The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMOKE MIRRORS AND THE TRUTH

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Breaking down the new cabinet with Bruce Anderson.  Who are the winners, what does that actually mean and is this a group built for action or more of the same?  Also, did Jean Chretien misspeak about residential schools and will he regret it?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the Wednesday Bridge. It's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Our podcast is brought to you by Questrade, Canada's fastest-growing and award-winning online broker. Tired of getting dinged with fees every time you buy or sell U.S. stocks? Well, good news. With Questrade, you don't have to.

You can hold U.S. dollars in your trading account and avoid expensive, forced conversion fees every time you trade U.S. stocks. Switch today and get up to $50 worth of free trades. Visit Questrade.com to open an account and use promo code QUEST. Conditions apply. And Bruce is back in Canada. Bruce is back from Scotland. He was tearing up the golf courses here for the last, I don't know,

almost a couple of weeks. Now he's back home in Ottawa. Peter, you make it sound like I wasn't doing any work over there, but I was doing work. I was connecting with you. I was thinking hard. I was thinking about this cabinet shuffle. I was obviously rereading your book, that bestseller book that you got out. It is a bestseller. I've been looking forward to getting back and getting on the Zoom with you and talking about smoke

mirrors and the truth. And that is what we're going to do right now. But, you know, let's not say you weren't golfing because you did manage to slip in around a golf most days when the weather was working and, and you were playing really well and good for you. If there's a place to play great golf, this is it. The birthplace of golf. All right.

The birthplace of cabinet shuffles in Canada is Ottawa. And there was a big shuffle yesterday. 39 people. Now, you take the prime minister out. So there's 38 actual cabinet ministers, aside from the prime minister. And it was an even split, and 19 men and women and the thing that intrigued me was not all of but a good portion of this most senior cabinet positions went to women we knew that finance would would stay with christia freeland

but anita anand got foreign affairs. And, you know, both you and I are big fans of Anita Anand and the way she dealt with the vaccine situation. Melanie Jolie became the foreign affairs minister, or global affairs minister, as they call it now, which may well have surprised a few people. Mark Garneau, not in cabinet anymore, which only signals to me that there's probably something coming his way in terms of an appointment. And there were others. But, I mean, those are kind of the big three, three of the biggest portfolios that any government has.

Health is a big one right now with, you know, with COVID, obviously. And there are others that are big as well. But that was my initial take on it. So you're closer to the action. You saw it all unfolding yesterday. What do you make of it all? I think it's going to take a little while to really see how it shakes out and to look at the mandate letters to understand some of the directions that the prime minister is giving ministers as he appoints them to these

portfolios. Explain that, the mandate letter. Right. Well, one of the innovations in recent years has been for the prime minister to craft a letter explaining to the minister what they're going to be held responsible for or accountable for doing, what it is that he wants them to do. And it also includes a lot of guidance about departments and ministers working together in support of each other where it's most logical and most efficient for that to happen. Often, there is additional content that kind of updates a mandate in a particular department because of an evolving issue or a new policy direction that has been announced maybe in the campaign. And so when we see those mandate letters, we'll have a little bit clearer understanding

of why some of the choices that were made were made. You know, a good example would be Mark Miller, who's going into environment and climate change, and Jonathan Wilkinson, who's going to Natural Resources Canada. And that might signal that the Prime Minister is saying we put in place most of the policy that we want in that area. And now we need to make sure that it's executed well, which often comes down to policies that relate to the extractive sector in Natural Resources Canada. So it's logical in that context for a Jonathan Wilkinson to move over into that portfolio with that outcome in mind. So what's under the hood of the shuffle is from a functional standpoint, a little bit more important, I think, than sometimes it's given credit for, at least on the first day.

And to be fair, we don't know what those mandate letters are. So I think we take a good look at them as we see them evolve and emerge in the weeks ahead. But the ones that caught my attention, Peter, the five or six choices that the prime minister made, which seemed most interesting to me. Certainly, Anita Anand to defence and Harjit Sejan staying in the cabinet, but being moved to a different portfolio, which doesn't have the same stature, I think is a signal of two things, both the confidence that he has in her and the fact that having acquired all of the vaccines that she did in an efficient and timely way. She's earned an opportunity to tackle a bigger portfolio, a bigger issue, if you like, although it's hard to know what's a bigger issue than the pandemic. But if there has been a big problem for the government in the last little while that just

hasn't looked like the minister was able to cap it. It's the sexual misconduct story at defense. And so I think it's bold to put a woman in that portfolio, given the nature of the issue, but smart to put her in because she's got a lot of credibility and she's pretty strong personality. And I think she'll, she'll do a good job. I imagine that the mandate letter for Anita Anand is two words, fix it. You know, I think that's probably the briefing, right? But, you know, there are always going to be other issues on the horizon in terms of military

procurement and that sort of thing. And her prowess in the procurement field, I think, probably didn't go unnoticed in thinking about her in that portfolio too, because we spent a lot of money on military equipment. And so I'm happy to see her in that role. I think she'll do a good job. And I think it won't just be about that, that misconduct or culture change that needs to happen. I do think that it's really important to see Melanie Jolie appointed to the foreign affairs or the global affairs portfolio. Some people will like that appointment.

I'm sure some will wonder if it's merited. I think what's interesting to me about it is this is somebody who in her first outing in cabinet at the heritage portfolio didn't have a great success. And so she suffered a demotion basically, and was one of those rare situations where the demotion was really acknowledged by Melanie Jolie as a demotion. And she said, she's learning some things and she's going to work hard and try to do better. And then she was given an opportunity, I think,

to shine to some degree in the economic development and tourism role. And I think she did impress a lot of people. And so the prime minister, I think, is basically saying, your first match wasn't that great. Your second one was quite a bit better and going to give you a chance to shine on a bigger stage. So I think that's a measure of how he approaches the relationship with ministers and especially those who might have some desire to succeed him after he goes.

Before you leave, before you leave, before you leave global affairs, what is your take on the Mark Garneau situation? It's not like he screwed up in that portfolio. I mean, he's got a pretty good reputation. I think it was more the question of, you know, maybe it's time to kind of put more new faces and new people in the cabinet. And if there's something that he'd be interested, I'd be surprised if there isn't an appointment for him because he can still be a very effective servant of the public. And there's been some rumors about ambassador to Paris, which to me would potentially be quite a good fit. And, you know, it would mean that Trudeau has Ralph Goodale in London and would have Mark Garneau in Paris, a pretty good combination of people that he has a good relationship with to help manage some of the relationships with our European allies and partners.

Maybe the most controversial choice in some quarters will be the appointment of Stephen Guilbeault as Environment and Climate Change Minister and shifting Jonathan Wilkinson to Natural Resources. I have a really high regard for Jonathan Wilkinson. I think he's done an excellent job at kind of taking some of the drama out of the environment portfolio at the way that it was becoming so polarized, I think needed a little bit of that. And I think he did a very good job of putting policies in place to move the country forward on our climate goals. The controversial part will be whether Stephen Gilbo will play a similar kind of role, or will he be somebody who's looking to have more high profile political clashes with climate deniers or people who are kind of laggards in the decarbonization field? I don't think it's clear what his mandate or what his inclination is in that regard yet. And it's going to be one of the things that a lot of businesses in particular are watching very

closely in the next 24, 48 hours to get that indication from him of whether or not their stable policy ends about working with him to implement it, or the policy ambition is going to be ratcheted up again, which for some businesses can feel quite disruptive and distressing if they think that they've just got to handle on the policy implications that were there. So those are some of the kind of the more important or interesting ones for me, Peter. If there's one newcomer that I'm really happy to see in the cabinet, it's Sean Fraser from Nova Scotia, a really bright, young MP, who I think will make an important contribution and will be well liked and well respected in a more senior role. He was a parliamentary secretary before, but that's a good one for him. and was not shy about going up against critics of the government and those who were thinking the environment push was going too far.

So it would be surprising not to see him carry on that role. I guess we'll get a very good hint almost right away because I assume he'll be in Glasgow at the COP summit that'll deal with climate change and other things coming up in a very short period of time, next week or so. Before we leave this topic, let me ask you about, there has been some criticism today about the number of times the global affairs portfolio has changed since Justin Trudeau became prime minister. I think it's five times in six years. Now, you know, obviously the prime minister is the pointed edge of the Canadian story in terms of the landscape outside of Canada

and in terms of meeting with other world leaders. But next is often the foreign affairs minister. And if you don't really know who you're dealing with because it's changing every few months or every year um how serious problem is that do you give a weight to this the kind of criticisms that we've seen uh you know in the first 24 hours on this well not to be too cute about it but i have trouble knowing which of the globe columnist perspectives I should take more seriously, the one that says none of these people matter at all, or the one that says

it's a travesty that we've had this many foreign affairs minister, but they can't, both those perspectives can't both be right. So maybe, Peter, you can pick whether Mr. Coyne or Mr. Ibbotson is the one that we're going to roll with. But more seriously, I do think that we've seen over the years an increasing tendency to assume that the prime minister of whatever stripe, whichever stripe, is going to be the person who makes most of the crucial decisions in the global affairs space, and is going to do a lot of the direct interaction with other heads of state, G20, G7, that kind of thing. And so it's plausible to say that in that context, we're in an era where we're unlikely to have foreign affairs ministers who have the same level of importance and stature as was the case when you and I first started covering or watching or being involved in politics. And I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, or it's just

a thing because the way that the world has changed. The second thing I would say is that since Trump and maybe even just before Trump, the world order and the relationships that we have with other countries have become quite unsettled, not necessarily because of anything that we did, but because of a variety of dynamics, whether it's the rising influence of China, whether it's the breakdown of the EU and the UK through the Brexit vote, whether it's Trump arriving and wanting to throw the cards of NAFTA up in the air and see what happens. But all of those things represent a real challenge in the global affairs portfolio and not a challenge where you'd say it's up to that one minister to manage. So I kind of hear that that's a lot of foreign affairs ministers in a short period of time. Yeah, and mathematically, I guess it is. But I don't know that I can point to anything where I'd say Canada was the worst off for it.

And I don't know that that's an argument for not having replaced Mr. Garneau with somebody who the prime minister has confidence in and wants to give a larger role to. Last question on, on the cabinet shuffle, if you want to call it a shuffle, that's really the new cabinet of a new government. But the last question is we, we have been looking at this and we talked about it last week with Chantel as, you know, for those who might want to, you know,

focus on a leadership rundown somewhere down the road in the next year or two, three years on the liberal side, who put themselves in a good position as a result of the, the cabinet posts that the prime minister gave them today? Well, I think the most obvious two are Anita Anand and Melanie Jolie. I think both of those are, you know, I think there's a lot of people who think Anita Anand has a lot of talent, but maybe not enough experience to think about it. On the other hand, Melanie Jolie doesn't have that much more experience.

But I think that they're among the people who are rumored to be possible contenders, not necessarily in the case of Miss Anand because of anything that she has signaled. Probably it's more fair to assume that Melanie Jolie indicates that she has some level of ambition. But those are the two, I think, that most directly come to mind for me, but I, you know, I think we're about a year away from really feeling how that race is going to start to take shape. And I think that there are probably five or six others who might have a, an inclination to think about running and none of them were put in a worse position

than they were in before um it's just those two kind of stand out for me a little bit well i should i should have mentioned one other thing um peter that um moving um steven gilbo to environment um also took him out of a heritage department where, to some eyes, mine included, I think he was struggling a bit with that Bill C-10, the broadcast and the telecom reform bill. And it had been a problem for Melanie Jolie before. It's not something that the public pays that much attention to, but it's really about the wiring of the broadcast and cultural and artistic systems in our country. And so there are a lot of people who are very articulate and very enthusiastic about getting involved in those policy changes.

And I don't think it was a singular political success ever since Trudeau has been a prime minister. And Pablo Rodriguez is widely regarded as a calm and steady performer, and hopefully he'll do a good job in that portfolio. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. I should mention to listeners who I'm sure have already noticed it, but there's a clicking going on on Bruce's output. He's just had a new setup installed in Ottawa,

and obviously it's not overwhelming know, it's not overwhelming but it is there. Every once in a while you hear a little click. We'll work on that and I'm sure we'll get it sorted out before Friday's Good Talk. We're going to come back and we are going to talk about Jean Chrétien right after this. You're listening to The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. Okay, we're back with Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa.

I'm here in Dornick, Scotland. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast. And we're glad you are. Alright, I want to talk a little bit about the former Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien. He's got a new book coming out. Launched yesterday, I believe. A lot of books out there right now. Mark Messier's got a new book coming out.

This came out yesterday as well. And, you know, as you know from constant mention, I've got one. So has Rick Mercer. So has Mark Critch. I mean, there are a lot of new books out there. And one of the ways, as I've mentioned, that they get you, the publishers get you to promote your book is to do interviews as many as you can and go on radio shows and television shows

and talk about your book. So Jean Chrétien, 87 now, has been doing exactly that, and he's given a couple of interviews in the last couple of days that have caused some discussion. One of them where he suggested that Justin Trudeau hasn't been taking enough of his advice. And he could have offered advice on things that seem to have got Justin Trudeau in a bit of trouble. That kind of reminded me, I mean, those are the kind of answers you give when you're kind of boxed in on an interview and they ask you, you know, what about that place you used to work?

What do you think about the way it's running? I get that all the time about the CBC. And you can get yourself in a bag of trouble by doing that. Nevertheless, he did it, he answered it. And Justin Trudeau has basically said, oh, you know, I listened to the former prime minister all the time. He was out there campaigning with me last month and I'm not concerned at whatever he says. I'm happy to hear it. So that one, you know, maybe that's a, maybe that saws itself off and it's not a problem. The other one is a little different. He was asked on Raja Canada over the weekend

about his government's handling of the residential schools question. And he was adamant. He said, when I was the, not only the prime minister, but before when I was the minister responsible for what was called then Indian Affairs and Northern Development, I never heard of this issue. Nobody ever brought it up to me. Not once. minister responsible for what was called then Indian Affairs Northern Development, I never heard of this issue. Nobody ever brought it up to me.

Not once. Now, that turns out, in fact, not to be the case. There seems to be evidence that, in fact, it was brought up more than a few times, at least four times, and nothing was done about it. So there are more than a few people who are quite upset with the former prime minister's comments on this issue. As I mentioned earlier, he's 87. He's selling a book. What should we make of this, Bruce?

Well, I think it was very poor. It was a poor choice for him to decide to do this book, perhaps. And certainly, I haven't read the book, so I don't know that for sure. But it was a terrible idea for him to go on this book tour without more thoughtful answers to the questions. And I'm kind of like you. I don't think it's wrong for him to say, I think Trudeau's printing too much money and that worries me. I mean, he's entitled to his opinion. it's always a little bit unbecoming of a former prime minister to you know to offer you know that kind of comment and at the same time to say but i'm not questioning anything that he's doing which

obviously he was doing um i just personally think it's better for retired politicians to kind of decide that they're retired in terms of commenting on their successors, but to each their own, they can decide what to do and the consequences are for them, which isn't to say that former anchors shouldn't comment on what happens after they leave. I'm always very interested in that. I was very careful about what I said on those. You have been for sure. But it's easy to get trapped on that because that is, that's one of the hooks, you know, the interviews are, you know, trying to

get out of you. Yeah. Not surprising, especially if you've dropped the odd bomb in your book, which it appears he did. So there you go. Yeah. But the other thing on the residential schools question, there are really two parts of it that are problematic as far as I'm concerned. And problematic is too kind a word. I find it disappointing, disrespectful, the things that he said, and he should know better. And so I don't give him a pass because he's 87. I don't think that when you go out on a book tour, you have people around you who can say, you're going to get this question. And it was pretty obvious that if you're doing a book tour, and you're him right now in

this time where Indigenous reconciliation is such an important topic, you're going to get a question about it. So you should have a pretty good answer. And his answers in two respects were really found wanting as far as other people are concerned, and certainly by me. One is him offering up the idea that he never heard that there were any problems in these schools. And I suppose there are more forensics to come to show well exactly what did transmit its way up to him in the food chain in that department, but it seems unlikely that there wasn't any criticism of residential schools that reached his ears. More problematically, even than that, though, is him saying, him really equating his experience at a boarding school with the experience of Indigenous children. I think the quote was,

he said, I was a boarding school student from age 6 to 21. I ate baked beans and oatmeal. It was difficult. The life of a boarding school student, very difficult. And I got to tell you, I think that to to use that as part of an answer about what we now know happened in those residential schools is disrespectful. It's disappointing. It's obnoxious and it's a bit outrageous. And it's a little bit in his style, I think, to be that kind of combative. Why is everybody getting so serious about things? And, you know, times change and attitudes change. But no, I mean, I think there are a lot of people who respect him. And I think a lot of people who respected him are not feeling the same way right now. Point us ahead in terms of what you think is going to be happening in this.

You know, it's almost a month before Parliament resumes. So, you know, a lot of these ministers who know nothing about their portfolios at the moment have got, you know, two, three, four weeks of crash learning time ahead of them. But the government also has to have a clear idea of what its agenda is as it brings the house back in a minority situation. And, you know, we'll be once again, you know, looking for support where it can find it on issues that it's going to advance so what do you see this next few weeks being how's that going on well i think the focus is going to shift uh first of all i do think that that the amount of time it takes to get to parliament

resuming or a cabinet appointed, it isn't really a matter that a lot of people are spending time worrying about outside of the group of people like us who do it because we're fascinated with it endlessly. And I also think that it's wrong if anybody is assuming that this work in preparation for the return of parliament and the tabling of a legislative agenda through a throne speech and so on is time poorly spent. I tend to think of it as being time well spent so that people organize their thoughts and get their legislative kind of direction in place. And then there's going to be time for it to be debated. And that's the way that it should be. I think pretty soon, the focus is going to

turn back to the question of Aaron O'Toole's leadership in the Conservative Party. And here's why. I think the thing that's simmering under the hood of the Conservative caucus is the vaccine mandate, the requirement that at a certain point in time in the next several weeks, if you want to get on a plane in Canada, you're going to need to prove that you're double vaccinated. If you want to go into the House of Commons physically, you're going to need to prove that you're fully vaccinated. I don't think that Aaron O'Toole has the, it's not, it's fairly obvious to me that Aaron O'Toole doesn't have the ability to say to his caucus, this is what we're going to do, and you're coming with me right now. And so he's not saying that.

He's kind of waffling back and forth. And I think that's going to turn out to be a bigger problem for him than if he just said, if you're not coming with me on this, you're out of the caucus. I think you have to, at some point in that situation, decide that the worst place to be is standing in the middle of the road. And instead, you've got to pick a direction. You've got to say you're coming with me or you're against me. And you take your chances in that respect.

But right now, I think what's going on is that his caucus is letting him hang out to dry basically as this deadline approaches without any ability to say what position they're going to take on it, who's not going to be able to make it to the House of Commons meetings. And probably some people want to let that play out, because they want to weaken him because they want to replace him because they want to create enough tension that there will be a vote on his leadership. So I think there's going to be a lot more drama around that, frankly, than around the throne speech, because political coverage loves that kind of drama. And beyond that, I do think that the completion of the vaccination program and the removal of vaccination of guidances on behavior and the strengthening, hopefully, of the economy at the same time. That's where all of the public instincts are going to be turned. That's what people are going to be

looking for. And in terms of big picture agenda items from the government, $10 a day child care. That's going to be one of those things that if you're in that cabinet, you want to see done, you want to deal in Ontario, and you want to make the expansion of capacity and the lowering of costs a reality for those people who are dealing with that cost of living issue now. Just before we wrap it up, you know, you're right, the reporters love the story of the chaos within the Conservative Party and the split. Do the Liberals have to basically stay away from that now? I mean, we're not in an election campaign. There's no point in having yet another wedge issue or, you know, build that wedge issue up more. Do they just stay away from it? Yeah, I think they do. I mean, we put out a poll today that showed that 77% of Canadians think

that if MPs want to go in the House, they should be vaccinated. That's bad math for the Conservatives. It's good math for the Liberals, but they don't need to do anything to benefit from it. The Conservatives have somehow managed to put themselves in a situation where they're kind of like the People's Party on this, but not completely like the People's Party. And that's a bad place to be. And the Liberals will just be happy to watch that play itself out inside the conservative movement. All right.

Good to talk to you, as always, Bruce. We'll talk to you again on Friday when Chantal joins us for Good Talk. Before we leave today, I want to just do a quick correction on something I said yesterday near the tail end of the program. And it was about John McCain. I told the story about how they were still not releasing the documents, the final documents for the JFK assassination. And I told the little story about John McCain saying he still wanted to know

what Lee Harvey Oswald was doing in Mexico City a couple of weeks before the assassination, where he visited both the Soviet and the Cuban embassies. And in recounting that story, I said, John Kennedy visiting those two embassies. Of course, that's not what happened. Anybody who knows that story knows that that was an error in saying that. The real person who visited those embassies was Lee Harvey Oswald. But John McCain still wanting to know up to the day he died,

what that was really all about. And until he knew that, he was not giving up on the belief that there was a lot more to what happened that day November 22, 1963, than what we know today. Alright, that's it for this edition of Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.