The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke Mirrors and the Truth - Spreading Manure?

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

Bruce Anderson has a new hobby, at least I think it's new!  All that to say we go behind the strategies or lack of them being used by some political leaders in Canada and assess whether they're working.  But we don't stop there, we look at how Joe Biden, faced with many of the same issues, is handling them with very different results.

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. You know what that means. It means smoke, mirrors, and the truth with Bruce Anderson. Ah yes, we love Wednesdays. We love them because Bruce joins us from Ottawa, and he always has all kinds of interesting things to say. Good morning. Good afternoon. Do you hear your voice? Great to hear that lovely Wednesday music.

Yeah, isn't it? I don't know where we found that, but we found it, and we're very happy with it. Listen, here's some. Let me start this way. I was checking my messages yesterday. I get, you know, like you do, I get lots of them, but I got one from you. I got a great one from you with a picture in it. And it's you on the, on the back 40 of your property and your, it's actually your daughter, but it's the family it's the anderson family spreading manure on the property to get it ready for the summer now i

thought this is a perfect this is apropos of smoke mirrors and the truth what better thing could you have than spreading manure because there's been lots of manure spread on some of the topics that we look at and confront each week and as a result that's where i want to start you were you prompted me in this discussion with that picture very i was a teaser picture and i was sure peter that i was going to get a lot of posters kind of making allusion to the fact that oh there i was spreading peter that i was going to get a lot of posters kind of making allusion to the fact that oh there i was spreading manure as a hobby as opposed to how i make my living now i think i posted it late enough in a day that i didn't get a lot of that so that's good but yeah it's uh it's been a fun project my daughter and i have started uh we rented a

little patch of farmland and we've put some vegetables in the ground or at least some seeds and we'll see how it goes. We'll keep people posted. Well, you should. You can open a little selling feature here on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Get the Bruce Anderson radishes. The radishes. The radishes are going to be much sought after.

Much sought after. Well, let's get to the kind of manure spreading that we tend to follow on almost a daily basis, and whether or not it's been working or not. Because the numbers I've seen lately from a variety of different research firms, and I think you guys are in the field right now at Abagastata, would suggest that certainly in some areas, what we've witnessed in the first year of the pandemic, where there was a lot of support for various leaders in the country,

and we're talking whether it was the prime minister or the provincial premiers, but those numbers in certain areas are starting to crater. I think that's right. Look, I think the way that public opinion works in a pandemic is something that none of us in the business of polling really knew because there was no prior experience to draw from. But now that we're a year in, there are some things that we can see. I think the first thing I would say is that there's nobody that's having a great pandemic from a public opinion standpoint.

That's just an impossibility. The most that you can have is people who are kind of holding their breath, frustrated, upset with the situation that the world and they themselves, by extension, find themselves in, but not particularly unhappy with the way that their governments are working. That's kind of the high watermark. And I think what we've seen is that a number of governments and leaders who've adopted the position of, I'm just going to do the work. I'm just going to do the job. I'm not going to try to score points. I'm not going to try to harvest what I'm doing during the pandemic for political upside, that those politicians are finding generally okay levels of public support.

I wouldn't overstate it. There's not, you know, as I say, there's no real exuberance out there for anything. But so that's kind of the ceiling. That's the best. And then you've got the floor and do some politicians fall below what looks like a natural floor where people aren't paying that much attention. And in order for your numbers to fall below that floor, you have to do something that really annoys them, that really gets under their skin.

And generally speaking, uh, we're seeing two versions of that or two aspects that can do that. One is, if you look like you don't really know what you're doing in managing those aspects of the pandemic that are under your control, or if it's confusing, or if it seems to keep changing. And I think we've seen, especially in Ontario in the last little while, this kind of Ontario is doing really well statement by Doug Ford, followed by we're going to close the schools. And we've got record ICU cases. And so when people see that, it doesn't just feel like political spin. It feels like maybe there's something that's just not right from a competency standpoint and how the province is handling that. So I think that's one thing. And then the second thing is really the, if it feels like you're still playing partisan politics, even though lives are at

stake, livelihoods are at stake, people are tired and frustrated, and they just want this to end. If they hear a politician that sounds like they're playing politics, taking potshots at others, they don't want to have anything to do with it. And I think Jason Kenney is a good example. And there's been polling out this week from another firm that showed that Kenney and Ford were the two premiers who were the least popular in the country right now. And I would make the case that it is partly these issues of competence. Alberta is a little bit different because there's a kind of a strong resistance cohort in the province to some of the measures that mitigate the spread of the variants. We saw, I think it was 17 members of Jason Kenney's caucus who said, we're against these measures that the government's putting in place. We don't see that in any other part of the country. So there is a cleavage around

what should be done within the United Conservative Party there for sure. But I think more pertinent to Jason Kenney's long-term political future is if he continues to look like a guy who puts partisan interest first and foremost and would rather have a political fight than just govern the province, I think he's going to continue to have problems because I think people are sick of it. What do you think? Well, here's what I find interesting. I mean, it's clear, you know, we focus a lot on Ontario for a number of reasons. One, we live here. And I hear from some of our listeners in different parts of the country saying, great talking about Ontario.

And I hear you. I used to be part of that crowd myself, especially when I lived in Western Canada. But it's also 40% plus of the population. There, a lot of people dealing with this situation, and there's a lot of problems within the delivery of the healthcare system, the vaccines, all of that. And there's a lot of finger pointing going on in Ontario, and quite unlike the way it was even just a few months ago. Alberta has been a story that's been developing, as you know, Bruce, for at least the last six months, the problems that Jason Kenney's been having. But here's what I find interesting. You go one more step west, you're into British Columbia, who are having real serious issues on COVID. It's not been a good last couple of weeks uh and they've got variant problems they've got

you know uh issues surrounding the number of new cases every day and yet while the premier has taken a bit of a hit he's not taken any kind of the hit that the that others have like basically like ford and kenny um now he he has a very popular person who goes forward every day in terms of putting out the case on the pandemic with the latest numbers. But what are they doing that the other guys aren't doing? Does it address actually your points that when the premier does talk in bc he's not kind of shoving the knife into either the feds or the opposition in the party that his spokesperson uh on health issues uh the uh the provincial health uh authority um her name has

escaped me for some reason bonnie henry bonnie dr henry dr henry yeah is is also saying the right things and being very realistic about them but they're doing something that others could clearly learn from because they've got a problem there's no there's no hiding that right um but they're they seem to be addressing it in a way that is keeping their support not as high as it was a couple of months ago, but still pretty high. Yeah. Well, I think a couple of things. One is that it's an NDP government. And generally speaking, I always hesitate to say this because I know that small C conservative oriented voters kind of hate to hear this. And they think that I'm saying something that reflects a personal bias. But two thirds of the country self-define as progressive people.

One third self-defdefined as conservative people. In a pandemic, my analysis would be it's harder to be successful as a small C conservative because people are looking at things and saying, we need compassion. We need empathy. We need government supports for our economic well-being. We need all the stops pulled to have government wrap its arms around this problem and solve it for us. And conservative parties, by their nature, have a lot of members who don't like a lot of that kind of thing. They're not kind of built with that orientation in mind. So you see this constant tension of, yes, we should do what we should do, but we shouldn't spend all the money that we could

spend to protect public health. We should kind of keep some in reserve because we don't want the deficit to be so big. Or, and or, I should say, we should kind of open up the economy pretty quickly because we want the private sector to be healthy and successful, and we want to accede to those kinds of pressures, even though the public opinion has been consistently on the other side of that question, that people would rather have more stringency than less stringency. And so it's not really a criticism of conservative leaders to acknowledge that that's a challenge that they have, that their base voters are a little bit more in favor of, you know, a foot on the gas and a foot on the brake when it comes to how to manage things. But it does put conservatives in a more challenging situation if they look to voters like

they're trying to, you know, just kind of not set the dial on public safety at 20, but at seven. And so those progressive leaders, on the other hand, are quite comfortable saying, we're going to do a lot to protect people. I think that is one aspect of it. is if you look like your goal is to defeat the virus, as opposed to defeat another politician, then people are going to go, all right, you may get it right, you may get it wrong. This is a virus that's clever and devastating. But that's the right fight to fight the virus. And I think that the politicians who've gotten offside public opinion look like they're not only focused on beating the virus that's how i see it which brings us to uh the prime minister um and i know we're going to talk about this um tomorrow on good talk with chantilly bear so i

don't want to go into it uh too far here but we don't want her to steal our notes and then just sort of offer the same opinions like she often would yeah sure oh yeah okay you run you you run the risk of of dumping on Chantelibare good luck with that buddy I'm not joining you on that one um let me uh but here's what i will say uh you know trudeau like all of them started off really well everybody was behind leadership even those who didn't like trudeau it's settled down over time but it's basically settled down and it doesn't appear at least from what i've witnessed recently to have shifted that much through some of the chaotic nature of this pandemic handling over the last couple of months.

He still has significant support. He also has a significant group of Canadians who will not vote for him, who will never vote for him, and have been emboldened, they think, by his handling of the pandemic. Now, part of what he has done is not, you know, gone to the bait from others who have been criticizing him, like Doug Ford. Until last weekend at the convention, and this we'll talk about tomorrow, where there seemed to be not directly from Trudeau,

but certainly from some of his ministers, an attempt to sort of bat Ford down. And I'm sure for partisan reasons, if nothing else. But the positioning of the, first of all, am I accurate in my sense that he doesn't seem to be moving the needle in either camp, the for him or against him, that much right now, like others clearly are. Yeah, mostly, that's right. And so what does that mean, just stay the course?

There was a bounce for Trudeau immediately after the pandemic arrived in Canada, where people were terrified of the health and the economic risks. When we think back to the mood of the country in March of 2020, people didn't know how bad this was going to be, how many people were going to die, how devastating it was going to be to the economy. And Trudeau was, in that moment, a really reassuring, sounding leader saying, we're going to do everything that we need to do in order to protect the economy, to protect jobs and to protect lives. And so he saw a real burst of support for his leadership, which then kind of subsided, and has come back a little bit. But you know, right now, Peter, his situation is two people loathe him for every one person who loves him. But the other seven out of 10 don't have strong feelings particularly about him.

And I think this is, you know, this is where the challenge for his opponents lie is that he's been in office, he's been in this position for a long enough period of time that people know who he is, they know what he does, they know the kinds of positions that he takes. And if he's only got two and 10, really loathe him, that's actually a pretty low number for an incumbent. That is not usually the kind of number that gets somebody thrown out of office. And so they have to ask themselves, well, if we haven't been able to find the things that we can use to make more people really upset with this guy by now, are we going to find them between now and, say, September? And probably not is the answer unless Trudeau makes a mistake, an egregious error that galvanizes everybody and says, you know, into a I can't stand this guy anymore. And, you know, when, as you know, Peter, when people are longer in office, they're less likely to make those kinds of mistakes. They just kind of learn from stepping on the rake that, that stepping on the rake is a unpleasant experience.

So, so I think then it becomes a question of what have you, what are you going to put in the window as an alternative? And, and so I look forward to the conversation that we're going to have about the two parties that just had policy conventions. And I think that's a really important conversation for us to have, because I do think it's going to be a little bit of what comes next election. And not just you like this leader versus that leader, because I do think that probably plays to Trudeau's advantage, even if it's not Trudeauia uh or anything resembling that right well we and and

we will talk about that tomorrow the both the liberal and the ndp convention just like we talked about the conservative uh convention a couple weeks ago we'll talk about those two tomorrow on good talk with uh with bruce and chantilly bear so listen a good conversation on some of those and the different things that are happening to them in terms of political leadership in the country. You know, Ford and Kenney in Ontario and Alberta and John Horgan in B.C. And, of course, Justin Trudeau in Ottawa. But the next time we talk, which will be right after this incoming break, we're going to look south to Washington and see how that leadership is handling things with the same kind of crisis going on. Back in a moment. Okay, back with Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario.

Actually, I'm in Toronto today. It all started to look the same, you know. I'm in southern Ontario, and I know a lot of people that don't care whether that's Stratford or Toronto. Hey, he's talking from Ontario. One of those Toronto-centric guys. Anyway, I'm in Toronto for this day. So I want to talk a little bit about Joe Biden and the way he's handling things. There's a natural honeymoon period for all U.S. presidents when they take office. Now, this is an unusual time given the way the last guy, the former distributions, whether it's the infrastructure program, whether it's the budget situation,

whether it's proposals for climate change. I mean, you can run through the list on every subject, including subjects where that country is definitely divided. People seem kind of happy with the way joe biden is handling things uh which raises the question is it simply just an extension of the honeymoon or is there something going on there that uh that political leaders and i i got to be careful when i talk about political leaders in Canada, because some are doing a great job. Clearly, the

Atlantic provinces, the four premiers there are doing pretty good. The premier of Quebec, even though he's had some real difficulties, is very popular. But nevertheless, the Biden story, there we go, keep using nevertheless.

I was kind of stuck on that word. I use it. Yeah, it's old. There we go. Keep using nevertheless. I was kind of stuck on that word. I use it. Yeah, it's old. It's old. Yeah. It's got a great story behind it, as I told on the podcast last week. You could say in any event. I could give you a list.

I'll send you a list after of other things you can substitute in for that. Okay. I will take account of that list. So tell me, what's he doing that others could learn from? Yeah, well, who he's not being is kind of item number one. I think, you know what, I was thinking about this question. I was reminded somehow of these two penalties that exist in American football. I don't know, actually, if they exist in Canadian football, but I've always found them kind of interesting and a little bit odd.

And one is taunting and the other is excessive celebration. And the thing about Biden for me. Is he not doing that? And the thing about Trump was that was almost all he ever did, that he was always kind of like, I don't want to talk about complicated policy issues. I just want to say those people are stupid. And those people are evil. And those people are trying to rip you off and invade your country and, you know, rob you. And whenever he had any bit of good news, it was, I'm going to spike the ball and I'm going to pick the ball up and spike it again.

And I'm going to do it over and over and over again so that people see the celebration and kind of appreciate how great I am. In contrast, you've got Biden who's shepherding because he's got these internal dynamics in his party. And I think he's personally very motivated by this. I think he's probably thinking he's a one-term guy, so he better get something done. And if you're in that office, you know that if you're going to get something done, you're going to get it done in the first two years. And really the first year. You've got to put these things in motion in order to have that

legacy and have that impact that you want to have. So what's he doing? He's shepherding an ambitious agenda on climate, on infrastructure, on tax change, corporate tax increases. And instead of parading these out like kind of the Russian weapons on the boulevard in front of the Kremlin so that everybody can see them and be either elated or horrified by them. He doesn't make a show of it. He actually makes a show of saying that he's invited congressional leaders in from the other party, and he's going to have private conversations with them. And reporters will say, well, what are you going to negotiate? And he says, I'm not going to negotiate in front of you.

And they say, well, is this just window dressing? And he says, I'm not much for window dressing. Thank you very much. And then the press conference is over. And I kind of love that posture, especially as a counterpoint to Trump, because I think it says to voters, he's just trying to do the job. He's not trying to be the president in the sense of achieve some measure of celebrity and public acclaim. He's just trying to do the job on their behalf. And I think that's a big part of what's working. And I also think that these vaccines and his pace is just phenomenal in terms of getting these rolled out. America's got giant problems, race very much up there, a lot of vaccine hesitancy that's going to create persistent problems for them if they don't solve that. But I think Biden is using the office of the president in a

much more productive way, in part because no taunting, no excessive celebration, no flags being dropped every day. I think the CFL does have some kind of rule like that, but it's hard to remember because it's been so long since there's been a CFL game. CFL game, yeah. I mean, those people are in serious difficulties. They're supposed to start training camp another week or so, but much of the country's in lockdown. That's not going to happen.

They've also got financial problems. Listen, I grew up watching the CFL. Man, I hope we don't lose it. Yeah, same here. I hope they don't, you know, amalgamate into something with one of the secondary U.S. football leagues that'll change our rules and we'll lose our independence on football and all of that.

But, you know, it's a difficult time. Anyway, let me get back to what you were talking about, because a couple of things there. I still wonder how long that can last, that strategic positioning that Biden and his team are doing, which has clearly so far been very successful, but coming off the tail end of a very different kind of administration, and still kind of in that sort of first hundred days where things tend to work in your favor.

So that's one. The other point you bring up about vaccine hesitancy, now there's a common problem that everybody we've talked about today is facing, whether it's Trudeau or Horgan or Kennedy or Ford or any of the other premiers and Biden and the state governors in the U.S. Every time they think they're getting around this hesitancy issue. They get knocked back down to the mat. And now we've got the Johnson & Johnson pause on its vaccine, the one shot, not worried about having to keep things in the deep freeze vaccine, concerned because there have been six examples of blood clots out of seven million vaccines that have been administered on the johnson and johnson front but it has and you can you could see like i was watching this morning i

saw dr fauci on on some of the american morning shows and he is beside himself trying to figure out how to answer these questions because he knows what it's doing to those who are on the edge. Not the anti-vaxxers. They're already in that camp. They're never going to change. But the ones who are, well, geez, I don't know. I keep hearing this or that about this vaccine or that vaccine. I can't keep them straight.

People are dying. Like, what's going on? And I'm going to wait. This is a, you know, I didn't realize the extent of how worried they are about this until I saw Fauci this morning, who really looks worried. Yeah. Because the danger here is you're never going to reach that percentage of those vaccinated that can push you over the edge into the area of herd immunity. And he looked worried and he didn't know what to say.

Because he realizes that people are worried. They see this even though the chances are so slight. But nevertheless, it's had an impact. And what they say and how they say it in these next few days and weeks is going to be critical to the overall success of this vaccine program. In spite of how many vaccines, especially in the States, obviously, that have already been administered, that's not enough. Yeah, I agree. I think the American problem is different from ours in scale

and a little bit in nature. And we're doing research on it as we speak, part of a task group of maybe 50 different organizations now. And we want more to join every day that are private sector companies, associations in different industries and the big labor unions in the country who are all coming together because they share a common desire to solve this problem, to promote acceptance of vaccines. And so I'm kind of deep in this subject on the Canadian side of the border. And I see that what we've got is about 25% of the population still who say, you know what, I'd rather wait a little bit and see how it affects other people, or I prefer not to take it, but I could maybe be convinced. So that's our cohort. There's 9% or 8% who say, I'll never take it. And we just don't bother trying to figure out what to do about that because there isn't really an information effort that would solve that problem.

And everybody else is saying, I've got a shot or I'll get a shot as soon as I'm eligible. In Canada, the biggest aspect of hesitancy is not, I don't trust vaccines very much, is that these ones were developed very quickly. And so do we really know, even the experts who are telling us that we should do this, even our own version of Dr. Fauci, even Dr. Fauci, do they really know that this is going to turn out to be safe?

And so that's hard to defeat, especially when you get these stories about AstraZeneca and J&J. And the other thing I'll add to that is that, and I remember this work that I did on referendums different parts of the world. When somebody has an idea, whether it's a constitutional reform or a change in an important law, and they decide to put it to a referendum of voters. And the most interesting thing that I learned in that work was that if an idea that's being put to voters doesn't start with about 70%, it won't finish above 50%. And one of the reasons for that is that the nature of media coverage, which isn't really a criticism of media, although, you know, we can sort of talk about it in the context of the vaccine hesitancy, is that even though almost 100% of the evidence is effectively that these vaccines are safe, we get into a situation where almost 100% of the stories about Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines are about, are they safe? And it has an effect on public opinion over time, which gets people away from the, this is really, really safe, into the, isn't this really unsafe? That's all everybody's talking about. So the media by their nature, focusing on this element of maybe excessive

caution, or an abundance, let's call it an abundance of caution, creates a dynamic which fuels hesitancy here for sure. In America, there's a lot more of the, if the government tells me to do it, I don't think I should do it. You know, there's pockets at scale of opinion that basically are just anti-establishment. And I think it's probably fair to say here in Canada, we've got more people who are a little bit more oriented towards, I'm going to trust the system. And if the system tells me that this is what I should do, and that we'll get back together faster, if we do this, then I'm going to do it. So that remains to be played out. And in America, there's so many people getting vaccines right now, that they also have a problem of people saying, if everybody else is doing it, maybe I don't need to. I think our own peer pressures in Canada will have the kind of an opposite influence, which is if everybody else is doing it, I should probably do it

because it's part of being a good citizen, even if I'm not sure I want to. But a lot hangs in the balance of these stories about side effects. No question about it. I love your story about referenda and your study on it because clearly one person who didn't get a copy of your study was david cameron in britain um who decided to you know have a referendum on brexit when it was already relatively close he certainly wasn't above that 70% number that you were talking about. And he sort of blindly walked into that one and had his head cut off.

The no side wins 60% of referendums. The evidence is really clear why. That's not because the ideas are all bad or mostly bad. It's because, you know, you start out with an idea and you think everybody's going to like it and you're going to win the debate. But everybody who opposes it, they don't have to have a replacement idea. And they don't have to hate every aspect of it. They just need to say this thing in it is horrible.

And that thing in it is awful. And the status quo isn't that bad. The status quo isn't that bad. The status quo is okay. We had our own example with Meech Lake and then, you know, the Charlottetown referendum, as they called it. That's why I did that work, to understand those dynamics. Right. But you're right. I mean, there was a lot of stuff in Meech Lake,

but the thing people remembered was distinct society, right? Yeah. And the same with the Charlottetown referendum. And the critics effectively positioned themselves on that issue and left everything else untouched. Yeah. Some people say, I hate this Triple E Senate, and other people say, I hate the distinct society.

The next thing you know, you're south of 50%, and you're never going to get back. Right. Okay, I'm just about out of time here. One quick thing that I kind of passed over on the Biden conversation is, you know, Biden and Trudeau are aligned on a number of issues. Is there something that they can or something that they're working on or can use to pursue their own separate agendas, which are in fact the same agenda on some particular issues.

Yeah, I think the one that I'm most fascinated by is that Biden has, I think, correctly understood that to galvanize and hold American public opinion in support of climate action, that he has to cast it as part of economic renewal, that this is how we build a stronger, more powerful economy for the future by harnessing all of the collective desire in the country, the intellect, the brainpower, the innovation, the capital that wants to align around climate goals. And I think he knows that if you only articulate it as an environmental ambition, you lose a lot of the enthusiasm that you can get from voters who say, well, I care about the environment, but I really care also about my standard of living. And so Biden has, I think, quite appropriately articulated his environmental,

his climate agenda as an economic renewal plan. Trudeau, I think, is doing the same thing. And I think the relationship between these two countries and these two leaders is going to continue to identify that as an area of alignment. The president has called for a leader summit that he's going to host, which is maybe arguably his first big foreign policy endeavor. It's a virtual summit, but it's his. He's chairing it. He wants to have the conversation with these other leaders from around the world about climate and about the ambition on climate. And I think that the signal that I see is that he wants to use America's soft power and the idea of America as a close ally to help affect that change

that he thinks needs to happen around the world. Well, we'll watch to see. That'll be fascinating. I mean, he's also suggested in the last day or two that he wants a summit with Putin, and that'll attract, obviously, a lot of attention as well. But two kind of major potential initiatives on the international stage, one in which could place Canada in an interesting and important position. Okay, Bruce, we're out of time for this day.

A reminder that tomorrow Bruce joins us along with Chantelle Hebert for Good Talk. That's at 5 p.m. on Sirius XM. And you can still subscribe to that program for nothing right now it's on a you know you'd get a one month trial offer so you can find that at siriusxm.ca slash Peter Mansbridge okay that's four good talks for the price of nothing right what a bargain yeah and on in some my radishes will be more expensive than that. You're going to do tomatoes too, right?

I'm going to do tomatoes. Yeah. All right. I'll price them later. Well, just remember, farming is not an easy, it's not a hobby. Farming is a really tough job. You're there 24-7. Yeah, my back has sent me the memo.

My back has sent me the memo already. 24-7, you got to be out there when they you know when the insects come storming across the fields you got to be there to swat them away yeah what do you know about this i don't i don't want you using any insecticide or anything like that these have got to be like low carbon free range tomatoes or whatever you call them when they're not uh they don't have that stuff sprayed on them. That's it. That's bad enough that you're spraying manure on there.

Shoveling it. But that's okay. That's one way to prep for this program. You've done a great job once again today. All right. We'll see you, Bruce, tomorrow. That's good talk. And, of course, the Bridge.

Normal special edition of the Bridge tomorrow at noon. Dominic Cook. I know. You've of course, the Bridge. Normal special edition of the Bridge tomorrow at noon. Dominic Cook. I know you've never heard of that name unless you were listening yesterday when I told you. Dominic Cook is a British theater director and a movie director, and he's just come out with a new film digitally. It's released, I think, this weekend called The Courier with Benedict Cumberbatch.

And I wanted to talk to him i don't you know i'm not into the movie review business but i wanted to talk to him because his movie the courier is a kind of little known story about the cuban missile crisis and so you know i love history and i know many of you do as well uh so you might want to see his movie but you might want to also listen to him because he's a really interesting guy, and he's on the program tomorrow. Looking forward to talking to him.

He's no Bruce Anderson. He's not out there cooking or growing radishes, but he's worked with Benedict Cumberbatch, and he's a pretty darn good actor. Yeah, absolutely. I'll look forward to that. Yeah, no, it's in our own way. Yeah, absolutely. That's right, yeah. I'll look forward to that. Yeah, no, it's good.

And then Friday, of course, the weekend special, your question, your thoughts, your ideas. Why don't we make it about what we've talked about today? Send me your ideas about what you want to see from a leader. I don't need the four-page essay. Give me the one paragraph. What's the ingredient you look for in your leaders or you'd like to see right now from your leaders what is it the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com don't be shy write remember to put your name and your location from where you're writing on the letter, on the Gmail.

Email. Okay, that's it for this day. Thanks, Bruce, and thanks to you, our listeners. This has been The Bridge, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. For Wednesday, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours.