The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMOKE MIRRORS AND THE TRUTH -- OMICRON, O'TOOLE AND OH MACLEAN'S

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

Have world leaders got it right this time in how they are responding to the latest twist in the Covid story?  Bruce Anderson brings his latest data to SMT.  Plus the latest on Erin O'Toole, and then an interesting take on Maclean's magazine's best-known recent cover.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, December the 1st. Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson, there next. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. This is Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. And man, there's never a shortage of things to talk about on Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Trying to sort out the smoke and the mirrors and the truth on Omicron.

The variant that had us, you know, had a lot of people panicking on the weekend. No question about that. The scientists have taken, most of the scientists, not all of the scientists, but the scientists and the medical people are saying, let's be cautious here. Let's not panic. And as we've often said, there's two different ways to go about this. And, you know, there's the political way to deal with these kinds of situations, and there's the scientific way to deal with these kinds of situations. And there's no, nobody's saying either one of them's wrong, but they're often different. And we've seen some differences on this one already.

The political leaders always concerned that they could get burned and many of them were burned 20 months ago when all this started that they acted too slowly. That would be hard to say anybody's acting too slowly this time around including here in Canada as moves are put in to try and ensure that as best they can, the Canadians are not going to be affected by this new variant beyond whatever they can't do to stop it, to prevent it. Anyway, there have been a number of things happen already, and there's already, can you believe it, there's already been some polling, some research, some data collection on how we all feel about this. And we've got the guy, the smoke, mirrors, and truth man himself to tell us all about it. Go for it, Bruce.

Happy Wednesday, Peter. You know, there's so much that goes on between Friday and Wednesday that I get anxious. I almost want to do smoke mirrors and the truth earlier because I, you know, so much that's kind of building up in my head. Anyway, I'm glad we're talking today. We did put out a poll yesterday that some of our listeners may have seen that showed that Canadians are definitely impacted by the news of Omicron. How are you saying it? Because I'm trying to figure out how to say it. Omicron, Omicron. Omicron. Okay. It's a terrible name. This Greek alphabet stuff is nuts.

No, I'm not against the Greek alphabet. My son-in-law is Greek, and I'm okay with trying to learn the letters and how to say it. It's not about being against the Greek. It's just like it's a lousy name. I am struggling with saying it the same way every time. So, you know, everybody forgive me if I mess up. The number of people who say that in recent days they become more worried about COVID doubled from October to November, from 20% to 40%. So we were on a declining anxiety grade, and now we're going back in the other direction. At the same time, Canadians aren't panicking about this. It's clear that they've noticed it. They're paying attention to it. And probably it's fair to say that they're hoping for governments to do prudent things, but no more than is necessary because I think that they still want to be in that zone of if we don't,

if we don't have to shut a lot of things down, then we shouldn't. And so I think that, you know, you made the point, Peter, about, so one more point about the poll that I wanted to emphasize, because it's really, it kind of links to the question of what's the difference between political management and health management? Because there's a blurry line there. And it's really about how do you keep people feeling confident and united and kind of rallying together for whatever it is that we're going to need to do to deal with Omicron?

Because we know that there are tensions in society. There's some divisions. Certainly, there are divisions around vaccination. And one of the things that we found in our poll is that for everybody who's been vaccinated, anxiety levels go up and down a little bit like a roller coaster over the last six or seven months as people hear about one different wave coming and now a new variant. But the people who are unvaccinated, and essentially we're talking about people who are refusing to be vaccinated now because we're down to that number, but it's 6% of the population. It's a very substantial number of people, their level of anxiety doesn't change. And Omicron didn't change their level of anxiety, didn't make them more worried about COVID.

They're basically saying, I'm not worried about COVID. I'm not taking the vaccination. My life is going to go on no matter what happens with respect to COVID. And so I do think that that is a signal that the politics of the next phase of this pandemic, if Omicron turns out to be a bigger problem, is going to be difficult, because there's a hardening of feelings on both sides of that vaccination question. And if people are looking at shutting down businesses again, if they're looking at changing, you know, the way that people can live their lives, and eliminating a lot of activities and not being with family as much that kind of thing,

then the vaccinated are going to be angry at the unvaccinated. There's no no getting around that. So that's another reason why the politicians, you raised the question about political management and health management. I think the blurry line is that politicians know that they need to do enough things to make sure that people understand that this is a serious issue and that they're doing all that they can properly do to limit the health risks, even while saying we don't know enough yet. And I think that's the line that the prime minister tried to walk yesterday afternoon. If there seems to be an agreement on most Western countries, not all, but most, it's

that they don't want to go back to lockdowns anywhere. Yeah. On anything. And that's, you know, that's a gamble. But they understand, and I think you're seeing it in the data to some degree, that that may be a real hard nut for most people to crack if you're going to bring back in lockdowns. People will go along with what needs to be done to keep them safe, but their experience has been better that we were safer than sorrier. On the other hand, there were some times where people

looking back would say, well, we went further than we needed to, or we left this measure in place longer than we had to. And I don't think that's an easy life for the public officials that have to make those decisions. But I think the public officials understand that there's a contract, a silent contract between the public and the rules makers. And that walking that line isn't about putting them at risk and hoping things work out for the best, because we did see some jurisdictions where people did that, and things worked out badly, and a huge political price was paid. But rather, it's about being measured, and always tying what you're doing to evidence. Not only doing things that kind of feel right because people have their own sense of,

from the internet or wherever, what the level of risk is, and not being too trampled by that kind of herd mentality that can sit in around some of these anxieties you know part of the problem with the situation we're in right now is we we need a lot more evidence to determine just how serious the situation is um and it could be another two three four weeks some say six weeks before we're going to have that evidence, which makes it a tough situation for both streams, the political stream and the health stream, in dealing with all this. The worst-case scenario, I think, for a lot of people is that if, it's one thing if we find out that you know the this new variant really does uh transmit quickly very fast appears to be and the early studies seem to indicate that

but you know there are more studies going on you can kind of deal with that um next case scenario that's not good is that it's not as effective in terms of the vaccinations as we're used to. I mean, we're used to in the mRNA vaccines in the over 90% effectiveness. you know, if you drop 10% or even 20%, most of the medical people will say, hey, that's as good or better than we have on a lot of vaccines that we take for a lot of other things. So we can take a hit like that and it's going to be okay. It's if they suddenly come up and say, well, you know what, none of the vaccines we've been taking are going to work against this variant.

That would not be good. That would be a really difficult situation and would really have quite an impact on the debate around vaccines. But if they tell you people like, well, you and I have had three vaccines already. If they tell us we're back to square one i i don't know what i think at that point i really i don't know what i think now hopefully that's not going to get to that and there's every indication that it won't get to that uh but that's those are some of the stakes that we're kind of looking at in terms of what needs to be determined over these next two, three, four, five weeks.

Yeah. And, you know, which gets us sort of be right around, you know, the height of the holiday season when we start to find these things out. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think there are three or four things that are different right now from what the first phase of the pandemic was. First of all, we didn't really know anything about it then. And so, everybody went from not

being fearful of it, it was just a news story about some other part of the world and some strange disease, to being something that everybody was transfixed by. And we were really transfixed in part because we had no idea how widely this would spread, how quickly it would spread, whether we'd ever be able to come up with a treatment or a vaccine for it, how many people were going to die. I don't know if you remember some of the earlier conversations we had and the modeling that was done about the infection rates and the likely deaths numbers that were as bad as this pandemic was were way off the the charts worse than than what actually happened um especially i think that especially yes especially especially here not so much in the states the early estimates were for um I mean, it's a lot of deaths, obviously, in the United States.

I'm not trying to minimize that. But the earlier models were worse than the actual outcomes, partly because people started taking some measures. But we know more now than we did then was really my point. The second thing is here in Canada, unlike in some other places, in particular, maybe the United States, people mask and social distance, it's actually not become a pain point. For the vast, vast majority of people, they just do it. And, and I don't think everybody loves it. I think that they just do it. And I don't think everybody loves it. I think that they just do it because it's a sensible thing to do until this thing is completely gone. And so, if that remains part of the protocol for longer, I don't think people will mind. But the third thing is that

the communication from officials, including the political and the health officials, will need to be more diligent and in the moment as information is found out about this, because people want to know what the government is learning, what governments are learning about. Is this a different variant that will spread and affect more people, but the symptoms won't be that severe? Will the vaccines work, as you mentioned? Will the medications that are in the pipeline be approved soon? And will they work against this vaccine? So those are all three questions that

are more temporally different, right? We're not in the, and I guess also if we need new vaccines, how long will it take before those are developed? And we've already got at least one company saying we should be able to have one by the spring of 2022. So it's a different context. And if I'm in the political game, I want to be talking every day about what it is that we know and what we're going to do. And a good question is for Doug Ford, these booster shots, they're sitting in fridges. Are you going to use them now? And if you're not going to use them, explain why you're not going to use them. Those questions become more prominent.

And a number of governments, Doug Ford's included, I imagine they're at some point going to have to answer the question, why have, did I read a million doses have been destroyed because they passed their expiry date? That's inexcusable. I don't know who's responsible for that. I don't know whether it's government or industry or science or whatever it is, but it seems absolutely outrageous that we've reached that point. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll shift to a little smoke, mirrors and truth on something that happened in Ottawa yesterday in the House of Commons. It was pretty interesting.

And what just it may signal for the future. We'll talk about that when we come back. Back with Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Toronto today. You're listening to Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on The Bridge, on Channel 167, Series XM Canada, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform, wherever you're joining us from. We're glad you're with us. You know, I was fascinated watching your Twitter feed yesterday. And it, you know, it takes a lot. That's always a good sign. It takes a lot to have to admit that. But there you were as somebody who hasn't held back on Aaron O'Toole and his position as leader of the opposition

and leader of the Conservative Party and what his potential future was, you haven't held back. You've been fairly critical. Yesterday, not so much. Yesterday, you were, I wouldn't use the word praising him, but you were certainly giving him credit for the speech he gave in the House of Commons in response to the throne speech. So when a new government gives a throne speech or a new session of parliament starts, they outline their plans with the governor general reading a

speech, and then each of the opposition leaders in the days that follow gets the opportunity to give their response to the speech from the throne, which is what Aaron O'Toole did yesterday. And tell me, oh, wise one. Yeah. I do love Twitter because everybody, if you say anything that isn't profoundly critical of the politician that your Twitter followers hate, they immediately go, what's wrong with you? Why did you lose your mind? I recognize that even as I decided I had to say what I wanted to say, which is really an observation, not so much praise, although because I believe that the Conservative Party needs to appeal to some progressive voters, it is praise of a sort to say that this leader in this speech made what I consider to be a more

deliberate and obvious effort to appeal to some progressive voters. He talked about the opioid crisis. He talked about mental health problems. He talked about reconciliation. He talked about energy workers and a future where energy workers found more opportunity. Now, there were some parts of it that still left me feeling disappointed in the positions that he took. Some I thought were still a little bit kind of stuck in the past and more base rallying than kind of reaching out. And one area in particular that I thought was just really, really weak. But if one is looking at Aaron O'Toole and saying, is he trying to straddle this fence between the hardcore of his party and the people that he needs to win support from, from the liberals particularly? And is he, or is he trying to make a more deliberate effort,

even at the potential expense of some of the base, to win support on the center of the spectrum? I would say that the speech that he made yesterday looked like he was saying, my party might not support me, or might, but I know what I'm trying to do, and this is what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to win some votes on the center. And so, to the extent that I think that that's what he should do to build a more competitive party, good for him that he did that. You know, I was watching the speech as well. And the questions that followed it because opposition parties get an opportunity to question him. And, you know you you highlighted a number of areas where where he was um where he was showing a progressive sign in the questioning he didn't show it when it got around to assault

weapons um look there's no movement there but anyway that's not the point i was going to make the point i was going to make when i was watching, because I noticed the same thing you did, but I was trying to determine how's that playing in that group around him? Because we know he doesn't have a United Caucus on a number of issues. And on this general theme of moving towards the center, he doesn't have a United Caucus. So I was trying to, you know, sometimes you can tell by body language, you can certainly tell by faces, but you can't in a pandemic that you know there were a lot of people around him yesterday when he gave this speech but they're all wearing masks as is the proper thing to be doing but you couldn't tell right right you couldn't see what was happening behind those masks.

Well, look, I honestly don't think that, I don't think his party will support him. I don't think his caucus will support him in this direction. And I don't think he'll be consistent on it. And in fact, the antics in question period were kind of inconsistent with the speech. And I don't know that I think he's sincere about it. So, those are all caveats. All I was really trying to say is that he and his team worked on a speech, and the speech had some very, to me anyway, clear indications that what he's trying to do is spend a fair bit of time talking about a version of conservative that might appeal to voters on the spectrum. Again, not saying he was sincere, not suggesting his party will follow him, not thinking that one speech means a deliberate and consistent strategy because already there's evidence that it's not the case. And on vaccinations, arguably the most important symbolic issue of is the Conservative Party really in touch with mainstream Canada.

He talked about how people who were refusing vaccines needed to be respected and their privacy needed to be understood, but everybody should get vaccinated. Well, that's hardly the kind of leadership rallying cry that most Canadians are looking for on this issue, especially as Omicron rears its head. And on oil, he talked about ethical oil and Saudi oil going up the St. Lawrence River. And those are arguments that are so old and dated that even people in the oil patch are kind of embarrassed to use them now because they understand them to be avoiding the conversation about an energy transition rather than having it. And so, you know, I don't want to go overboard, but I do think credit where credit is due.

It was an interesting speech that was a departure from maybe what I was expecting. You know, I heard him use that line about the Saudi oil going up the St. Lawrence. Which way is up the St. Lawrence? It's a good question. It's really down. He should have said down, right? I believe that's correct. The Saudi oil would have been coming down the St. Lawrence

into the major market areas, as opposed to up the St. Lawrence, which would be sending it out. I could be wrong. I don't know. I can remember Stockwell day getting trapped on this on the niagara river right i'm not gonna go on the wrong way with you i'm not going down this river with you okay um you know i what was i gonna say there there was something important

i was going to say before i got challenged by the direction of the river. But the ethical oil question, all of the, you know, even on the ethical oil question, Peter, it was interesting. He talked about environmental, social and governance considerations. spoken about that before. But for me, it was a bit of an obvious shift for a conservative leader to stand in the House and talk about climate change, talk about the need for it, talk about the fact that ESG considerations were reshaping investment markets and that Canada needed to be successful in attracting investment that was shaped or influenced by those kinds of considerations. Because, I mean, he did also talk about how we should produce more oil to reduce the price of fuel. So that doesn't all hold together. But there was definitely more of an effort to reach climate-concerned voters, to reach reconciliation-concerned voters, to reach people who are concerned with opioids and addictions and mental health than any of his predecessors had done. I remember now what it was I was going to say

because I was going to pick up on it. Good, I was trying to rag the puck. Yeah, you did rag the puck, and you ragged it long enough for me to realize what it was that I was trying to say because it's a pickup on your point, which was you listed off all those things, but then you said you're not really sure

how sincere he was about them now i find that quite remarkable uh aaron o'toole has been the leader of the conservative party for what since last like the summer of 2020 he's gone through two parliamentary sessions or he's into his second parliamentary session now as leader he He's run an election campaign as leader. And yet we're still asking the question, who's the real Aaron O'Toole? Because at different times, he's come from a very different policy positions. And that's not something any leader wants to be saddled with. You wouldn't say that about Blanchet, the Bloc Quebecois leader.

You know where he stands. You know what he stands for. You wouldn't say that about Jagmeet Singh. You know what he stands for. You wouldn't say it about Justin Trudeau. You may argue, but I know where he stands. I'm just not sure we'll ever deliver on where he stands. But we're still saying it about Aaron O'Toole.

It's not a good place for any leader to be in. Not just with the public at large, but with his own party. Yeah. Here's the other. It's a problem that he's got is not unique to this conservative party. I was watching a conversation about U.S. politics and the Republican Party this morning, and I was really struck by the more observers study the Republican Party, the more they say, well, it isn't really an elite party anymore. It's a working class party. It's a party of populists who hate big

tech and big business and Washington elites and that sort of thing, as opposed to the party that is kind of a voice and an advocate for business, if you like, more generally, and maybe some conservative principles in social life. The Conservative Party in Canada has a similar problem. And it's exacerbated by the fact that the People's Party exists as a political entity. And in our poll that is out today, we're going to show that the People's Party is pulling at 7% in Ontario. That's a number that is a significant number. The People's Party is a more significant political force than the Green Party is in Canada. And that's saying something compared to where we were only a couple of years ago. So I don't think it's easy for Aaron O'Toole to make

the decisions that he's got facing him, especially with the kind of caucus that he's got. But I think that there's no point in trying to emulate and out people's party the people's party. All right. Here's my last topic for today. You like McLean's Magazine. You've written for McLean's a different time. I have.

So have I. I used to be a columnist for McLean's for like three or four years. I've got one of your columns four years from mclean's framed and it hangs on my wall i enjoyed that it was a good time well this is a mclean story that i find interesting you remember in 2018 mclean's had this cover this cover with five guys in their blue suits and their blue ties. The Resistance.

Doug Ford. Andrew Scheer. Jason Kennedy. Premier Moe of Saskatchewan. Brian Pallister. And the former Premier of Manitoba, Brian Pallister. So they were standing there, and the cut line was, you know, after it said, The Resistance, they're looking very bold and strong the powerful new alliance of conservative leaders is taking a

stand against the liberals carbon tax plan welcome to justin trudeau's worst nightmare this was a paul wells piece and it was bang on. That was his worst nightmare at that point. Those guys were lined up, and they were going to take down Justin Trudeau and his carbon tax plan. So today I'm looking at McLean's magazine. And what is the story in McLean's magazine. And what is the story in McLean's magazine today? The last gasp of the anti-carbon taxers. While premiers rage about Ottawa's overreach,

their big fight to stop carbon taxes finally ends, and the environmentalists win. Yeah, that is interesting, Peter. I think the, I would just say two things about it. One is that Paul Wells is obviously one of the most gifted writers that Canada has ever had covering politics, but I think he was wrong in that piece. I don't think it was Justin Trudeau's worst nightmare. I think it was actually a gift for the liberals that the conservatives opposed carbon pricing to the extent that they did and the ways that they did. It allowed the liberals to kind of have the prominence for that piece of their policy puzzle and say, well, if you care about climate change, these people really don't. And so that common front, and I think it was also the case that these were all kind of middle-aged, older men wearing blue suits, and the idea of them as being this kind of block of conservative mindset was an opportunity for the liberals,

not their worst nightmare. But the second thing I would say is I do think that whoever wrote the current version, and I haven't read the piece, is right in the sense that we've had the last election fought over whether we should do something serious about climate change. Going forward, it'll be a conversation about what and how fast we should do it. And back to our point about Aaron O'Toole, I didn't see every word of the speech, but I sure didn't hear anything that sounded like, and if we get into another election campaign, by God, you know, the first thing that we're going to do if we can win that election is cancel that carbon price. So it does feel to me

that that is settled. And that's a good thing, obviously, from my standpoint for the planet. What I do wonder, though, is, you know, is the fight over? And I say that because, you know, you look at that picture, you go back to three years, look at the picture of the five guys.

Two of them are gone. Scheer, gone. Pallister, gone. years looking at the picture of the five guys um two of them are gone sheer gone palester gone uh ford and kenny well kennedy kenny especially is in some degree of hurt right now in terms of trouble ford has an election in the in the spring uh but he's doing it seems everything he can to try and position himself to be in good shape by the spring. We'll see how that works out. But when you look at Kenny and Mo, Alberta and Saskatchewan leaders, it's not like they're about to give up the fight. They may be in a losing position, but they're going to keep swinging on this topic.

Are they not, or are they just going to punt? No, I don't think that. I i mean they've lost their court cases um i think they're pragmatic politicians if not entirely rational on this question and part of that pragmatism is knowing that the companies in the oil patch are mostly in favor of carbon pricing. They mostly have already built it into their business models. And so they're not really with these conservative politicians on the substance of that policy. Some of the more junior companies are, you know, enthusiastic opponents of that kind of policy, but you're really talking about a kind of a marginal mindset. And part of it is, it's a bad idea, because Trudeau brought it in,

rather than it's a bad idea on its merits. And I don't think that Jason Kenney will look at his political situation and say, well, the way for me to come back from a foot in the grave politically is to talk more about how I'm going to fight the liberals on climate policy. I just don't, I mean, I could be wrong. And I'm sure Rachel Notley hopes that I'm wrong because it probably be a good day for her if he decided to campaign against her on that kind of issue. And for Doug Ford, remember he was putting up stickers on gas pumps and was using that as a way to,

I'm going to, I'm going to replace Andrew Scheer because I'm going to be a better fighter against carbon pricing than Andrew Scheer was. And he doesn't talk about that at all anymore. And those stickers are gone. Yeah. I think this stickers are gone. Yeah. I think this fight is over. Yeah.

I think you, I think you're probably right. It's been an interesting three years on it though, because that I'm sure for them, or they wouldn't oppose for that picture was the high point, right? This is it, man.

We've got them on the run. We're going to crush them. It felt like it, but it always feels, you know, every once in a while, Peter, you see something like that where you think, oh, they posed for that picture because they really feel like they've got the world by the tail. But do they really? And are they going to regret that picture? And I thought it looked like a mistake immediately when it happened. And I remember hearing people say, well, they didn't all

pose together, that the thing was photoshopped together. And I don't really know at the end of the day whether that was true. But I'm pretty sure if you assembled five relatively intelligent politicians, conservative, liberal, Democrat, anything like that. And you said, how about the five of you dress up in blue suits and you all stand looking grumpy about some policy. And we put that picture together on the cover and call it the resistance. They'd all go, no, we're not doing that. Doesn't matter what the subject is. Well, they did.

And they got to live with looking at it down all right we're uh we're out of time good to talk to you as always and bruce will be back of course on friday with chantelle for good talk tomorrow um i don't know what we'll do tomorrow but uh we'll think of something a lot of good letters coming in the last uh 24 hours you know aside from the request for book plates didn't didn't you mean to say that i know that the planning department and I have been meeting talking about the 10 different options we have for tomorrow and we'll select the right one rather than, oh, we don't know. We'll figure it out. We're going to have that full staff meeting in just a few minutes.

We'll have all 400 people who work on the bridge come in, sit down, and we'll vote on it. Very good. Thanks. Have a good day. Yeah, you too, Peter. Good talk. That's it for the bridge and Smoke Mirrors and the Truth for this day.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.