The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Is the Misinformation Game Crumbling?

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

That promoting vaccine misinformation have taken a big hit with some of their biggest supporters taking to the sidelines. Bruce Anderson is in his regular spot for SMT as we talk vaccine numbers, and also we look at just how big the indigenous issue could be in the upcoming election. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's Wednesday, hump day. You know what that means. It means smoke, mirrors, and the truth with Bruce Anderson. A can of pet food, where every ingredient matters. Some companies like to brag about their first ingredient, but the A Can of Pet Food team is proud of their entire bag. That's because every recipe has been thoughtfully sourced and carefully crafted with the highest quality ingredients, starting with quality animal ingredients, balanced with whole fruits and vegetables. Acana Pet Foods are rich in the protein and nutrients your dog or cat needs to feel and look their best.

Available in grain-free, healthy grains, and singles for sensitive dogs. Acana, go beyond the first ingredient. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson today is in Ottawa. Smoke, mirrors and the truth coming your way. And today we're actually going to talk about a number of things. We're going to talk about vaccines and numbers. We're going to talk about misinformation.

And we're going to talk about something we promised last week that we would get to, and that is this issue of Indigenous, well, the Indigenous issue and how much of a role it should and will play in the expected election that we expect to come at some point next month. Good morning to you. Good afternoon. No matter which time zone you're in, it's a good day. It's a beautiful day here in Southern Ontario.

So hopefully it is for you in Ottawa as well, Bruce. It's a beautiful morning here, but I'd also like to say good evening to anybody who's going to listen to this a little bit later in the day. And just a great big shout out. Summer's here. Feels good. Although the air to this a little bit later in the day. And just a great big shout out. Summer's here. Feels good. Although the year yesterday was a little bit sketchy in this part of the country

and obviously worse in BC. So some concerns, obviously, for people who are experiencing those fires. Seems like a bad year. The fires, Stephen, it's not just BC. It's, you know, like my old haunting ground in northwestern Ontario up around Red Lake. It's been like there are like dozens and dozens of fires. Yesterday, the wind was working in their favor, but that can, you know, that can turn on a dime. So, you know, it's a tricky time of year for a lot of places my my son-in-law in manitoba told me the other day that he can't even use charcoal

which would be terrible for you because you're a big charcoal uh what's that thing the egg you've got the egg yeah i like that charcoal's a big deal and they're you know they're restricting use of charcoal uh because of the situation uh in forest fires in in uh in Manitoba as well. All right. I want to talk vaccines for a minute, because there are a lot of good things about the numbers in Canada. And I want to talk to you about this, because I know how deeply and heavily involved you are

with the Faster Together program, which is trying to entice Canadians to get their vaccines. And you've got a lot of different groups and organizations, businesses, individuals, and associations who are, you know, aligned with the Faster Together program. Also, you know, you're aligned with the This Is Our Shot program that Hayley Wickenheiser is so involved in. So, I mean, a lot of good things going on and the results are being produced. You know, we got over 80% now of Canadians in the 12 or over bracket have received at least one vaccine.

The high 50% figure in turn, almost 60% now, who are fully vaccinated. So those are incredible numbers and heading towards what exactly Anita Anand predicted on this program a month or five weeks ago. So those are good numbers. No question about it. When you look at it with just including the 12 and unders, which you have to do when you're talking about the overall population,

even though 12 and under are not able to get the vaccine yet. Hopefully that's going to change by the fall, but the testing is still going on. When you look at them, everybody included, when you look at Canada as a whole, and you assume that we've got like 38 million people in the country, that's basically the population. And at the kind of percentages we're talking about, it's 27, 28 million have had at least one vaccine. Now, that's impressive, but you got to keep it in context.

That means that more than 10 million, almost 12 million people have not been vaccinated. So you got a country where a lot of people are walking around who have no vaccine, have not had a vaccine. And the numbers are, in terms of the daily vaccine count, are still going on. There's still people getting vaccinated it's dropped a little bit it's not the high numbers it was a little while ago so what's your thinking around that because i think we all agree that the you know the the elusive herd immunity phrase which we're kind of dodging and keeping away from because people just want to get as many people vaccinated as possible. But these numbers aren't enough yet.

And that's a lot of people walking around who aren't vaccinated. Yeah, yeah, it seems like it's not enough yet. I suppose that the science is still evolving, especially with the Delta variant, Peter, but we measure adults because our survey methodology doesn't allow us the flexibility to really measure people who are 12 to 18. So of the 18 and older, those are the numbers that I'm going to be able to use based on our work. And what we see right now is that there are about 2.4 million adult Canadians who say, I'm never going to take this COVID vaccine. And there are 2.4 million adult Canadians who are maybes. Our focus in our work with Faster Together is really on the maybes.

When we come to misinformation and politicization, that's where we can really kind of draw a bead on the nevers. But the maybes are the right target, I think, for the country right now, in the sense that most of them say, well, I'm still waiting, or I don't really want to get it, but I could be convinced to. And so we know that peer pressure, if we want, community pressure, a sense of being able to do everything that everybody else is. Those are all important aspects of how we get that 8% or 2.4 million Canadians to join all of the others who've got their COVID shots already. And I think, you know, my own view is that it's going to be important for governments to put in place more stringent pressures, more significant pressures. Some people want to call it a vaccine mandate or vaccine passport. I think that probably the right way to do this

is you can't force people to get vaccinations, but you can make their lives more constrained if they don't. And when we measure that in our surveys, and we'll put out something this week, 80% of Canadians believe that that's reasonable. Only 44% say everybody should be required to get a vaccination, but another 38% say you shouldn't be required, but if you don't, your movements, places you can go should be constrained.

That seems reasonable to people. I think another thing that we've started testing, and I think we talked about it briefly last week, is that if the pandemic continues because the Delta variant continues, because young people aren't vaccinated yet, kids can be carriers, even vaccinated people can be carriers, and the combination of the 2.4 million maybes and the 2.4 million nevers is enough of a petri dish. If that happens, if our economy can't fully recover, if businesses have to close down again, there's a lot of Canadians, about 80% who say if there's an argument to extend benefits for

businesses, wage subsidies, rent help, or wage benefits for workers, that those should be tied, those benefits should be tied to whether you're getting vaccinated or if you're an employer, if you're doing everything you can to get your employees vaccinated. Because just as everybody should have a choice, I guess, of whether to be vaccinated or not, or at least that argument can be made. Other people's choices should be respected too. And that includes the choice not to be in a place where people are allowed to go who are unvaccinated,

who could be carriers of this disease. Choose not to have their tax dollars used to subsidize people who aren't doing their part to end the pandemic and to reduce the risk for other people. So I heard a last point I'll make, Peter, is I heard Premier Ford the other day saying he wasn't going to enforce any kind of vaccine mandate because he didn't want to have a split society. He's got one already. We're split now. Yeah, gone already we're split now yeah exactly we're split now the way to not have a split society is get everybody vaccinated and

we're close enough that it's within sight um but the idea that the premier is going to basically side with the eight percent nevers against everybody else who took whatever risk they decided they were taking to get that shot, are paying their taxes and hoping the economy recovers. That seems like a terrible choice. I have no idea why he felt like that's going to be a choice he's going to enjoy, because I don't think he's going to stick with it. I think he's going to end up feeling a lot of pressure to change that position, and I think he's going to stick with it i think he's going to end up feeling a lot of pressure to change that position and i think he should well i'll tell you he can just look next door westward to another conservative premier brian palliser who's had a rough go in the last couple of years uh on the covet management situation and there have been a number of

scandals not the right word but there have been a number of issues that he's really been hit hard on. He's not backing off. In fact, he's the, at the moment, the lone province, others are looking at it, including Quebec, that have an immunization card for those who are double vaccinated. You actually get a card. You got to apply for it. You get it, and then you have to prove that you've had the two shots.

You get it in the mail have to prove that you've had the two shots you get it in the mail and this gives you access so this clearly is the first sign of the you know the kind of two-country state if you will in terms of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated and i know there's a lot of issues around that and a lot of people feel strongly about it but in manitoba you ain't going to the Blue Bomber game unless you have that card, which means that the stadium in Winnipeg, if you're watching the Bombers, the stadium is full. Every seat's up for sale. But every seat is occupied by somebody who has been double vaccinated.

The same goes in movie theaters and you know stage theaters some restaurants bars and lounges they all have the ability to say show me your card you don't get in now you know we have you know there's a lot about our country we love but one of the things that has always frustrated me is that we have this checkerboard canada you know uh pierre trudeau used to call it a you know a country of shopping centers where all the rules are different depending on where you are it's kind of like going through airport security depends which airport you're in well it depends which province you're in here instead of having one uniform policy. And I know the argument, I'll change the constitution, all that.

Well, change the constitution. Like, why can't we all be the same? Why can't we all have the same rules? But look at, you know, go on websites. I'm talking to listeners here because I know you know this stuff already about Manitoba, but it's pretty interesting. And it's been well-received, just like you say. You know, there is a constituency for something like this. it's pretty interesting and it's been well received just like you say there you know there

is a constituency for something like this there's also a you know there is also an argument against it about privacy etc although i don't get it there's nothing on this card except your name i think your birthday and your and your two um uh um a proof of a proof that you don't get the card unless you've proved that you've had the two vaccinations but nothing else about any of your health records nothing um yeah that's it yeah you know dr fauci yesterday i think it was yesterday maybe it was the day before he said somebody asked him why is thing why is this vaccination thing going better in canada than it is in the United States? And he said politics.

And basically what he was describing is the fact that we haven't allowed or encouraged the idea that the choice of being vaccinated becomes a matter of your political partisanship. We have a little bit higher level of resistance to the vaccine on the right. Significantly higher, I should say, than on the left. But we don't have that strong a divide as we see in the United States. And we shouldn't. And this is one of the reasons why I'm

worried about Doug Ford's position, because it basically legitimizes the misinformed, what I think of as relatively selfish idea that I don't have to take that vaccine. And maybe I'm saying that because everybody else is taking it or I'm just choosing to ignore the fact that I could be putting other people at risk. But sometimes I think if we stop talking about vaccines right now in the context of ending COVID, if we woke up tomorrow morning and we read stories about another virus, completely different virus, shedding our way. And we knew that there was a vaccine that would stop it. Do we think we'd be having this debate? No, we'd say everybody's going to get vaccinated.

We wouldn't even imagine for a minute wanting to put ourselves through what we've been through for 18 months if we had it to do over again so that's you know when we just stop and think about that you kind of go well this is a no-brainer everybody should get vaccinated and everybody should put their shoulder to the wheel to finish that and sometimes I think we're a polite society. So, you know, when we ask people, well, do you think less of somebody who's choosing not to get vaccinated? 40%. That's a lot of people say, yeah, if I run into somebody and they say they're not going to get a vaccination, I think less of them as a person for the choice that they're making. I think it's about 50% who say, if I have a friend or a relative who won't get vaccinated, I'm going to try to avoid seeing them.

So these are real divisive choices that anti-vaxxers are making. They may not recognize it that way, but from the standpoint of unity to recognize this conversation will get uglier if we have another wave or if we can't control the infection rate and if businesses start to feel that pressure again. And everybody's going to need to kind of fess up to what their position is at that point. And businesses, you know, have to be thinking fairly strongly about what they're demanding of their employees. Because just as those, as you suggest, as people sort of wondering about

their friends who won't get vaccinated or somebody they meet who won't get vaccinated, if you go to a restaurant and you ask your server and if your server is willing to answer um whether or not they're vaccinated and they say no i'm not vaccinated and i'm not getting vaccinated so we're like how exactly are you going to feel about that you know are you gonna are you gonna stay at your table are you to leave um and it's the same in uh you know when your dentist's office or your doctor's office now most people would say oh come on peter for crying out loud um health care workers they're all vaccinated well i i don't know what the numbers are in canada but i heard bill de blasio is the mayor of new New York City for a little while longer anyway

because there's been a new election and there's going to be a new mayor in New York. But he was on one of the morning television shows today, and he put forward a statistic which I found stunning, like absolutely amazing. And I don't know what the numbers are in Canada, but he said there are 22 million healthcare workers in the United States. Half of them, half of them are not vaccinated. Now, go figure that one. You'd think that that number would be much higher, but it's not.

Yeah, it's such a strange phenomenon, what's happening in the United States to see that country that struggled so much with COVID, the deaths, and the news was nothing but COVID and destruction of the economy and of lives for months. And they have this abundance of vaccines and they can't seem to get out of their own way politically on this. Although there maybe have been some slightly encouraging signs, and you and I were talking about this earlier, Peter, that now some of the Fox News personalities finally are taking to the airwaves saying, we're getting vaccinated, we believe in vaccination. So

I don't know, it's hard to feel hopeful sometimes when you look at the United States, but maybe there's some positive signs there. The one other thing in Canada that I'm a little bit preoccupied with, and we see it in our numbers, is that there's about 20% of Canadians who aren't sure the second shot is essential. You know, they say, well, it's a good idea. It improves your protection, but is it really necessary? And if you put those views together with the fact that we still have, you know, 2.4 million maybes and 2.4 million no's.

It's a lot of people where we have to finish the conversation and get it done. We can't afford to have a situation where people stop short of getting that full protection, create more of a Petri dish scenario because we got a little complacent. And so that's a lot of the work because we got a little complacent. And so that's a lot of the work that we're putting into faster together right now is how do we address that question? And to your, your point about will people be more comfortable going into a place where they know employees are vaccinated? We're measuring that this week.

We'll have a release out in the next week. We've actually designed a sticker that businesses can use. They can put on their Uber vehicles or in their windows of their hair salons or their restaurants saying, we heart COVID vaccines, or they can choose one that says we're fully vaxxed for your health. And, you know, so we're hoping to put those out into the market in the coming weeks so that businesses can help communicate in a way that creates that echo chamber effect and more and more people get vaccinated.

Okay. You've mentioned misinformation a couple of times. I want to spend a few minutes on that. We're going to take a quick break. Before we take the break, though, you said earlier, you know, good morning to people. And I said, good morning, good afternoon, because different time zones, because different time zones etc etc it's nighttime already in japan and we know there's the whole olympic story and maybe we'll touch on that next week see how it's will have gone for the first few days seems like a real mess right now but anyway um i mentioned japan and tokyo specifically and I don't normally do this,

and I don't want to start a rush of people sending in birthday, asking me to do birthday wishes. But I got a request from a son of a fellow in Japan, in Tokyo, who keeps his connection to Canada by listening to our podcast, and he's a big fan of yours. And so we're wishing him a happy birthday july 21st by the time he gets this it may already be july 22nd but nevertheless uh shailesh shukla happy birthday happy birthday to you yeah exactly and uh your son shelvalini, asked us to do that,

and we're happy to do it for you. This is a one-off. A happy birthday from the bridge, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. That is the truth. We'll be right back after this. Okay, you're back with the bridge, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, the Wednesday edition. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Stratford, Ontario. We're going to spend a couple of minutes here on misinformation because this is kind of a historic week, especially in the United States, for those who have been publicly either advocating don't get a vaccine or standing on the fence and not pushing the idea of getting vaccines at all. Most of these people are on the right of the political spectrum in the United States, and it's been a divisive issue of that there is no question but there seems to have for some reason and it may be the delta variant the fact that 83

percent of the new cases in the united states this number came out today um 83 percent of the new cases in the united states are a result of the Delta variant. But what's happened? Well, what's happened is people like Sean Hannity and a number of his buddies at Fox News who've been, you know, kind of not looking favorably on the whole idea of vaccines through many months have suddenly, suddenly gone, you've got to get a vaccine. You've got to get it now. Get out there and get a vaccine. It's really important.

It's going to save your life. Mitch McConnell yesterday, the Senate Majority Leader, the Republican Senate Minority Leader, but at times you think, even though they're in the minority, he kind of runs the place. He did more or less exactly the same thing get your vaccine it's going to save your life and a number of um church leaders religious groups that have been you know basically anti-vax have suddenly flipped and gone the other way and this is to counter what has been a successful attack from the center and the left on the misinformation that's out there,

and there is a lot of misinformation. And as, you know, that stunning statistic the other day about Facebook saying that, what was it, 60% of the misinformation on Facebook comes from 12 people? Yeah, this is incredible. Read by millions, 12 people have been orchestrating it. Anyway, what's happening? Why do you think this is suddenly happening?

Because it all seems to have happened within the space of the last 24, 48 hours. Yeah, look, I think that it's shocking to realize the degree to which other actors, including state actors, can use social media to really disrupt democracies. And I say democracies in particular because in democracies, we generally have kind of open platforms. I mean, I think what we're realizing is that the danger of these open platforms is that they can be invaded and manipulated by people who want to create division, who want to create social unrest, who might want to create economic harm, health harm, climate harm. And so we know that there's been a certain amount of that that comes from Russia. And we can imagine that there are other state actors around the world that are involved in some of this. And that maybe more of it is happening towards the United States and towards Canada.

But that doesn't make me feel any better about it. There's no question that this, this, this idea of a super spreader accounts is out there. And Facebook and others who monitor this have measured these super spreader accounts. They understand the dimension of the impact that they're having. And of course, when I talk to people at Facebook, they say, well, look, we've taken down many, many, many, many accounts and we've removed millions of pieces of misinformation. And I'm sure that's true. And I guess the question is,

is it enough at this point? Do they have a systemic solution or are we still witnessing what is in effect a systemic failure and that needs more than corporate action and i think that that i have some hesitation about the idea that governments need to get more involved in this beyond putting in place hate laws because you don't really want a society where government is being too prescriptive about what people can share. That's that's not ideal at all. On the other hand, the amount and the nature and the effects of disinformation, whether it's on climate, on health, on covid vaccines. It's it's very debilitating.

So there are those state actors, but there are also this other category of people who have their own political reasons for feeding misinformation. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's a very high profile anti-vaxxer. And I think he's been taken off Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, but he's still on Facebook. So there are some holes that some of this misinformation is getting through. And I think that we all need to kind of put the pressure on the social media platforms to take it very, very seriously and recognizing that it's hard for them to be responsible for

making all of the rules. And so it kind of can feel a little easy just to blame them. On the other hand, it's an urgent problem. And we got to do more about it. You know, there's no doubt that it's rampant in the States. I assume it's not as bad here or is it as bad here? I mean, there's some crossover, obviously obviously because of the social media platforms so uh but in terms of overall you know i mean the politicians have been actively involved some on the right some uh broadcasters some media people some newspapers have been actively involved in the states. Do we see that kind of activity here?

No, not really. I mean, I hesitate to say that because it's a smaller problem here, you know, to somehow imply that we don't need to take it seriously here. We do obviously need to take it seriously here. And we do have some people in politics who are spreading disinformation about COVID vaccines. We don't tend to really sanction that in a highly visible way. And sometimes I think that's too bad. Maybe we should do a little bit more to call out those politicians. On the other hand, I occasionally think, well, if we do that, aren't we just turning up the dial on partisanship?

Aren't we just going to create more friction? And every action has a reaction. And so you start to create a cluster of people who react to the argument that you're putting forward because that's kind of how politics work sometimes but i i do think some combination of like what we used to rely on really was media organizations that had a compass and had the ability to establish guardrails and that they did it because they understood that their role was in the public interest and that they did it because they understood that their role was in the public interest and that they had some responsibility if they wanted to keep their businesses intact

to govern their behaviors in terms of what they put out there. Well, most of those businesses are struggling to stay alive now. And one of the ways that they think works is to get clicks. And so a lot of times the information that gets the most clicks is the stuff that includes angry comments, misinformed ideas, arguments from people who are off the mainstream because they're deliberately off the mainstream. So I worry that we can't count on traditional media to do it, and the new media enterprises don't really have that DNA of what their role is, is to kind of protect the public discourse. And the default goes to politicians, some of whom are up for this conversation

and some of whom, you know, for reasons that are understandable, don't really want to put themselves in that role. Okay. The time left, of which there's seven or eight minutes here, I would like to deal with an issue that we touched on a little bit last week, but I know there was more that you wanted to say about it. And that is the question of the Indigenous issue that involves everything from what we've witnessed in terms of the residential school question

over the past couple of months, really the last dozens of years, but have really come into mind and focus in the last couple of months, to water on reserves, to the imbalance of the judicial system, to the problems for kids on health and education, Indigenous kids. And there has been much talk about, okay, you know, we're expecting an election could be called early next month and for sometime in September. And one of the big issues,

obviously pandemic will be out there, but one of the other big issues, most important issues, will be the issue of Indigenous rights and what we're going to finally do about it. And everybody kind of nods in agreement, yes, it's going to be a big issue. We kind of heard this movie before and it kind of drops off the edge fairly quickly as we all move to other issues.

Is this different? Is this year different? Is this, should this, well, I think we all agree it should, but will it be a big issue in this campaign? I don't know if it's going to be a big issue in the campaign. I'm not sure that we're going to see enough division between or distance between the parties to make it that kind of an issue. But if you ask me if things are different now, I think this decade is different.

I think the next decade will be more different still. And here's what I mean by that, Peter. I think that the young people in Canada today, call it under 30 voters, they have a different feeling about the importance of equality, that it isn't a conversation where they're interested in hearing, it's going to take a long time and we're making some progress. They're interested in hearing it's going to take a long time and we're making some progress they're interested in who's going to do it now who's going

to get it done now i don't want to hear any more um that makes me feel like this isn't urgent because equality for them is um should be kind of table stakes and that's true whether they're talking about the rights of women, the rights of people of color, the treatment of indigenous people, all of those factors have really created a cultural shift that led by young people to say, the status quo doesn't work. So fix it. And if you're not going to fix it, we're going to find people who will fix it and vote for them. So I think that change, we may look at it and say it's been a long time coming, but I think it's here. And so I think the Indigenous question fits within that to some degree. It's a part of that impatience for a sense of equality where the behavior of the country matches the rhetoric

of the country. The second thing that I think about is that is really about who we are as a country, which isn't really just about equality and what's missing and how urgent that is to fix that. We're having a little bit of a, I don't think it's a culture war, but we're having a culture reckoning where a lot of people are saying, I like Canada the way that it has been. And a lot of other people are going, I don't like your version of what Canada is. It doesn't feel right to me. It doesn't feel like, I don't want to buy into the idea that the Canada that has been, has been as good as you say it has. It feels like a white male argument. And I think that, so in that sense, the indigenous

conversation is also part of that reckoning, that cultural reckoning about who we are. And I don't really feel like as some on the conservative side say that this is about feeling shame about Canada. I think it's just saying it's canceling culture to pretend that we don't have problems of racism in our society, whether it's Islamophobia or racism towards indigenous people, we have it. And it, it's actually more true to my sense of who we are as a country to be honest about it and to take steps to try to deal with it. And so I think that cultural reckoning is,

has arrived in a way that it never had before in my life. And I think the impatience for equality is greater than it ever has been in my life. And so both of those things, to me, being the Indigenous question, has more urgency and more promise to it. But I don't know if it's going to be a choice dynamic in the election per se. You know, I've spent most of my life or a good chunk of my life believing that everything about us is great, that it's just such a great country. And when you compare us to other countries around the world and when other countries around the world compare themselves to us, you come up on that kind of side of the equation.

Canada is great. Canada is a great country but i gotta say um well i'm i still wouldn't live anywhere else in the world i have come to the belief that we're not who we thought we were on some key areas and so i'm an old white guy in my 70s i don't know one of those young people that you're talking about who are kind of leading the push towards change and acceptance of things that have not been right and we need to fix them. And we can fix them because we are at root a great country. So that's kind of where I am, and I'm wondering how much of that will unfold in this campaign. I mean, we all know campaigns. I know almost as well as anyone that things can turn on a dime

in terms of issues, and you can suddenly be talking about something you'd never dreamt you were going to be talking about. This is a little different this year because of the pandemic. It'll obviously be a big issue. But this one is tugging along. And I find your comments about young people and the push towards, you know, getting something done now. Forget about the promises of, you know, in my first mandate, I promise to in my first mandate, I'll, I promise to do this. And then the second mandate, I'll, I'll do that and blah, blah, blah.

Uh, they want to see change now, like right now. Um, so, you know, we'll see, you know, we'll see how that unfolds in a campaign. You know, at the top of my head, I would say that that tends to favor, you know, it tends to favor the NDP and tends to favor them in particular areas where they're potentially strong. And that may be part of the reason why we're seeing the numbers climb for Jagmeet Singh. I think there's no doubt. No doubt. I think that's right. No doubt. So give me the closing

thought because we're almost out of time one last thing on on this kind of push for equality that i was thinking about this morning and i actually put out a tweet about it which is that i remember when the trudeau government was elected in 2015 and the prime minister appointed a cabinet with 50 women and there were a fair number of voices then who were like, oh, this is a gimmick. You know, is this kind of working against the idea of a merit principle by putting in quotas? And I found myself thinking about that yesterday and thinking, you know what?

We've had a health minister who's done a good job in my opinion, any way of steering us through this really incredible situation. We've had a procurement minister who's done a fantastic job of getting us the vaccines that we needed. We had a climate change minister who got a carbon price put in place. And we've had a finance minister who's helped shepherd the country through, you know, incredible set of economic pressures. And I kind of look at that and go, you know what, that was a step change. And some might say it came way too late, but I don't look at it now and say that was a gimmick.

I say that kind of worked that show that merit actually was being prevented under our old system that we had this systemic mindset that, well, we could have more women and it'd be good to have more women, but, you know, is it really good for government? Well, yeah, it's, it's good not to have these historic kind of biases and to give everybody an equal opportunity. And so let's hope we have more and more quickly. Okay. We're going to close it out for this week. We never had time to get to the radishes,

but I've seen some of your pictures online bragging about all that. I'm going to tell you the tomatoes, honestly, the best tomatoes I've ever eaten. And I just wish I had more so I could share them with people or we could get some down to you in stratford but uh just put them in put them in our restaurant geocantina bank street in ottawa that's where you should put the hole in the wall it's opened up and people are happy yeah they're happy and um let's hope they're all safe and let's hope you're safe out there as you move forward in this summer of 21.

We're off for the week. Reminder, of course, that we will be back with a daily version of The Bridge once the election campaign is called. And this Friday, we've got a special. I've been telling you that we were looking forward to talking to Aaron O'Toole, a conservative leader. And that comes up this Friday. We have a one-hour special, which will go up on the podcast.

We'll be first heard on SiriusXM at noon on Friday, at noon Eastern time on Friday, Channel 167 Canada Talks. So you'll want to listen to that. We did Justin Trudeau a few months ago. This is Aaron O'Toole's turn. And if we're lucky, we'll get Jag listen to that. We did Justin Trudeau a few months ago. This is Aaron O'Toole's turn. And if we're lucky, we'll get Jagmeet Singh before the election campaign comes on as well. So you'll have heard the three main party leaders in the country. And before you have to really start seriously thinking about what you're going to do during the campaign.

But Aaron O'Toole, this Friday, on a special one-hour edition of The Bridge. So, Bruce, thank you very much. Good to talk to you, as always. And we'll talk to you again. Lovely to see you, Peter. Take it easy. Okay.