The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT With Bruce Anderson - Breaking Down Some Election Analytics

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

Bruce is back, with a detailed analysis of Canadian's attitudes on a number of issues surrounding the election. It's only two weeks in but some early trends are developing.  We also look at the issue of young voters and just how much of a difference they may make this time.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. It's Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, even from the Arctic, with Bruce Anderson, coming right up. Well, I'm in Arctic Bay in Nunavut. That's way up there. It's way up there. It's not as far up as I was a couple of days ago in Grease Fjord, but it's pretty close. And it's a pretty nice day here. It's a little overcast, but it's cold. It's often cold in Arctic Bay. That's why they call it Arctic Bay. All right. I'm in Arctic Bay. Bruce is in Nova Scotia. Are you still in Nova Scotia? Peter, I am. I've been following your travels with great interest, and it's nice to see that you got nice weather. I'm in Nova Scotia. You're in Arctic Bay. I was on Beach Meadows or Meadows Beach, I guess, today.

And it's just like the name suggests. There was a meadow and a beautiful long beach, and it's hot here in Nova Scotia. But I'm looking forward to talking. Good. Well, let's, you know, I've been sort of, obviously I've been into Arctic stuff, whether it's Arctic sovereignty, climate change, history. I've had all of that stuff going for the last four or five days,

and I've been totally zoned out of anything election and so quite frankly have been the people i've met nobody's talking about the election uh yet now they've have other things to be concerned about but i'm i'm wondering whether the there's kind of a sense of that in the country as well so i, I'm totally out of play here. So you got to help me in terms of, you know, are we in what they like to call the phony war? The first couple of weeks of the campaign, especially a couple of weeks where most of the country is on summer holidays.

As Chantel used to tell us, she didn't expect it would really get started until, you know, Labor Day weekend. But you tell me, you're there. I know you're on holidays as well, but you're a lot closer to the action. What are you sensing? Are people engaging or is it still quiet times?

Well, I remember the period of time, Peter, before the election call and you and sometimes Chantal and I would get on the pod and talk about when the election was going to be. And so in contrast with then when it seemed like I changed my position pretty regularly about whether we were going to have a fall election or not. Yes, you did. When the three of us got together for Good Talk a little over a week ago, I guess, I did say that I didn't think the election was really going to take hold until after Labor Day. And I still feel that that's the case. I think that we're in a period now, which is, I'm a Formula One racing fan. It's a little bit like practice. The practice sessions that the teams enter into that comes before the qualifying sessions that comes before the actual race.

And so, well, stuff is happening and obviously news organizations are covering it and Twitter is definitely, you know, consuming and opining on the election. I don't think a lot of Canadians have really decided to dial in yet. And so there's some fluidity in the polls, but it also feels to me like it's fluidity rather than people saying, okay, I was going to do this and now I know I'm going to do that. It's a lot more loose than that. You know, I'll tell you one thing about traveling in the high Arctic. Obviously, connectivity isn't as good as it is in southern Canada.

It's still pretty remarkably good, all things considered. You can hit the odd satellite and bring in a signal in small hamlets like this one in Arctic Bay. The Wi-Fi is pretty good unless everybody's on it at the same time, then it's a little tricky. But one thing I have noticed, I probably spent too much time on Twitter in Southern Canada, looking, watching stuff. Here, it's a lot harder to get. Any of the social media is a lot harder to get on a normal day, whether it's Twitter or Instagram or what have you. So I've been kind of off Twitter, and it's been, I've found, a bit of a luxury because Twitter at times like this, elections, the partisans get in,

some of those who call themselves opinion leaders get in on Twitter, and it becomes a real mumble jumble, and you don't know what to believe anymore. So it's been a bit of a luxury not having that. Yeah, I believe that. I think that there's a lot of is other, it has two settings. If I post pictures of my rather amateurish paintings, I see the good side of Twitter. Lots of people saying, well, that's really nice. Way to go. Keep doing it, Bruce. And then when I kind of turn off that part of Twitter and tune into politics, Twitter, it's a mess. And it's especially a mess, I think,

in this period right now, where all of the partisans and all of the media types who are trying to cover this campaign and opine on it are, you know, feeling kind of obliged to give instant takes on everything and to skirmish with each other. And, you know, I have to remind myself every once in a while that it's, you know, it's about 80% of the adult population that doesn't use Twitter. And so whatever is happening on Twitter isn't happening in the election as far as they're concerned. Facebook has more penetration, but I don't think that the campaign has really lit up for most people. I think they're spending the last bit of summer hoping that the return to school

goes safely for those families that have children going back to school and hoping that the return to school goes safely for those families that have children going back to school and hoping that the pandemic doesn't rear its ugly head again for, you know, for everybody. And I'm thinking that, you know, unlike our neighbors to the south who take an awful long time to run elections, it seems that we seem to be relatively confident that if we pay attention starting around the time of the debates and for the next couple of weeks after that, we'll be able to make the right decision. And so there's a calmness, I think, to public opinion that certainly isn't there on social media most of the time and especially during election times. Let me let me pull on that thread a little bit more before we get into some perhaps more

substantive stuff. You know, what is, you know, what would be your advice to those who want to follow the election campaign but don't want to be influenced by others' take? You know, obviously, there are social media challenge, uh, channels. There are newspapers, television, radio. Um, there are certain channels where you can actually just raw watch raw footage of, of the leaders in campaigns. Um, those are all possible. I mean, I, it's funny, I, I, you know, I've tried to do on this trip know i've tried to do on this trip i've tried to do some kind of not election

news election sort of fun facts uh each night as well and the other night i did a thing on signs and i was stunned to see in a study that had been done on lawn signs in an election campaign it was an american election i'll concede but nevertheless it was an interesting study that showed that two out of five people who looked at signs were influenced by other people's decisions on signs, like their neighbors or friends. And if they were showing support for a certain candidate, that that tended to influence their thinking. So it's not just, you know, Twitter or what have you that can have that kind of an impact on a way a person thinks during election time. But what do you suggest? Say you're an ordinary Canadian, so to speak.

You have not made up your mind about how you're going to vote. And so you want information, but you want it uncluttered, unfiltered, not vetted by somebody else. You just want it. Well, you know, a lot of people are going to rely on others, But instead of imagining that they're going to rely on people that they don't know opining on social media, the truth is, I think that social media are particularly helpful when people are hearing from people who they do know, their friends, their family members, their neighbors, that sort of thing. And they don't only listen to those people via social media. Sometimes they run into them at the shopping centers or at the grocery store or at the church or in their place

of work. And so I think what we do know is that the influence of people that you know and whose opinion you value, I wouldn't necessarily say trust, but I would say value, that those interactions do matter more and more these days. So that really we're talking about a situation where people are saying, you know, I've heard different things about X, fill in the blank, what our climate target should be, whether we've got the right kind of policies in place around vaccination. What do you think? And so those kinds of interactions matter a lot. We know that about a third of the population say that they generally influence other people who they know, which really means that the other two thirds are saying, I tend not to be the person who's influencing others, but I am in many cases influenced by those others. So we know the

social interaction side really matters a lot. And sometimes that gets lumped in with social media in a way that kind of allows the perception to develop that whatever is said on Twitter by whomever will matter to a voter. And that isn't really how it works in our experience. Twitter probably does something to change or reset the news coverage agenda. And sometimes the campaigns will react to something that they spot first on Twitter. But from a public opinion standpoint, it can't have that much impact. Facebook, on the other hand, really is a place where more people are writing their opinions for the benefit

of their friends. The network of people that they've chosen to interact with is more, in most cases, is more intimate than the network that they might have on Twitter. And so it's a different platform and it works in different ways. Are you sensing what level of engagement there is out there yet from anything that you've done? I mean, you said that a lot of people are still in the summer mindset and good for them that they are. We waited long enough for this summer after the last year and a half we've had. But are you sensing in any way an overall level of engagement? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that are going on, and I don't think of them so much as – well, I think one thing overall that's going on is that we're seeing

the difference between asking people the question, if an election were tomorrow, how are you going to vote in a hypothetical way before there's an election, in which case people know it's a hypothetical, and they answer it anyway. But they're not really committing to that as a final decision. Once we start asking the same question in the context of an actual election, which is what's happening now, opinions soften, they migrate a little bit, they meander a little bit. But we're still finding about 40% overall of the people who tell us that they have a choice say that their choice might change. And that's even higher among NDP and Green Party voters. It's about half of NDP and Green Party voters. So within that general thing, what are some of the movements that we're

seeing that reflects some degree of engagement by, I would say, probably at this point a minority of the electorate. We're watching Aaron O'Toole's favorability numbers. His negatives haven't come down, but his positives went up, which means that some of the people who had no opinion about him before developed a positive opinion about him in the first few days of the campaign. He still has relatively high negatives, but that's a better start for Aaron O'Toole than what we saw with Andrew Scheer. And it's bound to give some reason for optimism to the conservative party campaigners. The second thing that we see is that there's a continued increase over a several month period in support for the NDP. It kind of ticks up relatively slowly, and it's still not anywhere near a level

where you would look at them and say, well, they're competing to form a government. But it can't be overlooked, especially by the liberals, as a factor that could affect their success. And also because Jagmeet Singh continues to be quite popular, and I would say a more effective campaigner in my perception than he was in the last campaign, you know, the Liberals, if they're going to try to get some of those NDP votes to come over to their side, they're going to have to fight for those votes. And they're going to fight a, you know, maybe a better positioned NDP and a kind of better performing leader than was the case in 2019. So I think that that's a thing that we can see continuing to be an area of concern for the Liberals and optimism for the NDP. And I think the last thing I would say that we see is that the Liberal support continues in our polling anyway to hold up below the levels that we were seeing a month or two ago,

but at levels that are consistent with the outcome that they got in 2019. And we know that, you know, about half of voters like Justin Trudeau and half don't. And I think a lot of the questions about how this campaign are going to go for the liberals really revolve around a couple of things. Will Justin Trudeau be the ballot question or will it be, do you want a conservative government? Will those progressive voters who are leaning more NDP than liberal right now, will they go ahead and do that or will they decide that there's a risk of a conservative government and maybe they should vote liberal? You know, a strategy that's been tried and executed in the past.

So I think there's a lot to play for for the for the parties. Oh, there's one other thing that we are noticing, Peter, that even though this is probably the time the election in my life, that more voters were preoccupied with environmental issues, and particularly climate change, we're seeing really weak levels of support for the Green Party. It isn't the answer that a lot of voters are looking for if they're concerned about the environment right now. That's an interesting breakdown on all of them, uh it gives us food for thought let me ask you one question in a context sense of one of the first numbers you threw out there uh 40 percent suggesting that they could still change their vote i think that's what you said right yes um how does that stack up

with past elections is that is that higher than normal normal or is that about where it's been in the past? It seems higher than normal to me. I don't know if we've got undecided, an undecided but won't vote, which is a lot of the undecided that's measured in polls usually is made up of people who aren't going to vote at the end of the day. So we look at voting motivation. And basically, we ask questions about, are you sure, sure, sure you're going to vote? Or are you probably going to vote or probably not going to vote? And that gives us a bit better read on what kind of turnout to expect. But it's, you know, my sense is right now that we've got a lot of progressive voters, maybe more than were there in 2019. And some more of them are definitely looking at the NDP than were in that election campaign. We've got, you know, enough conservative potential voters for

the conservatives to win, but lingering concerns about the conservatives. And I noticed that in the last 24 hours, you know, if you'd asked me 24 hours ago, what might be the issues that will become central to this conversation about will the conservatives be able to kind of rally people to the idea of a change in their direction? Or will progressive voters rally against a conservative government? The two that look most plausible to me now, and things can change obviously in 24 hours, are healthcare and climate change. I noticed that Aaron O'Toole said in the context of an interview yesterday that if he were prime minister, he would essentially roll back

Canada's climate targets. And I think for a lot of those younger voters in particular, progressive voters, the idea of saying we'll burn the planet faster, it just seems like a non-starter. So I'll be surprised if that doesn't become a bigger part of the political conversation. And the second is the whole question of two-tier medicine. And I know that conservative supporters are, they're always frustrated when this comes up and they think that it's a kind of a, you know, it's a false accusation by the liberals or others. But we do have a situation where the way that Aaron O'Toole has defined the notion of choice being introduced into health care.

And now I gather the head of the CMA has said, yeah, it does feel like it opens the door to two-tier medicine. I think two-tier medicine sounds like a policy nerd kind of word or term, but in the hands of the Conservatives' opponents, it will start to sound like the rich get to buy the health care they want and the rest of us get whatever's left. So I think those two issues could become really important, in part because the Liberals need to be on the attack if they're going to win, and they need to galvanize younger voters and climate change is a particularly interesting issue for them and they need to galvanize some older voters and health care is a particularly interesting issue to those to those voters okay i want to talk about um a couple of things that

you brought up including the younger voters situation situation, but we'll take a quick break. We'll be right back after this. This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. Okay, Peter Mansbridge back in Arctic Bay, Nunavut, and Bruce Anderson is in Nova Scotia. What was the name of that place you were in? What a great name. Well, near Liverpool, Beach Meadows. Beach Meadows. Man, that sounds, well, it sounds like what I guess it is.

Meadows near a beach. Sounds wonderful. And Arctic Bay is exactly what it sounds like. It's Arctic Bay. We came in here on the Navy's new Arctic patrol vessel, Harry DeWolf, cutting through the waters of just north of here is Lancaster Sound. We came through there and down into Arctic Bay.

And it's spectacular, the scenery. I know I did a FaceTime with you the other day from Grease Fjord. And it really is. It's unbelievable, the natural beauty of this place, of our country. And so much of it, so much of it is kind of unattainable to most Canadians. It's exorbitant to come, you know, to come up here to try and, you know, have a holiday. It's so expensive to travel in the Arctic and they're limited as to how many people they can actually handle anyway. But, you know, someday it's going

to be available. Won't be in my lifetime, I'm sure, but it's going to be available to a lot more Canadians to see it. And it's absolutely worth seeing. Okay. Let me get back on the focus of what you can help us with. And for those, I know all of our listeners know that Bruce is also the chairman of Abacus Data, and along with David Coletto, is punching out numbers as some of the country's best research analysts and pollsters do, especially during an election campaign. And so that's what he's relying on when he's telling us these various things. You always used to tell me that an interesting way of tracking the mood of a country before an election is to get a sense of whether or not where the numbers exist in terms of how many people actually want a change in government or want a new government and that last time around in 2019 it was actually quite high

um it wasn't at over 50 percent i think at the beginning of the campaign we're saying you know i'm you know i'm contemplating um voting for a new government a change in government and i'm wondering yeah where is that number going into this campaign yeah we asked the question that basically has four possible responses. One is, I really, really want a change in government. It means a lot to me. Second is, I'd prefer a change in government, but it doesn't really matter to me. Third answer category is, I prefer the same government, but I don't care that much. And fourth is, I really want the same government to be in office after the election. So that gives us a measure both of the kind of the direction and the intensity of the feeling, which I think is really important. And in the last election and in this one, it's about 70% that would want a change in government. And, you know, that always feels kind of like a large number until you realize, well, the Liberals won, I think, with 33% of the vote in the last election. So it's not completely inconsistent with that. I mean, some people will have voted green in the last election wanting a green government, but in the end, happy enough with what they got.

And the same thing is true for other party supporters as well. So where are we at today? The difference that we see from the last election, Peter, is on the first answer category that it really matters a lot to me to have a change. The number today, I think, is 44%. And that is about six points lower than what we saw in 2019. So that's a good omen, if you like, for the liberals that the intensity of desire for change isn't as high in 2021 as it was in 2019. That 44% also obviously splits between people who want to change to the left and people who want to change to the right. And so that 44% isn't a strong enough number to completely reassure the

conservatives that they have a chance at victory now because they know that they're going in to an election where people are saying, well, I'm not as mad as I was even in 2019 when they got, I think, 34% of the vote. And so will those voters be as motivated? That's a critical question, I think, for the Conservatives. And it's a critical question, obviously, for the Liberals as well. Is it if the Conservative voters become more motivated, if that number that says, I really want to change goes up, that would be a risk factor for the Liberals for sure. You mentioned young people just before we took the break, and I want to explore that a little bit because, you know, I remember a couple of weeks ago when Jagmeet Singh was a guest on the bridge,

and, you know, I asked him the question, you know, what's your base these days as the NDP leader? Because over time, the base for the NDP has changed. You know, in the old Tommy Douglas days, it was kind of Western Canada, Prairies in particular. And then it shifted around with, you know, with Ed Broadbent. It became very much the base of the labor groups, especially in Ontario. They always both were looking towards BC as well.

Jack Layton, it was all about Quebec. And so I asked Jack Mead, saying, where's your base? And he says, well, it's none of those. It's young people, and it's kind of across the board. And he's convinced that he's hitting the mark with young people on a number of subjects, some of which you've already mentioned. The problem with banking on young people, at least that we've witnessed in past elections,

is, I don't mean to be cruel, but they talk a good game about involvement, and yet when it comes time to actually vote, their turnout is not as high as the parties who were depending on them had hoped for. I don't know where it'll be this time around. We are always, you know, looking for engagement with young people. All parties are, and, you, and observers to the process are hoping young people will turn out and have a real say in an election outcome because it is about their future as much as it is anybody's. So what are you seeing? Are you breaking it down by age? And if you are, what are you seeing with young people?

Yeah, we are breaking it down a lot of different ways, including by age, Peter. And Jagmeet Singh is right that if you had to kind of focus on one demographic characteristic as evidence of a base, you would put the thing around young people. I think he's been effective at conveying a sense of ambition on the issues that matter to them or that matter most to them, including climate, including diversity, including inclusion on Indigenous issues. I think he conveys empathy in a way that strikes people as very authentic and relatable. And I think that he describes ideas that have a measure of ambition that's bigger than what young people have heard before on questions that matter to their pocketbooks, to their

cost of living. And one of the things about the pandemic, I think, is that it's changed the way that we think as a society about what's affordable and what might not be affordable. In fact, it's allowed us to think that any idea if it's necessary enough, if it's good enough, is affordable, which wasn't really a frame that worked, that was part of our kind of political culture as much before, and it was always a limitation, kind of a ceiling on support for the NDP was the good ideas, but can we afford them kind of thought. I would also say, though, that in 2015, young people did

probably determine the election result for Justin Trudeau. So you're right that historically turnout among young people has been more limited than among older people, but 2015 did look like a change and 2019 wasn't that much different. And so I think it's an open question whether young people will play as big a role as Jagmeet Singh might hope for. But there are also, with each passing year, more young people in the voting pool. And so we do see a rise in the importance of issues that relate to them. Housing affordability isn't typically that big an issue for people who are over 45. It's much more likely to be an economic issue as is child care, as is student debt for younger people. And we do see those rising to the forefront, along with climate change, along with equality

and diversity among younger people. And so I think those do naturally create an electorate that's a little bit more articulated towards the center and the left of the spectrum. And that's why we really have two-party races if we look at generation now. Among older people, we've got a race between the Liberals and the Conservatives, and among younger people,

it's a race between the NDP and the Liberals. I want to talk a moment about issues. Issues change all the time. You always assume that the issue that's breaking at the moment is going to be the issue that carries the day in an election campaign and becomes the ballot question. Usually, we learn that, in fact, the way we live in our world today things move pretty fast now the pandemic has obviously been an issue for 18 plus months now and will you know have an impact

i'm sure in the campaign i'm going to list off a bunch of issues here and i want you to give me a sense of um not where they rank but you know what's grabbing hold at the moment at this point, two weeks into the campaign? You have the pandemic, obviously, and the sense of a fourth wave coming, or we're already in. Afghanistan, nobody was talking about Afghanistan three weeks ago. Now Afghanistan is a player and is an issue that the Canadian government has had to take action on. And opposition parties are saying different things about that action that they've taken.

You have the economy in a very general sense. and in specific cases about the cost of the pandemic recovery program, how it's going to impact inflation, where the jobs are coming from. Is there a future planned on how, if we ever get out of this pandemic, potential governments will handle that future. I mean, those are, you know, a couple of the issues that are playing. Healthcare is always an issue in a more general sense. Who's paying for what and where is the money coming from on that? Of those and whatever other ones I know you'll add, what's the conversation about out there in terms of those who are fixated on this election?

Well, I do think that there's two kind of categories of issue, Peter. One is the specific issue of things like housing and what can be done about it. And these are more kind of, they're very important personal issues, but they're a little bit technical from a policy standpoint. And then there's the kind of the more of the atmospherics. Does this party care enough about climate change? Does it have a good enough track record on diversity and inclusion? Or am I not comfortable with where they are coming from on that sort of thing? And those are solved less by the specifics of any platform promise

and more by the sense of what kind of person is the leader and how do they sound when they talk about these issues and what sort of candidates are they attracting and what sort of mistakes or other statements they're saying about it. And I don't think that we really know which ones will rise to the highest level of importance, although I did mention, I think, that this idea of health care for rich people and health care for everybody else and also climate change, and are we going to roll back our commitments to try to fight emissions, reduce emissions? Those are very promising. I do think the vaccination and the pandemic questions will come into focus around the time that we're going back to families, going back to school and, and the vaccine mandate will be part of that.

I don't know that it'll be a question so much of is the, you know, are the support programs, the right programs. I think it will be a little bit about, can we continue to have support programs and not at the same time really require vaccination? Because if we say we're not going to require vaccination and we are going to continue to support businesses, for example, that don't want to require vaccination, then is that really going to work as an idea politically? I kind of doubt it. I think that voters will decide that they don't really want to subsidize with their tax dollars businesses that can't open because they're not doing their part to

shut down the pandemic. I think for some voters, you know, there might be a crystallization around child care. $10 a day child care is an easy idea. It won't matter to people particularly who don't need child care or foresee a need for child care. They may be for it, they may be against it, but it won't be a ballot-defining question. On Afghanistan, I think it's a little bit early to really say, but my instincts based on having seen It's terrible to see. It's a calamity. We feel terribly about it. But what is our responsibility in it? Not everybody will kind of have that sense that some in the media and the critics of the government are saying that this is a betrayal by Canada. And also, people will probably ask themselves the question, well, what else could

we do about it right now? And I know there are some critics who are saying, well, you know, there was some bureaucratic delay in getting some people out and that sort of thing. But, you know, my experience, people will look at this and say, at some point that we've been flying people out, and we'll continue to fly people out as long as it's safe to do that. And we'll continue to try to find other ways to help people. But what's the practical alternative? And if they don't see a practical alternative, just having a harangue about who could have done what, when over the last several years, probably won't add up to that much political attraction.

That would be my sense. Okay. I know we haven't got into particular actions on the part of the various leaders in this conversation, but I found it really extremely rewarding in a sense of breaking down some of the issues and some of the ways that things unfold in a sense of breaking down some of the issues and some of the ways the things unfold in a campaign um i know tomorrow for the friday edition of good talk chantelle will join you and i and um

we'll get into more of a you know back and forth i think on uh on how the different leaders are performing and the impact they're having on the campaign at this admittedly early stage. But in the meantime, it's back to Beach Meadow for you. How long are you going to be holidaying on the East Coast? Are you there for another week? It looks like we'll start heading back towards Ottawa on Sunday. So a few more days yet. And how much longer are you going to be in the North? I should be out of the North tomorrow. start heading back towards Ottawa on Sunday. So a few more days yet. And you drove out there, right?

And how much longer are you going to be in the north? I should be out of the north tomorrow. You never know when you're in the Arctic how plane schedules can be affected by weather and sudden snowstorms, which have started already. It's still August. But for the most part, man, this trip, the weather has been spectacular. You drove out there, right? That's right, yes.

It's a great drive. It was a great drive. I really enjoyed it, especially the south shore of the St. Lawrence, going through a lot of towns where some of Canada's oldest history is. And that got me kind of fascinated by Champlain's voyages to the New World. And yeah, it's been great to not be on a plane and to actually kind of experience that drive through parts of Canada that I don't see very often. Well, you know, you're so right. I mean, traveling by plane across the country is a great luxury, and it's great for business in terms of the sense of being able to get back

and forth and, you know, attend certain meetings and pull off certain deals, what have you, whatever your business may be. But you don't see the country except from, you know, 35,000 feet, and it's just not the same. And getting that opportunity, you know, to travel the country, whether it's by car or by train or by motorcycle, whatever it may be, does give you a sense to really see the country that you've chosen to live in and to remember some of its

history and it's interesting that we've both spent the last week or so doing exactly that you looking at the you know the southern history and me the northern and in both cases kind of the same thing you know when Champlain and others came here that those initial voyages to canada weren't to find canada they were looking for asia right and then they found this great country along the way and the same very much so in the arctic you know the search for the northwest passage was all about trying to get a fast route uh to asia to trade um and. And they got blocked by a lot of things, mainly ice. Anyway, listen, thanks for doing this, Bruce.

Enjoy the last few days of your holiday, but we will interrupt it again on Friday, tomorrow, for a good talk with Chantel. So you take care and travel safe. You bet, Peter. You too. Talk to you soon. Yep. All right. That's it for Smoke You too. Talk to you soon. Yep. All right.

That's it for Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, special edition, special election edition, based out of Arctic Bay in Nunavut on this day. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.