The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - How Far Are Canadians Willing To Go To Support Ukraine?

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

We know where the government stands, we know where the private sector stands, but what about Canadians?  Where are they on the Ukraine war? Bruce is just out of the research field with a new survey and the results have some surprising findings.  Plus, the latest on the Conservative leadership race, and some thoughts on why the PM visited the Queen this week.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, Bruce Anderson, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, they're standing by. So I was thinking about McDonald's yesterday, and you can probably guess why. McDonald's announced that it was temporarily shutting down in Moscow and added to the McDonald's brand were Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Starbucks, and quite a few others. But those were the main ones yesterday. So why was I thinking of McDonald's especially? Well, McDonald's opened in Moscow in 1990, January of 1990.

And I'd been there in November of 1989, so just shortly before, and McDonald's was building its, you know, it's, what do you call them? It's not a restaurant, but it's takeout version, but it's also, you know, I guess an indoor thing as well, on Pushkin Square. And I went over to have a look at it because McDonald's Canada was very much involved in this initiative. And you had to wonder at that point, right? Gorbachev is still in power.

The Soviet Union hadn't crashed yet. And you had to wonder, well, how's this going to play? Well, sure enough, two months later, when it finally opened, there were 5,000 people at the door waiting to get in to taste this part of Western decadence. And it's been, you know, know very successful as all the other brands that moved into russia after the fall of the soviet union became very successful as well and millions and millions of dollars was made well yesterday they shut it down temporarily because of ukraine

and in some ways it's been interesting to watch these last couple of weeks because it's been governments and the private sector that have taken the initiative uh in terms of making significant moves against the russian economy which leads one to wonder where is where really is public opinion, especially in North America, but for us, especially in Canada, on this issue? Where are we? Where are Canadians? What are they willing to do? What are they willing to sacrifice to make the point against Russia?

And so that's where Bruce comes in, because there are few people who understand public opinion better than our friendly chairman of Abacus Data. And you're just out of the field on this day with public opinion. So I don't expect you to break it all down for us, but give us a sense. Where are Canadians on this issue? Are they as far ahead as, say,donald's starbucks the government of canada where are they they're further ahead they uh good morning peter it's a you know one of the

more interesting studies obviously uh fascinating to kind of just look at how public opinion can react to a global event or a major international event and to contrast it with how, you know, let's be honest, a lot of international events, things that happen in other parts of the world don't garner as much attention as what we're seeing right now. And so one of the first things that we wanted to do in this survey that we published, and it's on our website this morning is measure how many people are paying attention and it's really this the numbers are stunning they're really unusual um they are kind of consistent frankly with the numbers who became fixated on the pandemic which was also unusual

like if i asked myself what other subjects have i seen in 10 or 20 or 30 years whereas many people were really focused on what was going on i can't think of any so it'll give you some idea of just how attentive people have been second thing is they are massively supportive of economic sanctions punishing sanctions against putin and his cronies um and massively supportive of other forms of aid to help um the russian the ukrainian people fight back and there's quite a bit of hopefulness about um maybe hopefulness is the wrong word but people in can Canada are not convinced that Putin is going to succeed. A quarter, roughly a quarter, say they think he will succeed in taking over Ukraine, and the rest of the world will just forget after a certain point in time.

But everybody else is split between, well, he might in the short term look like he succeeded, but he won't be able to hold on uh to ukraine or he won't succeed at all because the resistance and the sanctions are so powerful and so punishing so um i've been really struck by a how many people are paying how much attention to this b how unified we are in supporting sanctions and military support and humanitarian support, and C, in the fact that people do not see Putin's success as in any way inevitable, quite the contrary. In fact, we asked the question two years from now, do you think Putin will be the president

of Russia? And half of Canadians say no, they don't. So there's a real sense that it isn't going that well for Russia, and it won't necessarily go that well in the future, even though people are really obviously very empathetic and traumatized and worried about what's happening on the ground for civilians in Ukraine. All right. Well, let me pick some of that apart because, you know, I agree with you.

It's been stunning the amount of attention people have been putting to this. I can tell just simply from our little podcast where people want as much information as they can get and background and context on the grain story, and we've been trying to give it to them. I would put myself on one of those camps in terms of what I think is going to happen and my view has changed over just a couple of weeks. You know, I don't think that he is going to take Ukraine even in the short term. I think he's in deep, deep trouble, and he's in trouble not only on the battlefield, but he's in trouble internationally, and it appears today he's in trouble with China.

And when President Xi is backing away ever so slightly, he's at least backing away from his position with Putin, and those are all troubling, troubling signs. And you know that people are hurting and some of Putin's friends are hurting money-wise, financially, because of the sanctions. So I think he is in big trouble and he's in big trouble now.

Having said all that, in terms of, I'd be intrigued to find out a little more about what Canadians are saying on the military front. How hawkish are Canadians about being involved in trying to prevent this murderous aggression on the part of Putin? Yeah, I think it is an interesting question. And we asked a number of things that kind of get at it. Certainly in terms of supporting Ukrainian resistance with military equipment, including lethal weaponry, there's really broad support.

And, you know, one of the fascinating things for me, just as a student of public opinion in Canada, in knowing how many issues can be polarized or where we can see a partisan division, we're really not seeing that on this issue, Peter. From the left, the center and the right, there's pretty much identical levels of support for military equipment, that kind of support, as well as humanitarian aid. Questions about a no-fly zone, questions about should we ever imagine putting Canadian troops in harm's way

in a conflict with Russia. Those are also interesting. We explored whether people felt that if the West got more involved, would it risk starting a nuclear war? And 70% of Canadians believe that it would. So people are not imagining that it's possible for the West to scale up its military involvement without putting a nuclear risk in play.

They get that 70%. At the same time, when we said, would it be better that Ukraine would be taken over by Russia if it meant avoiding a bigger war, if the alternative was a bigger war. And only 24% think it would be better for Russia to take over Ukraine rather than have that bigger war. I've been stunned by how willing, in this particular instance, people seem to be to saying, we need to draw the line here. There's a world order question.'s not you know yes we care about the ukrainian people yes we don't like this kind of aggression anywhere but there seems to be a resolve that's stronger and deeper than i would have expected and on the question of troops

canadian troops in a conflict with russia directly in conflict with russia we posited several scenarios and we said in which of these scenarios would you be willing to see canadian troops in battle with russian troops and there's none of them where people are yes yes, I'd like to see it, but 75% picked at least one scenario. Only 25% or 28%, I guess, said there's no scenario where I would ever be okay with Canadian troops in that battle zone. And the scenarios are, what if there was a nuclear strike by Russia? What if our NATO allies were also involved in combat? What if Russia had an incursion into a NATO country? So there were

the scenarios that one might imagine being the pretext for Canadian involvement. Yeah, and people aren't necessarily looking for this to happen, obviously. They don't want it to happen. But I was surprised at how much Canadians were willing to contemplate a scenario where we might find ourselves drawn into a conflict more directly. That is interesting because governments of the uh have resisted having that conversation in any uh serious way with their with their publics um on the no-fly zone i'm still you know i i can't uh i can't come to grips with that one myself i understand the argument on uh the potential that this could mean you know the third world war yet on the other hand this could mean the Third World War. Yet on the other hand, I watch some of these refugees coming out of their towns and giving up everything, and they've got their life's belongings in a backpack,

and they're fleeing with their kids, and some of them aren't making it. And when you ask them that question, you know, they say, please, you know, you guys have to come here. You've got to get your countries to come here. And the response is, well, yeah, but we're risking a third world war. And they look at you and they say, this is the third world war. I'm in it. I'm living it.

I'm living it right now. Peter, on that point, two out of three Canadians feel the same way that you do, that they support a no-fly zone. And we put the counter proposition of a wider war in that question. We didn't use nuclear, but two out of three people say, you know what, we've got to do more including that to save innocent civilians from being slaughtered by russia so there's there's a pretty strong inclination and i and you and i have seen enough public opinion and remember you know how how tentative generally canadians have been in recent decades about involving ourselves militarily. And I've just really been struck by this. And I also looked at one of the questions that was

kind of about our involvement. And I looked at NDP voters and liberal voters and conservative voters, and I was stunned to find that there was only a 3% difference or 4% difference across the spectrum. And I was stunned by the direction of it. So in other words, what I saw is that people on the left were more inclined to support military intervention than people on the right. I don't want to overstate it because it was still a small difference, but you would have normally in Canada expected it to be a difference in the other direction where people on the right a little bit more militaristic in their response to Russian aggression and that sort of thing. which is the humanitarian aspect of this that people are seeing on their screens is driving people not just from the right to say we need to stop this fascist but people on the left is saying we need to save these people and it's the combination of that humanitarian instinct and this kind of we need a world order that we can count on instinct that brings right and left and center all together around this.

Plus, I think it bears saying that the political leadership in Ottawa has resisted, for the most part, the temptation to make any kind of politics out of this. And people are generally pretty satisfied with the steps that the government has taken and i think that that opposition politicians kind of get the sense that that voters are not interested in seeing uh opposition parties really challenged just for the sake of uh making an opposition point on this on this uh. Well, one assumes that if Abacus is doing this kind of research on public opinion, so is government. And while public opinion doesn't lead government in terms of its actions, it can certainly influence government in terms of its actions.

If they're looking at the same kind of data, what do you think is going through their mind? You know, I do think that this is, I don't think that, it wouldn't surprise me if people in government are interested in what public opinion is now, but I don't get the feeling that there were steps taken along the way here that were guided by public opinion. I think basically the way that the policy steps by the government have kind of evolved is that they've been a product of, in the moment,

sober thinking, conversations with our allies, a strong sense of the need to respond in a number of ways. And so I think probably government took these steps without necessarily wondering whether or not or worrying too much about whether or not the public would support. And I think at this point, if they do see, they'll see this data, obviously, and maybe as you say, they'll have other data. I think that the feeling will be, all right, there's room for us to continue making the right choices as we see them based on all of the intelligence that we have and the kind of the moving target that is this conflict. And you and I and Chantal were talking about this last week, which is that in an ideal world, that's how it should work, that people in government should be gathering information about what the right choices are

and using that to make choices rather than what are the politics of it look like. But, you know, you raise the question, I think, quite appropriately, because if, you know, how many times in our lifetime watching politics is if you're involved in some sort of conflict and the public starts to lose faith in it or feel uncomfortable with it, um, it can eventually become a political issue. Um, I think right now people in government looking at these numbers would say there's a, there's a high degree of concern about what's happening. There's a high degree of desire to work with our allies, to do more to protect people. And there's,

there's trusting government on some level to do the right thing, the judicious thing, but also the, you know, the, the aggressive thing, if that's what is required. I want to move on to a second segment here that's on domestic leadership issues but let me quickly ask you this question. We signal that we'll be moving away from Russian oil imports as did you know the United States, the UK, EU, what difference does it make to us? I mean, it's a very small amount. Almost insignificant, right?

Yeah, it's completely symbolic in terms of any impact that it has on the Canadian supply of oil. I guess the question about where oil from Russia goes in the world has become a really important strategic conversation. I hear a lot of it in the United States. I watched Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday do a panel with a whole bunch of people talking about what could the U.S. do to replace the lost 3% or 8% of its oil that it imports from Russia. And it was kind of stunning to me that they talked about iran they talked about venezuela they talked about saudi arabia they talked about keystone as though keystone was a domestic source and nobody ever mentioned canada which is obviously the the largest supplier of oil to the united states what a shock they didn't mention canada they didn't mention canada and but i do think

that there is a conversation there's two elements of that conversation that i think are going to be interesting to watch one is that the dependence on imports of fossil fuel energy and whether or not countries like germany that found itself hesitating in its involvement against Russia because of that issue. Companies like Shell that found themselves saying, well, we bought a tanker of oil and we're only going to use it in this refinery and we're going to give the profits to Ukraine. And then a couple of days later, they said, actually, that was a mistake. We shouldn't have done that. We're not going to do that anymore so there's a real understanding of the politics of oil and dependence on foreign sources of oil that wouldn't have been there uh without this conflict

and i don't know where it's going to go long term certainly in the near term there's interest in on the part of al's leadership, provincial leadership, in selling more of our oil to the United States and positioning it as not dictator oil. I find that a little bit obvious and obnoxious in the way that it's being done. But I do think that there's a substantive argument in the United States about sources of oil and stability of supply and security of supply and will you know remains to be seen whether that endures beyond the life of this conflict okay and take quick break come back

talk about the conservative leadership race for a moment because it's getting very interesting and this week it uh it it is springing away from just one candidate in the race. Talk about that in just a moment. And hello there. Peter Mansbridge back here again in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. This is Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform. All right. A week ago, you didn't think, I mean, you didn't make a firm prediction, but you seem to be in the camp that Jean Charest would probably decide against running. Now we're told he's going to announce tomorrow, which is going to make this race, no matter how you feel about what his chances are, it's going to make it a lot more interesting on one person, you know, running for the finish line um there are you know uh laszlo lewis got in the race yesterday she finished third last time um there are others expected to join as early as this week so it's starting to look like a you know a multi-candidate race um what are your observations at this point and especially around the decision that appears to be being made that Sharae will jump in tomorrow. Well, you know, I'm glad that you pointed out my error.

It wasn't an error. We get to do that with each other. It's not proven to be an error yet. He made his side against it. It's going to be an error. And, uh, I think that, um, so first of all, I'm glad that he's jumping in the race. I think it's probably a good thing as well that Tasha Carradine has decided rather than to operate a separate campaign aimed at largely the same voters

potentially, that she's going to support Sharae. I think that's a good thing. It sounds as though Patrick Brown is going to get in as well he's the mayor of brampton that's right former pc party leader in ontario uh and so there will be a collection of candidates who aren't uh pierre poliev and who also aren't going after exactly the same voters as he's going after so i think that's that's good. That's a positive in the sense that there will be arguments made, I think, for a less right-wing version of less populist version of the Conservative Party. Having said that, I was a

little bit disappointed when Mr. Charest said he wasn't running as a red Tory and there was room in the party as far as he was concerned for people of all different points of view. And I know that there are going to be people listening to this podcast who say, well, why is it a problem to have all different points of view in a party? And of course, it isn't for everybody. I guess the question from my standpoint is this. If I used to be a member of the party, used to work for that party, I used to give money to candidates in that party. I got solicitations in the last couple of weeks to join the party, to give money to the Shiree campaign. And my problem with it is this, is that I would not join an organization where it's okay to have some views that I completely reject, such as the idea that you should and could reprogram gay people so that they're not gay.

I don't see that as a tent that I want to be in. And I think a lot of people will feel that way. And I think that the right path for the Conservative Party is to decide that some of those views, which clearly in my interpretation anyway, violate any notion of equal rights, just aren't acceptable. And if you're not willing to do that, basically what you're saying is come and join a group where there are really fundamental differences about basic human rights. And I don't think that's going to work long term for the Conservative Party. They could win an election if the Liberals look too exhausted and too bankrupt of ideas and don't

have fresh legs and fresh ideas and maybe a fresh leader. But it's not a viable long term solution for a competitive Conservative Party in Canada to basically operate a tent that says you can be gay in our party, and you can also be against gay people in our party, just to put it that bluntly. I don't think that works. And so I'm hopeful that Sheree and Brown and Carradine and others who are challenging Poliev, who I think clearly has a massive lead, almost a stranglehold on this leadership. I hope they challenge that set of issues. I hope they go after it aggressively. I hope they sell a lot of memberships in Ontario and Quebec and BC and Eastern Canada and among people who live

on the prairies who kind of think the way that I do. That's the right way to build a better Conservative Party, in my opinion. Well, it'll be interesting to see how Sheree and the others handle that question, among others, when they announce their leadership intentions as early as tomorrow in Shereay's case in Calgary. You know, it has the potential of, I mean, listen, let me put it this way. Do you agree with everything in the, you know, in the, you know,

positions of the, either the NDP or the conservative party or the green party, can you tick off every single one to say that, okay, there, here's a party where I agree with everything. I'm not asking for, you know, no, no, no. And I think that's right. I mean, I think that's the way it's always going to be. And I think the question is always going to be a little bit complicated by that, that there are going to be some ideas that you disagree with.

But when the ideas go to really fundamental issues, and for me, there are a couple. There's equal rights and there's climate change. And so if somebody wanted me to join a modern conservative party, the one that I see right now, I don't think I could do it because I don't want to be in a party where the argument that you're trying to make about climate change is, is it real? Or let me put it this way, that you're constantly confronted by people who are in your party. And when you say we need to do X or Y or Z to fight climate change, they go, no, we don't. I personally am more interested in being part of a party where the argument is, should we use a tax or should we increase the pace of our efforts in that area? What kinds of renewable energy should we rely on? Is small modular nuclear a viable option or should we just rule it out?

Those are debates that I feel are the ones that we should have. And that's just me personally, but I would look for a party where those were the kind of conversations. On equal rights, I mentioned issues around sexual orientation, because there has been recently this debate where we saw the caucus of the conservative party really struggle with this question of um of programming uh and counseling gay people in an effort to make them not be gay anymore which i found quite offensive on a number of levels but not everybody finds it offensive but i wouldn't be comfortable sitting in a caucus room or a meeting room with a bunch of people who said, no, no, no, no, no. We want more people to be straight. I just don't feel that that's a that's within the range of thearia law and all that kind of stuff,

all smacked of a certain amount of there's a kind of Canadian that we're okay with, and there's other kinds that we're not that okay with. And I'm personally not interested in that. In the NDP, I'm sure I would find some attitudes towards business that I would not be able to support. I wouldn't maybe find them as odious as people thinking that sexual orientation is something, your sexual orientation is something that I should have an influence on. But I would still find them not ideas that I really want to kind of duke out.

I am generally a centrist, so I'm going to find a messy, sloppy centrist party is going to be a little bit more appealing to me. But I also look at public opinion for the better part of 40 years now, and most Canadians are in that zone. And the question we have to ask ourselves is, are we going to stay in that zone or are we going to become more polarized? And for everybody who says we should become more polarized because my side will win, I just want to say, look at what's happening in the world with more polarization. And does it feel like a strategy for peace and prosperity? Does it feel like something that we really want to aspire to? We shouldn't. I've only got a couple of minutes left,

and I want two quick thoughts from you. This episode of The Bridge, the Wednesday episode, is called Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. So for those who are not necessarily conservative but are anxious to watch this race unfold, the leadership race in that party, uh, what's your advice on this whole, cause they're going to see a lot of smoke. There's going to be a lot of evidence of mirrors and there will be questions about the truth. What's your, um, what's your advice to those who are watching all this unfold on that banner? Well, I think that, you know, I think consume a lot of different media sources.

Look for the actual clips in the long form interviews with leadership candidates where difficult questions are asked. And the most difficult one, I think, is are on kind of climate change and equal rights. People will have different points of view across the spectrum of how fast we should get from big deficits to something closer to a balanced budget. But I think that, you know, your friend in mind, Alan Gregg, years ago said voters really want to ideally get a glimpse inside the soul of politicians. And I think that's what people should try to do. They should try to figure out what makes Pierre Poliev tick. And do I like it? Do I trust it? Do I feel like if he was responsible for making critical decisions about our health and safety and security if there was another pandemic do i feel like he's kind of

i want to say matured because i tend to think he's not that um he looks to me a lot of the time as a as somebody who hasn't done enough different things in his life to really have that kind of seasoning that I tend to look for, but that doesn't mean that that's what other people will think. There's certainly a, you know, I think Charest is going to position himself as somebody who's got some seasoning and some experience. And Polyev will probably say he's old and his ideas are old. And his kind of centrism, such as it is, is boring. And then there'll be people who kind of go, yeah, Polyev, he delivers a great quip. You know, and he's kind of got that combustibility. And you need that to draw attention and raise money and get news coverage

and that sort of thing i think those debates about um who these people are and what makes them tick are really important because you're never going to be able to predict what the issues are that they're going to have to deal with if they're in office if the prime minister someday all you can do is hope that you pick somebody who when when a crisis happens, will have the right set of values and instincts and judgment about what to do about it. The thing I would keep in mind is we've witnessed, and not just in the Conservative Party, but in all parties, and not just in this country, that leadership campaigns often have candidates saying things that they don't necessarily believe, certainly that they don't necessarily will implement if they become leader.

And you have to make your judgments based on that. We've seen lots of examples of that, not just, as I said, not just in this country, but elsewhere as well. Okay, final quick question. The Prime Minister, on his jaunt into europe this week stopped first in britain in the uk and at windsor castle in meeting the queen first person to meet her since she came out of her uh covet issues um and some people have wondered, no, I mean, it's not unusual for a prime minister to meet with the queen, but it seemed, I don't know. Do you have any theories on why he did that? I do, actually.

I mean, I think that we forget sometimes that he's known her for 45 years. He met her when I think he was five years old. So they have a relationship that goes back. And I think that when I was looking at those pictures of the two of them together this week, you know, sometimes Peter, you're a better student of this than I am, but you can see in a picture, a human interaction that is more meaningful than a grip and grin political picture often looks like. Right. I mean, you and I and all of our listeners, I'm sure, see endless numbers of pictures of people in political settings. Then they're you know, they've got an arm around each other or they're shaking each other's hands or their fist bumping or elbow bumping or whatever it is now. And you don't, you know, you sort of come to your own calculation about whether there's something personal that's going on there. And I think the relationship between the prime minister

and the queen is quite personal. I think they really like each other. I think they enjoy each other's company. I understand that it was originally scheduled to be like a 20 minute session. And as you say, the first one that she had with anybody since recovering from COVID and it ended up being 45 minutes. And I think that only happens when two people decide that they they're enjoying each other's company. And I think that's, you know, 45 years of relationship going back to when Justin Trudeau was just a little boy. I think that explains what what we saw in that picture. of a relationship going back to when Justin Trudeau was just a little boy. I think that explains what we saw in that picture. The first thing is an interesting one because she hadn't met Boris Johnson.

Right. She hasn't had a personal one with the Prime Minister of England. So that's interesting. All right. That's a good theory. I like that one. Um, so we'll, uh, we'll keep that in mind. We'll look for the, uh, we'll look for the books when he writes his memoirs. Maybe he'll talk about that meeting. Um, final thought before we go on, this one's from me and I'm sure you share this, but my good friend Dan Snow, the British historian with Canadian roots, Dan had a success, a big success that he just announced today

on his Twitter feed. He's been on for the last month or so this mission to try and find the Endurance, Edward Shackleton's ship in the Antarctic that sunk more than 100 years ago. Shackleton eventually, and all of his crew eventually got back to Britain. But there's an aura around that ship, and they found it.

And on his Twitter feed today, there's some remarkable, incredible images of the ship. So congratulations to Dan. You can find remarkable, incredible images of the ship. So congratulations to Dan. You can find him, Dan Snow, on Twitter. And maybe sign up for his podcast and his

streaming service. His streaming service. TV's fantastic. What a great story. What a fascinating story. I can't wait to learn more about it today. Of course, they have Erebus and Terror envy. You know, when Canada found those two ships from the Franklin Expedition, which were Royal Navy ships in the High Arctic,

they had to find the endurance. They had to try to equal the game here. And congratulations that uh that they did and and look forward to seeing dan stuff but you can get a peak an early peak and some of the pictures are remarkable um of endurance and it's way down it was down i think about 3 000 meters as opposed to the uh arabus and the terror which were you, almost at the surface. But nevertheless, it had been a challenge to find. Anyway, that's it for this week. Thanks, Bruce.

SMT for another week gone by. Bruce will be back on Friday, of course, with Chantel for Good Talk. Tomorrow we'll be back with some of your letters on your turn and a couple of other interesting little things that I've got for tomorrow as well. So we'll talk to you then. And I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.