The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Whatever Happened to Max Bernier?

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Look out, he may be on his way back.  The People's Party leader is said to be about to enter a byelection. race for a federal seat in Manitoba.  If he does what impact would that have not only on his party but on the Conservative party as well.  Bruce is off this week, but Toronto Star columnist Althia Raj is here with her take on that story and more.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday. Smoke, mirrors, and the truth. But today, today, not with Bruce Anderson. And hello there. Welcome to Hump Day. It's Wednesday. No, Bruce is off this week. I didn't realize that until a couple hours ago, really. But he's off this week, both today and on Friday. So today, Althea Raj from the Toronto Star. Columnist, member of the At Issue panel. Good friend for, let's just say a long time, a few years.

And Althea now is one of the, you know, leading commentators on politics in Canada. Friday, Rob Russo will be sitting in with Chantelle Hebert for a good talk. So welcome to the show. You've been on before, Althea. It's great to have you fill in at the last minute for us like this. And there actually are a lot of interesting things to talk about while Bruce gets over his coronation hangover. I'm trying to imagine. He went over there as this anti-monarchist,

and it didn't take long before he was lining up for the coronation street party. So it's interesting he's over in the UK. All right, we're going to start with Max Bernier, which I find interesting because we really haven't talked about him since the last election. And it's not, you know, they didn't win a seat, which is one of the reasons we didn't talk about him. But on the plus side for him, they got, what, almost 5% of the vote, over 800,000 votes.

Many conservatives figure it cost them 10 seats. So the guy had an impact. His party had an impact, the People's Party of Canada. And now it sounds like he's about to enter things again by getting into a by-election race in Manitoba. What's your take on this? Well, you're right. So Maxine Brunet won 840,000 votes in the last election. And I think you kind of lowballed the number because depending on who you ask in conservative circles, they believe that in about 19 to 20 ridings, if the PPC voters, and they are assuming that all the PPC voters would have voted conservative, which is quite a large assumption, because a lot of them

were non-voters, people who voted for the Green Party, New Democrats, liberals, they're kind of disenchanted voters that were not necessarily conservative voters, probably overwhelmingly conservative. But if you added up the numbers, that would have made a difference in 19 to 20 ridings. Now that still doesn't give them government, but it's significant. And it kind of helped explain a little bit about Pierre Polyev's communication strategy, at least. Now, Maxime Bernier,

and we learned this through a column by Fred Delory, who actually ran the 2021 campaign for the Conservatives, that Maxime Bernier is thinking of throwing his hat in a ring in a very favorable writing to the PPC in the last campaign. In Manitoba, in Portage-Lisgger, so this is Candace Bergen's seat. So the former interim leader who's decided to leave politics, she used to win that riding by like 70%. And in the last campaign, she was incredibly worried about the PPC. And she had reason to, they got more than 20% of the vote in her riding.

And she, she still, she still won, obviously, and she still won by more than 50%. But it wasn't as comfortable a margin as she was used to. So Maxine Bernier, apparently, according to Fred Delory, thinks that this could be his chance to get into the House of Commons. Of course, if he gets into the House of Commons, that means he's in the leaders debate in the next election. So it's high stakes for Mr. Bernier. He has been touring Manitoba. He himself hasn't announced this, but if you follow his emails, he did a PPC tour in Manitoba. So perhaps he was trying to see what the reception might be. And, you know, it's a reminder that Maxine Bernier is still there. And even though we don't cover him, he is still pounding the pavement, trying to raise money and hopes to run candidates in the next election.

OK, let me pick up on a couple of points. First of all, if he wins that seat, so they have one seat in the House, that gives them the right to be in the debate. Is that the new rule? Well, that's the rule at the moment um that was why he was in the debates the first time and then uh because he didn't have a seat because he'd been like a concert he was a conservative who became ppc then um mr johnson and we don't know who the next commissioner of the election leaders debate is going to be, they may decide to redraw the rules. But then they were looking, remember, at polling numbers, like whether or not they had sufficient support in order to determine whether their presence would be welcomed in the debate. But traditionally, the rule has been if you have a seat, if your party is represented in the House of Commons, your leader gets to go to the debate.

That's how Elizabeth May ended up going to the debate a few times. Remember, there was a floor crosser from Ontario who became Green. Oh, that's right. That's right. What do we know about Bernier's position and thinking on things. Has anything changed as far as we know from 2021, or is he still that sort of far-right guy on the spectrum? He is still that far-right guy on the spectrum. I think if anything, I would say the language has more, has radicalized a little bit.

Like he echoes a lot of the themes that you hear on fox news for example uh before tucker carlson was turfed uh he had been on that show uh and so he uh promotes his appearances on the rebel for example he's taken a more aggressive stance against immigration. He calls himself the peace candidate because he doesn't believe that Canada should be supporting the war in Ukraine against Russia. He has defended the three conservative MPs who met with that far-right German or European parliament politician, European politician. And he accuses that he's still, if you will,

campaigning against the conservative party and saying that the conservative party isn't living its true values. And so he's still, he's still in that vein. And I think if anything, that has kind of hardened. We haven't given him so much attention, obviously, as we did during the election or in the lead up to the election, because, you know, there aren't thousands of people protesting in front of Parliament Hill on anti-vax. And that message has kind of lost a little bit of momentum. Plus, he doesn't have a seat. So, you know, not having a seat costs you publicity and FaceTime in front of cameras. But if he gets that one seat, he'll be the darling, at least for a while, when he arrives.

Because everybody will be looking for fireworks. Not necessarily between him and Trudeau, although there will be some of that. But between him impacted Polyev and his positioning before and since becoming leader. So tell me about that. Give me some examples of that. Well, I think it started in the lead-up. Well, basically, after Aaron O'Toole was ousted as leader.

So we're going back. I'm losing track of time. A year? Has it only been a year? It's only been a year. Wow. Okay. So back in January of 2022, when the writing was on the wall for O'Toole, you know, that anti-vax momentum had built during the election campaign.

And Maxine Bernier had been quite vocal. Like, I think one of the reasons that English Canada got to see that clip of Justin Trudeau talking about anti-vax, and he was talking about the protesters who were threatening his wife, that they were racist and some of them were racist and misogynistic. That was a quote that was given on French television, a show called L'Équipe Judiz. And it was Maxime Bernier who promoted that clip on social media. And he was still riding that wave of disenchantment and anger with the prime minister about the COVID mandates and the premier is, but mostly directed at Justin Trudeau. And a lot of those people who were angry with the prime minister who supported Pierre Poiliev, sorry, who supported Maxime Bernier through their support behind Pierre Poiliev, you saw that in the rallies that Mr. Poilier was organizing for his leadership bid. And so that rhetoric continued

to fuel, I think, his leadership and helped explain why so many, you know, hundreds of 600,000 people cast their ballot for Mr. Poitier, signed up because of Mr. Poitier. But because COVID hasn't really been front and center of us, that message, you know, we haven't paid that much attention to from Mr. Poitier. But we were reminded last week from Justin Trudeau that when Mr. Poitier had a one-on-one with President Joe Biden, what did he use his time for? He used his time to talk about the vaccine mandates. And so you can tell that there is a pull. And I know a lot of people in the conservative caucus who would consider themselves more on the red Tory side of the caucus, people who did not support Pierre Poiliev's bid for a leader, believe that

the tone is too aggressive and it's designed to court these individuals mostly on social media. And maybe you can tell us what he's like when you're in the room with him and it's designed to court these individuals mostly on social media and maybe you can tell us about what he's like when you're in the room with him and he's delivering a speech to people that are it's not through the internet um but because i know you have i'm sure you have a story to tell about this week um but in terms of the content i don't think the content of mr poirier's message has changed and in the sense that he hasn't embraced an anti-immigration rhetoric. He is not an apologist for authoritarian regimes. In fact, you know, he's given voice to a lot of preoccupations that new immigrants to Canada have about foreign credentials, for example. He's speaking to young people about housing like real tangible everyday bread and butter issues

but the tone that you know the attack against wokeism all that mirrors the same language that Mr. Bernier uses in his social media and his communications to the people that he is hoping to court so it will be interesting to see how Mr. or what Mr. Poliev's rhetoric is in this in this Manitoba by-election and how that changes over time, because a lot of people in caucus are hoping that he will temper some of his communication style, Mr. Poliev, here as we go towards general election. Okay, two things. One, it will be interesting to watch that Manitoba riding because Polly Everett will almost certainly go out there at some point. Although it's funny, you know, a couple of months ago, he didn't turn up in that Ontario riding, right? Which they lost.

Yeah, in Mississauga Lakeshore. Yeah. But it'll be interesting to see what he does there because that will be a temptation, you know. If he's going to ignore Max Bernier, he'll do so at his potential peril. But it's an interesting riding, and it's funny it's that one, because it's gone through some redistribution over the last 50 years, but it's the first riding where I, as a reporter,

covered an election race, a federal election race, in 72. And it stretched a little differently at that time, but it was the same basic rural south central Manitoba riding. At that time, it was held by a liberal. It was one of those ridings that went liberal in 68 for Pierre Trudeau, but then swung Tory, and it's either been Tory or reform or alliance, I think, ever since. So we'll see what happens, you know, this time around

if the field unfolds like we think it is. Now, your other point, you lead me into talking a little bit about Polyev and his speaking. I was in Ottawa yesterday, Gatineau, actually, across the river, where the Building Trades Union, you know, powerful, big union, 500,000 members, representatives from across the country in all kinds of different trades were having their convention. And they had a day set aside for basically the politicians to do,

it was like a beauty pageant. They were, you know were fishing for Labour votes. The Liberals who got their majority in 2015, partly because they made inroads on a traditionally Labour, traditionally NDP area. They've been desperately trying to get them back ever since, and that's why they've ended up in minorities, because they haven't got them back. The NDP traditionally had that vote, trying to get him back ever since, and that's why they've ended up in minorities, because they haven't got him back.

The NDP traditionally had that vote, trying to get it back, and the Conservatives think they can make inroads there because of their leader and because of what he was saying. So yesterday, Sean Fraser, the Minister of Immigration, Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, and then Pierre Polyev all had their own time, about half an hour's time at the convention. I sat through all the speeches. I wanted to hear what they were saying. I wanted to especially hear what Polyev, because I haven't heard him in a couple of years, in a speech format. Now, you play to your audience, as you well know,

and he certainly did. There was none of this sort of anti-woke stuff. There was none of the let's trash the CBC stuff. There were times I was sitting there thinking, a socialist could give this speech. He was talking about enough looking after the people in the corner office. It's time to worry about the people on the shop floor. And I'm going, like, who is this, Tommy Douglas up there? What's going on?

But it was a pretty effective speech. Now, to be effective, you need a crowd cheering you on, right? That didn't happen. But then it didn't really happen for any of the three speakers. The audience was polite for all three of them, but they didn't sort of for any of the three speakers they were the audience was polite for all three of them but they didn't sort of go out of their way there were even for Jagmeet Singh there was no like big ovation it was all pretty just I'd say polite but I found it interesting to watch Polyev because at least for this, it was a much different Polyev

than you hear whether it's in the House of Commons or at a political rally of his people. Plus, he's starting to layer in. The attack on him has been, so far, you know, he's all hat, no cattle. He doesn't give you any details about what he'd do. He's starting to layer that in in some places. He's starting to give you a sense of what he would do if he was prime minister.

So it was an interesting afternoon to watch. And I know it's not a representative crowd of a group of Canadians. It would be a very different crowd he would speak to in the Manitoba by-election if he goes there. But nevertheless, it was interesting to watch. I mean, have you sensed a change in his approach? I mean, we've been kind of waiting for this kind of bend towards the middle a little bit.

I'm not sure it's happening. It happened in that speech little bit. I'm not sure it's happening. It happened in that speech yesterday, but I'm not sure that's, as I said, I'm not sure how representative that is. No, I wouldn't say that we've seen a switch in the House of Mr. Poliev going towards the middle. I think what we are seeing is, in fact, Mr. Poitier, in the comments, try not to talk about policy. He has tried not to talk about child care, although he's signaling that he would probably get rid of that, although I don't know how you'd get rid of a program that's

already so entrenched. He hasn't commented on the health care transfers, for example. They've been kind of careful about dental care. What you are seeing is that he is hoping that the next election is a change election. And he's trying to make the prosecute the case for the government needs to be defeated. And these are the reasons why the government needs to be defeated. And so he's very good at grabbing one issue and running with it, whether that's bail reform, you know, personally blaming Justin Trudeau for the crime wave in Toronto's TTC, for example, or talking about foreign interference and the government's incompetence on the file, or just the government's incompetence, generally speaking, on, you know, the passport file. How come, you know, we have more airplane delays at Pearson? Why people who got CERB or businesses who got business loans during COVID are being basically allowed to keep the money if they committed fraud?

Why the government isn't going aggressively against the fraudsters in a way that the Auditor General suggested perhaps CRA should? So I think that's the tactic in the Commons. I think what's more interesting is what you've seen outside of the House of Commons. He is doing extensive touring, very much like when Justin Trudeau in 2013, after he became Liberal leader, spent a lot of time outside of the House of Commons, going to small communities, talking to small groups, going to the regions. Mr. Pradieva, if you look at some of his social media where he posts pictures, you know, he's going to a lot of rural areas. And the Liberals do realize they're incredibly vulnerable in rural areas.

And in 2015, they won a lot of seats that are, sometimes we call them like ex-urban. They're not suburban. They're not really rural, like seats like in Peterborough, for example, in Ontario, this kind of like in-between area where he's talking to people about the issues that really matter to them, whether that's gun control, right? The liberals aggressively, in the conservatives' argument, at least penalizing law-abiding gun owners, hunters. And so I think that there is so much more on the ground work that where the rhetoric is not about wokeism, it's about what really matters to people,

young people. I mean, the polling numbers on young people is really interesting. In the last election, the Liberals' weakest age cohort were people under 35 and that was their best cohort in 2015 that is the cohort that gave them the majority government you talked about union support but i think i might argue with you i think it was young people in 2015 that really made the difference and and and indigenous yeah it made a difference in you know in some But you're right. Yeah, it was young people. And now Mr. Poitier is leading with young people. And, you know, you talked about the CBC. When you asked young people this abacus bowl a few weeks ago,

I was shocked to see 55% of young Canadians under 35 have no problems defunding the CBC. They have no affinity towards the CBC. I mean, I think that's a whole other issue, but probably the CBC not doing its job properly. But I think Mr. Poitier's rhetoric in the comments is quite different than his rhetoric on the ground. And I think that's where the change is going to come.

Peter, I just want to say one thing, because I don't want to leave the listener or the viewer, if they're watching this on YouTube, with the wrong impression. I don't for a second think that Maxime Bernier is going to win Portage-Lisker. It would be a huge upset. And Mr. Playa does not need to visit Candace Bergen's old riding in order to ensure a conservative win. be interesting is if the people who very few people in portage lisker who vote liberal or nep decided that they should back the conservative candidate and not the ppc candidate because they don't want if max and barry does rhyme they don't want max and bernie in the house of commons but i

mean this is the likelihood that there is a conservative upset uh in this writing is it's pretty unlikely i will uh i will bow to your expertise and your on-the-ground sensing of these things. However, I will say that the by-elections are often the most unpredictable thing. That is very true. And if people are angry, we will see it. Yeah, exactly. And there are parts of the country that are angry. They're not necessarily angry at Polyev. Well, they're not angry at Polyev. They're angry at Trudeau, and they're looking for ways to strike out.

I mean, Churchill used to call by-elections fire on ice, and you can take that any number of different ways. I tend to take it as it's a moment in time where people are ready to say, to hell with it. I'm going away i've never gone before because i want to make a statement um and you know i you know we'll see what happens i mean you know better than i because i i can't remember the number but there are quite a few by-elections about to come along there'll be five right but there's five right now there will be six because nathaniel eriskin smith the liberal toronto mp from bgcc or has announced that he's running for the ontario liberal leadership and he has said that he has no like he's not

coming back to ottawa even if he loses the ontario race so and there's an ottawa mpu who's thinking of doing the same thing right yes but he has not said that he is giving up his seat. That's different. So all those people who think this could be an opportunity for Mark Carney might want to wait a little bit to see how that actually unfolds. But whatever the case, that's a lot of by-elections, and I don't know whether they're all going to end up being on the same day. But they can make a statement.

I was in a conversation last night in Ottawa, and I was talking about, I mean, this once again dates me, which isn't hard for me to be dated on stuff. But in 1978, everybody was expecting an election. It was four years since the 74 election campaign that the Liberals had won based on a lie, right? Based on the promise they'd never bring in wage and price controls. They brought in wage and price controls a year later. And the public was waiting, waiting to take their vengeance on the Liberals.

So in late 1978, the four-year clock having passed and everybody figured there's going to be an election campaign this fall, Pierre Trudeau decided, no, we're not going to have an election. We're going to have 15 by-elections because a lot of people had dropped out. A lot of liberals said they weren't going to run again. So they had 15 by-elections. Now, I can't remember the actual number, but they got hammered in those by-elections. I think they lost like 10 or 11 of them.

But you know what? They had the federal election the following spring. And of those ridings that the Liberals had lost, they got most of them back. And you can make the argument that people were just looking for this opportunity to say, I'm pissed off and I'm not going to take it anymore. And they voted against the liberals. But by the time the next year rolled around, they said, OK, I did my thing. Now I'm going back into the tent.

It was a smart move by Trudeau and Keith Davey and the crowd that suggested that. Because what happened? The Conservatives still won the election in 1979, but it was a minority. It lasted nine months. It's a tiny minority. Those seats would have made a big difference. So it's interesting to see how a big array of by-elections could have an impact for further down the line.

Who knows? I don't know. History sometimes gives you a hint on these things. Listen, you mentioned a name that I want to bring up again, this Nate Erskine-Smith, because I would suggest that most of the people who listen to this podcast have probably never heard of him. But you have, and you think there's an interesting story to tell with him.

So we're going to tell it, but first of all, we're going to take this quick break. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Wednesday edition, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce is away this week. Althea Raj from the Toronto Star and her own very popular podcast is with us this week. Tell me about Nate Erskine-Smith. ruled. So he was 32, maybe just shy of 32 when he got elected in 2015. For some people who may have heard of him, he got a reputation as kind of a maverick, a dissenter in liberal ranks. If you'll recall, in the lead up to the 2015 election, Justin Trudeau used to often say that his MPs were not going to be Ottawa's voice

in the riding. He would be bringing the riding's voice to Ottawa, that people had become cynical about politics. And so he needed to show Canadians that politics could be done differently. With Stéphane Zignon, they had introduced opposition motions calling for free votes in the House and for members of Parliament to be recognized by the Speaker individually rather than having to go through their parties, their parties of officials like the Whips and the Leader's Office in order to get a speaking time to do statements just before question period.

So he was trying to empower members of parliament. And Nate Erskine-Smith is one of those MPs who, I guess you could say, young and idealistic, took that to heart. And in his first year, he voted against the government 13 times, if I remember correctly. Now, he voted against some liberal motions that other liberals also dissented on. I think of medical assistance in dying, for example, the first version of the bill, which some MPs like Rob Oliphant as well argued it wasn't expansive enough. He also voted in favor of opposition motions. And this is where you see that that's sometimes a slightly unusual. He voted with the NDP, for example, to decriminalize marijuana while the liberals were trying to legalize it,

like in the process, so that people would not be getting fines while the government was getting its ducks in order. He voted on a conservative motion to declare what ISIS was doing in Syria a genocide. Now, 13 votes probably doesn't sound like a lot, but in Ottawa, actually voting against your party line 13 times gets you the reputation as a maverick and a dissenter. The National Post a few years ago actually counted Nate Erskine's voting record and said 96% of the time he votes with the government. And yet he is still like held up as a poster boy for what being an independent MP means in the House of Commons. But, you know, he's a very thoughtful, hardworking MP. He has his own podcast, too. He's a good communicator.

He's a lawyer, trained constitutional lawyer. And despite this pedigree, you know, he's never been a parliamentary secretary. He's never made it on a cabinet minister's shortlist. He's never even chaired a committee. The best post, if you wish, that he ever got in the House of Commons was in the first term, in the liberals' first term, in the majority term. For two years, he was the vice chair of the Ethics Committee. So while Nate has kind of embodied the spirit of Justin Trudeau in 2015, the liberals have not really embraced his independent streak. A lot of his caucus members find him um slightly annoying they make their life he makes his their life a bit more difficult because if he votes against something then they have to explain

to their constituents and the public why they didn't vote against something um so you know there's a lot of team spirit in caucus um but Erskine Erskine Smith has decided that the best way for him to contribute or the way that he can have more of an impact is now to run for the Ontario leadership, frankly, on a very similar platform than all the stuff that Justin Trudeau talked about in 2015. So to me, it kind of raises the question of like, well, a few questions. What has happened to that idealism from 2015? Like, is it just not functional in a system? Can you just not run government without having all of your MPs vote exactly the same way you do? Or, you know, did the liberals just become intolerant to dissent? You know, will Nate Erskine Smith basically do what Justin Trudeau did, you know, eight years later? But that, you know, everything about Nate Erskine Smith down to, I don't know if you'll remember this, Peter, but Justin Trudeau had even said as opposition leader that he wanted to build a team

of people who were only under 40. Do you remember that? I went back and looked at some of the things that he had said, and I thought, you know, how far you've fallen? And it made me think, and I'm going to rant a little, of convention. So I'm a policy geek. I think probably most people know that I'm a little bit of a political geek, but I really like policy. And I was just so dismayed at the Liberal Convention that they organized the policy convention clearly for nobody to show up at 7.45 in the morning on Saturday, and nobody did show up. Like they didn't even have quorum. They had to wait half an hour to get 100 people in the room. And I will just recall that there were more than 4,000 people registered at the Liberal Convention.

So they didn't explain the rules properly. There were two counted votes, only two counted votes. There was hardly any debate. I think one or two motion got debate. That's it. One of them on mandatory voting. Like the motion on whether or not the Liberals should table a plan to return to budget wasn't even debated. It was just shocking to me, the lack of interest. And then the party made delegates vote to reduce the number of policy resolutions from 20 to 10 on Friday.

But 15 of those resolutions automatically would have become party policy. So they they basically scrapped five motions for no reason at all. And there's no outrage like nobody cares. We've gone back to, you know, the Stephen Clarkson big red machine. about how basically he was arguing that the liberals are just this autocratic machinery that wins election and they pretend and they give voice to all this like democracy within the party and participation, but it's just not there. Anyways, rant is over. They're not alone in that though, right? In all fairness. I mean, you know, political parties have their conventions where they discuss policy and they vote on a platform and all that stuff. And it's up to the leader, whichever the party is, whether they really want to follow any of this stuff or not.

Oh, yeah, it's non if you wanted to give the grassroots a voice, if you wanted to be, you know, to represent the writings in Ottawa, if you wanted, if you were like attuned to the fact that, you know, we have a problem in rural areas, we probably should be listening to the grassroots members who come from rural areas, then you probably would put your policy discussion at like 2 p.m. in the afternoon after people have nursed their hangover from all the cocktail and hospitality sweets from the night before or the people watching King Charles's coronation at four o'clock in the morning. You would I'm not saying that the liberals need to adopt every policy. Certainly, you know, rarely do party leaders do that. And some policies are on the books forever. Like I was in Stephen Clarkson's book, I learned that a basic income was actually suggested to Pierre Elliott Trudeau from the party's grassroots. And again, at this convention, it was suggested to Justin Trudeau from the party's grassroots. But to kind of cook

the system in order to get as few resolutions as you can, I feel is very disrespectful to the party's grassroots. The Conservative Party does things slightly differently. They try to nix policy resolutions they don't want debated behind closed doors. But their members are very interested in participatory democracy. They really believe that the party belongs to the members. And so you will hear about anger on the floor. And it is very hard for actually the conservatives to control a lot of their policy conventions,

even though they do do a lot of legwork trying to kibosh like abortion resolution, climate change stuff like we saw in the last policy convention from the Tories. My very first conservative convention, I was shocked. It was like nine o'clock in the morning and the room was so full. They were complaining there were not enough chairs for them to be able to follow the process. And at the time, it was like tables with chairs.

And the NDP, the NDP also care very much about policy conventions. They would not allow party members to talk down to them and not have a chance to talk back. And that's one thing that we saw, again, at the Liberal Convention. You had all these cabinet ministers on stage and then you had these mics, but nobody was going to the mics asking people questions. Like the cabinet ministers were talking to the delegates and there was no, the delegates were not talking to the cabinet ministers in that format. Sure. There was networking behind the scenes and, but it's, it's a different culture or the culture has changed because it wasn't like that in like 2012 for example when they debated whether or not they should open the

party to the supporter class there was active debate so you know i guess to your point if the leader cares and the people care and maybe the leader doesn't care and the liberal supporters don't especially if the leader is the prime minister. That works, too, against the system working the way it should. When the party's in power at 7.30 on a Saturday morning, they're not up for policy. They're up for celebrating whatever power they have or still have. Well, watchers can smith. I'm glad you've done that.

It's not until December, right? It's a long run for the leadership. And he's the first one officially in. Right. And there's probably going to be, well, who knows? We'll see how many end up going for it. Let me bring up another name. And it's another liberal, another young liberal.

I think he's still under 40 i could be wrong on that um but i saw him yesterday that's sean fraser minister of immigration at a time when this cabinet and this pmo especially are are heavily criticized for not having a good communication strategy. Nobody quite understands what they're doing, why they're doing it, or when something comes along, they don't explain their position very well like the Chong affair. It's just one day after another of slip-ups and trip-ups and screw-ups. But I didn't know anything about Sean Fraser Fraser I knew he was from Nova Scotia

I knew he was a young minister he spoke for 15 or 20 minutes and he was good he was a good speaker and I thought they have a tired kind of front bench of communicators they should elevate some of these

people up if they really want to try and change the equation out there on the way Canadians see them. I just thought he was pretty good. But, you know, beyond that, I don't know anything about him. But there's no question they have a communications problem, so they better start looking around on how to deal with it. Agreed. I don't think the communication problem is new, though.

I would say several years old, and it hurts them a lot. They cannot communicate what they have done. Like, that, to me, is the first problem. Then they can't adjust to news coming out. You point out to the Chong affair, how they, it's like they cut themselves and then they just bleed out for weeks on end as opposed to think, like, why not nip these issues in the bud?

You know where the ball is going to go. Like, you know, Katie Telford is going to end up testifying. Why are you put liberals up to filibuster and committee for weeks on end when you know that that is the end result that's going to happen anyways and she did good like for from the pmo perspective she didn't make any news she calmed the ships you should have sent her out on day one they should have known that from the last time she had to testify she did the same thing she was fine exactly exactly um but you raise a really interesting point about the new breath.

Well, how cabinet, I'm going to put words in your mouth, how cabinet perhaps needs a change. There is a hot rumor in Ottawa that there will be a cabinet shuffle in the summer. When is that? Not a hot rumor. It's every week there's a hot, whoa, cabinet change coming. But, you know, that that team of 2015, the people like Nate Erskine-Smith who came in, have been waiting very patiently for their turn. And there are a lot of cabinet ministers who have dug themselves into a hole and keep digging themselves into a hole. I'm thinking of one particular cabinet minister who I'm surprised is still there. There was more than one, but I'm thinking of Marco Menegino at public safety. After, you know, basically misleading the House of Commons on who had, on whose advice the government was acting on the Emergencies Act, I would have thought,

you know, in another era, a cabinet minister would not have survived a full year. And yet the government has been very reluctant to make any changes. And we're getting to the point that a lot of people think maybe the next election will be in the spring of 2024, that, you know, now is the time to ask those cabinet ministers who do not plan to run again to leave and to make room for others. But also, if they do not make room for the new generation of young people, do they decide to run again? Or do they decide to do something else? Or do they become or do they run and they become the angry voices that, you know, spew everything that they're upset about in caucus,

like, well, in the Marc J. Kretzian era, do people start aggressively campaigning for Mr. Trudeau's job, deciding that his time has come, and then they start backing François-Philippe Champagne or Mélanie Gelly or Anita Annan or anybody that, you know, maybe he'd give them a better position. So there's definitely some team building work to be done, I would say, this summer. And yeah, Sean Fraser is a great communicator. I mean, unfortunately for him, immigration is a really terrible file to have. The backlog is a mess, does not make you popular, but it's also a very challenging file. And it would become a more challenging file as we welcome more and more immigrants and don't really have the social the social programs and the housing and the infrastructure to be able to welcome them properly so i think that that will

be an area of tension as as we move forward in the years and decades to come it's been great having you on here, Althea. You know, I forgot to mention, I should have mentioned, your podcast is It's Political, is what it's called, and it's easily accessible wherever you get your podcasts. It's a Toronto Star podcast. And your columns, you know, like you've done great. First time I met Althea, she was a student of mcgill university and it was yeah it was a down the street des morton's history class or

something wasn't it his he was we were doing a town hall in mcgill and uh on on canadian history and althea was there in the in the crowd with some of her friends and asking questions or answering questions. I can't remember what. But you could tell right away this was somebody who was going to end up in Canadian politics in some fashion. And she has done just that and certainly made a name for herself, and we're all better for it.

So thanks for filling in. It's been great of you, and we'll talk to you again soon. it so uh thanks for filling in it's been a great of you and we'll talk to you again soon we'll be watching and listening to lc arash i'm peter thanks for listening on this day we'll talk to you again in 24 hours