The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Does The Right REALLY Believe That Trudeau Is More Evil Than Putin?

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Bruce Anderson and Smoke Mirrors and The Truth is all over the continuing fallout from the trucker's story.  From the US fascination with Justin Trudeau to the impact of Ukraine to the Conservative leadership race -- it's all here! 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, you know what that means. Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is with us from Ottawa's regular Wednesday spot here on Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on the bridge. And not surprisingly, lots to talk about as always. Why don't we start with Ottawa. Has the dust settled there yet? It's settling, Peter. I think definitely the the downtown area i think there's still checkpoints and there probably will be for a while but the downtown area feels safe and and uh the noise is

gone and the trucks are gone and businesses are allowed to reopen that's that's good i think the there's a fair bit of uh tension still in the air and people are watching these bail hearings for some of the leaders that were going on yesterday. And they're also pretty attentive to the idea that there are encampments. I think three of them, the mayor of Ottawa said yesterday on the outskirts of Ottawa, where some of the people who had been blockading or occupying downtown have set up their trucks. And, you know, one can only wonder what it is that they're there waiting to do.

But I think it's part of this kind of broader phenomena of people who believe somehow that they still have the ability to communicate with the governor general and ask for the dissolution of parliament and the firing of the prime minister and so on. So I think things are a lot better right now, but there's still some tension in the air for sure. What about the politics of it all? What's what about on the Hill? I, you know, I think that there's, there's been a certain sensitivity within the liberal ranks, I think, to how much they want to be in a debate about a measure like the Emergencies Act. Really, it sort of feels to

me that if you're constantly having a conversation about how authoritarian and dramatic was your action, that's not a winning political strategy. But I don't think that is a very big risk right now. It does sound as though the effort to freeze assets and bank accounts is going to be ratcheted back fairly quickly. The timeframe for keeping these measures in place was never intended to be longer than 30 days. So that will probably pass pretty quickly, depending on what happens again with these encampments. So I don't think that there's that much tension around the law, even though saying that I kind of have this fear of all of the incoming on Twitter of people saying the law is horrible. And how can you say there's not that much tension around it, but I'm really just talking, you know, with you about what I think is the political climate here. I think there is a real deeply unsettled feeling among people who

are in and around politics about the one kind of giant lingering issue, which is what did we see happen here? How did this come to be? And that's not really just about policing and the parliamentary precinct and whether that should be closed off to traffic in the future, which I think it should. But really, the thing that Andrew Coyne touched on so well in his column today, which is the role of misinformation and disinformation and how quickly it can turn into something that really it looks like it puts democracy in peril and it's not just happening here we see it happening in other parts of the world but we had a pretty much a front row seat here of that we did and there were a lot of people watching and they weren't just watching from here

they were watching from outside of canada as it made you know kind of headlines around the world nowhere quite like the headlines that's been making uh in the u.s especially on the part of the the american right and the conservatives in amer. Some of the headlines, and I'm just pulling one up here right now, in the Daily Beast today, Matt Lewis, who's a well-known writer for the Daily Beast and pretty well respected, he's got great contacts inside

different political parties in the U.S., both Republicans and Democrats. different political parties in the u.s and both republicans and democrats the headline he's got today is twisted conservatives feel trudeau is more evil than putin seriously you know really um right now with putin and you and a couple hundred thousand Russian troops either ringed around Ukraine or inside Ukraine, and seemingly to some we're on the verge of a potential world war as he invades a sovereign nation. But he's less evil than Trudeau for having done the emergencies act it you know it's a it's quite a story watching what the republicans are going through in the u.s and listen to this you know most of this has been pushed by uh you know fox news uh not surprisingly this was either i think last night it's either last night or uh or monday night on right that they're not allowing some of these

i'll just back her up for a second uh this is candace owens was on the um was on fox news talking about trudeau listen to this short 20 seconds right that they're not allowing some of these people the main leaders out of prison and they're really trumped up charges that really mean absolutely nothing except you've messed with the state and now you're going to face the consequences something that you might see by the way under the reign of somebody like i don't know adolf hitler joseph stalin all these things that they keep calling us is exactly what they're guilty of. I love the fact that she used the term trumped up charges. She managed to get Trump into that 18 seconds.

But this is the kind of stuff that's going out there about Canada and about Trudeau. And I know there are strong feelings and you indicated already just a few moments ago, some of the discomfort within the Liberal Party over being painted in a certain way over the use of the Emergencies Act. Well, this, though, really goes to the extreme. You know, more evil than Putin compares to Hitler? Yeah, look, I think that there are two issues that are linked there, but a little bit separate. So one issue for sure is this mischaracterization of the Emergencies Act

as this incredible overreach. Now, people can debate that, and I think there's a reasonable debate to be had. But the idea of equating it with some of the things that are, you know, Dean Allison, a conservative MP, said, authoritarian military-style measures carried out against peaceful protesters on the orders of Justin Trudeau, all being cheered on by the Ottawa and Toronto journalistic class, absolutely sickening. We've seen an editorial in the Wall Street Journal

written by a Canadian conservative, but given lots of profile. And as you said, the Candace Owens piece, the Russell Brand vlogs, these all reach millions of people. And they are definitely kind of feasting on this idea that Canada has turned into a totalitarian state. And it's absolutely ridiculous. Even if you don't like the freezing of accounts, even if you think there must have been some other measures that could have been taken without the introduction of that law,

what you're really arguing is, well, you should have done all of the things that you did, you just should have been able to do them without that law. So that's hardly the same as saying all of a sudden, we've turned into a totalitarian state. And it is a minority parliament. And parliament could have voted against the law. But it didn't because the New Democratic Party, not known as a party of totalitarians, decided to vote with the government on it. So there's that, which is just a reminder that the time that we live in is so marked by people exaggerating the difference that they want to demonize, that it seems like we can't have a kind of a reasonable debate about the substance of

some important issues. And then I guess the second thing is really how fast and how uncontrolled this information spreads and the degree to which it can become kind of accepted as fact by to put out a statement letting people know that all of the people who are calling her office to say they wanted to express a vote of no confidence in the government, that that isn't a thing. That that actually is not something that people can do. Until there's an election. Until there's an election, right? And I saw the prime minister, he looked almost pained that he had to explain. And I thought he did it in a civil way, not in an elitist sounding way,

but I'm sure that people who hate him think that he sounded elitist and like he was minimizing their point of view. But really, I think what he was expressing was a frustration that so many people in politics feel right now, which is that you can't have a reasonable conversation with people who've adopted a completely erroneous set of facts. And again, I really encourage everybody to read Andrew Coyne's piece today because it's so precisely compelling on that point. set of facts and again i really encourage everybody to read andrew coin's piece today because it's so

precisely compelling on that point and he calls out conservative politicians for trafficking in this he says they know who they are they know what they're doing they just don't care anymore um and i think that's a really important clarion call, especially from a small C conservative perspective like Andrews. You know, I'm wondering whether they do know what they're doing. Not from a, you know, a spin move, but from, you know, a change of ideology move. I mean, when you see what's going on in the states right now and the American right on the Republican side, and this is the party that under Ronald Reagan, you know, called the Soviet Union the evil empire, right?

And you just know that if Ronald Reagan was alive today and was able to talk about it, he'd be calling Russia an evil empire for what it's doing around Ukraine. There's no question about that. And so all his party would be, absolutely. Today, it's the reverse. And something's happened there

on the American right. And you can say it's good or bad. I mean, Trump was speaking last night and showing his usual... Eloquence. Eloquence in favor of his pal Putin. And Mike Pompeo was doing the same thing, the former CIA director, Secretary of State for trump i mean this is like a 180 of epic proportions at a time when the world is seemingly on the edge of a major conflict and they're siding with the conventional enemy yeah yeah i think called it genius genius sorry go ahead peter no i. My question is, okay, if that's what's going on on the American right,

is that what's going on on the Canadian right? What are they saying? Have they said anything of significance on the Ukraine situation? I've been watching for it, and so I don't want to go too far. I haven't seen anything, and it sort of, it fascinates me that that isn't more of things about the protests and that sort of thing from from conservatives and that they seem to feel like they've got a winning ticket i noticed this tweet this is from a couple of days ago by michael cooper an mp shutting down parliament police checkpoints freezing bank accounts without due process crushing peaceful protesters with the

full force of the state separating children from their parents welcome to justin trudeau's canada i think they think that that is a a rallying cry that will matter more to the people whose votes they don't want to lose to the people's party then let's talk about putin and parts of ukraine on the other side i see uh secretary blinken uh i listened to his news conference yesterday i thought he was uh thoughtful i thought he was articulate i thought his um the description that he made of a kind of a unified response by nato members was the sort of thing that feels to me like the world order that we've always counted on, that basically if somebody was encroaching upon the territory of a NATO ally, we all have agreed that we have an obligation to do it. But if you look at the Republicans and Trump saying act of genius and the Republican Party also tweeted out a picture of Biden

walking away from his podium after his remarks yesterday. I don't know if you saw this tweet, Peter, but the only words that are more alienated from the party, you know, offered the comment that this is really unusual in America, that you would have an act of disunity like that in a time like this. So, you know, I feel like I feel like we are going through a period where we're going to figure out whether the more populist nationalist and i kind of want to say fascist and authoritarian forces of conservative are going to win over the more kind of rational fact fact-based, institutional, law and order, peace and security-oriented conservatives. Right now, it looks like that first group is winning. It isn't clear how they're going to do in Canada, because there are fewer of them, and there are more progressive voters in Canada than in the United States.

But that's the fight that we're into. And when I think about the conservative leadership race but that's the fight that we're into and when I think about the conservative leadership race that's the fight that I think needs to be had too. Well I can just say from my experience of living in both central Canada and western Canada that if conservatives think that nobody cares about the Ukraine situation they better take a stronger look at their voter base. Because especially in the West, there's a considerable number who can point to their Ukrainian heritage. You know, I think of my old friend, good friend, close friend. I gave the eulogy at his funeral.

Reina Tishin, the former governor general of Ukrainian descent. He would be, right now, he would be apoplectic about what's happening in Ukraine. And equally apoplectic if he felt that his party, the conservative party, was abandoning that situation. Abandoning it in the sense that they don't think it's important enough to be talking about. And they're watching carefully to see how it plays out in the states between the Republicans and the Democrats. Anyway, as you said, the focus has all been on truckers. And so if they're saying much at all about ukraine

it's not getting a lot of play they put out one tweet about it in the last um five days the conservative party did and it basically was the trudeau government must act now and not repeat the same mistake they made in afghanistan and that's about getting people out yeah that's about getting people out that's literally the only one that i'm seeing in in the last four days um put out by the party as such put out by the party that's right so and there are many about the um you know the emergency stacked and the power grab and government overreach and also, you know, mixed in there some stuff on inflation, but mostly about the power grab and the overreach and the fact that the protesters have gone home and that sort of thing. And we saw, you know,

I want to be careful. I don't want you to get sued here. But we did see conservative MPs talking about people in their constituencies who they said had had their bank accounts frozen, you know, for making very small donations or buying a $20 T-shirt. And I thought it was interesting that the authorities didn't seem like want to really elevate the debate, but did want to push some information out saying it was extremely unlikely that that had happened. And again, I think it's part of this phenomena of if MPs are willing to put these things out, and I worked for an MP and you've known a lot of MPs. And the normal setting would be, are you going to go public with something like that? Or are you going to make sure that it's true before you do? And I worry that we're in a new zone

where people just kind of go, I can say this and it can travel the universe that I care about very quickly. It's not going to be fact-checked by journalists because I'm not saying it to journalists. I'm saying it to the interwebs. And it'll have the effect that i want it to have and i'll never have to apologize for it i'll never have to correct the record i'll never be held to account for the fact that it might not be true and take quick break i want to come back there's two things i

want to talk about one is the media and the other is, you mentioned the conservative leadership race. We'll do a little tease on that. We'll set us up for Friday's Good Talk when Chantal joins us. But first, this quick pause. And we're back. This is Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on The Bridge. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. And you're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

And as we always say, we're happier with us no matter how you're listening to us. All right. Two things on the media. always say we're happier with us no matter how you're listening to us um all right two things on the media one is kind of dovetails to what we were talking about earlier all this attention canada's suddenly been getting uh venae menon from the toronto star read a great piece the other day i'll just read you the first couple of lines because it puts this sort of focus on Canada in some context. Here's what he says. One of the great things about Canada was that Americans never paid any attention to us. Canada stood quietly in the corner, sipping a Molson, a nibbling poutine,

as America dominated the cocktail party with narcissistic chest-thumping and navel-gazing. America was the prom queen. Canada was the nerd who helped with homework. America cared only about America, and Canada politely trudged forth in the shadow of a friendly and self-centered superpower. It was beautiful. Now these protesting truckers in Ottawa have screwed up the dynamic. America suddenly fixated on Canada, and what America sees is more America.

Fox News, the most watched cable news network, went live in 1996. Between then and about three weeks ago, I'm pretty sure the word Canada was mentioned maybe 14 times on air. Well, you heard a little earlier how often it's getting mentioned and in what context today. Now, listen to this. This is media-related, but it's in Canada. And John Doyle, Globe and Mail's entertainment television columnist, he's in there in the last 24 hours online at the Globe. entertainment television columnist.

He's in there in the last 24 hours online at the Globe. Let's read you two lines from it. And this is, you know, Vinay Menon's piece was great in terms of its partial humor, but it made you think. This is much, this goes right to the heart of the problem our first temptation might be to write off this appalling activity as a pathetic imitation of trump supporters and it surely is pathetic here's what he's talking about

the obnoxious act of screaming fake news and liar at a television reporter is about as dismally dumb as you can be. You could say it is learned behavior from watching too much TV coverage of American politics, in the same way that school bullies are believed to have learned from TV or video games that using violence and verbal abuse are the hallmarks of strength. It's also tempting to dismiss the bullying as an offshoot of misinformation. The protesters get their news and form opinions based on gibberish spewed on social media. Therefore, they attack legitimate news when they see the mainstream media in the flesh talking to a camera on the street. That's an easy excuse to reach for, since most of us never really encounter the full blast of misinformation.

I know you feel strongly about this issue, as all of us who are in the business of journalism obviously feel strongly about it, but some of the scenes we saw on the weekend, the yelling and screaming and the abuse of journalists, including spitting on them, is, you know, John says it's a little too easy to point to social media, but the non-traditional media and the impact it's having

over the traditional media is something that should concern us all. Yes. The distinction I'm making increasingly, I'm trying to kind of use the not characterize fact-based media trying to do a good job and doing, in many cases, an extremely good job of reporting exactly what was going on and exactly the amount of misinformation, exactly the amount of kind of frenzied harassment that they felt and doing it while becoming maybe more aware than they ever imagined that they would be of what it's like to observe firsthand the effects of disinformation. And I, you know, I don't know how many times I kind of went back to that the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump. Do you remember this? When the whole thing was about, was this the largest crowd ever?

And they had his press secretary showing kind of faked up pictures of how many people there were. And that really, that wasn't the start of Trump's all-out war to diminish the credibility of the mainstream media, the fact-based media. But it was the beginning of the effort when he was in the White House, and it continued ever since. And it has become a huge, I would say, creeping issue, except that now it's kind of rolling. And I definitely feel like we saw some great journalism from not just one or two people, but from dozens of people in the last several weeks. And I hope that they are supported by their organizations. And I hope that somehow we find a business model that supports those organizations better in the future.

Because if we didn't have that, that, you know, people believe that, that what people think about our democracy and how it works in many cases has no relationship with how it actually works. And, and, you know, if we have two generations of that effect where will we be at 15, 20 years from now, how will we be able to solve some of the important issues? How much of it is going to turn into a fight about the other, where some people feel as though they've given up something because other people have gained more rights,

which is part of what's going on here. The farmers, the tenders, the nurturers of this uh this phenomena they're not just pushing kind of false narratives because they believe those false narratives they're pushing them because they kind of go i know the hot buttons that will work i know what will make somebody who fits this demographic feel angry because somebody else is getting something that they're not or that they've given up in order to to serve somebody else's purpose and you know that senator the conservative senator who um you know blathered on apparently a bit drunk although i'd hate to see him more than a bit drunk if that was a bit drunk he admitted admitted that, right? He said he'd had.

Yeah. Yeah. I think he said a bit drunk. I don't know if he, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and, and saying I wouldn't want to see him with one or two more drinks in him because that was pretty bad. The stuff that he was saying. And what was bad about it was people are entitled to their views and their interpretations of things, obviously, and I didn't agree with his, but there was a kind of a venomous aspect to it. And he was kind of right in the middle of this area where a lot of people had really experienced three weeks of feeling harassed, feeling threatened. And I saw Denise Batters,

that conservative senator, also saying it was a peaceful demonstration. And I think that there are people outside the Capitol who might hear that and go, yeah, that sounds right. And Justin Trudeau is an authoritarian. But it's not right. That's not how it was. And the journalists reporting on that was a critically important part of that reportage, in my view. I agree with you on that. I think there was a lot of really good journalism, not just in Ottawa, in Vancouver, in CPP, et cetera, in Windsor. On that day, it was mostly local reporters who were doing the coverage under pressure and being yelled at and being pushed around. And I thought they were really good.

And, you know, I wrote to more than a few of them in these different locations to tell them, you know, how... A lot of hostility and a lot of, you know, a lot of it really incivil and, you know, horrible stuff aimed at female journalists. And that's a giant problem that didn't start here and won't end here. And we need to do more to figure out how to stop that. But the lashing out and the vitriol towards journalists,

you know, people like Justin Ling, just doing a really good job of kind of getting underneath the hood of the information that we need to know. And so many others who've experienced it, I think is a really important takeaway. Hopefully it kind of, it conditions the way that journalism works to avoid the kind of the most clickbaity instinct. And I don't know if you read John Iverson's column yesterday where he was reflecting on a tweet that he had put out before and how he described the country as being divided into these two lunatic camps.

And, you know, I think he reflected subsequently on just how much pushback there was on his characterization of Canada. But I think his reflection was interesting because it kind of talked about when we use the language that feels most common in the social media atmosphere. It kind of seems like it works in social media terms because a lot of people pay attention to it. But what's the lingering effect? And is it a constructive one? Bigger issue, longer term issue, but definitely one that's at the heart of what we're experiencing now i think i do think that it's important to uh there there is a distinction to make when we talk

about the quality of um the coverage that was out there over these last few weeks uh and give praise where it's directed and and and draw the line about um with some of the agenda driven stuff on both sides of the border uh that was attached to the coverage of this story because there was some pretty brutal stuff in that area too. But in terms of not just mainstream, but some less than mainstream, whatever the term is for that, you know, good, solid stuff that added to Canadians' understanding of what was really going on.

And some of the, you know, the reporters are the ones who often get the people in front of the camera or the ones who often get the credit as they should. But the ones who are often forgotten are the you know the the people who are holding the camera or the microphone or the producer who's who's trying to steer things along in terms of safety um and guests did a great job under incredibly pressing circumstances let's remember uh peter i i know you probably want to wrap up in a minute, but let's remember that ostensibly these people who are coming to Ottawa as part of this convoy

and were expressing their outrage and their anger and being threatening to journalists and to regular citizens. Ostensibly, they were here because of a specific rule that was applied to a small subset of truckers going across the Canada-U.S. border, the same rule of which existed by the U.S. government. And when we sort of step back and say that's what caused this, it's really clear that that's not what caused this. That's not what this series of blockades was about.

It wasn't really even that much about the fatigue and the frustration with the COVID pandemic and the measures that were taken. It's really about what Bannon described in this long form interview that I watched again last night, which is that we no longer live in an age of persuasion, I think is how he put it. We live in an age of engagement, where the people who succeed are the people who can motivate people to act on their fears, on their frustrations, on their anger. And I don't think that's really been the norm in Canada. I think we have been largely a country where persuasion matters a lot. Engagement obviously matters a lot for political parties too but um and maybe in the conservative

leadership race and we'll see that uh being a critical issue okay i'll give you two minutes on the leadership race and and and here's the background to it uh the last time the conservatives were in a leadership race both pierre paliev and jean charé were talked about as they could run. They might run, and they'd be near the top of the results if they did run. As it turned out, Polyev decided against running, and Charest decided against running. This time around, Polyev is in the race, and there's increasing talk that Charest could get into the race.

And as a result, on the Charest thing, especially some of the, let's say, center-right, at least, are not happy with that situation. And are speaking out against Charest and calling him, you know, he's really a liberal. He's been both. He was liberal leader and premier in Quebec and he was conservative cabinet minister for Brian Mulroney. What's he going to do? You know Jean Charest. Do you know what he's going to do? And what do you make of the kind of action around him right now? I don't know what he's going minutes or less he was also the leader of the progressive conservative party um but i so i don't know what he's going to do i i i think he's indicated pretty clearly that he's quite interested in it uh which i think surprised some people because he was basically given the kind of the heisman uh by uh the conservative party the last time he he mooted his interest in it i hope he gets in i helped run his

leadership campaign against kim campbell which um for the fans of arcana uh you know he started out as a five percent candidate and finished very close to the top. Ms. Campbell beat him out and then went on to have a bad outing in the election and end up with only two seats. And Jean Charest was left to kind of rebuild the party as best he could in the subsequent years before going to Quebec. I think that, you know, what I'm seeing in a Charest candidacy is, first of all, there have been a number of voices, including some important conservative voices from Quebec, saying that they want him to run. They hope he runs, asking him to seriously consider running, which obviously is part of the buildup that you only do if you're really getting ready to do it.

I gather that the former B.C. Premier Christy Clark has said that she would support his candidacy. And people on behalf of Pierre Palliev, I guess Jenny Byrne is kind of using Twitter to attack Charest. The idea of Charest as a conservative candidate, which says they must think that it's a real possibility. And now there's a story out that Stephen Harper will enter the fray somehow to prevent Sharae from becoming conservative leader. I haven't read a whole lot more about it than that. So I want to be careful not to overstate what he has or hasn't said about that. But, you know, in a way, this is the fight that the conservative party had before Stephen Harper, you know, with Preston Manning doing his thing to the Brian Mulroney

party. And it's a fight that the conservatives need to resolve once and for all. And if there are some conservatives who don't ultimately feel welcome in a modern conservative party that's run by Pierre Pauliev or someone who kind of looks at the world more like he does, then that's probably opportunity for the liberals. But it'll be a fascinating race to watch. And all the more fascinating if somebody of Jean Charest's caliber, as somebody who understands public policy, experienced in government, and a great communicator in both languages. If he gets into that race, it'll be fascinating to watch okay we'll probably know more by friday on that front and friday of course is when chantelle a bear joins us from

montreal uh for good talk thanks bruce good conversation as always tomorrow's your turn your opportunity uh through your letters to get your say on some of these issues so don't be shy the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com i'm peter mansbridge in stratford for bruce in ottawa thanks for listening talk to you again in 24 hours