The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT -- Growing Pains or Signs of Things To Come?

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Then Arlene Bynon about her new podcast series, Calls from a Killer -- the story of her conversations with serial killer Clifford Olson.

Smoke, mirrors and the truth. Fred DeLorey, Bruce Anderson coming right up. Okay, gentlemen, a little smoke, mirrors and the truth to start and we'll actually use that phrase in this because I'll be looking to see how each of you, whether you fall under smoke or mirrors or truth on the two subjects for today. And the first one is the budget. Now, any new government is, you know, people are looking forward to what that budget's going to tell them, whether they're individuals or businesses, what have you. There's been a little, well, there's been question marks around the timing of the budget. First of all it seemed like it was possible it might even not be this year, then it was going to be this spring, or not this spring.

Now it's decided with the Prime Minister weighing in from Rome the other day that it will definitely be this year and it'll be this fall. Now is any of this anything special? Is this much to do about nothing or is this a new government kind of scrambling a bit to sort this situation out? And we'll let Fred start with this one this week. That's a great way to go. Let Fred start with this. I'm sorry to it. Look I think when you run a campaign where we just had an election and your entire narrative boils down to you're the man with the plan, you're the person who can lead us through all of these issues. In

fact he you know Prime Minister Carney used it as an attack point against Poliev when he said a plan beats no plan. So then to come out of the campaign and go whoops well actually we don't have a plan let's wait a while and figure this out. I think that strikes a bit at his narrative and at the core of who he is and why people elected him. I think a lot of people elected Mark Carney because who they think he is based on his resume being the central banker and chair of Brookfield. I don't think they actually really know who he is and he's gonna have to show that he can do the things

he said he's going to do. And it is problematic. It does strike at the core of his narrative when he comes out with this mess. Now, it can be course corrected. It doesn't mean that this is everything we'll be talking about in a few weeks. They have announced they're going to do it in October. It's something that they can certainly communicate much better on why they got to this situation. There could be a very good reason why October is the time to do this, but they

haven't explained that. And again, the initial response was, we're not gonna do a budget this year. Like that's just mind boggling that they would go down that route. But I understand they have a five, six billion dollar tax cut they're bringing in soon, which is good. There's obviously the tariff issue they have to deal with with Trump

and understanding how that affects the budget. Other programs and what they're gonna cost. There's the G7 meetings in June in Canada that maybe there'll be some impact there on our budget. So maybe those are all reasons they could be saying why there's no budget this spring, but why am I saying that and not them? Well Bruce was nodding all the way through that. So he obviously totally agrees with everything you just said. nodding all the way through that. So he obviously totally agrees with everything. It just, I just love hearing Freddie talk about this, this kind of thing. Cause nobody's better at, um, at trying to make, you know, something out of very, very little, I mean, it is a craft in the business of politics and I appreciate it

and respect game when somebody shows me how to do it. it and respect game when somebody shows me how to do it. So good for you, Freddie. But look, I think it was Brian Mulrooney took 248 days between the time he was sworn in and the time he tabled his first budget. And Stephen Harper, at least chat GBT reminds me that it was 85 days. Now, I think both of those people had a plan when they were elected. I think both of those people did the right thing when they were elected. Conservative leaders, by the way, I could mention the liberal ones, but it's the same pattern. It's not, you don't table it right away.

You get into office and you look at the situation you've got. You align, uh, the fiscal picture that you've got with the goals that you've set out in the campaign, and then you develop about, okay, how are we going to do this? Where are we going to trim spending? Where are we going to increase spending? And I think what's a little bit unique in this situation, well, what is unique in this situation, every situation has its own idiosyncrasies, I think. But what's a little bit different here is that we have a giant issue on the table that everybody can see in plain sight. It is not concealed at all, which is our relationship with the United States and the question of tariffs. What will the impact be of tariffs if they're imposed on us in the way in which they have been

threatened? And what will government need to do in order to cushion the impact of those on Canadian businesses and Canadian workers. If we find a way through that conversation where we don't need to plan for those kind of contingencies, then obviously you're gonna have rather a different scenario from a fiscal standpoint. It's gonna change all of the dynamics.

So for everybody that says, I need to see a budget now, even before the next meeting of the prime minister and the president happen, even before we see the evolution of the trade conversations between the United States and China and the further conversations that Canada is going to have with the United States. You know what? It feels a little bit to me like it's going to be a long three or four years if we're going to evaluate the performance of government in 10-minute increments. And that isn't really the way that voters look at this.

Voters are kind of like, okay, we had an election. You gave us a couple of options. We picked this one, now we're going back to our lives. You get on with doing the work and we'll let you know how we feel about it as we go, but probably not in 10-minute increments. That feels more like what Twitter is built for or X or whatever it's called now, rather than regular people in regular lives. You buying that Fred? Well, look, I think expectations are, I think expectations are very high for Carney and he, you know, 10 minute increments

is an interesting way to look at it, but things can set in quickly too and turn on you and be hard to wrestle back if you lose people. I understand like the points you made were similar to what I made about why it makes sense. Maybe why they don't have a budget now. Why aren't they saying that? Why are you and I saying it? I think it goes back to part of the failure of communications.

The Liberals, I think, are some of the best communicators, but it seems to be only two to three weeks every four years that they can tie that message together and then they just go into this weird place where they can't tell the story. Where they need to work, where maybe that's it. Maybe it's just like, well, I think the last 10 years, I'm not sure I'd say Trudeau's government did the work. This is so different from that, but I take your point. Communications wise, it isn't right.

Like the true liberals didn't tell a story well. Now, current liberals have a story to tell. And if there's a reason to delay this, they should tell it. They should lay it out like you just laid it out. And they have not been doing that. It's been this weird uncertainty that's coming out of them. You know what, I hear you on that, but I kind of also feel like there's a frothiness and sometimes I feel like to all of that questioning and it's making me feel like we are really

living in such a changed world where I watched that long form interview with the prime minister the other day and I was struck at the questions about how different is this cabinet. Prove to us that it's really different, that kind of thing. And I understand, I respect Vashi for doing her job and the way she does her job. And I understand why she asked that question. But I just look at it as a pollster a little bit and I sort of say, well, how likely is it that the average voter, that that's the thing that they really want to know more about as opposed to what is it that you want to build?

What is it that's on the table in terms of our relationship with the UK and France and other European countries? Stuff that's a little bit more about the substance in the prime minister's mind and what the agenda is. And I feel like the reason for those kinds of questions, why isn't the budget sooner? How many of your ministers are Trudeau ministers? Is that there's a, just a little bit too much of a, let's keep the election going,

let's use a kind of a gotcha frame for all of the interactions with the government. Fair enough. People, you know, free to do that. I just don't think voters are going along for that ride to your point about, you know, opinions will be quick to set in and they'll be hard to change. Let me just ask one last question on this because some people are making the argument that Carney definitely has a plan and he knows what his plan is.

But maybe he hasn't shared it with some of his key ministers, like his finance minister. Is that an unfair observation? Because that's kind of what it looked like in this seemingly fumbling around on the budget date because it didn't seem the prime minister had any doubt in his mind what, when it was. Any thoughts on that? Well, look, I mean, I'm going to be a broken record here on this whole notion of the, the gaff watch, the fumble watch. I mean, if anybody put a camera on any of our lives and said, look, just five minutes ago, this is what you did. And I didn't see that coming.

And you better explain that to me. That's not gonna be a very interesting show in terms of my life, but it's also not that relevant, I don't think, to how government needs to work. And of course, this government has only been in place for, you can count them in hours. And there's a lot that's been going on. You know, the whole idea of these supposedly horrible gassed, the housing minister said something that anybody looking carefully at it, or even just reasonably at it, would say, well,

what exactly was wrong with what he said? Yeah, he's been vilified on social media. I don't think it matters. I don't think voters will pay attention to it. But what he said was, our plan is to build a lot of affordable housing at scale so that people who are trying to get that first house in the housing market have a chance to do it. But at the same time, obviously, we don't want to crush the equity that people have built up in the homes that they already own. What politician would ever try to get elected on the idea of, let's crush the value of the homes that you own, Peter, in order for people to be able to buy those homes? It doesn't even make any sense. So, but that, you know, spent two or three days

being the subject of, you know, people being kind of aghast at the fumbles and the gas and everything else. And I'm just not, I'm not here for it. I just don't see it that way. I don't think voters do either. Fred, should I move on or do you want to say something? Because I've got an interesting headline. I want to see how consistent Bruce is when I read the next headline, but you go ahead. Well, just on the cabinet ministers and all of the different things that they said last week, I think one of the issues is, you know, this is a new government. The government was sworn in last week, so I understand that maybe gaff watch shouldn't be as focused on that. But man, there was a lot of gaffes

and it was them walking into cabinet just giving their opinions before they even sit around the table as a team and talk about, okay, this is their first cabinet meeting and the prime minister should be laying out the direction and they should all be having that confidential cabinet confidential conversation about what the priorities are

and how they're gonna move things. Instead it was just these ministers walking in given their their opinions on different things, which I thought was absurd. And it reminds me back to the Harper era, which I had worked for the entire time he was prime minister. My favourite caucus in the cabinet ins and outs, and that's when cabinet ministers are going in and out and reporters are scrambling, my favourite was during the Harper era because they didn't happen. We didn't do ins and outs. It's something that makes no sense.

If you don't have a story to tell, don't tell it. Okay. Bruce, headline in the Hilltimes today. Is this much ado about nothing? To limit critics, let me read it. What's the headline? Here it is. To limit critics' time to organize against Poliev,

some senior conservatives explore moving the convention to this fall. What do you make of that? I don't know anything about it, but it sounds kind of normal in terms of how parties deal with situations like the one that the conservatives find themselves in where they've got a leader who's got a lot of strength and so he can kind of organize and apply pressure on the rules or the procedures in order to protect his position.

But I'm anxious to hear what Fred can do to explain this situation, because it could be jiggery-pokery. It could be something that we really need to be very worried about in terms of the future of our democracy, but it doesn't sound like that if I'm being honest. Not at all. But it doesn't sound like that. Jigarie, what do you think? The connection is supposed to be this fall. It's supposed to be every two years.

But because it was an election year, I guess the National Council pushed it to 2026 instead. So on those grounds, it makes sense to move it up. But of course, for the leader and his perspective there is an automatic leadership review after you lose an election and delegates will come and they will cast a ballot on whether he should stay or go. I see no scenario that he loses that. I think he'll get a massive, massive, massive win. The party is very much still behind him. But there is a risk if they do it next winter, who knows what the world looks like.

Events happen, maybe Cardi actually does put a budget in that people like and things are taken off and maybe affordability is dealt with, maybe the tariff threat's gone, maybe crime is down. All of these issues that galvanize support behind the conservatives, maybe those disappear. And Poliev is looked at as not someone who can win. So that's a risk to him as it were for any leader in that situation. So politically, it makes sense. Do it as soon as you can. If you're popular now, let's have this vote now internally and get it over with. It also gives it, puts it in the back

rear view mirror where he can really start focusing on the next election and not so worried about the last one. The other way is, can we ask Fred a follow up on this? Because it does feel to me that the, well, I don't think he's doing it kind of overtly so that everybody can see it. It feels to me like Mr. Poliev is reaching out within his party. He's trying to, you know, without saying I screwed up, saying, you know, there's an element of outreach that's important, it's not just performative, that, you know, has a, it's a requirement rather than I'm the guy, I don't need anyative, that you know, has a, is a requirement rather than I'm the guy, I don't need any help, I'm going to do it my way. Do you sense that changes

is going on? I do. I do think that's happening. Now, whether he'll, you know, I know he's certainly making calls, but you know, is he taking the advice that remains to be seen? But I think that's what he should be doing. He should be going dark right now, essentially, in terms of the public being out there. He doesn't need to be out there. He needs to be reviewing what happened and figure out the path forward. And he seems to be doing that. As I mentioned before, the previous show, he's never lost before.

This is the first time he's ever lost elected office at any level. So it is a learning experience when that happens and it's usually where you learn the most from. You look at, you know, Brian Maroney lost his leadership against Joe Clark, Stephen Harper lost his first election against Paul Martin. Both those individuals really changed their approach and changed how they did things after those losses and figured out the path to victory and they went on to the big, big wins. And Poliam has to do the same. He has to figure

out how he can get over that hurdle where yes, he got 8 million votes, but so did the liberals. And we can't win in that scenario as conservatives. We need to figure out how we can, if it's a two party race, how we can make sure we're not offending voters and scaring them away. Well, let me just leave it with this comment and get your reaction to it. It just seems to me when I read a headline like this and a story like this, all it does to me is indicate that there are those who are on Poliev's side who believe the threat to Poliev is more serious than perhaps we're giving it credit for. Yeah it's it's one of those things I remember like Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole were in

similar positions they were in pretty strong positions people forget because they both ended up losing their their leadership spots but they were in pretty strong positions. People forget because they both ended up losing their leadership spots, but they were in strong positions for those first few months and it changed. The freedom convoy, the trucker convoy in Ottawa was something that really shifted ground on O'Toole. Then there was sheer some issues with the party. So events happen, things happen, there was sheer some issues with the party. So events happen, things happen, sometimes out of your control, sometimes in your control. And it's a risk.

As long as that, until that vote is had, he is vulnerable. At the same time, I would say there's no, I've seen no one waiting in the wings organizing against them, which was different than Shirinu-tuk. There were people organizing that. Bruce, you have any final thoughts on this? Yeah, look, I mean, I think it makes sense that you would be in the history of the conservative party and its different iterations.

It would make sense to recognize that there is always a risk of the factions. And Fred has done a good job of describing the different factions within the conservative movement. I think Pierre Paulyev has done a good job of uniting those factions. But a lot of the effectiveness that he had was showing everybody the 25-point lead that he had. And so this is different and it would be prudent for him to tend to these factions and to think through the question of how do I re-motivate people if I need to to head into another election? How can I strengthen their confidence in me? Is it really only about how well I criticize Mark Carney and what the liberals are going to do?

Or is there an aspect of my behavior, of my temperament, my comportment, my communications that I should be changing? I think those are all good questions for him to be dwelling on. But I think I'm where Fred is on the likelihood of there being a real problem for him in a foreseeable future. I think he's got time and he's got the confidence of the vast majority of his party to kind of work on those things and to see how the liberals do. But that reckoning will come down the road probably

not in the next 12 months, I guess is where I'd be. I can just say one more thing on this. It just brought me back something you said, Bruce, to 2004 when we lost, when Harper lost to Paul Martin. His big question wasn't whether he can stay on or if he has support in the party, it's whether he can ever win. And that's the real question I think Poliev has to try to come to ground to. Can he win? Yes, he can win the leadership route, whatever it is. But Harper's focus was is it possible because it is hard as a conservative to win. We're well aware of that the math that

the way the country is built is it favors the Liberal Party in almost every election. Oh, my god, you sound like a Leaf fan now. It's like, it's so hard to win. We have all the money, we have all the bands, we get all the attention. Things have to go well, look, we do win a little bit more than the Leafs, but not a lot. Too soon, you guys, too soon. Too soon?

Yeah. Yeah, not fair. No, but Fred is right. It's hard to, I was looking at the trend lines of the conservative vote, which actually have been fairly stable over the years. The liberal ones tend to fluctuate more. The liberal party being a party that tries to find that center and the largest number of voters. Its mistake is that every once in a... its recurring mistake is every once in a while, it kind of pushes a little further left than people want.

And then sometimes it pushes a little bit more towards the center than the left wants and it has this kind of more jagged profile in terms of support. Conservative support tends to be a little bit more stable, but it has a ceiling. And the ceiling is the difference between what the mission conservatives want and what mainstream Canadians really want to see in government. And I think that's a perpetual problem, but I think we're heading into another phase of it because the, I think the biggest question for every politician in a way is Canadians aren't sure that government is worth it anymore. And I know that's a kind of a blanket statement

and it's not everybody, but it's about three out of four who say it costs me more than it benefits me. That's a category problem for politicians. It's not just a brand problem. It might work a little bit better for conservatives if they're saying, well, we just want to reduce the scale and the activities of government. More challenging for the liberals because their challenge then is not just to say here's a better version of government, but to prove that government can actually solve economic problems, can deliver social benefits, and can be a net positive in your life. That's a different phase that we're in.

We see it in the United States playing out big time, but it is here in Canada now too. That's a fascinating observation and one worthy of a future discussion, which I'm sure we'll have. All right, thank you both. Bruce Anderson, Fred DeLorey, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth.

Talk to you later. Yes, good to see you. Yep, bye. Thanks, guys. And welcome back, Peter Ransomers here again, segment two of The Bridge for this Tuesday. Segment one, of course, was Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, available on YouTube, segment two.

Today is special. My colleague on SiriusXM, Arlene Beynon, will be by in a moment, to talk about her new podcast series, which is on CBC, CBC podcast service. It's a fascinating discussion with Arlene about her new series. I want you to hear that coming up in just a moment. But first of all, as always, we want to give you some advice on the question of the week, which is for Thursday's Your Turn and the Random Rantor, of course. This week, the question, you got a short time to come up with an answer actually, it's basically today and tomorrow up until 12 noon Eastern time.

The question is about King Charles. King Charles comes next week. He'll be giving the speech from the throne. Now I mentioned King Charles last week on Good Talk, and I've mentioned this a number of times over the past, I don't know, a couple of months. I have not been impressed with how the King or the Prime Minister of the UK, Sir Keir Starmer, has handled the situation in terms of Donald Trump, the 51st state, sovereignty, Canada, etc., etc. A number of people wrote in and said, oh, Peter, it's got nothing to do with King Charles. He's just doing what he has to do by the constitutional protocol. He has to go with the instructions from the government of the day. Listen, I get that. I've covered the Royals since my first time I covered them was 1970, so I've done it. I kind of understand that. But I do not understand this.

I do think that King Charles is his own person and he can make statements and he can make arguments. And he clearly did not on this case. But I think that's one of the reasons he's here next week is he wants to make it very clear where he stands on this issue of Canadian sovereignty. And I think that'll be clear in the speech from the throne, which of course will be vetted and if not written by the government of the day in this country, in Canada.

So we'll see how that plays out. But here's your question, given all that, what are your thoughts on the monarchy these days? Have they changed at all in the last couple of months? Are you a monarchist? Are you not a monarchist? Are you sort of indifferent? That's what I want to hear.

Your answer to that question and 75 words or less, answer in by noon Eastern time tomorrow. Include your name and the location and you're writing to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. You got all that? Your thoughts, your current thoughts on the monarchy. Let's have it. Okay, Arlene Bynum, as you know, one of my colleagues here at Sirius XM, lucky I've known Arlene for a long time. We've done a lot of shows together on Series XM,

just in the last little while. And always pleased to do that. Always pleased to appear on her show and hopefully she doesn't mind being on the bridge as well. And for good reason today, she has just completed this series, which is now gonna air on the CBC podcast service. It's called Calls from a Killer.

This is a story about Clifford Olson, remember 1980s British Columbia, controversial deal that Olson made with the RCMP, kind of a cash for bodies deal where he told him where the bodies were of people he'd killed and they paid him for each each body. Anyway Arlene, well I'm going to let Arlene tell the story because it's much more interesting when she tells it than I tell it. So here we go my conversation conversation with Arlene Bynum about her new podcast series being run on the CBC, good for them, calls from a killer. Here's my conversation with Arlene. How did this happen? How did Arlene Bynum suddenly start talking with Clifford Olson? It really was something to tell you the truth. Even after all these years, when I think about it, I shake my head. But it was a case of not knowing who's listening to you when you're in the media. I'd become a bit of one of the first pioneers

in being a true crime buff, carried it over into my job, did a bunch of series on Ted Bundy and won an award for one of them and then went on to do other stories on Henry Lee Lucas. And so I wrote for the Globe, I think I wrote an opinion piece on it. I'd written about some of this crime, covered it every day on my daily show and also on the documentary show.

And one day I got a letter in my office and I remember staring at it because it was airmail. And who used airmail? Maybe some people did then, but I don't know. So, I picked up the letter and turned it around and the writing on the back said, C. Olson, Kingston. And I turned to my office and we were, you know, very close, a little unit. And I said, wow, this guy must have a really tough time getting a car loan in Kingston. Can you imagine having a Sealson and you're in Kingston knowing about that famous story as you did? And I opened the letter and I yelled, it's him, it's him. And the whole, the people I work with just froze. And the letter said,

dear Arlene, if you want to research a serial killer, if you want to talk about a serial killer, maybe you should talk to a real serial killer. I have a story to tell. Would you like to hear it? And then this flourish of a signature, Clifford Robert Olson. I just dropped the letter to the ground and I couldn't believe it. So I wrote him back and it took me a while. I knew enough, you know, doing the Bundy story and the ego attached to it. And I already, Peter was making ethical decisions already, already as I was doing it. I had nothing, I had no template for it, but I was like, okay, I'm going to be judged by this.

What do I do? And I didn't go, oh yes, sir, boy, you've got a story to tell. I waited, I waited about a week and a half. And then I wrote a letter. And it's all it said was, yes, I would be interested in hearing your story and signed it and sent back. I want to understand how you got to that conclusion of deciding to go ahead with it. And I asked that for, I'm sure the same reason that you thought about it for a week and a half. I mean, I can remember there was a point at which we thought that Paul Bernardo was going to be made available for an interview with me. And I got to tell you, I had real reservations about whether or not I wanted

to do that anyway. You know, it was a tough, as it turned out, and they wouldn't allow it, so it didn't happen. So we never had to come to a conclusion. So I'm not sure what I would have done in the end, probably would have done it. I'm not sure. But clearly in that week and a half, you made a decision to do it. What brought you to that point? Well, you know, he wasn't allowed to give interviews. So when he was offering, I thought, is he going to send me another letter? I never dreamed I was getting an interview, to be honest, ever. I thought, okay, I'm starting this communication, which was an ethical deal

enough. But okay, if you have a story to tell, what are you going to do? Are you going to send me info? I'm going to have questions. Then after I sent that letter back, because he was legally barred from talking to the media, hands down, I get a telephone call and I picked it up, same crew in my office. And it said in those days too, and especially in our unit, we were trained working in that, you know, the newsroom. We hit the button often on the lines that came in and you just taped it just in case. I don't know, you just taped it. Somebody could say, you know, there's a fire or so and so. And it was the operator. And she said, I have a collect call from Clifford Olson. Will you accept the charges? And I froze, dead, going, how the hell? And I paused and I said, yes, not knowing.

And he comes on the line and he said, hello there. And I was, we were kind of back and forth. And I said, first question, how are you doing this? This is a secret. They think you're my lawyer. I put your name down as a lawyer. And if they find out, they'll cut us off. So there I am again.

You know, you're a journalist. You get on. Like, what do I do? So the tape's rolling. And I thought I'd get as much information that I wanted out of him because surely he wouldn't be able to call me again. And it seemed like such a huge story. So I was, you know, I was asking him things. Why did you do this? And he's like, well, you know, he wouldn't, he was very evasive in the beginning. But then I, I said, what said, what drove you to do it? He said, they call me a psychopath.

And this first phone call. And I said, are you a psychopath? He said, do I sound like a psychopath, a killer to you? And he had this friendly voice that I would get used to and all I could think of is what lured a bevy of unsuspecting people to get in the car with promises of money and jobs. And so he started to tell me things, you know, about a little bit about what his life was like in prison. And then it was kind of, he had to go. But I had the interview and I tried to get him into the mindset because it was kind of, he had to go, but I had the interview and I tried to get him

into the mindset because it was the beginning of true crime. As you know, everyone was like, who are these things called serial killers? Why do they do it? Why is it kind of a new phenomenon? Are we just finding out about it? So it's really getting into the psychological. And then he said, shall I call you next week? And I said, how can you make these calls? And he said, I've got you down as a lawyer. And then he said, I'm never forget 9 30 next Tuesday.

And then I sat there the next Tuesday and the phone rang and it happened again. the phone rang and it happened again and it went on for years. Well, you know, I mean, good on you and those who have, you know, discovered all these tapes and, you know, in a basement somewhere after all these years and good on the CBC for getting you to do this, um, a special series on, on the CBC podcast. Um, at the end of the day, I mean, like a lot of people, I'm really looking forward to listening to this,

but at the end of the day, what do you take from this, from these tapes, from these conversations and from this podcast series? The end of the day, you know, my mind changed so much, Peter, as I was doing it. I had certain thoughts and a lot of them held. I talked to all the victims' families while I was doing this 30-something years ago and redid it all for the podcast.

So I had time, they had time, and we knew each other. In a couple of the interviews, I couldn't finish. I started to sob and we kind of left them in because it was part of it. They sobbed. I'm bent over. I realized there's many things. The pain and the stain of murder, it doesn't go away. These families went through a horrible experience. We had a homegrown serial killer. When you listen to the podcast and we go through that investigation, many who are just learning about this crime are going to say, how did we pay this killer $100,000 for the bodies? It was ransom really, wasn't it?

And these parents are like, if she's dead, I want her back. I want the body. $10,000 a body, he threw in one for free. And the money went to his wife. It was sold by the RCMP at the time that it had to be done. But even after all those years, I searched and searched, I cannot find anyone paid money to lead the police to bodies, cash. So that, that dark moment in our history, secondly, how it happened,

how at that time the police don't work together. So many things that happened in that case mirrored themselves as lessons that we've learned in justice, knockout drops, drugs, surreptitiously drugging people, the innocence that we felt for people who are in control. I mean, not believing people. Most of the victims, I think he'd killed one or two and a girl staggered out of a bathroom,

escaped somehow and was telling people what happened. And when it got to trial before he killed all these people, they didn't believe her because she'd taken money for sex in a hotel room. And not from him, but I mean, she'd had a history of working in the sex profession, but she was so young. She was a teenager. We had such a different feel of things that this story is a microcosm in a lot of ways of many other crime stories to follow and the way police react to them.

And then a reminder of that pain and the victims and those who were around him It just it never went away and secondly The way he could manipulate the police and The media and nuts. No, it wasn't the media I was trying to make sure he didn't do that because he didn't really have any contact with the media before he did these things but he could manipulate anyone that because he didn't really have any contact with the media before he did these things. But he could manipulate anyone around him. He was a charismatic, uneducated criminal, and he was a white shark killing machine.

And the way he got rid of it, the way he got away with it, is kind of a story of the journey we've made through justice in a lot of ways. You know, I think we're gonna leave it there for now, Arlene. It sets us up to listen to this series. And, you know, as you said a moment ago, this is a dark stain on our history, what happened there on a lot of different levels, that you had the opportunity, you the opportunity to talk to the person

of the center of the crime is remarkable. And then after all these years, it can come back now through this series and we can all learn something about our system, our country, our past, our system, our country, our past, but we can also learn something that can hopefully lead us into a better future than what we saw back then. Listen, congratulations on this. And as I said, congratulations to those who've worked with you on it and to the CBC for moving ahead on doing this podcast series. Good luck. Thank you, Peter. Good luck. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Arlene Bynum,

Calls from a Killer is a compelling seven part series. It launches today. So it's dropped already. You can get it wherever you get your podcast, right? As of today, calls from a killer. Arlene Bynum, you won't have any trouble finding it. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this Tuesday, our two-part program on the bridge on this day. Tomorrow is an encore day, but tomorrow is also the deadline for getting your answers into that question. What's your current thinking about the monarchy with King Charles coming in just a couple of days? Tell us your feelings on that.

The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Have it in by noon tomorrow, 75 words or less, your name and location. make sure you include those. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. We'll talk to you again in, well, as we say, in about 24 hours.