The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Deep Fake is Deep Trouble

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Our weekly chat with Bruce Anderson with disinformation the topic at hand. More examples, some quite sophisticated, are having an impact and the question centre stage is how to deal with it. And also ...some thoughts about where to look for leadership on the world stage.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just one month away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. Smoke, mirrors, and the truth. Bruce Anderson is coming right up. And hello once again. Wednesday means Bruce Anderson, as you know, and Bruce is in Ottawa today. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. I guess we're all still in shock and probably will be for some time about what happened over the weekend.
Starting point is 00:00:39 What fits into our discussion is this whole issue of, well, smoke mirrors and the truth is disinformation. And we're seeing that play out. We talked about it yesterday, some on the Canadian angle about, you know, whether or not there'd been a G7 meeting when in fact there'd never been a G7 meeting. It'd been this quaint meeting of the five nations that had nuclear issues attached to them of which Canada is not a member.
Starting point is 00:01:11 There was the issue about the Canadian embassy and as I said yesterday, there is no doubt, there is absolutely no doubt that some people did end up with a voicemail. Now, whether that was just problems with the phone system at the embassy in Israel or not, that appears to be what it was, and that's fine.
Starting point is 00:01:32 But nevertheless, there was some confusion around that issue and some disinformation around that issue as the opposition party tried to play it for whatever they thought it was worth, both those issues. But the bigger disinformation question may well relate back to Mr. Musk, Elon Musk, and X, formerly known as Twitter. Do you want to leap into this? Yeah, there's a lot to go around in terms of concerns about this. I think what we've known for some time, Peter, is the potential for large numbers of people to be terribly misled, intentionally misled by bad actors was there. What we're seeing in real time right now is that when you have a crisis, when the risk of really hot takes in a really dangerous world escalates, we don't seem very equipped as a society or maybe even more broadly
Starting point is 00:02:36 as a civilization to protect ourselves from the negative effects of that. Now, that's a pretty bleak way to start this conversation today, but I don't find that there's much good news out there around this. I think the latest piece that I was reading this morning was about a letter from the European Commissioner or a European Commissioner to Elon Musk saying that they had been reviewing the content that had been shared on X or Twitter, as most people still call it, I think, about the situation in Israel and Gaza, and had found a number of instances where there was misinformation, disinformation. And the EU has the power to fine Musk very significantly, I think 6% of revenues.
Starting point is 00:03:29 And so it's a pretty clear shot across his bow to get control of the platform to deal with it, the situation that the EU is describing. And of course, in the midst of all of that, Elon Musk had been tweeting about information on sites that are known for hosting disinformation in the past. So in the earlier world, the pre-X world, we all saw legacy media, what are called legacy media now, provide us with pictures and commentary and analysis of what's going on. That's still happening, but it feels to me like it's being swamped by these online platforms distributing pieces of content, which are intended, it seems, to give people false information and to excite animosity, hostility, outrage. And it's not at all clear where it's coming from or how many different sources it's coming from or how many different agendas are being played into. But it's certainly taking a very dangerous and volatile situation and making it more dangerous, I think. There's such a mix of disinformation, misinformation, and just outright garbage on some of the social media channels.
Starting point is 00:04:58 I guess we each have to come up with our own way of of dealing with that i mean i get asked at a lot of you know speeches uh and and public events just the other day i was at one where i was asked again like what do we do how do we deal with this and i i you know i'm never quite sure how to answer it you can't just say ignore it don't you know like don't read it or get off Twitter or threads or whatever it is you use. Because they actually do provide comments that I see on, occasionally see, because I just stopped looking at a lot of this crap. But I do read the stuff that comes in to me from listeners to the podcast or to the SiriusXM edition, and it's pretty good.
Starting point is 00:06:03 It's pretty constructive. I don't agree with it all the time. They certainly don't agree with me, but it's thoughtful in terms of what's written. It's not from an angle or a deliberate angle or an angle to try and spread disinformation. But I'm not sure what the advice is here. I'm not even sure myself what the best route to follow
Starting point is 00:06:31 in terms of dealing with social media and trying to prevent disinformation from crawling into our headspace. I mean, like, what do you do? Yeah, well, look, I mean, I am a person who relies on X as a source of news. So it's a real hazard in the sense of if I trusted everything I saw, I'd be trusting a lot of stuff that isn't true. On the other hand, as a way for people who are interested in current events and in the moment information, it's better than turning on CNN. There is more information flowing more quickly from a variety of different sources and perspectives
Starting point is 00:07:18 than you can get anywhere else. Some people will say they prefer Facebook, but I'm not sure that Facebook, I'm not sure Facebook has as many downside risks as X does, but I also think X has more information coming at me more quickly. Now, what do I try to do? I try to look at the author of a piece of content or a tweet and say, well, do they have an interest in giving me the accurate information? Or they potentially have an interest in giving me inaccurate information? Good example was Pierre Poliev tweeting about this meeting of the countries that are known as Quint. Maybe he didn't know what that meeting was or what that group was or the background to it and the fact that all of the countries in there share in common the fact that they either have nuclear weapons or they host nuclear weapons, American nuclear weapons, on their soil.
Starting point is 00:08:24 And, of course, if you're President Biden and you want to send a signal to Iran, and your particular signal is, we have nukes, and we know you have nukes, and you're maybe thinking about or threatening about using them, but understand we're alert to this. That's what I interpret it. So if I'm somebody who's not putting a skeptical lens on what Pierre Pauliev said, which is that these countries met and Justin Trudeau was left out of the conversation and attempt to kind of embarrass the liberal leader,
Starting point is 00:09:00 I might believe, okay, this is another example of Canada maybe losing some stature on the stage. Well, so applying that lens of, do I really think Pierre Polyev has a personal agenda here, a political agenda? That's helpful. Another example for me would be Alex Panetta, a journalist that we've talked about before and admire his work. Alex was one of the first to raise the question when this communique came out, why wasn't Canada involved? Now, to his credit, he dug around on it a little bit, more information came out, and he took down his tweet and he acknowledged that he took down his tweet so trusting the platform that he works for is an important thing for me cbc i believe that that's an organization which on
Starting point is 00:09:54 most days tries to get it right um no i shouldn't say that that way on most days gets it right on all days tries to get it right. But there's no question that there's a ricochet effect when somebody puts something in the marketplace that's kind of exciting, that's stimulating, that causes rage. You and I exchanged a clip about Keir Starmer, the UK labor leader. And in this clip, which more than a million people saw in a very short period of time, it was apparent that the voice of Keir Starmer in conversation with his staffers was bullying and berating them and cursing them out. And it now appears that that wasn't him, that that was artificial intelligence generated content meant to spoil the moment at which he came forward with a major speech, kind of a defining speech for the next year or so.
Starting point is 00:11:06 And I think people looking at that are kind of wondering, well, how are we going to keep things like that from unduly affecting our political choices? And I think the answer is, we don't know. We don't really have the ideas. We don't have the consensus on how to do it. Part of it is ethical. Part of it is technological. And the ability of the bad actors to outrace the good actors is pretty clear every day. Let me make a couple of points. First, just to go back a bit on the Five Nations thing, what's known as QUINT. I'd never heard of them before. I'd never heard of that organization,
Starting point is 00:11:50 and I don't think it's commonly talked about. We don't talk about it like we talk about NATO or NORAD or the UN. G7, right. G7, G20. QUINT, it's a new one. It's a new one for me anyway. That's that. The Keir Starmer thing, I think, is really interesting for us to talk about for a minute.
Starting point is 00:12:13 Because Starmer, who's, as you said, the Labour leader in Britain, who's enjoying at the moment about a 20-point lead in the public opinion surveys for the next election in Britain over the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak. So this is, you know, remember what we used to call, it sounds kind of quaint now, the dirty tricks campaigns. Remember, you know, Nixon ran them in 72. Wag the dog, yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:43 Wag the dog through the Clinton years and, you know, and the Reagan years. These things, you know, they were not very subtle, but they had a real impact on the politics of the day. Well, we're into a whole new era now because of AI. And I'll give you credit, as I so often do. I think it was almost a year ago or more where you said, we've got to watch how this is going to impact.
Starting point is 00:13:21 We were having one of our discussions about AI, and you said, we've got to watch how this is going to impact. We were having one of our discussions about AI and you said, we've got to watch how this is going to impact politics in many parts of the world, including the US and Canada. And in fact, it's starting to do that. This is the first example in Britain
Starting point is 00:13:39 of what they call deepfake, using AI to basically alter the, not alter the voice, but alter the speech of a leading politician to make him sound like he didn't sound in terms of what he was saying, not the actual quality of his voice. But apparently very easy to do.
Starting point is 00:14:04 Now, that came from somewhere. Was it just a, you know, was it something done outside of the political arena or was it something done inside the political arena by the dirty tricks campaigners of their day? Are people working on similar kinds of things in our country? South of the border, you know,, I can't believe they're not. I'm sure they are because the technology exists, and apparently it's not that hard to use.
Starting point is 00:14:34 The question of whether to pull the trigger and actually use it in a campaign is probably taken at a whole different level than those who are making this stuff up. But now it's there. It's in play. We've seen it happen in Britain. How soon we end up seeing it happen here if we not have already seen it happen. But as you warned us a year ago, this could have a real damaging effect on the political debate inside the political arena in our country just as easily as it did in Britain. Yeah, yeah. Look, I think there's
Starting point is 00:15:18 two categories of concern from my standpoint, and I'm really just beginning to kind of understand the different dimensions of this. And I'm spending more and more time trying to figure it out. One is what, you know, people might call misinformation or disinformation, where different stakeholders or platforms or organizations are pushing information into the market that they believe is true, even though it isn't, or that they know isn't true, but they want people to kind of consume it. You know, a good example for me is this whole kerfuffle about whether the embassy in Israel was open or closed, working or not working. And in the world of hot takes, when people are kind of angry and stressed, and their ability to kind of take a piece of information from an MP, Melissa Lansman,
Starting point is 00:16:15 that says 100 people contacted my office and said that the embassy is not working. You asked me what's the advice that I try to follow. I would read something like that and say, well, I don't intuitively believe that nobody was working at the embassy. I can't imagine that the phone lines there would be overwhelmed. I can't imagine that the way that the federal government approached it would be to have an incident response line, a 1-800 number, essentially, back in Ottawa, where they have a whole team whenever there's a crisis that can handle the large volume of information and provide a single point of entry, which they used X and other platforms, I guess, to try to get out.
Starting point is 00:17:07 But so there was a whole bunch of misinformation and disinformation about that. Some of it, I think, intentionally dishonest. Some of it, I think, just people being worried and expressing their frustrations and their concerns. And the challenge for government is people don't want to wait an hour, four hours a day, half a day to get the information. Just like right now, the government has said, we're going to send CAF planes and we're going to bring people out who need to come out. I can imagine that today these platforms are going to be filled with
Starting point is 00:17:39 what time are the planes coming? And I have some empathy for people in government who are trying to figure these things out and move at the fastest speed that they can. So that's a whole area of commotion and chaos that is much harder for institutions and politicians. And it will be just the same if the conservatives win the election. They'll be faced with the same set of dynamics. And so it isn't really a partisan thing. It's more we need to kind of wrap our heads around the instinct for hyper fast reaction, both on the part of an audience and on part of the institutions that we're talking about. But then AI comes along and takes what the bad actors want to do and kind of adds a nuclear energy level component to it. Just makes it possible for a bad idea to become a dangerous idea much more quickly, much more pervasively. And you kind of lump into that the fact that what we would have counted on
Starting point is 00:18:47 in the past is a world order where the leading countries in the world would all get together and say, we can't do this. We're now staring at the prospect of potentially another Donald Trump presidency. And just this week, he was giving a speech, I think it was in New Hampshire. And he was talking about this conspiracy theory of Barack Obama really being the president right now. Because there was some video clip of Obama a few years ago, deadpanning with Stephen Colbert, saying, you know, in an ideal world, ideal world i'd you know there'd be an earpiece in the in the president's ear and i'd just call the shots and nobody would know well trump has turned that into uh a theme in his speeches and dollars to donuts there are people
Starting point is 00:19:40 out there who go i knew that was happening i I knew that Biden wasn't the real president, that Obama is. Last point, you know, you and I have seen third party candidates in the US political system in the past. People like Ross Perot. I think there was a guy named John Anderson. They all come from a kind of a quirky, slightly off-center point of view. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I saw a poll yesterday or a series of polls that had him as a third-party candidate, maybe with as much as 15, 17, 19% of the vote. Now, his whole campaign is based on anti-vax, I would consider it disinformation. We probably have some listeners who will find that obnoxious
Starting point is 00:20:36 in terms of their own perspective on vaccines. But his campaign seems to be built on the fact that he has that famous name, even though his siblings, as you have seen, put out a statement the other day when he announced that he was going to be a third party candidate and said, we don't agree with him on any of this. He does share our name, but not our values. But it's a sign of the times that a third party candidate has risen to prominence based on the disinformation effects of the anti-vax movement and has the potential to really disrupt the U.S. political situation. And so when we look around the world for those institutional, political, geopolitical guardrails, it's hard to see where they're going to be. And we need conservatives in this country to work together with liberals and new Democrats to keep this from becoming a bigger problem in our society. We don't need them.
Starting point is 00:21:40 We don't need any party in Canada to try to profit from the opportunity that artificial intelligence brings to political advantage. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to pick up more on this question because I think it's really interesting and it's, well tense period of politics in a number of different countries, including ours, where a lot of this is going to come into play and have an impact on the way we think, what we do, what we say, how we vote. All has that potential. So we'll talk about all of that when we come back. Recording in progress. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. And you're listening to Smoke Mirrors and the Truth,
Starting point is 00:22:50 the Wednesday episode of The Bridge. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. And normally, you would have been watching, some some of you on our YouTube channel, but I forgot to push the button on the first half of our program today. And so we're just getting the second half of it on our YouTube channel.
Starting point is 00:23:16 If you're watching this on the YouTube channel, know that the first half, a really good discussion, is available on our podcast platform and you can download it to hear it but you get to to watch us now uh for the second half which is still on the same issue of disinformation and misinformation um conspiracy theories how to handle it all uh in a period of well we call this program smoke mirrors and the truth and all in a period of, well, we call this program Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, and there's a lot of it in all of this. And it does come back to that question.
Starting point is 00:23:56 You know, we've had Michelle Rempel-Garner, as you know, Bruce, on this program a number of times in the last six months, talking about the work that she and her colleagues from all parties are trying to do in determining how ai is going to be kind of monitored even regulated in canada and whether there should be certain you know safety precautions put in, especially on the political front, as you head in towards election campaigns. And I'm not sure how that would work, how that would even be monitored, if in fact that was the direction we ended up going.
Starting point is 00:24:41 There is such a thing in Britain, but didn't seem to prevent what happened on Keir Starmer. So I don't know. Where's your head on that? Yeah, we certainly learned from the effort that was made in the last election to monitor and report on the Chinese interference question. We learned that we are nowhere near where we should be in terms of the ability to spot these efforts and nowhere near where we need to be in terms of the ability to have a public discussion. In effect, and I don't think this was the intention behind the way that that effort was designed. But I think it was designed to keep from talking about interference unless the authorities who were looking at the evidence were convinced that interference was so don't elevate something so that it becomes a political issue in and of itself if it's not going to have a material impact.
Starting point is 00:26:03 But the problem with that approach is, well, who gets to decide what's a material impact? And what if we don't talk about this more? What if more people don't become more anxious that they're being misinformed, that they're being told lies, that they're being convinced of things that aren't true or perhaps relevant to their concerns? The potential to do that is much greater, much more quickly than it ever has been before. And we have a chasm in terms of policy in the area of politics. And what are we going to do about it? And will we talk about it or will we not talk about it? And I think given that we have minority government in Ottawa, we could have an election at any time. And I don't think we're better equipped to deal with this issue than we
Starting point is 00:26:53 were in the last election. And we were poorly equipped to deal with it then. So we do need politicians like Michelle Rample-Garner and others to step forward, to use their share of voice, to call attention to this risk, and to try to come up with solutions that won't be perfect, that won't be agreed to by everybody, but at least will represent a more significant and useful starting point than what we have right now, which for most reasonable people, if they're paying any attention to this, is quite worrisome and it should be worrisome. Do you think they care?
Starting point is 00:27:37 I mean, there's so much on the plate right now in terms of issues that should be, and not necessarily are, but should be dominating the discussions that take place in Ottawa either around the cabinet table or around the caucus table or in the House of Commons. Yeah, I got the sense, I certainly got it from the first time we talked to Michelle Rempel, which was about six or seven months ago, that it just, A, there wasn't a lot of knowledge on the part of the 330 whatever MPs in those comments about AI and the impact it could have, the bad impacts that it could have. And while there's more now than there was then in terms of knowledge,
Starting point is 00:28:22 there still doesn't seem to be a front burner issue. No, it's not. It's not a front burner issue. There is work going on in the background in government. I think that's good. I think that, but I think there's a difference between public policy, the role of government and artificial intelligence, which is a big and important set of subjects, and the combat of politics. The combat of politics is not going to be easily regulated through broad public policy. The federal government is seeing just how difficult it is to get across the finish line with some of the bills that they put in place or been trying to put in place for several years. Now, I don't think those bills are particularly well designed. I also think that the initial design gets dated very quickly.
Starting point is 00:29:18 So now you've got a situation where the government is being accused, I think quite falsely, of trying to censor what people can traffic as information on the internet. I don't think that's right. I think it's disinformation. I think it's deliberate disinformation. But I also understand that the level of trust of anybody in this area is not what it should be or used to be or needs to be in order for people to say, okay, put in some policies that help protect us all and help create a conversation that's safe and productive for us. People won't agree about that. I had people on Twitter. I'm going to keep calling it Twitter because I don't know why it would be called X.
Starting point is 00:30:03 It doesn't make any sense to me. But last night, we were kind of debating kind of ridiculous things. And it just reminded me of this poll that we did a little while ago. And you'll remember this. I think that 20% of Canadians don't think that humans landed on the moon, that there's lots of people who have come to believe things that aren't true. Politicians know this. They see the evidence. But to your point, they've got so many other things on their to-do list. And it's not clear that if you did care about this, what you could do about it. It's almost like everybody is looking around the world and saying, well, somebody please come up with an idea that we can hang our hats on. And maybe that will happen over time. I feel like it was easier to imagine that it will happen before what I generally think of
Starting point is 00:31:02 as the world order seemed to be breaking down. But it's also true that at the end of the day, the question of whether or not you can legislate or regulate ethical behavior is a pretty open question. You can try. You should try in some cases. But if people want to do unethical things and don't feel any sanction for doing those, this is the point for politicians, I think, then they will. So I think we need to make sure that we have a good read on the technology, good ideas on the
Starting point is 00:31:43 regulatory side, and we need a conversation about ethics that is a kind of recurring conversation where people keep on reminding themselves that if everybody chose to do the unethical things that were available to them to press the argument that they believe in, we'd all end up in a pretty, pretty sorry place. You know, I'm, I was at the University of Toronto yesterday, the Munk School, with John Ibbotson, who's got a new book out called The Duel, which is about, it just came out yesterday, and I was interviewing him in front of an audience about this new book.
Starting point is 00:32:22 And The Duel is about the Diefenbaker-Pearson years, basically the 10th decade of Canadian politics from the kind of mid-50s to the mid-60s. And I really recommend it. It's a fascinating book. I grew up during that period, thought I knew it pretty well, but there's lots in this book that I hadn't realized. But one of the things I was looking at was the kind of issues they were both,
Starting point is 00:32:51 these men, which is really the only period in Canadian political history where there have been basically two dynamic personalities on either side of the house who were right through that period, that decade. And, you know, both had their time in office as prime minister, both had their time in office as opposition leaders. But you looked at the issues of the day and the way they, in fact, changed Canada as a result of their positions on different issues. But I look at that, and then I look at what we're going through today,
Starting point is 00:33:29 and I look at a picture of Trudeau and Polyev and Singh together, and I wonder, like, why would anybody even want to try and lead right now? Because there's such an array of issues on the table. I mean, look at it. You've got, just in the recent weeks, you've got the Canada-India issue. You've got the guy in the house issue. Now you've got a Middle East war going on against all the other things that are constants in our lives right now a housing crisis unlike anything we faced before um inflation food prices grocery prices uh you got a war in ukraine you've got
Starting point is 00:34:14 an uneasy uh segment of the population that uh demonstrate and you know, truck convoys and anti-vax and this and that and the other. There are so many issues in front of the political leaders of the day. And they seem to change like you're watching a pinball machine, right? It just sort of, one bounces off the other, one day you're on this, the next day you're on that, and they're totally separate, and nothing seems to be getting resolved. It's sort of like a crisis of issues. No matter who you are, which side you're on, nothing seems to be happening. Now, people would say, okay, this is a time for real leadership.
Starting point is 00:35:15 People have to step forward, deal with these issues one by one or a number at a time. Sometimes I get carried away with the moment and not realize that, sure, there have been moments like this before. But, man, I can't think of anywhere there were so many, so many, you know, didn't mention a bunch, you know, climate change, energy prices, all of this. There's a lot of stuff there. There's a lot of stuff there. There's a lot of stuff. And one of the things that I think is kind of unique in all of that is that for most of my life, maybe all of it, the role that the United States played in kind of modulating, organizing conversations. It wasn't always perfect. It wasn't always right. It wasn't always appropriate. But it was always there.
Starting point is 00:36:13 And you kind of understood America to be a mostly stabilizing force, an authority that could bring parties together to try to reduce tensions, to try to point the world in a safer direction. Now, even as I say that, I sound like I'm kind of glorifying the past role of the United States. But really, the point I'm trying to make is that right now, the rest of the world looks at the United States, if they're paying close attention, as a bit of a failed democracy. It's got two competitors for the highest office,
Starting point is 00:36:56 neither of which is well regarded by the broad public, both of whom are seen as past their prime, to put it nicely. And in the case of Trump, for many people, he's not just past his prime, he's just unfit for office by any measure. Of course, we've got other people who think he's the savior of the world and the savior of America. But what does that mean in the end? Well, right now we're seeing the Trump effect, which isn't really about him so much personally, although he's been the leader of it. But it's been about this idea that you can say the most outrageous thing and people will gravitate towards it if they have enough sense of grievance. say it in a way that feels familiar and resonant to them. And so the Republicans in Congress can't figure out who their leader is going to be because they can't figure out whether they want to try to play a more, I don't even want to say moderate, because I don't think you could look at McCarthy and say that he was really a moderate, but more moderate or you want a more disruptive and radical voice where
Starting point is 00:38:07 america is constantly faced with a new deadline about whether or not it's going to fund the functions of government you've got vacant positions across the top ranks of the military because one senator is holding up the process by which those positions would be filled. Even in the context of this conflagration in the Middle East, he's saying, no, I'm not going to back down. I'm not going to let the president appoint senior officials to the military. And his party seems powerless to rein this guy in. You've got a sense that there's no ability to kind of control the dialogue or to steer the dialogue to a safe place. And you've got a majority of Americans now saying, and a large majority of Republicans saying,
Starting point is 00:39:01 let's not send any more money to Ukraine, which is exactly, I'm sure, what Putin has been waiting for, expecting to happen, and will now be taking advantage of. So I know I've just added to the list of headaches that you described, but for me, the shakiness of NATO caused by the United States, the shakiness of NATO caused by the United States, the shakiness of the world order caused by kind of a breakdown in the U.S. political consensus of how to deal with Russia, how to deal with China, how to deal with their own internal divisions.
Starting point is 00:39:41 We need steadying leadership here in Canada. From whatever side of the aisle, we need steadying leadership here in Canada from whatever side of the aisle, we need steadying leadership and we need people not to be trying to provoke divisions for the sake of political advantage. And I hope we get it. Who's the great leader out there right now? I'm not talking about just Canada or the United States or anywhere. Like on the stage, there's always been at least one, if not more than one of the international leaders
Starting point is 00:40:14 you kind of look up to and say, that's a leader. Right? I'm not sure you got that anymore. I mean, you got Netanyahu who has been around forever, is facing corruption trials, is facing a divided country on the issues of change he wants to make to the judiciary, basically to save his own hide. Now trying to lead a country and a government made up of all sides through a
Starting point is 00:40:49 terrible situation. But I couldn't tell you the name of the German leader after Angela Merkel. I probably should know that, but I can't because it hasn't had an impression upon me yet. Britain's been in turmoil for some time on the leadership front. America is America. Yeah, no, I think there is no obvious answer to your question. There isn't. you were saying this before, but it's hard to imagine why people who have a reasonable life and some accomplishments outside of politics would decide to step into politics now. But we need people create a better blend of criticism, constructive criticism, and acceptance of the fact that they're doing jobs that are difficult.
Starting point is 00:41:55 And that sometimes they need to make choices that aren't perfect. And that compromise isn't, you know, a bad idea. Usually it's what our democracies are built to try to do. And so, you know, in my spare time, I do try to encourage more people to get involved in politics and to help create a next generation of leaders. And I know you do the same thing too, but we all need to take a pause
Starting point is 00:42:27 in the relentless criticism of people in public life, regardless of what side of the aisle they're on, unless they're bad actors, in which case we need to call them out. We need to make sure that it's a safe and more productive place for people who are trying to do a good job. Okay. We're going to leave it at that, at least from the two of us. I know that many of you out there will have views on the various things we've discussed today. So drop me a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.
Starting point is 00:43:00 Make sure you include your name and where you're writing from. Love to hear from you. Try and get them in today. We'll see what makes it on the Your Turn program tomorrow, along with the Random Ranter. And for those of you who are watching on YouTube, sorry, my fault, my bad, my incompetence, for not pushing the button on time to get the first half.
Starting point is 00:43:22 But once again, if you are watching and you saw the second half, you can get the first half on our podcast platform. So thank you, Bruce. Bruce will be back on Friday for a good talk with Chantal Hébert. I'll be back tomorrow with your turn. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in 24 hours.

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