The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke Mirrors and The Truth -- Why An Election Now?

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Bruce Anderson joins us for the week's SMT with the topic:  the election.  Everyone is betting it will be called next month, but why?  What's the reason?  The government hasn't been defeated in Parliament so why now two years before the rules say it should be called?   And what are the issues? What's the ballot question?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from, well, it's hump day, it's Wednesday. That means Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, your summer Wednesday special with Bruce Anderson. Coming right up. Acana Pet Food, where every ingredient matters. Some companies like to brag about their first ingredient, but the Acana Pet Food team is proud of their entire bag. That's because every recipe has been thoughtfully sourced and carefully crafted with the highest quality ingredients, starting with quality animal ingredients, balanced with whole fruits and vegetables.

Acana Pet Foods are rich in the protein and nutrients your dog or cat needs to feel and look their best. Available in grain-free, healthy grains, and singles for sensitive dogs. Acana, go beyond the first ingredient. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. I'm in Stratford, Ontario today. Bruce is in Ottawa, as usual. Good to talk to you, sir.

Good morning, Peter. Great to talk with you. I guess we should start off by saying to those who were listening on their podcast platforms last week to our Wednesday show, if you were on Apple Podcasts, you didn't get the podcast until well, I think it was yesterday, which is a long time to wait for what is just such a hot podcast. And we don't know what happened. We've been dealing with Apple, trying to figure it out,

but there was a problem. It went up on all the other podcast platforms, which is good. It also obviously was on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks last Wednesday. But for some reason, there was an Apple problem. So we apologize for that. Hopefully that is not the case this week because last week's was a great pod. You should still listen to it anyway. There's lots of good stuff in there. So that is last week's news.

But we wanted to mention that in case you were confused as to what might have happened. Bruce and I actually got together over the weekend because I was in Ottawa. We dropped by our little restaurant, Giacantina. And the boys and girls there are still kind of a little miffed at me because I called it a month or so ago, hole in the wall. Hole in the wall. That's what you called it.

Yeah, I did. Hole in the wall. Really, that doesn't sound good. And, of course, there actually is a hole in the wall in Gia Cantina now. And it's a spectacular hole in the wall. So we've turned that phrase to our advantage. As they bust through, made the place bigger in expectation that soon we'll have actually people allowed to sit down in a restaurant in Ottawa. And, well, you got to go there.

If you're in Ottawa or you're traveling to Ottawa, you want to go there if you're in ottawa or you're traveling to ottawa you want to go by it's really great it's a fantastic food the whole bit and that's all we're going to do and well the countdown for us and for a lot of places around ontario anyway is on and uh our team are so excited that as of friday they'll be able to welcome people into the restaurant um we really only ever did that for a very short number of days last year so it's exciting for us obviously and we're really pumped for everybody else in the industry that is looking forward to the same kind of return to work and the opportunities to do what they love doing you know it's really hard to get a a grasp on the pandemic story when you look around

the world right now i mean there was a lot of excitement over the last month about you know coming out it's things are reopening that this is happening, that's happening. Then this Delta variant kind of swept in and has caused issues in different parts of the world. Trying to watch what's going on in the UK, because I'm hoping to get over to Scotland in the next couple of weeks, is really dicey. Like, I can't figure it out. And, you know, then I watched the soccer.

We won't talk about the result on Saturday or Sunday. But, you know, and then I watched the soccer. We won't talk about the result on Saturday or Sunday. But, you know, 65,000 people there. It's like they were, you know, kind of all over each other. And I worry about what the impact was. Was that a super spreader event? What's going to happen, you know, in the next week or so as a result of that? Numbers going up, cases going up, but the governments of Great Britain, the different governments, whether it's England or Scotland or Wales or Ireland,

they're all, Northern Ireland, they're all, you know, saying we're opening up, we're opening up, we're going to, you know, we're going to seriously ease restrictions. So I don't know. I mean, I'm happy to see things happening here as well and the numbers dropping, but, you know, you have this fear that the numbers could, you know, turn on you. We got great vaccine numbers more and more this week and more indication that we're lining up millions of doses for overseas use

by other countries who are desperate for them. That's all good. So there's a lot of good signs, and there are a lot of kind of cautionary signs. Where's your head on all those? Pretty much the same, Peter. I spend a lot of time thinking how great it is that we're going to be able to get back to doing

some of the things that we really like to do. And then almost immediately, I'll read something that says, look at what's happening in France. Look at what's happening in the UK. Why are they putting masks back on in Israel? And I think the takeaway for me is that we've got a very high vaccination rate. It looks as though people are going to continue the process of getting the second shot for those who haven't got the second shot yet. But we're still going to need to be careful. And I think we're probably at that point where much of the country feels so frustrated with how long this has gone on that I think we talked about this last week a little bit.

I think people are going to start to get sensitive if they're in situations where they're talking with other people who say oh I didn't bother getting vaccinated because if we're if we're going to see a prolongation of this rising anxiety about the delta variant maybe even another wave where businesses or some businesses in some areas have to close down. It wouldn't surprise me at all if people don't start getting tense towards others who happen to choose not to get vaccinated. That would seem to me a logical way for people to react in this situation

where we know that vaccines can stop the infection rate from growing. We know it can't stop everybody from getting COVID, but we sure know that it can create a much milder version of the disease than otherwise would occur. And it's pretty clear that the key to getting back to whatever normal is for everybody is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. And you're seeing that kind of tension rise in some areas in Europe because some countries, I think Greece was one yesterday, that is locking in. You can't go in a restaurant unless you're vaccinated.

And they will want proof of that before they will let you in the restaurant. That's not happening here. There's no indication that that's about to happen here, but it very well may get to that, as you say, depending on how things unfold in the next weeks and months. And there's another aspect of it that we, you know, hopefully we won't have to have this conversation as a country. But, you know, obviously, one of the things that's been useful for the country, I think, has been the subsidy programs from government that allow people who can't go to work because their workplace is shut down to get some income and allow businesses that can't open up fully because they've been shut down to get some support for rent and other business costs. But that's cost the country a lot of money.

That's cost taxpayers a lot of money. And the question in my mind is if we end up in a situation where because some people aren't getting vaccinated and some businesses may be not doing everything they can to encourage their employees to get vaccinated. Is it reasonable for people to ask the question, should you be eligible for benefits if you're not willing to get vaccinated? Should you get business subsidies if you're not doing everything you can to encourage your employees to be vaccinated, because otherwise it's just a subsidy from people who are willing to get the shot to people who aren't willing to get the shot. And I can't imagine that people will feel comfortable with that in perpetuity if that's the situation that we get into, and let's hope that we don't. I agree.

You know, I remember raising this with Minister Anand a month ago about this kind of two-nation setup. And, you know, is there going to be a charge to those? Like there's a charge to smokers through taxes on cigarettes that helps pay for at least some of the impact they have on the health system, you know, when and if they get sick. The same thing here for those who are not vaccinated is there going to be some kind of penalty, and what she talked about the penalty being is this sense of there are going to be two kind of countries out there, the country for vaccinated and the country for unvaccinated. Whether it's formal or informal, that is the way it seems to be heading. So we'll see, in fact, if that is the case.

Listen, I want to talk a little bit about the election, not surprisingly, the possibility, the likelihood of an election coming up in the weeks ahead. And we will do that right after this. Okay, we're back with Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. And you're listening in any number of ways, podcast platforms or SiriusXM. And we thank you for joining us.

So, whoa. What was that? That was some kind of music trying to jump into the podcast. It keeps coming back. I'm still learning how to use this board. You're doing a great job, Bill. Yeah, I know. It's going well.

I'm impressed every day. Every day. I'll get the hang of it soon. It's only been two years. Okay. The assumption is, and just about everybody seems to feel this way that there's going to be an election call next month um sometime in august some say it's going to be like really early in august like in two weeks and others say it's probably a month away

but whatever the case the election would end up somewhere in september so let's say if we assume that, the question is, you know, and I get asked this by some of our listeners as to why. Like it's a minority government, it hasn't been defeated, it's not going to be defeated in the next month because the parliament's not even sitting, and there's no indication from the opposition parties that they want to defeat them. And no surprise when you look at the polling data.

So why does there have to be an election? We supposedly have a law in this country about mandatory election dates, and they're every four years, unless a government is defeated in the parliament. This one hasn't been. Now, it's the prime minister's prerogative harper called one early um at least early in the election between the actual election date still remained the same but he it was what two or three months before the actual election date um but why what's the argument because you know it's going to have, one of the first questions at that news conference on opening day

to the prime minister is going to be why. Why are we doing this? Why are we having an election right now? Nobody wants an election. Why is there one? So what's the answer? Well, I don't know if it's going to satisfy everybody who thinks there shouldn't be an election, but I think the answer probably is that we've been through the biggest crisis in terms of public policy choices in my lifetime. considered or governments that considered deficits in the 30 billion dollar range to be

pretty significant and maybe at towards the upper limit of what we should be doing in terms of borrowing to fund public priorities and this year that number is more like 300 billion we've got an opposition party in the conservatives who say that the government is got it all wrong, messed up the pandemic response, messed up vaccines. We're not prepared for another pandemic. If one should happen because they think the government is horrible, isn't doing enough to stand up against China is corrupt.

But are they really saying they want to wait two years to solve that with an election? Or maybe they should, you know, give people a chance to vote for them right now because of the devastating consequences that conservatives describe about the government. We've got the NDP on the other side saying, not going far enough, fast enough, and elect us and you'll get more of what you want more quickly. Those are both reasonable things to have happen in the context of a democracy. And you've got the government saying, we had to make some really big epic decisions. We got some right, we got some wrong, but now we've got more massive decisions

to make going forward. And so I, you know, I think there will probably be some people who will say, Peter, I wish we didn't have this election, but I think other people will say, well, you know what, there are different visions of the country. We've been through something really traumatizing and with huge implications for what we do through governments. Maybe it's okay to have an election now and to try to clear the air and see what direction people want to go in. Yeah, well, you know, I'm just going to play devil's advocate here for a little bit. You know, governments are elected to lead in good times and in bad times, right? That's their job.

And they get a mandate after an election to do that. And the opposition has a mandate to challenge what they're doing. Yep. and the opposition has a mandate to challenge what they're doing. Yep. And they have the opportunity in a minority government to defeat the government if they feel everything is so horrendous that the government is doing. They haven't chosen that route. They've said things, but they haven't chosen it.

And let's face the bare facts. I mean, it's all very nice to say there are big decisions still to come, and perhaps we need another mandate to do that. They wouldn't be considering that argument if the polls weren't, I'm assuming, they wouldn't be due considering that possibility if the polls weren't showing what they're showing which is a huge gap a huge lead for the liberals 14 15 points seems to be consistent now in whichever poll you pick up and that's huge that is a big. Now, if it was much tighter, you know, maybe the opposition parties who are saying awful things about the government would strap on the big ones and say, okay, let's go.

We're going to defeat you guys in parliament and force an election. But that's not what it shows right now. And you've got to assume that the government is considering this election call, if in fact that's what they do, for the strong likelihood, if these numbers are correct and hold through a campaign, which is no guarantee of that, that they can move that minority into a majority position. And so they're just simply doing it for that reason no other

well i think that point is well put that there's a there's a different calculus on the part of the liberals because they're ahead in the polls right now than there would be if there weren't but I guess the thing that I might take a little bit of issue with, Peter, is the implication in what you say, and I'm not suggesting this is how you feel, is that they would make that choice to run that election for their own self-interest exclusively, as opposed to because they think, you know what, we are at a point where we're moving forward with a climate plan, with a carbon price and a series of other policies.

And the conservatives have said, if they get elected, they'll unwind all of that. Darren O'Toole says you'll have some kind of price on carbon, but it's, you know, most observers are looking at it saying it's not going to achieve the kind of ambition that Canadians want from an emissions reduction standpoint. Nor is it really a plan to re-engineer our economy so that it's competitive in a world where other economies are decarbonizing as quickly as it looks like they may be. So in that sense, the government can look at it and say, well, look, we want to build more public transit. We want to provide more child care.

We want to do more on climate change to transition the economy. And we think we're at a moment in time where there's enough confidence in what we're putting on the table and the way that we're conducting our business as a government, that people will give us more support than what it was at 33 percent that they got two years ago. And they can look at the conservatives and say, well, the conservatives want to have an inquiry into pandemic management. And they keep on wanting to talk about the we thing that happened a while ago. And they think that the priority should be to, you know, increase our, you know, pugilism towards China. And those are all choices that should be put in front of people.

But I think it's not unreasonable for incumbents to look at that situation and say, well, we got a lot of things we want to do. They don't really care about those same things. Their first act would be to unwind a bill that they did a lot to prevent passing. Actually, this is a C-10 bill about taxing large tech companies. So very different visions. And I don't know, I still look at it and go, well, you know, democracy didn't say we elect you for four years. Democracy was basically here are the votes, count them, and this is the result that we got. And I think that sometimes the politicians are in a position

where it makes sense for them to say, let's clarify things about where we want to go as a country. You might have touched on, you know, a possible reason that I would buy into with your line about... Thank God. All right. At least one. It's that one about the popular vote, which is such an awful term. It's basically the number of votes. You know, Conservatives got a lot more votes than the Liberals did,

quite a bit more in the last election, but because of the way the votes are distributed amongst the seats in the country, the Liberals had more seats, a significant number, not enough to give them a majority, but certainly enough to give them the control of the House of Commons in a minority government. And that's a pretty good argument to use to say you know we've made a lot of big decisions we've spent a lot of your money

more than any other time in the history of the country and as you said you know deficits around 300 billion dollars 10 times more than it ever been before, not ever been before, but 10 times more. Let's be clear, people weren't told that that was going to happen in 2019. They didn't vote for it. Nobody knew that it would be a possibility. That's right. But given the very fact

that more people voted for the Conservatives than voted for the Liberals last time, the Liberals, because of an emergency situation that no one could predict, made huge decisions that affected the health of Canadians, the wealth of Canadians, the wealth of the country,

and the future of the country. And perhaps for that reason alone, it's worth saying, okay, we're through the worst of this this it's time for a reassessment from the people about how we're doing i love that i've turned you around in like three minutes on this this is no i can buy that part of the argument okay i still don't buy the other some of the earlier parts of the argument i mean there is a law you know that exists in the country we went to a great deal of trouble to pass it for some reason but you know in mandatory election dates taking that power

away from the government right to a degree i mean there was always the ability for a government to call an election if they wanted to but still still. Anyway, I see some of that. I see some of that argument, but I see it based on that one fact, that the Conservatives had more votes in the last election. And not just one or two more votes, quite a few more votes than the Liberals did. I want to raise another point on this, if I can, Peter. Can we spend another minute on this? Yeah, sure me get my stopwatch okay fire so as you know for a decade

or so maybe a little bit more maybe more like 14 15 years i worked in support of the progressive conservative party in support of leaders like Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell and Jean Charest and Joe Clark. And when I look at the, so I don't have a kind of a toxic feeling about a Conservative Party. I was part of it. I put my heart and soul into it. I gave money to it. I did polling for it. I helped leaders prepare for debates within that party. And one of the things that I'm kind of anxious to see clarified in Canadian politics, which isn't necessarily a reason for an election, but it's a thing that's in my mind as I think about an election, is I want a version of the Conservative Party that somebody like me can vote for again, can support again. I know that people think I'm always critical of the conservatives. I'm critical of this version that I see right now of a conservative party

that seems conflicted on issues that are really simple to me, like equality. And right now, I kind of look at the conservatives and say there are three reform parties, and there's no progressive conservative party. And I'd like that to be clarified a little bit. And when I was looking yesterday at our latest polling data, and I think I tweeted out a slide that showed this, in the 2019 election across the three prairie provinces, the conservatives got 64% of the vote. Today in our polling, the conservative of voters in the prairie provinces in the stronghold of the conservative party in terms of the seats that they have in the current parliament who aren't happy with what they see the conservative brand representing and i kind of feel like it would be great if this election if it happens now in in some way helps clarify for the conservatives what it is

that they need to do to not become a movement that only appeals to a small subset of the population, but to really compete for the votes of mainstream voters in all parts of the country, all ages. And I mean, I've wished that for a while. So maybe it's just me saying I wish it every time since, you know, basically since I think the Reform Party arrived in federal politics. But it does feel to me that if you're the conservatives sort of inflection point where they need to make a choice to either create a party that is more progressive and is built to attract centrist voters. Right now, the conservative brand only gets 20 percent support among self-defined center voters. That's the majority of canadians um so i i think that's another reason why i'd like to see some further clarification of whether of where canadians are at um those are i know it's longer than a minute but i don't know that's okay

those are pretty startling numbers some of those especially that one about the drop in terms of support across the three prairie provinces. Now, part of that, you know, you can get into this age-old discussion about how much is impact by provincial representation. In other words, provincial governments, because we've seen that before. We've seen that work against liberals before, and we've seen it, you seen it work against conservatives before. And there's no doubt that Jason Kenney in Alberta, Brian Pallister in Manitoba, they've had a rough go because of the pandemic and some of the decisions they've made.

Whether that's a crossover into the federal vote as well, I don't know. It's hard to say, but we have seen that kind of distinction in the past. Right. But Premier Legault is doing very well in Quebec and Premier Horgan is doing very well in British Columbia. So it isn't axiomatic that if you were in office during the pandemic that you were going to pay a price. It is the case that Jason Kenney has been losing popularity. And if there was an election now, I think most of the polling that I've seen out of the province suggests that he would lose to the NDP.

And is that because, you know, the pandemic was worse in Alberta? No. It was because people just didn't like what they saw as being the choices that were kind of driven by a certain approach to the role of government. And, you know, I think some people in Alberta probably look at that and say, well, that's because the province is changing and maybe we don't want it to change. But that's, you know, that's part of democracy, too. The people who are there, they deserve a chance to vote at some point and say, this isn't the direction that we want to go in.

So I think there has been some influence of, of that in the Prairie provinces, but I don't think that it's just because conservatives happen to be in office during a pandemic. And if you were in office during a pandemic, you paid a price. It's people looking at the choices that were made and saying, we would have wished that other choices had been made. Yeah, no, that's exactly what I'm getting at. Okay, sorry.

That where constituents were unhappy with some of the choices that were being made, they obviously have that feeling against the incumbent party, but it can sometimes cross over into their feelings about national parties as well. Yes, agreed. We have seen that in the past affecting both parties over time. Okay, look, here's what I want to get to. If we assume the likelihood, and most parties all,

whether they want one or not, seem to think it's going to happen, you know, sometime in the next, you know, two to four weeks is going to be an election call. What do you, you know, this is an overworn phrase, but let's overwear it early. What's the ballot question? The simple ballot question. Is it performance?

Is it the ability of the parties to deal with the pandemic crisis, especially the government? You know, most elections, you know, it's not about who wants power. It's about who's in power and whether you want to throw them out or keep them. I don't know the answer to that, Peter. And I think it's, you know, even though it's overworked as a question, it probably is the right question for us to be thinking about and mulling about. But I'd say a couple of things. First of all, at this point, anyway, it doesn't look like it's going to be an election about change, about the desire for change.

When we look at the polling from the run up to the 2019 election, we had 52 percent who said, I definitely want to change governments. And in the end, they didn't change governments. 52 percent wasn't a large enough number once it gets split into the different parties that are the alternatives to the liberals to create a clear change in government. But that number, the proportion of voters who definitely want to change in government now is only 39%. And you and I have seen an awful lot of elections where a lot more people said, come hell or high water, we got to change the government that we've got. So this is not looking like a change election in that sense. I don't think that's what the ballot question is going to be. I'm also not sure that it's going to be a question about the prime minister. I think that what the NDP leader has done is created interest in himself,

but he hasn't really done that by being harshly critical of Justin Trudeau. In other words, I think he's kind of inculcated one important lesson that I've always learned from my polling, which is that if I'm less popular than you, Peter, I know that's hard to imagine, but let's just kind of play it out this way. If I'm less popular than you and I say, you're a horrible person, the average listener doesn't go, I guess Bruce is right. And Peter's a horrible person. They go, I guess Bruce is right. And Peter's a horrible person. They go, why is Bruce being so horrible to Peter? Right. This is, I get a lot of mail

about that. I know, I know. And I'm just testing it. It's like a laboratory experiment. I see if I try it every week, a little bit, just poke a little bit more of it. Maybe at some point people will go, I like Bruce better than Peter, but that's a project that's a longer term project. So to get back to my point, I think Jagmeet Singh has done a good job of being critical of the government and putting himself forward as somebody that people might be interested in, but not doing that by being harshly critical of Justin Trudeau, who some people like, some people don't like. We talked about this before.

It's 20% who really don't like the prime minister. That's not a big enough number to have him booted from office. Typically, there's a fair number of people who kind of go, I don't love him, but I like him or I'm OK with him. And so for the conservatives, they've taken a different approach. Typically, they've said he's kind of the devil incarnate. He's a horrible prime minister. He's everything you hate. And I think they've lost ground in part because that narrative, that story, that reason for voting for them hasn't really worked.

So I don't think it's going to be an election about change So I don't think it's going to be an election about change. I don't think it's going to be an election about Justin Trudeau particularly. I do think it might be an election about optimism. And here's what I mean by that. In a lot of elections, opposition parties build their momentum by making the case that things are bad and that you should be worried about all the things that are bad. And you should vote for them because they are able to identify the things that are troubling to you. But we've been through this life-altering, country-altering, world-altering situation, and people know what

bad looks like, but I don't think they want to hear how bad things are. I think they want to hear how much better things are going to be. And so in our polling right now, when we see 70% roughly saying both Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh are optimists and only 50% saying that about Aaron O'Toole, that's telling me something about the dynamic. And I do think that politicians who go into this election campaign saying, here's how we're going to make things better, are going to have a more attentive audience than people who say things are bad and you really need to focus on that. And could you get a little bit more angry as you head to the ballot booth? So I think it's going to be an unusual election from that standpoint. And I think optimism

is going to be one of those subtle, you know, people aren't going to put ads together to say, be optimistic and vote liberal or vote NDP. But I think there is an element of it's so easy to make the case that things have been horrible, but do people really want to hear that? Or do they want to hear the better stuff that might be coming? Well, and you know, I, I think we'll, we'll want to talk about that perhaps next week about the debate surrounding what better things could be coming so there's lots

of talk about and you mentioned a couple of them earlier the you know transit uh in terms of the cities uh in the country child care um probably some stuff around uh education although it's you know it's a provincial responsibility but there are issues that pop up on a federal campaign, student debt and stuff like that. And that's one way to push it towards a sort of, you've got to feel better about the future because these are the kind of things that we want to deal with as potential governments.

The NDP will push that line. The NDP will push that line. The Liberals will push that line. We're still kind of waiting to figure out what the Tories are going to do because the traditional big, long pamphlet of promises on a platform is something that they didn't. I don't think they did it last time. No, more the time before, if memory serves me correctly. Yeah.

So, you know there there's there's stuff to talk about there and we should um and i'm sure you have other you know other areas too that you'll i think climate and equality are two of those issues right where people are there are a lot of voters who say as a country we've talked a good game about diversity and equality for a long time. But do we need to kind of look at ourselves and sort of say we need to do better and we need to do better more quickly? I think there's a lot of people who are interested in that. So in a way, I think you could look at that and say, that's not a, an optimistic outlook. On the other hand, I think people are saying, make it better, show me how you're going to make it

better. And I'm interested in that. And I think the same thing is true on climate change. And I think on both of those issues, liberals and the NDP offer kind of similar aspirations, but also maybe different approaches. And I think the conservatives have to decide where they want to be on those issues, because the other thing that I think is evident as we, as you and I age is that the rest of the population is too. And the more younger voters that come into the political marketplace, the more pressing those issues are, the higher the expectations are, the more pressing those issues are, the higher the expectations are, the more urgent the expectations are.

And again, I'm not trying to beat up on the conservatives, but if they asked me to come to a meeting, I would say, if only 10% of under 30 urban voters in Canada say that they would consider voting for you, you probably have to address that. You know, you got to have some ideas that those voters will like. What I, and let's frame this for next week, because your point about, you know, diversity and equality is obviously a key one. And it's on the minds of a lot of people I've heard in the last, you know, since the various issues

that have come up over the last month have come up, more and more people have suggested this could be the issue of the campaign. The whole question surrounding Indigenous rights and the gap between Indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in canada could this be the election where that is the issue and i think that's a good discussion to have as to whether it can be the issue um you've touched on a little bit there but i think next week we should touch on it in greater detail because, I mean, I think it would be wonderful if that was the issue.

I'm just concerned about whether it can be, whether there are enough people who are really ready to face and confront this issue from all sides through a campaign format. But we'll talk about that next week because we're out of time for this week. And I think we give it the proper platform next week by doing that. All right, my friend, thank you for this. Another good Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. And we'll talk again in a week's time.

All right, you bet, Peter. Take it easy. We'll talk soon. You got it. And thank you for listening to Smoke Mayors and the Truth on the Bridge. If you have any comments, drop us a line at themansbridgepodcasts at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcasts at gmail.com. We'll see you again in a week. Thank you.