The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - WHEN WILL IT EVER BE TIME FOR ACTION?

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Smoke Mirrors and the Truth is the platform for Bruce and Peter to take on the residential schools issue.  No holds barred.  Also the latest on the election -- and the likelihood now that it will be called in August.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the Wednesday edition of The Bridge. You know what that means? It means smoke, mirrors, and the truth with Bruce Anderson. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further. BitBuy is Canada's number one platform for buying and selling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. BitBuy has launched a brand new app and website with a new look, lower fees, and new coins. Bitbuy is your one-stop shop to get involved and super easy to use for beginners. Visit bitbuy.ca or download the Bitbuy app. Enter referral code podcast20 to get $20 wow i sound pumped i sound like i'm really into it you are really into it and i can tell why i'm looking at your shiny face this morning and you're going you know what it's 448 days of pandemic

and it's almost over i can see the finish line i'm going to scotland i'm gonna just get back to life and who's not excited about that i'm you know i can't see the end of the tunnel i can't see the light at the end of the tunnel because i'm master zeneca boy like you are and they have screwed this up so bad in trying to get the second dose to people, it's outrageous. It's totally disorganized. If I had a dollar for every sentence that started, they have screwed this up so much, I'd be pretty rich. You would be. You'd especially be rich right now. I'll give you a dollar right now for every time I say it. we should have a jar that is for you know a dollar or ten dollars every time you say they really screwed this up because otherwise you know what we might just turn

into those two old guys from the muppets sitting up in the balcony looking down at everybody else going they screwed this up why do they screw this up they did screw it up now obviously you've figured out a way to get your second shot i haven't i've called every pharmacy in southwestern ontario and in toronto willing to drive into toronto and they you know they say no no you've got to go to the pharmacy you got your first shot and i said fine so i phoned the pharmacy i got my first shot and they say they don't they haven't given us any supplies so you can't come here. The audio book version of this story, and I can listen to it another day in my car.

I know this story. And here's my new technique. OK, I have studied about this. I'm just training my mind not to think about it and to will the vaccine towards me. I was watching it on YouTube. You can just will the vaccine to me. I was watching it on YouTube, but you can just will the vaccine to come to you. And so that's my strategy for today. And I'll listen to your audio book about all the pharmacies that you called and all the nose that you got. And I'll do that another day.

Let's talk about, you're going to will the vaccines towards. That's the new strategy. I'm going to send you the training tape. Oh, man. Oh, man. I don't even want to start on that. Okay, let's move on. Let me start, actually. Let me start this way. You'll be pleased to hear me say this.

I want to formally congratulate you and acknowledge that you picked the right team in the opening series of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the North opening series on the eastern side of the country. In other words, Montreal versus Toronto. I just want to say that even though I said at the beginning, it all depends on Carey Price. I'm absolutely right about that.

Best goaltender in the world. But nevertheless, you picked Montreal, I picked Toronto, and you were right. Montreal picked me, let's be honest. I don't want to listen to your audio book about how good you feel about that decision. Montreal picked me. Do you remember that you agreed

you were going to sing the song? No, I never said anything about that yeah i never said what's that thing they chant in the crowd when they have a crowd i can hear you singing it in your rich baritone you're happy now i'm keeping with the genuine congratulatory message that you were sending. Anyway, I am sending that, and I'm sincere about that, and good for you. That's good. I'm going to take it.

Hockey's over for the year, but that's okay. All right. Moving on to much more serious issues. I want to, you know, I want to try to discuss the latest issues surrounding Indian residential schools. The question that haunts us as a country, you know, hole in our soul, scar on our nation, all of that. And it's come to the forefront once again. And people talk about it as, you know, this is part of our history.

Actually, you know what? Sure, it's part of our history, but sadly, it's part of our present too because it doesn't go away. And one of the reasons it doesn't go away is because we don't properly address it. You know, when I talked about this the other day when Murray Sinclair, the justice who was in charge of the commission of inquiry that looked into the residential schools question,

gave his final report in, I think it was 2015, there were 94 recommendations of a path forward to deal with this, for everyone to deal with it. And sadly, the central issues surrounding those recommendations have in fact not been addressed. And so here we are at another kind of marker in the road, and people are saying, this is the moment. We've reached a moment. Well, you know, there have been many moments on the road before, and we haven't dealt with it. this moment as a result of the disclosure surrounding the Kamloops Residential School

and the 215 young children who are in unknown graves there, unmarked graves, one could hope that this is going to actually finally encourage not just governments, but certainly governments and institutions and Canadians generally to address this properly and make a difference on a lot of fronts in terms of how Indigenous Canadians are part of this society. But I don't have that confidence. I haven't seen anything, any reason that gives me the confidence that something is going to change.

Well, I don't have a profound confidence either, Peter, but I do have some things that I hold on to as maybe an indication that we're going to change the way a way not to think about, talk about things in the past that were shameful. But that doesn't make it right. If I have any reason for hope about how we deal with this is that when I talk to young people who know something about this issue, who care to acknowledge the larger question of how we treated Indigenous people in Canada, but know, you can pick up a Conrad Black column and read something about what he has to say about the residential school system. And it's sort of an equivocation ale saying it started out as a good idea that went bad, which isn't of the same order of, it isn't problematic to the same degree. with the revelation of these graves and the likelihood that there are more of them, maybe this will be the moment where we stop having a kind of a quiet, quasi-conversation where we say, yes, it was bad, but McDonald was good, or yes, it was bad, but it started out okay, or yes, it was bad, but let's look at what we need to do from a policy standpoint today this is horrible and um and we're probably in for more horrors of this type and so let's hope we do

something good with it something positive with it yeah listen you know i don't disagree with anything you said but the fact is hope only takes you so far, right? You actually have to do something. And the markers were clearly there from Murray Sinclair six years ago on what needed to happen. And once again, not just by governments, the health care they received, the education they received. As they got older, the judicial system they faced if they were in trouble, that it was not fair, that it was not equal to what non-Indigenous kids go through.

And so what does the government do? Initially, they said, we're going to look at all these recommendations and we should be moving on all of these. There are certainly a lot of them. So what do they end up doing? Actually, they end up fighting in court some of these changes that had been basically ordered by the courts to make systems more fair and more equitable.

And you go like, wait a minute. You know, you can't have it both ways here. You can't say, yes, we have to do something. And then on the other hand, fight change. Fight fair change. Fight change the courts. Agreed. Had to be done.

Yeah. Like, you know, I realize this is a political football for some, and, you know, you mentioned, you know, O'Toole and Polyev, the conservative, I don't know what he is now, house leader, finance critic, or he's been all of them at some point or another. And, you know, the fact that some of these are trying to make this a political issue, it's not a political issue, it's a human issue. It's an issue about our country.

It's an issue that taints us on the international stage, at the UN, at other places. And it's going to take a concerted effort, not an effort that has these conflicts within it, as the one I just exampled, to begin significant and real change. Yeah, I agree with that. I think this is a moment that tests leadership and that there's not really a lot of room for gray. And I think what we've been watching over the years has been a kind of a growing recognition that there have been problems and that we needed to

be more upfront about them and then we needed to deal with them and so let's have a commission and let's look at the recommendations and let's say that we're going to adopt all of the recommendations and then let's adopt many of them and make some effort but we but you know I can't help but walk away from watching that experience and knowing what we now know about these deaths at these residential schools and seeing this evidence, which is so vivid and shocking, but with the view that we still at the end of the day, have a kind of an institutional force trying to reckon with the fact that the earlier versions of the institutional force made some

horrible choices. And just in the way that human nature and institutional nature works, I guess sometimes it takes more generations of change before that comes to reality, or we decide that we're just going to put it away and not think about it. And if I have hope, and I understand your point about hope only takes you so far, it that at some point and maybe that point will be soon like it should be in hours or days or months but not decades that we say no we're not gonna on the one hand on the other hand anything about this anymore especially with respect to residential schools. There's simply no way not to look at that and say, we shouldn't be in court cases with people about the impacts of them on this. We need to solve this problem and we need to get on with it.

Not to remove it as a political issue, but to establish the political right on this. What is the right, the appropriate way for Canada, a country that likes to think of itself in a certain way, should think about this, should remember our history, should understand it. I can take a little tiny bit of hope from the fact that the analog issues in the United States don't seem to generate anywhere near the level of public angst that we have upon these revelations. I don't want to make more of it than is legitimate, but we are having this conversation. We are having a conversation

about how we should feel about the founding people of this country and the choices that they made with respect to residential schools. And that's what we should do. And I think in America, sometimes people just go, no, we're not going to revisit history. History was a product of the times and that sort of thing. And I can't look at residential schools as a 64 year old man and say, well, it's OK, because, you know, back then people thought about this a certain way. Like, I don't know. As a human being that I could ever imagine there being a context in which I would say, let's take these kids away from their parents. Let's treat them this way. Let's put their lives at risk and not care. So any of those arguments, I think, don't work. And I'm a little bit happy that

we can say these things in Canada, and it's not, and it maybe propels us towards a better resolution of this issue than somewhere else, but it's very cold comfort for sure. And I think the writing's on the wall for politicians. They've got to do more to, to, to write this situation. They do. And as I've said a couple times already here they're not alone it's more than just the politicians but there's a starting gate there you know my fear is once again you know like six years ago there was an enormous amount of discussion about this issue when murray sinclair's report came out and it was the focus and people called it the moment and it's all going to change and what happened basically nothing happened you know there was you know perhaps the most of what

happened is what you're talking about in terms of young people it focused their mind on an issue perhaps they hadn't known about certainly hadn't been taught about in most schools but became aware of it and you, you bank on them as a future generation of leaders to ensure that if we didn't do anything about it, they would do something about it. So, you know, maybe in that is, you know, there's some progress but i do fear that this moment will pass just like all the other moments yeah and uh you know nothing significant's going to happen i mean perry belgard who uh you know the uh the grand chief of the assembly of first nations who was on this on our podcast a week or two weeks ago now um talking about his relationship with the federal government

and and how well many first Nations have done through the pandemic because they acted quickly and their leadership was strong and good. I see he met yesterday, or at least had a virtual conversation with the prime minister, and, you know, directly appealed to him to drop the court cases, move on, show leadership on this issue that'll have an impact. And, you know, he has, he's got clout. He has not only the clout of his title and his leadership role,

but he's got political clout as well. You know, he has an impact on, you know, a lot of votes and, you know, a couple of dozen ridings where he can make a difference or the Indigenous vote can make a difference. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Let me make, yeah, go ahead. You know, I was just reading this story about Jason Kenney's response to questions about this, about the renaming of a school in Calgary. This is a story that's out, I think, today or maybe it was yesterday, but today is when I saw it.

And he went into this, you know, I hate canceled culture. I hate the idea that everybody who was a great leader, but an imperfect person now is under this kind of cloud of suspicion. And that, you know, if we're not careful, we'll end up canceling all of our lionized figures. And that just makes my blood boil. Like I don't care enough about the role that these people played in the time that they played it to get me to a place where I go, yeah, but, you know, I mean, he says that without McDonald, Canada never would have come together. Well, how do we know that? And why should that be an answer to the question? What about the residential schools? What about the treatment of indigenous people?

It's not an answer to it and it shouldn't be an answer to it. We should stop talking about it as though. The question about residential schools needs to be turned into a but don't you love McDonald's? Don't you think Canada is a great country, even if it's imperfect? Isn't it better that we have Canada, even if it came with residential schools? That's a bullshit argument, and we should stop hearing it. Let me throw something somewhat similar at you, and let me ask you how you feel about this um as you know and as most of our listeners know i worked for the cbc for you know 49.9 years i wasn't there long enough to get that

special gift they give you if you've been there 50 years it's like a short wave you know transistor radio or something anyway i was basically there for half a century. So I have, you know, I have fond memories. I have memories not so fond. I feel I helped in certain achievements the place made, and obviously I am responsible for some of the things that didn't go as well. Having said all that, I don't work for the CBC anymore. So while I defend or attack the CBC, it's certainly within my right as somebody outside. I have a couple of contracts with the CBC on doing some documentary work,

but I'm not a staff employee anymore. But here's the story that I've just become aware of in the last 12 hours. In the 1960s, the early 1960s, one of the CBC's best documentary producers went to the same school in Kamloops, the residential school, at Christmas time. I can't remember the year. I think it was 62. And he did a documentary, half hour, hour one hour i'm not sure how long

and it was glowing all right worked with the church was running the school work with the government and appeared to have worked with the um residential school students in putting this together. And it was beautiful scenes of, you know, singing at Christmas and, you know, dancing and what have you. And it aired at that time and was looked upon as things were looked upon in 1962. Only the year previous, only the year previous. Only the year previous, John Diefenbaker had succeeded in his charter of allowing Indigenous Canadians to vote, right? They'd never been allowed to vote before.

1961, they just received that acknowledgement as members of the society. Anyway, this film airs on the CBC, and then like so many things in the CBC, it gets buried in the vaults, right? Well, in the last couple of years, this thing CBC Jam has started, which is the streaming service for CBC, and good for them, they're starting to use that

and to try to get stuff out of, of their past and what have you. And lo and behold, if you dig deep enough into Jim, or at least two days ago, if you dig deep enough into Jim, you will find this documentary. It was there and you could watch it. With nothing said other than, here it is.

This is what the residential school system is like. And they aired it. And it was being aired for those who went deep enough to find it. Anyway, somewhere along the line, someone went, the light bulb went on and said, oh, Jesus, we better pull that. Now, I don't know why it was pulled, and the CBC hasn't given an explanation. Was it pulled because it just is outrageously not representative of that school, clearly from what we know now?

Or was it pulled because we need to balance counterbalance that with the facts that are known now still offer it up as something that was part of that time this is what we did this is what your public broadcaster did and yet here are the facts that we know now and put them side by each and and you it with that or that you just pull it, say nothing and move on. You know, I got to think about that for a while. I'm not sure what the right answer for that is. I am. Okay. all have a responsibility to do more than just passively say, well, that was wrong.

So for me, just removing the item is passively saying that was wrong. If we don't go further and say, look at this mistake we made, look at this error in judgment that we made, understand what was wrong about it, then we are really not doing justice. We are not making it right. We are not doing enough that's active to say, you know, the wrong didn't stop when it was aired. The problems of residential schools are here today. They're magnified over time. As you've been so eloquent about, Peter, for a much longer period of time than me,

we know how many lives have been damaged by the experience of indigenous people. So if we're serious about wanting to do right, then every time we find something in our history that we think is wrong, yes, you know what? It's good to live in a democracy where Jason Kennedy says, I value Canadian history. So I don't want to hear these arguments because I don't believe we should go full force into cancel culture. That was his statement yesterday. Well, you know what? That's

a political statement, full force into cancel culture. I can make a political statement on the other side, which says I want to go full force into being honest about who we are, what we did, and why it was wrong and what we're going to do about it. That's what we should be doing. So that's a reasonable debate to have. And so for the CBC, to me, you know, I bet if we went on their website, Peter, and we found the statement that sits there somewhere that says, here are the values that we believe in and that we guide our everyday actions about and all of that kind of thing. You know, I'm sure they have one.

It's probably 100 pages long if you found the print version of it. And so if you looked at that and you looked at, well, let's just quietly kind of make this thing kind of disappear, those things don't square. You know, there's a lesson to be taken from it. And it doesn't mean that you have to vilify the people who did the piece, what was it, 70 years ago, 60, 70 years ago? But it does mean you have to say it was wrong.

And we're sorry we did it. And we should learn something from it, and everybody should know that this is not what we should do going forward. There is a new reckoning in the world around discrimination. And I think that's a good thing. And I think it's part of why the stakes are going up on these issues. And the pain threshold is going up. and it's why we get these arguments about let's not go full force into canceled culture but those arguments have to be defeated

they have to be debated and defeated okay you know i just said we're going to move off this topic uh in a moment just let me say this, because I've been saying this. I said it internally at the CBC for at least the last decade I was there, and I know I've talked to you about it over time. But I firmly believe this, that if we don't address this in a meaningful, constructive way, and soon. And when I say we, I mean all of we. It's not just a non-Indigenous thing. It's an Indigenous thing too.

I mean, all the decisions being made by Indigenous leaders over the years, and they're the first ones to tell you, haven't been right, haven't been perfect. They've had problems as well in this trying to make this relationship work. But nevertheless, you know i feel increasingly uncomfortable when i hear people talk about you know we don't have the same kind of clout on the world stage that we used to have that's true it is um however i feel increasingly uncomfortable when we try to make clout that we're out there trying to tell other countries how they should behave on human rights questions when we've got issues ourselves you know

yeah look within our borders for looking outside of them and what i used to say when i was in a position of some you know clout in the cbc uh was that if if we don't address this as a country and if we don't address this more more fundamentally as a public broadcaster and there's been a lot of good work done on it don't get me wrong um but more focused even than it is now um the day will come when we're faced with a much greater situation. And you just need to look south of the border to see that there's a point that's reached on the part of those who feel oppressed or they can't take it anymore.

And, you know, there have been moments in our last 50 years where it seemed like that point was about to be reached here, but never got that far but that doesn't mean it never will get that far and so in my view you know it may not be while I'm alive but we've got to deal with this or we're going to pay a much bigger price than we're already paying in terms of the respect for us on the big stage and the respect we have for ourselves on our own stage. Anyway. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right, Peter. Okay. We're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back to another topic that we always have fascination with, especially this year.

That's in a moment. Okay. Some people think that, you know, okay, enough already, enough election talk. The thing is, the beauty of this conversation is that it seems to change all the time. Every week, there's a new angle to it. And so I don't want to dwell on this. Maybe five minutes on it would be enough. But where are we? Where are we on the expectation of when this next election will take place? Well, I think it's going to happen late summer. You know, everybody needs to define what they mean by summer and fall now, because there's been so much kind of mashing together of doses in the summer,

doses in the fall. But I guess what I mean is I think that the election is more likely to be called in August for a date towards the end of September. And I do think that between now and then, pretty much every Canadian who wants a vaccine will have had the option to get a vaccination and probably two doses. So I think that the idea that the pandemic will be mostly behind us, and then people can go out safely and vote. So it doesn't have to be a completely kind of different sort of election. I think that's true. I think that, you know, there are those who are saying, well, I don't think the government can force an election or trigger an election or cause an election to happen without a really good argument for why they need a majority government or they need a new mandate. hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize the economy, to provide the medical and other

health supports that we needed to try to figure out what parts of the economy are going to be so seriously damaged that we need to nurture them back to good health in the coming years after the pandemic is behind us. I think those are a lot of big questions that require a kind of a fresh agenda. And so, you know, I think it would be a mistake for the government to say, let's go out to the polls and ask people if they think we did a good job. But if they did say we want to go to the polls because here's an agenda that we want to put in place for the next four years. I don't think that people are going to look at that necessarily and say, we're really unhappy that this is happening, so we're going to penalize you for the fact that there is an election.

I think that the challenge for the conservatives on this has been saying that this is a ruinously bad government, but we don't really want an election right now. I think that's an awkward position to take once we're through this vaccination period. I understand why they're taking it, but I think it's a more untenable argument as we get closer to the end of the pandemic. And as people start to think about, well, what's next?

What is coming next? So I have a throne speech and tell them what's coming next. Why do you have to have an election? Seven people listen to these throne speeches, and two of them are us. This is not a way to set an agenda in a material sense, right? But in an election campaign, they don't get focused on policy either. Usually it becomes personalities and, you know, the one-offs, the moment of the campaign.

People do get a chance to make a choice. Okay, let me just say this, because I think we're more or less in the same park on this, but, you know, I think it'll also be late summer because the longer you leave it, the potential for other issues starts to crop up. Inflations are a growing concern in the United States, might be here, and if it becomes a growing concern, then it affects everything from interest rates and all those people who have purchased houses with mortgages at very low interest rates and all those people who have, you know, purchased houses with mortgages at very low interest rates are suddenly going, oh my gosh, what if my

mortgage rate goes up? Anyway, you know, there's that and there are other issues from jobs to what have you that could, you know, the longer you leave it post-pandemic, the longer those kind of things can happen. That doesn't mean all would be bad post-pandemic. In fact, some things may be really good. But nevertheless, it's a gamble. But there's also risk in going forward now if you're the leader. If you have a minority government and you say, I want an election now and nobody's pushing me to have an election, the opposition's not forcing me to have an election, and I choose to have an election. Well, you bloody well better win a majority government, or your party's going to be wondering,

what the hell was that all about if we come back the same way we left, with a minority? So it's a gamble. At the end of the day, it's all in the hands and the head of one person. And that's the prime minister. He's going to make that choice. But, you know, it's a gamble. I can't put myself in his shoes and I can't imagine what's in his head. I can only tell you that if I was in that job, first of all, I would be so anxious to get out of that job.

You can barely keep me for running to the exits because it's a hard job. It's an unpleasant time to be in public life and it's a deeply stressful time to be in a position of authority. And I would say that about politicians that have to make decisions as, as mayors and premiers and as the prime minister. So, um, but I also think that if you're him, you, your political career is going to end at some point. I mean, I know that we have this occasional fascination with the idea that people want to be a prime minister for life. Well, I don't see Justin Trudeau wanting that.

I see him as being somebody who probably thinks I've got a few more good years in me. There's some things that I haven't done that I said I wanted to do and that I promised to do and that I want to make more progress on. And so if you're him, you call an election, you lose, you're done. You win a minority, the clock starts ticking on when you're done. But you're done sometime between now and four years from now. Because that's just a natural way of politics. People inside a party will go, well, that was a good run, but we need to kind of refresh. And he probably would be the first to kind of look at it that way and say, I'm not going to fight to hang on so I can run another election. I've seen, and you have too, lots of politicians who would do that. But he doesn't look to me like a guy who's made for that fight, made that way, made with that kind of inner gyroscope. So if he wins the majority, he has a few years to accomplish more with a stronger mandate.

But I still think he's gone before the election after that. That's just how I see this guy as a kind of a political actor. And I think it's probably the right place for his head to be. And so it wouldn't surprise me and it wouldn't particularly frustrate me as a voter if he asked for another mandate within that time frame. All right. Well, there you see what our views are this week. We'll see where they are next week. Stay tuned.

Yeah. Listen, we never talked about radishes but i know they're doing well and hopefully they continue to do well we'll pick that up the radishes are going great but peter so are the vaccinations and let's just all get that shot because we'll get back together don't get me started about the. Yeah, just don't get me started. Just wheel that vaccine towards you. Okay, I'm willing it. I'm willing it right now.

All right, good. All right, buddy. Good to talk to you, as always. We'll be back tomorrow with the Thursday Potpourri. Friday is the weekend special, and we've given you lots to write about, so write about it. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. I Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. I'm

Peter Mansbridge for Bruce Anderson. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.