The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Five Days To Go

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

This is a lively and important discussion with Bruce Anderson on how to prepare for Monday night's election results. And also a good back and forth about whether the coverage the People's Party is getting, or not getting, is fair or unfair.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's election week. It's Wednesday. It's Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Tim Horton's Smile Cookie Week is back starting September 13th. For one week, the iconic chocolate chunk cookies topped with a pink and blue smile will be available at Tim Horton's restaurants across Canada. 100% of the proceeds from each Smile Cookie will be donated to local charities and community groups in each restaurant's neighborhood. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Smile Cookie campaign has raised more than $60 million for charities, hospitals,

and community programs across the country. Grab your Smile Cookie from September 13th to 19th, only at Tim Hortons. Love that Wednesday music. Love it. It signals Bruce. He's in Ottawa. Don't you just love that music too? You know, Peter, since last week, I've been really like i wake up every day i go how many sleeps till peter's book is available and then usually

you know that lasts for an hour and i go too many sleeps still it'll come and then i start thinking about the election so that's been helpful for me as a distraction from the stress I feel waiting on the book. But I know we're not here to talk about the book today. But if you did want to remind people that the book is coming, it would be okay. Really, it's just not right for me to say, you can find out all the details of the book at thepetermansbridge.com and you can pre-order and enter a contest. And I know you're given all these plugs because you expect that I'm going to

give you a free signed copy. No, just endorse my book, which I'm going to write. What's your book going to be called? I'm not saying yet. There'll be plenty of time to promote that down the road and, and it won't be a farming book, but farming will be part of it for sure. It's not going to be about, it's not going to be all about polling and all that.

Is it going to be like. No, it won't be. It won't be boring. And I won't sort of say, well, everybody wants to know every story that I can remember from my entire life. And I'll maybe write four or five books like that. I've just had a very interesting life. And yeah, no, I'm going to learn from what i've observed let me put it that way yeah but you've you've told us countless times what you've learned from what you've observed

you now want to put it in print as well well you keep saying it's such a cathartic exercise it is i'll assure you of that it is cath cathartic, and it's good fun. Okay, enough about books. Isn't this exciting? You know, we're like five days away. You know, this is like democracy is exciting, right? Well, yeah, it's exciting. It's a little stressful. You know, I kind of feel content, TV mix, radio.

And it felt like a national conversation. And I do think that over the years, especially since the Internet has become a big part of our lives, that it's harder to know exactly how many different conversations are going on that are going to affect things. And if you're in my line of work and, you know, literally you can go long stretches in between elections where people don't go, Bruce, tell us what you think is happening up there. You get a lot of that during an election and it's harder to know. And I'm not, you know, I've got a good friend. A lot of people know him who follow him on twitter voice

of i won't finish the sentence he's always ready to tell people exactly what's going to happen and i kind of i'm amused by it but you know my position is i think i see some things going on and i'll tell people what i think i see but i'm very much uh we'll see what happens and we don't know right now you know you talk about watching your first elections on on tv i remember watching my first canadian election on tv it was either 57 or 58 there was only one channel then and that was the cbc imagine living in a world with only the cbc right wow um but it was you know it was black and white they kind of anchored from i don't know some studio i think in ottawa charles lynch used to anchor the program

you know he wasn't a cbc employee as such he was you know he was he was charles lynch he was a great columnist and in print journalism he'd been around for a while he was a giant yeah he landed on everybody did tell me did everybody smoke on this set? Oh, yeah. Were there little bottles of whiskey underneath the tables? It wouldn't surprise me that they certainly smoked. In fact, if you watch the 67 or 68 leadership convention, go into the archives, dig deep, go YouTube, wherever,

Norman DePoe, another great journalist of his era, he was openly smoking on the air during the broadcast. And it's the strangest thing to watch. You see it there and you go, oh my gosh, look at that. But I used to be a smoker in my early days. I quit more than almost 25 years ago now. But when I started doing the national, I used to smoke during the national. You couldn't see it.

And, you know, the cigarette would be in an ashtray off to the side during the program. And I'd take a puff or two during. A little Johnny Carson style, right? A little Johnny Carson style. You know, seeing all those clips where i take a you know a puff or two during a little johnny carson style right a little johnny carson all those clips where he would you know the camera the show would come back on after a commercial break just before he got the butt out of his mouth and then put it aside but yeah you know the other thing i know we're going to come to the election and i'm looking forward to that but i think the first time that i I really saw my future wife was that she was a commentator on an election broadcast that you were doing.

That's right. And she was a commentator because she was a senior aide in the Progressive Conservative Party, legislative assistant to Joe Clark. And I remember thinking, wow thinking wow i'm gonna hang around politics these interesting people the great nancy jameson um you know who as you say worked for joe clark and in you know and and future elections uh became a commentator for us on on a couple of them uh and she was uh you know she was terrific. She always is. Okay, let me move slowly to today. But to get to today, I think you've got to start by understanding 2019. And I want you to give us the short story on that, because people get carried away um with the numbers i get carried away with

the numbers in terms of you know the polling data that comes out every day on this campaign and you try to keep things in context and one way to keep them in context and in perspective is to remind yourself of what happened in 2019 where the conservatives ended up two to three points ahead of the liberals in the number of votes cast, but considerably behind in the number of seats won. I think it was, you know, it's somewhere around 25 or 30 seats less for the conservatives than for the liberals, which seems odd when you see the number of votes cast is so much higher for the Conservatives than it was for the Liberals. So I think you have to keep that in mind because a lot about what we're looking at now in terms of the lay of the land is not dissimilar from what we saw in 2019.

So first of all, explain to me how, you know, in the most basic of terms, how we wound up with the result we did in 2019, given the number of votes that were cast and how they went to the different parties. Yeah, certainly the simple math in 2019 is that the Conservatives got a higher proportion of the total number of votes cast because they got enormous volumes of votes in the Prairie Provinces where they won the bulk of their seats, especially in Alberta. And so that can happen. And the key for the Conservative Party to ever kind of get to forming a government is that they need more votes in Ontario. They need more votes in BC. They need more votes if they can get them in Quebec. And they need more votes in Ontario. They need more votes in BC. They need more votes if they can get them in Quebec and they need more votes in Atlantic

Canada. And right now, and so for the last couple of elections, the conservatives and the liberals have really kind of fought over all that eight or nine points around the center of the spectrum. People who say I could vote conservative, I could vote liberal. And in 2015, those votes went for Mr. Trudeau. By 2019, some of those votes were, I don't know, he's not really everything that I hoped he would be. I'm a little bit disappointed with some of his policies. I'm more tempted by the conservatives. But in the end, Andrew Scheer turned out to be a real challenge for the Conservative Party as a leader.

He just wasn't effective at winning the confidence of those voters outside of the prairie stronghold of the Conservative Party. Fast forward to today. And, you know, it's probably the case that the Conservatives have won a few more of those kind of liberal Tory swing voters why he called the election and therefore a reason to vote for him. I think it's also true that Mr. O'Toole hasn't really made a compelling case for why we should have a conservative government. So for those voters who are looking for that, I don't think that that that picture has been painted very, very clearly at all. And then the other fight that really matters, Peter, is the larger number of voters who say I'll either vote liberal or I'll vote NDP. That's about 16, 17 percent. So huge volume of votes. And those voters had been with the liberals mostly.

And then they started to feel like they weren't getting enough of what they were looking for on a variety of progressive issues. And they weren't sure that they had confidence in the Liberals on Indigenous relationships or climate change. Maybe those two the most prominent of those issues. And so they started to drift to Mr. Mr. Singh. I think the election hangs in the balance in terms of what happens with those voters. And one of the things that we might talk about today is, you know, Mr. Singh in an interview with Rosie Barton last night on on Trans Mountain Pipeline. I think there's more scrutiny now on the idea of voting NDP because people look at the the numbers a little bit at least even from a distance and say well we might get a conservative government and do we really want that those progressive voters i mean so sorry for the no no that's good i mean that gives us that gives us a good sense of uh the way things are

are happening we we should see as you raise it. Let's talk quickly about that Trans Mountain thing because it could have an impact in BC. I mean, as you know, for the last couple of weeks, I've been saying there's no pursuing of sing on answers, real answers to specific things he's brought up, but he's not telling us how he'd do it. Now, Rosie didn't back off. She kept at him and finally ended up saying,

you're not answering the question. And that's noted, and we'll move on now. But tell me, you know, in a nutshell, I don't want to get sidetracked by this, but in a nutshell, why is that issue so important in terms of those kind of voters, especially in BC right now? Well, I think that the Green Party and the NDP made quite a meal out of Mr. Trudeau's decision to buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline. I think they profited politically from it extensively.

And it was a choice that the PM made knowing that he was going to take heat for it, that he would significantly from, you know, that sense among BC voters that, that Trudeau built a pipeline or bought a pipeline that they, that many of them, those progressive voters, uh, didn't want. So why it matters now. And, and I'm, you know, I appreciated the fact that you've been saying, you know, there are various ways that people can say, well, there's some good journalism and there's, let's be critical of some of it. I think the criticism that you've raised consistently about whether or not Mr. Singh is being held to account is a really important one, because if people vote NDP without knowing what his positions are on some of these critical issues, and they end up getting a conservative government,

which isn't really what they they want. And 75 percent of NDP voters don't want a conservative government. If the choice is between a liberal and a conservative government, then people are going to be disappointed and they're probably going to wonder, well, why didn't I know what his position was on X or Y or Z? And there hasn't been very much of that kind of scrutiny. So it's, I think people should watch this clip with Rosie Barton. I think it's a, it's a bit of a masterclass in terms of how she's able to keep on pushing the need for a clear answer. She says, what would you do if you were prime minister with that pipeline? And he says, well, I wouldn't have built it. And Mr. Trudeau built it.

And he put us in that situation. And she stops him after he says that for a while and says, yes, I get that part. But what about what would you do? And he says, well, it's really important to know what my position is. I want to be really clear with Canadians. And basically, you know what and I know what he to be really clear with canadians and basically you know what and and i know what he's doing at that point in the process he's trying to eat seconds so that the clock runs out before he has to answer that question and she won't let it happen she keeps

saying yeah yeah yeah that's not an answer the question is is, and I should say, I think she did it respectfully. The question is, what would you do with it? And he finally says, well, I would assess it and see what's in the best interest of Canadians. And she says, well, what does that mean? What determinant would you use to assess it? And he says, I would use the determinant of what's in the best interest of Canadians. So it's there, that clip, for people to see. And if there are progressive voters who think, well, I could vote for Jagmeet Singh, and even if Aaron O'Toole was the prime minister as a result, I know that Jagmeet Singh hates pipelines. He hates oil. He hates pipelines.

He would never let that TMX be built. Whoops. He might let it operate is what we learned last night. And can you count on him to press the conservatives if their government enough that they won't build the Northern Gateway? I think those are questions that emerged because of this clip last night. And I don't want to overstate the importance of it. But B.C. looks like it could be the battleground that decides how Monday goes and those swing voters between the NDP and the liberals are the are probably going to be the determining factor so I think he's gonna he's gonna wonder how he ended up in a situation this late in this campaign without a better answer on what would you do with the Trans Mountain

Pipeline? You know, if I wished anything, it would be that all the leaders were pursued in that respect on their vulnerabilities. And they all have them. They all have them, not just Jagmeet Singh. And they all do exactly what you say. They're eating seconds. They're trying to move on to the next topic. They're spinning. They're doing whatever they can do exactly what you say they're eating seconds they're trying to move on to the next topic they're spinning they're doing whatever they can do to not answer the question and it's incredibly frustrating and you know rosie was right right to do what she does did because if there's anything that bugs an audience it's that when they're not getting answers to direct questions and uh you know and unfortunately it's become a part of political life um and and most of if not all i think all of the leaders do it um okay i want to ask a more um well i ask this question. 2004, 2004, 2006, 2008 were all minorities.

19 was a minority. 11 and 15 were majorities. So four of the last six elections were minorities. There's every indication that this one is heading that way at least based on the numbers we see right now heading towards a minority uh you know have we found ourselves in this century becoming you know a government of minorities which at a certain point can lead to a government of coalition. We went through a long stretch of majority governments, pretty much. Now we're into a significance, a generation of minorities.

So is that shaping up to be the future? I don't know. I think that every time I think, oh, we can learn from the past, I think, yeah, but we probably shouldn't use the past to predict the future. So I'm a little bit betwixt and between on this. I do think that we become, it's easier to have a fragmented political outcome in an era where the price of entry for a political party or a leader is much lower than it was before. It wasn't very long ago, as you know, Peter, that if a party wanted to run an effective national election campaign, you needed $20 million.

You needed to be able to finance some of it with a bank that didn't know whether or not they were going to get paid back. You needed to be able to have a plane that you could fly people around in. You needed to buy advertising in very significant amounts on television. Today, you can find an audience from your desk and you can build an audience by convincing one person to reach out to 10 more. You can raise money through all kinds of grassroots digital fundraising schemes, and you don't need as much money as you used to because maybe you're not flying a plane every week. We've seen that Aaron O'Toole is doing a lot of the communication work that he's doing

from a studio in Ottawa. So I think the price of entry is a lot lower, which means in theory, you could have a lot of smaller parties take root and develop some, some strength. Our first past the post system does mean that those smaller parties will have trouble getting seats. And I know that's frustrating for people who wanted electoral reform. But I know that's frustrating for people who wanted electoral reform. But I think that and I don't think that Mr. Trudeau covered himself in glory at all in the way that he stepped down from his or backtracked on his commitment to electoral reform. I think it was a fairly embarrassing, a fairly embarrassing episode for him. And, and, but the thing that he said at the time,

which did stick with me is that changing our system, if it resulted in a whole bunch of really small parties with really tendentious views, you know, might that be bad for our political culture? Now I don't think it's for one political leader to decide. And so I'm not trying to relitigate the electoral reform issue. I am just saying that this whole issue of fragmentation, is it a good thing because it gives more people access to a party

that might exactly represent what they believe? I'm probably not that guy who thinks that. I tend to think we're better off having bigger tent parties. We're a society that has historically felt like we were better served when we look for compromise where there's conflict rather than more conflict and less compromise. What does it take to draw enough voters in to create a majority government. It takes 39%. It takes a leader that has the interest in trying to get those votes from a broad cross-section of the country, but primarily in the largest, most populated areas of the country.

That doesn't always mean it's a representative party or government, and we know that it's reasonable for people in the Prairie provinces to say they don't feel very represented, or at least in Alberta and Saskatchewan feel they don't feel very represented with liberals in Ottawa. But, you know, sometimes they're not that happy with their own provincial government as well. So that's where I am on. You may be right. We may be headed for endless series of minority governments because the price of entry is so low, but I don't know for sure. Okay. I've got some People's Party of Canada stuff to talk about with you, but we're going to take a break first. Here it is. Starting September 13th, Tim Horton's Smile Cookie Week is back. From September 13th to 19th at Tim Horton's, 100% of the proceeds from all Smile Cookies purchased will be donated to local charities and community groups across Canada. In the last 25

years, you have helped us raise over $60 million. And in 2020 alone, Smile Cookie Week brought in $10.6 million while helping over 500 community organizations. You can participate by grabbing your own Smile Cookie at Tim Hortons restaurants across Canada from September 13th to 19th. You're listening to The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge back in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. This is Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on the Bridge on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167 Canada Talks, and wherever you get your podcasts. All right.

Here's my question about the People's Party. Maxime Bernier. And it's a question about fairness, really. Here is a party that is, you know, depending on which poll you look at, is polling upwards of double what the Green Party is. And yet, they weren't in the debates. They weren't in the French language debate. They weren't in the English language debates.

The face-to-face program, which ran on the CBC, was excellent. Four party leaders. And their criteria for that was, you have to be a national party running across the country, and you have to have at least some representation in the House of Commons. So that was the criteria, and that's why the People's Party didn't make it. That's why the Bloc didn't make it. but I'm wondering when you see upwards of 7% of those being contacted for various polls saying they would vote for the people's party of Canada, their leader,

Maxim Bernier, their policies. And they're mainly around, you know, at least the best known policies are around COVID and sort of resisting the fact that whether it's mandatory vaccines or masking or what have you. But they're basically blanked in terms of coverage, debates, special interview programs, even the nightly news. And some news organizations are saying they won't cover them on election night

because of a question of safety for their reporters and their crews. What do we make of that is that fair uh well you know i remember as we were thinking about talking about this i remember the conversation that you and chantal and i had um around the time of the trump, the last US election. And we're having the conversation of what should the media cover of some of the material that's out there? And do they have a responsibility to kind of take away the president's microphone in those moments

where he's going on and on and on with things that are manifestly untrue and often, you know, worse than, worse than that in terms of the implications and the impacts that they could have on society. And I think, you know, what I observed with you and Chantal is that kind of reflexive, maybe that's not the media's job. And I, and I understand that. And I think that's a reasonable argument as to whether the media's job is to kind of limit coverage of anything. But I think the other side of the coin is the modern challenge, which is by seeing something that's causing friction and saying, oh, look, there's friction.

And people love car accidents and they love friction. So let's train our cameras on that because people will pay attention to it. Is that a decision in and of itself to give more oxygen to things that don't deserve more oxygen in the minds of voters or readers? And is the media, by deciding to give those things more oxygen, making a decision that the people that they purport to serve wouldn't agree with? So this is all in the mix of what's the right relationship between media and the public.

And I would say I make a distinction increasingly between the owners of media platforms and some of the journalists. I think some of the journalists are quite uncomfortable with what some of the owners are kind of looking for in the coverage that they get. But, you know, a good example of this yesterday, Peter, was a column written by John Ibbotson of the Globe and Mail. And I don't know if you had a chance to read it yet, or if others who are listening to this podcast have had a chance to read it, but it's a good example of where the line is, as far as I'm concerned. I was quite critical of this article because basically Mr. Ibbotson's assertion is that the People's Party is far outside the mainstream of Canadian politics,

but it deserves representation. And in the course of his column, he said there are plenty of reasons why so many people have become resentful and untrusting. And I'm reading an exact quote here. There are plenty of reasons why so many people have become resentful and untrusting. And I'm reading an exact quote here. There are plenty of reasons why so many people have become resentful and untrusting, colon, the loss of manufacturing jobs due to offshoring, the increasing number of non-European immigrants, the stress of the pandemic, the self-empowerment that comes from rejecting authority. Now, some people will look at that and say, well, he's just describing a fact as he sees it. I tend to look at it and say, if you say there are plenty of reasons why so many people have become resentful and untrusting, like the increasing number of

non-European immigrants, I feel like you're giving a legitimacy to that, that if you don't counter, you're giving it a bit of oxygen. And I'm not saying that Mr. Ibbotson feels that way. But I did note that after there was a lot of pushback on the column, somebody went in and edited that column and added the this is racist, but it is how they feel. And I think this is a really good example of the dilemma as it relates to the People's Party. People's Party isn't only about accommodation of a multicultural society, but it's very clear to me that Max Bernier has made a very strenuous point about multiculturalism and how he feels about it. But I think people's party supporters also include people who are angry about other things. They're angry about vaccination. They're angry about the state of the world. He's not wrong in diagnosing what some of those opinions are. But the idea that just because there are

some of them that we should kind of elevate them, I think I don't agree with that. I think that if he wants to convince more people of his argument, he's free to do that in a democracy. Should the media do anything to help? That's up to individual media platforms and journalists. And for everyone that wants to write that we should legitimize that kind of opinion. I for one, and I think, you know, probably you are going to go, I'm not with you on that. I don't think that that's the way to characterize the, you know, the legitimate grievance. Yes, of course, people can be upset about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Yes, of course, people can be upset about the loss of manufacturing jobs. Yes, of course, they can be stressed by the pandemic. They can feel a

self-empowerment that comes from rejecting authority. But non-European immigrants, we have a lot of them in this country. We have a lot of them. We have a lot of European immigrants who've treated very harshly First Nations. Once we sort of legitimize this notion that this is just one of the grievances that kind of builds up a political party and and let's kind of recognize that it's there and sort of, you know, maybe try to get along with it. I don't buy it at all. What about you? Well, listen, here's where we, there may be a difference between us. I agree with the points you just made, the last points, absolutely. But earlier on you said,

you know, a movement that's outside mainstream political thought. Well, you know, a lot of movements start outside the mainstream political thought, and they become part of the mainstream political thought. And how do they achieve that? Well, perhaps they have something to say that is, you know, accepted by a significant number of the people. Perhaps what they have to say does not reflect the country as we know it,

but nobody's pushing them on what they have to say. And sadly, history has shown us what happens when that happens, when there is no pushback, when the media doesn't cover a movement that has shown some... I mean, we've spent a lot of time talking about the Green Party. This party has double the votes of the Green Party, if the polls are accurate. We'll know on Monday.

So all I'm saying is, is it fair, not from a question of balance or a question of, you know, gee, they deserve us, a question of being the way Rosie was yesterday with Jagmeet Singh, pushing. Yes. Trying to understand why are you saying that? What do you base that on? Like, what do you really want out of this? What would you do to, you know, non-European immigrants?

Would you, you know, ban them from entering the country? Would you throw people out? What would you do? You know, I think that's where the question of fairness exists, that there is no push, no demanding. Because of the rules of the game that all the networks and all the media organizations for the most part seem that they've agreed to, basically shut these guys out while every day their number seems to go up a little bit

well look i i agree with you peter on on this to some extent and i and if you said to me would you like to see a debate where max bernier and justin trudeau or max bernier and aaron o'toole go toe-to-toe i would pay to watch. If that was a paid watch kind of thing, and I would pay for other people to watch it. I want to see Max Bernier challenge. What I hate is that scenario of six people on a stage where this marginal character with sideshow freakish views gets to chip in one line every once in a while and people can go, oh, you know, he said something that didn't sound so outrageous or it was outrageous,

but in the way that I liked it. And then we never get to find out anything more about what's underneath the hood. Now, Mr. Ibbotson's colleague, Gary Mason, also wrote a piece for The Globe. And the headline of that piece was Maxime Bernier's disgraceful election campaign. And that's a pretty strong headline. And then the column is pretty strong appropriately as well. And one of the things that he highlights, which really does go to the, do we know what he's really saying? And if we did, would we say, well, let's give it 7% of the coverage or something like that? Or would we all say, well, what is he really talking about?

Because here's the quote. Because we know that without freedom, there's no human dignity, equality of rights and economic prosperity. We know that freedom is the foundation of our Western civilization. And then he pulls out this quote, he says, where tyranny becomes law, revolution becomes our duty. And that line Mason points out is very familiar to far right militias. And so should that be censored? No. should a light be shone on it yes but should we you know as as john ibbotson was doing saying well we're just looking down our nose at all

of these people as laurentian elites rather than we're trying not to be too horrified by this notion that there's a guy on this stage who came within one percent after winning on 12 consecutive ballots came within one percent of winning the conservative party leadership who was our foreign minister and who was able to rally a significant number of people now i've measured racism in canada and I think you've seen some of that work. I don't like to use the number 10% to say that's how many people are pretty hardcore racists in Canada. But if you ask me to pin it down, I would say it's about 10%. And I'm not saying all racists will vote People's Party of Canada, but I would say that it's the only party that probably looks like it's willing to kind of hear them out or have the discussions that they want to have.

I think this is a really interesting topic. And, you know, I look forward to seeing what happens on Monday night on a number of different levels, and this being one of them. And I think it's going to be, you know, it's going to afford us the opportunity to have a continuing discussion on this front, because if that party does as well as these polls suggest, they become a factor in any number of different ways. They'll become a factor in who ends up winning on Monday night. If they end up winning seats,

which seems unlikely at this moment, but if they did, they'll become a factor in Parliament. But, you know, that situation does not go away in terms of whatever the result is on Monday night. It's going to be, it's something we all have to face. And I think, you know, as a people, we have to face it. As media organizations, we have to face and i think um you know as people we have to face it as as media organizations we have to we have to face um questions about what exactly do we do in terms of covering and how we cover it

yeah anyway yeah i get that it's not easy i see the i see the dilemma for sure okay look uh this is our last chat before Monday. Do you want to say anything even more profound than what you've already said in the last 38 minutes to leave with the good people who love smoke mirrors and the truth? Well, yeah, I want to say one thing. You know, I've watched Aaron O'Toole in his campaign and I've been critical of some things,

but I think that the thing that he's been trying to do is make a version of what I would think of as a noble trade. He's tried to basically say, I don't really want the most angry voters. I want to trade that support if I have to leave it behind for the People's Party for more people on the center of the spectrum who are looking for an alternative to the liberals that isn't radically different, but is more conservative, more small C conservative.

And I think that he's made a more vigorous effort than Andrew Scheer did. And maybe a more potentially successful effort than Stephen Harper did. So I give him some marks for that. I think that there are, I think his challenge, frankly, is that he's got two challenges. One is that the bulk of his policy is, I would say, better than Andrew Scheer's policy.

His climate policy, for sure, is better than that. But a lot of his policy proposals aren't as good as they should be. And I think that of lighter versions of policies that more people like, I guess. And then on the other side, I think he'd run into a problem, which is that if angry voters want to vote with their anger, maybe Aaron O'Toole comes across as the Diet Coke of anger. And they look at Max Bernier and they say, if I'm angry, he's giving me full on high tests, real classic angry. And I'm more drawn to that.

I still think it's the right noble choice for Aaron O'Toole to make, to try to make that trade. I'll win more votes on the center if I lose some on the right. But when I watched him go kind of personal and negative I think it was yesterday it made me think well okay maybe he's decided that that trade isn't working out and he needs to go back and get some of those angry voters so I'll be watching for that as well and and I think that's one of the really interesting dynamics here it is absolutely and it's ironic in a way because you've got not that this hasn't

happened before but it's so clear crystal clear here on on this campaign you've got the conservatives trying to poach soft people's party votes as you just outlined and you've got liberals trying to poach soft ndp votes from the other side of the spectrum. And it's entirely possible that whichever one of those two parties is successful in the poaching that they're trying to do will end up being the winner on Monday night. We'll see. All right, listen, good of you to be smoke mirrors in the truthing today,

but you'll be back in 48 hours with Chantel on good talk. And I'm sure we'll have lots to say on Friday. So Bruce, can I just make it quick? Good. Good talk. And I always feel like we should say good talk. It's a subtle difference,

but you know, I, I, I just want to leave that there thank you peter great to talk to you again we'll have that debate should it be good talk or good talk that's it that's it didn't that sound better i like i don't think so but we'll let the voters decide all right tomorrow it's your turn. So get those cards and letters coming in.

The Mansbridge Podcast, gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Thanks for listening on this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.