The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Can Canada Do More?

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

Bruce Anderson on the scene in capitals across the world, including Ottawa, where President Volodymyr Zelensky appears on monitors asking for more help and gets standing ovations instead on his main request.  Cowardice or prudence?  Plus Conservatives and Trump.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. Bruce Anderson, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth is next. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. So, the world tour by Zoom of President Zelensky of Ukraine continues. And, gosh, Canada was the latest stop just yesterday, where he dropped in by Zoom on monitors, with MPs with their cameras taking selfies with the monitor in the background. And Zelensky gave, after an introduction from Prime Minister Trudeau,

gave a terrific speech, somewhat similar to the one he's been making in different world capitals over the last couple of weeks, explaining the current situation, how bad it was on the ground in Ukraine, how under attack ordinary civilians were from Russian forces, but how the resolve of Ukrainians was evident, and the friendship of allied nations with Ukraine was clear. And he thanked everybody, and he thanked especially Canada yesterday, as he will the Americans today, and as he has to other countries in the past few weeks, for their support, monetary support,

support in terms of military equipment. But he also made it clear that he still has this, well, he has a number of requests, but his one major basic request is a no-fly zone and wanting, pleading with, in this case yesterday, Canadians, trying to get them to imagine what it would be like if their country, our country, was under attack and its need for a no-fly zone. Well, that was followed by lots of ovations from the parliamentarians, MPs, senators,

invited guests inside the House of Commons yesterday for this, And a long ovation, a couple of minutes long. It's funny, you know, you hear about 15-minute standing ovations, and you go, really, 15 minutes? Like, 15 minutes is a really long time. I think they timed out yesterday's, which felt really long. It was like two and a half, three minutes. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is all these MPs who loved obviously being there,

getting the opportunity to hear Zelensky right there in the House of Commons by Zoom or by whatever technical means he was using. But, you know, sorry we can't do a no-fly zone because you know that of course could lead to world war three that's the reasoning so you have this parade around the world by zelensky with these powerful emotional speeches the guy is a hero there's no question about that and yet his one major major request basically falls on deaf ears. So what do we make of this, Bruce?

Well, I don't think that the request falls on deaf ears so much. I think it's obviously the and and a very good thing that we're able to have that kind of communication between president zielinski and the rest of the world i don't remember a situation that's analogous to that country under attack where much of the rest of the world is united um in support of that country. And we get to kind of hear this appeal and have this kind of reportage on an ongoing basis. So I think that is quite unusual. I think that Zelensky is asking for the thing

that is most obvious for him to ask for, which is a type of military help that he thinks can prevent the number of deaths that are happening, civilian casualties in particular, in his country. I don't think that, I'm not one who thinks that by saying no to that request, the rest of, well, the countries ino are indifferent to the suffering indifferent to the problem um or deaf to the plea that he's making i think they're making a different calculation one that he might not like but which basically has to do with de-escalation versus escalation do we think that by taking that step we would end up saving more lives and putting an end to this conflict or do we think that we would end up

with the worst set of outcomes and i But that's a fair question. All within the context of, you know, people like me, Peter, and I don't know, I don't want to include you in it. You're entitled, obviously, to your own opinion. But I don't know what I don't know about this. And I don't really think that my perspective on whether we should have a no-fly zone should really have that much to do with whether we have one. I think that I can have emotional feelings about the casualties. I can have emotional fears about the risk of nuclear war.

But I want people to make rational decisions on our behalf. And I understand the argument of those who say, once NATO decides that it's going to go into conflict, armed conflict with Russia, we don't know how that's going to turn out. And it can feel like the right thing to do because we see these pictures of the casualties and are horrified by them but people whose job it is to decide whether our troops or american troops or british troops are put in harm's way they need to think really carefully about whether or not the outcome is going to be what the advocates of a no-fly zone would want it to be. And the last thing I'll say is that I think that when President Zelensky asks for that, by now he knows that that's not going to result in all these other countries saying,

OK, you made a compelling pitch, We're going to agree to do it. So why does he keep on asking for it? He keeps on asking for it because it's the necessary and logical thing for him to ask for, but also because I think he knows that it continues to add pressure and build support for continued sustenance for Ukraine within countries like Canada. So in other words, that the idea that we're talking about, why aren't we doing more to help is, you know, is probably the outcome that he hoped for more than he expected that we would hear his plea and then sign on to the idea of a no-flight zone,

which we can't really do without our allies anyway, and which President Biden has said there's no chance he's going to do. So it's effective for him, Zelensky, to make the case for something, knowing that we're probably not going to, or certainly not going to agree to it now, but also knowing that it creates a certain pressure within Canada to continue to support, to maybe add to the support levels in other ways, and that the politicians who want to do that actually appreciate in some respects the fact that Zelensky is kind of building that kind of pressure up in Canada because it gives them the flexibility to do more of what they want to do.

Okay, let me answer your question. I don't have a firm opinion on this. I just found the scene somewhat bizarre and have found it increasingly bizarre on each stop of this world Zoom tour, as i'm calling it um because he has in fact changed his his not demands really isn't the right word but his requests um he you don't hear him doing the nato thing anymore take us into nato that's not on his list anymore it was a couple of weeks ago it's not now and there are rumors that that he's prepared to drop that.

Feels that he understands why he may need to drop that. But he doesn't drop the no-fly zone. And there is a middle ground. There is, instead of definitively taking it off the table every time, is leave it on the table it's something we need to consider um so that's one uh two i think the most significant thing yesterday in terms of support for ukraine wasn't this kind of showboat thing in in various houses of parliament or congress like today. It's the fact that you had the political leaders of the democratically elected governments of Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.

You had them getting on a train and going into a war zone and going all the way to Kiev to meet face-to-face with Zelensky in his bunker, you know, have a meeting to show their solidarity with him. I mean, it makes me wonder what may be going on behind the scenes in terms of negotiations. Because let's face it, if the Russians, one assumes, as poorly as they've operated so far,

if they wanted to take out a train, they could probably figure out a way to take out a train. And it's not like it was a secret they were going into Kiev yesterday, these three political leaders. But they got in there, they had their meetings, and then they've left. But that image, that image, sitting across the table from each other, discussing what the situation is, I found that incredible.

You know, people kind of suggested that it was unprecedented, a situation like that going back through history. And for the most part, it is. I actually can, as a poor student of history, I can point to one thing, May 1940, with France on the edge of falling to the Nazis as they moved into France. Churchill flew at least once maybe twice

you know on a small aircraft flew to paris to meet with the french leadership to try and implore them to stay in the fight in the fight and to throw more and more support from britain such as it was to them so i mean it it has happened before it didn't work then uh hopefully this the this will be different yeah look i think that's a really interesting point and i think the uh the fact that uh joe biden and uh justin trudeau and all of the other nato leaders i guess are getting together in Brussels next week, continues to show me that the NATO countries are allied and they want to be seen to be active in ratcheting up the pressure. I think the sanctions are very significant. I think that there's impatience on the part of all of us who hate the pictures of civilians being killed.

How much longer will it take before the sanctions have the desired effect? I don't think we can know the answer to that, but I think we can probably presume that they're having an effect and they're going to continue to have an effect. And so I suppose that at the end of the day, it comes down to whether or not one believes that the issue of America and Canada and other countries not wanting to sign on to this idea of a no-fly zone is a matter of cowardice or prudence. And I don't see cowardice in it. I really don't.

And I see people writing that and commenting that. And I kind of feel like it's a, it's an easy accusation to hurl when it's not you that's making the decision about whether to take that step, hearing from all of your experts about what might happen. And, you know, if we had people walking out of our defense department, the senior levels are walking out of the Pentagon and saying, we quit because we're giving them advice that they should do this and they won't take it. Well, I might feel a little bit differently about that, but I haven't seen, and maybe you have Peter, I know we're both consuming a lot of this, but I haven't really seen somebody who's a seasoned, objective analyst of military action, saying that they think that this is a prudent step to take right now, and one that would resolve this conflict in a way that the world

would like. But, you know, it does feel to me like the pressure is building. It does feel to me like this notion that I was hearing in this podcast the other night about, I forget where the quote comes from, but it's got historical significance of you need to build a kind of a golden bridge for your enemy to kind of walk back across when they're ready to surrender the thing that they tried to do, which they shouldn't have done. I wonder if the combination of signals that are being sent isn't designed to create that opportunity for Putin. Not that anybody really wants to support him, but they want to end the conflict. And I haven't heard,

I have heard things from Canadian and other leaders that sounds less like we will never consider that too. We are not considering that now there's different versions. And I have heard some that are a little bit firmer on that but i i think partly what they're trying to do is avoid giving putin the quote that he can use inside russia to say america is going to come and fight with us because that gives him a different kind of momentum within his country right now it seems to me like there's a lot of Russians who are saying, why did we invade Ukraine?

But if all of a sudden American warplanes are shooting at Russian aircraft, he gets to talk about this differently. He gets to say, you see, I that the nato threat against russia was real they're shooting at our pilots um i don't know what that does to the chemistry inside his country but it doesn't seem to me like it would obviously be a positive and a way to de-escalate this situation so i think those are all you know those are all really good points. And I don't think any serious person suggests this is cowardice. I think they're arguing from your point that it's more prudent to be taking this position. I just do tend to agree with those who wish they'd never quite taken it off the table.

I mean, let's face it, the guy is on his back foot right now, Putin. Nothing is going right for him. Nothing. And I think you're right. It is this way of trying to find that bridge to an exit ramp and trying to find it in some fashion that doesn't um doesn't allow him to do what his pal trump would do all the time which is lie uh for one and uh and appeal to his base of which he has won in in. Putin does. There's no question about that.

I mean, there have been big protests, amazing acts of courage in protests, but they're relatively small in numbers in terms of the protests compared with the size of the country. And he does have a base of support there who don't question anything he does, just like Trump has. So I hope we're right in thinking that there is something going on in the background. I mean, I really do think there is. Whether it can be successful or not, I don't know.

It comes down to how one man reacts to all this, and Putin, if he's surviving. And the only other point I'll just make on what you said is there have been some so-called military experts. Well, they're more than so-called. They actually are. They were in senior positions in the military, both in Canada and the United States,

and some in Europe, who suggest there was a mistake to take it off the table the no-fly zone but you know the military isn't there to make those kind of decisions those are political decisions as you quite rightly point out and that is our system and thank god it is. There is some kind of political check on these things by those who are elected by the people. But, you know, I'm sure there's been a counter-argument around the cabinet table, not just the Canadian one, but others as well, about this issue on the no-fly zone and other issues.

And that's good. That's the way a democracy works. It isn't one-person rule. Yeah, well, look, I had, I watched, I think I had some insomnia, and I watched in the middle of the night a news item about that meeting that Putin had with his security counsel yeah did you see that oh yeah that was great the way right he tore that one guy apart right and everybody else just sat there going yeah for sure boss we we've got to do this and we've got to do it right now and i thought that's kind of shabby as communication

just as i thought yesterday's list of 300 plus canadians looked kind of pathetic so when i look at this is the russia banning 300 yeah this is all the people who had no plans presumably to go to russia but now are banned for life from going to Russia by Putin. Were you on that list? I wasn't on that list. I wasn't on that list. And I'd certainly sign up for that list if there was a way to do it. I think that the, where I was going with this is that I think that the russians are looking kind of pathetic in this

piece now i think putin is looking pathetic i think the oligarchs are looking like they're going what the hell is happening to our lives you know there's squatters in one of their mansions in london and the boats are getting taken and the planes are getting taken and the money's getting frozen. And I just have to think that that pressure has got to be felt, even if Putin looks like he's trying not to show it. But to push out some list of 300 people and say, there you go, Canadaada none of these people can ever come to russia i thought that looked pathetic and i kind of feel like we need to believe that these sanctions and other pressures um are going to have more effect over time we have to we have

to believe that i thought hillary clinton's response she was banned too yesterday her response was the best which was i'd like to thank the Academy for this Lifetime Achievement Award. Good for her. This guy's been such a menace to the world. And the notion, I was thinking about this yesterday, that if Donald Trump had been president, if he had won that last election, Oh, we wouldn't have this problem. We'd just be watching the Leafs and the Senators, and we'd be having a good time. The world would be at peace.

Just incredible. But on that point, you know, to how democracy works, yesterday the thing that I saw in the leader's speeches after President Zelensky was nobody was taking the government to the woodshed and saying, why are you lacking courage? Why are you not doing the thing that he wants? There was one columnist who basically said it was a lack of courage. So to me, that's the same as saying cowardice. These two words kind of fit together. But I didn't hear any of the opposition leaders criticizing the government's decision.

Some of them used language about no-fly zone that was a little bit more nuanced with our allies in the area where the humanitarian corridor. But if our allies aren't going to do it, that's an easy thing to say. But it isn't going to come to pass. So, yeah, I find it encouraging that this is one of those rare issues in Canada where our political parties don't seem to be divided, although I haven't really heard from Max Bernier, and I try not to follow him, but I assume he's got a pro-Putin position, which is shocking on some level, but not shocking on another.

Well, speaking of political parties, we went along on that, and I'm glad we did because it's a good conversation, and I know it's happening around dinner tables and kitchen tables across the country as well. But I did want to do a quick check-in on the conservative leadership race, because there have been a couple of really interesting columns to quote from, actually from the Globe and Mail, and we'll do that right after this. And we're back with Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on the bridge. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa.

I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. You're listening on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Campbell Clark has a piece in the Globe and Mail overnight. Let me just read the first two lines from it. This is on conservatives. There are some people who say that conservative politicians are liars who will say anything to get elected, govern unethically,

or flirt with racial discrimination to win votes. But those are just the people running for the leadership of the Conservative Party. The things Tory leadership candidates are saying about each other are downright scathing. To Canadians outside the Conservative tent, that's bound to send an ugly message about the folks squabbling inside. Kind of sums up where we are after the first week or so of this campaign. It's not a great start if the goal for the party of changing leaders

was to draw in more Canadians to consider supporting the party. Now, I understand the logic for this kind of intuperative internal criticism being done in a way that the rest of the world can see. I understand the logic of it is you have to win the leadership, and then you worry about winning the country. But that's a lousy excuse for this. I mean, that's a refuge that people take because they think that it will kind of pass the smell test among observers.

But reasonable observers are looking at it less serious, less focused on the country, more focused on internal kind of conflicts over social conservatism, climate change, and who's in charge, than most voters would kind of like to see. I mean, I think there's a huge opportunity for the Conservative Party to be competitive in the next election. But I think that if it turns out to be several months of this, it's going to be a problem for them. Now, that problem can happen two ways. One is that they end up picking somebody who's not Pierre Polyev and being deeply, deeply divided about that. Because it's pretty clear that if you're supporting Polyev now, you've kind of decided that

Jean Charest is the devil devil he's the villain in this piece or Patrick Brown is the villain um maybe you don't have a view about Leslyn Lewis but either one of those two would destroy the party that you want to be part of and I think that's the message that polyev is giving to his supporters, that these are not conservatives in the case of Charest, or they're not honest people in the case of Brown. Well, you know, if you do that and one of them wins, you got a whole problem of is that party going to be able to come together? But the other problem is, let's say Polyiev does win and he wins essentially by saying, if you're left of center, I hate you. I do not want you in my party. I want to push you away. I want to laugh at you. I want to mock you.

I want to rally my side by making fun of all the things that you think are important, like climate change. And if you do that, you miss the math of Canada, which is that there are two-thirds who identify more as progressive than conservatives. And the only way that conservatives will be for sure losers in subsequent elections is if they cause the left to coalesce. What they need is they need to get close to 39 or 40 percent. It needs to be better organized. And the way for that to happen is for all those NDP voters not to vote liberal. But the way that NDP voters decide to vote liberal is when they get really scared of what the right looks like, when they get really worried about what a conservative government would look like. if you care about climate change, if you care about equality of opportunity,

if you care about the split in income inequality that's happened, if you care about child care, you're going to be sorry if Pierre Poliev is elected. And that's always been the area of greatest opportunity for the Liberals. I don't know that they've had somebody who's setting himself up better to give them that opportunity right now than Pierre Polyev. And so I think the Liberals are probably looking at this going, they're probably pretty happy for two reasons one is they're seeing a party that looks like it's fractured rather than unified focused on internal fighting rather than focused on what the voters need and what the future of the country wants but they're also looking at it saying if pierre pauliev is going to win he's going to create an opportunity for us to galvanize and consolidate progressive voters around the

candidates most likely to win in their ridings, which are mostly going to be liberals. But tell me what's different about this, if anything, because, you know, party leadership races are traditionally about this tug of war inside the party between left and right, no matter what the party is, the left and right of their particular philosophy. And, you know, you make enemies inside your own party. And part of the process after the final vote is to try and get back together again, try to unify. This isn't peculiar to Canadaada you know we see the same

thing uh we see the same thing in the states every time there's a presidential nomination race with the you know the eventual winner trying to appeal to the side with the most votes and then after the decision is made you know try their best to try and bring things back to the center usually um and to appeal to everybody within their party so like what's actually different about this i i know there's the the rhetoric is a little more flaming perhaps this time around but at its root, what's different? Well, I do think that the, the, the social media age that we live in means that people will say things in a way that is more inflammatory than would have been the case before.

And they say things in the moment. Like I watched some of that skirmish between Jenny Byrne, who I guess works for the Poliev campaign and the Patrick Brown campaign. And they were going back and forth at each other on Twitter in a way that when there wasn't a Twitter, you wouldn't see. You'd see a story one day and then there'd be another story the next day. But the point of that is, temper is cool. And people have a chance to think about whether or not they want to hit that tweet button. And so we don't live in that age now. And people are

going to say things that probably with a little bit of time, they might have tempered. I think so that can create a dynamic. I'd be surprised if there aren't people inside the Polyev camp who are wondering why they got themselves involved in something as kind of rabid looking as that on the weekend. And the reason I say that is I think they're ending up in a situation where you've got Charest and Brown, who among their core themes are unity. Let's bring the party together and let's build a bigger party. And Polyev is not talking about unity and he's talking about a smaller party. And I think that's different. I think that I don't know that I can remember

a conservative leadership candidate, let alone a front runner. I'm sure there were some candidates, but let's say a front runner whose basic pitch was, if you voted liberal, we don't want your vote. That is different to me from anything that I've seen from the mainstream Conservative Party in the past. And it's certainly different from what the Liberals do. The Liberals are like, look, there's two to three million Liberal Conservative switchers, people whose vote will go to either one of those parties. And we want to get as many of those votes as we can. Poliev is saying, effectively, those switcher votes, you're not conservative enough for us.

We don't want those votes. And I think Charest and Brown are making the pitch that they want those votes. I just don't know if they'll be able to persuade enough party members or people to sign up to be party members and support them. But I think it's different to have a conservative front runner saying, liberal voters not welcome, former liberals not welcome, smaller tent is the right tent because it's the one that is the purest by my definition. I've only got a couple of minutes left. And I want to bring in this quote from a piece by my friend Gary Mason,

also on the Globe and Mail. Gary's out on the West Coast, but he watches national affairs very closely, and just like we do. Here's two lines from his latest piece. A poll by Leger, taken between March 4th and 6th, so just in the last week or so, asked the hypothetical question, if you could vote in the next U.S. presidential election, would you vote for President Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

Among people who identified as supporters of the Federal Conservative Party of Canada, an astounding 44% said Trump. 44% is Canadians who identify themselves as conservatives. This, despite Mr. Trump's admiration for dictators, his penchant for lying, his applause for Mr. Putin's foray into Ukraine, and his complicity in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, among other things.

Does that number surprise you that it's that high, 44%? I mean, the majority would not vote for him of conservative voters, but 44% would. No, it doesn't. And I mean, it's the same math that we've been seeing for a few years. So 44 percent of call it 35 percent gets you down around that in that 15 to 20 percent range. And we've seen that be the level of support for Donald Trump in Canada from the get go. It's about 75 percent among People's Party supporters. And so when I look at that 15 percent, I'm more interested in the 44. I

understand your math. I get it. And I get what you're saying. But the 44 percent of a party that's about to vote to employ a new leader, if you will, vote for a new leader. What does that say? It, you know, basically it validates on some level the strategy of Pierre Poiliev if what we're seeing is him saying, well, I want to lock up that 44 percent. I want them. I don't I don't want to say I'm pro Trump, but I want them to think of me as the closest candidate to Trump in this race in Canada. I guess I think that the challenge is, again, does that become such a horrifying thought for what Leger and our polls showed, which is that the vast majority of NDP, of Green Party, of Liberal voters, and even of BQ voters, oh, Well, no, we don't want that. So, you know, those votes might go to the People's Party,

even if Pierre-Paul Lievre can win the support from that kind of conservative in this race. And so that's another reason why the math might be bad math to chase after those voters. But I think that, you know, I sort of look at it and I worry about that risk here. I look at the states and I kind of go, it's a big number down there. And there is stuff happening in the U.S. political system. The laws about abortion, the horrible laws coming out of Florida, the so-called don't say gay laws.

I mean, what's happening is that that far right, that is kind of the numbskull right, if I can put it that way. I don't mean to be pejorative to everybody who supports Trump, but well, okay, maybe I do. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It just seems to kind of animate a lot of passion. I haven't heard anybody make a logical case for Donald Trump yet. He has a lot of support in the United States. He has some support here in Canada. None of that makes any sense to me from a logical, how would your country be better off standpoint

but we live in times where it's proven to be really really difficult to argue rationally with people who think that he's got the right idea even if you're just trying to say well he's got a different idea every day as he has has on the conflict with Russia and the relationship with China. I think that we need to understand in Canada, and I'll finish up on this point, that for all of my life, America could have seemed like sometimes very admirable place, sometimes a little bit frustrating place to watch, but never a security risk, never a geopolitical risk. And I think that that's not true anymore. I don't think that we know what America would do under a Trump presidency.

And, and that worries me as much as, as anything that I'm worried about today all right we're gonna leave it at that uh not that there's not more to talk about there is on all the three different subjects we've had today and uh that's what fridays are for good talk chantelle join us i'm sure we're going to be touching on some of these things again on friday so bruce thanks very much. Kind of wrap it up for this day. Tomorrow is your turn, basically.

So if you have some thoughts on any of these things, drop me a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. I am Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening to The Bridge, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth today. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.