The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - When Is A Gaffe Really A Gaffe?

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Enter the Fred DeLorey/Bruce Anderson spin room as we deconstruct elements of last night's French language liberal leadership contender's debate.  There were various moments, and especially one, where views differ and they are worth discussing.

Smoke, mirrors, and the truth. Delore Anderson in the house, coming right up. And hello there, Bruce Anderson and Fred Delore are with us. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. I think the contract says that it's supposed to be Anderson Delory. Isn't that right? It's supposed to be alphabetical. Is that the idea? No, I think it's a top billing thing.

I mean, he's a rookie still. All right, let's go. All right. Okay, French language debate for the Liberal Leadership Hopefuls last night. I'm looking at the headlines in the morning papers, and these are just the English language papers. I'll concede that, but here they are. CBC, liberal leadership hopefuls pitch themselves as best person to take on Trump. The Globe, liberal leadership contenders focus on Trump's threats to Canadian economy, sovereignty, and French debate. The Post, the National Post's first liberal leadership debate

offers little to distinguish between the candidates. And finally, the Star, Trump and his threats are the dominant topic at federal liberal leadership candidates' debate. None of that sounds overly interesting, but that's what it is. If you were expecting fireworks, they're not in those headlines. There's an opinion piece in The Globe, which may sum it up better, Campbell Clark. Even with his gaffes, Carney's still the frontrunner after the French debate. Okay, we convene the spin room, our spin room.

Fred, of course, works for ford in the upcoming provincial election which we'll get to in a little bit and bruce is uh working along with mark carney on the liberal leadership debate so what's your headline what's your headline fred oh wow uh well i really i think campbell clark hit it uh quite well um well in terms of how Mark Carney has this race sewn up. There is no real competition here. You know, and I say this as a conservative who's gone through, we've had three leadership races in like five or six years where Max Bernier was going to win one of those and then lost. Peter McKay was going to win the next one, then lost. So frontrunners do lose.

But then I remember the third one, Pierre Polyev crushed everybody and ran away with it. This feels like that sort of race, where it's not a race at all. There's no real competition in this. But the gaffes is what jumped out at me, both with what Campbell Clark wrote in the Globe and Mail and then what happened last night. And the gaffes were mostly, out at me um both with what campbell clark wrote in the global mail and then what happened last night and the gaffes were were mostly it was language based and i french is a hard language to command um when you're an anglophone and i'm not going to criticize his

french per se but it was i think it was the expectations uh i expected and the way it was presented to us that mark car is this brilliant man, the smartest man in Canada. He is a master of everything, economics, French, the language. He did not, his French was not at the expectation that his own team, I think, had set. And when you fail to meet expectations, that's when problems begin to arise and people will begin to question how legitimate is this person. So I think it was a bit of a letdown in so many ways for him and his team. Bruce, how do you respond to that? And how do you put your own spin on last night?

Well, look, I think that you read three or four headlines, Peter. Three of them mentioned Trump. And I think from the standpoint of what the Liberal Party is trying to do through the course of this race is to say this is the issue. This is the issue that should be talked about. So, you know, some observers who are looking to score this as a boxing match or that sort of thing and might say, well, that, you know, that doesn't sound that interesting to the vast majority of voters. That is the only issue that is interesting to them. And to set up an election where the contrast between Pierre Pauliev, who has a lot of supporters who support Donald Trump, he's in quite a difficult position and have those liberal

leadership aspirants all saying Trump is a threat. How we deal with it, maybe we differ a little bit, but it is the subject of the discussion. So I think from that standpoint, there was something accomplished there for the liberal aspirants and probably for the Liberal Party relative to Mr. Polyev's conservative proposition. The second thing, so the National Post said there was nothing to distinguish those people. I don't think that was right at all. There were things that they agreed on, which is hardly surprising since they're all in the same party. But to say that Karina Gould was exactly the same as Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney to me just didn't sum up what I saw last night. And on Fred's point about language, I'm somebody who grew up as an Anglophone who learned how to speak French in Valleyfield, and

I could probably have a, you know, a 20-minute debate where I wouldn't completely mess up. I could kind of carry it on that long, but it's long to do that for that length of time. And I actually think that the level of French, including by Amara Carney, I think that francophones in Quebec probably measure it not on the basis of was it as good as some pundits might have suggested that it was going to be. I don't think that's the measure at all. I think that it's did he and the others sound like they were trying to have a real conversation in the French language with Quebec voters? And I think they all passed that test, to be honest. I really do.

Let me deconstruct the one main gaffe for a minute, because I find talking about it somewhat interesting. The issue is around the Middle East. And at one point, when Carney was going through the various attitudes toward the Middle East situation, he was talking about Hamas. And it was clear from what he was saying that everybody on that stage was against Hamas.

And that's been clear all along. And nobody's really questioned that. But in his wrap-up to it, in French, it came across, we all agree avec Hamas, with Hamas, as opposed to against Hamas. Now, it was a slip. It was an issue of syntax, I guess. But it was that, nevertheless. And the conservatives, Fred, had an ad out with literally within minutes

on social media to take advantage of that. Now, you know, I guess all's fair in love and war, but is there anybody who actually thinks that Mark Carney or anybody on that stage is with Hamas? Well, he said it. These are his words. Like that's the problem with this is that that's exactly what he said. All they had to do was clip what he said.

It's not like does he believe it or not. I don't know. He said it. Now, we say it's a slip and a gaffe, and it was. I don't believe he thinks that way, just to be clear. But the fact that he said it, it is all fair and love and war. This is a political, you know, in the House of Commons, the opposition, the government sit two sword lengths away from each other. This is a civilized war in politics that we have, and it's a part of our democracy.

So if you make a slip like that, if you say something that messed up, it's going to be used against you, no question. But again, to the point that I was trying to make earlier, to me, it's about expectations. I expected him to be able to command the language better because of what was presented in front of me of who this person is. I understand the language is hard, and I don't fault people for not being able to speak it. That's not a uh where i'm coming from on this but for him and his team uh i think it's a it's a problem because it's now a a uh chick in the armor where we're seeing where maybe he's not as strong as we thought he was bruce yeah i i thought andrew coin had it right uh when he said that people who are trying to make this into a gaffe, it has the odor, I think he said, of a flop sweat, you know, implying that it's kind of desperate for, you know, his critics to be saying, look at what a terrible mistake he made. When everybody who is saying that knows that he didn't make a mistake, that his position wasn't as they're trying to describe it.

All they're trying to do is the same thing that regular voters have been sick and tired of politicians doing forever, which is let me find three words put together in a certain way, frame them in an ad and cause people to get enraged or be fearful or get confused or some combination of those things and i'm not suggesting that's what fred is doing but um well it's a cousin of that you know it's not that far from what fred is. Fred even goes on to say, I know he doesn't think that. Peter, you said, I know he doesn't think that. And all three of us will say things in the course of doing a podcast or making a presentation or giving a speech where we'll kind of flip a word around. And I saw it in real time, and I thought, yeah, somebody's going to try and make a meal out of this.

But this is the least substantive meal of any gaffe I think I've ever heard told of. Because nobody believes, nobody who's paying attention and is kind of open-minded about this can come away thinking, you know what, big revelation. He's for Hamas.mas i mean that's just kind of that's silly again i don't think it's about i don't think anyone really thinks that i think it just goes to the point of this guy we really need to take a much closer look when he he did mess that sentence up he did say we're all for hamas he said that uh yes it was a mess it was a gaffe. He didn't mean to say it, but he said it. And it's about that he messed up the language and said that.

So we need to really look at how he communicates and what he's saying. And I think that is the issue here, because we are, you know, he's going to win this leadership. We're likely going right into an election. And you do not have many days in front of you in a campaign to make these sorts of gaffes so let me let me ask you this question though fred and i do this with great respect obviously um the i think it was the deputy leader of the conservative party used that um slip of the tongue to make the case that mark harney is for haas. I don't think that's responsible. I don't think that is. I mean, you can make the case that it's fair game. Everybody's always done that kind of thing. And he did say those words in that particular order. But she's a

serious person, presumably. She's the deputy leader of the Conservative Party. She would be somebody significant in the context of a polia of government, I would assume. And she's very involved in the public conversation about the Middle East issues. So I don't know. I mean, if you ask me to sort of rank order the degree of unhappiness that I would have as a voter with him using those words in that way, incorrectly describing his actual position, but just in the moment, just in the heat of a debate, versus her saying, I'm going to tell people, I'm going to use my platform to tell people that he supports Hamas. I don't know. I think I know which one, for me anyway, is the bigger transgression.

Yeah, I think, again, back, I think the point of it was that it was a gaffe. But on the other side, too, there is a vote within the liberal bloc that I think conservatives and many Canadians are concerned about, that there is this, I don't want to say pro-Hamas, but this lean towards Hamas or Palestine, and not so much on the Israeli side of that debate that exists within the Liberal Party. So I think there is a block within the Liberal Party that may very much agree with Carney's slip-up and with what he said. So I do absolutely think it's fair game to point that out. But again, to me, it's about the fact that he made a gaffe, and he's got such a short time to introduce himself going into this election

that he can't afford these. I'd just say one more thing on it. He did immediately correct himself when challenged about the use of the word avec, the use of the word is, or with, and he corrected himself. You can assume that the people who are going to be responsible for the federal debate, both broadcasters and parties, were watching last night to see whether there was something to learn from that particular model of a debate. Was there anything to learn from it? I mean, you two guys have witnessed debates over many years in many different campaigns. Did you forget about the performances, the format? Was it a format that is something that should be looked at seriously for the federal debate? Bruce, first.

That's a good question, Peter. I haven't really thought about it very much, to be honest. I found myself watching it and thinking, you know, first of all, French language debates involving mostly English politicians, usually not going to be a great viewing experience for anglophones or perhaps for francophones it's going to be a bit labored so the format for me kind of fell into the background of just watching people try to do the right thing and express themselves in a language that wasn't their first choice bayless being their, Baylis being the exception, I think, to that rule.

And so I didn't pay as much attention to the format, but I did kind of feel at a couple of times that the moderator was having trouble causing the right kind of interaction between the candidates and allowing it to develop in a way that was useful for the audience. So there was a lot of kind of broken back and forth that he stepped in and stopped. And there wasn't as much back and forth where you like to see an exchange, an extended exchange between candidates where they have a chance to debate each other and you get to see how they react when they're challenged one to the other. Now, the English language debate tonight should feature more of that, I think.

And so we'll see. I also thought that the moderator was trying to do something interesting, kind of interrupting an answer with a follow-up question, making it a little bit more conversational like that, I can see some advantages to that in making it feel less overly formatted. But I don't know that it completely worked. I felt like it kind of disrupted the flow of the conversation sometimes, and it kind of made people who were, especially the three who were working in language that wasn't their first language, you know, if it was me up there, I would have been unsettled by it. I wouldn't have felt like, oh, this is great. This is more conversation coming at me in a language that I'm working on.

So I don't know. I don't think the format was a problem last night. And we've all seen debates at the federal election level where we walked away going that was just a disaster we never got to see what we wanted to see and that wasn't that for me last night but also i i didn't think it worked as well as it might have fred i find it fascinating that canada is 158 years old and we're still continuing the biggest debate we have with debates is the format for debates um we cannot seem to get it right they're all just and i think the we have a multi-party system is what makes it different we're also unique in that you know we follow our american neighbors where they have two people on the stage um we have this westminster political system like in the uk and australia they don't have debates they don't have leaders debates so we've americanized ourselves by having this this thing that is a core to us we have to have

them we believe um and we still can't figure out how to do them i remember the conservative leadership race that uh pierre probably have won in 2022 the leadership debate there was an absolute travesty uh it was so poorly done uh it was embarrassing as a conservative the at how they had these weird paddles you had to hold up if you wanted to uh to interject uh tom clark was the host and at one point um they wanted no audience interaction at all and when they would react early on in the debate he threatened to shut down the whole debate as if he could even do that as if this was some service he was providing um it was the strangest thing so i i can't knock the liberals for trying uh this format i think it was interesting

uh but it is fascinating to me that we still can't quite figure this out it still worked for tom he's in a multi-million dollar condo in new york as the as the consul general so maybe he was in there to sabotage the conservatives and the the Liberals gave him that suit. No, Tom would never do that, but he did get carried away on the paddle issue. There's no doubt about that. Okay, shifting topics to our second and last

topic for today, which is the Ontario election coming up in a couple of days. The Ontario legislature, for those in other parts of the country who don't know, has 124 seats. The Conservatives in the last election won, I think, about 80. If you listen to those who claim to know these things, the Conservatives, Doug Ford, could end up with close to 100 seats this time, which makes you wonder what kind of campaign this has really been.

I mean, he portrayed the campaign, Ford portrayed the campaign as one to counter Donald Trump with, which is a puzzle on a number of fronts, seeing as the provincial government really doesn't have anything to do with that relationship. Obviously, they have to protect jobs, etc. But that kind of majority, is that good for democracy? Bruce, why don't you start?

Because I know what Fred will say. Well, look, I think the outcome is good for democracy because we're having a fair election and people are going to get to choose among the candidates that they want so it's hard for me to kind of you know say well democracy only really works if no party gets more than a certain threshold of seats that our system is that first past the post system and it's a it's designed to be a competition that focuses on that outcome and so i don't really have a a view on that i think the the question of whether or not a ford should have called uh for an election i think is a pretty open question but voters have been reluctant to kind of engage in that. They're preoccupied with the Trump impact on the economy and what to do about it. And his two main opponents have not really talked about that in the same way that he

has or haven't been as persuasive as he has. He's almost had the field to himself, I think, in terms of talking about that. But I also think the bigger question will be in the middle of a huge crisis that people are rightly concerned about. Is this going to be such a low turnout that we look at and go, wow, how could that have happened? How could we have ended up in a situation where people are really quite worried about this situation and then don't bother to vote? Because I do think that Doug Ford planned to be a bit under the radar, a plan to kind of run a campaign that people wouldn't notice that much, that would just kind of allow him to pick up another win, a very substantial win. And so if we just look at politics from the standpoint of the tactical choices,

I think he's made a smart tactical choice. If we look at it from the standpoint of did he have enough of a mandate to work with, I think the answer is obviously he did. But he chose to do this because he saw an opportunity and, you know, I feel it was cynical just as I think giving people $200 just before an election campaign was cynical but his opponents so far have not been able to kind of change the dynamic. Fred Bruce covered a lot of turf there.

Words like me to start, Peter? Well, look, I think there's very good reason why the premier, and it's in his main message of why he called this election. He wants to be premier and have this government in place to deal with the entirety of the Trump government. Trump is going to be president for the next four years. It'll be good to have a stable Ontario government that can be in place for that entire time.

And that's what this election will give us with whoever wins this. Obviously, you know, I usually say no ballots have been cast yet when I talk federally, but there's actually been a lot of ballots cast because we've had three days of advance polls and returning offices are open. But at the end of the day, he is asking for a clear mandate.

And it is a big deal when, you know, Trump had just came out yesterday and said he is bringing in, they're coming in in March, these 25% tariffs across the board, 40% of Ontario's GDP is based on trade with the US. This is going to have a major, major impact on our province. And for Premier Ford, he wants that mandate that he could, as you said yourself, Peter, protect jobs, protect workers, protect our industries. There's going to be a lot of work to do on that. I know Premier Houston was in Ontario recently on that, talking about knocking down interprovincial trade it's a big job it's a focused job it changes everything right trump has changed the game so much uh so to me it makes perfect sense that he's gone to the people for a mandate to

protect ontario to to go back to the the main slogan of the campaign that's the the focus of this to the other parties i don't know what they're running on. I don't know what the liberals, in particular the NDP – Yeah, you're still there. We got you. Okay, sorry. Can you still see me? Yep. Yeah.

Okay, sorry. Was that a gaffe? It was a technical glitch. He did say it. Yeah, he did say it. You're right. He did say it. Yeah, he did say it. You're right. He did say it. The NDP, I don't know what their message is in this campaign.

I don't know where they are. I don't know what they're trying to get across to voters. This issue is the number one issue right now is affordability, and there's the concern of the Trump tariffs in terms of what people people are worried about and i the other campaigns are not talking about any of those issues okay um to be fair uh ford and your party was talking about an election before donald trump was elected in november so that possibility always existed no matter what the issue was. I mean, it was... That must have been a gaffe too then, because they didn't want you to know that they were thinking about having...

I think the media were speculating. Yeah, based on... All the premiers saying... Based on what? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know how you guys came up with this. Let me ask this as a final question.

Does what happens on Thursday, on Election Day in Ontario, have any impact on the federal scene? Not just the liberal leadership race, but on the federal scene with the sense that we're going into an election fairly quickly, maybe very quickly, after the liberals decide on who their leader is. Because I noticed that, or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I didn't notice it, but did Pierre Polly ever campaign with Doug Ford on this can during this, were they standing on the same stage together?

I'm not familiar with Polly of campaigning on any, with any provincial leader. I think he's focused on federal stuff. There's been a number of provincial campaigns under his federal leadership and I don't recall him being engaged. So it's, it's not but i'm sure if doug ford had asked him to be there he probably would have been there maybe yeah i don't know i don't think it's uh there's just different topics different jurisdictions and where they're fighting and if you look at ford's campaign he's going to a lot of he's got an insane amount of uh union endorsements and he's going to these workplaces they're not the big stage rallies that you uh that we've seen in the past it's been

a different type of campaign in that regard where he's going right to all these manufacturing places and meeting with workers okay we don't we're not having those big rallies all right just to go back to the question i was trying to ask, and then I knocked you off course, but does it have an impact? Does the Ontario election result, whatever it is, will it have an impact on the national race? You know, I think the Ontario election and Ford's positioning in it is telling us a story that's relevant to the federal election campaign. It's a story of a politician who is the leader of a conservative party, but who has generally tried very hard to be a leader for a kind of a broad cross-section of Ontario voters who's tried to avoid the culture war aspect of what separates Conservative voters from other voters. I don't want to give him a free pass on everything. I

mean, there's some things that I would criticize, but we're not here to do that. You're asking a question about whether or not he's showing a version of how to succeed as a Conservative politician in Ontario that Pierre-Paul Lievre would be wise to emulate. Ford is more popular, I think, among Ontario voters than Pierre-Paul Lievre is. And he's campaigning in a way that is more welcoming to voters outside of the core conservative base. Those are those are things that Pierre-Paul Lieviev didn't think he needed to do and has not really developed much of an appetite for, let alone a skill set for. Ford, on the other hand, I think spent the first year or so that he was in office looking like he was, well, maybe I'll try and do this

Trump version. And he moved away from it. And I don't think he's ever gone back towards it. I think he's been quite disciplined about it and disciplined, maybe not exactly the word I would use to describe it for it. But he's been pretty careful to make sure that mainstream voters don't see him as that kind of flip the table over populist. And I think that Pierre Poliev is struggling with the fact that 40% of his voters want him to be on sound more like Trump or supportive of Trump. And the other 60% of his voters want him not to do that. And that I think is the central challenge that he's got. And that Ford is showing there's a way to do it. But I don't know that Pierre Poliev is going to either embrace that way or be

able to, to carry it out. Fred, you get the last word. It's a mighty challenge to be a federal conservative leader too, right? Like Ford is premier of Ontario. He is absolutely focused on, you know, the people and that's always been, that's his authentic him, right? He really, really does care about people and what their focus and what their issues are. Polyev, I think he's in a similar boat, but it's a different jurisdiction. It's the federal, you have all these other provinces and these other types of

conservative out West that aren't the same as conservatives in Ontario necessarily. So you have this friction at times and it's an immense challenge to be a federal Conservative Party leader, to keep the coalition together. It's such a fragmented coalition. There's so many different types of conservatism. I mentioned the West of Ontario. There's also Quebec and Atlanta, Canada. It's other types of conservatism.

Yeah, Fred's done some really interesting work around, I think, what is your current count, 12 different types of conservative, or is it even more than that? I think it's around um that you can define yourself and you can chop up the conservative movement movement into what who fits into what and they and people identify as this type of conservative so it's an immense challenge to be a federal conservative leader to keep all of that together how many different kinds of liberals are there? Maybe three. We'll have to talk about that sometime.

Easy now. Well, it sounds like that could be a good conversation too. This has been a really good one. We appreciate your time. Both of you, I know you've got lots to do this week and we'll check in again with you next week. Thanks again. Thank you, guys. Thanks. And welcome back, part two of The Bridge for this day.

The first part, of course, was Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, which is also available on our YouTube channel. Tuesdays, we offer Smoke Mirrors and the Truth on our YouTube channel, so you can always find it there. And a good episode today.

Hope you enjoyed it. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Glad to have you with us. Okay. We begin part two with a reminder about your turn for this week. Coming up on Thursday.

Tomorrow, of course, is an encore edition. Wednesdays are encore days. But Thursday's your turn, and it's important to note this now, if you're taking part, is the deadline for your turn this week is three o'clock tomorrow afternoon, Eastern time. Okay, so that's I know that's early on the West Coast 12 noon. And we have a lot of listeners on the West coast uh who'd love to write in for your turn you write into the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com uh include your name and the location you're writing from and also keep it short please one paragraph normal paragraph, not an extended one.

The question of the week is, it relates once again, as it has the question the last few weeks, it relates in a way to this whole issue around tariffs and the feelings, some quite deep feelings, about our relationship with the United States these days. And the question is about what you're buying and what you expect others to be buying.

And do you say anything when you're in the grocery store or in the clothing store or in the hardware store if you see others buying something that you wouldn't buy anymore, that you're only buying Canadian? Or at least you're not buying American? Do you look for signals and signs at the grocery store about what's grown in Canada and what isn't? And do you share that with others? What is your situation on that issue? That's what I want to hear about this week. How do you feel about what you're buying in the stores?

And we've already heard a lot from you already in terms of letters that have come in already, and we expect some more as well. Once again, 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon Eastern Time. Coming after that. I'm afraid it's not going to make it. And it's, this week it's because I'm traveling. I'm on my way to Ottawa today. Then I'm up in Petawawa for a couple of days in my role as an honorary colonel of the Canadian Special Operations Force. So anyway, that's the news about your turn this week, and we'd love to have you join us. Okay.

You know, it's been a while since we did an end bit. We're going to do one today. And here's the preface to the end bit. I'm one of three children. My parents had three kids. We had two before we came to Canada. They had two before we came to Canada, my sister and I. We were both born in England and then had our early childhood in Malaya, which is now Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur before we came to Canada, initially in Ottawa. And it's in Ottawa where our younger brother was born.

So there were three of us. That's the three kids. And my sister and I were always convinced that our little brother was the favorite, was our parents' favorite. And, you know, we weren't serious about that, but we tried to milk that for whatever it was worth. We were convinced, or so we said, that he was their favorite. It certainly wasn't the middle child. That's me. So it really came down to either my sister or my brother. But this is the end bit today, is about favorite kids.

And it's a new study. And the story comes out of CBS News. And the headline is, Do you have a favorite child? Here's what Factors Research says contribute to the perception of a favorite child. So here's the piece. And I'm reading from their wire story, the CBS wire story. A new study from Brigham Young University

found that parental favoritism is real and that factors like gender, birth order, and a child's temperament can serve as influences. The study, which was done in Europe and North America, looked at data from 20,000 people and showed parents tend to favor daughters slightly more than sons. We have to keep in mind that culture plays a big difference, said Dr. Sue Varma, a board-certified psychiatrist on CBS Mornings. I know my Asian and South Asian friends will say, daughters, are you kidding me?

No, the sons are the favorite children. Varma is the author of the book Practical Optimism. And she said, in addition to traditions and culture, it's also about perception. A lot of times, the agreeable child may get less attention, even though they are the favored child, she said. The parent is like, I need to focus on the child that needs me more, the kid that's having rebellious behavior or oppositional. Varma said daughters are sometimes favored

because they are often considered easier to parent. Part of what makes parenting easier for some parents is, is my kid also agreeable and conscientious and diligent and dutiful and obedient and respectful? Varma explained. If a parent feels insecure or that the child is demanding too much, it makes the parents feel less competent and therefore shows less favoritism to the child. She said the key for parents is listening. So you may say, what constitutes favoritism? Is it how much time you spend with me?

Is it how much affection? I think parents really need to listen to the kid and validate what they're expressing, Varma said. So here's some tips for parents. This is the way the article concludes. Dr. Varma offered advice on how not to show favoritism. And these are the five points she outlines. Listen to your child's complaints. Okay, your child has a concern, listen.

Don't get defensive. Validate your child's experience. Spend one-on-one time with each of your kids. Invest in your child's talents. And one final tip from Varma, don't dismiss what your child is saying and try to spend more one-on-one time if there are multiple children.

Well, there you go. There's the real answer. So I'll have to rethink what happened all those many years ago. When is the middle child, and I know some of you are their middle kids, and so you're probably going, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I was not the favorite. I'm not complaining, you're saying, but clearly, I was not the favorite. Well, I don't know. I think at the end of the day, we were all pretty much favorites of our parents.

I know that was the case in our household, although we'll never let our little brother think anything other than the fact that he was perfect. He never made mistakes. He was always right, as opposed to us. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for this day and quite the day it was hope you enjoyed Smoke Mirrors and the Truth

I know that some of you have been concerned about the partisan nature sometimes of SMT but that is the idea they're obviously going to be partisan. They're in a competition against each other. But on this program, we're also trying to bring you some sense of what it's like in the midst of that competition.

And so I thought today I did that quite nicely. So thanks to both Fred and Bruce. And thanks to you, as always, for listening. Tomorrow, once again, Encore Edition. Thursday is your turn and the random ranter, of course. And Friday, it will be good talk with Chantelle Hebert and Rob Russo, which continues to hit new record heights in terms of numbers in the ratings,

both on our audio podcast and on our youtube channel so that's it for this day i'm peter mansbridge thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours Thank you.