The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT -- DECONSTRUCTING TWO POLITICAL MOMENTS

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Bruce Anderson joins for an attempt to deconstruct two key political moments -- one in Ontario and one in Manitoba.  One happened here and what are the lessons for all of us who consider ourselves political junkies.  

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It is Wednesday, and Wednesdays have always meant Smoke Mirrors the Truth with Bruce Anderson. And Bruce is in Ottawa today. I'm in Toronto. And it's good to have you with us. Getting going in the fall. I'm so excited to be here. Back talking every Wednesday with you, every Friday with you and Chantal. And it's stinking hot here in Ottawa today. I don't know what you got where you are. It's been hot here for a couple of days. It was really ugly

yesterday on the Tuesday and here we are on the Wednesday and it's going to be hot again supposedly for the next few days. So I mean you know we complain when it's not hot enough and then when it gets hot we're going, oh geez, this is really difficult.

Yeah. Anyway, I want to take... What's on your mind today? What's on my mind? Let's get down to what's on your mind today. Yeah. Anyway, I want to take it. What's on your mind today? What's on my mind? Let's get down to what's on your mind today. Exactly. Well, I've got a couple of things that I want to try and deconstruct and, in a way, call out the smoke, the mirrors, and the truth on both of them, really.

But they're two examples from provincial stories that have come out. So we'll stay away from Ottawa for a bit. Some people would be cheering that right away. But one is in Queen's Park in Toronto. They're probably tuning into the wrong podcast if that's how they really feel. That's true. And the other one is in Manitoba, which is now, as of just yesterday or the day before, the gun has gone off for the next provincial election, which is in early October.

But there are two stories here. They're very different. I want to talk about them. So let's deal first of all with the Queen's Park one. If you followed at all the Greenbelt story over the past few years, but especially the last year or so, Doug Ford promised before the last provincial election he would not use any of the land in the Greenbelt,

protected land, for development. And then as soon as the election was over, he said, oh no, let's open it up to developers. And there were billions of dollars exchanged hands on a number of big development deals. And so he's taken a lot of flack. And then the Auditor General and then the Integrity Commissioner both came out with the reports that condemned the way this was done.

Sorry, I had to put the cough mic on there for a minute. Condemned the way this was done. And so ever since that moment, there's been a backing off in parts of the Ontario government. At first, when the Auditor General zeroed in on the Chief of Staff for the, jeez, I've got a really bad cough here, hold on. Hopefully that cleared it. Zeroed in on the chief of staff of the housing minister and questioned how things had happened.

The premier immediately said, he's not going anywhere. He's staying in the job. Two weeks later, he resigned. Then the housing minister became the target, who was also the target of the Auditor General's report and the Integrity Commissioner's report. Initially, Doug Ford said, he's not going anywhere. Then he resigned.

And since there's been a cabinet shuffle. So it's been a bit chaotic in the Ontario government. In the midst of all this, just a couple of days ago, there was a interview, well it was more of a press conference really, done by the Premier, Premier Ford, and the Ontario Press Gallery, the reporters. And there was an exchange that took place between one of the reporters, Colin DeMello from Global News, and the Premier. I want you to listen to this exchange and listen carefully,

not necessarily to the content of the argument, but the content of the interview, the way the question was asked and then how the question was answered so here we go the general's report is nothing but incompetence right from the chief of staff who decided to rush through a process to the housing minister who looked away because he thought it was going to be too politically sensitive to a premier who directed his housing minister to open up the green belt after promising Ontarians that you would never touch the green belt. So I'll take that. But premier, at what point do you take personal responsibility here and how are people to have trust in your leadership? Well thank you for that Colin

and I'm sure you just walked down the street from your home that you have a home but you know many people don't have a home Colin? There's hundreds of thousands of people that don't have homes and yes when I in 2018 we didn't have a housing crisis you know why we didn't have a housing crisis Colin? Because there was no jobs here. People weren't coming here. Because the last government lost 300,000 jobs. There was no interest in coming to Ontario. But now, since we've been in office, we've created an environment and condition for people around the world to come to Ontario.

Let me finish, Colin. To come to Ontario. When we have a housing crisis I have two options Colin I sit back like the other government did and let the whole province fall apart or we move forward and we build homes because I know you Colin a year down the road if we don't have the homes you're the first person that's gonna be up here saying why didn't you build the homes why didn't you do this why didn't you build the homes? Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? Well, Colin, guess what? We're going to build

homes. We're going to build homes until people have the same opportunity that you have. You have a nice home down the street, but guess what? There's hundreds of thousands of people that don't have your opportunity, that don't have the good paying job that you have. That's the difference. Okay, a couple of minutes of an exchange between the reporter, Colin DeMello in this case, who works for Global News, and the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford. And while here, before I say anything more, so I don't cough all the way through it. Bruce, your take on that exchange and the way it played out. Well, I think the first thing that needs to be established is, was this a real scandal that Colin DeMello was talking about? And, of course, my view is that, as I've said before,

whenever we talked about the Greenbelt and the Ontario housing initiatives that Premier Ford engaged in that related to the Greenbelt, scandal is starting to bear some fruit. And there's some accountability and there's persistence on the part of the questioners of the government. So I think that it is a good thing that the premier is feeling this friction. It's a good thing that people who were involved in the decisions have had to resign. And I suspect that there should be more to come as more information comes out about this. And as the government feels additional pressure, but to get to your point about every question about that particular exchange,

I think there were a few things that stood out for me. One is that Doug Ford has become a better communicator over the period of time that he's been in office. He was kind of rough-hewn, but effectively rough-hewn originally. But there were days when you thought, this is not professional enough. It's not going to hold up to the demands of being in office and the way in which things come at you. And I think he's gotten a lot better at knowing what his message is, at sticking to his message, at being forceful in terms of commanding the microphone when he wants to deliver his message. And he did those things in this particular exchange, I think, relatively well. When you're a politician,

at least there are a lot of different ways that people come at the art of politics, I guess. For some people, it's always a choice between, is an issue going to feel like a sword issue or a shield issue? In other words, are you going to feel like you're on defense or are you going to be on offense on the issue? And what you saw Ford doing in that exchange was saying, this is going to be a sword issue. I'm not going to spend all my time talking about what I did wrong. I'm going to spend my time talking about what we're trying to do, which is to build houses for people who don't have them. Is it what people look for in terms of accountability? No. Is it effective as political communication? TBD. It's certainly probably better

for him on that day than answering the assertions of incompetence and worse and kind of accepting the premise of the question without having the opportunity to say, here's why I did it. Do I think that just before people sort of load up their keyboards, do I think that this is really what happened, that Premier Ford did this with the Greenbelt because he was so preoccupied about building homes for people? No, I don't. I do think that this had a lot to do with exceeding the developer pressure. And so I don't think that his assertions as to motive should be taken at face value. But the last thing, and maybe the thing that will light you up a little bit, has to do with the role of the questioner. And in this case, it's not a comment on Colin

DeMello at all, who's, I think, quite a respected journalist covering Queen's Park and who, in this particular instance, was asking questions that I thought were, you know, well pointed, appropriate in the circumstances. But what for how Ford responded, which I think people in the media sometimes look at this and say it was a personal attack on him. I don't really think that it was, but it was definitely a pushback on the idea that the media get to ask questions in such an aggressive way. And so I've been studying that a little bit in the last little while, including I asked a question on a survey that we haven't published yet, but we will publish it soon. The question I asked was about Pierre Pauliev. And, you know, I put the proposition that he sometimes gets into disputes with media. And I asked people, do you think when this happens that what's going on is that he's being overly critical and trying to bully journalists, or that the news media are biased against him and conservatives generally. And what the results were, were quite

striking to me. 57% of Canadians across the country answered that question by saying, I think the media are biased against him and conservatives generally. 43% said, I think he's being overly critical and trying to bully journalists. Now, we've seen this play out in the United States with Trump. And what he was tapping into there was a certain skepticism of the role that the news media seemed to have arrogated to themselves or society had given to them, which allowed them to put whatever brutal and hard hitting question they want in the expectation that the audience would always say, well, thank God the media is pressing this case on our behalf, is acting in our interest. I happen to think most of the time that's what media are doing. But there's no question that over the last several years, more voters have started to think, well, just because the media are testy with a politician doesn't mean that the media are just being testy because it gets clicks or it draws attention

or it you know creates some sort of conflict that then becomes a story where otherwise there might not be a story so i think there's a little bit of everything in this whole exchange i'm really glad that we got a chance to talk about it and what did you think like if you were advising colin de mella would you say keep doing what you're doing? Would you say the same thing to Doug Ford? Or would you give him different advice? Well, let me start by saying the quality of the question and the quality of the answer is what led to that exchange being played quite a bit and which led to us talking about it today.

Because it did provoke responses from the audience who was watching it, and some of them were in favor of the way the question was asked. Some of them were in favor of the way the answer was given. Here's where I come down, first of all, on the question. The Queen's Park reporters have taken a bit of a beating ever since Doug Form came into town and got away with his kind of aw shucks approach to handling stuff. And the criticism, and I'm not leveling it at any one person,

but the general criticism was the Queen's Park press and the Ontario press covering Doug Ford are being kind of soft on this guy because he's like Mr. Jovial, Mr. Good Time Premier. And they've been criticized for that. So DeMello, who is, I agree with you, is a good journalist and has a good reputation and can be quite aggressive in his pursuit of an answer, which is what it's all about, right? You're trying to ask questions to get answers. And what he chose to do here, which is always a dangerous game, was to lay out all the facts, right?

The Auditor General criticized it, said it was terrible. The Integrity Commissioner said it was terrible. The Chief of Staff had to resign. The Housing Minister had to resign. He didn't say it quite this quickly because he went through everything, but when are you going to take responsibility, accountability, for what happened here under your watch as premier of the province of ontario so that's what he was laying out now was it clickbait was it designed to try and get

an answer well he got an answer you can argue about the quality of the answer but part of that answer included the old approach of, well, just criticize the messenger. Go after the reporter. That's right. I thought it was quite personal, actually. When you start dragging out where does he live and what kind of house have you got and all this kind of stuff, you're trying to say, oh, you're privileged. I'm the guy sitting here worried about all those who don't have a house. And that's what this is really all about.

When, as you said, when you track back on this story, that's not what it was all about. It was all about... Well, look, I'm sure I'm wrong about this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Okay, you're wrong. Moving on now to our second. You know that this was this seemed like a personal attack on a journalist. It makes me feel like, yeah, sure, it was.

But also journalists would make lousy politicians because the skin is so thin. That's true. This is the weakest attack that most politicians would ever have to endure. The idea that they have a home and it's down the street. Yeah. Like, literally, I can't think of. I agree with you. But my point about it was, in his attempt to deflect the story, he went for the, you know, let's turn it into a story about the reporter as opposed to.

That was that's where I was going. Right. So because Ford knows what that public opinion is like that I described for you and that among the, you know, 87 percent of conservative think that when pauliev is having a fight with the media the media is to blame 87 of conservative voters so figure it's roughly a similar number for ford among his ontario conservative voters he knows that what he's doing he's got two parts to the answer i'm trying to build more houses. And you're trying to bully me, you call into mellow. Right? And he knows that I'm both of those on the first one, people are going to go, I don't know, housing is a crisis. I don't know if that's why you were doing it. But maybe the question was a little bit full of vitriol. Now, I don't, I don't happen to think it was. But I think that when you do that kind of

question where you go, this person was incompetent, that person was incompetent, this person was incompetent, this thing failed, this thing was broken, what do you got to say? You could expect a politician who's decently on his game to come back both barrels at you, right? Because that's kind of what you're doing. Now, another version of a question, which I think that you might have asked at a point in time, is something that says, when was the first time that somebody told you, Premier, that developers were going to be enriched to the tune of maybe billions of dollars? When was the first time that you heard that from anybody?

And what did you do about it? Right? Because the real answer that I think DeMello is looking for is where's the accountability for you? And to get at that, I think you need to go to what's the information we don't have yet, rather than to recite the information that we do have and see where that goes. Because that's not an easy question for the premier to turn into. I'm trying to build houses and you've got a nice house. And also, you know, why are you being mean to me? So it's a very interesting one. But I think you would have asked that other question if you were doing a kind of a one-on-one. I don't know.

That is a good question. It might be one of the follow-up questions to a version of the same one that Colin DiBello asked. And I'm not criticizing his question because I think he was laying out the groundwork, but he could have gone to a much shorter one and just said, you've had criticism and you've had resignations. When are you going to accept some accountability for what's happened on this story, on this issue? Just go straight to the heart of the question, which is accountability. That's kind of the point. You know, as I was getting ready for this conversation,

I remembered the term the fourth estate, which I suspect a lot of people don't still use that term, but I remember that term being in common usage when I started working in politics and was studying journalism briefly. And so I went back to, you know, where did that term come from? And it came from, well, there's a little bit of a debate about it, but there's one version where it came from France and it was considered to be the idea that the media were a counterpoint or an additional kind of estate around which, in addition to the nobility and the common people and the courts, I guess.

And so, but there's some dispute. There's another quote from 1891. Oscar Wilde wrote this. In old days, men had the rack. Now they have the press. That's an improvement, certainly. But still, it's very bad and wrong and demoralizing. He goes on to say we're dominated by journalism. Now, I don't know all of the context of that. But I was fascinated to read it because it reminded me that this tension between people in the other states and journalism isn't new.

It's taken on a new tone and antenna. And because it happens in real time now, and it plays out not on the margins of formal news conferences, but kind of live with everybody's phone, and then spilling out on social media. It's a very different time. And it's one that requires, I think, a lot of reflection on the part of journalism as to how to avoid getting played, essentially, how to stay in that role that the public will look at and say, this is valuable and it's in our interest that you're doing this, rather than you're doing something that is kind of mostly in our interest, but also it's in your interest to do it this way because the business of journalism is foundering or, you know, somebody is trying to become known as a

as a as a as an aggressive kind of attack dog journalist. And again, I'm not suggesting that with Colin. It's more about the general phenomena of the relationship between politicians and and journalists these days. What's the lesson from all this? there a lesson is there a simple lesson from you know us deciding to to focus in on this exchange is there a lesson either for journalists or for politicians or for the public i think it's too early to say i think the good the one really good thing out of this is there have been resignations because of this scandal. And I don't think that these resignations would happen if it weren't for the role that the media were playing in keeping this story alive. quibbles I might have about how to get the chemistry just quite right, the bottom line is, without the persistence of the media on this scandal, there would be no accountability,

probably up to this point in time. There would have been that report by the Auditor General, which was scathing. But then there might not have been anything else, because judging from what Premier Ford had been saying, and you made this point early on didn't look like he was going to do anything and that is so often is the viable strategy for incumbents is wait for the news cycle to turn that's the expression right wait for the news cycle to turn because it doesn't turn in one week increments anymore. It turns in 10 minute increments. And everybody knows what that trending column on Twitter or whatever else they get their news is telling them. And it is telling them, don't pay attention to what you were paying attention to. Pay attention to this new

thing. And then it's up to the media to decide if the new thing is going to be the next chapter of the important thing or something completely different yeah i couldn't agree with you more um with the with the one possible exception that this story drops in the middle of the summer when that that uh 24-hour news cycle that becomes a 10-minute news cycle isn't quite as great right there's not as many things happening parliaments and legislatures aren't sitting um you know journalists are kind of in a in a haze a little bit looking for a story to pursue the auditor general drops her report whenever it was two or three weeks ago and it becomes a dominant front page story because there's you know as it should but it keeps going because there's, you know, as it should.

But it keeps going because there's nothing else to replace it in the cycle that we're used to. And then the integrity commissioner comes in with his hammer on the story as well. So for Doug Ford. Look, I think that's probably right. But I think there's two other things that occur to me, Peter. One is that it's a scandal and people consume scandal. And this is not a small scandal.

It's a scandal that people can go, wait, there was a family wedding. There were developers at it. There were people who were getting preferred access to land deals. There's a reason why. I know that politics podcasts are very popular, especially this one. But real crime is a super popular podcast category. People like those stories. So I think that's the thing. I

think the second thing is that we are in a housing crisis, a housing affordability crisis, which makes this a scandal that has additional topicality to it because people want to know, is he really trying to solve this problem or is he trying to do something else and pretending that he's trying to solve this problem? So there's real currency to anything that has to do with housing. And of course, people do and have always. The only thing I would say that has been a recurring problem for Doug Ford has been his comments about the green belt. Remember when he got elected, he, he got himself in real hot water about that.

People care about this and they care about it. Even if you don't layer in the idea that it'll be sold off in lots to people who might have heard about it or been able to gain some advantage of it. They care about it because they care about it. So I think there are good reasons why it has some life in addition to dropping during a period of time where there might be other stories. But for me, if people aren't paying attention to a political story, sometimes it's just because they're paying attention to their sporting event or the camping trip that they're taking with their family or what have you.

Okay. Well, if you have an opinion on this, don't be shy. Drop us a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. I read all the mail that comes in. Some of it ends up on our Your Turn edition on Thursday. So send something in. If you do, make sure you include your name and where you're writing from.

All right, we're going to take a quick break. Then we're going to come back, switch over. We're going to move west one province to Manitoba, where the election has been called. October 3rd it will be, and a very interesting first day on the election campaign, as you're about to witness when we try to deconstruct a newspaper ad. That's coming up right after this. And welcome back.

This is Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, whichever one that may be. I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Toronto today. You know, I spent a lot of time in Manitoba the early part of my career,

from Churchill to Winnipeg and all points in between. And so I keep an eye on what's happening in Manitoba politics. In fact, I saw the name of my kind of co-host in one of my early election evening news specials back in the 70s. And Ed Schreier was the premier. And that co-host, the analyst, was Paul Thomas from the University of Manitoba. And I saw he was commenting on the likelihood of what may or may not happen in this election campaign that has just been called for Manitoba. The Conservatives are the party in power, and they're seeking re-election. We'll see what happens.

The NDP is doing quite well in all the public opinion polls that have been taken in the last year. The Liberals are kind of out of sight. That's a snapshot of what's happening. But here's what's interesting. At least I found it interesting. We'll see what Bruce thinks. The NDP decided to start their day, day one of the campaign,

with a full-page newspaper ad about their leader, Wab Kanu. But is it Wab Kanu speaking? No, it's not Wab Kanu speaking. It's Lloyd Axworthy, the former liberal federal cabinet minister, former liberal member of the Manitoba legislature at a time, and I think he was the only one in the Manitoba legislature at a time, and I think he was the only one in the Manitoba legislature. Anyway, Lloyd Axworthy's written a letter to Wab Kanu, and Wab Kanu then had it put into the Winnipeg Free Press.

I think it was on the front page. And at no point does he say, I'm going to vote NDP. I'm a liberal. I've always been a liberal, says Lloyd Axworthy, and I'll continue to operate that way. However, the rest of the letter is all praising Wapkenu. Quotes like, you can provide a caring, conscientious governance. And at a time when the task of restoring Winnipeg's downtown, offering good educational and career chances for our youth,

working cooperatively with community groups, business, the academy, and tackling inequality of services, housing, health, and employment is paramount. Your experience is a strength. That's pretty heady stuff, and not a bad name to have on your side in terms of your experience and your ability to do the job if you're called upon to lead the province. As a strategic move, Bruce, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like this. We've certainly had times when members of opposing parties have said nice things about their opposition colleagues. But this is quite something and clearly being used as a major campaign moment. The beginning of his letter, interestingly enough,

actually talks about a different era that used to take place, especially in Manitoba. Lester Pearson, Stanley Knowles, Duff Roblin. There's the former Conservative Premier in Roblin, the former NDP member from Winnipeg who sat in the federal parliament, and of course Lester Pearson, the former prime minister. How they used to get along together and talk about policy and what they could do, even though they were in different parties, what they could do to achieve gains for the people.

Lloyd Axe really kind of hinting that this is of guy, Wab Kanu, could be. What do you make of this? Well, you know, I think it's a really smart thing for the NDP. I think it could be an important thing in terms of the shape of the election. My assumption is that the conservatives will want to try to criticize wab canoe as being somebody who doesn't have the kind of experience that the province is looking for is maybe too far on the progressive side and the ax worthy name for as long as i've kind of paid attention to Manitoba politics, and I don't profess to be an expert in it at all, has been synonymous with a kind of a mainstream

progressive place in kind of Manitoba politics. His brother, Tom Lloyd, there's another brother who was involved in politics. It is a kind of an establishment name, if I can put it that way. And maybe Lloyd actually wouldn't like it being referred to that way. But it confers, I think, as endorsements go, a sense that mainstream progressive voters should give this guy and this party at this moment in time in the life of the province a good hard look. And it describes his background and his personal experience as being of value in helping deal with the issues that the province faces. And I think it's clever in that respect as well. The last thing I'll say is I think it's smart for the NDP to put it out there on the understanding that at some point the Conservatives are really going to come after him

because they're going to see him as the most important challenger. It looked to me like the NDP got about 150,000 votes last time and the Liberals got 70,000 votes. So it's a meaningful number of Liberal votes that if they decided that they wanted to coalesce against the progressive alternative that had the best chance to beat the conservatives, that this statement at this time might be the right kind of signal to send. And the last, I said the last thing, but I'm also looking at that image. And what does that image say to you? Because the choice of these pictures that go into an ad like this, very, very important.

For me, that picture is well chosen for the message that they're trying to convey. Talk about the picture. Well, I think it suggests that, you know, the people who are in the shot, it's a diverse, regular folks crowd. It's not an establishment crowd. It is not an elite crowd. It looks like a collection of regular voters. And he, at a podium in a suit looks like a voice of, or sends a signal of confidence, I suppose, and kind of ready to be premier. And so I think that the structure of the quote that they used and the picture that they chose to go with it was really well done. And I think this kind of endorsement

is the sort of thing that, again, based on my rather distant observation of Manitoba politics, could be quite helpful. This is Wapkenu's second campaign. You recorded the number of votes last time around. He didn't do well, and he was heavily criticized during that campaign for his past, his personal past, and issues surrounding charges that were leveled about him in terms of a domestic situation. So that, I think they were fully expecting that's going to come back again, especially if the Conservatives, since they're in trouble, they're going to play whatever hand they've got and try and stop Wap Kanu and his approach.

The Conservative Premier, current Premier, Heather Stephenson, you know, I've talked to both of these people. I've talked to the Premier. I've talked to Wab. I've known Wab for a while. He used to work at the CBC years ago. They're both, you know, good, decent people. Let's hope it doesn't go into the tank in terms of a campaign

that gets ugly. It's a little bit what Lloyd Axe really talks about in the article, that that era of Pearson and Knowles and Roblin was an area where civility was a part of campaigns. And what he worries about is that, and he didn't talk specifically about this Manitoba one, but generally that civility in politics has been lost, or is being lost, and hopes it doesn't go that way. So I just found it a very interesting way to start your campaign.

There are a lot of ways you can start a campaign, and we've witnessed many of them over time. Some of them work. Some of them don't work. Some of them really don't work. This is an interesting one, interesting way to go, interesting approach to take. Yeah, I do as well.

And I don't know enough about Wabkanu's personal background and the details associated with the issues that have been raised to really have a responsible point of view to offer on it. But I know that, or I surmise that part of what they're doing with this quote is trying to create some context in which people can again look at this individual and say, from everything that I know about his background, he is somebody that can be trusted with the office of premier. And for Lloyd Axworthy to say that, I think that's a name with whom that probably carries some weight. Last point on this. And is there, as I mentioned in the first segment of the program,

looking for lessons, is there a lesson in this approach between the NDP and the Liberals? Although the Liberals are running in this campaign, and I'm sure they probably weren't overly excited by what they saw from Lloyd Axworthy. But is there a lesson here for the federal partnership between the Liberals and the NDP? Well, that's a more complicated question, I think. I don't know that I think if it is a partnership, first of all. I think that it's a convenience for both parties that they don't have the threat of an imminent election surrounding the work that

they're trying to do on an ongoing basis. Beyond that, the friction between the federal NDP and the federal liberals, at least at the parliamentary level, has been pretty intense for a very long period of time. There are individuals for whom there are good relationships across those divides, but there's a lot of shots taken. There's a lot of, I wouldn't say bad blood, but there's definitely a feeling. There's some bad feelings sometimes. So I don't see that as being an imminent partnership. At the same time, I do think that when we watch what's playing out in the United States, the polarization and the sense on the part of progressive voters that they're kind of terrified of what conservative means now, whether it's Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy. They're looking at Republicans and saying these are not George and Jeb and George Bush senior.

These are these are different characters. And that can produce some coalescence among progressive voters. It doesn't look like it's doing much of that right now in the United States, but there's a greater prospect that it could in Canada. If Pierre Poliev becomes seen as somebody who's kind of more cut from the cloth of Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, for example, you could see a situation develop where if the conservatives enter an election campaign 10 or 12 points ahead, which is kind of where they're at now, as far as I can tell,

where those progressive parties start to get pretty serious pretty quickly about how do we counter that. And that leads you to this kind of initiative no question about it okay good conversation i i i'll just say i asked that question because sometimes people get tempted to think oh my god it could you know things can are going to get so bad for us we've got to make a deal we've got to go behind the scenes and make a deal somehow um to save what's left of this party or parties. And when one side seems to have an enormous lead at the moment through the summer, 10, 12 points, talking federally again, you get sometimes you get some of that panic.

But it's worth remembering, as you've pointed out before, that the Liberals were down to 40 seats in the 1984 election. And nobody could believe they would ever come back, that that was the end of the Liberal Party. Well, 10 years later, they were in a majority position, back in power. Conservatives, 93, down to two seats. Two seats. I know, but you say that as though 10 years is just a moment in time, which, of course, in the life of the country, I guess it is. But for those liberals for 10 years, that didn't feel like it was nothing. It felt like it was something. And I think the, you know, I can't help but look at this election,

as we've discussed before. You know, Mr. Harper won his election. Kudos to him for it. But I don't think he won an election because people fell in love with the conservative party and Stephen Harper. I think they got tired of the Liberals. And I do think that Pierre Polyev is doing a pretty good job of making people understand that what he is trying to be is a voice for working class Canadians. And I'm choosing my

words carefully there because I don't know that he is that, but I think that is what he's doing strategically is saying, the other guy says he's the middle class voice. I'm the middle class voice. He's a guy who's an elite. And I think he's more effective at doing that than Andrew Scheer was. I think he's more effective at doing it than Stephen Harper was. I think he's more effective at doing it than Aaron O'Toole was. And I think that for the liberals, the story of that Harper win is one that they should bear in mind, that people will vote for somebody who's changed if they really want change, and they'll overlook some flaws if they really want change and they'll overlook some flaws if they really want change. And so liberals have their work cut out for them.

Didn't Polly have just called Trudeau a Marxist. So I guess he didn't call him a Marxist. Yeah. He's an elite Marxist, I guess then. Yeah. He said that both Trudeau's father and son were, were Marxists. And you know, I mean, I think that the truth is that there's probably a lot of people who go, I don't know who Marx was and I don't know why I should hate it. But it speaks to the things that go on when politicians are more reckless about the risks that they put. I think I tweeted about it or whatever you say that we're doing now on Twitter. You X'd about it. X'd about it. It's

like burning down the house that you want to live in. And there's a lot of it now. And I don't like it. I don't think it's good for the long term i think it's part of the uh the massive problems that we've got ourselves into but there's no question that pierre pauliev is is ready and willing uh to play the game that way and i don't know that the liberals have shown a similar um appetite uh for going into the corners hard, to use a hockey metaphor. And they probably need to do more of that. So do the Leafs. So do the Leafs need to go into the corners.

Leafs need everything. Let's be honest. Another five-year rebuilding plan. Great conversation to open season four for this episode of Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. You've been listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, or on your favorite podcast platform,

or you've been watching on our YouTube channel. And we thank all those who watch us on YouTube. The numbers have been pretty impressive. And we get the odd comment. In fact, we get a lot of odd comments. If you go and look at the comments, just bear in mind that everybody gets a lot of these kinds of comments on these social platforms now. I've stopped. I've stopped looking at them.

I certainly don't look at the ones that don't have a name, like have some kind of funny, weird phrasing for a name. But anyway, enough with that. Thanks for this, Bruce. We'll see you back on Friday with Chantel for a good talk. Tomorrow it's your turn and the Random Ranter. And the Random Ranter this week is going to talk about housing. So we'll see what he has to say,

whether he has a solution to the housing situation. Can't wait. Can't wait is right. So that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge with Bruce Anderson. Thanks for listening. And we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.