The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke Mirrors and The Truth -- Both Main Parties Face Issues, Are They Serious?

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

The Conservatives lead collapsed and they are divided. The Liberals stumble over a candidate. Social media stories that don't make the news.

Smoke, mirrors, and the truth. Anderson and DeLorey. Coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Bruce Anderson, Fred DeLorey. Lots to talk about today. Let's start with the name Paul Chang, which is probably a name that Mark Carney wishes he hadn't heard of before, but he has. And as a result, he's got the, I don't know, perhaps the first kind of major stumble of the Liberal campaign. We'll debate whether how major it was, but it was definitely a stumble of a kind. Paul Chang was the Liberal MP, still is, I guess, the Liberal MP for another couple of weeks,

for the riding of Markham Unionville, which is one of those kind of key Toronto area ridings. He's the candidate, or at least was, until a couple of hours ago when he stepped out of the race. This after a kind of ugly controversy over his description of what should happen to his major opponent, the conservative in the race for that riding. Initially, Mark Carney stood by him, initially being just 24 hours ago,

criticized him for the remarks he'd used talking about his opponent, but said he would allow him to stay in the race. That all changed, you know, actually just a few hours ago, shortly after the RCMP stepped in to look at the situation, and then Paul Chang stepped out of the race. So is that, what does that say? People are raising questions about what it says about Mark Carney's leadership. Fred, why don't you start us? Sure.

I think it calls into question a lot of Carney's judgment, the fact that he stood by this guy for so long. It was a couple of days of stories about this. You know, the Liberals had so much momentum and still do, I would say. But this really risked knocking them off. They've lost two days of messaging of what they were trying to tell their story because this dominated it. And it could have continued. Campaigns are only 36 days long. And if you look at the cap, we spend about $36 million each campaign gets to spend. And every day you lose on messaging, you can say it's a million dollar mistake. So this was a $2 million mistake and

possibly three or four if Chang didn't pull out himself. Now, I'm sure he was pressured to do so. But to me, I just don't understand why Carney just didn't do it over the weekend. It was absolutely egregious what he said, what Chang said. Dealing with foreign interference, we've had inquiries on this. This was almost, you can look back to Justin Trudeau's polling numbers. The beginning of the end for him started to happen when foreign interference became a big issue. That's when his numbers

started to slide. And there's also three, four weeks to go in this campaign where other foreign interference issues could pop up. Keep bringing this story back up if Carney hadn't done anything and he didn't do anything.

And I think that really calls into question what he's thinking here. This is a competitive seat. Markham Unionville, conservatives won it in 15 and 19 by slim margins, and we lost it by a very slim margin last time too. So it is a competitive seat that could go either way. So I'm not sure if that was the calculation that they were thinking, just trying to keep the seat. But keeping one seat and potentially losing a lot of others is not smart politics. Okay, well, let's hear how Bruce tries to describe this situation.

Well, thank you for not saying how Bruce tries to spin this. I appreciate that. The, look, the comments that Mr. Chang made were deplorable and he apologized for them as he should have. And I think at the end of the day, he made the right call by deciding to remove himself from the campaign, that what was happening was that he was a distraction from the big issues that Canadians are focused on and want this campaign to be about. So, you know, to your point, Peter, how big a problem is it

or a gaffe or what does it say about Mark Carney and how lingering would that effect be among those who had a problem with the way that Mr. Carney handled it? Look, I paint a lot of bad paintings, but some good ones, too. And I will give each of you guys a one of these paintings of your choice. If people are still talking about mr chang come election day so i i don't think that this this issue is going to survive today in terms of it being a major focal point i think it it did uh obviously distract uh some attention from or detract some attention from the housing announcement that Mr. Carney made yesterday, but it also was a distraction from a lot of stories that were dominating the

news coverage about this campaign over the weekend, which were mostly about conservative infighting and discomfort in conservative ranks with the way that the campaign was going. So I think it was a helpful wind in that sense for the conservatives. And, you know, we'll see if we return to that regularly scheduled programming of conservative infighting, which seems to be the thing that a lot of conservatives want to do right now. Well, you know, first of all, for those, you know, watching us on our YouTube

channel, I'll take any of those paintings except the one on the bottom left. Those are of my family, but by a great artist, not me. But I'll have something that you would like if you can find me voters that are still talking about this. I think all three of us would agree that campaigns move at warp speed and issues don't stay around very long. It is a notch for the Conservatives after a bad run. But this issue about, not what it says about Paul Chang, everybody agrees it was disgusting what he said, even he says that. The question is, was there an issue there about

how Mark Carney handled this? I mean, why would he have decided to keep the guy on the team? That's kind of the... Yeah, I think some people will uh will dwell on that and and come to their conclusion i think that you know it's a fair question i don't think very many people will i guess that's what i'm saying most of the people who want to uh at this point go you know what i was thinking i was going to support mark carney the liberals, but I think I can't now. You know, I've been polling for a lot of years,

and that doesn't make sense to me that that's a very large number. It does make sense to me that people who are craving the kind of tweet that Pierre Polyev put out over the weekend, that Mr. Carney was a cheater and a plagiarist and a scoundrel of all kinds that those people will kind of enjoy what happened with Mr. Chang. I just don't think it will affect that many other people and I could be proven wrong and Fred may see it differently. Now that he's stepped out of the race, I agree, this story will go away.

But if he hadn't stepped out, given that Carney had supported him and stayed, it could linger. And again, if there's some incident that happens in the next few weeks over foreign interference, I think it could have really blown up on Carney. So it was a huge risk. And again, just

knocking them off message for a few days too was I think a mistake. They could have really blown up on Kearney. So it was a huge risk. And again, just knocking them off message for a few days too was, was I think a mistake. They could have just dealt with it and get back to their ballot question. And that's what everyone should be striving to do. And I'll just go back to 2019 to your point, Bruce. Blackface, and I've been publicly out on this a number of times. I believe Blackface saved the liberals in that campaign because it took conservatives off of the message about affordability at the time. And they started

focusing on blackface and tried to make that the ballot question. It wasn't. No one thought Trudeau was racist. And we lost our opportunity there. So it does go both ways. I see the point on that. Okay. Let's switch it to the topic that has been bedeviled the Conservatives over these last few days, last week basically, which is questions being raised inside the party itself

about the focus of the campaign, whether they're addressing the real ballot question or not. Strong criticism from inside the party and not from unnamed sources, people stepping forward and saying it, like Corey Tanik. But the leadership of the party, whether it's Pierre Poliev or Jenny Byrne, his chief strategist, say they are not going to be influenced by that criticism.

They're going to stay on that message track that they're on right now, which has led them from a 25-point lead to an extremely close race with the Liberals perhaps a point or two ahead. Bruce, I'll let you start on this. You know what? I think this is kind of an old story. It's always an interesting story for people who are close to politics, the internal or intonation fights within parties.

And the Conservative Party isn't the only party that has those. The Liberal Parties have suffered for years from kind of outbursts of that kind of tension. I don't think there's been very much of it lately in the Liberal Party. And there hasn't really been in the Conservative Party. I think a 25 point lead, which is what they had at one point, is a pretty good predictor that there's going to be a lot of discipline, that people aren't going to shoot at each other within a party when that happens. Losing that 25-point lead is also fairly predictably going to cause some tension, some finger-pointing, especially in a party that is still a little bit of a work in progress in terms of pieces having been glued together that don't always agree

on what should constitute the posture of a party. And for me, the most interesting aspect of this is, and it came to mind when I was reading a long-form Maclean's piece about Jenny Byrne, who's running the Conservative campaign yesterday, is that the description of her, and I don't know her very well, Fred, I'm sure knows her a lot better than I do, and maybe he'll have a point of view about this. But the description of her as somebody who really only ever wanted a certain kind of conservative vote feels to me consistent with the person that I've observed and the kind of campaigns that she likes to run and the discipline that she tries to enforce on others within the party. In other words, there is a manifestation of that, which is effectively saying, you know, well, the liberals go into the country and say, hey, everybody, we want your vote. The conservatives in that mode tend to say, we want your vote, but we don't want your vote. And I think that if I'm trying to diagnose a more chronic problem for that version of

conservatism, is that voters kind of sense that, that these people are not campaigning to be a government for everybody. They're campaigning to be a government for people who agree exactly with them on social issues, on economic choices, on policy choices. And I think especially in the context where the Trudeau effect has been wiped away and where the contest is who can stand up to Trump, running a campaign that says we want your vote but not your vote, I think it's a losing proposition. So I think that's more than the personalities involved. That's really the question that the conservatives have to grapple with because right now they don't sound like they want to win back the votes of those people who migrated either from the NDP or from the Conservative Party into the liberal column in the last few weeks. Fred, how do you challenge that?

Well, I think what the conservatives, this iteration of them have done is they've identified what they think their path to victory is. And they don't see it as Trump and tariffs. They see it as affordability and cost of living. And that's where they're focusing. And that's where they're going hard after. And that's why his messaging hasn't adapted to the times. I disagree with it. I think you can adapt it and actually talk about Trump and tariffs and the plans and the policies that Polyev wants to do. He had a great announcement this weekend about capital gains that he could have led with a better preamble about Trump and how this will insulate us as a country from that. But instead it's almost the Trump is a throwaway line at the very end.

And so they have their target groups. They're trying to get and get them fired up. And they are enthused, right? Like the conservatives are more popular now in terms of supporter base than they've had in decades. We are at, you know, to be buzzing around the 40% mark is unheard of. Of course, the problem is the liberals are higher than that right now, the collapse of the left. That is partly Trump. It's partly, you know, the left. That is partly Trump.

It's partly, you know, maybe a unification against Polyev. That has done that as well. Just the uncertainty of it all. But I think, you know, I ran the last campaign, and I had issues too, keeping the Conservative coalition together. If you recall the last campaign, the big wedge issue that the Liberals brought in was vaccine mandates. Canadians were overwhelmingly supportive of the mandates, but there was a faction within the Conservative world that was not. And keeping the coalition together was very,

very, very challenging. I had to spend most of the campaign dealing with that sort of thing to avoid blowups. So it's not easy being a conservative in this country, particularly where, you know, the Liberal Party could just go wherever the wind goes. Conservatives can't. They have to, you know, they have to be grounded by some kind of principle. Grounded. But can I ask you a follow up, Peter, if you don't mind, I just want to pursue this with Fred a little bit more and see where his head is at on this. I think both of these parties and other parties, too, for that matter. But if we just focus on the Liberals and the Conservatives, both of them from time to time can suffer from this instinct to say, if you think this, then you're not our kind of voter. The Liberals tended to get in that mode a little bit. And that's where all this kind of

backlash against wokeism developed, is that it felt like the Liberals were excluding people from the coalition that they wanted to build on the basis of issues where people weren't really used to or expecting the Liberal Party to draw lines and say there's a fence here. And if you're on the other side of that fence, we're not that interested in you. In fact, we might criticize you. I think the Conservative Party has always had a little bit more fierce version of that. At least the party that emerged after the Progressive Conservative Party died has had this kind of instinct to want to say, if you ever thought about voting liberal, we hate you forever. And I think that if I look at that from the standpoint of building a bigger coalition,

I feel like they've got to lose that a little bit. I think they've got to kind of get into the mode of saying we want some of those votes where we want to charm offensive. No, I think you're misreading the situation. I think it's misreading the situation. I think it's more of if you believe in big government that spends a lot and has high taxes, we don't want your vote because we know you're not going to vote for us. I think it's more along those lines than, you know, than party brand and who you voted for. It's more. Why did you vote for those other parties?

Because at the core, particularly Polyev, it's small government. It's less government in your lives and less taxes. and that's what the big driver is for him and that's where i think they would fit in and if you don't believe in that then you're not voting for us anyway right um let me let me ask i know we talked about this uh before but i i just want to kind of underline it right now because fred uses the vaccine example from the last campaign about the impact that had within the Conservative Party and how he had to try to, you know, ride that carefully in terms of not losing support. Is Trump the vaccine issue of this campaign? Is there a danger in going too hard after Trump for Pauliev in terms of his own support?

It is a similar situation where, if you recall, because of the vaccine situation, the People's Party, Max Bernier's party, was up around 5%. And we had a lot of candidates freaking out about this. They were seeing purple signs showing up in traditionally very blue polls. And people felt we had to tack to that right to go after that vote to keep it. But our research showed us very clearly that if we tack to the right to go after that vote, we lose the middle by huge, huge numbers. So, you know, we could have got that 5%, but then lost 10 or 15 on the other side of it

in competitive seats. So, you know, we could have got that 5%, but then lost 10 or 15 on the other side of it in competitive seats. So, you know, you have to balance that. I think it is similar with Trump. You've got to, you know, I think he has, I think Pierre has to do it. I think he should do it. I think he should challenge Trump and be more aggressive. He will lose a bit of that right potentially to Bernier again or they stay home but I do think there's more ground to be won in the middle

than there is on the far right I'd like to pull on another thread of this which is really interesting to me I think that I see him smiling you know he just he wants to be a host he just wants to be a host

go for it Bruce You know, he just he wants to be a host. He just wants to be a host. Go for it, Bruce. What's interesting to me is that since we started doing these these conversations every Tuesday, you know, spread regularly says, I think the big issue is affordability. And I tend to say, I think the big issue is how are we going to deal with the economic threat from the United States? I think all of that's debatable. I think affordability and the Trump economic threat actually stack on top of each other, which I've heard Fred say too. But for me, there's a third important ballot question that's emerging. And it kind of goes to what I'm talking about, which is this huge yawning gap between the likability of Pierre Poliev and that of Mark Carney. Three weeks ago, I thought it was

fair and reasonable for Fred to say, well, a lot of people don't know Mark Carney yet, and we'll see how that goes and that sort of thing. I thought he was stretching the point a little bit, but that's okay. I'll spare within the context of this. But I don't think that's true now. Right now, there's a massive gap between these two people. And I don't think that if you're running a conservative campaign, that you can look at that and say, let's pretend that that doesn't matter. Let's just roll out policy. Let's dial up our Trump friction a little bit and we can win. I think there is a problem between one leader that people don't think is experienced enough, don't think is particularly likable, and the other one who they think has a lot of experience and seems to be likable. And for me, the kind of the, the way that I test this is I kind of imagine that if somebody could recreate

that moment where Pierre Pauliev is standing in that orchard and he's chomping on that apple and he's being quite dismissive and derisive towards that local journalist who's talking to him. If you put Mark Carney in that mode, what do we think would happen? We think his favorability would go way down, that people would say, what's wrong with this guy? Why is he so, you know, aggressive towards somebody who doesn't share the same point of view or is asking him a question? And I think that's at the heart maybe of why I sort of interpret Paulieva as being kind of aggressive in signaling that he doesn't want the votes of a lot of people. And sometimes it's aggression

towards a journalist. Sometimes it's just talking about voters who might occasionally think about, well, maybe Mark Carney. And I come from a school of thought in politics, which is if you have a chance of winning back that voter who is with you and is now maybe thinking about something else, don't insult them. Try to charm them. Try to convince them. Try to coax them. And I just don't feel that Pierre Polyev is very good at that. Well, it's not who he is. He is a scrappy guy.

He's been a politician for 20 years. And if, you know, you go watch him, anything, performance in the House of Commons or any speech or anything he's done, he's a scrappy guy. and stormed a 25-point lead like he is. He has a successful track record with that style. Will it get him over the actual final hump that matters? That remains to be seen. But I do think it's who he is. He's not going to change and shouldn't change. He needs to be authentic on that. I do think the upcoming leadership debates are going to be the most interesting

and the most exciting sight that I have been to watch a leaders debate, to see these two performers. I shouldn't say performers. Polyev is a performer. I don't know what Carney is. I don't know what he's going to be like at all. So there's so much uncertainty with him. And it's going to be fascinating to see how he reacts to Polyev's style. I totally agree.

I think these debates are going to be really interesting. A couple of weeks, one night in French, one night in English. And, you know, I think the country, we've seen in the past that it's usually debate night that really engages the Canadian people in terms of the election, that all this is just sort of a run-up to the debates, which is the final big block before the actual voting takes place. Let me just ask, spend a couple of minutes on this final question. It's to do with the difference between what appears on social media and what appears in, I don't know, what you want to call it, the legacy media, the conventional media,

because there's no doubt there is a difference. Bruce, you kind of referred to it earlier, some of the stuff that's been on social, which in some cases is orchestrated by the parties themselves, but it doesn't appear on the conventional media, on the main media, either because the stories can't be validated or that they were deemed to be not that important, but they certainly seem to be important on social media.

I want to try and understand the difference there and the impact that what's on social can have on the eventual result of the campaign. Who wants to go at this first? Fred, why don't you start on this one? Sure. I would say with the social media, particularly with PolyEv and what they're doing, they're speaking to their people, and they're reinforcing a lot of their messages, and they're telling their own story.

There's no filter. It's what they want people to their people and they're reinforcing a lot of their messages and they're telling their own story. There's no filter. It's what they want people to see. And if you're a conservative or lean conservative, your algorithms keep showing you the same stuff over and over again. I don't, you know, I don't see much liberal stuff on my feeds because I'm not a liberal. I don't support their stuff. I don't like their stuff. So I don't see it anymore.

So it just, it may galvanize conservatives and get them fired up to see it i do think traditional media um or however we phrase it legacy media i think when you see something on their you know on the shows or in the news stories i think there's a different trust level there that just pops through and is more real so i think one of the issues with social media there's so different trust level there that just pops through and is more real so i think one of the issues with social media there's so much fake stuff happening now that i just i don't know what i'm seeing anymore if it's real so i i question it more but when i see something from traditional i think there's just okay this is a real story this is a real thing that happened

so it's interesting i think this is all evolving as we go right like the last campaign on at least on the conservative side social media wasn't a big thing for us as the level that it's at now. And I think with artificial intelligence now entering the sphere, I think things are going to continue to change. And I think people's perception of what they're seeing is going to change,

where they're just not sure what they're seeing is real or not. Well, I guess that's the big question, is what's real or not? Whatever filters are put on it, do they include fact-checking? Do they include accuracy? Because some of this stuff, it doesn't appear to be provable.

And that's the main reason it doesn't leap to the next stage, the traditional media stage. Bruce, your thoughts on this? Yeah, that's an interesting point. I'm not even sure in my mind anymore that the next level is the traditional media. I think that it used to be an aspiration maybe 10 years ago that if you could make something happen and go a bit viral on social media that maybe a mainstream or legacy news organization

would pick it up. But I don't think the parties really need to care about that anymore. It's much more likely the case that the journalists who are working for the mainstream media are scraping the internet looking for things that they can cover. And so I think that reversal hasn't necessarily been a good thing but I think it is a thing and I think it's here to stay I think for the parties one of the challenges is when you think about

the traditional news media and you think about how to get your story out the traditional news media spend less time in my estimation and I'm sorry Chantal's not on this to tell me I shouldn't talk about media all being the same, but they spend less time saying here's what the candidates said and more time saying here's what's wrong with what they said. The structure of these stories typically is pretty heavily weighted towards the skepticism. And fair enough, if that's the interpretation of what journalism should be.

But I think it leaves a lot of voters feeling like, I don't always want to watch the skepticism. I don't always want the filter of a journalist saying, yeah, but. And so what happens on social media is that the parties can avoid the skepticism. They can deliver a piece of content that is specific about their policy initiative, like housing or whatever it is. And they can also deliver an image of a candidate that, that gets at what our friend Alan Gregg used to talk about as being kind of the Holy grail of political communication. Can you give people a glimpse into the soul of a politician and make them go, I like that person. I can believe in that

person. In social media, you can construct that. You can construct it because you can use video, you can use sound, you can see a smile, you can see somebody kiss their wife. You can feel the sense of, oh, I kind of get who this person is. Traditional media don't give you that anymore. And again, I'm not trying to be overly critical of them, but that isn't what they're in the business of doing, if they ever were. You used to do that in your long-form interviews with leaders, but there just isn't that much anymore. And I think I understand why. It's that the other stuff just, it delivers what the consumers are looking for. And the last point for me is that if we, Fred is younger than me and I'm younger than you, not to put too fine a point on it, but if we're not thinking about Instagram and in particular TikTok as a main driving force of how some of these images and ideas are being conveyed, we're not dialed in properly. I think that these are huge, huge factors in terms of the transmission of information.

And people are quite comfortable with the six second, 10 second, 15 second version of politics right now. Can I just say something about the skepticism argument? Because I agree with you. Much of media has become very skeptical about whatever the case, whatever the issue is. But that's not the reason journalism exists. The reason is to challenge challenge assumptions to determine the truth doesn't mean they're saying guy's a liar or she's you know twisting facts it's just a they're putting something forward as a proposal for the future journalists should um you know challenge the

assumptions that are in in that to determine how true it is. I can see how some people take that as being skeptical. It's not being skeptical. It's just like doing the job. You know, report the facts and ensure the facts are facts. Anyway. I agree with that. I think that the crowding out of the reporting the facts is what I observe.

I think as we've discussed on this and other programs in the past, we are at a very, we're at a tricky point in terms of the history of journalism and the matching of trust from the clients of journalism and how we move forward on this, whether it's an election campaign or not is going to determine the future of journalism, which is right now at a, you know, in a, in a difficult spot.

Last question, because we're running out of time. Just your assessment of, you know, we're a week in a little more than a week in now. Where are we in this campaign? I'm not talking about the polling numbers. We see those every day.

We see more than we ever wished we were going to see in terms of polling numbers. But in terms of the actual campaign, where are we? Fred, why don't you start? Each of you have a minute or so here there's look this is the second week the campaign is always a bit of a lull it gets kind of quiet uh generally on a uh you know in terms of all the news and stuff generally um campaigns should be out there id'ing vote right now they know what their ballot question is or they should and they're trying to find as many supporters as they can. And that's

getting out there on the doorsteps very aggressively and doing that. At the same time, though, I do think the Conservatives need to adapt to the ballot question a bit better, seeing hints of it, but not seeing it actually happening. So I think if the Conservatives don't adapt, then we're in trouble. But at the same time, tomorrow is tariff day. What does that mean? How are we going to get hit by that? We saw that statement last week from Trump after he spoke with Carney that seemed to put some things to bed or at least give some people pause that maybe things won't be so bad. But this tomorrow may completely change the game again. Yeah.

He's unpredictable, if nothing else. Bruce? Yeah. I think that we had, even just last week, we had two different campaigns. There was a campaign that was kind of at the beginning of the week, and there were a lot of questions about Brookfield and, you know, Bermuda and China and that kind of thing and conflicts of interest. And then all of a sudden, Trump intervenes. And then people, I think, were quite rightly transfixed by this as a higher order issue. that the way in which Mark Carney responded to the situation was extraordinarily widely consumed.

I think these are events, as you know, Peter, that draw huge audiences, not because people have become interested in politics, but because they all of a sudden recognize the importance of these issues and the sense of are we powerless or do we have some agency in this? So I thought that we learned something really important about the degree to which the public can get engaged in this campaign around this particular issue. I don't think more people are going to get engaged around crime. I don't think more people are going to get engaged around, you know,

some of the cost of living issues. And probably they're not going to get that much more engaged around housing, although people will look at the different housing proposals. I think the Trump question, the U.S. risk, and the management of it from the Canadian side is the big issue. And right now, I think, you know, Pierre Pauliev, I think, is trying to make the case that Mark Carney is not the guy that you want. And I don't know if he's succeeding at that.

It doesn't look like it from the standpoint of the polling right now. And it doesn't look like it to me when I see Mark Carney talk about this issue. I'm biased, obviously, but I thought on the day that he responded, it was one of the best days I've ever seen a politician have in terms of just kind of connecting with that spirit in the country about how we should respond to this threat. But as you said at the beginning of this, the Anderson files this week, as you said back about 25 minutes ago. These days move by real quick.

You know, what happened yesterday is forgotten by tomorrow. But we'll see. You know, it's only the first week or the first 10 days or so of a five-week campaign. It's going to be interesting. Thank you both, gentlemen. It's been another good conversation. Look forward to talking to you again next Tuesday. Yeah, thank you both, guys. Thanks, fellas. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge right here on SiriusXM Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform.

As always on Tuesdays, the first half of the program, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce and Fred, is also available on our YouTube channel, so you can watch it there. Second half, just right here in our comfortable little family on SiriusXM and on your podcast. For segment two today, a little bit of an end bit, but first with a preamble. You know, I used to, you know, I've been lucky enough to be,

have been honored by a number of universities in Canada and the United States, actually, for my work and with honorary degrees. And it's quite often that the whole idea of getting an honorary degree and giving a speech at the commencement service is to give some advice. And I remember when I first started giving those speeches that I looked around, what's the kind of advice that other people have given, and there's lots of good advice out there. And the one that always struck me was something that happened at Queen's University back in the 1960s

when they gave an honorary degree to Lorne Green. Remember Lorne Green? Canadian actor who actually started off in the broadcasting business. He read the news on CBC Radio. During the Second World War, his voice was called the voice of doom. Because the news wasn't good, especially in those early days of the war. But Lorne Green was asked that question

by students at Queen's. What's your advice? What advice do you give us? So Lauren Green said, here's my advice. Buy a good bed. That's right, buy a good bed. And the reason being, said Lauren Green, was you're going to spend a third of the rest of your life in bed, so you want to make sure it's a good one, that it's comfortable.

Now, that's real advice, right? When you consider a third of your life, you want to be comfortable. You want to sleep well. Well, that's the point of my end bit today. It's not Lorne Green's quote, but this issue about sleep. You know, when you're growing up, you're told by your parents, you know, you've got to get eight hours sleep. And that's not a bad way for a kid to grow up

if you're able to have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Now, as you get older, it's harder to get eight hours. It's harder sometimes to get seven hours, maybe even six. And I'm at that point now in my late 70s where I'm, you know, I'm lucky to get, you know, six and a half, seven hours at best, usually less. I never have trouble falling asleep. By the time I get to bed, I'm boom, I'm gone pretty quick.

But I do tend to wake up in the middle of the night. Not to get up, but I just wake up. And then I make a, you know, a critical mistake, terrible mistake. I lean over and pick up my phone to check out, actually, who won that hockey game? You know, who won that baseball game? And as soon as I do that, I end up spending more than a few seconds on the phone and then your mind starts going and you can't fall back asleep. So the end bit today is about falling back to sleep. How do you do it? What's a simple technique to help you fall asleep? Well, I've tried everything. But I just tried this last night.

This is only a one-night test. But it worked. It's a piece that was in the New York Times a few days ago. And it's actually called that, a simple technique to help you fall asleep. And the answer is something called cognitive shuffling. It's a piece by Christina Karen in the New York Times. So let me just read you a little bit, and then I'll tell you about my experience.

Dr. Joe Whittington has been an emergency room physician for two decades, but he can still find it tough to quiet his mind after leaving the hospital. As he tried to doze off after one particularly chaotic shift, he kept thinking about a victim of a motorcycle crash whose vital signs had tanked, a patient who developed sepsis, and another whose heart had suddenly stopped beating. His tendency to replay the night's events and his irregular work hours often made it tricky for him to fall asleep. Over the years, he tried deep breathing, meditation, melatonin, before finally stumbling upon a technique called cognitive shuffling. Do you know what that is?

Well, let me cut to the quick about this. It's been touted on social media for years, but does it really work? So the first thing you've got to understand is what is it? Well, this is what you do. So you're lying in bed. You can't fall asleep. You start by taking a random word. And the example they use in this article is Pluto. Then you think of as many words as you can that begin with the same first letter. So, you know, like plane, poodle, play, peaches.

When you run out of P words, you can move on to the next letter of your original word, which is L, and do the same thing. Love, light, lemur, linger. Take a second or so to visualize each word. Research suggests that when people naturally drift off, their minds are often peppered with vivid images or distant thoughts. So says Luc Beaudoin, who's a cognitive scientist and adjunct professor at, wait for it, Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, who developed the cognitive shuffling technique. The goal is to help your mind mimic that process. These images don't create a clear storyline and may help your brain to disengage from problem solving or worry loops, said Dr. Beaudoin, who also has an app based on the technique.

I'm sure you can find it. Anyway, I'm not going to read the whole article here. You get the point. So there I was last night, or I guess it was early this morning, 2.30, 3 o'clock, something like that, when I woke up. Check my phone, and I said, okay, I'm going to try this. And I did. I tried it. And I only made it to the third letter, I think, of the word that I was thinking of before I drifted quietly, slowly, peacefully, back off to sleep.

So that's only a one-day example. And you're going to want more than that, obviously. But it was a pretty good start to checking this theory out of cognitive shuffling. So if you have trouble sleeping, why don't, you know, I'm not endorsing this, I'm just telling you my experience. You might want to try it. Okay, a couple of reminders for the rest

of the week. Tomorrow is Encore Wednesday, and we'll have one of our best editions. It might even be this one. Lately, I've been doing, because our shows get so out of date so fast because of the rapidly changing storylines, I haven't figured out where we'll go tomorrow with our encore edition. Thursday, it's your turn. And remember, your turn is kind of part two of what we started last week. Your thoughts on what you see as the issue beyond the Trump issue for the election campaign.

And there are some just terrific letters, but so many that we have, well, we have at least two weeks, probably three weeks of letters to deal with here. So that'll be Thursday plus, of course, the Random Ranter. Friday is Good Talk with Chantel and Rob Russo. A couple of things, if you follow me on social media, you probably saw. I mentioned yesterday that we've passed

the 15 million download point on our podcast. Just the podcast that's helped out by SiriusXM. Pops it up into wherever it is up there in the sky where you download the podcast from. And 15 million over the five years or so that we've been doing this is pretty impressive. I got to admit for our little retirement hobby here, we're so glad that you've joined us and the numbers have never been as high as they are right now. And, you know, as you know, Friday's Good Talk is available on SiriusXM.

It's available as a podcast and it's also available on our YouTube channel. And last week on our YouTube channel, last Friday, it had 135,000 views, which is a new record for our YouTube channel. And just to put that in some context, that's more than some television programs get. It's just crazy. But we're glad that you're tuning in. All right.

That's it for this week. Thanks so much for listening, and we will talk again in 24 hours on the Encore Show. Bye for now.