The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT -- Can Trudeau Survive?

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

With an increasingly vocal caucus demanding answers to the Liberal's nosedive in the polls, Justin Trudeau faces his internal party critics. What does he have to say and do to calm their fears, or is that even possible?  Bruce Anderson looks at the smoke, the mirrors and the truth.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Smoke, mirrors, and the truth with Bruce Anderson. And yes, it's an SMT day. And you may wonder what that stands for if you're a new listener. Sounds like a kind of a sandwich, doesn't it? Sounds like a sandwich. Well, yeah, at least a sandwich. It actually stands for Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth.

Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Toronto today. And we have a number of things we want to... Cool name. I wonder who came up with it. Say what? What came up with what? You said it's a cool name. I wonder who came up with what? It's a cool name.

I wonder who came up with that. Well, I had to think long and hard for it. And I listened to all kinds of possible entries for the name. And I took some of those entries and I kind of put them together and get a meeting of the naming committee. The naming committee. Actually, Bruce was the main contributor to the title smoke mirrors and the truth and i came up with the name good talk too i didn't get any credit for that you

you did it all you did it all you i mean there we go there's little you didn't come up with that's nice i appreciate Well, you're welcome. Okay. Here's your history lesson for today. 30 years ago this summer, Jean Chrétien walks into the Liberal caucus room to what he described as a bunch of nervous Nellies. Why were they nervous?

They were nervous because Brian Mulroney had stepped down as prime minister at the time, and a conservatist in their leadership convention had voted for Kim Campbell. And in that summer of 1993, Kim Campbell was way ahead in the national opinion polls. She was on her way to a huge majority government. And Liberal MPs were nervous. Nervous Nellies, John Craychan called them.

So what happened? Well, a couple of months later, the election was held, and Kim Campbell returned with two seats, two, and she wasn't one of them. Those conservatives were wiped out. Liberals won a majority government, the first of three for Chrétien. So the issue now is we haven't heard the term nervous Nellies on the part of the Liberal caucus by certainly any of them

or anybody in the Prime Minister's office, but you wonder whether that's going to be the tone that will be taken today as the Liberals meet in caucus and a caucus retreat in London, Ontario. And Justin Trudeau just returned from a, well, let's say, attendance at a summit and some problems with the airplane and some questions about how effective he'd been at the summit and all that. But Liberal MPs very nervous about polls which show them upwards of, up to 14 points down. So there's your history. There's your context for today.

Is this a nervous Nelly situation? How's Justin Trudeau going to handle this? Can he handle it? Look, I think if the term nervous Nelly, which is what Jean Chrétien intended, I think when he used it, is meant to imply that people have kind of irrational fears, exaggerated fears, are kind of overly pessimistic about their situation. I don't think this is that. I think there is a lesson to draw from that period of time. But the one that I would take from it, and I remember that campaign in 93. And I remember the run up to it, the leadership campaign in the Conservative Party, because I worked for Jean Charest in that. And I saw what

happened in the Conservative Party, which was that it became quite divided between Kim Campbell, who was a very qualified person and candidate, but who wasn't all that effective at campaigning. And that over the course of the leadership, she went from having a really strong lead, a massive lead to a very small lead by the time the convention rolled around. And in my view, if there had been one more week in that race, Jean Charest would have won that leadership race. And who knows how that subsequent election would have turned out. But the problem that was happening in the Conservative Party then does have some parallels in the liberal apparatus right now.

Once they settled the leadership, tried to pull the party together, it was still the case that they were campaigning as kind of incumbents. It was not a great campaign. They had not done enough preparation. They had not really estimated the strength of Jean Chrétien and the liberals in that contest. And they almost took it for granted that people at some point were going to say, well, we can't have this guy. He's in no way qualified.

He's not going to appeal to people. Remember, they ran an ad sort of making fun of whether he was qualified. I mean, people debate whether or not the intent of the ad was to make fun of his physical deformity, the way that his mouth aligns when he speaks. I don't know whether that was the case or not, but it was certainly perceived that way. And during that campaign, the liberals always had the conservatives on their back foot. It was a defense scenario almost every day in that campaign. And so when I think about that experience and where the liberals find themselves now, I think the caucus members who are restive, and I think there are a good number of them who are restive, I think they're worried that come the time of the next campaign, they'll be too timid, too defensive, unable to articulate what it is that they're fighting for. They'll rely too much on the idea that you can just demonize or belittle or otherwise marginalize your competitor. And they're savvy enough to know that those are mistakes that have been made by incumbents before. And they're savvy enough to

kind of look at their situation and say, we feel like we're on defense all the time right now. I don't think they're wrong about that. So restiveness of this sort is the kind of productive chemistry that is necessary for a party to survive and thrive. It has to be something that happens within parties because that level of energy and creativity does dissipate the longer a government is in office and it needs to find a way to you know combust again it needs to find a way to to be on offense sometimes not always on defense which is what it seems like it is to me now so what has to happen today and tomorrow i mean when you consider that ever since the cabinet shuffle, which was, what, six weeks ago now, we've witnessed something in the Liberal Party that we haven't witnessed,

well, since 2015, when Trudeau won his first of the three elections he's won. And that is Liberal MPs speaking out. Seemingly a couple more every week initially anonymously talking to some reporters i think it was chantelle actually was the first one to actually mention this which was like 48 hours after the shuffle she said she was picking up vibes weren't weren't good for Trudeau from within the caucus. And ever since then, it's built, and now it's not so anonymous anymore. Some MPs are speaking out. Still a minority group, but nevertheless, we haven't witnessed this before like this.

So, you know, Trudeauudeau i assume unlike his father who used to claim he never read the papers or watch television news although i used to sit i used to sit up in the parliamentary gallery the press gallery when i was a member in ottawa and trudeau was the prime minister pierre trudeau was the prime minister you'd look down you'd see him you'd see him reading like newspaper clippings every once in a while right um anyway assuming justin trudeau reads this stuff and watches tv and i believe he does like you believe he does too he must know be very aware of what's going on whether his staff is telling him or not and so he's got to have an approach when he walks in that room later today and it deals with mps boths both in the caucus room and outside of it. What's he got to say?

Put your strategist slash advisor slash observer slash analyst hat on. What does he got to do? What can he do? Or is it too late well is it too late is the is a is a really good question um i don't think it's too late but it might be too late but let's assume for the moment that it's not um and by that i i guess i what i mean is I don't know that it's a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives will win the next election. But I think if the prime minister continues to operate more or less the way he has been operating, then I think it's very unlikely that he can beat Pierre Polyev. So assuming that he wants to stay, which is what he said, and he wants to, you know, he believes that he can beat Pierre Polyev, I think that the thing that he needs to do with his caucus, and I know we're

going to talk about this situation in the United States with Speaker McCarthy, it's kind of the, you know, where you've got this kind of group of congressmen saying, you must obey us to the speaker, the leader essentially of their party. That's not what needs to happen here. But there does need to be more openness on the part of the prime minister and the people around him to hearing what it is that MPs are experiencing at the doors and to having a clear plan, something other than don't be nervous Nellies, to go back to your Kretchen quote. They need to hear something that feels as though the five alarm fire that they are experiencing when they're out in their communities is noticed by the people in charge of their political operation. I don't think they've heard that so far. I don't

think they've sensed that it has resulted in policy ideas that will help. But more importantly, I think they sense a kind of a timidity almost in the political response of the government, a kind of a pulling of the punch, a kind of an uncertainty. It's almost like a boxing metaphor that they're staggered. They're a little bit kind of dazed as a political operation. And so I think they need to not hear him rile him up with some sort of barn burning speech, not hear anything that sounds like, you know, I don't want to hear anybody else say another bad word about what we're doing or how we're doing it or how I'm doing. I don't think either of those things

will particularly work. But I think there needs to be an exchange. I think he needs to ask people to talk to him more about what they're hearing, to share ideas about how to deal with the issues that people think the government hasn't been good enough on, how to talk about the conservative challenge and maybe be less preoccupied with the NDP challenge, which is always there. But most of those MPs who will be in that caucus meeting who are worried about losing their seats, they're worried about losing their seats to conservatives, not to NDP candidates. And so their preoccupation is going to be, what are we going to say? Not just about this guy, but about our ideas and about why we to be able to exit and kind of watch how that manifests itself as a strategy going into the fall

and through the winter. Big question marks about whether or not that's the energy that he's going to bring, the prime minister is going to bring to that meeting. Hope for his sake and his party's sake that that's the contest that they're preparing to have. Well, yeah, I don't disagree about what you've said, but I do also agree that the government, through the prime minister and his ministers, has got to get their act together on what they stand for on the big issues of the day.

And if the big issue of the day is housing, I mean, there are big issues out there, inflation and climate change and that, and some of those things, we kind of know what they stand for. But housing is the emerging issue. They went to a great deal of trouble in the shuffle to put in a communicator in Sean Fraser, the Liberal MP from Atlantic Canada. And I don't know him, but I've watched him, I've seen him speak to an audience. He's good. He's absolutely a good communicator.

But I watched him the other day on Vashie Capello's show on Sunday. And, you know, he actually, he didn't seem, at least to me, to have an answer on any of the questions Vashie asked. Now, I know it's only six weeks on the job, and they're trying to develop a new approach on housing. But if you're a communicator, and if you're going to go to agree to go on a show like that, you really should have something to say other than we don't know yet,

or, you know, we're working on it or stuff like that. You've got to have an answer. And right now they need answers. If they're going to try and, you know, stop the slide or at least begin the turning the ship around a little

bit yeah i think that's interesting sorry go ahead well no that's that's all that's the point i wanted to make if you're going to if you're going to have a new message something that will buoy your caucus and encourage the people that you haven't sort of given up. You've got to have that message. You've got to say something. You've got to say it now. I mean, it's not like there hasn't been, it's not like housing just suddenly became an issue. This is the problem I see sometimes when politicians become part of a government

and they don't forget that they're politicians, but they kind of put that part of their their effort or their thought process aside. And I have a lot of time for Sean Fraser. I think he's a really good, really effective minister. He's relatively new in cabinet and he's dealing with the most hot-button issue that the country has, which has arguably, maybe other than climate change, it's the hardest to fix or to appear to be able to fix in any reasonable period of time. So he's dealing with a difficult situation. But to your point, the government doesn't seem able at a political level to say,

well, if we can't tell people exactly how we're going to solve this, or if we can't tell people exactly the answer to the question that's being asked, we better give them a better answer than we have been giving them and that's not true just on housing i watched um mary ing last night she was in the at the london uh caucus meeting or at the the run-up to it and she was asked questions about the relationship between canada and india and the stories coming out of that india about our relationship with with Modi and so on. And I felt for her a little bit because she obviously didn't have a green light to say anything about the nature of that relationship that had some substance to it. And so she did what people in politics are kind of obliged to do sometimes, which is kind of skate around and kind of run out the time on the answer.

And I feel like something has gone wrong in the system in government where they can't say, well, we can't say nothing. So what are the three things that we can say that have some bite to them that people can hear and understand? Like, I'll come back to the India point in a minute. But for Sean Fraser on housing, at the very least, if you say, this is what I found out about our problem with housing since I've taken this job. We built this many houses. This is what slows down the pace of home building in this country. This is what needs to change in order for that to happen. We don't control all of those variables, but we're trying to get everybody

together who does control those variables so that we can have a big national push. Now, I didn't see the interview. Maybe he said something that sounded like that. But I think at the very least, you need to be able to say, here's some facts. Here's our intent. Here are the steps that we're taking. And stay tuned. I feel that level of structure and politics in the government's message is missing too often, because ministers as ministers end up being reminded all the time of the things they shouldn't say, can't say yet, still to be discussed, still to be decided. Somebody might get annoyed if you say this this way, or that message hasn't been approved at prime minister's office all of

those things enter the minds of ministers when they're doing these interviews and then that effect isn't better messaging it's less uh messaging and i think that's part of the problem that the government has they need more people to take more shots. By that, I don't mean attacks, but I do mean, you know, to put some energy behind what it is that they're saying, and they need that to happen every day. I want to ask a polyeth question, but you wanted to say, did you want to say something more about the India trip? Yeah, I did.

I was reading a couple of pieces about it it and one in particular in in the national post and i know it's our you know it's one of our two national papers and so i should give it you know all of its due but sometimes i do find that the editorial direction of that change, of that chain, is a bit prominent in the reporting of news. And yesterday's piece that I read was a kind of an example of that. It essentially set up the notion that because the Indian leader, Modi, is unhappy with us and manifested that, showed that unhappiness in one way or another towards Trudeau during this G20 meeting, that this meeting was a failure for Canada. And I thought to myself, well, how did we get to a situation where the judgment of whether we're having a good meeting with Modi is whether he's happy with

our position. Because our position, I mean, these are complicated issues, but our position, our idea isn't to make every leader in the world happy, especially leaders with whom we have significant disagreements. It should be to take our point of view, to put it on the table, to try to have a respectful dialogue, to understand that there's some situations where we're going to be convincing and our pressure, along with the pressure of others, will have some effect. But also to understand that we live in a world where that's not going to happen sometimes, but it doesn't mean that we should suck up to leaders with whom we have profound disagreements.

So I found myself looking at that thinking, and you know this, Peter, you probably covered when Joe Clark lost his bags. What year was that? 1970 something or other, right? Way back in the end. Fall of 78. Fall of 78, right? So there can be a kind of a feeding frenzy, a plane broke down. This guy, you know, when they shook hands, it seemed cold.

And I kind of feel like that tendency of some in journalism to say, let's just make it a whole story of disaster. And I think the Sun put a kind of a disaster frame on it on their Sunday Toronto Sun front page, because we want to tell a story about disaster. I don't know that that was a, I don't think that was a fair characterization of that G20 or the conversations. I feel like if that's a fair characterization of that G20 or the conversations. I feel like if that's the only version that people get, it's no wonder that over time they end up feeling like, well, maybe this government has kind of completely lost its way, which I don't think is true. But I think the government's problem isn't just fighting against Pierre Polyev. I do think that there is a fairly significant tilt

in the part of the news media towards the idea of a change and to the conservative challenge. Not across the board. Right. It's funny you mentioned the Clark lost bag thing because the difference there on that one was Clark was going, trying to establish himself as a potential prime minister. He was opposition leader at that time. He was going to take a world tour.

He was going to go to a bunch of different countries. India was one of them. Did you go on that? I did not. I did not. We didn't have the cash, the CBC, to afford that trip. Those were the days where you had to travel with a crew of five. It was the early days of electronic news gathering,

and it was very complicated and very expensive. So I don't think he did. Now you just take a phone. There you go. Yeah, exactly. But I think on that particular trip, neither of the major television networks went. Anyway, but a lot of others did go on it,

mainly print, radio as well um and and what happened was it became this gang up right it wasn't just one news chain that were writing these stories everywhere he went the story became what was the latest screw-up lost bags he almost walked into a you know a guard in a in an honor guard parade you know guy holding a sword or something and uh you know there was the famous quote in in india where he asked an indian farmer what's the totality of your acreage so this became this whole thing about the word totality which is actually a good example of like I don't want to stop your flow, but how bad a problem was it to say what's the totality of the acreage? Exactly, exactly.

But everybody was like, ah! Yeah, yeah, the ONR. So the thing was a disaster. Since that time, and what is that now, like 45 years ago? Since that time, no opposition leader has gone on that kind of a world tour to establish their credentials in the foreign policy area like do you see nobody throws a football back and forth on the lawn in front of the parliament buildings for the same reasons yeah and robert stanfield that famous 72 i think it was or 74 election campaign picture where he threw a football back and forth with reporters for, you know,

five or 10 minutes, perfect throws, perfect catches, and then suddenly bobbled one. And Doug Ball, the CP for photographers, a friend of mine, I mean, he had the picture of the fumble. And he sent it in. In those days you they just sent in their their roll of film and the photo editor in toronto went through all the pictures said ah this one bang it ended up everywhere and it was you know disastrous but the point i was trying to make is since those days um especially on the foreign tours you don't see them happen that much. Or if they happen, they happen like suddenly they appear there.

They don't take a gaggle of journalists with them. I mean, you haven't seen Pierre Polyev turn up in Kiev in the middle of the night to meet Zelensky and talk about how he would do things in Canada or anywhere else. I mean, I'm not sure what foreign trips he's taken. Has he been to Washington? Has he been to Mexico City? Has he been to London? I don't know.

Perhaps he has. But it's just not as evident. For those kind of reasons, you know, that the littlest thing can become the biggest thing all of a sudden. And in a way, you know, Trudeau probably is saying, please, don't send me to India again because I can't win. Some of it for his own missteps. Remember the one a couple of years ago

and the outfits he was wearing when he got there. I mean, it's not been a good time. All right. That was not good, no. We sound like the Rest is history podcast today i like it we're going back in time into the into the ball yeah into the but uh you know what but one more point on this um you know what you just said about what wow trudeau is probably thinking don't send me here you know because it could go This is, and I don't know that he is saying that. He tends to be, I think, you know, by character, a

turn me loose, let me fight kind of guy. And so, but I do think that the apparatus of government tends to condition the prime minister to not do very many risky things, almost none. And sometimes you have to do risky things, especially if you're 10, 12 or 14 points behind in the polls. Contrast that attitude towards what you can do, the shots you could take, the surprises that you could generate with this much ballyhooed moment where Pierre Pauliev took the mic on a flight back from the Conservative Convention filled with Conservative Party delegates to Calgary and, you know, gave a little rah-rah commentary. That has been seen by I don't know how many people, but it's a lot.

And it was a good stunt for him. I know that there are people who are outraged that the safety equipment on the plane was used for something other than safety and that sort of thing. And, you know, maybe there is some sort of process that should be followed there. I don't know. But I think just as a piece of raw politics, it wasn't the most imaginative thing in the world. But it's the kind of thing that people do when they're not afraid of making a mistake, when they're not being told, don't try something different. It's exactly, in my view, the kind of thing that Justin Trudeau would have done eight years ago. And everybody, as you saw in the, at least the image that I saw,

all the phones were out, everybody was recording it. And you kind of knew at that moment that this was going to be a bit viral and it was going to reach a lot of people and the things that he was saying he was saying with a smile not a snarl and he was saying them to people who would largely kind of go you know i kind of like he's got a almost a uh an optimistic uh bitterness towards the government that is a different chemistry than he had a year ago. And I don't want to overdo it, but I really think that he is a significant challenger to this government, and they need to be willing to try things that are as disruptive as the things that Pierre

Pauliev is trying to do, not necessarily imitate him, but just remember that politics is such a game that you have to, you have to take shots to. Optimistic bitterness. There's one for the, for the file. That's quite a term.

We're going a lot longer than I'd planned to go on this. We still have a couple things we want to do i don't know whether we get to them all but uh one thing i know we have to get to is our uh first break so let's do that and we'll be right back and welcome back. You're listening to Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on The Bridge, Wednesday edition, Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto.

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is also where you can send your comments and you may become a part of the Thursday Your Turn show along with the Random Rant here. Okay, back briefly. You mentioned you wanted to say something about Polyav and

a couple of days after their convention in Quebec City, which seemed to go pretty well for them, there were the normal issues that have come up that you highlighted last week, you and Chantal, about the potential problems in a convention like that with a huge lead that they seem to have in the polls. But you wanted to add something else. Yeah, I was reading a piece in the star about this and it kind of touched on a number of points that i thought were interesting um and and including uh things that happened on the floor of the

convention the conservative convention in quebec city one of the things was that Mr. Polyev's wife spoke, and she talked about being an immigrant who lived in Quebec. She referred to Quebecois bands and music that she was interested in. She, I think, said something that a lot of Quebecers would kind of appreciate, which is that she said she's she spoke Quebec was. And I grew up in Montreal and Valleyfield and kind of know the difference between the Quebec French and Parisian French and the idea that that people should be proud of the way that they speak French in Quebec, or at least acknowledge that it's unique. So there was all of that, which I thought was quite good. And of course, we talked about this before, that her voice talking about him as a family man has been quite a helpful thing to his image with Canadians.

He also, though, said some things that, you know, in another time would have captured more attention. He said, vive la nation québécoise. That's a very interesting statement for a conservative leader to say. And there was a time when that would have been the headline coming out of that meeting. And it's kind of indicative of the degree to which his political acumen is almost priced into the coverage of him now. And again, the silence, I think, on those kinds of points, and I don't think he was wrong to say that. I think that what he's been trying to do is knit together the notion of if you thought the Conservative Party was anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-Quebec nationalism, I'm going to tell you, my father's gay. Vive la nation québécoise. I'm pro-choice.

And I'm here in Quebec because I, you know, really want your support. It was a more full-throated embrace of the idea of winning seats in Quebec than we've seen from a conservative leader in a long time. And it was, I thought it was quite remarkable. And again, I, it's, you know, people are gonna be surprised at how many positive things I'm saying about the way that he's approaching politics. I don't think that he has the right policy prescriptions in many areas or any policy prescriptions in some areas. I'm just commenting on the quality of his politicking, and I can't help but notice that it seems pretty effective

and well thought out. The style is the man himself. Remember that one? You want history? 68, Pierre Trudeau. Yeah. And, you know, listen, there were a lot of things about, there were substantive things about last weekend that could cause some problems

and the split that showed within his party on some of those key social conservative issues. But if they walk away thinking about the kind of things you just mentioned and the little spiel on the plane, by the way, you should note that he or his advisors got approval, first of all, from the airline to do what he did using the flight attendantants, you know, public address system to make his little speech. Look, I've heard people sing songs using that apparatus. It's not like the only time it ever gets used is for safety messages

or, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, but they're usually hammered when they do that and coming back from the Grey Cup or something. Something like that. whatever um let's move on uh because but you know what though the uh every time i try to move on you hear what he does he kind of interrupts and plows forward with something else, making the timing difficult. But we'll get there. Go ahead and make your last comment, and then we move on to the next subject. Remember the Aaron O'Toole convention?

Coming out of that convention, there was a huge sense of disarray because the party said, we don't really accept climate change. And the run- up to it was, there's a lot of pro-life MPs. And so Aaron O'Toole came out of his convention wounded by those internal pressures. I don't think that's true about Pierre Poliev. We didn't hear, I mean, there were some motions adopted on the floor, and they knew that they were going to have those kind of motions that were going to be controversial. But they had said before, as you and I and Chantal talked about, that these weren't

necessarily going to be party policy and that the leader wasn't going to be bound by those things. In fact, the way that he communicated his approach from a value standpoint and an intention standpoint was to reassure people that those controversial motions weren't going to be party policy. Now, whether that was being honest or not remains to be seen, but at least it was well managed, I think, from that standpoint. All right. I'll stop. We're not going to get to the Kevin McCarthy stuff, which is fine. Oh, no. Which is fine. But what we are going to get to is this, I don't know, trending movement, should we call it? The I will not comply movement that we've seen on some

social media. And let me give the quick background. Yesterday we did our COVID update with Dr. Lisa Barrett from Halifax. And she was great. And she kind of gave her sense, her opinion on where things stand and how we should, as individuals, react to the fact that there is clearly a bit of a resurgence going on. Not totally unexpected, by the way, of COVID this fall. No mandates out there, but the knowledge that there's a new booster coming.

There's also a vaccine on the RSV, which is also another disease that is spreading that affects the respiratory situation. But how one should approach this and who the vulnerable sectors are, etc., etc., and how you may consider, as a personal venture, you might consider masking at some point in terms of areas with big big crowds you know hockey games as they come onto the agenda in another few weeks that kind of thing anyway it's a good conversation some nice reaction i've heard from from listeners but this new trend, which quite frankly, I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out to me, Bruce, this I will not comply issue.

Tell me about what you're thinking on that. You better explain it, first of all. Yeah, well, look, I think that the reaction to the COVID pandemic, as we know, has become a point, a major point in what is generally described as kind of the culture war that's, you know, a big part of our democracy and certainly a huge part of the US political system now. And I see it as having two dimensions. There's obviously one dimension where people are saying, I didn't want to be told by government how to live my life, what to put in my body, what to wear on my face, how to, you know, organize my business, what sorts of things I need to do in order to be able to travel on public conveyances. All of that kind of rejection of the authority of government has become a much bigger part of our political life because of the COVID experience. You know, I think some of those attitudes were obviously simmering there, but COVID gave them a reason to become organized, highly visible, politically potent, and to attract the interest of leaders who are populist by nature like Donald Trump. we now have a situation where we're heading into potentially another difficult COVID season.

You talked to an expert in that. I don't know how bad it's going to be, but I do know that relative to the first version of COVID, where people were anxious and there wasn't much resistance to the idea of get us a vaccination, please, as soon as you can. And where can we get the masks so that we can wear them and protect ourselves and protect other people? We're not going to have that experience again, should a pandemic of a similar size and risk appear on our. So what it does is it poses a question for both the opposition party in Canada

and for the government. If it's a regular flu season style of situation, maybe there won't be very much politics around it. But what we do see happening in the in the in the political culture in america and we've seen it come up north of the border a little bit it was trending on twitter in canada this i will not comply thing and what that really is is that this this intersection of people um having rejected the science and the evidence of what can keep them safe and keep society safe on COVID and wanting to express that as a act of political activism towards incumbent governments. it pose it could pose a question for the conservatives as to whether or not they're going to be too closely aligned with those sentiments because those sentiments aren't i will not comply because here are 1500 scientists who say the vaccines don't work

there i will not comply because i i love trump or i hate trudeau or, you know, my cousin, you know, said that their health was harmed because of the vaccination they got. It's a collection of attitudes that has less to do with science and more to do with the politics of it. On the government side, I think the question is how bad would things have to be from a risk standpoint before government would ever again consider the kind of mandates that were put in place the last time we went through this? And I do think that that is in part a political calculation, not just a science calculation, because on some level, the non-compliance thing is not just about if you put more rules in place or you yell your position louder that people will comply. Sometimes the opposite can happen.

And so I think it's away because I don't think that the idea of noncompliance as a thing in society is a good thing. But I know that the politics of it are pretty sensitive and combustible. I get a kick out of how Trump is portrayed in some of these things as if he's on, he's on side with all those who are not complying. I mean, he says he is too. Yeah. This is the guy who, you know,

and good for him, funded the vaccination program, the research program, then took credit for it, you know, suggested everything to, what was it? Drinking toilet bowl cleaner or something, or, you know, suggested everything to, what was it, drinking toilet bowl cleaner or something or, you know, horse injections and whatever to, you know, prevent you from getting COVID.

And then damn near died himself in the hospital, so the story goes. When he had COVID, so the story goes, with all the latest technology and research materials available at that time. You know, those people in the medical community who were working on him said, you know, he came close to death in that couple of days. I find that a little surprising because he was up and around like in a couple of hours 48 hours anyway um anyway he he somehow portrayed as the anti the anti-vaccine the the the person who who wouldn't comply um don't remember, don't forget, he's 6'3", 185 or something. Oh, don't exaggerate.

He's 215. He's as fit as Aaron Rodgers. He's like the same size. That's right. Wait, so that helped. But he has a better Achilles heel than Aaron Rodgers has. Fair enough, yeah. At the moment.

Yeah, I don't know. And the part we don't get to, because it just would take too long to properly explain it, is the decision to move ahead and impeach, or at least begin an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, and this by the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who is clearly being pushed by not only the right wing in his caucus, but also by Trump. You've got to do this because Trump clearly wants, if he's going to end up running against Biden again,

he wants them to be on equal ground, having both been impeached. But the whole thing's a joke. There is absolutely nothing so far. And hey, if they've got evidence, bring it forward. But they haven't brought any evidence forward so far, and they admit they have no evidence that Joe Biden has done anything wrong. His son, well, that's another story. But Joe Biden, apparently, so far, there's no evidence he's done anything wrong.

If there is, then go for it. Have your impeachment inquiry. Nevertheless, that's all happening, and there you go. I've wrapped it up. There's nothing more to say on that subject are you sure can i add one thing you can have one minute of time on this that's all i can't but i can't uh can't give you more than that people should listen to this this quote by representative matt gates of florida from the floor of the uh of the house you got it play it

because if you've got it there play it all right all right hang on here we go i rise today to serve notice mr speaker you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role the path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair. Mr. Speaker. That quote, I mean, you and I have watched American politics for a long time. I've never seen anything like that in terms of the way that American politics works typically is that the speaker has a lot of authority, a lot of influence. And the arguments that preceded this are normally held behind closed doors, that there is a real sense of we wouldn't do this publicly because our opponents would take advantage of it or because it's just not done. It's not the way that politics in a political party should work.

But Kevin McCarthy is a very unique character. And this is a very unique time in American politics where you've got these populist right wing politicians who think it's their role to hold him to account publicly and to challenge his position if he doesn't agree. And the strangest part of all is that he seems to go, all right, if this is what you need me to do, I'm going to do it. It's not a great time in American politics. No. And the interesting thing about this one is there seemed to be a number of Republicans offside, both in the House of Representatives, certainly in the Senate, and also on the analyst side of things, Republican analysts and commentators. I heard one this morning say, worst speaker in the history of the united states yeah there you go all right uh

listen thanks bruce and thanks for bringing the clips along today we have a whole new role for bruce on smoke mirrors and the truth now he brings the clips i can just hear this sir yeah i'm in compliance excellent yeah you will comply um all right. Thank you, Bruce. Bruce will be back on Friday, of course, for Good Talk with Chantel. Tomorrow it's your turn and the random ranter. So join us for all that. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.