The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Pierre Poilievre Unplugged

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

It happened a few days ago but some interesting moments during an interview Pierre Poilievre had on Winnipeg regional television.  He talks about his press availability and his climate position.  Both reveal to Bruce Anderson more about the kind of leader he is and will be.  Also, more on Bill Morneau and Justin Trudeau.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, Wednesday. Bruce Anderson, smoke, mirrors, and the truth. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Toronto. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. Good morning, good good day good afternoon depending on your time zone how are you good morning peter it's great to see you um okay we're gonna um i gotta start this episode with a just a little brief explanation you know a lot of people out there think that those of us in the media, people like me, people like, you know, news anchors in different places, reporters, that when they sit down for an interview with a

public figure, hey, they've already told them all the questions they're going to ask. You know, they get approval from whoever it is that, okay, we can do this interview because I know what you're going to ask. That's not what happens. I mean, it just doesn't happen, certainly not at the level I was at. I can tell you in 50 years of journalism at the CBC, I was only ever asked once by those who worked for the person I was about to interview what the questions were going to be.

I said, no, no, no, we don't do that. You know who that was? Vice President Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States, a Democrat. He wanted the questions. Now, he was going through a particularly kind of weird time in his life, but nevertheless, he wanted the questions. I wouldn't give them, and so the interview didn't happen.

He shopped it around, went to a different outlet in Toronto, actually, and had the interview done. But that was the only time in all those years from all different politicians and business leaders and academics and you name it, I mean, you generally said, okay, I want to talk about climate change, right? That's the interview I want to do. And that was it. You didn't start going through the specific questions. Anyway, I say that as a backdrop to what our first installment is about. And it's about our friend Pierre Poliev,

who has been back and forth on who's going to interview him and who isn't going to interview him. But he did an interview a couple of days ago in Winnipeg with Marilee Caruso, I believe is her name, who is the anchor of the CTV local news in Winnipeg, one of the anchors. And I gave you that preamble because I think it's important to understand that when you hear the beginning of this interview. You've been highly criticized for limiting the amount of questions you take from the media. We're sitting here right now. And just so

my viewers know, I was given zero restrictions on this interview and i had as much time as i wanted i could ask any questions i did not give you questions in advance so i mean it seems very night and day why are you selective and who you decide to do this with well listen the media in ottawa is largely government funded and they basically regurgitate Justin Trudeau's talking points. So I talk to more independent voices. I go out and speak to multicultural media, rural media, social media platforms that allow me to be unfiltered and talk directly to Canadians. I don't think that a small group of gatekeepers who are dependent on Justin Trudeau for handouts and for favorable regulations

is the best way to get my message out. So I want to empower everybody. We live in a big, free, open country. It's not just Ottawa insiders who will have a voice when I'm prime minister. It's the everyday common women and men that are going to take back control of their lives and their country. Well, we appreciate that. But you talk about the gatekeepers. Are you not being a bit of a gatekeeper there? Here I am right now. I'm taking all of your questions. I've done interviews with other media outlets earlier today, and I do them with all kinds of voices,

not just liberal insiders who regurgitate Justin Trudeau's talking points, and that's what you frankly get from the Liberal Press Gallery on Parliament Hill. So I'm here to talk to everyday Canadians. And I do interviews with organizations that Justin Trudeau won't talk to because he knows that they won't carry his water. He just wants Liberal media from the Parliamentary Press Gallery

who have largely been bailed out by him using tax dollars and depending on him for more bailouts. And obviously they're going to support Justin Trudeau. I stand up for the common women and men of this country. I'm fighting for their paychecks, their savings, their homes, their country. And that's, those are the people I'm going to talk with. Oh my God. We're so, you know, grateful that there is somebody who stands up for the common man and woman and the issues that matter.

And here he is. There he is. Now, listen, seriously, that's basically the line he's been trotting out ever since he became leader and before he was leader as well, that it's all a liberal-dominated press in the press gallery. I don't know how often he reads the press gallery-based opinion pieces, but to say they're liberal-dominated is kind of hilarious. But nevertheless, that's been his line.

He hasn't changed. We thought at some time he was starting to change, but he hasn't changed, and he sure hasn't changed in that interview. What do you take? Well, it was hard to listen to that, Peter. I mean, I think he has changed on some things.'re going to talk about another clip i think where i do think that his positioning has evolved somewhat um and i was surprised at this clip i was surprised because it was so uh pugilistic and look i think it's a lot of baloney to say that the that the press gallery in Ottawa is completely liberal biased.

I think that that, you know, that nobody would be more shocked to hear that than the liberal government in Ottawa. That just doesn't make any sense to people who are on that side of those situations in Ottawa right now. But also, it was just kind of rhetorical and unsubstantiated in this notion that there was that that all of these news organizations and journalists in Ottawa are bought and paid for by the government because the government provided some funding to support media that were trying to survive and come through what is really a difficult transformation or transition in the media environment economically, all of that is completely exaggerated and not really worthy of a national political leader, in my estimation. That having been said, I don't think it's probably going to hurt him very much. I think that as you and I

know that the public confidence in journalism is not what it should be or what we would like it to be or what it has been at some points in the past, that there is an instinct to, I wouldn't say completely mistrust journalism, although, you know, our data on this shows that, you know, as many as almost half of the public don't think that you can trust what the media tell you about major issues. So there's a bigger market than the base, if you like, of the Conservative Party for this message that you can't trust the media. I don't know that he wins votes by saying that. I guess my point is probably he says those things and people think, well, he's just being a politician and he's kind of priming the people who might support him. But they don't necessarily feel inclined to

kind of step in and support the press gallery in Ottawa. Although at the end of the day, we shouldn't really have political leaders doing that much so aggressively to undermine confidence in the work that reporters do in Ottawa. The other point he makes is, you know, I'm not doing the Ottawa-based media, but I'm out there doing rural media and multicultural media. He should probably have a look and see how some of those organizations are helped in their funding process and dependent on various different grants from different levels of government.

Anyway, you know, the point is, and I agree with you, I'm not sure whether this damages him at all. I mean, the media, you know, the national media is upset because he's not doing, you know, weekly scrums or weekly news conferences or he's doing, you know, major interviews with some of the major networks or newspapers. I don't know. I don't think that bothers the ordinary citizen that much.

They hear about him. He is reported on, whether he's doing interviews or not. You mentioned the other clip, and it's interesting because, well, let's just play it. It comes out of the same interview, this one with Mary Lee Caruso from CTV Winnipeg. And I'm just going to try and find it. You know, those of you who are watching on our YouTube channel can tell.

The whole production team is now kind of searching for this clip, right? You are looking at the production team. At least you're looking at it on the right-hand side of your screen. The executive producer and the line producer and the AD. The director, the editor, you name it. It's right here. Good. So here is this clip.

I think this is the clip that's going to play. Let's see. Once again, it's Pierre Polyev being interviewed in Winnipeg. Yeah, well, that's working well. I see it playing. See the environment protected. So if you don't put a tax on carbon, how do you ensure targets are still met, emissions go down?

How do you do that? Well, we've missed every target under Trudeau. He's missed every single environmental target while driving up our energy prices. So we're getting the worst of all worlds, all pain, no gain. The alternative, instead of trying to drive up the cost of traditional energy that we still need, let's drive down the cost of carbon-free alternatives. Let's remove red tape so that we can produce, we can build more hydroelectric facilities and generate emissions-free electricity. Let's maintain the environmental and public safety protections, but build nuclear energy.

Let's produce the minerals of electric cars in Canada, using the most environmentally friendly and emission-free factories and mines, instead of importing them from more polluting countries like China. All right, if you're wondering where the music comes from, that is not from CTV Winnipeg. The interview is from CTV Winnipeg, but then the Conservative Party took that clip out of the interview, married some music, some wonderful music in the background to highlight what their leader had to say. Now, what's interesting about this clip, as opposed to the last one,

there is or there appears to be, you tell me, Bruce, there appears to be movement here in terms of his position defending ending the carbon tax, but at the same time saying we're going to meet targets. Yeah, I think that it's a I think it's a very substantive shift in the way that he talks about the issue. I don't know that in practical policy terms that there's anything underneath it that will meet the rhetorical lines that he's setting out. But from a rhetoric standpoint, he's not saying anything that sounds like I don't fear climate change. I don't believe we need to act to limit climate change. I don't think we

need to reduce emissions. I don't think we need to be active in the e-vehicle market. I don't think we need to consider more electrification. He's saying all of those things that the Liberal Party and the NDP would be saying about the need to be active and aggressive in pursuit of those solutions. He's limiting his conversation around carbon tax, or he's shifting his conversation around carbon tax, or he's shifting his carbon, his conversation on carbon tax to the specific issue of targets. And I think he's doing that strategically, because the 2030 target, not the 2050 target, the 2030 target is a heavy lift for Canada. And it's a debating point that reasonable people who are concerned about climate change know is a real, it's not going to be easy.

Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley in Alberta are both on the same page about that, saying we will not be able to hit that target. And so we need to be more realistic about it. Now, it's above my pay grade to know who's right about that. I do know that the Liberals understand, in terms of how they see their approach, that if you don't set a target, you're for sure not going to make as much progress as if you do set a target. And whether you actually hit that target or get close to it, the point of the target is to know what you're trying to achieve over what period of time. So for me, Polyev there is definitely saying, look, if you care about these issues and you believe in more electrification, if you want to look at small modular nuclear, and he added the point about making sure that environmental protections were there. If you if you think that we need to be active in the critical minerals to support the e-vehicle marketplace, I'm your guy. Now, this is very, very different Pierre Pauliev. And I think it's because he's accepted the political math of this issue to an extent that

he had not done before. Now, one last thing, which is that you mentioned the music surrounding the clip. And this kind of goes back to the why would he do that interview that way with that interviewer? Because he got to say all of those things without anybody stopping him and saying, but wait, what about? And so he got this nice long roll that he could then have his folks excerpt, put music around. It looks like a news interview, but it plays like a political ad. And, you know, on one level, I say, well, at it from a journalist standpoint, you'd go, that's probably what he was looking for in the context of that interview, is the opportunity to look like he's being interviewed by a journalist and just to really have a clip that runs through a position on

climate change, which, you know, and maybe to be fair to that journalist, maybe after he finished that, she asked him a bunch of follow-up questions. We don't know. I suppose we could find out, but he's not sharing that. That's for sure. In the first clip, she challenged him on the gatekeeper stuff. So, you know, I'm a believer in interviews, especially long-form interviews, is let the person talk. Yeah.

Don't, you know, badger them when you need to badger them, but let them talk and then follow up, you know, with the kind of questions that may help better explain the situation and expose some fault lines in perhaps that person's argument. So I'm not going to criticize, but I am going to accept your point that the parties are always looking for that clip that they can make into a commercial or an ad of some kind, and whether they add music or whatever works for them.

Okay, so, you know, it's interesting, as you point out, that we're seeing something there in Polyev that we haven't seen in the first months of his term as leader. A shift towards the middle, at least on this issue. But perhaps we'll have to pay close attention to see whether there's other shifting going on as well. But he's talking about driving down the cost of alternatives to fossil fuels. And the only way that governments do that is to use policy tools, right? And so the idea that you should just, he used to be more of a let the market kind of decide how it wants to go, but don't intervene in the market with the carbon price to kind of

put a finger on the scale. Now he's saying, well, we need to change the energy market. We're not really going to tell you how we're going to do it, but we're not going to do it by, you know, adding cost to fossil fuels. We're going to try to find mechanisms that reduce the cost of alternatives. So if there are follow-up answers to what specific mechanisms you would use to reduce those costs, that's great. Then we're having a conversation about two different policy tools or a variety of different policy tools to try to get to the same outcome. I don't think it's clear that we're there yet, but this is a significant shift in my view in

the positioning that he's taking on it. Well, the thing that he does manage to do and no matter the clip you find out of him and he manages to blame all the ills of the country on on justin trudeau that is his thing that's what he does and uh he doesn't hold back from that and he hasn't changed in that position um in years actually uh but he's still very much going to town on that issue he's not alone out there right now because uh bill morno the former finance minister continues his let's see how many different ways i can trash trudeau book tour as he uh travels around different parts of the country selling his new book that he spent the past few years since he quit writing, I guess, or having somebody help him write. I'm not sure how that worked out. And, you know, he's been giving interviews.

And he was on with Matt Galloway on the CBC the other morning. And he was taking his shots there. You know, he said, this is nothing new. Lots of people have said this. Trudeau's use of vaccine mandates as a wedge issue polarized the debate in Canada. But then, you know, he goes on. It appears in many instances that the Prime Minister floated above the issues he confronted, choosing not to get his hands dirty in dealing with the mechanics and implications

of the issues before him. Well, that's quite a condemnation of your leader or your former leader. But he's not holding back. We talked a little bit about Morneau last week with Chantal. I regret what I said last week. It was a specific comment about the book. And I remember saying something like, you know,

I've had business partners over the years. And if they wrote a book about me, if the worst things they said were the equivalent of what he had written in that book, based on the excerpts that I'd read, I could probably live with that. Maybe be happy because they maybe could have written worse things. But this Matt Galloway interview and the things that he said in it crossed a line for me, I think, in terms of how I judge him. It's just my opinion,

but I didn't like two things about it. First of all, I think he's completely wrong about Trudeau using the vaccine mandates as a polarizing wedge issue. I think that that's a popular construct among people who oppose vaccine mandates. I think it's a popular construct in some far parts of the Conservative Party. But I think a more considered analysis of how Justin Trudeau approached vaccine mandates would not lead you to that conclusion. And I'm disappointed in Bill Morneau that he would further that narrative about how vaccine mandates were used. Now, you know, people might disagree who listen to this podcast, so be it. But I have a very strong view about that. I don't think that's what was done. And I don't think it's fair to tag Justin Trudeau with that argument.

The second thing I would say is that he talks in this interview about having had his recommendations kind of overruled because Trudeau had a discussion with his political advisors. And my reaction to that was, you know, that's life in the fast lane. This is how politics works. It's like a scrum in rugby. It's physical. It's constant. It demands people to push against each other, to argue with each other, to debate with each other, and you're going to lose some. And it's a bit unseemly this far after the fact to say, well, I lost a lot of them, especially when you then went out and proselytized for the policy that ultimately emerged. You're essentially saying the thing that normally happens in politics

happened while I was there and I lost some of those fights. And now I'm telling you that I'm disappointed or mad or frustrated that I lost some of those fights. And I don't know. I mean, I think that people should be obviously able to write their account of what happened in their life in politics. I'm not suggesting that anybody should censor that. But I do think that when you enter politics, when you work with a party, there is a unwritten pact. There's an understanding that you're going to have frank conversations, that you're going to say things to each other that in ways that people outside that pact might not completely understand or like to hear the sound of or admire the way the conversation went, that there's a messiness in the kitchen of politics. And there's an unwritten code, I think, about how much of the messiness you talk about after the fact. And people are entitled to do it, but they're also in,

they should do so in the expectation that a lot of people that used to be in that conversation with them will be pretty disappointed and maybe, you know, I could use stronger words. When Morneau came into cabinet in 2015, he'd never been in politics before. He'd been a successful person in the private sector, very successful but the knock on him coming in was he's a little naive to be

given that portfolio finance minister, that senior job right out of the gate with not having any political experience before that the knock now on the part of some like you is there was a little naive going out too a few years later. And I kind of get that.

You know, there's a reason why cabinet meetings are in secret. There's a reason why cabinet docs are held for, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years after those meetings. You know, some of them are still coming out as a result of the, you know, the FLQ crisis in 1970. And that reason is the stuff was confidential. And at times things got pretty tense around that table. That is politics. That's what's supposed to happen.

That is democracy. But at the end of the day, somebody has to make the decision. And there's a reason there's a first minister, a prime minister. Yeah. And usually that decision rests with him or her. Yeah.

He specifically pointed out the amount of money that was going to be provided to Canadians underserved. You remember that aspect of this interview where he said, well, we had done our careful calculations at the Department of Finance and ultimately, pardon me, in the PMO, the decision was made that it should be five hundred dollars a week or two thousand000 a month because that sounded better. And when I read that, I thought, well, I don't know what his number was because he didn't say what it was, but it probably wasn't $200 a week or something like that, right? It was probably not that far off the $500 a week. At least that's my assumption, but it would be good to know what his number was. But the insinuation in his comment is that how it would sound to people shouldn't really be a consideration. And I don't think that reflects a good understanding of the politics of the situation that the government was in

and the prime minister was in, because what people were looking for was a signal that gave them confidence that they were going to be able to keep the lights on, keep the heat on, keep the food on the table, keep their lives going. And so I don't know what the delta was, but I do know that how the number would sound is a reasonable part of the political calculation that a prime minister should make. And it does seem to me naive to assume that that's just politics and it shouldn't come into play and that the finance department would have figured out exactly what it would cost for people to buy the bread and the milk and the meat that they need on any given week. Anyway, I was really struck by that because I thought that was an easy example for him to use, but probably a poor example of the point that he wanted to make.

Well, he's clearly going to keep giving interviews as he has the right to do. He's selling a book. And, you know, at the end of the day, some of the criticisms may be right. Nobody's saying that Trudeau was correct on everything. That's kind of not the point. The point was the whole way this has come out. He had the opportunity to say things when he resigned, and what he chose to say was the reason he was resigning

was he had the possibility of a different job he didn't have he didn't have all these criticisms um they've kind of leaked out some of them over time and now they're out with a flourish with the book be interesting to see how well that book does um book the book business is uh is a tricky one uh in our country and except for you like your books just fly off the shelves fly off the shelves it's hard you know to go in there in the middle of the night and buy them so i can have the headline the next morning saying flying off the shelves flying off the shelves in canada you know, unless you're Margaret Atwood. I do my part. Flying off the shelves is a description that is rarely the case.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, then we're going to come back, and we're going to join the Let's Trash Justin Trudeau crew, at least on the numbers as we look at them right now. Let's not oversell that. Well, we know you won't oversell it, I mean. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. Back in a moment. And welcome back.

Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto. Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. You're listening to Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on The Bridge for this Wednesday. And you're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Hello there. Hi.

Hi. And we're glad to have you with us uh if you want to subscribe to youtube uh the youtube channel it's free there's no fee uh we do the wednesday and friday shows on the channel can we shut that music off please mr uh producer guy thank. That's very good. All right. Polls. Some interesting polling numbers this week. Because the gap between the Conservatives and the Liberals,

even though most people seem to think the Liberals have had a good last couple of months, the gap has widened up to, in one point in the Nanos poll this week, seven points between the Conservatives and the Liberals, which is pretty substantial. What do you make of these numbers? I know you've got your own numbers too, so add those. Yeah, no, the Nanos numbers, the gap to seven, is different from the Abacus four-point gap both in favor of the conservatives you know

i think there are two or three things that strike me in the in the numbers that abacus published this morning on their website one is that um again you know the the results of an election will all come down to uh essentially bc ontario and Quebec. And the Liberal numbers in Quebec and Ontario are not particularly bad, but they're troubled in BC. Liberals are in third place and well back of both the NDP and the Conservatives in BC. And that's a real problem, I think, for the Liberal Party. One question on my mind, by the way, is that if the Liberal Party in BC changes its name and the Liberal brand, the term Liberal really only applies to a federal party over the long term, does that kind of weaken the, even though the BC Liberal Party

was not a Liberal Party, it was more of a Conservative Party, but if in BC you only have the NDP and another party not called the Liberal Party, does that make it harder for a federal liberal brand to have visibility and a sense of a relationship in BC? I think that's an open question. I know Chantal raised something like that a little while ago. But I think the second thing in the numbers that I would look at is if I were Justin Trudeau, I would look at my own personal numbers and say they're the worst same as it was in the last election, which I won 51 percent. Really time to change the government.

So, you know, a rational person in his situation would say. I'm kind of losing affection from some people. It's draining a little bit over time. Slowly, I don't want to exaggerate. It's not some big spike or anything like that. It's more of a gradual trend. But it isn't the case that people necessarily want to change the government. And when Abacus put the direct question, if you could only choose or if you only were choosing between Pierre-Paul Lievre and Justin Trudeau for prime minister, how would you choose? More people chose Justin Trudeau. I think it's 54-46. It's all to play for, for the liberals

and for the conservatives. Neither party can look at these numbers and say, we're in good enough shape. They both need to look at these numbers and say, it doesn't really matter because people know there isn't a vote right now, but this is the year in the run-up to an election and neither party can feel confident in their position in the polls right now. Last thing in the abacus data is going through the numbers of what do you think are the issues? And if you think cost of living is an issue, which party would you be inclined to vote for? think cost of living is an issue, which party would you be inclined to vote for? If you think health care is an issue, which party would you be inclined to vote for?

And so on. There's difficult news there for the liberals, because the economy always tends to be a little bit better for the conservatives, but hasn't always been, is now by a significant margin. The voters who are most concerned about the economy generally think the Conservatives are better positioned to help with that. And that should feel like a problem for Chrystia Freeland and the Liberal cabinet, given the effort that they're putting into economic management. Liberals are also not ahead on health care and not being. Ahead on health care isn't always a problem. Health care sometimes sits as a top issue that people raise, but because they don't have another issue. But right now, health care is a big issue. And the liberals are in the middle of negotiating a major increase in financing and talking about outcomes, but they're

not generating that sense of differentiation. Why you need the Liberal Party to be acting on your behalf on the healthcare issue isn't there in the numbers. And that's a problem that they should try to work on if they want to win re-election, which they do. And then the last one is the cost of living. They're pretty far behind the Conservatives on that too. And that's last one is the cost of living. They're pretty far behind the conservatives on that too. And that's notwithstanding the fact that liberals have done things to try to help with the cost of living and inflation is coming down a little bit, but things like the cost of childcare is a material change that liberals have done. But they're not getting credit for it in the numbers, which again, isn't necessarily a problem, but they probably should be

looking at it and saying, we need more people to be more familiar and aware of the facts of what we're doing to try to help these problems. And that's a communications challenge as much as anything else. You know, in all the data that I've seen this week, it's not like the NDP is dropped off the face of the earth. Their numbers are still there and they're around 20, which is not a bad number to be at. If you're a third or fourth party, the block is still sort of there in Quebec. But the way you paint the picture sounds to me like it's, for the most part, you pick from column A or column B here. That's the way we're heading in terms of an election. It's hard to say.

I mean, I think that the NDP number kind of stays up high. And for a while, it looked as though Jagmeet Singh was one of the reasons that people were looking at him as kind of a fresh leader, a fresh face, a different voice in national politics. Those numbers don't look the same for him now. And I think the liberals should be able to say, in their own thinking about the run-up to an election election that we've done enough things on the social policy side that we should be able to call on support from soft new Democrat voters to prevent a conservative government from getting in that strategic voting argument that comes up virtually every election from the liberals. But there may be a couple of issues that break that model a little bit. And one of them is the discussion about health care. And we've seen in the last several days quite a bit

of focus on Doug Ford in Ontario and his announcement that he wants to move to a model where there is more private delivery of publicly funded health care so that people will still be able to pay with their health card, as he put it, and not their credit card. But rather than go to a public health facility like a hospital, they'll go to a clinic. The NDP response, Marit Stiles and Jagmeet Singh both, Marit Stiles, the NDP leader in Ontario, has been, no, the only way that healthcare should work in Canada is publicly funded and publicly delivered. And I don't know if that's going to hold up that well. Because I think mainstream Canadian voters who sometimes are tempted to look at the NDP are really perplexed at the situation in our health care system right now. And they will probably care more about delivered rather than publicly delivered as long as publicly funded is part of it.

As long as you don't have to use your credit card or find money to pay for a health service, they'll be open to the idea that these backlogs that we have are going to be reduced if we open up the delivery system a little bit. And I'm not a healthcare expert, but I'm more of a public opinion expert. And from my public opinion, pollster perspective, I think there are a lot of people out there who either are experiencing a real problem getting the services that they need or know somebody who is and are worried that governments aren't moving fast enough towards solutions. You know, it's interesting since last Friday on Good Talk when Chantal and you suggested that we were starting to see movement on the health care front,

which seemed like a deadlock between the prime minister and the first ministers of the country. Pretty much up until then, the suggestions that we had on that program last Friday were that it's getting closer, and everything that's happened since that show went on the air has suggested the same thing. The health minister yesterday said maybe it's not happening quite as fast as some people think.

But everybody else, you know, from the premier of Saskatchewan to the prime minister of Canada, saying there's very positive signs here. We may be marching towards some kind of an agreement. And the feeling is that you know it'd be it'd be helpful if this happened before a budget uh which could come anytime sort of february march april uh so so there you go that's that's where we're at and as you say the the ford stuff this week was really interesting um and and cut some new grass on this issue. And, you know, we'll see where it leads to.

Okay. That's a fair amount. There were other things we were going to discuss, but we're kind of out of time for this day. We didn't talk about Donald Trump. No, we didn't. Remind me again. Who's Donald Trump?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, feels good to be able to wonder that. No, Peter, that was a great conversation. I saw, speaking of polls, I saw a poll yesterday that had Biden, even with his current problems, and he's got them, Biden leading Trump 49-41. And that's the widest gap i've seen between those two men no look wait but wait and he's got his problems look he does have his problems but america

to be transfixed by these last five pages of documents found not in a beach club not because he was trying not to give them back i mean honestly i don't understand how that country can listen the politics the documents thing to me has always been overblown i agree with, you know, there's no comparison between the two, but there is a comparison between the two. Of course there is. Yeah. And, but I just think it, you know, it's, it's just not as important as some of the other issues that all of the other issues, all the other issues that Trump is being investigated on. And sure. If we spent time on the Mar-a-lago document sure we have um but at the end of the day that is not going to be what well nobody's suggesting that biden was holding them

to try to trade them for some you know financial you know emolument or political leverage or whatever. Oh, you know, Hunter Biden, laptop, Ukraine, minerals, China. Alright, so mission accomplished. We talked about Donald Trump again, and now we can go about our day. Yes, we can. Alright, my friend, good to talk to you. Look forward to Friday with Chantel on Good Talk, and

until such time, we will bid adieu. And thank you out there for listening as well. It's been a treat talking to you, as always. Tomorrow, it's your turn. So if you've got something to say, get it in now, right now. Because for a variety of different reasons, tomorrow's podcast, the closing time on it will be early this evening.

So if you have something to say at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, send it along. But your turn and the Random Ranter coming up tomorrow. And good talk on Friday. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.