The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT -- The Power Struggle Inside The Convoy

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

The "smoke" is clearing inside what seems to have been a chaotic scene inside the convoy that shut down Ottawa earlier this year.  Bruce Anderson has his take on the latest testimony from protestors themselves.  And also, the latest soundings of what Canadians feel about inflation and Covid.  

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. Ah, we love that Wednesday sound. The sound of smoke mirrors no truth. Bruce Anderson is here. He's going to tell us a little truth, maybe splash in a little smoke, little mirrors, but eventually we'll get to the truth.

Which is what the inquiry commission into the truckers convoy is trying to get to in Ottawa so into when this is about the third week and for the most part until yesterday all the witnesses were well either police or some kind of security some of the government lawyers it's been pretty much one side of the story, even as that side has had its own differences in terms of assessments of what was going on. Yesterday, for the first time, we started to hear from the demonstrators, the protesters, the, in some cases, truckers, who were part of the convoy.

And one of the main guys, he's kind of suggested that he was part of the reason this whole thing started in the first place, is a chap by the name of Chris Barber from Speedy Creek, Swift Current in Saskatchewan. Now, he was there yesterday, and it was a really, well, kind of interesting testimony in the sense that he admitted, self-admitted to having expressed racist terms in the past, racist memes online. But his main testimony was about why he tried to organize this convoy and the problems he had in doing that once they got to Ottawa he said it was just a total power struggle between all kinds of different factions within the protest movement which had its impact on how things went it was it was testimony that uh you know, sparked some raised eyebrows.

They expected, I think a lot of people expected, okay, we're going to hear from the protesters and they're going to come out swinging against the government. He even said at one point, he'd never read the memorandum of understanding. Remember that document that was put out by the protesters when they got to Ottawa saying what their objects or their aims were, including overthrowing the government, getting rid of the Prime Minister and the Governor General and the whole bit. He said,

I never read that. This isn't one of the lead organizers. Sounded a bit odd. What was your take on what we heard on kind of the first day of hearing from the protest movement? There's more to come, including some of the more familiar names. Tamara Lick is later this week. But this was the opening volley. What did you make of it?

Well, I guess, again, as we discussed last week, Peter, I think that it's a really good thing that this hearing is happening. I think there's been so much misinformation and a lot of political conversation about whether the Emergencies Act was needed and what to make of the amount of threat, the nature of the threat that the convoy represented when it came to Ottawa. And, you know, it's reasonable to assume that a lot of people watching or listening to some of this from a distance over the last several months weren't really sure what to make of it. And I do think that the structure and the pace and the manner in which the commission is having witnesses appear and questioning them is really quite helpful.

It's shedding a lot of light on exactly what transpired. Yesterday, to me, again, kind of made me feel like it must have been difficult for the government to get a handle on exactly what degree of threat there was, because as we'd heard last week and maybe the beginning of this week, the Ottawa police were confused and not doing what they were expected to do. But this week, we're starting to hear now that the convoy wasn't one convoy. It seemed like it was several convoys. It was different factions. It was people coming with different agendas. It was people who were disorganized and who now are acknowledging that they were disorganized as a way of maybe defending themselves against the idea that they were coming to do damage or harm or intimidate. But I don't think it leaves people with the impression, I don't think it will leave people with the impression that there was no risk. I think it'll leave reasonable observers

with the impression that there was a very difficult risk for government to assess, and probably impossible to imagine negotiating some sort of a reasonable solution to the blockade and the occupation with the convoy, since, as I said before, it wasn't one convoy. I mean, we had one guy testify yesterday, who was supposedly the leader of one of the factions, who said that he never saw any intimidation, harassment, anything like that during the course of the convoy. And I guess in the context of the room, he got a roaring ovation from supporters. Here's a line I read from the Post Store. He also said he had witnessed no incidents of threats, violence, harassment, or intimidation

by any convoy participants, and argued that any negative representation of the convoy was from the shit produced by the media. That's his quote. Got a roaring ovation from supporters, but I think other observers would look at that and say, well, if that's what you want us to believe, we can't believe that. People watched their news coverage. They saw what was happening on the internet. It was very clear that the degree of intimidation and harassment was significant. So not none, but significant. And so that undermines the credibility of a witness who comes forward and says that. And I think that's really what I took away from yesterday. So they wanted to maintain that they weren't doing anything that was kind i think they undermined their position and added some credibility to the to the idea that the government really at some point maybe

had no choice but to do the emergencies act you know one of the the common themes about protests movements that reach uh the point of some big demonstration in in in some place and we've seen this in other parts um of canada we've seen in other parts of the world. We saw it in New York. What was that term about 10 years ago, the one percenters who took over Parkland and various other things. One of the issues they have is trying to determine who's the leader of the pack.

You know, like who actually speaks for the group. And they never had one in that New York example I'm having. And you get a tendency to believe, at least after one day's testimony, and as I said, there's going to be more as the week progresses, that that was part of the problem here as well. You know, Barber himself says, you know, there was a power struggle going on among the protest leaders even before they arrived in Ottawa as to what it was about, what they were going to do, what the goals were, how long they were going to be there, all of that stuff. part of the problem when you're trying to put forward a case that you're arguing for, where there are all these different factions and people get confused and things get out of hand.

And it seems like that was, you know, that was part of the problem here, at least within that. No question about it. In fact, I gather yesterday there was a timeline that was released by the commission of the protest prepared by convoy organizers that detailed some disputes internally, and one of them was this Tamara Litch in an exchange with Pat King, who's another high-profile individual involved in the protest. And she was urging him not to go to Ottawa. You need to check your ego. And if you care about this movement at all, you will not go into Ottawa. Now, he did and obviously has been a high-profile kind of voice of this protest movement, if that's what you want to call it, for some time. whether or not that threat level goes up when somebody who has used language like Trudeau would

catch a bullet is the kind of voice and the kind of participant in the convoy that would make police forces and officials worried about safety more vigilant, more active, more inclined to stop the convoy. And, you know, I think ultimately what happened is obviously the Ottawa police were completely unprepared for what was arriving in the city. They allowed trucks to position themselves in the worst possible place in terms of the potential to disrupt the downtown activities and to stage this massive protest and disruption. And then after that, governments were probably looking for who could they solve this with? Who could they discuss with if they wanted to discuss? And the evidence presented yesterday says

there is no answer to that. There was no answer to that. And so in the absence of more effective policing at the front end, the problem grew out of hand and needed to be dealt with. You know, one of the things that has come out this week is that the various factions, as they were coming to Ottawa, were getting their own intelligence, which suggested this is a slam dunk to shut the city down. They're not prepared for us in any fashion. And, you know, we can do this fairly quickly and fairly easily. And as that turned out, that was entirely accurate.

All this puts the pressure on leaders like Tamara Lutsch, who's, you know, you feel whatever you want about her, but she's no dummy. She seems to have been able to handle certain aspects of this, you know, whether it was her defense, she's still up for, on charges, whether it was seemingly in control of parts of the actual protest time, she at least had that appearance of being in control

when she was, you know, the few times she spoke to the media, et cetera. Anyway, she's got a certain amount of cleanup on aisle number three to do when she hits the stand this week and her performance if you will when she's at the inquiry is going to be critical for the way that segment of this story comes across to the public because she's the focus group and you mentioned Pat King. He seems to have his own detractors within that movement, let alone outside of it.

But Tamara Litch, if that's the proper pronunciation of her name, is the one who kind of carries the ball here right now in terms of how that side of this story is going to be seen in the days and weeks ahead? I think so. And I think that, you know, it's important that we wait to hear what she has to say and how she characterizes it. But I think that the moment for convoy organizers or leaders to say, we speak with one voice, we took action in a coordinated and carefully planned and agreed upon way, that moment is past. That is out of the bottle now. And so to your point about cleanup on aisle three, who knows whether that's what she'll try to do is

to try to reconcile the different perspectives that we've already heard from her's what she'll try to do is to try to reconcile the different perspectives that we've already heard from or whether she'll just try to save herself a little bit and say, well, here's what I was there to do. There are going to be questions, I assume, about what happened with the money that was donated, because I think I've been reading some stories that suggested that that money went into her personal account. And where was the money coming from and how was it being used and what sort of governance was there on that, I think will be questions that come up and that hopefully she will shed some light on. The last thing, Peter, that kind of struck me is that we're watching this debate play out as Elon Musk has taken over Twitter and what will happen to that

platform. And Chris Barber, the fellow that we started this part of the conversation with, was testifying about his role as an internet troll. He acknowledged that he was unfortunately an internet troll, which he defined as an online troublemaker. He said his social media posts about COVID-19 were very angry. And he admitted that his trolling would frequently get his social accounts suspended or banned. And he created a lot of them, new accounts in order to get around that. And I think that's, it's not going to be central to what this commission does, but it probably is the most central issue that our democracies face right now is, will these platforms exist in a way that allows people to use them the, that's the right idea, and whatever anybody wants to say should be allowed in the name of free speech. Others will look at it, and the really unfortunate attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband last week and say, no, there's got to be some guardrails around this, this isn't working, and we need to do more. So I'm watching that issue as well, obviously.

It's a little bit of a sidebar to our opening conversation here. But because you've mentioned Musk, last week you were kind of hopeful, I think. You've been an on-again, off-again fan, if you will, of Musk, but certainly mostly off in the last uh the last year or so um but you seem to have some hope based on his opening statements in regards to what he was going to do with twitter in the in the opening hours really of his uh chairmanship of Twitter. It sounds to me like you don't have that anymore. Not much hope, no. I think the, you know, if I had any optimism,

it was more about the idea that with the right kind of direction, the platform could be a useful thing, but it had gone in very unhelpful directions. Because he put out statements as he took control of the company that suggested he understood the importance of content moderation, this notion that, yes, free speech is a good idea in principle, but allowing a platform to be kind of dominated by people who mean to do harm in society by trolls and spies and foreign interests trying to undermine our democracies, that there are real risks in not having a content moderation system. So he seemed to believe in that and to state his belief. And he also seemed to understand that advertisers were going to move away from a platform

that didn't have proper content moderation, that became a swamp of people going after each other, insulting each other, demonizing and trying to foment unrest. I think since then, and it's only been a week, almost all of the signs about how Musk will operate have been more worrying than confidence building for me. So I still want to believe that he can make it a better place. But I think the aspects of his personality that are hard to like, are kind of seem to have for me the upper hand right now in thinking about whether or not he's going to make it better. I think he has great business acumen. But I also think he's got a kind of an unfortunate series of traits. And maybe the most telling moment for me was that he put a comment on Twitter on his own account that gave a small amount of credence

to some weird conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi's husband. And if you've just taken over this platform, and if you really care about this issue, and if you really believe in the importance of content moderation, you don't do that. So, no, I don't feel more confident this week. I feel less confident. You know, it seems like for 10 years, excuse me, at least 10 years now, we've been talking about some form of content moderation on social media. And yet, there have been no significant steps in that direction at all. And the situation has only got worse and worse and worse.

And, you know, you're left thinking, this is never going to change. You know, governments don't want to tiptoe into this water, at least democratic governments. The Chinese don't hesitate. But we don't want that model either. But there's a fear to do anything. Because it will seem in some form anti-democratic. And yet the situation keeps getting worse.

I don't see the end game here. I don't see how we're going to get out of this situation, whether it's because of Elon Musk or other players in this sphere. There just doesn't seem an end point that is going to kind of make things better? Well, you know, Peter, that's a feeling I have on maybe two or five days when I think about this. Now, the other three, I try to maintain a, you know, there's a pendulum. And if the pendulum swings too far in one direction, eventually it will come back in another direction and and that humans don't as a general rule have an instinct to destroy the

things that they care about um but you know we're going through a period where whether we look at the issue of climate change or the subject that we're talking about now that that question is a little bit more pressing and a little bit more uncertain than it has been at any time in my life, except maybe during that short period called the Cuban Missile Crisis, when it was, you know, the world was seized with doubt about whether we were going to avoid a global nuclear war. But, you know, it's not that nothing is happening. Some of the platforms are recognizing the pressure from the public, the pressure from advertisers, the potential pressure from legislators.

Some legislators are doing some things. There is an online harms bill that's working its way through the Canadian system right now. And as you say, it meets with some controversy from people who say any attempt to or any significant attempt to change the way in which content can be delivered online to people is somehow compromising their freedom. I think that's true, and I think it's important. I think that there are some things that we all have had as a society and understanding that we don't allow people to do. And we know that there are rules regarding what can go into an ad that's shown on television or played on radio, and that those same rules don't exist for content that is delivered on these platforms, not necessarily in the form of advertising, but in all forms, we can see what the problem is. And you're right, it's not clear whether we're going to have the democratic will to solve it. And a lot of the time when I'm looking at the US, that's the issue that I'm thinking about. And I noticed in the last 48 hours or so, I saw clips of Republicans and Democrats both saying that the future of democracy is what's at stake in the U.S. midterms. I think that's true. I don't know that this one election is going to decide it.

So it may be that the future of democracy is what's really on the ballot in the next several elections, not just in the United States, but maybe here as well. Okay. Enough on that. We're going to take a quick pause and then change the subject. Although in some ways, there's kind of a relationship to our next subject as well, but we'll do that 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. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167.

Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. All right. You're recently out of the field with Abacus Data on a couple of key issues, the economy, I guess, in general, and COVID. I don't want to dwell on all the results. I want to get the headlines. But first of all, I have this question for you about polling. We all know the old term, you know, these are accurate 19 times out of 20, what have you, those kind of things, certain stipulations are put up, margins of error are mentioned, all of that. Aside from that,

can polling be wrong? Yes, you can. And a lot has to do with the way in which a question is asked. Over the years, I've seen, by the way, Peter, I always enjoy you asking the question, which is availed, I don't like polls, why do we have to talk about polls so much, kind of comment. I get it. I get it. Despite that, our 30-year friendship has survived intact

and even thrived. Well, we know how you feel about the media. Exactly. I asked the odd question about the media that probably causes you a little heartburn. But no, the major sources of inaccuracy in polling, you know, there's technical sources of inaccuracy like sampling error. And, you know, moving from in-home polling to phone polling to internet polling, every methodology has had its challenges in those areas, most of which comes down to how do you get people to answer questions if they don't want to?

And if you don't, if you let a whole bunch of people not answer the questions, are you sure that your sample that does answer questions is representative of the population as a whole? There are pretty good systems and methods to solve for that. The bigger errors that people talk about a lot in the political world are, why didn't you get the election right? Usually that comes down to a question of understanding who is going to go out and vote rather than how do people feel about the choices. Polls are pretty good at figuring out how people feel about the choices. And sometimes they're really good at understanding who's most motivated to go out and vote. But especially in US elections, where there's really

two choices on the ballot, typically Democrat and Republican. And we're in a lot of cases, those races are extraordinarily close. 50-50 splits are not that uncommon there, including in big states like Florida. The difference in figuring out that a Democrat is going to win versus a Republican is going to win is typically comes down to applying a model that says, I think Democrats are more motivated than Republicans, and so their turnout will be better, or the reverse. And right now, pollsters in the US are feeling that anxiety, I think, quite significantly. On the one hand, you've got a thesis that says that Democrats are going to have good turnout levels, because there are a lot of people, women in particular, who are motivated

by the Roe versus Wade decision by the Supreme Court and that abortion has become almost the number one subject that Joe Biden is talking about as a way to make sure that Democratic voters turn out. On the other hand, the Republicans can see that with a weak economy and an uncertain economy. And in Joe Biden, somebody who's not Barack Obama in terms of being able to rally voters and stimulate interest and that sort of thing. Republicans feel that they may have the upper hand in the last several days. It may be coming to them that motivation levels are better for their side than for the Democrat side. I've looked at a lot of polls in the last 24, 48 hours, and I'm

going to continue to right up until election day in the United States. And I don't think that it's possible to know as of right now. There are two different scenarios that are being watched carefully, and I think merit some consideration. So that's an area of potential inaccuracy. And I guess the others really come down to question design, question wording. If you ask people something and you give them only two choices, but there might be a third, then you're going to get a false sense of what they actually would choose if they had all of the choices available in a question. Those things can be accidents, errors. Sometimes people design surveys in a certain way in order to fashion a story that they want to have told. Sometimes media organizations say, you know, make it simple, make it blunt, don't make it complex or nuanced,

and that can lead to some sense of error as well by creating more of an idea that everything is black and white for the public rather than shades of gray, which is more commonly the case. So lots of room for error, but tremendous expertise in the polling industry has developed over time, and there are lots of responsible players, Peter, as you know. Okay, here it comes. It's interesting watching those American numbers that have rolled out in the last few weeks, which have clearly shown a bounce back for the Republicans, but some of the Democratic pollsters

and some of the kind of independent pollsters are saying, be careful because there's a real issue here about capturing young voters in the results that we're seeing. And depending on where their heads are at, this can make a big difference. It could. Yeah, I think that's always a question mark. The assumptions for years have been that young voters don't vote as often as older voters. And so in designing their turnout models, pollsters often will assume that that's going to continue to be the case.

And it isn't always the case. Justin Trudeau won his election 2015 in part because younger people turned out in higher numbers than they had previously. Another factor that I'm watching, Peter, is advanced voting. It's become a much bigger thing in Canada, as you know, in the last several elections. A lot of votes are cast in the weeks before Election Day. And that's happening in the U.S. as well. And I think I sent you something this morning that I was looking at. Gallup had published something that said that advanced voting in the U.S. midterms was significantly higher among Democratic voters than among Republican voters.

Again, the Democrats will look at that and say that's an advantage for them. Republicans might look at it and say well maybe that's always the tendency and um we shouldn't read too much into it and i think you could that's another area where you could say well both arguments have some merit and we'll have to see how that one turns out all right um let's get to your latest data which so on the economy and this is really important, obviously, in the context of the fall economic statement that Christy Freeland is putting out on Thursday of this week. We ask people how they're feeling about current economic conditions, the impact of inflation, what kinds of things they think should be done about it, where inflation is hurting them the most. And I know I heard your admonition. Let's not dive too deep

into the numbers so i'm just going to give you three or four uh numbers and then everybody who's you know worried that they're going to fall asleep doesn't have to worry about that it's just over a third of canadians 37 who say things are really difficult for them in the economy right now so when we hear the economy is the number one issue, and it is, cost of living as a part of that is the number one driver, it's important to bear in mind that that doesn't mean that everybody is suffering economically. It's a significant number of millions of Canadians who are finding things really difficult, and inflation is causing them to make difficult choices in order

to make ends meet. 43% say they're having to make difficult choices to make ends meet. It's not everybody, but it's a pretty large chunk of the population. One of the things we're watching, though, is has it been changing in recent months? And it hasn't been changing very much. So the inflation, once it hit 5%, 6%, has had the same kind of impact on people as it's having right now. That's an encouraging sign, I suppose, for governments who are just hoping that people can kind of, with a little bit of help from government and making some of those difficult choices,

can make it through until inflation eases. And perhaps part of that, that interest rates go up enough to cause that easing without going up so much that they cause even more pain. And the last thing that we're looking at is where is the pain being felt the most? Is it the cost of housing because interest rates are going up? Is it the cost of energy? Because we know the price of fossil fuels, oil in particular, has been going up. Is it cost of food? And it's the cost of food. There's a lot of people, half of the population who say inflation is making the cost of food

for them a lot more difficult. So I think I would expect to hear a fair bit from the finance minister tomorrow about this. Of course, the big dilemma is it's a big problem, but not everybody agrees that the solution is government spending to ease the problem. Some, probably half of the population roughly think, you know, the best thing that you can do from a policy standpoint in this situation is use the interest rate remedy and wait for inflation around the world to continue to ease because most Canadians think this isn't just happening here. And they also think that if government tries to spend its way to solving this problem, it could make the problem worse.

And so they're uncertain what better solution is on offer. But it doesn't mean that they're not anxious and that they're not watching government closely looking for better ideas than have been on offer so far. What do you expect the theme, I guess, if you wish, for Christian Freeland tomorrow on this economic statement? And I should say, you know, for finance ministers, there are really two big days in the year. One's the budget, obviously, which can be a massive document with all kinds of far-reaching impacts. And the other is the economic statement, which is not a budget, but has become increasingly kind of like a budget over time,

with some changes that can affect you directly right away. There have been examples of that in the past. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. But in terms of the background noise of this economic statement tomorrow, what do you think it will be, or what would you suggest it should be? Well, if I were advising Ms. Freeland about this, I would say that the two things that you want to have people feel about what she has to say is that it's realistic and that it's optimistic. I think the most worrying sign in the numbers that we have is 57% who think this is bad and it's going to get worse and there's no end in sight. that is the kind of mood that incumbent governments need to try to work against,

not just for their own political sakes, but because it's harmful to the economy. If people don't feel that things are going to get better at some point, that has a self-fulfilling aspect to it. But politically, obviously, you're an incumbent, you don't want people to feel like pessimism is the only thing that you can see far off into the future. But the second part of that is it needs to feel like a realistic approach. And I think that one of the challenges that the Trudeau government has is that it's got years of messaging behind it that sound like we can do everything that we hope to do as a country. We can achieve every outcome that we want to achieve as a country. And I think Canadians are

not in the mood to hear that right now. I think they think that what we need to do is be careful about how much money government spends. We need to be careful about not trying to do more things than we can afford to do or succeed at doing. And we need to focus on the priorities that matter most in terms of getting through this rough patch of high interest rates and high inflation. So I think that's the wire to walk realistic, in part because her her political opponents will have maybe less realistic kind of ideas on offer in part because they don't, they're not held to the same standard, right? They're, they're opposition parties, they get to say, we would fix this and we would make your housing cheaper and just trust us. So I think she needs to sound realistic. And I think she needs to build some optimism out of this current mood where people are feeling like they're not sure if rising interest rates is working yet.

They're not 100% sure that it will work in the future. And they're not sure what that means in terms of the cost of living long term. The description you used, the wire for her to walk is, as you put forward, what you think it is. But that image of the wire to walk, it is a long wire. It's a thin wire, and the drop is substantial if you can't hold on to that wire. So we'll see how she makes out tomorrow. There's been a lot of pressure on her over the past few months of feeling that she wasn't really engaged on that file, which may or may not be true.

But the appearance was certainly there. But she's kind of back at it with some vigor in the last little while. Tomorrow will be the big telling point for that. Last point, and it's on something you also included in this data collection you did at Abacus, and that was on COVID and Canadians' attitudes currently towards COVID. And what's the headline there? Yes, by the way, we do have a release on the inflation data that's on our Abacus data website today, and we'll have one on COVID in the next 24, 48 hours. The highlights on COVID

are that worry about COVID is notched up a little bit. It's still at relatively low level. Uptake of fall boosters is up a little bit, but there's still probably 40% of Canadians who've had some vaccinations who aren't yet sure that they'd take the booster now. So we've gone from 90% of, you know, fully vaccinated back when that was two shots, to a number of significantly lower than that as we head into the fall away. The major factor there is that people believe that the severity of the illness, if you've been vaccinated, and as COVID has developed over time, the severity of the illness is lower. So people feel there is more risk of the spread of COVID, but lower risk of the severity of COVID. And so it's creating this kind of uncertain patterns of behavior where people aren't necessarily following the guidance to get the

boosters. We also asked Peter about masking. And if the provincial government said you need to mask again in public settings, will you do it? And what we found is that about 59% said we'll do it happily and accept that that's the right choice. And another roughly 30 said we'll do it, but we won't be happy about it. 13% said we won't do it. And that's another measure of people sort of indicating to governments, yeah, do what you need to do, take the right decisions, but don't go further than you need to do. And I think that's a, you know, so COVID fatigue is still a very significant factor in how people are reacting to things. Just one point of clarification for me. The resistance to taking the booster right now,

if I understand you correctly, is not based on some movement on the part of people who've taken the shots in the past, suddenly thinking, you know what? I don't want to take a shot because I don't think they work or I don't like the idea of taking shots. I'm resisting vaccines. It's more, in fact, quite the opposite. They feel the vaccines they've had already have been enough. I've helped them or wouldn't help them more.

A lot of people believe they had COVID. A lot of people know they had COVID. And almost everybody knows somebody that's had COVID. And almost all of those situations for people have been, you know, either mild or not that mild, but eventually, you know, people survived. And so so if we go back not that far in time to before we knew what COVID was going to turn into, and before there were any vaccinations, there was such apprehension about mortality rates, and such a demand for a medical solution, that everybody had this kind of fear. The hesitation on the vaccine right now isn't about worries about the vaccine causing health problems.

It isn't a reaction and a sympathy for the anti-vax movement. It isn't anything like that. It's just people saying, you know, maybe I'll get around to it. Maybe I won't. Maybe I need it. Maybe I don't. It's that kind of thing. And so it's become a little bit more like the flu shot,

to be honest, than the COVID shot. All right. It's good. All good. Bruce Anderson with us here on Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. And we covered a bit of ground, and we'll cover more later in the week when Bruce is joined by Chantel for Good Talk on Friday.

Tomorrow is your turn, your opportunity to weigh in on any of these subjects you want. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Please join us if you can. And the Random Renter will be here tomorrow as well. All right, that's it for this day.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again tomorrow. Yeah. In just 24 hours.