The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - WINNER, WINNER -- THE 120 DOLLAR TURKEY DINNER

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Lots to talk about this week with Bruce Anderson on SMT from Wab Kinew's historic Manitoba election victory, to the challenge the new Speaker faces in Ottawa, and who knows what about the soaring price of turkey!  Plus a new segment Bruce wants to call "Grovel" where I correct things I got wrong in the last week.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Welcome to Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson is up next. And welcome to the Wednesday episode of The Bridge, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa, I'm Peter Mansbridge in Toronto on this day. And, you know, we've got a fair number of things to talk about. Over the years, I think both of us have seen friends from our respective businesses think about going into politics. Some decide to, in fact, do that. Some win, some lose, some run for the Liberals, some run for the Conservatives, some run for the NDP.

I had a friend who ran for the Parti Québécois in Quebec. So we've seen a lot over the years in terms of... You hung out with separatists? I hung out with separatists. I didn with separatists i didn't know he was a sap till he announced he was running for the people need to know people need to know this very smart guy um nevertheless the the issue at hand uh centers around wab canoe who last night became the first first nation's provincial premier in the country. And Wab has had a number of different professions in his background.

He was a rap singer at one point. But he worked for the CBC as a reporter in Winnipeg. As a documentary filmmaker, I mean, he's an extremely talented guy in the communications end of things. Innovative in his style and his thinking is really, really good. But he's taken the decision to run for politics, and he ran for leader. He became the leader. At a time the Conservatives were pretty well held power in Manitoba for a considerable number of years. And last night he won.

And so it's a big moment. I mean, he has not been without controversy in his life and in his professions, but there he is. He's now Premier of the province of Manitoba. Lots on the plate there. He got actually, you know, a pretty nice congratulations from the outgoing Premier, who's, you know, the first female Premier of Manitoba. But the focus is on Wab Kanu and you know good for him congratulations to him there are challenges facing that province as there are challenges facing you know all provinces these days but it'll be interesting to watch how Wab does and you know it was a historic moment and

so now he moves on to see what he can do in governing. Yeah, I think it is an important moment. And congratulations to him. I agree with you that Heather Stephenson did exit gracefully, and we don't always see that. So that was nice. I think we had a conversation about this election campaign at the beginning of it, as you recall. And one of the reasons was that I think what triggered it was that they ran an ad, the Web Canoes team ran an ad, front page of the newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, I think it was.

Exactly. And it included an endorsement by Lloyd Axworthy. And the way that it was framed in this and the points that were made, I thought were an attempt to diffuse the risk of personal attack against Mr. Canoe by the conservatives. And I think we talked about whether or not that was a smart idea. And I thought it was and I think it probably was. It didn't seem like it became a campaign about him and his personal qualities. It was almost like they challenged the Conservatives to come at him on that stuff by taking out that ad. And from this distance, it doesn't seem as though that challenge was taken up. There were other

things that the Conservatives did, which drew criticism, in particular campaigning against the idea of searching landfills for two missing and presumed dead Indigenous women. I don't think that it was a campaign that Conservatives could be proud of. And I think that as a consequence, it's probably a helpful thing that their campaign lost, that trying those kinds of messages that seemed a little bit desperate, or more than a little bit desperate towards the end of the campaign, and being repudiated by voters was good. So I think it was a, I know, I think it's also an important signal to conservatives that if they feel that the tide has been moving towards conservative

governments because they look at the polls at the federal level and see the conservatives ahead of the liberals, you know, got a strong NDP government in BC, got a majority NDP government in Manitoba now. There's life in the kind of the progressive voter block is a signal that I think that politicians will take out of the result in Manitoba as well. And the last point for me is that there have been friction points around the rights of Indigenous people, reconciliation and that sort of thing. And I think that if there were some people on the right, and I don't want to suggest individual politicians or even just point to one party who felt like they could or should

from a campaign effectiveness standpoint run against reconciliation, that this was a signal that there's risk in doing that, that voters aren't really drawn into those messages as much as might appear to be on the surface sometimes. Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that, although I still think that the underlying message, as often happens in elections in Canada and elsewhere, is that there's kind of a time limit on how long a government can stay in power

before people start to get anxious about how long they've been there and it's time for a change and all that. And that played out to a degree in Manitoba. The, you know, the Conservatives actually were well behind when the campaign started. They closed the gap somewhat, not enough to prevent an NDP majority government. Just kind of eked over the line. Basically, the two sides flipped in terms of seats

compared with what they had the last time around um but you know we have seen this and it's there's no doubt it's part of the of what's going on nationally in canada people are saying i've had enough of them the liberals and i want to move on and the only real option i've got they they seem to think, is the Conservatives. But all those other factors play into it as well and there are many different factors on the national scale. But the time for a change theme, once it takes hold, how many times have we seen this over our careers?

Once it takes hold, man, it's hard to stop it. It is hard to stop it. I think the, you know, there's a question in my mind about whether or not it's evidence of polarization. You know, when we look at BC and we look at Alberta where the opposition party is the NDP effectively, and we look in Manitoba now, centrist parties might struggle in a world where polarization is happening. Centrist parties who

are incumbents might carry an extra burden because of the factors that you say that, you know, if you've been in power for a bit of time and things aren't going that well for people. It's hard not to own those problems in the minds of voters. It's hard to solve those problems because it's hard to solve those problems. And when you're the incumbent government, you tend to say things that sound like it's hard to solve these problems. And if you're the opposition party, you tend to say things like, no, it's easy. We'll just elect us and we'll get at it right away and we'll solve it for you. And that's a little bit of dynamic that's going on in Ottawa right now, obviously. And yeah, so I think there's a lot for politicos to take from the Manitoba election.

I'm not sure if that's always the case with Manitoba elections in terms of the dynamic around federal politics, but I think there is a lot at this moment in time for sure. And it's funny, the Canadian people seem to have this kind of balancing act between federal and provincial, right? You can have whichever party's in power federally, you can see over time how some of the provinces start going in the opposite direction. The people in their vote. To try and, I don't know, find a balance, if you will, in their political masters. You've seen when the conservatives were in power in Ottawa

that there were a lot of liberal provincial governments eventually. We've seen a bit of the reverse over the last eight years. A lot of the provinces went conservative with the liberals in power in Ottawa. This has been an interesting development because it breaks up. It breaks up that sort of three prairie provinces, if you include Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, that were all conservative. It puts a dent in that.

And that was a power block against Ottawa, those three conservative governments. So that's a little bit less now. It felt like it. But I think there's actually two things that happen at the same time sometimes. One is that when, I don't know how often it is the case that there's enough friction between the two levels of government that people say, well, these guys are getting a little too strong and these folks need to be a little bit more prominent and have a little bit more muscularity in the conversation. So I'm going to vote strategically that way. You know, there have been times when

there's constitutional issues or there's friction around other issues where that is, you know, pretty obviously the case. And it's, you know, it's consistently the case in Alberta, for example, and I guess to a considerable degree in Saskatchewan as well. But it may also be just that when a progressive party wins a big election, or when a conservative party wins a big election, that party in office in the early going tends to be so full of piss and vinegar. I don't know if that's an accepted term on the bridge, but it's not profane. It's just like they have so much energy, right? They're way out over in front of their skis, and they're excited about the opportunity and want everybody to pay attention to it.

That feels right for your own partisans. And it probably is the right thing to do to have enough forward momentum on your agenda that it sticks. But at the same time, it starts the process of having people say, well, wait, we didn't want that much of that. We wanted some of that, right? And then there can be this recoil that happens over time where people say, well, you know, they got a little bit too into some of their own rhetoric, some of their own ideas. They misunderstood how enthusiastic we were for some aspects of their agenda. And I think that maybe more than anything else kind of eats into it.

And then the other factor is that if you have a party that's been out of office for two or three elections and it has any skill set at all, it's going to get better. The competition aspect is going to kick in. If I look at the federal conservatives, I think that competition with the liberals has made them a more effective opposition party. It took them a couple of, you know, a number of years for that improvement to really take hold.

But I think that's part of what happens is that the parties get tired of losing. They get tired of trying the wrong things to get out of losing. And then they start to get a little closer to the right things. And yesterday in the house of commons was a good example for me. And I don't know if you want to move off the Manitoba election now, but there was a pure poly of standing up, talking about the price, the fact that a Turkey costs $120.

Now, now I checked into that costs $120 now. Now, I checked into that price today, and I saw one place offering a turkey at $120. I don't know if that's more broad, but the reason I checked into it was it did sound to me like the piece of political communication that if you were the conservatives, you would have wanted to have landed this week, yesterday, and have people talk about it today and tomorrow. It's very hard for incumbents to answer the question, why is a turkey $120, when three weeks ago you said, we're going to stabilize food prices, we're going to bully pulpit the grocery retailers. And if they don't do it, they don't do what they should do. We're going to take care of that.

So for me, that's an example of how the conservatives have learned through trial and error over a couple of elections, how to get closer to the mark in terms of what it is that will motivate people. They're not talking about meeting the small, fringy convoy people who are assembling now. They're not talking about a lot of those issues that were base rallying before very often. And I'm not trying to give them a clean bill of health here.

I'm just saying when they stand up in the House of Commons and say $120 a turkey, that's to some degree a function of what happens when competition works its way through our political system and an opposition party that's tired of being in opposition gets better at what it's doing. Agree? Yeah. Yeah, I do. But I'm still trying to get over the $120 for a turkey.

And you found one where it was 120 bucks for a turkey? Like that must have been a very big turkey. No, a 20 pound turkey at $6 a pound. Now the place that I checked might've been a little bit like special turkey. I don't know. But I didn't have a chance to go to the costco site yet um i mean that's a that is that does make you sit up and sort of ignore everything else that you see on the front of your paper it does right it does i think last week um paul yet was talking about the price of of lettuce and uh is that with the, how long before the meeting with the grocery retail executives will it be before the price of lettuce comes down?

I think that this is an important signal for the government that when their answer sounds too much like we will always have people's backs. And the other guys are saying $120 a turkey. If you were a fight judge and you were scoring that fight, that would be easy, right? Every single point goes to the conservatives if that's the nature of the debate. And so competition needs to work its effect on the liberals right now at the federal level they need to take the lessons from the beating that they're taking every day in the house of commons and get better uh at how they're communicating and what they've got to say and they've also i'm not always

in favor of you know pugilistic, but they've got to fight back. They've got to be more interested in raising doubts about the truth, the truthfulness of their principal opponent. And there are reasons for doubts about his truthfulness. But right now, it doesn't look like competition is having that effect on the Liberals yet. You know, politicians have got to be ready for so many things, right? When they put their name forward, they put their face forward, they get out there in a campaign, this price of whatever it may be is something that historically has been an issue for some politicians who were sort of, in a way like me, if it's really $120 for a 20-pound turkey, that's a shock to me. But I can remember times, as I'm sure you can,

I think of George Bush Sr., I think of Pierre Trudeau. When challenged by a reporter during a campaign, and this is one example, I think it was the Bush senior one. Price of milk, yeah. Price of milk. He hadn't a clue what a price of milk was. And, you know, perhaps there was good reason he didn't know what it was, but to the average voter it looked like,

this guy doesn't get it, what we're going through. Same thing happened at Trudeau. i can't remember what was something to do with how much money he had in his pocket or something and he had none because everybody else paid for everything for him yeah that's right i remember that yeah um anyway there were stories remember that he was kind of notoriously cheap that he deliberately didn't have money even though he might have you know put some in his pocket in the morning but he didn't want to pay for anything now i don't know if that's true or not you were a journalist uh covering politics in those days um it's like you on the golf course you know and get to that big putt and make a small wager and then oh well i don't have any money with

me just put it on my, add to my tab. We have 25 years of those debts that have piled up. I'm going to outrun them, I think. That's the plan. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and I want to move the topic to something else, which we will do when we come back and welcome back you're listening to the wednesday episode of the bridge it's smoke mirrors and the truth bruce anderson's in ottawa i'm peter vansbridge in toronto

glad to have you with us you're listening on sirius XM channel 167 or on your favorite podcast platform or you're watching us on our YouTube channel where the numbers just keep skyrocketing. And so do the comments. Some of them are actually readable. Are you getting a little bruised by this commentary? You know, you just have to keep reminding yourself that amongst the really constructive comments, there's the odd, you know, bot or something that's planted

by some disinformation specialists and just whiners and moaners. But quite frankly, I'm still amazed. It's more so on our main written-in email comments, where you get really good, thoughtful, constructive stuff. Some of it's positive, some of it's negative, but it all has a constructive nature to it. I had a week just in the last week where I've been in a lot of different meetings and settings with different people in and around politics.

And I am struck by how much people have said that, and it's not to toot our horn here, but the conversation, they appreciate the fact that you have good guests. That's what they say. Especially on Wednesdays, right? They really like the guests I have on Wednesday. you have good guests. That's what they say. Especially on Wednesdays, right? They really like the guests I have on Wednesday. They like the guests.

Okay. Before I ask you a question, a couple of things, you know, one of the things that we'd like to do on this program is when we're wrong, admit it. And occasionally I do give those admissions. The other day,

it might've even been yesterday. I did like the use of the word we in that. Okay, go ahead. Yesterday I said, I think it was yesterday, I said Donald Trump's being convicted of fraud. Now, it kind of slips into, you know, a theme that I've had for more than a couple of years, that he is a fraud.

He's just a straight-out fraud and a liar and everything else. But convicted of fraud was wrong, and I was wrong in saying that, because he wasn't convicted of fraud. He was found liable of fraud in a civil case as opposed to a criminal case where if that had happened, he would have been convicted of fraud. But it wasn't a criminal case. It was a civil case. So the correct terminology is he's found liable of fraud,

and that's in some degree what's going on in New York courthouse now is trying to determine what that liability is. So that's one correction the other correction a week ago and it may have been on smoke and i may have been victim to a disinformation campaign i can't remember where i saw it i saw it somewhere on social media we were talking about about a late-night emergency kind of meeting by the Liberal caucus, and I said, you know, we don't really know what's going on in there, and we didn't at that time. But I did say that the prime minister wasn't there,

and what did that say about the relationship he had with the caucus? Well, it turns out he was there, at least according to the most senior people in his office, that in fact he was there, and what that caucus was about was the speaker process, the election of a new speaker. So I put that forward. And as a warning to, you know, how many times have I given it to you? I wasn't going with it myself of getting suckered in by something that was on social media, right?

And I didn't look to confirm it. So I'll do that in the future. But it's, you know, it's one of the reasons I ignore all those things that are said about you. I know they're not true. Well, we should really talk a little bit more about the mistakes that you made this week, these two in particular, and how it makes you feel when you make that mistake. And you say dwell on it every day. It makes me.

You sleep at night because of these. Like, I don't know that I could. No, good for you, Peter, for saying that i i'm sure that we both this headline look at this headline those of you are watching on our youtube channel we'll see that wall street journal issues correction for an article published in 1963 well you see you're faster than that yes i was much quicker on the mark. They misquoted John King. Sorry, John Lewis, Martin Luther King's friend and fellow civil rights leader in the U.S.

They misquoted him from a speech he gave. And all these years later, after his passing, in fact, they corrected that. Well, thank you for your mea culpa, Peter. It's good fact, they corrected that. Well, thank you for your mea culpa fear. It's good for you to do that. It is good. I'll try to remember if I make a mistake, and I'll try and do that too. Here's what I want to ask you about.

We always like to feel like we're competitive with the Americans on any number of different levels. It's often hockey or soccer or baseball. But, you know, we've been kind of ahead on some of the key issues of the day. And just in the last week, I mean, we dumped our speaker a week ago. They only dumped their speaker this week. Well, we elected a new speaker this week. It's going to be next week at the earliest before they elect their speaker.

Now, speakers in Canada and speakers in the United States are two very different things. There's, you know, the speaker in the U.S. is third in line to the presidency after the president and the vice president. Speaker in Canada is, well, they get a nice place in the Gatineau Hills, and they have some responsibilities. Pardon me?

They have an apartment in the center block. That's right, apartment in the center block. Whiskey with their name on it. Oh, I didn't know that. It's right, apartment in Centre Block. Whiskey with their name on it. Oh, I didn't know that. That's the thing. But in terms of real power, they don't have that kind of power as the Speaker in the States.

But there's been such a focus on these two stories, very different stories, very different issues at stake. But there's been such a focus by the media in both countries that it does leave the question, how important are these positions anyway? Like, should there be this kind of overwhelming focus

on the part of the media, or is this another example of where the real people out there, the voters, concerned Canadians or Americans, who have so many other things on their mind, are saying, what the hell? This is not what is consuming my time at home or my work. Well, look, in Canada, I think there was a focus on the speaker briefly because of the events with the visitor in the gallery of the House of Commons. I don't think otherwise there would have been that focus on the selection of a new speaker. There wouldn't have been a selection

of a new speaker, but it didn't really take that much time and it wasn't that controversial. And in the end, the House picked a popular, likable guy with a good amount of experience, Greg Fergus, the first Black person to serve in that role. And as he assumed the position yesterday, I remember I was looking at him as he kind of opened up question period, and he had a funny line. He said, I I just like to remind members that this is kind of like the first day when you have a new car. Don't edit it on the first day, if you don't mind. It was a moment of lightness. And then everybody kind of got on with their business. They had that ritual of the two principal party leaders kind of appearing to drag him up the center aisle of the House of Commons to take his seat, which is meant to show that he was reluctant to like this is a tradition that he was reluctant to to take on that role. But it was a pretty orderly process, and I don't think that people will really be talking about the change of a speaker, particularly in Canada, beyond yesterday.

In the United States, as you suggested, it's a very different role, and it warranted a great deal of media attention, I think. You could argue that on the cable news channels, the coverage goes on and on and on and on and on. And I think that's true. And I think it's true because they've got these panels assembled and they need to sell advertising. And so the more hours that they can create where people are tuned in, waiting for some moment in the unfolding drama, it's a good it's good for their business model. However, the saga of Kevin McCarthy was a really interesting one. How many days do you remember, Peter? How many days it took for him to be selected? But it went on and on and on. They had endless ballots and he wasn't able to kind of get over the line because his own

conference, his own caucus of Republicans was not really into him, even though he had been the heir apparent in that role for a good long period of time. And here he is today. I saw by one account, he was in that role for 27 Scaramucci's. Remember that reference to 27 Scaramucci's? The guy who was the un who lamented director of communications for the for President Trump. But American politics is so chaotic. I think this is the big picture coming out right now. And what's really important is not so much McCarthy. It's the chaos in American Republican politics. And the I was going to say that capper on the chaos story, but we don't know what the capper is in two hours. It might be even more bizarre is that there are

some Texas Republicans who are going to nominate Donald Trump to be speaker of the House. And I saw, you know, Jim Jordan saying, look, look if he wants to he's a who's a prominent republican whose name has been uh tossed around as the potential successor to kevin mccarthy 27 scaramucci mccarthy jim jordan said look if trump wants to i want him to be president he said but if he wants to be speaker that's okay with me maybe okay with him, but it's not okay with the law. You can't be indicted and have a position of some relevance in the U.S. Congress. Well, I'm glad you said that, and I hope you don't have to correct yourself on this one, because it made me a little worried at 6.30 in the morning when I read about this because i thought i don't understand are there no guard rules in american politics anymore uh because it does feel some days like um

uh it's just trump's country uh for too many people and too many politicians and i find that bizarre to watch him harrumphing in this courtroom, posting things about the judge who's sitting presiding over his case about her clerk, so that the judge has to say, you're coming into my chambers at lunch, and put a gag order on him. And he took his post down. And one had to imagine that that was maybe the closest that he has come yet to incarceration uh i rather suspect that that the sanction against him if he had not taken that post down was going to be so significant that he took the post out i'm sure he didn't want to do it anyway that's that's a little bit of a ramble. It might give a little spine to some of the other judges

on some of the other charges against him in terms of gag orders, although this one sounds good. He's had a gag order, but it doesn't really change too much of how he is likely to act. I mean, watching him this you know it's like he's on a television show he's so acting you know tough looking face on him sitting in the you know in the uh at his chair at the the uh prisoners dock i don't think it's a prisoner's dock in a civil trial maybe but, but it felt like it.

You know, people get mad when I say we should look, at least learn from some of the British stuff. When you see in a British courtroom, the defendant is all alone in a little box. I watched Witness for the Prosecution the other day. You know, that old movie, black and white film great great film yeah anyway lots of scenes in old bailey with the doc highly recommend um i just want to for a second go back because it made me smile thinking about it um when you talked about day one first dent on a car

remember our old friend mike robinson who's gone now, sadly. Yes. Mike's dream had always been, as he was growing up and in his early adulthood and his later adulthood, he wanted a Land Rover. I've got to have a Land Rover. I really want a Land Rover. And finally, he got his first Land Rover.

And he drove it off the lot, got home. They were living in a, I think they were living in a condo at the time, whatever it was. It was an underground parking garage. He drove into the underground parking garage, but he hadn't realized the height restriction. They're very high. Yeah, and wham.

And that was the end of that particular Land Rover on day one. Okay, just another thought on the speaker. You talked about Greg Fergus, the new Speaker of the House of Commons. First black Canadian to be elected to that role. We wish him luck. It's going to be challenging, especially out of the gate, and especially so given the current temperature in that place. And I don't mean the actual temperature, I mean the temperature caused by the polarization and the back and forth that goes on in there.

You like Alex Ballengold from the Ottawa Bureau of, what is he? Is he still with the Star? I think Star, yeah. Right. He had a piece this week, and the headline is rude disrespectful and unruly mps say the house of commons has turned into a circus and someone needs to tame it now we've heard this criticism before right about uh what happens in the house of commons and you know every year every year we talked about it a couple of weeks ago. And as I was saying earlier, I get slammed when I say,

you know, there are lessons to be learned from other places, and I usually point out the British House of Commons. And at that particular point, I was just talking about the way politicians speak and their ability to speak. And I got, you know, I got a number of emails saying, we don't need to learn anything from the British. We've had enough of that in our lifetimes. And I sort of hear you on that.

But nevertheless, you should read this article. And Bruce is writing, it's in the Toronto Star, a couple of days ago, October 2nd. And he goes through the situation in the House, how bad it is, how bad many of the MPs think it is, that it's gone, you know, it's gone too far in the unruly nature of the place. And so this lumps into what Greg Fergus is going to have to deal with and how he deals with it.

And I'm not sure what, quite frankly, I'm not sure what the answer is because it has turned into a bit of a sideshow uh watching occasionally there are moments of brilliance on on all sides but man doesn't happen often what's the advice uh what's the advice you give glenn uh greg fergus well i i think it has gotten quite a bit worse. I think it's a reflection of the times that we live in, in terms of the polarization, but also just the way that social media in particular has changed the way that people exchange ideas, and not for the better. There's some for the better. Obviously, people are sharing thoughtful observations sometimes on social media, but also they tend to be using language when they disagree with somebody that is more disrespectful than they would do in person in years past. And some of that has made its way into how the House of Commons works. There's a lot of howling. There's a lot of yelling.

There's a lot of heckling. There's more of that kind of constant noise intended to disrupt one side or the other as a natural fact. And I do think that the speaker has some role to play in trying to tamp that down. And, but it will take a good deal of strenuous effort over a sustained period of time to change that. I think it's effort worth putting in.

I hope Greg does it. The, but the second thing is that when there are, and there always have been MPs who deliberately cross the line into unparliamentary language, that's the term used to describe the things that you're really not supposed to say about your opponent in the House of Commons. In order, I mean, people sometimes don't know why these rules exist, but in order to maintain the idea that you can have a conversation in the comments rather than it's just people hollering insults at one another. called a liberal minister, Karina Gould. The Conservative MP was Melissa Lansman. Said she was a disgrace. She said that Karina Gould was a disgrace.

And the Liberals rose on a point of order, which is how you sort of address something that you think is unparliamentary that was said. Address the question to the person who was sitting in the speaker's chair, a conservative MP named Chris D'Entremont, and said, you know, this term that was used by one MP to describe another was unparliamentary and required an apology and a retraction. The conservative speaker who was

in the chair at that time, a well-liked individual, Chris D'Entremont, said, well, I'll have to look at the tape and then come to a decision about that. And as soon as he said that, Melissa L lanceman stood up again and said it again and there was no sanction as far as i could tell um so he's saying i'm going to look at the tape and she as much as said you don't have to look at the tape i'm going to say it again because i believe this to be true well believing it to be true isn't a legitimate response to, is it unparliamentary language? You can say it outside the House of Commons. You can write it in a newspaper article if you want. You can do it in an interview. You can say what you want to say.

Now, sometimes people will, in the House, MPs will use language to be really critical of somebody on the other the record from hansard of the house applauding the the attendance in the house in the gallery of of that nazi she could have said that that was a disgraceful choice um and i don't think that would have been unparliamentary i'm not an expert in that but i think that would have been okay but to say that the other mp is a disgrace is unparliamentary language and'm not an expert in that, but I think that would have been okay. But to say that the other MP is a disgrace is unparliamentary language. And I thought, well, that's going to be an interesting test because if more MPs are going to test the ability or the willingness of the speaker to come down hard against that kind of language, to protect the idea of parliamentary language, then it'll be an interesting session.

I don't know whether that'll be the case, but Ballengel's article suggests that we've reached a new level of vitriol, and I think he's on to something there. Yeah, it certainly does suggest that. You know, I guess the image that one would like to be left with, to a degree, and I think that degree is important to define, and each person will define it themselves, but there was an image after the election of the Speaker,

when the Speaker was kind of dragged into the House, which is a custom. The new Speaker is dragged in by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. And it just looked like, you know, kind of good fun, a degree of camaraderie. You know, it was nice to see. Now, trying to find the line between that and what we've witnessed in the House of Light,

including by those two who always, often, I'm talking about Trudeau and Polyev, often at times look like they're, you know, rehearsing for a campaign ad and the way they go at each other. But I couldn't help but look at that picture and say, like, where is the line in between that, where you know that these two guys don't like each other,

but you don't have to like each other to have a degree of respect for the roles you play. It just doesn't seem at any time other than in that moment, they have that. Does that matter? You know, look, I watched some of the house in the last couple of weeks because I really wanted

to see how Trudeau and Polyev would do with each other. And there were many parts of it where I thought, you know, it's rough, but it's within the bounds of what should happen in our house. Polyev yesterday talking about $120 turkey, and you promised, and what are you going to do? The countdown is several days to Thanksgiving.

To me, that's all legitimate opposition politics. That's kind of what the role should be. And there wasn't really much in that language that he used that I would say was kind of outside the bounds of anything that we've ever heard. But then there are other moments where you really see that there are different value systems. And I think that's where the politicians are more sharply influences on it, because there is no question that a good number of liberals on any given day will hear Pierre Polyev or some of his caucus say things that they think are completely untrue, are misrepresentations of the facts. The characterization, for example, of the government's bill online is a case in point where Polyev is calling it censorship. It's not.

It's not really censorship. And so's a, so what I find is that on things where one side thinks the other side is lying purposefully over and over again and needs to be called on it, tempers run pretty hot about that stuff. and that's understandable. Uh, and on the conservative side, there's a lot of people who just, uh, really more than anything else, probably just dislike liberals. They just like everything that the liberal party has stood for. And they kind of can't keep that out of their, uh, uh, out of their talking points or out of the way in which they approach politics. So, you know, some of those tensions do run pretty deep. I don't know what the rest of this session is going to look like,

but it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't turn out to be one of the hardest hitting most fractious that I've ever seen. And we only have two more years to go if they stretch it to the limit. We'll see. They'll be putting the boxing gloves on by the time they get in there by then or not we'll see what uh the new speaker has to has to say about all that all right listen we're uh we've had a good conversation and it's nice to hear all your apologies for things you've said in the past.

Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you got them off your chest. Well, I feel badly for you losing all that sleep about the errors, the grievous errors that you've made. But you know what? Repentance is good, Peter. Way to go. It is good.

I feel better. I feel better already. We can just make it a regular part of the wednesday conversation you could take a few minutes off the top and apologize for whatever else you got wrong and i'll i'll consider that we'll have to come up with a name for that section though which i'm sure we'll do or you'll do grovel. Let's start with the grovel every Wednesday. Okay. All right. All right, my friend.

Thank you for this. We'll see you on Friday. Good talk with Chantel. Until such time, take care. And for you out there, thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.