The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT with Bruce Anderson - Is Ottawa Ready for the "Truckers"?

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

The cross country trucker's convoy is picking up steam, coverage and ugly words as it makes its way towards the nation's capital this weekend.  What exactly is their issue?  Who's funding them? And is Ottawa worried? All that and more as Bruce Anderson joins from Ottawa.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. What's going to happen when the truckers get to Ottawa? And hello there, it is Wednesday. This is Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. And hello to you. Hello, Peter. Is it frosty there? I see you're wearing a scarf and a hat this morning.

It's cold here, but I'm inside, and you look like you could be outside. I keep my studio cool. I keep my studio, which is my office, which is in one corner of the house. Well, let's just say it's not very well insulated so early in the morning and throughout the morning and most of the day often, it's pretty cool. So I've got the little fireplace on, though. I've got the little fireplace on, uh i'll be taking the scarf off soon um okay i want to talk truckers and i want to start by uh with something that i think you believe in as well as listen we uh you know part of the uh the heartbeat of a democracy is the

ability to protest on things that you don't like and make your case known and do it in a peaceful way and in a way that makes the point and so i got nothing against protests i don't think you got anything about uh against protests either um but there seems to be the potential here for this current truckers across canada heading to ot to Ottawa could get ugly. It's ugly in some ways already, but for the most part, it's peaceful. But will that continue on? I mean, I looked at some of the pictures from yesterday when it was going through Winnipeg.

And, you know, just the signs, you know, we are being murdered. That's about vaccines, right? The truckers protest is basically about trying to get the government to back down on its ruling that truckers will not be allowed into Canada from the US.S. if they're not vaccinated, which is the same rule the Americans have about Canadian truckers, right? But Canadian truckers, 90% of whom I'm told are vaccinated. The 10% who aren't

have been made the focus of this demonstration. So anyway, the signs on this, like we're being murdered, no lives matter, to the psychopaths in charge says another sign um you know become ungovernable lots of stuff about you know trudeau um which isn't flattering and uses all kinds of F-bombs and so on and so forth. And let me just read one little line from a friend of mine who went out to see some of this thing going down, heading up towards Portage Avenue to go into Winnipeg. It was near Headingley at the point he saw it and it, you know,

Headingley is just outside of Winnipeg. It's on the western outskirts of Winnipeg. Here's what he wrote to me. I got stuck in the anti-vax trucker rally today out in Headingley. Thousands of people lining the TransCanada as trucks drove by honking horns with lots of F. Trudeau signs and Trump effigies. My daughter was with me, and she said it felt like January 6th came to Winnipeg. The crowd was all white.

Now, that's just kind of a visual description of what it was like. Once again, I underline, as far as I know about yesterday, it was peaceful. It's just ugly. And it's just halfway to Ottawa. And there are a lot of people involved. And what's it going to be like when it gets to Ottawa? And how ready is Ottawa for this sort of converging on Parliament Hill, I guess. So I'd be concerned if I was in Ottawa in terms of in government,

watching this thing coming at me. What are you hearing? I think people are concerned, Peter. I think they're concerned at a couple of different levels. Obviously, I think there's some level of concern about what happens. I think,000 truckers and 1.4 million people headed to parliament in Ottawa. And they're going to stay there until Trudeau resigns or they give us back all of our rights and freedoms. Well, I don't think the numbers are going to be anything like that, but I think it's going to be significant enough to warrant concern. And of course, the kind of energy and the things that have been said by people who are either in the convoy or supporting the convoy are worrying because they're not really,

you know, I agree with your point. And I think it is important to say that it's really good that we live in a country where people can protest. It's a peaceful protest is such an important part of um a functioning democracy and it's legitimate for people to protest against vaccine mandates and against justin trudeau if they don't like him and um so all of that is is fair game however a lot of the language around the trucker convoy is first of all it's kind of pretending

that all truckers are behind this and that's clearly not true um this is a small minority of of truckers the national trucking association has said that it doesn't support uh the kind of protest that's being undertaken right now not that they don't support protests or that they don't have differences with the government, but that they don't support this portrayal of kind of truckers when they, in fact, say that 90% or almost 90% are fully vaccinated. So there's an issue there of what happens when the convoy gets to Ottawa and will safety be jeopardized. And I think that people have to take that seriously. We can't have seen the kind of events that we've seen in different parts of the world without wondering whether something really unfortunate could happen here.

I think the other issue, and I know we're going to talk about it a little bit, is the pandemic has created some dividing lines in Canadian society. And, you know, just as it feels as though we're almost through it would be a terrible time to see these exacerbated even more. And I know that people think I'm very critical of the Conservative Party sometimes, but I am right now because too many Conservatives of note are standing with the truckers are saying they're proud of the truckers are cheering on the convoy and i think that it's one thing for them to say that they believe in the argument that truckers are making about a vaccine mandate although they've not really been clear about that all the way through this pandemic it's another thing not to be willing to denounce some of the hateful language that's kind of riding shotgun with those truckers in this convoy. And that's a potentially bigger concern,

because it kind of goes to the heart of the question of whether we're going to have a Conservative Party that mainstream Canadians can look at and say it will um be a positive contributor to canadian democracy i don't think that the answer to that question is very clear today you know i i'm looking more the pictures of some of these signs um that were part of yesterday's you know convoy going through winnipeg and one assumes that they'll still be in the convoy when it arrives in ottawa no more auschwitz stop fascism i mean come on you know even the winnipeg sun yesterday had a and had a you know an opinion piece in it saying that they've lost their way you know like what is this actually really all about? And what isn't it about? And I hear what you're saying about the Conservatives,

but the Conservatives didn't organize this. I assume it was organized somewhat by some truckers, but also it was organized by one of the leading executive members of the Maverick Party, which is an Alberta-based party, which feels strongly about where Alberta's place is in the country and is described by some as a separatist party. They've raised a lot of money through a GoFundMe page, like more than $4 million. That's a lot of money to pay for truckers, you know, hotels and gas and what have you as they cross the country. Um, yeah, 4 million bucks is 4 million bucks, but the GoFundMe people

who are used to, you know, kind of take in the money are saying, we're not giving you a penny of this money until you tell us exactly what you're going to do with it how it's going to be used and show us a plan and i assume at some point they'll do that but we're talking a lot of money this is a well there's the thing you know and not being very careful about drawing comparisons with what happened on january 6th but one of the big issues about January 6th was nobody knew where the money came from and how these people were funded, how they got their, you know, their Trump flags and their Trump banners and, you know,

all the stuff they had and the special clothes they were wearing, all that kind of stuff when they stormed the Capitol building. Now, we don't know what's going to happen this weekend when it gets to Ottawa. It may just be a peaceful drive through with the trucks. If it is good signs, they could do without some of them anyway. The, but the, you know,

the organization level of this is important to be aware of. And the money aspect is important to be aware of. I look, I think that's right. and the money aspect is important to be aware of. Look, I think that's right. And I think it's fair to say that politicians didn't create this. But I think the standard that I want to see politicians held to as the conversation, it seems that politics deteriorates the way that it seems to be doing, is higher than did they start it. And if they didn't start it, they're okay. And so when I look at the pantheon of conservative voices,

the prominent conservatives across the country, and I try to find that one, just one, who's raising serious objections to the kind of language that's surrounding this convoy whether it's the uh the racist commentaries whether it's the uh that we should come and take back our government uh kind of talk just one i'm just looking for one and i haven't yet found one on the other hand i see jay, the leader of the Maverick Party. I see Jason Kenney. I see Pierre Polyev. I see Candace Bergen, the deputy leader.

I see Andrew Scheer, the prior leader of the Conservative Party, all standing with the truckers, all saying, you know, you got to understand that these people feel as though their freedoms have been taken away. And so when politicians sanction, even if they don't say, I love everything they're doing, even if they include the kind of small type, we support peaceful demonstrations. That's a far cry from the standard that I think we need in Canadian politics. We need politicians on every side, on the left too, to establish guardrails in our conversation and to say when people are pushing their cause in a certain way, it causes problems in our society. Now, it's not up to the social platforms to solve all of this, but they're not doing everything that they can. At least Twitter isn't. It's up to all of us, and it's up to the politicians who purport to be leaders in our society to stand up and say, you can hate Justin Trudeau. You can dislike his inflation policies.

You can dislike a lot of things that he's doing you can hate his climate change policy um you can dislike his values but it is a democracy and there have to be some limits on how people conduct themselves and what kind of speech is acceptable and it's not going to be settled by law or regulation. It's really a question of what kind of society do we want to live in? And when we put such a spotlight on this small minority of people and the things that they're saying, because it's kind of exciting, it's newsworthy, it's clickbaity, it's edgy. Well, you know, we're going to do that because that's the way society works these days on the other hand it is a requirement of politicians to stand up and say we don't agree with that and aaron o'toole is caught in the headlights of this

convoy right now and it's not it's not a good look for him he wants to be prime minister of the country and i don't think he's covering himself in glory at all on this question okay we'll get to aaron o'toole in a minute i want to deal with one other issue in terms of the you know you got to be careful you know all of us about the truckers rally because as you said it's like a it's it it's people represent 10% of truckers. And I'm not sure how many in this actual convoy, I mean, they may be driving trucks and

the big rigs are obviously truckers. There's a lot of, you know, Ford F-150s and Ram trucks and, you know, whatever that are in this thing too, aren't necessarily truckers as we think about them. But one of the ways they're trying to engage the Canadian people at large on this issue is saying, this is costing you food in the grocery stores.

There are empty shelves from coast to coast to coast. Well, I don't know how well they're doing on that argument because obviously I've only been in the grocery stores that are nearby me. And so far I haven't seen an empty shelf of any significance anyway, other than what normally gets empty at certain points of the day. But the pictures have appeared online. I think one was even from Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, put out a picture of empty shelves caused by this issue of, you know, truckers who can't come up from the States,

and the shelf was about Canadian beef. Yeah, it made no sense. You know, it just had nothing to do with anything other than the... Canadian dairy, Canadian beef, Canadian chicken, and he's showing empty shelves. And we're supposed to believe that that had something to do with this vaccine mandate for truckers?

It's ridiculous. Yeah. And another one popped up that apparently was from, you know, the Netherlands or something. It was in a, you know, another ad. But, and so you keep hearing people talking about empty shells and i i don't know i i haven't seen enough to make a full-time judgment and i don't think any of them have either but there seems to be a a need for that i mean ottawa is saying they're empty shells are not an issue

okay that's ottawa's. The protesters say there are. And I guess individuals are going to have to make that judgment themselves. Well, we're going to know in time, right? I mean, it just seems kind of strange to me that we can be immersed in this whole empty shelves. What was it? Randy Hillier. I think he's an MPP in Ontario, if I'm not mistaken. Right. I think he was kicked out of Doug Ford's party.

Yeah. But yesterday on Twitter, he called the federal transport minister a terrorist who was forcing Canadians into starvation with his vaccine mandate. I mean, it was an absolutely loathsome comment to refer to him as a terrorist, but also this force Canadians into starvation thing. When, as you say, Peter, I mean, if a week from now there's no food in the stores, for sure the Liberals are going to have a problem, and for sure they're going to change that mandate.

But I don't know a single sound-minded person who thinks that that's what we're headed towards. I mean, 90% of these truckers are vaccinated. It tells me, simple math tells me that at worst, we might have a 10% impact on some things. Well, I don't know that that gets us to starvation, but I don't even think that's going to happen. And the Trucking Alliance doesn't seem to think that that's going to happen. And also, you know, is kind of ridiculous. But even if I give it some legitimacy, I kind of look at the Conservative Party and say, how, after so many unforced own goal errors politically during this pandemic, can you still be getting it wrong? Can you still realize that 90% of adult Canadians are vaccinated and just want the rest of folks to kind of get with the program? And instead, they pick the 10% side or the 6% side or even the two percent side as ground to fight on i don't

understand it as health policy i don't understand it from a law and order party i don't understand it as political strategy and i don't think they know what they're doing i literally don't think they know what they're doing well i think they think they seem to think that they are on the side of the people because they're watching, you know, some people protest. But here's, to me, you touched on it and I touched on it earlier, but here it is in its simplest form. These people are supposedly protesting in favor of American truckers, unvaccinated, to be allowed to come into Canada.

Let's say they get that. Let's say somehow that's approved. And so these unvaccinated American truckers come into Canada, they dump their load, and then they're driving back. They can't get into their own country because they're unvaccinated. I mean, the whole thing's ridiculous. It's completely nuts.

Completely nuts. It's nuts. Okay. Well, listen, fingers crossed that the protest does the protest thing in a peaceful fashion. They could clean up their act on signs. I mean, it's outrageous, some of these signs. It's just crazy.

But anyway, and that things are peaceful over this weekend. I fear you build up this, you know, emotion in people who've crossed the country and they're getting, you know, as my friend said in Winnipeg, there were a lot of people there lining the street, the Trans-Canada Highway, as you know, which turns into Portage Avenue on the western outskirts of the city. And they're cheering them on and they're waving flags, Canadian flags, Trump flags. He said there were a lot of Trump stuff there yesterday.

And, you know, I worry. I worry about it, and I hope Ottawa is taking it seriously on whatever levels they need to be prepared in case things get totally out of hand. Okay, enough on that. I want to talk about Aaron O'Toole for a minute. You know, on the one hand, you know, I'm sick of talking about Aaron O'Toole. It's like every week we've been talking about Aaron O'Toole

because every week something comes up that happens within his own group that blows up and creates huge problems for a guy who's fighting to save his job. I mean, there's enough issues to go after the government on to have, you know, true and honest discussion and debate about different things. But the Aaron O'Toole story keeps bubbling up, and it has again today, and we'll talk about it when we come back.

Back with Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario on this day. You're listening to SMT on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. We're glad you're with us. Tomorrow, by the way, is episode 500 of The Bridge, the overarching podcast that SMT is under and Good Talk is under

and what have you, but episode number 500. We've passed, since we started working with SiriusXM, which was almost a year ago, we're over, we're almost at 2.2 million downloads. Since the bridge began with the election of 2019, we're around 4 million downloads. So it's pretty impressive how we've done with our little hobby podcast, done from our chilly little office den in Stratford

and our palatial studios in Ottawa that Bruce has, of course. Oh, yeah. Anyway, here's the second topic for today, and we've got 10 minutes to talk about it. Our friend John Iverson, who's a columnist with the National Post, he's a tough guy, big Scott. What is he, about 6'5"? He's huge.

Huge, huge, huge. Huge guy. Wrote a great book on Robbie Burns. It was Robbie Burns Day just yesterday. But he's a political animal. He loves to talk politics and he's not shy. He plays guitar and he can sing too. Let's not forget that.

Yeah, we've had him at our little event at the Black Sheep just across the river from Ottawa where we raise money from any number of different good causes. Anyway, as I said, John's not shy, and his main target is often the Liberals and often Justin Trudeau. But he has a column today about Aaron O'Toole, and it's based on the fact that it was a big week for Aaron O'Toole, as he's meeting his caucus, trying to protect his leadership

at a time when something seems to come up every week that attacks his leadership, usually from within. And some of his, this was an opportunity for him to sit down with Iverson and say some things about his position and what he wants his party to be.

So did he take that opportunity? Yeah, I think he did. Let me just start, Peter, by saying no one wants to not talk about the Conservative Party in Aaron O'Toole more than me. I wish that we didn't talk about it as much as you wish that. But, you know, this is about politics a lot of the time. And I think it's the, you know, in some respects, it's the most interesting story in Canadian politics to see what will happen to our conservative movement, especially when we look south of the border and see what's happened to the conservative movement in the United States.

And to my eyes, it's a it's a kind of a tragedy what's been happening to to conservative. And following that same line of logic, no one really wants Aaron O'Toole to succeed more than I do, except probably Aaron O'Toole and those people who work immediately for him. Because I want to have a Conservative Party that's competitive. And I don't know who, if it's not going to be him, is that person. Now, I don't think he's been stellar at representing the idea of a big tent inclusive party. I think he has been a bit tentative about it sometimes. I think he's got this kind of bad, I said one thing to win the leadership, and then I said something else after problem that's dogging him. But at least in this Iverson column today,

he laid out the idea that he wanted to be a leader who would build a Conservative Party that could win an election with Canadians who had become sceptical of the Conservative Party around environmental issues, around inclusion and attitudes towards the LGBTQ community. And I think that that is the position that is required of a leader. I think that it is one that he would have been better advised to have stuck with and been adamant and vocal about all along. I worry for him that it might be too little too late, that there's so much energy kind of amassing in his party that's uncomfortable with him,

that it might not matter at the end of the day. But he did say some really important things in the context of this Iveson column, and good for him to do it and good for John to put the column in. And I think John's final thought in the column was, this is what he wants to do. It's not clear that his party is going to support him in that quest. And certainly, you know, the issue that we were just talking about, the truckers, where O'Toole, you know, would go so far as to say, well, it's not up to a leader to meet with a protest group, which was, you know, really a strange comment,

because they do do that all the time. But it was his way of saying, I don't want to say anything against them. But I also, I'm not going to go and kind of put my body beside what they're doing. So there was even vacillation this week on this, in this moment, when his leadership is coming to a head on something that is a pretty clear opportunity to say peaceful protest language that stays within some lines of respect for other people and stay focused on the vaccine mandate issue if that's what you're here for but if you think you're coming here for some sort of a Trump style insurrection. And I noticed that Don Jr. was tweeting support of this trucker convoy last night. Then you got to shut that down. If you want to be Prime Minister of Canada, you can't establish the precedent that that this is this is

okay, or not worthy of your comment. So I'm hopeful for Aaron O'Toole. I'm hopeful for aaron o'toole i'm hopeful for a a moderate conservative party um and i'm i'm thinking this is a critical week in the in that story if you got to shut it down you got to shut down a good chunk of your caucus too and certainly your your big players because they're all out there you know saying supportive things about the country. Yeah. If you don't tell them what the lines are, every conservative leader and probably every leader of every party has found this over time, they choose their own. And I think that's what's going on right now. When you look at that list of MPs who are kind of siding with the truckers

and you kind of go, wait, probably close to 90% of the millions of votes that the Conservative Party got in the last election are people who are fully vaccinated. And they're listening to all of these elected MPs, you know, really kind of support this vitriolic protest that doesn't really seem to have that much to do with vaccines on some level, but it's definitely anti-vax. I know some of them are saying, well, we're not anti-vax, we're pro-freedom. But, you know, we've been this conversation since so many times during this pandemic is that we live in a society where we are surrendering some of our freedoms when we're

infants and we're getting vaccinated because it's kind of how we keep people living uh but yeah it's a it's a very interesting time and i use the word interesting advisedly you know it'll be interesting to see what the media do with with this protest when it arrives to yeah you know we're almost out of time here i want your thought on that but let me make one point on the because it links back into my initial thoughts on you know on protests which are good they're part of the lifeblood of a you know a healthy democracy um and you can look at some of the protests that have taken place on the pandemic issue over the last two years,

and you can say, okay, you know what? There was a strong anti-lockdown movement and protest movement focused on lockdown, not on vaccines, focused on the lockdown. We saw a lot of it out here in southwestern Ontario. And for the most part, you know, it's been successful. Governments have backed away from lockdowns as we, you know, this thing shudders to a conclusion, one hopes, over the next few months. But there's no doubt they've pulled back on lockdowns

and that's partially due to the kind of protests the reasonable voices that were made on that so there is a you know there's a distinction here okay so these next few days are going to be interesting to watch in terms of what happens with this convoy but also as you point out what happens with the media coverage and once again my whole you know media is not a monolith so that people are going to do this differently but you know you can't ignore the story because it is you know a significant moment involving it appears to be a lot of people. How many we'll find out as we get closer to the weekend. But what are you going to be looking for?

I mean, to me, it's always, you know, be fair, be accurate, keep things in context. And keeping things in context is to firmly explain what the issue is and, you know, who's's actually involved how they're involved who's organizing it where is the money coming from those kind of things as opposed to just showing you know a bunch of trucks driving through a town yeah well i don't first thing for me peter's i don't envy the media having to to sort this out i don't think it's easy at all. And so I'm going to be very I'm going to be slow to criticize

because I do think that the question is, you have to cover it. Even though what we know is that this is a very small minority. This group represents a very small minority of Canadians, and they're getting a much larger share of voice and rationality would suggest that they get, but that's going to happen. I have been encouraged a little bit in the last day or so.

I noticed that Glenn McGregor, I think is CTV News, was really being pretty clear in describing what he saw as being the dark side of this protest. Others have been doing something similar. I'm going to be looking for the media to not just say, look at how many people came and look at how angry they were, but to also say, look at the fact that they and look at how angry they were, but to also say, look at the fact that they're angry about a lot of things that don't have anything to do with vaccines, that they're hurling insults at people from different parts of society, that they're harboring a bunch of resentments that are being given a kind of a

voice and a tacit support by politicians who aren't calling them out on it. That's a, you you know to me they're not going to change the vaccine mandate and this protest is going to go away but the lingering problem that we've got is what kind of conversation are we going to consider to be okay in society and and that's not a law or regulation thing that's a what's the public will and i think the media have a role to play in keeping a focus on that part of the conversation some are doing it now but it remains to be seen whether that will that will happen and i hope that it will well who have you been seeing cover it in a way that makes you feel either comfortable or uncomfortable peter you know i i, I'm just not comfortable with it because I think you've got to be,

you know, I'm glad to hear that I didn't see the particular CTV report you're talking about, but I'm glad to hear that they were taking that approach on, you know, putting things in some kind of context. And I think that's what needs to be done in a fair and accurate way. And wherever it is, in print or on, you know, on television or online, it gets caught up with a lot of the, you know, the social media traffic on this. But, you know, I think these next few days

I think are going to be examples of where we can look at journalism and see how serious and responsible it is through a situation that may or may not get out of hand. If it doesn't get out of hand, then fine.

As I said, I think we'll be able to watch this and see. I do, I got to say, I worry a little more about how Ottawa is preparing for this than how the media is preparing for it. But on that too, we'll find out how the days unfold. Okay, look, we're going to wrap it up for this. Bruce is back on Friday, of course, with Chantel for Good Talk. Some of this I'm sure we'll be talking about again because it'll be 48 more hours of any number of different things

that have happened on both the fronts that we've discussed on this day. And maybe some Boris Johnson news too. We'll see. Oh, he's fine. You guys don't give up. Guy has a little birthday party. We'll see. All right, Peter, talk to you on Friday.

Okay. Good to talk to Bruce, as always. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford. Bruce is in Ottawa. That's been Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, the episode from the bridge for this day. We'll be back in, in 24 hours.