The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Should Anything Be Off The Record On The Campaign Planes And Buses?

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Journalists Althia Raj and Rob Russo tackle some key questions about journalism: should Justin Trudeau be called "prime minister" during a campaign?; who pays for reporters' travel on campaign planes?; should reporters share the blame for bad answers from politicians?; and how about the touchy subject of what's on and what's off the record?  It's an action-packed episode you won't want to miss.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Election Bridge. Today, it's the reporters. All righty, it's Tuesday of week three, The Election Bridge. It's the bridge, but it's the election edition of the bridge right we got a real selection throughout the week you heard the insiders yesterday and i must say from looking at the numbers of the downloads of the podcast yesterday i was terrific clearly you are into the idea of the insiders giving their take on various things as they relate to the election campaign tuesdays and we'll have this episode in just a moment, is the reporters

with Rob Russo, former Bureau Chief of Canadian Press in Ottawa and former Bureau Chief of the CBC in Ottawa, and Althea Raj, who is the former Bureau Chief of the Huffington Post in Ottawa. She's still a pretty active journalist as well. She does a column for Le Devoir, and I think you can expect within the next week or so, you're going to hear another announcement about,

well, let's just say there'll be another announcement about Althea Raj. But in the meantime, she's going to keep doing the reporters because she's good and she knows her stuff. Wednesdays, tomorrow, you'll have the opportunity once again to stir a little smoke mirrors and the truth with bruce anderson back from his uh holidays in nova scotia uh thursday this week we're going to do you know your voice we want to hear what you have to say. And there have been a lot of comments and letters and emails so far. The best way to get to me is themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

If you have things that you want to say or questions you might want to have about the election campaign, send them in. A selection of those will be on Thursday's program. And over the last couple of weeks while I was up in the Arctic, a lot of emails did come through. And I will, as I said, pick a selection of those for this Thursday. So if you want to get in on that, you probably should get your email in the next day or two so I can have a look at them. There's been a lot already,

and the ones that I think touch me in some fashion will certainly make the cut. And we've been getting them from all over North America. A lot of Americans following this race as well. Some of them are Canadians who live in the States. Others are Americans who like to either visit or talk about Canada. And so that's all good to have. So we'll be doing that on Thursday.

Friday, good talk, Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. And so far, when we're looking at the numbers for last week, that was the winner. People love Chantantal and Bruce. And those numbers were pretty big for, for last week. Okay. Enough already. Time to,

to get to the reporters with Althea Raj and Rob Russo coming up. Right. As soon as I find it. Here it is. Here we go. All right. The reporters Althea and Rob are both here. They're both in Ottawa. I've had a lot of mail over the last couple of weeks since our first edition of The Reporters,

which is really encouraging because people care about journalism. They care about what we do and how we do it. And they ask questions because, you know, one of my pet peeves has always been that we're not, we're actually not transparent enough about how we do our work. And it's one of the reasons that the trust factor has been affected somewhat overall between the journalists and the people that they serve. So let me get at some of these questions. One is right out of our last program.

And Althea, at one point, it's not like you stumbled, but it's you backed off. You were talking about Trudeau and you called him the prime minister and said, oh no, you know, I should just call him the liberal leader. So, and you're not alone in that. There are different news organizations that operate differently on that basis. What's your rationale? What do you think's appropriate to call Justin Trudeau during a campaign? Well, the reason I think I and a lot of other people try to refer to the party leaders by their role as leader of their party and not by the role that they had in government. It's not that he's not the prime minister anymore, because of course he still is. But you don't want to give a feeling

of an incumbency advantage to the race. And that's why there's kind of like a level playing field during the election campaign. And you try to have balanced coverage of all the political parties, or at least most of the major political parties. And you call, call some of us call the party leaders the leader of their party and that's why we don't refer to the prime minister

as the prime minister when he's making a liberal campaign announcement for example i think the hiccup though in this role is um when you're talking about things that have to do with the government so like the government's evacuation and the prime minister acting as the prime minister and not Justin Trudeau acting as leader of the liberal party in making those announcements or clarification. I think, I think if he had a press conference in Ottawa with government ministers, I think I would probably call him the prime minister because he's acting as a

prime minister and he's not acting as the liberal leader. Where are you sit on this, Rob? I'm afraid that i agree i i uh i understand the the nature to of of uh of calling him the liberal leader but i just don't think it's it's particularly valid it can cut both ways to call somebody a prime minister when they're at the head of an unpopular government uh it can really hurt. I covered Kim Campbell in 1993. I can tell you she was carrying a very sort of awful can for Brian Mulroney in that campaign as prime minister. I don't know that it's particularly helped Justin Trudeau in this campaign either. So there's that notion there that it can cut both ways to be the head of a government. The other reality is that he is the

head of the government right now the government continues to function uh it is in caretaker mode which is a a particular brand of governing that may limit his ability to do certain things but he remains the head of a government he remains the prime minister and i think we should probably call him that because it can it can hurt as much as it helps depending on the situation and i think we should so then you don't agree exactly i was agreeing with your last point and that and that i think it can sow some confusion if we refer to him one way at times and another way uh at other times during a rip period. Do you think it would be appropriate if he's making a Liberal campaign announcement in Grand Bay, for example, that we

call him the Prime Minister? The Prime Minister announced a new thing in the Liberal platform? Yeah, if he was making an announcement in Grand Bay after having cut subsidies to a local industry in Grand Bay, I don't think it would help him if he was the prime minister. But I just like facts are not messy things. They're pretty clear things. And the fact remains that he is the head of the government. He is the prime minister for better or for worse.

There is an incumbency advantage. Polls have shown that, that when you ask the question, who makes the best prime minister, the person who's in the office on the job often gets the edge there. But when it comes to actual voter intention, voter support, it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference. You can be quite unpopular as a sitting prime minister of Canada. You know, I've watched that argument play out for the last, know 40 years uh in the newsrooms that i've worked in and it's still playing out today and i i think you the listeners today will get a sense of the different arguments that exist because in fact there is no ironclad

rule different organizations and in some cases different reporters um treat this issue uh differently and and that's the way i can tell you peter having worked in the united states that there is a definite incumbency advantage uh to the presidency of the united states and that's projected through symbols the symbol of the white house the symbol of the presidential podium. Air Force One, watching Air Force One come into a town is a powerful symbol of the office of the president of the United States. We don't have those kinds of trappings because we're a parliamentary system and not a presidential or Republican system. So there are areas where it did make me feel a little bit uncomfortable as a journalist but i don't know if that's the case here in canada yeah it would be so inappropriate to see justin trudeau arrive in like the prime minister's plane to campaign event well because because because that's the way we've existed uh as you know as long as planes existed but you know they have a head of state as their president.

We have a head of government as our prime minister. And, you know, it is different and it comes with different trappings as a result. Okay, that question actually, a very good one, came from Patricia Sutherland in Ottawa. She also asked another one, which is tricky as well. How do reporters juggle reporting on a policy promise announcement and the details of the policy promise? With quick turnaround in reporting, it always amazes me how journalists can summarize and in some cases analyze what may be a complex policy in such a short period of time, especially if it's dropped in the middle of a campaign. It's comparable to producing short news clips versus a long podcast style well yes and no but the the crux of your question is a good one

so how do they do it how do they handle the quick policy promise or announcement in trying to give details and analysis right out of the gate. Rob? There are two things. First of all, some reporters are fast processors, very good. One of the reasons why reporters leave journalism and go to what we call the dark side is because a lot of us, or a lot of them, have a skill. That's the ability to take complex public policy issues, distill them to their essence very, very quickly,

and articulate them in a way that can connect with readers, listeners, and viewers. It's a real skill. How do we get that skill? Some people are natural. David Cochran on CBC is a natural at that. But then there's another way we get that skill. We cheat. And how do we cheat?

We go to the people who are about to make the announcement and we say, give us your announcement. And so that we can study it and bone up on it. Or we establish beat reporters who have expertise in a particular subject area can do that very, very quickly as well. But I used to do something for the Canadian press when I worked for them called cheating for speed. And you prepare in advance. And one way you do it, you get the speech in advance. You go to the people and say, give me the essence of the message in advance. You line up reaction in advance to what you think the announcement might be. So you use tricks, but you also hone muscles. You build and you hone muscles over a

period of time. I'll see it. Yeah, I agree with everything Rob said. So that cheating is usually asking for the documents under embargo. That's the term we use, but sometimes they don't give them to you. So it does happen that they'll just drop something that you had no previous knowledge that they were going to do. During the campaign trial, I think a few things help when that happens. Rob's absolutely right. And it's a really good reason why we should have beat reporters, something that there seems to be fewer and fewer of. So when you have a beat, you have that, you know, you've covered housing, for example, you know a lot about housing and you can dig into your own knowledge and expertise on the subject matter. But sometimes you don't have an expertise in whatever the subject matter was that is

the issue of the press release or the speech. Often you do line up reaction, not necessarily just to comment on the record on the policy, but experts who can tell you like, what is the value of this policy? What will it do? What are the drawbacks? What are the positive friends of it? You can, I guess, to use Rob's point, cheat by using previous files. So things that you've written on the subject previously, you can cheat by calling on your colleagues. Often we are partnered up. If there's somebody on the subject previously. You can cheat by calling on your colleagues. Often we are partnered up. If there's somebody on the bus,

there's somebody back in Ottawa who's helping kind of fill in the blanks. You're gathering the information, but they're helping flesh out your story. I would also say that we tend to carry around like the previous budget and the previous platform so that we can measure political parties' commitments and promises based on what they've done in the past before at least what they've promised before so i think those are a variety of ways where you can at least that first

file has a bit more background than just what the political party is giving you i just want to know what cochran paid you rob Rob, for the show. Cochran is pretty good at that, but he probably offered you a day's cod fishing in his beloved Newfoundland. I've been cod fishing with him. He's not very good, but I was excellent at the cod. Yeah, I've seen the pictures on the Internet of both of you French kissing the cod. Exactly. Okay, here's a good one. Carolyn Black from Waterloo writes,

listening to Tuesday's podcast on the talk about travel, and this was your discussion, the two of you, do the parties pay for the transportation of media that travel on the campaign planes and buses and planes now i think the answer is the answer is no but is it a complicated answer is it just straight up everything that a reporter has as a result of that trip whether it's travel food hotels whatever is paid for by the journalist or their organization the The news organization. Yeah, it's a lot of money too. It could be a thousand dollars a day, even more so. Actually, I can dig that up if you want

to know the actual number, but it's a lot of money. And that's just the cost of the travel. So being in the plane, being in the bus and in the bus, they kind of give you a setup where usually you kind of have like two seats to yourself and a platform. So that's kind of like your writing desk and they give you a light and an electrical plug so you can plug in your laptop. And then in the back of the bus, there's like they've taken some of the seats out and there's a bit of a canteen there with some a fridge you can get some water or some pop actually sometimes there's alcohol too they want the journalists to be liquored up and friendly and well fed and all those other things varies very differently some camp i remember i was on the liberal campaign in 2011 but on the NDP campaign they had like lobster and then the conservatives had they were it started the food started off being really bad

and I think it got better during the 2011 campaign so the parties pay for the food too so that that let's say it's a thousand dollars a day that cost is just for the travel and then your news organization will also pay for your hotel room so the political parties will arrange that your hotel rooms wherever they're going it's really expensive and it explains why not a lot of news organizations and all the reporters on the planes well it's been a long time since i traveled on before i did a couple of campaigns on the planes, and there was always this feeling that the parties were actually subsidizing

their own travel bill by hitting up the reporters for more than it was actually costing. You know, Rob, you used to have to crunch these numbers as a bureau manager at both CP and CBC. You know, briefly, because I want to move on, but what's your take on this travel issue? Yeah, some parties did make money on the reporters. It's about $50,000,

a little bit more now for what we call the season's ticket to travel for the entire campaign for one reporter. So that's why a lot of news organizations just can't afford it anymore. When you and I were on planes, Peter, they were packed. They're not packed anymore. That's why they remove seats in the back. News organizations are facing a money crunch. So it's about $10,000 a week if you want to take a weekly ticket.

And it used to be about $2,500 or $3,000 a day. It's really expensive. Do they subsidize it? I know that the NDP was anxious to get some coverage, and I thought that they might have been subsidizing some of their recent campaigns when they thought they were going to be ignored um but it's rare it costs a lot of money and it's one of the reasons why we don't get the breadth of coverage that we should have we don't get all the newspapers we don't get all

the regions represented on national campaigns the way we should right now okay i'm on a second are you saying they're subsidizing the parties were subsidizing like they're not charging the media organization the cost because i was always concerned that the parties were actually making money no i think that's point off of us i think that's what rob's saying okay initially yeah um of course when he and i were traveling on planes they were like props, we had to stick our arms out the window and flap, right? Yeah, that's right. Okay, I got to read this one. It's a couple of, it's a little long, but it's a good letter.

Scott Keller from Winnipeg. I'll be honest, I was a bit annoyed listening to your discussion with Rob and Althea the other day, specifically the when the journalists were slamming politicians for not answering questions i certainly agree that politicians should answer important questions but whenever the conversation comes up in the media there's never any self-reflection about why they do this in my opinion the media is just as much to blame when it comes to this issue it's not uncommon for politicians to answer many questions

for a respectable period of time only to be cut down into two or five second sound bites if i was a politician why would i risk giving a thoughtful answer when i know it will only be used if the media can turn it into an explosive story not to mention all the stupid hypothetical or trap questions that are being thrown out just to try and fabricate the headline there is no room for context or making subtle points in today's discourse and trying to do so can get you into big trouble politicians speak in prescripted sound bites because they've learned there's no benefit to being thoughtful in their answers in fact it's usually detrimental there was also a part of your podcast when the Ignatieff campaign was criticized for holding too many press conferences, giving too many detailed answers.

Seriously? While I too get annoyed when politicians dodge questions, I can't blame them. Okay, so Scott's got a lot in that letter. And he kind of fires around the room. Everybody takes a hit on that one. But generally, what's your response to that, Rob? What would you say? I would say that I've covered a lot of prime ministers.

I don't want to say the number, but it's probably in double figures. And the number of them that gave substantive answers to substantive questions dwindled as time went on and we learned that scott's absolutely right and that there was a little bit of time very little bit of time for them to be seen in terms of on broadcast or listened to on broadcast for a substantive answers but the ones that did answers substantively i thought got a lot of coverage and got a lot of respect you know stephen har Harper did not hold a lot of press conferences. When he did,

they were really, really interesting, because if he was asked a substantive question, he would answer substantively. The same with Brian Mulroney. He would give sort of soundbite clips, but he was also

capable of taking questions that were substantive on the Constitution and answering them substantively. But that's dwindled. Why? Because, I mean, Scott's right. They want to get their message across. So they stay on a message track. It doesn't matter if we ask them a gotcha question or a substantive question, they don't want to necessarily answer the question that you're asking. It's an indelicate, sometimes tawdry dance, and it doesn't have to be particularly polite. But we're trying to get information and they're trying to get their message across. If I take some people complain about our questions at face value. It's almost like they say, you guys should be the antenna. You should just transmit, just transmit.

And we can't do that. We're abdicating our responsibility as journalists if we don't pose questions. Should we pose better questions sometimes? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that we should abdicate our responsibility and just provide an open channel for people to bloviate about what they want without being challenged. I agree with everything Rob said. I find it a mark of disrespect, frankly, when the politicians don't answer clear questions like I don't I don't think that there's been a lot of gotcha question on this election trail. And yet it's really hard to get Aaron O'Toole or Justin Trudeau to answer a

clear question. And when they do answer clear questions, like I think of the liberal leader on Canada on Sunday night, the answers are good. And why would you not answer the questions? And when you look like you're not answering the questions, because everybody can tell that you have avoided giving a direct answer to a question. It looks cagey. It looks like you're trying to hide something. If the answer is no, why don't you just say no and explain what your position is?

I agree with Rob's comment about Stephen Harper. When he chose to have press conferences at length, they were really, really good. When he felt comfortable in a subject matter and he wanted to be asked, he gave good answers. There's lots of politicians that do give good answers. Bob Ray gives very long and thoughtful answers. Ralph Goodale would never evade a question if you asked him anything. His answers might be 25 minutes long um but he's answering the question to the the comment about criticizing ignatia for the too many press conferences i'm not going to criticize him for having too many press conferences my point in that comment was that i think he had so many he's so many press conferences that his message the message that he wanted to get through did not get through because he was answering questions on 50 different topics. I think it's possible to still get your message through and then answer. I mean, the question periods are only 20 minutes long now and give thoughtful answers to those questions. I think you're respecting the people who are asking you

questions, but you're also respecting the public who is watching you. You know, it's interesting with Ignatieff because I was in more than know, it's interesting with Ignatieff because I was in more than a few of those interviews with Ignatieff when he was liberal leader and they were painful because he was never comfortable. He just was never comfortable for a guy who's had a world of experience on a variety of issues. And then a couple of years ago, I was in Hungary working on a documentary and I interviewed him in Budapest. And it was one of the best interviews I've been involved in. He was fantastic.

You know, he was focused and he gave short answers that were, you know, directly in response to the questions. And, you know, it was about the unfolding situation in Hungary. And he was the president of a university there. And it was terrific. And it was like I sort of looked at him and I said, man, you must be happy to be out of politics. He said, absolutely, very happy. But there's a perfect example, Peter,

of a thoughtful guy who is corralled by this notion, the modern notion of message discipline. I'm sure that he had his people hounding him to stay on message and don't answer the question, as opposed to giving a thoughtful answer and allowing that answer to breathe a little bit. And that's what we're dealing with now. It's like, you've got to stay on message. And if it means ignoring the question, you ignore it. That's what they're told.

Okay. In the few minutes we have left, I want to deal with a delicate subject we may drag into the next week as well. And it kind of surrounds the conflict that some journalists face with covering political campaigns. Two fronts. I got a letter from a fellow by the name of Roger Lawler in Ontario. And I'm not going to mention the names that he mentions because I just don't know whether the situation is true. But I know the situation does exist and has often existed in years of political coverage. Where a journalist has a relationship with one of the people on the, you know, the dark side, on the political side,

a relationship that may involve, you know, living together. They may be spouses. How news organizations deal with that in terms of handing out assignments on election campaigns when they know one of their journalists is involved with somebody from the party that either they're covering or that is the opponent of the one they're covering. There's that. There's also this other issue that deals with conflict on the briefings that take, or not briefings, but the chats that take place with political leaders in the back of the bus or the back of the plane, and whether or not those should be considered off

the record or on the record. Now, I know those are two very different things. So I'll let you pick which of those two you want to go for, because they both are they're both interesting dilemmas in the field of journalism. Althea, why don't you start? Pick one of those two. I feel like I have so much to say on both of them. So the, on the conflict thing at HuffPost, when I started there,

they lead like the version of me, I guess in Washington was married to somebody who worked for the Obama administration and every, at the bottom of every one of his story, it says that his spouse works for the Obama administration. And I think full disclosure is probably the best policy. I think it's useful to the reader to know that this is happening. And I think that transparency never really hurts.

At least you're upfront about it. When I worked for Post Media at the National Post, one of the reporters was married to somebody who worked in the ndp campaign and she was not um allowed to cover uh partisan politics so she had a beat she basically covered um food policy um and so there was no um and as i guess that was the national post's way of getting around the subject. I've had a conversation with my partner about, I mean, it's not the same level of conflict, but many moons ago, more than a decade ago, he ran for the Bloc Québécois. Should I disclose that at the bottom of my stories? He has no relationship with the Bloc anymore, but we've had that conversation. So I think that it's useful to be transparent.

And if there's enough time, I'll go around on the off the record stuff. Okay, well, let's let Rob in first. Yeah, on conflict, sunlight is the best disinfectant. We had lots of people who had spouses. This is one industry town, Ottawa, spouses working in various departments. That being the case, if you were a reporter, you did not cover that department. If you had a spouse working in the environment department, you didn't cover anything to do with the environment. There was a wall there. And so that was just a fairly solid rule.

On the off-the-record rule, you know, we all use off-the-record sources. Good reporters all use them. Should there be off-the-record access to the prime minister? I think the gallery, the press gallery, came up with a compromise. I think it was Joyce Napier at ctv who came up with this that allowed these things to go ahead but the prime minister was put on notice that he said if he said anything that was newsworthy at all we would report it uh so uh he's not the first prime minister to do that i've been covering prime ministers for a long time like i said both peter and I might remember Brian Mulroney did them until Neil McDonald burned him at the back of his campaign plane in 1983 or 1984 and reported a comment that Mulroney said in reference to Bryce Mackesy, who was just given a plum appointment by outgoing Prime Minister Trudeau or Turner.

So, you know, prime ministers have always done this. Stephen Harper did it. And there was a controversy about Stephen Harper doing it, with some people saying, I'm not going to participate. So what did Harper do to get around that? He started inviting individual reporters up to the front of the plane for a one-on-one off the record tete-a-tete so should we do it uh is the question the gallery decided it seems to do it during a non-writ period

and now there's a debate over whether or not to do it during a writ period um i i personally used off the record conversations uh for i thought they were beneficial because you could a see somebody how they operated uh up close um you if you trusted this person at a minimum if they gave you information it would prevent you from reporting something that was in error and anybody who was going to prevent me from reporting incorrect information. If I trusted them, I appreciate it. If you establish the relationship of trust, you could push that person to go on the record afterwards. You could show them that you have this trust and use that person for information, and then you could push them to go on the record, push them to give you information or people that would put forward information on the record as well.

So I actually think that they can be beneficial and are an essential part of a reporter's toolkit. I'll see if you can wrap it up in less than a minute. I'd be very happy. I agree with everything Rob said. I think we've actually had off the record chat during campaigns. This is not a new thing. I think it's a new thing to me that reporters are publicly saying that they've decided not to participate in that conversation. I would add the caveat that I think it's interesting that the prime minister of the day would agree to a conversation where the reporter gets to decide

what is newsworthy because if the prime minister says something, usually it's newsworthy. But they can be useful even if you can't report on what was said. In this case, the example was Justin Trudeau coming to the back of the plane. He didn't have a great week. What did his body language convey? What information can you gleam out of the conversation that can give you leads to go chase something down later? Or if you're writing a more thoughtful piece at the end of the campaign, these are things that you file away in the back of your head and you can't report on them, but they can lead you to go report on another in other areas and through different paths. If he says something that triggers something in your heads.

I think it's more useful to have access to information than to not have access to information, however that information comes to you. All right. Just a quick point of personal disclosure here. Way back, way back, 1979 campaign, I was covering the Conservative Party i i was in the middle of a relationship with somebody who worked for the conservative leader ironically the guy was covering the liberal campaign was in a relationship with somebody who was uh close in terms of an advisory role to the liberal leader at the time now when i look back at that now i go how the hell did that ever happen how were we did your bosses know yeah they knew but you know that was like whatever that was

and that wouldn't be allowed to happen today no no absolutely and in fact it never was allowed to happen again at uh at the cbc but you know it did happen then i don't think when you look at the coverage of everything, there was some pretty hard hitting stories by both of us during that campaign against the party we were covering, but still it's the perception of stuff and, and, and, and the potential for a conflict of some sort. Anyway, that's just, that's just being transparent. Peter needed to get off his chest. Yes. I've had to live with that for 50 years or whatever whatever it is listen thank you for your honesty and

disclosure um thank you both it's been a great conversation we covered a lot of turf and uh we will continue to do so through the final weeks of this campaign It's been great to talk to both of you, and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Peter. All right. When we come back, wasn't that a great conversation? I liked it. When we come back, our fun fact for the day,

the origins and the meaning of a bellwether riding. You're listening to The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. All right, you hear bellwether mentioned every campaign, you know, you'll have the journalists coming on television or radio or you'll see it in the print. Somebody suggesting, okay, that's a bellwether writing okay so what do we actually mean when we say that and what is what is a bellwether writing which is one that we look at as journalists and analysts excuse me whoever was queuing that up made it too early.

Bellwether. The Bellwether riding, the one that we all tend to focus on often, is Peterborough-Kawartha Ontario riding. It's elected an MP for the government winning side in every election since 1965 with one exception, and that was in 1980 but every other election since 1965 whoever won peterbrook kawartha represented the party that ended up forming the government it has about a hundred thousand voters so why is it bellwether it's it's really well it's one of those things that's impossible to know

because in some ways it does resemble the country. It's both urban and rural. It's both industrial and agricultural. It's becoming more dependent on tourism and the service industry. Housing is becoming an issue as people leave the greater Toronto area and look to settle in this area of Peterborough. It's raising the price of housing, making it harder to come by. That's according to the Peterborough Examiner. But in some ways, it does not resemble the country.

It's much less diverse than Canada as a whole. It's older than Canada as a whole. Not by much, but it is older. 44 is the average age. In Canada, it's 41 as a whole. It's a little richer than Canada as a whole. The median household income is almost $65,000, while in Canada, it's about $63,000, Canada as a whole. Currently held by the Liberals, Marion Monsef. She's looking for a third term. She's a cabinet minister, has been since the government was formed in 2015. She won by 6,000 votes in 2015, only 3,000 in 2019.

So it'll be interesting. She had much more of a challenge last time round. Let's see where she ends up this time round. And Bellwether, where's that word come from? Bellwether, it's a leader or an indicator of trends. The term derives from the Middle English bellwether and refers to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of a castrated ram, a weather, leading a flock of sheep.

Bellwether. A shepherd could then note the movements of the animals by hearing the bell, even when the flock was not in sight. Okay, that's why they call it a bell weather riding. Now you know perhaps even more than you wanted to know. This has been the reporters on this episode of the bridge tomorrow, smoke mirrors and the truth with Bruce Anderson. Don't miss it.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours.