The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth -- The Stretch Run Begins

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

What should we be watching for as the leaders hit the final days of their campaigns to woo voters.

Smoke, beers and the truth. Bruce Anderson, Fred DeLorey coming right up. All righty, Peter Mansbridge here with Bruce Anderson and Fred DeLorey. We're less than a week away now from Election Day. This is a campaign that seems to have gone at a breakneck speed. It just seems like yesterday this thing started. Mind you, I suppose for some people it's felt like a lot longer than that, but nevertheless here we are. Days to go before the campaign. I've got to tell you that I expected, there I was the

night before last watching the hockey game, watching the Leafs and the Senators in a real battle of Ontario. And I expect to see election ads, and I did see election ads. There were quite a few of them in there from all three of the main parties. And I expected it was that they were going to be ads full of debate clips, because that's kind of what we had said for the last week that expect debate clips to be in ads. Well, in those particular ads, there were none. There were no debate clips at all.

Um, so I'm wondering what that says, if anything, about where we are and about the role of debate played in all of us. Um, Fred, do you want to, uh, do you want to start? Sure. Um, the debates were interesting in that I thought Pierre Poliev did very well in coming across as someone who was thoughtful and really made clear his motives and why he wants to be prime minister, in particular his closing statements. And really bringing a lot of the debate points to his ballot questions about in terms of affordability and cost of living.

In contrast with Mark Carney, I thought he looked good in terms of, you know, he came across as very smart and knowledgeable, which I think was part of their strategy. But what jumped out to me on the liberal side was the real lack of driving that narrative question that has put them in first place in the polls, has put them likely in a position to be reelected. And it feels like for the last week and a half, they've drifted off of that message track that was working for them. You know, the very first question was about Trump and tariffs.

And Carney, when got sucked into a about Trump and tariffs and Carney when got sucked into a debate on pipelines. And that was it. We never came back to Trump or the 51st state throughout the entire debate. And I think that's, you know, the reason why the liberals can't use much from the debate is because they never any they never delivered any really good points that I think would rile up the voter block that they need. But if if that's the case, and it was so good

for the conservatives, and he was so good in your view, Poliev, why aren't the conservatives using those clips? Or at least, the night that I was watching. I wouldn't say it was, it wasn't a knockout punch for Poliev either, right? He came across, I think he got a strategy of looking like a good person, and not just a leader of the opposition,

but looking like a statesman and a potential prime minister. Uh, but you're right at the same time, there was no big push there either, other than, you know, the messaging that he's been pushing for the last, uh, for the last month. Uh, but I think, you know, the next, this last week, it'll be interesting to see who re if any of the campaigns can refocus and get to what they want to be that drive-in ballot question. Bruce, what do you think? I mean, it won't surprise me that both of you

will make arguments about how well your particular party did in the debate, but I really thought I'd see more of the debates in the ads. Now, maybe I'm just looking at the wrong ads, but these were all new ads that were running that night, and none of them had anything to do with the debate in them. Yeah. So look, I think there is a technical reason that's the part of the answer to your question, Peter, that the ads that are made for showing

on TV during hockey games are more fully produced ads that have scripts that have ads that have scripts that have a very kind of specific purpose to them. And the use of clips is more likely in the context of short, sharp digital ads that you see on Instagram or you might see on Facebook or you'll see traveling the various social media that you might use. So I know that there have been debate clips put into paid advertising on social media by all parties. So I think really what you're doing is kind of comparing apples to oranges in terms of how advertising works.

I think both parties have been producing pretty high quality advertisements. There's some debate I think about the one that the conservatives put out in the last couple of days with the two golfers who are a little younger but otherwise demographically similar to you and me, Peter. I think we can have different points of view about how useful that ad is. But generally, I think the quality of the ads has been pretty good for both parties, both major parties. I don't see as much of the NDP material as I do the others. I think the other thing, to go back to your point about the debates, is that I think Mark Carney went into the debate basically deciding that he wasn't going to get it drawn into

a slugfest with the other leaders, which I think was the right approach for him. I don't think that people wanted to evaluate him as a kind of a debate performer or a kind of a fighter among fighters. I think that they wanted to decide whether or not their inclination to think that he would make a good prime minister was in fact right. So that whole approach doesn't really lend itself to those, you know, those kind of incredibly powerful and dramatic moments. It creates a different kind of output. And for Pierre Poliev, I think Fred's right. I think that we have seen a shift in how Pierre Poliev has been approaching his campaign. He at some point decided that the likeability gap between him and Mark Carney, which is somewhere around 15 to 25 points depending on the question and depending on the poll, but that's a huge gap. And if you're being strategic and you're

looking at that situation and you don't try to use the four hours of TV time that you have where you'll have a pretty big audience to try to narrow that gap, then that's a big mistake. And you can't narrow the likeability gap by being too aggressive towards your opponent. You can only narrow it by being more appealing as an individual, a good person, as Fred said. So I do think it's probably the case that if you compare the communications output of Pierre Poliev in those debates to what he says on the stump or how he delivers

a line in an interview, the debate version is going to be a calmer, less exciting version of that. I think, again, that was strategy for him. I think it was probably good strategy. Where we're at now, I guess, is will it be enough for a Pierre Poliev to have made a significant difference in voting intention? So far, I think the evidence is no, that Canadians are still pretty oriented towards the idea of Mark Carney continuing

in this role with a mandate from Canadians as Prime Minister. Let me talk about these next few days because we often during an election campaign, we'll look at the final, we can say, well, you know, such and such leader is going to these places and that means X. The other leaders going to these places, that means Y in terms of their thinking in terms of where they're going, not just what they're saying, but where they're going. So what do we know about where the leaders are going this week, and what does it say about where their campaign is sitting at? Fred, you start us. Yeah, there's different ways.

So talk to us about that, the tactics of the final week, first of all. It's a, it's different scenarios, depending on what's going on. Typically you wanna be going after those seats you can pick up, the low-hanging fruit, the ones that you think are very competitive, that just takes a little bit of a leader's push to get you over the hump to win.

There's a lot of seats that are gonna come down to very small margins, and you wanna send your leader there to try to give your There's a lot of seats that are going to come down to very small margins and you want to send your leader there to try to give your local campaigns a boost. But at the same time, sometimes it's just pure logistics. You're looking at different ridings and where you're going to go and you know you have to do some leader events the last few days and you got to just figure out what's close to an airport, particularly those last few days when you're jumping around the country quickly. It comes down to that. Sometimes like if I was the NDP, I would be putting Jagmeet Singh in writings that I have no hope in so that he doesn't drag me down. In some of the current seats

that they're holding that they're trying to hold, I think he's probably a drag on them right now. But for the two main leaders, I think you're going to see them hitting the 905 lower mainland BC, and for Carney and the bloc, they're going to be battling it out in the eastern townships. So I think that's where you're going to be seeing a lot of the leaders for the next few days. But if you see a leader in a riding they already hold, then that would seem to suggest that they're in trouble in one of their own ridings. Is that, would that be a fair assessment? Typically, but it's not always the case.

Sometimes it comes down to logistics. Maybe there's an airport in that riding and there's a hanger there that you can have a big event in. Um, so it's not always the case. I know media and everyone always jumps always in this riding. That means they must be losing it, but there could be four ridings around that riding that we're trying to win. And you're trying to make a big effort there and just get a big regional push so it's really case by case the way you

have to look at that and make that judgment call whether it's you know if they're trying to win or lose. Bruce? Yeah I think I think Fred you know again Fred is right I'll say that a lot. You say that a lot. It's amazing. And they'll say, well, here are the other things though that... Look, I think it's too early. I know we're into the last week, but it'll be a few days still before you can tell from where the leaders are going whether the orientation of the campaign overall is how are we going to win the election versus how are we not going to lose as much as we might lose. There will be some choices that become apparent on the final weekend and that fit that template.

Before then, as Fred said, there is yes a barnstorming value when a leader's tour goes through an area where they feel like they're in a dogfight, maybe across a few different ridings with the other party because the word of mouth and there is a sense of community level interest, maybe excitement when a leader's tour goes barnstorming like that. But that was probably more true 25 years ago than it is today. Today you still have to, as an overall campaign, say what is the best way for us to make up some ground

in terms of message and how we deliver that message. And that will generally supersede decisions about which ridings to go to, at least until the last few days, it seems to me. I mean, there'll be some influence of that earlier in the week, no question. But when they're clinked down in the final days, I think it's a much more prominent concern. And the conservatives still have things that they need to get done. Later today, I guess they're putting out their costed platform. The liberals put theirs out

last week before people started voting in the advanced polls. I think it's probably the case that millions of people have voted now and they haven't had the benefit of being able to evaluate the conservative platform. So that's a choice that the conservatives made. I guess when we see it, we'll understand what the rationale was for it, but it will be a part of what they campaign on presumably for the next few days. It'll be part of what the other parties campaign on as well. The last point for me is the Conservatives have made a very unique choice in this election campaign as we talked about before, which is that there's very little room for national media to travel to the Conservative events.

They can't travel with the Conservative campaign. When they get there, there's not very much room for them to ask questions. It's very hard for them to produce kind of detailed content about the conservative campaign. The conservative campaign wants to make that content itself or through allies in certain aspects of the media. And that's different from the liberals. Liberals travel in a more traditional way with a broader kind of media apparatus following them around and more questions. And you know, I think on balance, you could look at and say that's more

risky because journalists are always trying to prosecute a difficult question with a politician. But I think on balance, there's more upside because more people get exposed to the content that you do want to put out there simply because the volume of coverage is going to be greater. I wouldn't mind. I'd just like to quickly. Yeah, go ahead. If I could just fact check Bruce on something quickly.

The Liberal platform came out Saturday after almost 2 million people voted on the Friday of advance polls. So the Conservative and the Liberal platform pretty well the same time in the grand scheme. Sorry, Peter. No, that's okay. Maybe a couple million voters still, but we'll see. What did you two make of that advance poll number? Now I know it was a holiday, Good Friday.

People may have been trying to get out early and not have to go through the big lineups on actual voting day, but two million people on an advance poll day. It's kind of unheard of what does it what does that tell us does it tell us anything other than it was a big number well when I first drove by the polling station on my way to do David Cochran show on CBC Friday evening there's a lineup outside I've never seen that before I always I always voted advance polls and it's usually in and out. I'm usually the only person there, maybe one or two other voters, but it was packed.

So at first I was quite unsure of what it all meant. Then the stat came out 2 million. So if you look at the 2021 numbers in advance polls, if 2 million people voted then, if you extrapolate that, it would be almost 96% voter turnout if the trends continued, which is obviously never going to happen. I think we're probably in the 70% range.

I think it was a good Friday. I think the overwhelming driving factor was that this was a holiday advance poll and it was easy for people to get out. But I do think we will have an over 70% turnout, which 1984 was the last time we had that. So it will be a big turnout. Yeah, 88 too. The free trade election was 75%. Brad, who do you think a big turnout favors in this context?

It's hard to tell because I think both teams are generally fired up in terms of their block. You know, the conservatives, the folks I talk to around the country, they've never had more voter ID done before, they've never had more sign requests, they can't keep their signs in the office, they're going, you know, they have to do two, three double orders of signs, yet the polls show the liberals winning.

So there's just a real, I think, I don't think it benefits anyone necessarily until we really count the ballots Yeah, any disagreement on that bruce? Well No, I I think I agree that there's going to be a higher turnout. I think we can we can probably safely assume that that's the case um you know assume that that's the case. You know, two million is a great first day number. I think Good Friday helps, but I also think that over time, as people become

accustomed to the idea that you can vote in advance polls, more people have been doing that, and so that trend continues. I think the level of engagement and interest in this election is quite high. I think that Fred hears from conservatives the same thing that I'm hearing from liberals, which is liberals aren't saying, well, you know, our poll numbers look good, but we don't see the same activity on the ground. They're saying we see a lot of demand for science. We see a lot of volunteers.

We see a tremendous amount of energy and fundraising is through the roof. So I think it would be foolhardy to sort of speculate as to where that balance lies in terms of which of those two parties is getting. I think it's probably fair to say that the NDP are not doing a lot of what's going on in terms of the early voting, but it does feel to me like we've already probably crossed the three and a half million voter line, maybe a little bit higher than that, which is a pretty remarkable expression of interest. And to me, if I compare it, 2021 and 2019, I thought 2021 was a boring election. I thought it came on the heels of COVID and people were kind of exhausted. They weren't really given choices that they fell in love with. And this election, there seems to be a lot more on the

line. There's a lot more sense of risk of getting it wrong if given the threat that the US represents economically and otherwise to our sovereignty. And I think there's a lot more interest in the liberal leader, a new liberal leader. If Justin Trudeau was running in this election campaign, I don't think that we would see the same level of interest. And I don't think we'd see the same polling either.

So I think a new leader and a big threat. And let's be clear, Pierre Polyev is a very skilled campaigner, has been a very effective communicator in many respects. I think in some respects that, you know, you could, if he's behind now, you could kind of put it down to just a couple of things. One is that, you know, he was a little, he was somewhat out of position running as a populist conservative when Donald Trump became public enemy number one for Canadians. Second thing is that he chose to trade likeability for punching power as a communicator over the last couple of years. I don't think he needed to trade those things up. I think you could try to do both. I think he made the trade because he felt it was, you know, it yourself and that's who he is. He is an attack dog. That's who he's always been. He's not gonna, it would be a challenge for him. I know we saw some, I think in the debate it was good with what we saw the likeability factor that he put some emphasis on but I think it'd be hard for

him to do that for a long period of time. What, you two guys have been around for a while, you know, Bruce and myself I I guess longer than Fred, but still you've seen a lot of stuff. You've seen a lot of campaigns and how they operate. We talked about this in week one, and I'm wondering as we're in the final week how you answer it now in the sense of what's different? What are you seeing different about campaigning in 2025 than you've seen before. Clearly, the issues are different, but in terms of the mechanics of campaigning, what's different? What do you see that's different this time? Bruce, you start us this time.

Bruce Larson Well, I think the campaigns more heavily rely on social all the time to deliver content. Once content is put out into the social atmosphere, it travels much more aggressively around to many more voters than has ever been the case. It's more a continuation and an improvement in the functionality of the parties with that material. I mean, there are a lot of people in these campaigns whose job it is to take content and within minutes to have that content traveling the universe. So in a way, that's almost the new arsenal for campaigns that didn't exist a long time ago. The second major change I think is, well, I don't like the

approach that the conservatives have taken in dealing with the media because I think it continues the erosion of the importance of a kind of a free media that adds a checks and balance aspect to our politics. The nature of media coverage of the election gets thinner each year, in part because of the dwindling resources in the journalistic environment. And so I do miss the opportunity to read more in-depth media coverage, more continuous media coverage. And I don't blame journalists for that. I have problems with some, obviously. Everybody does.

But I think they don't have the resources. They're not able to cover the way they used to. And in the case of the conservative campaign they're not invited to. So there's less media coverage, less substantive media coverage, there's more social, which really means parties just getting their message out without it being stress tested by editorial operations or anything like that. Does that favor one side or the other or does it sort of favor the politicians in general if the filtering is, the filtering by media, the vetting by media is less than it used to be? I think it's a, I think there's a different kind of vetting. Like I was looking at, I was online a few minutes ago and I was looking at

somebody who writes for the National Post. I won't mention his name because I don't want to start some sort of a social hot war, but this is not somebody that you would go, oh, I'm sure this guy knows the difference between somebody who's economically competent and somebody who isn't. And when he wrote that, you know, in the classic kind of 200 letters that it looking at the Liberal platform made it clear to him that Mark Carney didn't have the first idea about economics or fiscal policy. That kind of, if that's vetting by the media, then I don't want it. It doesn't make me feel

comfortable. It makes me feel like anybody who has some sort of a relationship with a news organization can write anything that they want and there's no opportunity to say, well, what do you know about that actually? How is it that you can opine this way without any background, without any evidence that your judgment should be? Now, I think in the case of traditional media or the media that I'm more familiar with from campaigns gone by and you too, Peter, there were editors and publishers who would say, well, we're not going to let that kind of individual offer that kind of observation without it needing more backup than that. So I don't know that it helps politicians. I don't know that it hurts them. I think it hurts society in general if media don't have the same kind of quality assurance

that they used to have. Okay, Fred, what are you saying that's different? Similar to Bruce, but I see it as more of a positive, I think, in that we have all these social media channels now where people are pushing messages, where I remember like my first few campaigns I worked on where the leader would get up in the morning and do an announcement.

They would do a pick somewhere, a quick pick somewhere in the afternoon, and then do a rally at night, and that's all we'd see of them. And there'd be a few news clips in the stories and whoever the gallery is will write stories on what happened, basically what we saw that day. Now I can go on any of my social media channels and almost find out what Pierre Poliev is doing right now and who he's talking to within the last hour and see clips of him engaging

with voters and supporters. And I think that's an interesting evolution of the world. I agree, I think that's better for the better as well. You can find live performances or presentations all the time and that can't be a bad thing and in it years ago all we would do is kind of hope that Newsworld or CTV news channel or CPAC would show up and add some coverage but there's a direct to consumer aspect to this which is unmistakably it's unmistakably good for the politicians but also you have to at least make the case that it's good for the voter as

well. That's interesting. On the changes though though, Peter, there's another interesting thing. And going into this last week, we'll see more of it. And that's the different apps the parties are using to get out the vote internally. There's, I can't remember what the liberal one's called. Is it minivan? But the conservatives called engage and it's linked to the database. And I think it's, it's a really cool app. The Ontario PC has just used it in their election

where you, you know, it just lists on a map where every all your voters are that are ID'd in a poll and gives you the walk routes and it's so simple to use and it's just another tool that just makes our life so much easier when you're trying to get out the vote and knowing who to go to. So first time the federal conservative parties use. So it's just another small but interesting evolution. You know, in the next few days, some have happened already, major newspapers and some not so major will declare who they're supporting. That used to have an enormous impact and value to parties when that happened. Does it make any difference anymore? I don't think it does at all. And unless it, unless it goes against the grain, if it shifts something, like if the Toronto star was to endorse the conservatives or the national post was to

endorse the liberals, that would be, uh, eyebrow raising and do something. But I think we all know the son of the post will endorse conservatives and the star will endorse the liberals and we can all set our clock to it. Any disagreement there? Yeah, I think that's right. I think the, I also think that the role of columnists has changed over time.

I think we measured it not very long ago and you know, it's about 27% of voters who say that columnist opinions have an impact on how they vote. So it's not a very big number. I think most, the very, very large majority of that 27% though, are looking for the columnist to confirm the opinion that they already have. Usually I think people gravitate mostly towards columnists now who express opinions that they agree with. Now, that's not always the case. You do run into some people who are,

no, I want to read an opinion from somebody that I generally disagree with. I think that's a healthy thing, but I don't think it happens as much as it used to. So columnists, for all of the reality that people in and around politics like Fred and I and people like you who've kind of followed politics and been immersed in it in a different way over the years, Peter, we pay a lot of attention to what columnists write. We use Twitter or X, I guess it's called now, to follow the news all the time. But most people don't do those things. Most people don't read a lot of columnist opinion. They don't use X. And they gather their opinions from friends on social, in person sometimes. But it is a kind of more of a community of people that develop opinion patterns. And social media and traditional media

tend to reinforce those rather than change them, I think is the case these days. Last question. What are you going to be, tell me the one thing that you're going to be watching for in this final week. What's the one thing you'll be looking for that could either make a difference or would lead towards what you as individuals are hoping for in

the final week? What's that one thing, Fred? I would say not what I'm hoping for but what I'd be trying to see what the real outcome driver will be if Carney really hones in on the message of Trump and 51 and how he's the one to protect Canada. I think that's the message of Trump and 51 and how he's the one to protect Canada. I think that's the message and only if he effectively delivers it will guarantee him a majority or not. I think the bloc are perhaps his biggest threat right now. If they can make some kind of rebound and eat seats in Quebec, it could prevent him

from that majority government. I'm not sure of Poliev if there's enough left for him to do in terms of his ballot question enough to, you know, he, I feel like his vote, he's done very well at locking in his vote. I think where that, you know, fringe NDP vote may go, whatever's left of it, if he scares it to the liberals, continues to do that, or if they can go back to the NDP, that could help Polyev. But at the the end of the day I think it's what I'll be watching for is Carney on the right message track for his party in the next five six days. Bruce. Yeah, yesterday the you know Trump tariff policies just hammered the U. the US and Canadian stock markets again. I think that this campaign started with a great deal of attention being paid by voters

and politicians alike to that issue. What are we going to do about the economic risks that Trump represents? And then as you would expect, over time, the campaign became about the campaign. There's a lot of interest in a variety of different aspects of the campaign, the personalities, the issues, the policy ideas. And so for the most part, I think for the liberals, the more discussion there is about anything other than the Trump tariff and economic threat and who is the best economic leader for the country, anything other than that is not as good a day for the liberal campaign as a day when the focus is

on the economy is facing some serious headwinds and we need a really smart plan and a really smart leader. So I think that's what Mark Carney is going to focus on. I'd say I'd be looking for it, but I'd be very surprised if that isn't what we see. For Pierre-Paul Liev, I think the question really does come down to what is it that he's going to try to use to put himself into a better position. He's already shown himself that he can improve his likeability a little bit, but can he get more, can he get closer to where people might say, okay, this guy could be a good prime

minister to manage the economy. And every once in a while, I think, okay, he's having a day where he sort of looks a little bit more of the part. And then he'll have a day when he'll do a big event about plastic straws. And I think those are base rallying moments. Those look to me like a campaign chooses to do that when it's worried about losing some of the seats that it wants to hold. So I'll be watching to see if there are more wants to hold. So I'll be watching to see if there are more plastic straw days for pure polyeth and that will tell me that this is more about protecting the base. Okay. It's been great talking to you through the campaign. I'm sure we got at least one more to do once this is over because there are going to be a lot of loose ends to put together in terms of

what happens now in both parties. Well, actually in all parties, because there are big questions being raised for all the leaders here. And we'll see where the answers are to those questions in a very short time, just a week from now. Thank you to Fred, thank you to Bruce. Talk to you again soon. Thank you Peter,. Thank you, Fred.

And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here with segment two of The Bridge for this week. Segment one was also available on our YouTube channel. This one is strictly for Series XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Let me start with a reminder. Your turn this week, your letters, and they have been flooding in, as they've been done ever since the beginning of this year. It's been quite remarkable, the fact that you've been contacting the bridge with your thoughts, in this case, around the election campaign, around Trump and the 49th, 51st state, talk of annexation, the tariffs, all of that. There's been lots of interest on your part and there continues to be this week as the question that we asked this week Well, it's pretty straightforward

Well, it's actually not straightforward. It's kind of complicated, but it comes down to one thing why you're voting, right? That's that's basically the question. It's not who you're voting for I don't want to hear that and letters that suggest who you're voting for. I don't want to hear that and letters that suggest who you're voting for are kind of getting screened out. What we're looking for is simply this. What's your motivation this time to go and vote? Is it an issue? Is it a policy? Is it a candidate? Is it a local issue? Do you vote because you care about what's happening in your particular writing? Or do you vote because you're concerned about the national story? Obviously it can be any one of these things or a combination of them, but we're looking for your primary reason. What's motivating you this time to go and vote? You may well have already voted.

You may be part of that incredible number of millions of Canadians who've already voted in advance polls. It's quite something. But voting day is next Monday. And obviously the majority of people will vote next Monday. We'll have a result sometime on Monday night, maybe creeping into Tuesday morning if it's a tight one. And it could be. The polls are starting to be a little, well, they're starting to show a tightening up of the race. We'll see if that's the case by Monday, of course. So anyway, your questions are your answers to that basic question. What's your motivation for voting this time? You send it to the Mansbridge podcast

at gmail.com. And you've got until tomorrow at 6 p.m. at Eastern time at the latest to get your cards and letters in. If I were you, I'd send it today if you've got an answer ready. Include your name and the location you're writing from. Still get a number of people forget to write the location. If you don't get that location in, you don't get on. Keep it under 75 words. That's the goal here, themansbridge I just got a new phone and the other day I saw online, I think it was on Instagram, one of those social media apps, an

advertisement for a phone case and it looked pretty nice. I used to have three or four phones ago, a really nice leather case. But of course, every time a new phone comes out, the old case doesn't fit. So you have to buy a new case. It's part of the scam of raising money. Well, sorry, not a scam. Obviously, we all need new cases and we all need cases that fit the new phone. At least that's the theory behind it right? Anyway so I saw this and I made the mistake of clicking on it on that ad and you know why that's a mistake because what that means is now you're gonna get the ads for every kind of phone cases out there because of the algorithm. And so I've seen all these phone cases.

Now Will, my son, you know Will, he's way ahead of me on technology. He's up to speed on all this stuff. But he doesn't have a case. He's got a relatively new phone, but he doesn't have a case. And he looks at me like I've got three heads when I'm saying I'm looking for a new case. Because he says, you don't need a case. And I said, of course you need a case because these things are vulnerable. They fall. You drop them and you can break the glass. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, they can handle it. And I'm going, well, maybe you can handle it, but I can't handle it.

I even find the things kind of slippery without a case on them. Anyway, we've, you know, we have that discussion and that debate until in our crack research department for in bits, Mark Bulgich sends me this article this weekend. It's from the BBC. Now it's a quite lengthy article. And so I'm not going to read it all. But I'll read a couple of parts of it. And it is about phone cases. The headline, it's the BBC website, okay? So it's free, you can get on there, no problem. And they've got tons of stuff.

It's like, you know, same with CBC, you know, public broadcasters at work trying to serve the public. And some people want that service, others don't. That's a different argument. But the BBC have a section called kind of future, right? And there's an article there. And if you're in any way interested

in finding out more about this, the article is headlined, is it finally safe to ditch your phone case? I put it to the test. So this is by Thomas Germain, who's one of their tech guys. This article came out I think about a week or ten days ago and the sub headline is this with smartphones

tougher than ever a new wave of phone minimalist say cases are for cowards okay I joined the case free cult called and braced for the sound of broken glass. So that's the fear, right? That you drop the phone, the glass breaks or something goes seriously wrong inside. Well, all the testing seems to indicate while there are still phones to break that those numbers are down, down quite significantly. Part of the reason is the glass on a phone and this is not just Apple phones, not just iPhones, it's you know kind of run the gamut of different phone makers.

That glass is really tough. It's a kind of gorilla glass. And every year there's a new grade of gorilla glass that gets tougher and tougher and harder and harder to break. Now, phones cost a lot of money. As you know, I don't need to tell you that. Most of you, I assume, have a mobile phone, a cell phone of some kind. You may have the latest up-to-date one, and you may go back a few versions. You know, I was looking through my box of old phones and I still have my, like, the

very first BlackBberry I had. I think, um, I think the guys at Blackberry in those days and we're going way back late nineties, Jim Balsillie sent me one. And at those times it wasn't a phone. It was just, it was an email thing. You could get emails on it and then eventually graduated to phones and that I have a whole box of these things I don't know why I keep it's like there was somebody gonna come along and say

gee I really that's an antique I'd really like that old phone or that old email provider. Anyway, getting to the point here, the Gorilla Glass is tougher, much tougher than it used to be. And as a result, the number of damaged phones from dropping them are going down. And in fact, this article argues you don't really need a case now here's the there's a lot of interesting facts in here and you can find it as I said by looking it up but one of the facts is if you actually ask Apple as an example do you need a phone cover for your phone?

You won't get a straight answer on that. They kind of dodge that question. Now, phone covers are a big business, right? They cost anywhere from like 50 to 100 bucks to get a cover To put on your phone and you can get a leather one or plastic one or whatever So the fact that they don't answer the question would be seem to be an indication that you don't really actually need one other than for looks I Don't know I still find it hard to hold it without a cover on it. Maybe that's just me. Anyway, there you go. This is my little end bit for today. You don't need a cover

for your phone. You may prefer it with a cover just simply for the feel or the hold of it, but dropping your phone is less likely to cause problems today than it did even just a few years ago. So lots more information on that online at the BBC website. Their future section, you know, just go to the headline was, is it finally safe to ditch your phone case? I put it to the test. So you'll find out there.

All right. That should be enough for today. Hope you enjoyed the program. Look forward to tomorrow's Encore Edition. We're going to bring in the Moribats team for conversation number 20, a repeat of last week's really good piece, really good conversation on majority governments. Is this the time that you need one in Canada given the various issues that are in front of us? Is it time for a majority government? We've had a lot of minority governments already in the last 25 years. Five, I think, is the time for a majority government. That's tomorrow. Thursday's your turn. You heard the question. Friday is good talk.

The final good talk before Canadians go to vote on Monday. Rob Rousseau, Chantelle Bair will be here on Friday. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. We'll talk to you again in a mere 23 plus hours. Bye until then.