The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth with Bruce Anderson

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Will any other provinces follow Quebec's plan to tax the unvaccinated?  Bruce puts the SMT lens on that one.  Plus the calls for Boris Johnson to resign intensify.  And then of course there's the question underlined by the Australian Open -- is there one set of rules for the famous and then the rules for the rest of us?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It is Wednesday, hump day, that means smoke mirrors and the truth, with Bruce Anderson. Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce is in Ottawa. And hello to you. Well, hi, Peter. I've been really looking forward to Wednesday, Hump Day, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth Day. And I can't wait to hear what we're going to talk about.

Well, I think most people can probably guess what we'll start talking about. We've got three good topics here today. So let's get right at it. The first one is the move made yesterday by Premier Francois Legault of Quebec, that he is going to, his province is going to charge those with a special tax, those who are unvaccinated and refuse to get vaccinated and don't have a medical exemption now lagoe has been i think it's safe to say throughout the pandemic has been the most popular um first minister in the land at least has received the support of most of his province most of the time where other premiers premiers and the prime minister at times have suffered hits from the public in terms of support.

Not so Legault. He's done pretty well, even though his province has been hit particularly hard right from the beginning on the pandemic situation. So how this one's going to play out and how real it is, I mean, it sounds good. There's no question about it. All the legal experts are trying to determine whether or not it's legal

to be able to do this. How much is this tax going to be? How is the province going to collect it? And how are they going to collect it for people who don't have the money if they don't have the money? Lots of questions associated with it, and therefore the big question of, will it ever really happen, or is this all about optics? Is this a little smoke, mirrors, and the truth that's happening

right in front of our eyes here? So let's talk about this, and why don't we start with your sense of, because I think there was a degree of surprise yesterday when this dropped. Yeah. But what was your, what's your sense of it? I don't know how I feel about the idea itself. I think that I hear people say it's a slippery slope once you start charging people differently for the health care that has been universally accessible. Where does that stop? Could it go badly? Could other people kind of use that kind of opening of the door to achieve other changes in health care down the road that we wouldn't necessarily be in favor of?

So I don't know that I love the idea at all, but I do appreciate and support the point that he's trying to make and the outcome that he's trying to achieve. And I rather think that maybe that is what he was trying to do yesterday is, is add another layer of we're serious about this. You need to get a shot if you're not vaccinated and also i think he was introducing for people in a very blunt way what we know is part of the math of this epidemic which is that if all of the resources in our hospitals or significant

proportion of the resources in our health care system are going to be over consumed by people who've chosen not to do something that we know can help manage health risks in society. The economics of our system do get unraveled. This isn't the only time maybe that we'll face this. And you and I know, peter that when we were born well you were born in another country so not sure what applied to you there but another century another century well yeah me too but uh another millennium the the uh the point i was making is that um vaccinations for infants and children has been kind of accepted as an important health measure. And it does create a healthier society when children are vaccinated.

It's not just for those children. It's for everybody else's children, too. Those children who get the shots, it's for everybody's children. And if we think about the way the world is working today and the way the online discourse about anti-vaccination happens, it isn't based on science. It's only based on how people feel and their instinct to resist the voice of authority. Now, if we don't solve that problem or fight at least to minimize it, and this is, I think, the point that Legault was touching on, essentially, or at least that's how I interpret the point of the policy,

then who's to say we won't have a much bigger problem in our healthcare system going forward? So I think it's the right conversation to have, even if I don't know if this policy is going to survive or is the right policy. What do you think? Well, they're expecting quite the conversation. They were, his communications people

were putting the word out last night that they're looking forward to a healthy debate and discussion about this, and they're expecting a lot of different views to play out. Obviously, what the goal here is is to get people vaccinated. And he has shown in the last couple of weeks a number of initiatives that have, in fact fact done exactly that when he um when he imposed on the liquor stores uh in quebec that they had to um see proof of of uh double vaccination and boosters

too i think um and also with the you know if you wanted to buy dope at one of the provincial cannabis stores you had to have the same kind of um proof of uh of vaccination before you could buy it and it worked i think we i think we stopped calling it dope in the when the millennium turned oh really it's been so long um the area sorry yeah the uh um but it worked you know people and a lot of people rushed out and got their vaccination and i'm assuming he's hoping that the same thing will happen here uh as a result of basically threatening them with a uh with a new tax um so i'm like you, I'm not sure how to feel about this. I mean, you know, I, I worry that it infringes upon the kind of universal nature of, uh, of our healthcare system, uh, and what we're extremely proud of over the last 50 or 60

years. Um, but at the same time, you know, there are, I know people draw distinctions here and say that it's not the same, but there are penalties. If you smoke, there are penalties I know people draw distinctions here and say that it's not the same but there are penalties if you smoke there are penalties if you you know if you drink there are penalties if you don't wear your seat belt um there are lots of penalties out there and we you know we brought this up I remember bringing this up and in the interview I did with uh Anita Anand last last year when she was responsible for vaccines, this issue about whether or not the unvaccinated and those who refuse to get vaccinations should be penalized in some fashion.

And she said, and the government said, and other governments have said, provincial governments have said, yes, they are going to be penalized and their penalty is going to be they can't go to certain things, they can't do certain things. You know, they can't go to big sporting events or concerts or dining rooms or what have you when dining rooms were available unless they had their vaccinations. So there are penalties out there, but this is the first one that seems to be hitting the pocketbook. What about the issue of whether it'll ever really happen or whether it's a little smoke and mirrors right now? To be honest, I don't think it will happen. I could be proven wrong there, but I think that it's hard for me to imagine what was in Premier Legault's head.

And I'm looking forward to hearing Chantal on Friday if we have a chance to talk about this as well. I'm sure we will. She has an exceptional understanding. And of course, you and I both feel a certain trepidation talking about Quebec politics when she's not here, knowing she'll bring the hammer down on us in just a number of hours. We get two days of freebie time before that happens. Here we go anyway. So look, I think that if I were in Legault's shoes or in his office advising him, one of the things that I kind of like about introducing this subject is that it changes the conversation a little bit from measures that are being decried for being kind of fascist or authoritarian or

you know obnoxious by government I don't view those measures around weed that's what I think we call it now, or booze as being fascistic or authoritarian or obnoxious. I think they're productive nudges of society. But they can be part of a conversation that some people say, you know, government is just really trying to arm twist people to do what the government thinks they should do. And that's a that's a somewhat helpful conversation, but mostly unhelpful from the standpoint of how to get to the maximum number of vaccinated people. By introducing this idea of a cost, I think that Legault is raising a perspective that I think a fair number of small C conservative voters in his province and maybe in other parts of the country will find interesting and maybe resonant. You and I were exchanging some data about ICU beds in Ontario, which showed, and I may have

the numbers a little bit wrong, I think it showed that 138 of these ICU beds of some 500 sample were occupied by unvaccinated people. And when we bear in mind that the unvaccinated population is more like 8%, that's a lot of ICU beds that are occupied by people who wouldn't be there if they had been vaccinated. That's simple math. I saw another statistic that said dealing with a patient in ICU for COVID is about a $55,000 item. Our healthcare system should come down to how much are you costing the healthcare system versus how much am I and is my health worth more than yours because I take better care of it be some sort of parameters around how our health system works that require in an urgent situation people to do the thing that keeps our health system from becoming bankrupted. You know, Quebec has always sort of charted its own way and not been particularly concerned whether others follow it or or or if in fact it's even following them in certain uh you know initiatives um and so i don't imagine that legault and his team are spending a lot of time wondering whether or not other provinces are going to follow this initiative but it is a legitimate question for us to ask do you think any other provinces will in fact follow the quebec initiative i think a number of them will be watching it carefully i think that because part of the backdrop is the question of um health transfers you know they were headed towards

another big contentious conversation about federal transfers of dollars to the provinces for health care. And, you know, I think that in that context, it's legitimate for observers to say, well, what is the experience of the provinces through COVID? What are the things that they're willing to do or not willing to do that can mitigate some of the costs that happen when a pandemic occurs? And I don't know that I think that anyone will follow suit because I think that the conservative administrations in Ontario and Alberta, for example, and Saskatchewan, you know, would probably be a little too preoccupied with offending anti-vaxxer voters. And so I think if we think about their political circumstances and how they might be a little bit different from Legault, given the makeup of the voting blocs in Quebec, I don't think they're

going to follow suit. But I do think it's tricky for conservative politicians to make the case that there shouldn't be any extra cost borne by those who choose to add enormous costs to the health care system. Because that's really what it comes down to, as far as I'm concerned. Okay, we're going to move to another issue of leadership. Because Legault was showing his style of leadership yesterday in that initiative, and it will be judged as all initiatives are over some time. Another question around leadership is Boris Johnson. And when we come back, we're going to talk about what happened today with Bojo. All right, then. We've crossed the pond. If you know your history, you know that in May of 1940, when Neville

Chamberlain resigned the prime ministership of Britain, and it was taken over by Winston days of where the alliance would collapse through the Netherlands and Belgium and France, and it was just a very bad time. And his leadership was called into the question to the point where they were screaming at him in the House of Commons to go, just go. That was, I think, the term that was used. Well, that term was used today, actually, again, but this time on Boris Johnson, the current British Prime Minister.

And the issue, well, it's over pandemic management, and in particular, one issue that surfaced in May of 2020, so we're a couple of months into the pandemic, and the country was in lockdown and there were no gatherings supposed to be happening well in fact he had one at 10 Downing Street in the gardens and there were lots of his staff there and it's now been determined that he was there and that that he should resign as a result of that. And it was a particularly raucous question time in Westminster,

in the British Parliament today. And it's not just the opposition. There's a significant number of conservatives who feel Boris Johnson, for any number of reasons, and this one being the latest, should step down. So what was interesting was he decided to confront this head-on today by, for the first time, really admitting what had happened and apologizing in a very carefully worded statement. And that's what I want to talk about, but first you should listen to it. So here's Boris Johnson earlier today in London explaining the situation.

Mr. Speaker, I want to apologize. I know that millions of people across this country have made extraordinary sacrifices over the last 18 months. I know the anguish that they have been through, unable to mourn their relatives, unable to live their lives as they want or to do the things they love. And I know the rage they feel with me and with the government I lead when they think that in Downing Street itself the rules are not being properly followed by the people who make the rules. And though I cannot anticipate the conclusions of the current inquiry, I have learned enough to know that there were things we simply did not get right. And I must take responsibility. Number 10 is a big department

with the garden as an extension of the office, which has been in constant use because of the role of fresh air in stopping the virus. And when I went into that garden just after six on the 20th of May, 2020, to thank groups of staff before going back into my office 25 minutes later to continue working, I believed implicitly that this was a work event. But Mr. Speaker, with hindsight, I should have sent everyone back inside.

I should have found some other way to thank them. And I should have recognised that even if it could be said technically to fall within the guidance, there would be millions and millions of people who simply would not see it that way. People who suffered terribly, people who were forbidden from meeting loved ones at all, inside or outside. And to them and to this House I offer my heartfelt apologies. And all I ask is that Sue Gray be allowed to complete her inquiry into that day and several others so that the full facts can be established and I would of course come back to this house and make a statement.

There you have it Boris Johnson in Westminster today and there is there's a guy fighting for his job and there's no question about it you you may look at this off the tape you've just kind of heard about this as it was really is this a reason to have to resign uh there are a lot of people who think it is um this coupled with a number of other missteps that boris johnson has made in the during the the pandemic and they're not all on the opposition benches there are a considerable number who are on the conservative side of the British House of Commons as well. So this statement became, you know, pretty important. He spent, and his staff, I assume, have spent days, you know, framing that to try to satisfy the critics. Now, the question is, did it satisfy them? It didn't sound like it did in the House of Commons

and it hasn't in many of the remarks since. But the framing of a statement like that, the way it's worded and the way it's presented are critical things in the life of any leader. Now, Bruce, you've been involved with any number of different leaders of the federal and provincial and i guess to some degree municipal level as well and you've helped in framing certain statements when you look at that one uh and especially under the umbrella of the title of this show, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth.

How did you see it? Bad smoke, crappy mirrors, not very much truth. Honestly, Peter, I think there's three things going on here. First of all is, for context for our listeners, this party happened during a period of time when a lot of people were experiencing real hardship, not being able to be with family when family members were dying and the government of Boris Johnson was saying, you can't do these things. that surrounds him attending a party when he was telling other people that they should behave completely differently and accept some really serious personal downsides. The second thing is he said over and over and over again that there was no party or he didn't attend a party. And now he's saying there was a party and I did go. And so there is a question of how many different types

of lie did he tell from the time that this story about this party surfaced? And then to get to your specific question, yes, I have seen and been part of conversations with politicians from time to time where something breaks, something really bad happens. Debris is lying all over the floor in terms of what you have that you could possibly say about the situation that you find yourself in. And it's not pretty. You look around the floor, gather pieces of debris, try to put together the best possible story that you can

out of what's available. And it's usually, it's never going to be a work of art and it's not always laudable activity but this is one of the worst versions i think i have ever seen of that this notion of i went out and i because i believe in the fresh air being a part of how you fight covid and let's understand number 10 is a kind of a big office, but part of which is the gardens. I mean, when that team of people was sitting around writing that statement, I'm sure some of them said, this is going to stink.

Nobody's going to really like this statement, but it's the best that we can do in the circumstances and to that point he created this kind of off-ramp at the end of it which is very deliberate which is saying but let's wait until the results of this report come and then I'll make another statement and that is a Hail Mary pass that is built to say I'm going to get hammered for this statement that I just made. I know it. I know it's weak. I know it's not got very much to offer.

But maybe the news cycle will turn before this report. Maybe people will forget it. Some of the anger will dissipate and I'll get through it. So that's the Hail Mary pass, which is almost a tell that says, I know this statement is garbage and isn't going to satisfy the critics. What did you think? If you were covering it right now, how would you cover it? Well, you know, this guy has managed to dodge so many political bullets over the term of his prime ministership, over the term of his career.

I mean, this is a guy who's been, you know, was fired a couple of times as a journalist for making stuff up. You know, he, but he's a very engaging personality. You know, like I've, you know, I've stood across from him as opposed to sat across from him to interview him, and he's a great interviewer. He's always engaging. But how many strikes can you take?

I mean, he's well past the three-strike zone. I don't know what it is in cricket, but he keeps getting his leg before the wicket to block the ball coming in to knock those little things off. And an LBW is supposed to be a reason to kick you out, but he's still in there. Now, the ultimate irony in some ways for me, when I look at that party, when you put your mind back to May of 2020, that was only a couple of weeks after he damn near died in hospital of COVID.

He got COVID. He was in the ICU. He was on a ventilator. Oxygen, getting oxygen. Exactly. We were basically doing the obits for Boris Johnson. So a couple of weeks later, there he is, you know, organizing a party in the fresh air in the backyard. It's kind of like, it is kind of like Trump, who himself was organizing all kinds of various things at the White House,

both during and after he knew he was positive on COVID. But will he survive? I mean, you know, you figure the odds are in his favor that he'll survive because he keeps surviving. But this one, you know, I don't know whether you watch the i love watching question time uh with the prime minister in britain it's once a week it's only questions of the prime minister and they come from all sides and you know there's the the normal kind of toadies on the conservative side who ask the questions that are floated up and passed through the prime minister's office,

first of all, but there are also conservatives who go after him. Yeah. And it's great television and it's great theater and they all speak so well, that whole British thing. It's just wonderful to listen to them. And today was definitely no exception.

So I don't know where it's going to end up. As we know, you and I both followed enough politics in the UK to know how this works. And some people may not be familiar with it. And I recommend a viewing of the House of Cards, the UK version, for a pretty good narrative about what it takes to remove a sitting prime minister, which might surprise people that it's really just about whether his own caucus says, and they could decide this afternoon that they want to replace him and he'll be out this week. So the public opinion might not matter that much if there are other people who think, you know what, this is my moment to take this job and I can rally enough support in the caucus. So that'll be an interesting thing to watch. But just before we finish this subject, I want to read one small thing.

And this is about Boris Johnson. And Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticized for what amounts to be a gross failure of responsibility. I think he honestly believes that it's churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation, which binds everyone else. This was written by his master in Eaton College in 1982. So you could certainly make the case that this guy has been operating from the position of the rules don't apply to me for all of his adult life anyway. I don't know what he was like before 1982, but that's 40 odd years ago. So there's been a pattern there for sure.

There's been a pattern, and he hasn't suffered from it. You know, he did, you know, in spite of his kind of tainted career as a journalist, he had great, you know, he had great positions and postings as a journalist. And then he ran for municipal politics. He was mayor of London and a very popular mayor of London through the London Olympics. And then he decided he was going to run for parliament. He ended up in the cabinet. I don't know if his opponents ever ran an ad saying nice hair.

Do you know that? Cause I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't, you know, okay. So I think he's going to survive.

Do you think he'll survive just sort of up and down? Yes or no? No. But in the short term term you think he's gone like he could be gone the next week i don't know when this report is going to come down so i don't know if that's a longer runway but i think he's not got a very long runway and i think there are other candidates that are interested in it so i'm going to take a chance and i'll play the under and you can play the over and next week or Friday, we'll get to,

you'll get to, you know, spike the ball in the end zone. Or I will. Yeah. I don't know. You know, if that report is,

is anything like normal parliamentary reports, it could be a long time before we see it. I don't know. Well, how complicated is that investigation? It was a party it said bring your own booze and downing right if i was somebody in that caucus or outside of it who wanted the job i would say let them have it for a few more months yet let's get over the hump the final hump

of the pandemic and then i'll come in maybe you lose the momentum though that's the thing right is if you don't take the shot when the puck's on your stick and the net is wide open do you get that chance again that's the calculus i think is probably happening behind the scenes okay um we got time for one last um quick topic and that's Novak Djokovic. And the question of whether the rules only apply to the ordinary people, that the famous have their own set of rules. And that's kind of what you're seeing playing out in Australia

and the attempt to not make that the headline, but that seems to be the way the headline is going. And it's clear this guy lied about his situation. He's, I think, finally admitted that today. But as of this hour, and that may change, he's going to be in the australian open you know listen there's there's no question that he's one of the world's great tennis players if not the greatest tennis player in the world um but uh that's the famous part of the equation the fact that he hasn't been vaccinated, that he's had COVID, that he appeared in places with COVID, knowingly appearing in places with close-up proximity to other people, is certainly part of the issue. Your take?

It's a fascinating thing to watch from a number of standpoints i think that first thing that occurs to me is that in team sports there are problems we've seen the problem with aaron rogers with the green bay and um uh and a couple of other players who've been kind of high profile resisting the idea that they should get vaccinated but in team sports you know it's pretty easy for people to understand these are all people who depend on each other it's not a single individual who's going to determine the outcome of any sport they're all going to be in a locker room together. They're going to be practicing together. They're going to be in close proximity as they travel from place to place. And so the idea of a mutual responsibility is kind of easier to enforce, I guess,

but in an individual sport, whether it's tennis or golf, the chemistry is different. Now, I happen to think that there is no dominant player in golf right now. So that if it was Tiger Woods 10 years ago, and Tiger Woods said, I'm not getting vaccinated, and I still want to come and play the Masters, that's sort of what this is like. Would the Masters say, no, you can't come? Or would they say, let's see if we can't figure out a way to exempt you from that requirement because our audience will be so much bigger. And the number of times that you need to or want to win the masters in your career is a kind of an essential storyline in the history of golf and so in tennis which is the only other sport that i think is analogous in terms of the there is a clear sense of who is the best in the

world or that these events especially the majors um the grand slam events in tennis um they decide who is going to be considered to be the best player in the world and maybe the best player ever. I don't follow tennis as closely as some people do, but my understanding of it is that Djokovic is the best player for sure right now. And probably if he wins the Australian Open this year, if he plays, we'll cross that milestone and be considered the best player ever that he that he is tied with nadal and federer in terms of the number of grand slam wins and this is going to be that thing so for the event organizers it's not trivial to say he can't come but at the same time the politics of saying because he's the number one player in the

world, we're going to try to find a way to allow him to come, that's super problematic too. I don't think he should be allowed to play. I think that what happens if he is allowed to play is that it establishes this kind of idea that if you're an important enough entertainer, because I think that's what sports figures are, that you get to call the shots. And I don't think that's a healthy precedent to set. What do you think? I think that the best tennis player in the world with the best record is Serena Williams. She's had more Grand Slam victories than Ava. Good point.

Definitely. Well, I've already been checked on that by listeners in the last week. So I agree with your new position. Yeah. I agree with exactly what you're saying. This whole sense that the famous have their own set of rules. I've seen it, not to equate myself with Djokovic or Tiger Woods, although our games are very similar in both those sports but the um what i would what i would say is that

i can recall in the sort of heyday of my being known that you the things happen that shouldn't happen like you get a better seat in a restaurant or you get moved up in a line or you're offered to be moved up and we we resisted that most of the time anyway. But there is something that's just simply not right about this sort of the own set of rules for the famous, and especially so when it's dealing with public health. Let me close things out for today with the acknowledgement that we dealt with three really interesting subjects here, and yet we don't really know what's going to happen on any of them, which is the beauty of this. You know, you've got Francois Legault, and will he actually do

what he says he's going to do? You've got Boris Johnson, will he resign? And you've got Djokovic, will he actually play in the Australian Open? Will he be allowed to play? So all three of those things, we don't know the final answer to. We have our suspicions. We have our feelings about what might happen or should happen. But we don't know, which is the whole beauty of smoke mirrors and the truth. It's great water cooler talk. If ever any of us were around a water cooler again, for sure.

And so the virtual version of it will carry on for sure. And would you even feel safe in a water cooler? Like a big wipe down with the water cooler in between? Outside in the fresh air. That's right. Yeah, move it out into the gardens. Yeah. All right, listen, great to talk to you.

And as you said, it's going to be fascinating to hear what Chantal has to say, especially on the Legault story on Friday on Good Talk. She'll set us straight. She will set us straight. She's pretty good at that. Okay, Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. This has been Smoke Mirrors and the Truth on the Bridge.

Thanks for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.