The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Summer Good Talk -- Could Trudeau Do A Biden?

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Bruce and Chantal join me for a Summer Good Talk and what a summer it's been so far.  Could the political winds that have changed things in The United States blow into Canada?  That's the question and there's a lot of talk about concerning that subject.

Are you ready for some summer good talk? Bruce and Chantel standing by, coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with Chantel Hebert and Bruce Anderson. Our annual once in July. Who remembered our names? That's so exciting. After a month's absence, he still remembers us. Yeah. I was going to say, I don't always remember names very well, but

you two, how could one forget? And especially with the mail that I've been having. A lot of listeners who think we kind of betrayed them by taking some summertime off. Oh, well, there is, there's only one thing to say about that and it's called get a life. Well, it included one of our, one of our competitors as such, a good podcast friend of ours host who says, come back, come back.

We've got to hear what you guys are saying. So this is your chance out there as we have this special show, and we'll do one special show in August as well. It's not like nothing has happened. It's been a crazy month in politics on both sides of the border. And so this is an opportunity to catch up. So let me, I know a lot of people out there are asking this question, so I'll ask it

and we'll see where the answers land. Could Trudeau do a Biden? Not could he, would he, will he? Is there any chance that Trudeau will do a Biden? Chantel? Willie, is there any chance that Trudeau will do a Biden? Chantal? Well, the short answer is, if you guys know, let me know. Because we're not in the prime minister's mind. Trudeau is not Joe Biden in many ways.

The parliamentary system is not the presidential system. So there is no scenario where Trudeau quits and the next day, Christopher Freeland becomes the candidate. That's not going to happen. He's not facing an election in four or five months. He is probably at least 10 months from a federal election. What he does share with Joe Biden is a conviction that the other guy needs to be defeated. And if there is a path to Trudeau deciding that he's not going to be running the liberals in the next election. And I don't know that. It would be true

an acceptance on this part that maybe someone or maybe he can't, he can't do it. Someone maybe can do better, but it's not him. And at this point, I think it's possible to think that if you're Justin Trudeau, but it's harder because you do not see who that person is that will do it if you can't. So do I know what the prime minister will decide over the course of his holidays? In my mind, it seems to me like the last realistic moment to be thinking about leaving, i.e. use the holidays to figure it out. And then if you're going to leave, say so when you come back from that holiday in BC.

But we've watched Brian Malarone and Pierre Trudeau leave it much later in the game. So short answer is, I don't know. It's possible. It's possible he doesn't. And at this point, I have to say, because I've been thinking about the fact that we were going to do this. We haven't done this for about a month. Over the past month, I've talked to the usual number of people in Montreal, but also

outside Montreal, who like to talk about politics. And it struck me over the past few days that over the past few months, I've had a lot of political conversations, and none of those conversations were the names Trudeau, Poiliev, Blanchet, or Singh ever mentioned. The only names mentioned were Trump, Biden, and now Kamala Harris. Well, there you go. Bruce, I obviously want your thoughts on this. All I would say in the difference between, you know, lots of differences between Biden and Trudeau,

but one of them on this scenario is that there were a lot of people whispering in Biden's ear, close friends, not so close friends, saying, you've got to do this, you've got to get out, that's the only chance we've got to win, it's the only chance we're going to stop Trump, is you're going to have to step down. If somebody is whispering in Justin Trudeau's ear, we're not hearing about it like we were hearing about it with Biden.

So, Bruce, where do you go? What's your thought on this? Well, back to your original question there, Peter, is it will he, would he? I just want to kind of wrap everything that I'm going to say for the next 50-odd minutes in the blanket. Chantelle, I don't know because I don't know. I won't know hard answers to any of the questions that you're going to ask, not only this one. But here's what I would take. And it is in line, I think, mostly with what Chantal said.

The similarities between Trudeau's situation and Biden's is that they're incumbents and it's a hard time to be incumbent. And Justin Trudeau has made that point. And Biden has felt that. And the question of whether or not incumbency becomes less of a headwind 12 months from now because the economy gets better, because interest rates come down. I think that's an open question. I have my doubts about it, but I don't think that it's a very predictable thing. The second thing that's quite different between Biden's situation and Trudeau's situation is the timing circumstance. The U.S. election is in November. If the Democrats were going to get competitive after they saw themselves losing oil, they had no time left

on the clock but to do something about it. The liberals have plenty of time as they would see it. Others might say it's not that much time, but relative to the U.S. situation, it's an eternity in which they can watch, try to improve, try to improve their competitiveness, try a variety of different things to level the playing field. I think that's important as well. Third thing that's different, Biden's demise was triggered by the most horrific debate performance that any of us have probably ever seen, certainly the worst that I've ever seen. There isn't a scenario like that for Trudeau in the Canadian context.

And in part, that extends to another really important difference, in my view, which is that as much as everybody is saying, wasn't it an act of heroic, democratic ideal for Biden to step away from the nomination? If we're really being cold eyed about it, he was forced out, as far as I'm concerned. I believe that the thesis that Nancy Pelosi, let it be known that there was an easy way to do this and a hard way to do this. And that there was a certain period of time in which Biden could choose the easy way to have this done. And then that time elapsed. And he was out of time on Sunday. He had already experienced the leading Democrats in the House and in the

Senate call for him to step aside. And the donors had been hitting the pause button. And so he didn't really have a choice. In fact, he probably left it a little too long if what he really wanted to do was establish that his choice was being made in the interests of the country, as opposed to because he had no other alternative that the hammer was really going to come down on the Monday if he didn't resign on the Sunday. I don't think there's any real prospect that Justin Trudeau will face that kind of pressure. Not now, not in the fall, not in the spring. I don't happen to think that his party has that kind of level of energy around this question. And I don't know that they're going

to get it. I actually think, and I'll finish on this point, that in some ways the risk for the Liberal Party is they become a little too complacent with the idea of losing. And they don't take the kinds of steps that the Democrats were taking. I'm not talking just about leadership here, just that sense of focus and urgency to try to figure out what kind of reset would work, whether it's leadership change or other changes. And I think that sometimes the Liberals in Canada feel to me as though they've almost priced in a loss. And that's not a great situation, obviously, for the Liberal Party, but it also doesn't lead to increased pressure on Justin Trudeau to leave. And so I think that's another difference here.

You know, I still find that remarkable. I hear what you're saying, but I find it remarkable that there's so many Liberals who aren't saying anything out loud or aren't going to see him to talk to him. You know, maybe they are. We just don't know about it. But it just seems like they're factoring in a loss. I mean, there's, what, 180 of them or 165 of them or something.

And a lot of them are going to lose their job, you know, if things don't change. You'd think that there would be some, especially after watching what happens south of the border, that there would be some push somehow. Unless they really believe that this guy can pull it out of the fire. Okay, it's an exaggeration to say they're complacent about it. I think the point I want to make, though, is that there's more complacency than you would expect and more than existed in the Democratic Party in the last couple of weeks. Chantal? I mean, I'm not in these people's minds, but I do get the fact that they are also waiting to see one of two things once the prime minister comes back from his summer break either that he decides that he's had it uh and then things will move on to a leadership campaign or else that uh he decides

that he needs to do something about what led to the results in saint paul's and that uh changes are in the offing whether it's a tr Tron Speedstretch cabinet shuffle, whatever. And I'll just say about the cabinet shuffle thing that it needs to be something better than we saw last summer. If you're just going to rejig the bottom half of the card pack, well, nobody really cares whether you handed it two threes and you got two sixes instead, which is basically what happened last summer. So I think there is this waiting to see. We're still in the something should happen one way or the other once he's back from BC.

I'm not saying something will, but I think a lot of liberals are keeping powder dry. And I have never believed that they would wake up after the St. Paul's by-election and suddenly stand up and say Justin Trudeau has to leave and do so publicly with their name in the paper, because that's not how liberals do it. Do you remember how many of them signed the letter for John Turner to quit? And it seemed like no one had signed that letter. When you tried to get any of them to admit that they'd actually signed the letter, it's their signature. They wouldn't own to it. It's the liberal culture. So I'm not sure this story of the liberal leadership or what happens next has played out or will play out

until Justin Trudeau comes back from BC. And I think he knows that. I always remember what you said last summer around this time when there was a shuffle and it was sort of flat it didn't really do anything for anybody and i can remember you saying at that time kind of what you hinted out here just a moment ago that if you're going to do a shuffle or a throne speech there better be something big and new that everybody can embrace and last year we thought i think you even might have even suggested,

if he was going to bring in Mark Carney, why didn't you bring him in then? Bringing him in now, I mean, it's been a year of talk about Mark Carney coming in or not coming in or why isn't he in or why didn't he run. So I'm not sure whether that's the big thing. Maybe it is a big thing. But it just seems like a shuffle or a thrown speech, that's not going to do it. That's not going to sort of turn the numbers around. Look, I think that the, I'm watching the U.S. developments very closely, in part from that standpoint. It's fascinating

on a number of standpoints, but the notion that you can have a party that goes from a sense of collective despondency and despair to collective enthusiasm. Now, whether or not it manifests itself and sustains over time, turns into some, you know, much better electoral fortune, that remains to be seen. But the chemistry within the Democratic Party was hugely affected. I think there's no question about that. Simply with that one reset choice, which was Biden stepping away. It does feel to me that whether or not there's a leadership change in the Liberal Party, there is some bottled up enthusiasm. Or it's hard to see the enthusiasm right now. Maybe it's bottled up and maybe it would be released by a variety of changes. If we look at the leadership question first, here's what I see. Justin Trudeau's

negatives are in the range of 60%, call it, depending on the poll. But let's say a big chunk of that at the bottom level is just people who don't like him. They're not going to change their view of him. They've come to that view. Some of them started with that view eight years ago. Then there's another layer of people who don't like the sound of his voice. They just kind of tune him out. The style doesn't work for them. They're not interested in what he has to say. They think it of tune them out. The style doesn't work for them. They're not interested in what he has to say. They think it all sounds the same. And then there's a third layer on top of

that, which is that people which is people who don't think that he has the same priorities that they would like their government to have, that he kind of thinks about what is five years and 10 years and 20 years need to look like for the world and for Canada and for society. And people can agree with him about all of those things, but they're looking for a politician who's going to tell them about five weeks from now, 10 weeks from now, tell me about the price of food. Tell me about the price of fuel. Tell me about the price of houses. And because the positioning of the liberal party under,

under Justin Trudeau has been so oriented towards this higher aspiration, longer term vision, it's created huge space for Pierre Pauliev to step in and say, well, I actually don't need to talk about ideological issues. I can just talk about cheaper houses and fatter paychecks and lower prices and tax the tax. So can the Liberal Party become competitive with Trudeau's leader? I think potentially, but provided they can solve for that second and third layer, the people who are tired of hearing Justin Trudeau's voice and need another reason to listen to him. Maybe that's a stylistic issue. And maybe the biggest part of all is the priority set. Does this liberal government look like it can find its way to a set of priorities that feel like they're going to solve your problem today? They're going to serve you rather than teach you? And I think that's a big question, Mark.

I think that's the question that Justin Trudeau or I, him, would be thinking about in the way of Zitophim. If I can add on that, but from a totally different angle, I covered the orange wave in Quebec. And I've covered the number of change elections, including Brian Mulroney's coming from behind to win the election, or even Jean Chrétien. Usually when you have a 20-point lead, there are people out there who are enthusiastic about you. They want to talk about how they can't wait to vote for you. And I'm not seeing that, or at least not to the level you would expect with a 20-point lead when it comes to

Pierre Poilievre. It's not happening. At some point, if you're going to seal that deal, people have to start wanting you not just because you're not the other guy. And that has failed to gel. I mean, at the end of the 2011 campaign, I couldn't go anywhere in Montreal without people talking to me about Jack Layton as if he hadn't run in, I don't know how many elections as leader before that one. And the bragging about how they wanted to vote for him,

how it was going to be great to vote for him. There is not that sense out there, and I think that probably means there's still an opening for the liberals to do better. I also believe that some conservatives should be spooked by this spectacle of progressive voters coming together and putting their hand in their wallets, some of them well-heeled. I'll agree with that. But there is a force out there for progressive politicians that we've watched unfold in the U.S. that should spook people who believe that Pierre Poitier and his set of policies and his friendship with hard right groups is something that won't matter to voters.

Whether Trudeau can still channel that force, I don't know. And yes, I know some NDP people will write to you about Jagmeet Singh about to do that. I don't believe that, seriously. But there is a force out there, and that's very dangerous for the conservatives, notwithstanding the 20-point lead. Chantal's raising a really interesting point that I've been thinking about as well

in the Canadian context. But the specifics in the U.S for me of Trump picking JD Vance, because he was so cocky that he thought I'm just going to roll over the Democrats. And then there's going to be a guy who's going to be Trump's fourth and fifth terms, if you like, or sorry,

third and fourth terms. And I'm going to overlook the fact that he is a red flag to progressives, that he will attract a level of animosity and hostility and criticism that he'll be hard pressed to defend against. Because it wasn't like he had these views 20 years ago. It's like he had these views two or three years ago, the things that he's been saying, the comments that he's made about women and childless women. These are, these are, this is a choice that you make when you don't think you can be beat. And when you know that your base wants to pick that cultural fight until the 11th hour, that they can't resist the cultural fight. They want to fight the woke mind virus.

And if the Democrats, and I think this is a question that relates in Canada as well, if the Democrats decide to engage that fight, if Kamala Harris decides that she wants to be the champion of the vote, she'll probably lose that election because a lot of voters in the middle are just tired of hearing that agenda. It's not that they disagree with it. It's just that they don't think that it changes the price of cucumbers. And in Canada, I think that part of Justin Trudeau's problem has been that the party has ended up feeling like it talks about that agenda so much that it doesn't really relate to people's grocery store experience. If Pierre-Paul Liev decides that he wants to let those people in his party want to fight that culture war agenda, if he lets that happen, he will open up an opportunity for progressive voters to rally, because I think

Chantel is exactly right. The enthusiasm level for Pierre Pauliev is tepid at best. It is there and his 20-point lead or 15-point lead is based largely on the instinct for change and the frustration with the incumbents. All right, I want to take a quick break. Our, our first break, you're listening to our summer. Good talk with Shanteli Bayer and Bruce Anderson back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to our summer. Good talk right here on Sirius XM, channel one six seven Canada talks are on your favorite podcast platform, or on our YouTube channel, or whatever venue you are catching us on. We're glad to have you with us. I want to pursue this same theme for a little while yet.

Let me start with this way, seeing as you're comparing things to the States. This past week has been remarkable there. I think we all agree on that, and it'll be interesting to see how long it continues in the vein it's been going on, and a terrific launch for Kamala Harris. Are there lessons for Canadian politics and what we've witnessed in the last week? I mean,

we've dealt with the issue of how Biden left and whether there's a lesson there for Trudeau, but just sort of generally what we've witnessed here in the last week, are there lessons that Canadian politicians can take from what we've seen? Who wants to start that, Chantal? Well, it's a very simple lesson. It's not based on ideology, and it's not just watching the U.S. It's what happened with the transition to a different government in the U.K.

Do we always need to proceed so slowly when we do change within parties or within families that it takes months and months and months when other countries that are comparable manage to effect change at the top or craft cabinets within days where we take months? And does it not make our politics very stale unless we have really interesting contests? But beyond that, I've, you know, I've been off. So I've been watching from a distance. But there are people in conservative circles who believe that this is the dawn of a new right-wing age. But that is not what I saw in France, and that's not what I've been seeing in the UK. And again, in both places and in the U.S., what I've seen is that there is a really, really strong progressive current, and it's still there.

In the same way that, you know, after the pandemic, when people started demonstrating for Black Lives Matter, the message was we are still there. And you kind of look at what happened in the French elections. You look at what happened in the French elections, you look at what happened in the U.S. over the past week, and it reminds, and I think that's bad news for the conservatives and for Pierre Poilievre, it reminds progressives in this country that they are still there. You know, I wonder if, you know, it would have been one thing if Biden had stayed in and somehow managed to beat Trump,

which it didn't look like it was going to do that. And after all, that's why he probably stepped down. But if Harris manages to beat Trump, what impact does that have here, Bruce? You know, it depends to some degree on what kind of campaign she runs. I was listening to a really interesting podcast in the car earlier today, the Hacks on Tap one that I think we've all probably listened to from time to time. And David Axelrod, I think, was the one who was making the point, maybe it was Mike Murphy, was making the point that if she writes,

if she runs a campaign that feels like it's saying there are two Americas, there's mine and there's yours, the view that was offered was that she was going to lose, that there were enough people kind of unwilling to embrace this idea of the kind of the progressive America as the right one to triumph right now. I think that's probably right. I think it's maybe more particularly the case for her that she needs to demonstrate that she can talk about these other issues that matter to people separate and apart from those. So where does that take me in terms of in Canada, first of all, I want to just say Chantal is absolutely right that the size and the scale of the change that the liberals would need is significant. This is not incrementalism.

This is not let's go to the reset fridge and pull out the diet coke of resets. This is you got to really go for it. So if you're not going to change leadership and that's one part of a reset agenda for some people, then everything else has to meet a higher wow test, if I can put it that way, in order for people to's about the degree to which the government says, we are yanking the wheel in the direction, policy direction of solving your problems now. We are here as a government of service rather than a government of aspiration. And we get what it is that is a specific pain point. If I were advising Trudeau, I would advise him to do what lots of politicians, when they do do it, feel the benefits of, but almost nobody ever wants to do it, which is to say, we missed the mark on a few things. We missed a couple of important cues. Maybe we should have been beating up on the grocery products issue two years ago, and maybe the answer isn't going to be

in the grocery bill of rights, but it's going to be in some other version of the bully pulpit and regulation. I don't know what the specific policy choices are. My argument is really for a powerful reset. So last point for me is if Kamala Harris runs a centrist oriented campaign, a unifying campaign, the kind of campaign that she's talking about where she says to women, we're not going back. That's not a disunifying message. It's a unifying message, if you like. I think the room is there for the leading progressive party, the Liberal Party, to do the same thing, especially if the Pierre Poliev Conservative Party decides that it wants to tap into a little bit more some of those themes that J.D. Vance talks about and some of the ones

that in his worst moments Donald Trump rattles on about. I don't think we know how the Conservatives will play if they face a Liberal Party that looks more competitive. Right now they're on cruise control at 15 or 20 points ahead and they're basically just trying not to make any mistakes or drawn in get drawn into a conversation where they might injure themselves well because for the most part the campaign such as it is here is not about them right they don't want it to be no it's about you know it's a it's about the liberals. Let me ask you this question. Don't tell Heather, finger up, though.

I saw it. I just wanted to mention, I believe a Trump victory is a bad scenario for both Trudeau and Poitier. There is no payoff for Poitier in a Trump victory. On that score, you should be secretly cheering on Kamala Harris because people or questions will become very pointed as to how he handles Trump, how close he gets. You know, 60% of Canadians already say they're rattled by the prospect of a Trump victory. So there's no payoff here for Poiliev. He would be lucky if Harris wins, because it will help him look like a normal change in government every decade thing, rather than

what will happen if we elect a right-wing government that may get along with these people south of the border. So beyond that, I also note that if she does win, she will have scored points for an incumbent in a year when incumbents all lose. But it will not escape notice that this will have been achieved through a leadership change. Yeah, but the fact of the matter for her is they're not looking at her this will have been achieved through a leadership change. Yeah, but the fact of the matter for her is they're not looking at her as an incumbent, right? I mean, all the excitement around her in this kind of first week is that she's, you know, a new face. She's not a new face, but it's sort of new face, new age, new era, new generation, all that stuff.

And Chrystia Freeland should get no ideas from that. Well, that's the next point I was going to make. Because I'm not sure how well Kamala Harris was known a week ago in the United States, but she's sure known now. It's been a remarkable unveiling of a candidate. It's just been something like I don't think any of us have ever seen before. But so here's the question. You know, I was kind of surprised. I'll be interested to hear what Bruce has to say about this,

because I know not all polls or surveys are ones that Bruce thinks are well done or well positioned or responsible to sort of enter the fray. But I was surprised by a survey that came out midway by Bruce's old firm, Abacus, that tried to identify how many Canadians were aware of certain people by putting their pictures up. Politicians. And obviously, Trudeau was way up there. I think, you know, over 90%. And that's no surprise that somebody who's been

prime minister for almost a decade, most Canadians would know who that person is. But second was Jagmeet Singh, you know, in the sort of mid to high 70s. Third was Polyev, where one out of three Canadians did not know who this guy was when they saw his picture. Now, for somebody who supposedly has a 15 to 20 point lead, you'd think they'd have better identifiable factors than that of the others they were really

others i mean i think christopher freeland was at the top of the list but was down there somewhere in the mid-20s and melanie jolie and anita anon they were all kind of bunched together way down at the bottom and this is once again this is not who do you like this is see this picture do you know who that is um way down near the bottom was mark carney like seven points or something so what does that mean what does that say anything about how i don't know interested we are in in outside the three of us in canadian politics in are outside of the three of us in Canadian politics in the middle of the summer of 2024. Does it say something about them?

I'm not sure what to think about it, if anything. Bruce. I love David, and he and I have done a lot of creative work together. And so I admire his creativity. And we once did a poll together where we took a picture of my son-in-law and a picture of a friend of ours and just ran a poll saying, which of these two would you vote for? You know, most people should answer, well, I don't know enough about them, but of course people did vote and they voted for not my son-in-law. And so for me, look, this,

this doesn't really, it does certainly assert that there's a lot of people that aren't paying as much attention to politics as we are and the people who are following this podcast that's for sure um but i don't think it matters that much if people can identify them from a picture i also feel like there's different ways of doing it if you gave people a picture and three names they probably would be able to pick the right name in a much higher proportion. But at the end of the day, there can be an advantage in not being so well known. I mean, I think one of the biggest problems that Justin Trudeau has is that he has been prime minister for enough years for people to get tired of you generally, regardless of how good you are or popular you are when you start.

But he had those kind of pandemic years, which are like dog years for incumbents. Like they feel like seven years because the exposure is so significant and so overwhelming. And so I believe that being a fresh face is arguably a benefit. But I also think that at the point in time when people are called upon to compare candidate A or candidate B, leader A, leader B, that's when that matters. They'll dial in. They'll pay attention. They'll consider them on the basis of party, on the basis of positions, and on the basis of personality. And so if they don't know these personalities, to me now doesn't really mean that they won't know them at a given point in time in the future. I happen to think that that poll you talk about only shows one person in the basically normal range, and that's Pierre Poilievre.

And why do I say that? Because an over-average, abnormal number of Canadians could recognize Justin Trudeau long before he was prime minister, for all the obvious reasons. And Jack Mead's saying it's kind of a giveaway, right? We're showing you a political personality federally. It's really hard to

not know that this is Jock Mead Singh. If you offer names, everyone would get it right, especially if you say Mr. White, Mr. Snow, Mr. Singh, which of the three. So I'm not sure that means anything, but to Bruce's point, two and a half years ago,

if you'd asked Quebecers to identify the Parti Québécois leader, and I would dare you guys to do so on a picture with no name, most Quebecers would probably have said, we don't know who this person is, unless they were devoted PQ supporters. And there were a few of them. And today, Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon is leading in the polls in Quebec on the basis of his performance with three or four members in the National Assembly. And do you remember the year that you taught that you would be funny by presenting the at-issue panel with pictures of people? And none of us could recognize a woman who was actually a federal cabinet minister from Saskatchewan and we do this for a living

and we all sat there and you know possibly it ended up being on her but it was on us because we actually showed me some of the current liberal ministers, just their pictures. And maybe I'm going to go get, you know, a beer in the fridge rather than have to show that I don't have a clue who that person is. That's the problem with the cabinet shuffle, right? Trying to make headlines. For most of these people who are sworn in, you're never going to hear about them again until the next cabinet shuffle, right? Trying to make headlines. For most of these people who are sworn in,

you're never going to hear about them again until the next cabinet shuffle. But that's the evolution of cabinet. I would venture that most of us knew almost everyone who was a minister in Brian Mulroney's cabinet. That's true. On his height. It was a different era.

Yeah. Definitely. What are we missing this summer? I mean, it's easy to talk about the Trudeau story, and in a way the Polyab story, but there's got to be more going on. What are we missing? Well, you know, one of the things that I'm fascinated by,

and we're sort of just touching on it, is the speed of the news cycle, and in particular the degree to which we can decide we've heard enough about one story and we need to move on and we're going to move on to something else. It seems to be accelerated. I mean, here we are days after a sniper almost killed the US president. I don't want to over dramatize it. I think it was a piece of glass that hit him, not a bullet, but that doesn't really matter. The it was a really serious event.

And it feels as though it's kind of moved out of the news cycle because Biden resigned and because people want to talk about the Kamala, the candidacy, and, and, and. And so for me, thinking about the political context, it's a reminder that two things, really. One is back to this point of if the liberals are going to do a reset, it better be a big, powerful and sustained reset in order for it to have any meaningful impact because this notion that you can have a budget and you'll deliver an hour and a half worth of goodies and everybody will kind of walk away going, boy, there was more goodies in that than I thought there was. That's not the world that we live in now. So a reset needs to be powerful and sustained in order to have any kind of meaningful impact. But it's also the case that, lest the conservatives imagine that Pierre

Pauliev's 15 to 20 point lead is built on some really firm foundation that couldn't be shaken. I think that looking at the United States, we're seeing a situation in real time where political circumstance can change. Now, we'll see polls in the next few days. It'll tell us a little bit more about that, but things can change in politics pretty quickly. And the notion that the liberals, you know, if they, that there's almost no time on the clock to establish a reset. I don't know that that's true anymore.

I think people kind of learn things and accumulate opinions and their opinions can change in time periods that are less than 18 months or 15 months or 12 months, sometimes in as little as two months. You know, when you talk about how fast things are happening, it was, you know, it was only a month ago that the debate, the disastrous debate happened and that dominated the story and it clearly changed a month ago that the debate, the disastrous debate happened. And that dominated the story. And it clearly changed a lot of things as a result. Then you have the assassination. Then you have Biden stepping down. Then you have Harris starting up.

And it's all been on a month. Well, and yesterday we had to learn what brat meant. And I don't know about the rest of you, but it took me longer than i thought it was going to learn that i've been brought for a long time and don't forget the in between the republican convention which i believe focused a lot of minds on the other side of the the spectrum you know among the and i don't think you can compare the trump thing to anything that's happening in this country or trump pierre poilievre the parallels fail at some point i think most canadians do not see the conservative party and pierre poilievre as uh the equivalent of donald trump and the rupture in the past but But among the prime ministers that we did cover,

that did manage to overcome, and it was earlier in their tenure, but a gap in the polls and come back from behind to win a majority government, there is Brian Mulroney. And what Brian Mulroney did was not a reset or promising more of the same. He found a large issue, one that goes over and above the everyday politics of we're going to help you build more houses or we're going to help you with grocery prices, which I don't think anybody really believes, to tell you the truth. But he managed to find an issue that he brought to Canadians and asked them to make a serious adult choice on something that you could reasonably oppose.

But he changed that election in a debate of ideas, not a debate over promises, which I think don't favor the incumbent at this point ever. I'm not sure what Justin Trudeau or the Liberal Party could come up with that would allow them to, one, give Canadians a serious choice, and two, distinguish the Liberals from the Conservatives in a way that would override the fatigue with their regime. But the fact that they're not coming up with any big ideas tells me that Canadians are right to think that they have come to the end of their intellectual capital, having spent it over eight

or nine tough years in office. And that is why change happens. Because people, in the end, they decide you're basically asking people to vote for you because you're not as bad as the person who would win. I don't think that's a winning proposition after nine years in office. Okay, I've got to take a quick last break, but we'll have enough time when we come back for Bruce is going to outline what the major reset should be for the Liberal government. He's going to tell us what that is, and Sean will tell me what's one of her own. But first, this last break.

And welcome back. The final segment of our summer good talk for this July. We'll be back again in August, the last Friday in August. So keep that one in mind. Okay, Bruce, you suggested a couple of times that one of the things that the liberals would need, more so than just a cabinet shuffle or a budget speech or a throne speech. They would need a major reset. What qualifies as a major reset?

Well, I mean, I think there's a reset that involves a policy focus and there's a reset that involves a change in tone and communication style as well. So let me separate the two and qualify my comments on the policy question by saying I'm not the person who should come up with the right policy idea. that Pierre Trudeau, for him, a big reset kind of idea would have been wage and price controls, would have been constitutional repatriation, would have been the National Energy Program. These are big bang policies. These are kind of put a cleaver on the table and have everybody look at it and say, okay, that's big enough, controversial enough, potentially important enough that that I want to pay attention. I want to see I want to sense that there's a new level of energy. Incumbent parties struggle with the practical realities of big idea changes like that because there are practical problems with anything big like that. And sometimes it is right to avoid those big ideas

because they are impractical rather than to embrace them because they're politically advantageous. But that's a problem that incumbents have that challengers don't have. And that's part of why Pierre-Paul Lièvre can say, axe the tax, and liberals can say, well, but it's the most efficient way to reduce emissions in terms of the longer term economic. And you've lost most people at that point, because ax the tax sounds like food is going to be cheaper, fuel is going to be cheaper, everything might be cheaper. Whether that's true or not, that's the political combat around the idea of taxation. And I think the liberals have put themselves in a bad place on taxation, in part because they sounded through this last budget like they were willing to

go to the taxation window again, because they wanted to find more money to solve more problems for people. And at the end of the day, people heard taxes rather than solutions. And it was kind of predictable that they would. But people are not in that mood. end of the day, people heard taxes rather than solutions. And it was kind of predictable that they would. But people are not in that mood. One of the reasons why young people are moving more towards the conservatives now, and we see it in the United States as well, is they're frustrated with the price of things. And so, you know, if a conservative politician says, I'm going to ask the tax, I'm going to make your paycheck go farther, a lot of young people aren't stopping at,

but are you progressive enough on climate change or do you share my views on DEI? They're just going, I'm having trouble making ends meet and I need something that helps me now. So I think for the Trudeau government, a reset has to be squarely in there. They can look at five or six other policy areas. But if you're not solving the cost of living problem for people, you're probably not going to address it. A couple of other things come to mind.

I think the Liberals have too many voices telling too many different stories. And this has been a problem that we've talked about before. 30 odd, almost 40 ministers, I guess, all with social media profiles, all talking about places they go, meals they have, fancy people that they meet. This is discordant with the mood of the country that says, tell me what you're doing for me, or don't talk to me about what you're doing that you're kind of enjoying or proud of, and never let me feel as though you're doing for me or don't talk to me about what you're doing that you're kind of enjoying or proud of and never let me feel as though you're asking for appreciation of the work that you're doing because that's what the votes were for in 2021. So there's a reorientation of government as leader and teacher and exhorter to government there to serve you. I think that's the biggest, most important tonal change,

if you like, from a communication standpoint, in addition to the policy reset that I think would be useful for them. He's left you two minutes, Chantal. Oh, that's more than enough since I'm not going to be writing up government policy anytime soon. You know, I'm not looking for policy. I'm looking for what actually qualifies as a major reason. Let's be serious.

If you really wanted to send the message that you are going to be a different kind of government, the first thing you do is change leaders. And that is the attraction of Mark Carney, someone who's got economic credentials that environmentalists find attractive and who incarnates a different kind of liberal government. I'm not sure that you can do that, being Justin Trudeau or being Chrystia Freeland, who is really associated to Justin Trudeau. So it's possible to talk until the cows come home about this policy or that

policy, but it will not change the fact that you need probably a new salesperson and that new salesperson should come from outside. And I'm not saying that because I believe it will work miracles. But it is really hard to sell yourself as an agent of significant change when you've been in office for nine years. And you've been telling people that, you know, you're going to have their backs whenever you open your mouth. Now, that being said, I'll just reinforce Bruce's point about teaching. In the early years of the Trudeau government, I think a number of us, and I'm certainly one of them, kind of got fatigued with being told by the prime minister that he was a feminist. There came a moment where you thought, well, where would we have been, all of us who managed to make our

way through life without Justin Trudeau, if only he'd come before. And you will have noticed that he stopped saying this, I'm a feminist thing, which is really, it's kind of irritating, but it drives the point about the messaging of the liberal government. You don't know how badly off you were until we came along. Aren't you fortunate? And don't you understand that you need us? I think they really need to drop that act, not just the feminist prime minister thing,

but the entire we know best and don't you know that we have the real values that you want to have. And before us, they didn't exist, those values, obviously. We're going to leave it at that. A really interesting conversation today. And I'm glad we found time to meet in July, and we will meet again in August. I know you're off again on another bicycling trip, Chantal,

so enjoy that. And Bruce will be at the lake, I'm sure, for a good part of time when he's not at the golf course. I'll finally be in Scotland when you guys are not. Well, they'll all be talking about us saying, do you know Peter and Bruce? Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

That's right. Okay, listen, take care. Have a safe August, and we'll see you in about a month's time. Yeah, take care, you guys. Okay. Thanks to you as well, our listeners. Talk to you again in a month.