The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Is The Gun Legislation a Wedge Play?

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

The Liberals have introduced amendments to their Gun Legislation that have caused major opposition -- was that the plan all along? The Democrats win Georgia -- so what does that mean for Donald Trump? And if you're wondering, we are dealing with the AG's report on COVID spending on Good Talk on Friday.

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, coming right up. And yes, hello there, Bruce Andersons in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto on this day. Let's talk about Georgia first of all. You know, this incredibly tight race was supposed to happen last night. I mean, it looks kind of tight, 52-48 roughly. But 100,000 votes in the favor of Senator Warnock, the Democrat in Georgia. In Georgia, the red state.

But no, the Democrats hold on to Georgia and increase their Democratic majority. You know what I found the most interesting part about last night? I think most of us thought Warnock was going to win given the kind of campaign it had been and the track record that Trump favorites have had in the last while. The most amazing thing for me, I thought Warnock gave a great speech, but I thought, you know, after a disastrous campaign of one bad speech after another, that Herschel Walker actually gave a pretty good speech. You know, he talked about, well, he conceded, for starters. He talked about having tried as hard as he could. He talked about defending the Constitution.

He said, in terms of a concession speech, all the right things. And he wasn't reading it, he was just doing it. And, you know, good for him that he had one good day out of a campaign of bad days. I don't know where he was getting his advice. You can imagine perhaps where he was getting his advice. But he certainly didn't get advice from Donald Trump last night for his concession speech because it was a good concession speech and it touched all the right bases. But overall, in terms of the night, it just keeps that string of Trump disasters going. He's had a horrific month of losing legal cases, losing election fights, and sitting down with all the wrong people. And he's still the leader of a party, the apparent leader of a party, that seems unwilling to finally really shake him off.

What do you make of it all? Well, the first thing that occurs to me, Peter, is you're, you know, I feel like you're a better person than me because you're saying nice things about Herschel Walker. And I can't really bring myself to say nice things about Herschel Walker. I think that all I said is he gave a good concession speech. I didn't say much more than that. I know it wasn't a full endorsement, but it was how you opened the conversation. And I was sort of, Oh, I had not expected that the way we were going to start this conversation was going to be,

you know, a tribute, a tribute show to Herschel Walker. I'm kidding you. I understand that, that it was very qualified kind of, he did this one thing in the course of this campaign and it was last night. And,

and concession is good when you lose. And maybe we've just lowered the bar too much that we're setting the bar at. He conceded that he actually didn't get more votes than the other person. But you put your finger on the most important takeaway. I mean, obviously, it would have been bad, I think, for somebody as unqualified, unfit for office as Hershel Walker to be in the U.S. Senate. But the real import here is this was a bad week for Trump, in a bad month for Trump, in a bad year for Trump. He is now demonstrably kryptonite, as I heard somebody call him this morning, for the Republican Party, in the run-up to the midterms, there were four

Senate seats that were very, very winnable seats for the Republicans and would have established full control over both houses of Congress in Arizona, in New Hampshire, in Pennsylvania, and in Georgia. And Trump picked all four of those candidates. They were all four Trumpist kind of candidates. And you may remember, and our listeners may remember, that there were warning signals sent by Mitch McConnell, among others, saying, if we pick bad candidates, and by that he meant if Trump picks the candidates that are election deniers and that are Trumpists, then we're going to have trouble. And he was right.

And those candidates went down to defeat, including Hershel Walker last night. And it's a reflection of the fact that even when you think American politics is so hidebound by this 50-50 polarization, the blue voter will never vote red and vice versa, it doesn't always work out that way. that Herschel Walker still came within a very narrow margin of winning that Senate seat, despite being such an inferior candidate to Reverend Warnock. It does say there's a lot of polarization still that's out there. It's a lot of people voted for a candidate who didn't really deserve their vote. And I know that there will be people who say, well, that's a partisan kind of thought. But I think if you look at these two candidates and the things that they offered and the way in which they thought about the issues and the campaigns that they put together, it wasn't really close, but the votes ended up being kind of close. So a bad,

bad time for Trump. Maybe that's good for America, but I think the Republican Party is still in the same place, which is that it looks like a party that the candidates for which know that they can't win with Trump and they can't win without him. They need his base voters in order to get the primaries that they want to win and so that they can present as Republican candidates. But if they're too Trump-oriented, then they stand a good chance of losing in general elections. And that's a cult issue that the Republicans still have to solve. When we talk about votes, you're quite right overall. The know, 52-48 or 51-49, somewhere in that zone.

And it's close on the overall numbers. But when you look at it by region, by each kind of zone in the state of Georgia, it's usually a blowout one way or the other in most of those areas. You know, the rural areas are heavily heavily republican um and you know upwards of 90 95 percent vote totals uh and then you look in the urban areas much have more heavily populated areas uh where the democrats have have the edge not quite as high as that but sometimes you know in the 70-75% range Democrat, which underlines the other split that has taken place in the United States and to some

degree in Canada as well. We see it every election where there's this rural-urban split. And there's a very different feeling on many of the issues outside of the major cities than it is inside the cities. So it's... And particularly suburban. Suburban voters in this election gave the win to Warnock. That's where the Democrats outperformed expectations. That's where Herschel Walker underperformed what the Republicans could have expected to get.

And that's been true in the midterms more generally. It's been true for Trump in his last presidential election is that the suburban voter was feeling alienated from the Democrats for a while, and then they feeling alienated from the Democrats for a while, and then they became alienated from the Republicans. And I think the Republicans can't win suburban voters if they look like they're the party that wants to flip the table over, if they don't want to respect the Constitution,

if they seem as though they're a party that is about a kind of a rural, inflected vigilantism. And so much of the brand of Trump comes off that way in the news coverage of it and the way in which it manifests on social media, that sort of thing, that I think those suburban voters who are typically voters who are saying, I want to keep the yardsticks for the country and the economy moving in the proper direction. And sometimes I think that the liberals get, you know, kind of too distracted by things that don't mean that much to my everyday life. But they don't really want to um they don't want some sort of virtual insurrection of their country they want more stability than trump and a trump-inflected republican party seems to stand for i think that's the kind of warning that mitch mcconnell and others in the republican party were trying to send to the party members. But as we've talked about before,

the question of who's leading, is it the base or is it the, you know, the kind of the notional leaders, the titular leaders in Washington, D.C.? I think that's an open question. Are there, given the split, the rural-urban split, are there comparisons to Canada? How do we look at what we witnessed in Georgia and in many parts of the U.S. a month ago during the elections and say, hey, this is kind of the same things happening here? There are similarities here I mean uh generally speaking the our elections are increasingly won or lost in the three biggest urban centers in the country um and the conservatives can't win unless they can post better results in Vancouver and Toronto in particular

um and a lot of that a lot of the seats that are a little bit more swing seats in that kind of larger urban agglomeration space are suburban seats. Those voters are kind of grappling with a variety of issues that are different from issues for people who live in either the more affluent urban core areas or the less affluent urban core areas. NDP in some urban core areas can have an advantage because they look like the party that's most committed to solving the problems of the homeless, of the underhoused, of the people who have the least incomes. Liberals sometimes have an advantage because they appeal to people who are a little bit more affluent in the downtown urban areas

but are still largely progressive voters. And conservatives have more traction in those suburban areas where they blend a we-know-what-you-need-and-it's-not-what-the-people-in-the-dow in the downtown core of these cities need and focus on economics to some degree. But the conservative ability to own the suburbs in Canada has been spotty. And whenever they've had a bad time of it, it's when they look more like a kind of a rural more right-wing more reform oriented uh political formation and when they do well it's when they look more like a progressive conservative organization that was the secret to doug ford uh winning in ontario his second election and if you're like me following the polling information coming out of Alberta about Danielle Smith, what you're seeing is that it looks like a close race on the overall province wide numbers.

But if Danielle Smith doesn't do better in Calgary, she's going to lose that election to Rachel Notley in all likelihood. It's the urban vote there that is going to decide if this version of conservative is what they really want, or if it's too much like the kind of conservative that they don't want. I asked you this question a couple of years ago, I think, and you didn't have an answer for it then, but you were going to work on it. So I wonder. I have been working on it. Whatever the question is, I'm standing by for it. And thank you for giving me a heads up about it, whatever that question is. Here it is.

Why in the States are liberals blue and conservatives red, while in Canada it's the opposite? You know, I've been working on that question, and I'm not finished yet. All right. I'm going to answer the question about the donkey and the elephant and the blue and the red next week. So everybody should tune in next week for a special edition of Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, in which we discuss the reasons for the blue and the red and the donkey and the elephant.

I don't mind so much the donkey and the elephant, but the colors thing really, really bugs me. It throws you off. My tiny brain has to keep reformatting every time we're talking about one country or the other on on terms of the colors i'm going to give you a tip just use the names then and then you don't have to worry if you're gonna get it wrong i'll do that or write it write it on the you know finger get a sharpie out and just write red republic yes you even had to think about it. Yeah. Okay. Here's perhaps the lasting image of yesterday.

It's not on this question of where the Republicans sit with the American people and with their place within the political landscape right now. It's not a picture of a triumphant Democratic candidate in Georgia, nor is it a picture of the defeated Republican candidate in Georgia. It's something that happened on Capitol Hill yesterday, which was really glaring. They had a ceremony for a number of the Capitol Hill police officers who had fought the protesters, the insurrectionists, on January 6th,

and also in honor of some of the Capitol Hill police officers who subsequently died as a result of that day. And they were giving out gold medals, congressional gold medals. And so the congressional leaders, both from the Democrats and the Republicans, were there. Senator Schumer, the Democrat from New York, the majority leader in the Senate, he was there. So was Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. And Kevin McCarthy, the guy who thinks he's going to be Speaker of the House of Representatives. They were all lined up, along with others.

And so as each member of the Capitol Hill police officers group, or the spouses of those who had lost their lives, walked by. They accepted a handshake from Schumer, but not from either McConnell or McCarthy. And it was really awkward to look at, because McConnell was standing there with his hand outstretched to shake their hands as they walked by. And every one of them totally ignored him. And as he finally got the message, he tried to turn his hand from a shaking motion to a waving motion as they walked by to not look quite as awkward. but you only had to see his face to know how difficult that was.

So that's the image that I think says a lot about where the Republican Party is right now in a nation that's clearly split and divided. But the sort of no respect moment that we witnessed there was quite something. It was overwhelming to look at. It was, and I'm glad that we exchanged the video clip of it, and maybe we can put it up on social media so that people can look at it, because it is one of those moments in politics where you realize that somebody has decided to orchestrate an event for a particular set of pictures to be transmitted to the rest of society. And that

in the orchestration, both McCarthy and McConnell felt that they belonged on that stage offering congratulations to these police officers when, in fact, they were mostly cowards about this, right? They, at one moment, said, oh, yes, Trump is responsible for this. And then ever since then, they've been more and more silent about it, right? They didn't vote to impeach Trump for his behavior. They have been really careful not to say his name when talking about the importance of respecting the Constitution. I think I'm right about the impeach vote, by the way, but Trump's been in so many different kind of movies. My point with McConnell is, you know, on some days you hear some observers say, well, he's the ultimate kind of political craftsman.

He understands the craft of politics, how to not put yourself in a situation where people will judge you too harshly, how to kind of escape a situation where you're forced to take a position that might alienate some of the people that you really want. And I get that that is one way to measure the efficacy of a politician. But another is whether or not they have any kind of courage at all when something really bad needs to be called out. And McConnell, I think, has proven time and time again, he is a coward when it comes to Donald Trump. McCarthy is perhaps an even bigger coward when it comes to Donald Trump. And so good for those police officers and the others who decided that we're not going to be orchestration that lends any sort of support to the image of McCarthy and McConnell. We have issues with what they did. We have issues with what they did as a consequence of January 6th.

And it would feel hypocritical and wrong to shake their hands. The only really surprising thing, in a way, was how many people had to pass McConnell and not shake his hand before he realized that this wasn't just an accident, that these people had discussed it in advance that they were going to do this. And you said it was awkward. It was so compelling in a way to see McConnell with his handout, like you see politicians sometimes almost a caricature of, I know these people don't like me and I didn't do anything to help them, but I'm going to stand on this stage and I'm going to reach out my hand and they're going to shake my hand because I'm a powerful person and they're going to feel like it's the right thing to do and have those people go no

we're not doing that just walk by very very strong statement very strong um have you sensed in the last well certainly in the last couple of weeks since the uh you know the sit down dinner with the racists and the anti-semite that that Trump had since some of his continuing losses in the court of law. I mean, he's getting hammered almost daily, losing battles. Have you sensed any withdrawal? I mean, a few Republicans have been relatively outspoken, certainly compared with the way they've been the last two years, about Trump, especially over the dinner.

But there does seem to be a divide starting to form. Do you see that? Yeah, I do. I think that it's kind of surprising that it's still. I mean, now that this runoff election, which is the last election from that set of midterms, the next round of primaries are some time off into the distance. So Trump's major point of leverage has either been using social media to belittle and berate other people in the Republican Party who don't fully endorse him or to threaten to primary people like Liz Cheney and others who who don't support him. A lot of his power has gone away right now.

He still can reach a large number of people. He can do rallies. He can put himself on some of these kind of quasi TV channels that reach the Republican base. And he can use the social media platform that he has been using. And I guess if I understand Elon Musk's current position on this, that Trump could go back on Twitter if he wanted to. It remains to be seen whether he will, but there's no question that he doesn't, he's not flexing his muscles in the same way that he was. He did do two rallies in Georgia for Walker, but on the night before the election, he was using social media to talk about overturning the last election rather than exhorting people to vote for Herschel Walker.

It was as though he had tired of that and didn't want Walker's impending loss to further stain Donald Trump's image. But to your original question, it's a remarkably small number of people who've said remarkably soft things from within the Republican ranks against Donald Trump. And maybe today is the day that there'll be more of it, where people just feel like DeSantis isn't the only answer here. I want to be the answer, or I feel like there's little risk to me for taking a harder line against Trump. They should do that. Whether they will or they won't, I think, still comes down to where they raise their money and do they have the courage.

Courage. Yeah, it seems like that's what it's going to take. And we'll see. We'll see if any of them have it. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk guns and Canada right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Wednesday edition. That's Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson.

Bruce is in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or because it's Wednesday, you may be watching us on YouTube. And if you don't have the link, uh, it's on my Twitter and Instagram, uh, bios, and the Truth in action. All right. The liberal government in Ottawa has introduced some new gun legislation,

gun control legislation. This isn't the first time they've done that, but they keep refining what they've done in the past. And they've done so again. And on the wording this time around, it has some people, gun enthusiasts and hunters, upset. Because the way they read it is that certain types of guns have been circled, including at least a couple that are used primarily or solely for hunting, duck hunting, that kind of thing.

And they feel that this legislation infringes on what has been their right, in some cases, for centuries. So I guess the question, Bruce, is whether or not that was kind of deliberately put in there to cause a degree of friction between politically, really, for the conservatives versus the liberals, for some NDPers versus the liberals, for some liberals versus the liberals.

Whether this was a setup, basically, a wedge issue. What do you make of it? I don't think so. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think it's possible. There's no question that from time to time liberals can look at issues like guns and say, if we need to clarify for voters who may not pay that much attention to politics day in, day out, what's the difference between conservative and liberals?

Guns is one of those issues that has a recurring role, let's say, in that. On the other hand, I think this legislation has been kind of in motion for a while. So what really happened in the last little while, Peter, just to summarize for our listeners, is that the Liberals introduced some amendments to their own bill, which included a longer list of weapons that would be subject to some of the provisions of the bill. The Liberals say that their intent was to make sure that every weapon that was originally designed to be used in a context of war was uh was caught by this bill which includes some weapons some rifles that allow for larger magazines of bullets to be attached to them, semi-automatic rifles. I think the liberals' view is that that's the right thing to do,

is to remove weapons that can be used in that way from our society. I think the conservatives and the firearm rights advocates say, well, some of those weapons are only notionally used that way. They're used by hunters in some instances who want to have multiple bullet cartridges. Whether that, you know, whether that list was carefully enough screened, whether it included some that are kind of in the margin, I think the government has probably signaled that they're open to looking at some of the guns that were included in that later list of amendments. And so there's going to be some, I would assume from what the government has said, that there's probably going to be some amendments to the amendments because the government is saying we are not intending to make life difficult for hunters here but then the second thing that's going on on the margins of this that caught a lot of a lot more attention is the there's an activist group called the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, which has been kind of advocating against this bill. And they have been running a promotion

using a code. You know, people are familiar with codes. I think that if you want to buy a piece of merchandise, if you go to a site and you enter this code, you get a discount or something like that. And the code that they've been using is the word poly or the the short form poly which is associated with the polyvalent in montreal the scene of a massacre of of women some 33 years ago go, I guess. And that the association with that organization and their choice to use that as a promotional tool is very controversial, needless to say, a lot of people think that it's incredibly distasteful, incredibly disrespectful to the lives that were lost. And then the last part of that is Cary Price, one of the most famous hockey players in the world and an icon in Montreal, posted on social media in his fatigues for hunting and with his weapon, saying he was against this law. And that post was linked to the CCFR. And then there's been this two-day controversy of what did he know

and did he know about the code that they were using? And it's been a bit of a mess from a Montreal Canadiens PR standpoint and from a Carey Price PR standpoint. I'd be interested to know what you think about that, somebody who has met Carey carry and knows carry and follows hockey and has followed this issue closely. Yeah. Listen,

I think it's, it's unfortunate to say the least, if not more than that. He's saying that he didn't know about it, you know, which is hard to believe you live in Montreal for whatever it's been for him, 15 or 20 years, and says he wasn't aware of December 6th, the polytechnic shooting. Now, he's changed his story on that.

He says now that he was and that the club was wrong to say that he didn't know about it. And he says he didn't know, he didn't agree with the CCFR using that marketing code. But I don't know if you read the statement that he put out, Peter, later in the day, maybe in the early evening, but he said he didn't have any control over the timing of the government's amendments. And he was basically kind of blaming the government for the awkwardness of his post. And then he said some people will have been particularly impacted by that massacre, and I can understand why my post would have been upsetting to them. But it was a pretty mealy apology. It wasn't really an apology.

It was an excuse. And I think he's less than fine. I'm sure it was an excuse. I mean, I think he was deliberate in his post in terms of being in opposition to the legislation. Yes. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I mean, you know, he's a guy who's been hunting and fishing since he was a toddler. His Indigenous background, you know, hunting and fishing is a part of his life, always has been. Yeah.

I talked the other day on the podcast about how I, you know, I've been in his home. He makes his own ammunition, you know, like he makes his own bullets and has for years. So he's a dedicated, like, hunter, sports person in that term. He got himself into a mess here that his hockey club has tried to help him get out of. Hasn't been successful. I mean, I'm getting lots of emails about it as well.

And, you know, it's just it has tainted what has been for him a life of only accolades. Yeah. I think one of the things that they advocate for, it isn't just a kind of a narrower definition of which semi-automatic weapons should be prohibited. They advocate that you should be able to obtain a license to carry a concealed weapon in Canada. They advocate that the ownership of, that having an unlicensed gun should be taken out of the criminal code and it should just be some sort of a regulatory offense. So those positions of that organization, they're entitled to take those positions, but should a famous entertainer or

sports star decide to associate themselves with an organization, they should be careful about what else they're associating themselves with, including this marketing promotion that's so distasteful, disrespectful, and including some of the other positions that they take, which perhaps Carey Price doesn't support. Okay. I don't disagree with you on that advice that you give to all those who are in public life and find themselves suddenly involving themselves in campaigns of various natures, make sure you know what you're dealing with and who you're dealing with.

But back to the central issue as to whether or not this is, how this plays out politically. I mean, clearly conservatives are upset, and they've made that known very clearly and they bring it up in the House of Commons. But I saw, you know, it's a problem for some NDPers, especially NDP members who are in northern ridings where, you know, hunting is a big deal and important to the life of those ridings.

I mean, I saw Charlie Angus is not happy with this legislation and is making his feelings clear. How does this play out politically? And I do think there are elements within the Liberal Party as there are in other parties who are always looking for the wedge issues. Yeah, I don't think there's any question that this, if it was intended to be a work of political art, it's an imperfect work of political art by the liberals.

They don't have their own side completely unified around this. They, you know, if they were intending to just isolate the conservatives, they ended up drawing criticism from the left as well. And they're already talking about making amendments to the amendments. So if you put all of that together, you could either come to the conclusion that it was just a little bit of sloppy work on the list that needed more time and more deliberation and more care not to include some things that kind of just legitimate hunters want to use.

Or it was a kind of an attempt at political strategy that was kind of ham-fisted a little bit. But I think the former is the more logical solution. What's that term, Occam's razor? The simplest answer is sometimes the most likely. If you put a list of, I think there was some 500 weapons, if memory serves me correctly, together, that's a big list. There's probably going to be some things on it that maybe don't get as much scrutiny as perhaps could be the case.

So we'll see how it goes. But I do think that conservatives need to be careful about this because the general orientation of a lot of voters, including a lot of voters that conservatives need to get support from, is less guns is better, especially with what we've been seeing in the United States. And semi-automatic weapons, I think there are probably those suburban voters, some of them who would say, do you need a semi-automatic weapon in order to hunt? And the Conservatives have such strong support in rural Canada. It's not clear to me

that they're going to really strengthen their electoral prospects by over-litigating this issue. Probably everybody would be better served if parties just got together and figured out what this list should be. All right. I'm going to wrap it up for this day, but one quick last point. I saw somebody floating the idea yesterday or Monday about a major cabinet shuffle in the works. Now, cabinet shuffles happen in the life of any government, and often they happen around this time of year, like, you know, sort of after the holidays, early January,

before the House comes back, gives new ministers and new portfolios a chance to understand their department, et cetera, et cetera. Are you hearing any rumblings about cabinet shuffles? Well, you know, I'm tempted to generally think that when you hear about this, it's because people don't have enough other things to talk about. On the other hand, somebody wrote a piece yesterday that I saw where, well, actually, Trudeau had had shuffles in January of this year and this year and this year and this year. And I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that.

Somehow that escaped me. So I think that the rumor mill is built on the idea that that has been for Trudeau something that he's done on more than two occasions, at least. And so it's not implausible that that represents a time for a reset. There will be caucus retreats and presumably cabinet retreat towards the end of January when the House comes back. But other than this being one of the more recurring, it's like Christmas music. It's going to come and we're going to listen to it. And I don't know if it means that there's anything to it. I really feel that this government anyway, it's been pretty good about keeping that kind of thing under wraps.

So the more pressing question then clearly is why red why blue next week this is a reason you know in addition to maybe we should have a little christmas music uh as our opening music um but for people to come back in the next two weeks for the remaining shows before the christmas break sounds like a plan all All right, Bruce, thanks very much. Another little smoke mirrors the truth with Bruce Anderson. Bruce will be back, of course, on Friday with Chantelle Hebert for Good Talk. And tomorrow, it's your turn and the random ranter. So if you have something to say, get it into me now,

the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com,bridgepodcasts at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcasts at gmail.com. Don't forget to include where you're writing from. And lately, there have been some really, really long letters coming in. Got to, like, condense those thoughts, you know, like Bruce does, like how he just packages his answer into like one line or two. I don't know. Maybe, could be.

You know, those kind of answers, those kind of questions. And if you have the answer to red and blue, get it in now. You can beat them to the punch. This is your TLDR. It took me like a couple of years. I would see people use TLDR in my office, and younger people would sort of send me a message back, TLDR. And finally, I worked up the courage to say, well, what does that mean?

And they go, too long, didn't read. So this is your message to writers. If it's too long, I might not be able to read it all. Good for you. That's good advice. TLDR. I better write that down or I'll forget it.

Um, okay. Thanks Bruce. And thank you. Thank you out there for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.