The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke Mirrors and The Truth - Are We Fair To Anti-Vaxxers?

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

A letter to SMT prompts a description on fairness in our commentary.  Bruce Anderson and I have our thoughts on this, and the role it may play in the upcoming election.  Plus our take on the Green Party and the NDP.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's Hump Day, Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, with Bruce Anderson, who's next. crafted with the highest quality ingredients, starting with quality animal ingredients, balanced with whole fruits and vegetables. Akana pet foods are rich in the protein and nutrients your dog or cat needs to feel and look their best. Available in grain-free, healthy grains, and singles for sensitive dogs. Akana, go beyond the first ingredient. Oh, I love Wednesdays. oh i love wednesdays you gotta love wednesdays wednesdays are so good i'm sitting in stratford ontario that's mumbling in the background that's bruce anderson he's in ottawa you're good today you're good always excited for wednesday peter Just so excited. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Well, so am I. And you know how we're going to start the conversation today? We're going to start with some letters, or a letter. A letter in particular, because I get a lot of letters. Obviously, there were a lot more when we were daily before the summer hiatus. We'll be starting daily again, I think, and probably within a couple of weeks because the election is like, it's there, man.

It's about time. Are we getting together with Chantal soon? Yes, we get together with Chantal. Fantastic. We've got a whole election scenario planned for the daily podcast, the daily edition of The Bridge. Obviously, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth will stay on Wednesdays. Good Talk with Chantel and you will be on Thursdays.

And big news, dropping the paywall on that. Sirius XM is going to let that go through the campaign. Anybody can get it. They'll get it as a podcast. They'll get it as The Bridge podcast. It'll be on at 12 noon on Thursdays, 12 noon Eastern, and repeated at 5 o'clock like all the other ones are, repeated at 5 Eastern.

Fantastic. Fantastic news. So it's all good. It's all good. And there will be a Friday edition, kind of a mailbag edition on Fridays, like the old weekend special, but it'll be election related. So we're going to make –

So I have to keep writing these fawning letters to you under different names? That's right. Those are good are good they're very good i like when you do that i really like you you change the tone a little bit depending on who you are but it's all boils down to the same thing about we love your podcast we love the bridge yeah it's really good uh anyway sometimes i write that i like i especially like wednesdays have you noticed that you know you can't tell it's me but anyway carry on carry on carry on um listen we have discussed the vaccine situation and we have made no secret about where we stand on vaccines no No secret at all. We believe in vaccines, and we believe everybody should believe in vaccines, although we do accept that people have the right to say,

no, you know, I don't want a vaccine. The argument has developed into over the last month or six weeks into, fine, you have that right. What right do I have as somebody who is vaccinated about where I go, where I'm let into, what the rules are, all of that. Anyway, I got, you know, I get a lot of mail, and some of it is, you know, kind of, I don't know, wacko. Some of it.

Not much of it. Most of the mail that we get here at the bridge is really good. I mean, in the sense that it's well thought out, it's smart, it's all those things, even when they disagree. So anyway, I got this letter last week from Dale Hogg, who wrote in it, you know, he's obviously been, I guess you'd say, a fan of mine over the years and back in the years of The National,

he does seem to not quite understand that there's a difference between a newscast and a podcast. The newscast, which I worked with and on and for for 50 years, you don't express your opinions. You're offering the best information you can so people can make up their own minds about whatever the issue may be. Podcast is different.

You know, I don't work for anybody. The CBC doesn't run this podcast. I got nothing to do with this podcast. It's all me and Bruce and whoever else we happen to have on the show. And, and that's it. So do you hear my opinions? Darn right you do. And you certainly heard them on vaccines. That's where I've been the most, I don't know, most obvious about where I stand is being on, on vaccines. So Dale, I'm not going to read all of Dale's letter, but I'll,

I'll read the'll read what I think of the key two sentences, two paragraphs. After listening to you speak on COVID vaccines and those who are vaccinated versus those who are not, I can no longer look at you as inclusive, open-minded, or cool. In fact, the way you speak against those who are not vaccinated show that you are actually quite divisive, closed-minded, and not cool at all. I'm not going to go on a rant or try and change your point of view. I would, however, like to point out that there is a large, well-educated, insightful, and open-minded group of Canadians who have chosen not to get vaccinated at this point. You have turned your back on those people with your narrow minded public opinion on those who are vaccinated versus those who are not.

You are perpetuating the growing divide in this country. It's almost like you've been in the media so long that you have lost your way. Okay. That's, that's from Dale Hogg, and I wrote him back. I obviously don't agree with him that it's a growing divide. I think it's a narrowing divide, and I think the numbers suggest that too. But the numbers suggest a lot of other things too, about the kind of people who are getting vaccinated and those who firmly believe they do not need to get vaccinated or they are against vaccination in general. So I told Dale, you have your right to your view. I have my right on a podcast to my view

and I will allow you to express yours, which I've just done. But I think it's an interesting letter, Bruce, because while the numbers are heavily in favor of those who believe in vaccination, because they've taken vaccines, we have been suggesting for the last few weeks, if not more than that, that we were heading to a point where the divide, such as it is, and I believe it's narrowing, but it's a divide nevertheless, is creating certain tensions. And for Dale to sit down and write this letter, he was obviously upset.

So, you know, what is your sense of where we are on this issue, and what is your data showing in terms of the of the divide as it is? Well, let me just make a point in terms of how I personally reacted, not on your behalf, but a little bit on your behalf to this letter. I mean, I think it's a novel way to push nonsense. I think it's novel in the sense that it's not angry. It doesn't expressly make points that you can look at and say those points are on the data completely inaccurate, but it makes a number of statements that are wrong. He says that the number of people who are anti-vax is a large number. It's not. It's 8%. So 92% are either enthusiastic about the vaccination or willing to take it. He says that the anti-vaxxers are well-informed. That's completely wrong. It's completely wrong.

If you were a well-informed person, that's not a matter of opinion. That is a matter of fact. If you were a well-informed person on this and you and I know agree completely about this, it would not, you wouldn't spend a lot of time looking at the information about what happens to people if they get the vaccination versus what could happen to them if they don't. So they're not well informed. He also seems to imply that there's a kind of a coolness factor to being open to an anti-vax argument.

I think that's wrong, too. I actually think that this is part of a syndrome that's been developing around the world, and we saw so much of it around Trump. It's hard to know exactly what's behind it. like they did with Trump on various issues, seeing an opportunity to push misinformation, divisive disinformation into our political culture, not just Canada's, but into Western political culture as a way of destabilizing it, a way of dividing it, a way of weakening our political system. And I think this is part of it.

But I don't know whether or not Mr. Hogg falls into which category. I don't know which category he falls into of people who offer anti-vax arguments. I don't know if he's just misinformed, literally does not know the evidence. I don't know if he's being deliberately wrong in terms of the position that he's putting out there. In other words, is there some reason why he would try to convince people to do something that's against their health interests or against our economic interests? I don't know. That letter doesn't sound like that. But he is being wrong. And those kinds of opinions aren't just harmless in society. They can be dangerous to people.

They can put other people's lives and health at risk. And this is why I take it so seriously personally, is that it is dangerous to kind of surround an opinion like that, even if it's gently or mildly expressed and say, well, it's, you know, it's an opinion and a legitimate opinion and everything else. And I think you put your finger on it exactly right. He's entitled to not get the vaccination, but he's not entitled to, well, he's entitled to try to convince the rest

of us that it's a bad idea to get vaccinated, but A, it's not working and B, it's a bad thing to do. Here's what our data shows, Peter, to get to your question. I'm sorry I took so long. About 94% of all of the adults who've been vaccinated think there should be some limits on what anti-vax or non-vaccinated people are allowed to do. They're not necessarily trying to run their lives. They're simply trying to protect their own and protect the economy too. And about 95% of the anti-vax people don't want any restrictions on their lives. So there is a divide.

It's real. Pretty much everybody who's for the vaccination says, I don't want to be in situations where I could be exposed to this disease because there are lots of unvaccinated people. Pretty much everybody who's anti-vax says, I want to be with everybody else whenever I want to be with anybody else. And so it is going to come to a crunch time. In the States, it's already happening. Here, I think we're going to we're going to get to it maybe in three weeks, maybe in five weeks. But somewhere along the line, we're going to run out of arms to vaccinate. And politicians are going to have to make some tough decisions about who gets to do what among the unvaccinated or what,

what kinds of constraints are there going to be on their behavior if they choose as they think is their right to not be vaccinated. But I actually think that we'll get to a good place in the end, but it's going to be rough, as letters like this suggest, because people are going to have strong feelings. Yeah. I don't think it's going to take us another three or four or five weeks. I think we're there.

I think every day there's more evidence of this discussion and debate surrounding what restrictions should be placed on those who aren't vaccinated versus those who are. And yesterday, there was kind of a new fact tossed into the mix. The CDC, the Centers for Disease Control in the US, put out the results of a study, which if I was unvaccinated, I'd be somewhat concerned about. Because what they're saying is for vaccinated people, because of the Delta variant, for vaccinated people, the heavy percentage of those who are vaccinated are not going to get the Delta variant.

And if they do, it's going to be a mild case but the heavy percentage won't get it at all however that's not to say they can't transmit it they can't be carrying it so when you go into say the hockey rink or the hockey arena or the restaurant or wherever that has made a decision they'll only take vaccinated people and the unvaccinated are saying, no, no, no, no, we should be allowed in there. And they say they win the fight. Well, they'll be going into an area that quite potentially has,

because the heavy percentage of people in that spot will be vaccinated. They may be heading into a place where the vaccinated are not going to be threatened by the Delta variant, but they're transmitting it. And who's going to be, who's going to be hurt by that? The unvaccinated. It was a very interesting fact that rolled out yesterday.

And if I was unvaccinated, I'd be looking at that too. Yeah. When they're making the argument, you've got to let me go wherever I want to go. Yeah. Yeah. I saw. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw. Yeah. You're right.

I'm probably pushing that date too far out. There are strong feelings already. I think that what I was struck by in the survey that we released in the last couple of days, which people, if they want to look at it, can get it on our website at Abacus Data, is that we're so inclined towards politeness. And again, I think that letter was written, as you said, in a very polite way. Yep. That we don't, as a society, immediately want to rush into a shoving match about this. At the same time, the level of frustration with this pandemic has been so intense that the notion that a solution is available to us and some people might keep

us from being safe or our economy going back to normal because of what they associate the anti-vax with freedom from government tyranny or they've read something that says that the vaccine vaccines are hurting a lot of people which they're not but that is going to make people angry it's already making some angry and i do think it's going to be incumbent on premiers, especially like Doug Ford. I think he's going to have to change his position. I think we may have talked about this a little bit last week. His idea that, well, I don't want to sort of mandate vaccines in certain situations because it might divide society. Society is divided and it's going to be more divided. And if he doesn't want to mandate it, I think he's

going to have to kind of wear that among the very large majority of people who say, why would we put ourselves through another wave? If we know that we have the answer, if we know how to do this, whether it's children going back to school or kids going to university campuses or people going back into the workplace or people getting back on transit or people traveling again. So, yeah, I think it's going to be upon us. And I remember in your interview with Aaron O'Toole last week, Peter, which if everybody hasn't had a chance to listen to, especially if there's going to be an election coming up,

people should go back and have a listen to that. You asked him several times, what would his position be on whether vaccines should be mandated? And he stuck pretty firmly to a, well, it wouldn't be my call. It's up to the provinces. And I thought, well, he's right about that. On the other hand, you were asking him for a gut check, a personal gut check. What do your values tell you? What is a leader?

Ideally, a leader in this situation, at least to my mind, shouldn't avoid that question. Should say it's not up to me, but here's what I think. Because it's those kind of signals from leaders that help voters like Mr. Hogg and others kind of understand the dynamics, understand what's at risk. about whether or not vaccines should be mandated. That sort of helps nourish this resistance among those who already resist it. So I know he said that he was for vaccinations and that he and others, other party leaders had all said the same kind of thing. But I haven't seen his health critic talking a lot about, hey, everybody, go out and get vaccinated, please. I think there might have been one or two instances, but it hasn't been a steady drumbeat. And I think it's incumbent upon all of us to push hard on it politely, if necessary, maybe a little bit more firmly, but we got to do it. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, the one, the point I was,

the answer I was trying to get out of him was whether or not he believed that there should be restrictions placed on unvaccinated people in certain venues, you know, whether it's theaters or restaurants or arenas or what have you. And he just wouldn't go there. Now, two months ago, or at least two months ago i asked trudeau the same question the prime minister and he basically said at that point he wasn't for vaccine passports but he seems to have changed he hasn't said anything specific but you get the sense we're getting close to somewhere on that.

Jagmeet Singh, I'll be talking to on Friday, a special broadcast on Friday on the bridge. And the whole idea then is we will have heard from the three main national party leaders before the election campaign starts. So it'll be a good check for you as well on where the Np stand on these things but here's here's my my final point on this and i think you basically suggested this before and i'm just wondering how much closer we're getting to is that while governments kind of sit on the

sidelines trying to decide you know the thumb in their mouth figuring out which which way the wind is blowing on this issue not all of them you know i give a thumb in their mouth, figuring out which way the wind's blowing on this issue. Not all of them. You know, I give credit once again to Brian Palliser in Manitoba, the Conservative Premier, who has a vaccine passport program in place and happening and operating now that prevents unvaccinated people from getting into certain venues. Now, but businesses are the ones that quite often are,

we are expecting to take the lead on this and you're, you've seen it in the States already. Even the U S government actually, in one particular department, I think it's veterans affairs, has said they will not allow workers in their building unless they've been vaccinated, won't be coming back to the office. You've got, you you know other areas as well other private businesses that are saying the same thing and you know i think the washington post said they won't allow any of their uh their people reporters you know editors uh technical people

in the building unless they're vaccinated and you assume that we may end up seeing the same kind of thing happen here if we haven't already in some cases, where businesses will say this is our policy and we have every right to make it and we're making it. You don't come in this place. You don't work for this place unless you're vaccinated. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that is going to be um fairly common i think that the nature of politics in canada is such that we're slow to and it's a good thing that we're slow to kind of weaponize division for political purposes

and so the prime minister and others are probably thinking, when they said that they were not in favor of vaccine passports, that we should try every other possible way to get to the finish line before we have to be for something like that. And that if we say we're for something like that, before we need to, what we do is we cause political division, political resistance, we kind of fire up the anti-government intrusion mindset, and we make it harder to actually accomplish that. Now, it's possible that that's what Doug Ford is doing, too. I don't, I don't, it doesn't sound like it to me, but I, I can certainly make a case that you should never be for this kind of thing

before you have to say that you're for this kind of thing. But I think we're kind of at that point now because we've got 8% who say, I'll never take it. We've got 8% who are, I probably will. I don't really want to, but you know, and that's, those are our last two big segments are each about 2.4 million adult Canadians. So how do we get that 2.4 hesitant? Forget about the refusers. They're not going to get the vaccine. My view maybe some of them will months from now,

when it becomes apparent that they can't do as many things as they want to, even if they holler at the moon, um, is still not going to allow them to get on planes and go different places if that's what they want to do. But the hesitant, what combination of there's going to be lottery starting up in a week or so, uh, there's going to be lotteries starting up in a week or so. There's going to be messages from employers. There's going to be barriers to doing certain things that are going to become more evident to them. Those people might come along,

but I do think that there's a reasonable argument to make that if politicians sound like they're forcing you to do something before they need to sound like that, that that could go sideways and be a little bit counterproductive. So a lot to play for on this issue in terms of the politics of it in the coming days. I'd be willing to bet that if they're not absolutely clear before the gun goes off to start the election campaign, they're going to be nailed on, individual leaders are going to be nailed on it,

and perhaps individual candidates door to door on this question. The leaders will be asked it at the opening news conferences that each of them have on the day the election's called, and they better have an answer, because if one does and the others aren't, don't. You know, people will make decisions. I agree. We saw one thing on this this week that, you know, makes Aaron O'Toole's job even a little bit harder on this. I don't think it's a hard choice, but I think at least presents him with another conundrum.

Let me put it that way, which is Derek Sloan seems to be indicating that he's going to start another party. So we've got the Maverick Party, we've got the People's Party and maybe the Derek Sloan Party. has been a kind of a rallying force for people who are against vaccinations and religious conservatives, social conservatives. And if you're Aaron O'Toole and you're looking at his polling numbers, you kind of know that if he takes a harder line on vaccine requirements, he's putting himself at some risk with some part of his base. Now, I still think it's the right calculation to make because it's the right policy position and it's how you build a Conservative Party at some point that can win an election

is to be principled about something like that. But I'm sure that there are tensions within his caucus and within his party about taking a harder line on something like this. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. But as I said, it's going to be interesting to see how each one of them answers this question, including Justin Trudeau. Yeah. He's going to need an answer. Yeah.

He won't be able to dodge around it. He's either for some kind of passport or certificate or he isn't. Yep. Okay, we're going to take a quick break because there are a couple of other things. One in particular that we kind of ducked over the last couple of weeks, but it's out there. And I want to try and understand how much of an impact it could have on the election. And that's this whole issue of the problems the problems within the uh within the green party so we'll talk about that in just a moment okay peter mansbridge back in stratford ontario bruce

anderson is in ottawa this is the Bridge, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, which we've been trying to get at for the first half hour of this program today. And there's a lot of smoke, mirrors and the truth around a lot of the issues we've talked about. And we hope we've kind of guided you towards what we think anyway is the truth on these. And I'm sure you'll have your opinion as well. You're listening to us either on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or you're listening on the podcast, which is downloadable on any of the podcast platforms. It's called The Bridge.

We're in our kind of summer schedule but we're getting ready we're getting ready to be there uh daily as soon as the election campaign starts and we want to we want to make this a part of where you go for the election uh in terms of the information and the debate and the discussions and the views uh that we can produce and we'll be doing that i you know the the plan and at least initially is going to be doing it five days a week during the campaign, although I have one little surprise near the beginning of the campaign as well that I'm going to tell you about a little bit later.

Not today, but I'll tell you in the next couple of weeks. Okay, Bruce, Green Party. You know, they're polling what, around 4% or 5%, which is usually where they poll before an election campaign. Sometimes they do a little better than that in the campaign itself, sometimes not quite as well. They never have a lot of seats. Right now they only have one. They were elected in two, I think,

but the one person left and joined the Liberals. So they're not like an overwhelming factor. They haven't been in Parliament over the last couple of years. And the question is, will they be during the election campaign, especially at a time when there's obviously enemy polls? Is the leader, was there a coup when there's obviously enemy polls is the, is the leader. Was there a, was there a coup attempt to get rid of her? Did somebody try to stop the steal or like, I'm not sure exactly what happened in all of that. And I think a lot of people are unsure,

even some green party members are not quite clear on what happened, but the impact, if any, that has had on terms of the people across the country who, in fact, support the original ideals of the Green Party. You know, we can say four or five percent isn't much, but it could make a big difference at the end of the day where those four or five percent or six percent or whatever it may be ends up going yeah well look i think that there's certainly enough voters in canada peter who care about the environment as an issue for there to be a relatively successful green party some will argue that without our without a change to our first past the post system is it will always be really difficult for a party like a green party to win seats and have influence and i think that's a different argument and and there's some merit to it but the system that we have is the system that we have and um what's different now as far as I can tell from what we were seeing, is that, first of all, the climate change issue is persuasively an issue of enough concern to enough people that a Green Party could harness the concern about climate change to a higher than ever level of electoral support.

But that's not happening. Second thing that's different is Elizabeth May was a well-known environmental activist and became a well-known politician and well-liked. She had a very positive kind of impression among Canadians for the way that she talked about the issues, the fact that she was articulate and intelligent, obviously, but also how she interacted with other leaders. And people basically looked at Elizabeth May, in my view, and didn't look at the party behind her. Didn't look really in detail at the party's platform. I'm not talking about Green Party members. I'm talking about everybody else.

And they said, you know what, maybe I'll cast a vote for her because I don't think that the liberals or the conservatives care enough about this. And that brings me to the third thing that might be different. In the past, if you were a deeply worried environmental voter, you might hear an argument that says, don't waste a vote on the liberals. They're not going far enough, fast enough to fight climate change. And I think that there are going to be people in this election who feel that way. But they might now think that voting green is wasting their vote because the party seems to be collapsing under its own internal divisions,

that it doesn't, you know, that enemy Paul hasn't been able to escape this internal strife and really articulate what it is that you'd be voting for. If you decided to cast a vote for her or the green party or the local green candidate. And it would be one thing if this was going on for like two weeks, most parties, if they have a skirmish, usually quickly understand how you have to put that fire out because the public will lose interest or they'll be interested, but only in that aspect of what you have to say. And then you'll pay a price come election day. But this has gone on now for months. And I think to a lot of people, it's hard to know what

it is that they're arguing about and how it relates to climate change or the health of the planet and what it is that you should interpret from all of this skirmishing about the Green Party. And what is it? You know, who is it made up of? What are the ideas that they really espouse and how have they seemed to wander so far from the central environmental issues of our time anyway i i you know i i i care a lot about these issues as i know you do peter and so i hope we have a good debate about environmental issues but it doesn't feel like it's going to be because the green party has has got its act together. That's not what it looks like right now. I think I might have misspoke on the number of actual seats they have in the House of Commons.

I think I said one, it's two. It was three after the 2019 election, but the member from New Brunswick ended up crossing the floor and joining the Liberals. It's funny, I spent time in that riding but the member from New Brunswick ended up crossing the floor and joining the Liberals. Didn't happen, yeah. Yeah. It's funny, I spent time in that riding during the 2019 election as part of this documentary I was doing on what people were thinking.

And you could really feel the movement within that riding in Fredericton towards the Green Party, which was a breakthrough, obviously, in Atlantic Canada for them on the federal scene. And sure enough, it happened, and it happened convincingly. So it'll be an interesting seat to watch to see if it stays in the new membership role of the Liberals based on the decision of the MP herself, or whether it goes back to the Green Party. That'll be interesting to watch as will the performance of the party overall,

because it has been a puzzle, especially so in the last weeks or months. Just as a closing, I said earlier that I was going to be interviewing Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP for Friday's program. If there's one thing you want to hear him answer, explain, talk about? What is it? Yeah, well, I would have had a different answer yesterday from today, because I'm reading today that he believes that if Justin Trudeau asks the governor general to dissolve parliament, have an election, that she should say no. Now, I never picked him as a monarchist.

I never thought of him as somebody who thinks the queen should decide when we have elections here in Canada, that's not how our system works. And so I think there have been a number of questions raised about Mr. Singh in recent months about whether he has, whether he really understands jurisdictions in Canada and who is responsible for what, or whether he's just kind of ignoring them to make points that sound rhetorically attractive. And so today we're presented with another instance that could be one or the other. He might not really understand, I suppose, that that would be such a breach of

tradition of how our system works, that it would cause a constitutional crisis of sorts here. Maybe he thinks that that's worthwhile doing to prevent an election, but he better have a pretty good argument for why we should create a new precedent or or take this really unusual step because otherwise i don't think it holds up much as a policy idea and i think it raises more questions in my mind about whether all along the things that he's saying are really just him saying i I know I probably couldn't do this if I was prime minister, but I'm going to say I could do it because it's going to sound popular. So I think that's a really important conversation to have, and I hope you have it with him.

And I look forward to listening to the interview. When will we be able to hear it, Peter? Fridays. There'll be a special edition of The Bridge on Friday at 12 noon Eastern on Sirius XM channel 167. They'll also be available at that time on all the podcasts. On all the podcasts. Well, thank God for The Bridge, honestly. I just, I don't know what we'd do without this in-depth interviewing that goes on now and the chance for you to ask really good questions and for the politicians to do their

best to answer them i don't know whether i can see your tongue in your cheek there or not no i'm serious this is i think this is a great new way to have political content um i think the politicians when you interview them are really thoughtful loquacious, and they get a chance to answer questions in some depth, which I think is really great for people to hear. I really enjoyed the Aaron O'Toole interview, and I hope lots of people listen to it. it yeah you know i think that um i think it is important that the the there is this kind of vehicle because you know the scrums don't do it and you know in the election campaign there will be kind of daily scrums or some attempt at a scrum uh every day and the you know the answers are kind of short and it's all very combative it's not the the right word, but it doesn't lend itself towards a serious discussion. And I've been in both situations over my years, so I know of what I speak.

But at the same time, the leaders often shy away from the longer-form interviews. Now, I'm lucky because I've been around a while, and I have a bit of a reputation. And I can say that when I asked Justin Trudeau earlier this year to do this podcast, he said yes. It was just a matter of time, a matter of finding the right time. And I said, like, I don't want to do 10 minutes. I want to do 35 to 40 minutes. And they agreed. Same thing with Aaron O'Toole.

It was just finding a spot on their schedule. And this week it is Jagmeet Singh, and he's agreed as well. He's had a crazy week. He's been all over northern Ontario. So finding the right moment. It turns out that it'll be a Friday broadcast, and that's good because it'll give it an opportunity to hear both on the, obviously on Friday, but also it'll be repeated on SiriusXM on Saturday and Sunday. And it's, you know, always will be available as the podcast.

But you tend to get more in a longer form interview and especially a podcast interview. I mean, I sat down across the table from many leaders, prime ministers, opposition leaders over many years and in a situation where it was on television and it can be, you know, sometimes it's just not real. These feel more real because, you know, you're in your study at home, you're in your car, you're whatever. And, you know, I always start by asking them before we push record that, you know, just be yourself, you know, like let's have a conversation. I know you want to wrap this up, but you asked him a question that the answer to which I think it amazed you a

little bit. It amazed me when I heard it, when you said, what, you know, what grade would you give the federal government, the Trudeau government for its handling of the pandemic? And if you've been listening to Aaron O'Toole for the last 18 months or however long, 18 years, this pandemic has been, you would think, well, he's going to say, well, what's a lower mark than an F? And instead, he said a C-. Aaron O'Toole would give the Trudeau government a C-.

I think you and I had the same reaction, which is like, wow, I used to love getting a C-. It was better than some of the stuff that I saw on my report card. Not early on, like grade school, I was really good. It sort of faded a little bit after that. But, you know, I think that the reason he answered that that way is precisely the point that you're making is that it's a longer form conversation where people are actually telling you more, maybe more sometimes than they think they want to tell you about how they really feel. But I thought it was a reasonable answer for him to give. He obviously takes issue with some of the things that the government did and lots of people do, but it wasn't a performative political answer,

I guess is my point. A performative political answer would have been, what are the letters after F? And if I were an advisor to a politician today, I'd probably be saying, you have to say something that's way more strident than C-. So good for you, and it's great to have this format. All right. Thank you, sir. Look forward to talking to you again. Well, we'll get you on, and Chantel as well, on Friday to talk about what we end up with.

That's so exciting. Joke me. All right. Reun me. All right. Reunited. All right. Take care. Smoke mirrors and the truth for this week. Thank you, Bruce in Ottawa.

I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford. We'll talk to you again, actually, in just a couple of days.