The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Big Bad Budget -- or Was It?

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Chantal and Bruce on Chrystia Freeland's budget -- its had some not-so-good reviews, and, at the same time, some surprisingly good reviews from places you might not expect. So what should we make of that?

Are you ready for a good talk? I know that was a pretty sad effort at trying to sound Scottish. It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad. Well, I'm in Scotland today. I'm in Dornick. And that's why your good talk is coming to you a little later than normal on a Friday. But we're here. And we've got a lot to talk about.

Chantel's in Montreal. Bruce is in Ottawa. And let me start this way. I remember when Preston Manning was trying to make a name for himself in the early 1990s, and the way he chose to do it was not by criticizing the government or the federal government or the conservative government. He always talked about the Mulroney government. And everything was a criticism of the Mulroney government, tying Mulroney to the government, whether Mulroney was there or not. And we know what happened in the 93 election. Now, I've been watching this Candace Bergen and

the interim leader of the Conservative Party. and whenever she talks about the government, she talks about it in terms of the NDP liberal government. Right from the opening salvo after the agreement was announced. That was her ticket, she thinks, to picking up votes and picking up support for the Conservative Party. So her first big target, one assumes, would have been the first budget. And sure enough, that's how she came out firing. Does it work, Chantal? No, I think it misfired. And there are reasons for that.

The Conservatives have spent the weeks since the NDP signed an agreement with the liberals painting this as an open bar, a buffet, eat all you can, it's all the same price, we're all going to be paying for it for the rest of our lives. You'll see spending like you've never seen before. If I were to draw a parallel, they did to this budget and rendered the same service to the Liberals as they did a year ago to vaccines, spending weeks telling Canadians that we were going to be last in the world to get vaccinated, and in the process process making the Trudeau government look like a bunch of vaccine savvy geniuses. Well yesterday the first comments out of the lockup were that this was a

much more modest budget than the previous installment 800 pages versus 200 this time, that some of the revenues that the government had received as part of the, as a result of the increase in energy prices was kept aside to go to the deficit, that there was actually a track to, whether you buy that track or not, a track to a $8 billion deficit in 26-27. And all the headlines that the liberals got, or almost, and columns had this theme that it wasn't a free spending budget that everyone expected. Thank you, Conservative Party, for having raised expectations that it was easy, because there is a lot of spending in there. But it was a lot easier to present the budget as something that was reasonable after two weeks of caricaturing whatever the deal was with the ndp so interestingly enough those the the i was watching the outs from the budget lockup

yesterday and the Conservatives looked like they were reacting to a budget that they had not read, which is never, as you know, particularly good. It's also hard to see anything in that budget that they can hang their hat on for very long, especially since the House, as of today, is not sitting for two weeks. So I'd call it, one more point, I'd call it a successful political operation on the front, also that it seems to have reassured many

in the more fiscal conservative wing of the Liberal Party that all taps are now open to keep the NDP happy. And that's really interesting. You know, here's where I would try to perhaps, but not offer a defense for Bergen and the conservatives, but offer an explanation that perhaps they knew very well what was in the budget and they realized that they'd been had. But they also realized that most people are not

going to read the budget i used to hate budget days right like i hated them i mean i i didn't understand them i'd stand there in the briefings i didn't know what the heck they were talking about and for the average person out there um i you know they're never going to read the budget whether it's 200 pages or 800 pages i did don't don't yell at me yet chantelle it's're never going to read the budget, whether it's 200 pages or 800 pages. Don't yell at me yet, Chantel. I'm not going to. It's just that in this era, in these days, you can get away with saying stuff that's totally off the wall. We watched it again this week in the U.S. over the hearings for the new Supreme Court justice. And, you know, maybe that's what their spin was.

Bank on the public, not reading it, not understanding it, and they'll go for what we say. I totally agree. And that was my point about headlines and column headings. Because by the same reasoning, I don't know if you've read every budget column i couldn't there are just too many uh at some point you say enough but we all read the titles and the titles all suggest well you know we've escaped the worst or this was a pretty reasonable budget or they're raining back uh spending which is why I'm saying it's not the budget. We're not discussing substance here.

We're discussing a political play. The Conservatives created a frame that allowed the Liberals to have exactly the headlines they needed to reassure a lot of Canadians that they had not gone spending crazy. Even John Iverson gave them a nice spin, which is unusual coming out of the National Post. Good guy, John. We all like John. But it was a surprise, a bit of a surprise. Bruce, your take on this part of the budget discussion? Well, to be honest, I was bracing myself for a budget that i wouldn't like i thought i was

going to hear something that was going to be windy and self-satisfied and self-congratulatory and full of these kind of epic we're what I, that's not the budget that was tabled. And as a result, not just of my weak expectations for it, but the substance of it, I actually felt contained a lot of things that were interesting ideas. And the overall framework of it was reassuring on the fiscal side. I think that this is probably now, it helps that the starting point was the biggest deficit, the string of very, very large deficits, but this is probably the biggest miss to the better of any fiscal projection that we've ever seen in my lifetime. It was a giant miss to the positive. And the fact that the government didn't spend all of that is obviously by fiscal

conservatives considered to be a good thing. But the point that you guys were talking about, I think is the really interesting one in terms of the politics of it. I think it baffled the conservatives. I don't think that they knew what was happening. I don't think it really matters in the end, because I don't think people are going to consume the politics of this except people inside the bubble and people who are trying to figure a couple of things out. So the conservatives basically produced a lot of social media advertising that said this is an NDP budget and it's going to drive up inflation, the implication being giant spending, when at the same time, John Iveson says, no prudent budget and Andrew Coyne couldn't work up a sweat, criticizing at least the part that I saw of what he had to say. And so if you've got the conservatives saying it's a giant nod in the direction of the NDP,

those left of center liberals who want to make sure they get all the progressive votes are going to like the sound of that. But Chantal's point about all of those more centrist liberals in the cabinet and the caucus, they'll love this budget. They'll think there was plenty in this budget that's meaningful on the housing question. They'll like the fact that there was defense spending. They'll like the fact that there was a big focus on mining and economic growth. And they'll love the fact that the fiscal story that they have to take home to their constituents is a much better one than was supposed to be the case even only a few days ago. So overall, I agree with Chantel, a very effective political exercise for the liberals,

in part because they surprised a lot of people. It also helped them, by the way, that this is the first budget since 2018 that is not a pre-election or a pandemic and pre-election budget. So instead of having a Christmas tree with all those trimmings, because Christmas is coming, called an election, you basically have the structure of a tree to which trimmings will be added. That is the gift of time that the deal with the NDP gave them. And for the NDP, people have been saying, and I don't disagree, that there's not all that much in there for the NDP.

But here's the choice that Jagmeet Singh had in a parallel universe where he has not signed a deal with Justin Trudeau. He gets that same budget with no dental care, and he still has to vote for it because he doesn't want to have an election. So if you're going to be doing that, you're much better off being able to say, I see I got this, and I'll get more of those trimmings to pick over the next two or three budgets. Especially if you're the fourth place party. And I, you know, listen, I agree with you.

You can't judge a three-year deal on three days or whatever it's been since the deal was made. But did they get had in a way, the NDP here, Bruce? No, I think they needed to have some some clear air i think they weren't interested in having another election and i think they saw an opportunity to put on the table an arrangement that gave some profile to a promise that they liked i understand the deal but in terms of, did they get had? No, actually, I don't feel like the public opinion on this budget is going to be that the NDP were left out in the cold or they ended up being kind of robbed. I mean, the dental care thing is in there more or less. I mean, the language is a little bit kind of muddy because I think the idea is still muddy, but it's there.

And that's basically what they said. They articulated that they're going to criticize certain parts of it, but basically that they're going to pass it, which I think is, you know, is probably that's the deal that they made. And I think that they got the deal that they made and they got, I think they may be, there is one other dynamic though, which I'm fascinated by, which is that every time the conservatives say the liberal NDP government, the liberal NDP budget, the liberal NDP, they're almost describing a political party that doesn't exist right now, but could exist at some point in the future,

and might not be a good thing for the conservative party. And by that, I'm referring to the fact that both the Liberals and the NDP have bigger accessible voter pools than the Conservative Party does. And in the past, there's obviously been some friction between the parties. And there's some New Democrat voters who would never consider voting Liberal or say they wouldn't, and some Liberal voters who say they would never consider voting a democrat but there's a lot who basically would say i want progressive policy and the shades on the fiscal side are kind of somewhere in the middle so i don't know if if i'm the conservatives if they're really doing much more than pleasing themselves by talking about a liberal NDP budget or a liberal NDP government. I'm not sure that everybody else out there takes those partisan brands and reacts to them in the same way.

The other thing is to go back to your early opening about the Mulroney government, the Mulroney government. There is a lot more fatigue within the electorate as a result of time in office with Justin Trudeau than with the NDP liberal agreement. And having replaced the Trudeau budget, Trudeau government, Trudeau free land with NDP and liberals, they could actually be helping a government that is aging put a fresh coat of paint on itself. I'm not sure they see that because in their echo chamber, everything that they are doing works perfectly well. That echo chamber, as they know and we know, is too small.

And unless you understand the psychology of the people who have not been voting for you and try to adjust to it, you are just going to perpetuate your problem. And at this point, with a leadership campaign on, they're basically talking among themselves again. When we talk about, or at least when I talk about budgets, you get overcome by all the numbers. And it's always been part of the issue about covering budgets what do you believe how much should you believe in the numbers you're hearing and what's the likelihood of them turning out to be the kind of numbers you're seeing whether it's on deficits projected deficits although they don't seem to quite do as much as they used to do on projected deficits. But the kind of numbers that are piled into a document like that, it's funny how you say,

like it was only 200 pages, not the 800 pages we were worried about. There's still 200 pages of numbers. How believable are they based on, you know, what we're looking at in terms of the economic picture in the country and all the stats that firm up? Bruce? Well, I actually thought that I read the speech and I went through the document this morning. And I thought the speech was actually a pretty well written one. I didn't watch it. I didn't really want the performance part of it.

I just wanted to kind of read the language and the themes and how it was written. And I thought it was well-written and well-constructed. And as these things go, I mean, it's not one that people are going to kind of put into books and say, you know, 25 years from now, do you remember that speech? But, you know, these never really are. And then I looked at the at the longer form document. And I know that there's a tendency to sort of say, well, why does it have to be 800 pages or 24 pounds or whatever? There was a lot of stuff in there. And not all of it was numbers and projections. A lot of it was describing different elements of what the government's going to do. It actually read like a more detailed version of

the kind of thin throne speech that we had after the election. It gave more sense of what it is that the government's going to do, which felt to me more reliable, at least in the sense that Chantal's referring to, that there's not going to be an election in the near term. And the government is sort of saying, we're going to do this by this year, we're going to table a Pharmacare Act by the end of 2023, we're going to and there's a lot of stuff in there, including a lot of stuff that many people won't know very much about, but it's probably helpful for them to know. The competitiveness and the productivity challenge that Chrystia Freeland is talking about. There's some data in there.

There's a lot on critical minerals and where they are in Canada and what we're going to do. It might not be the most captivating reading for everybody, but that's not its purpose. Its purpose is to kind of give people a sense of what are the considerations that government is using to make the choices that it's making with their money. And in that sense, I actually felt that there was quite a lot of interesting material in it. So, to your question about what do we make of those projections and they do project a very modest deficit in 26-27. I don't think they know themselves and the budget speech makes that clear that there is too much uncertainty. That is what they're offering you and it's comforting to look at but that doesn't mean that they are willing to go to great measures to live or die by those

numbers because they simply don't know um i'm like you i don't have a great love for budgets but i there but there are many ways to look at them and it's interesting to see how people look at them and to get a sense of what is really happening a A lot of the things that Bruce talks about are interesting, but they feel a bit half-baked. There is no thought process to support them yet. So, you kind of look and say, this could be interesting, but what does it mean? And you fear, suspect, that the authors don't really know. This is out there there but we're going to spend more on national defense but we need to have a fresh defense policy well then the chicken egg which one is going to come first but aaron wary from the cbc i thought that something that is interesting because it speaks to

you know the the big lines in the budget he listed where the biggest spending was going in this budget. And he came down with, in order, the biggest spending announced in the budget is climate change, reconciliation with indigenous people, housing, and defense. a really interesting way to look at it because it does give you a sense of where the core of the government's plan really is beyond this number that number or those initiatives that are supposed to make the economy grow without explanation as to what that will actually do so i thought that was a really interesting list because it does remind you that with except national defense, this is what Justin Trudeau was elected on in 2015. You know, it's a good point because we should write those four areas down and look at them a year from now, because I think it was you, Chantelle, pointed out that a year ago or so, the big item in the corner was care homes for seniors. Not even mentioned yesterday, right? You know, it was a year ago.

It was a pandemic ago, although we're still in it. So it's interesting to watch these things because often what happens with a throne speech is a little like what happens with, or excuse me, with a budget is a little like what happens with a throne speech. You get the broad strokes painted for you, and you have to wait for the details of how, if ever, they're going to unfold. And in a sense, it's the same way with a budget. Bruce, you wanted to add something there? Yeah, well, let's remember that the run up to the budget is essentially within government. A lot of departments putting together their best ideas based on the contemporary situation that they find themselves in, which, you know, in a lot of cases is quite volatile.

And then submitting them for consideration and triaging and funding. And so it does make sense that that process, which finishes up basically a week or so before the budget is tabled, does mean that departments and ministers don't know exactly what their outcome is going to be from that process until it's decided. And then it's announced and then they can uh they can say all right well we got this much money to do these things that we asked for we didn't get this other money that we were looking for and so now we're gonna we're gonna put that into into motion so that that never really that part doesn't really trouble me um in the sense that i see kind of how it how it works in that kitchen and it's a bit messy and that's, you know,

and maybe there's a better way to do it, but that's always been the way that I've seen Canada do it. I do think that on a couple of things, we really should sort of make it, we should take a minute and sort of reflect on the fact that on the climate issue, notwithstanding the fact that Pierre Poliev could be elected in the next election and try to unwind a lot of this, but there's pretty strong alignment

between the government and its climate ambition and industry wanting to do the same things for their own reasons in some cases, not just because of government commitments, but because investors and supply chain customers want to buy from places that have net zero emissions targets that have environmental and social and governance standards that are high. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, the idea that we could be two or three more years of having that baked into public policy that affects the way our oil companies operate. That's a meaningful change in this climate change debate. It may still turn out that carbon capture and storage isn't executing the way that people hope that remains to be seen. But we're locked now into a process for a period of time that should pay some dividends in terms of emissions reduction and reduced friction between the government and the oil patch. The other thing is that on the child care deal, that's all funded.

That funding is locked into this fiscal timetable. And the government has said, you're going to see those childcare costs come down within the next year, a year and a half, I think. And so that's a commitment with a timetable that regular people who pay those large costs now will be able to look at and say you did it or you didn't do it. But that money is going out the door, it's funded to be very hard for any future government to wind that back. And the last thing I'll say is on the housing question, which is for many people, the biggest pain point, right? If you're a young person and you're not in the housing market, you're really looking at it as an insurmountable hill to climb. I think the government put a lot of effort and pieces and tools on the table. Remains to be seen whether in the aggregate,

they're going to be breakthrough items in, in crack this, this really, really troubling problem. And it's not only a problem here to be, to be clear. But I think that the fact that there is a little bit of trial and there will be some error is better than not putting as much effort into it. And so I was happy to see a lot of effort into it. I still don't know if this is going to be enough. All right. We're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, we're going to pick up in a way on the climate change story in this sense. Chantelle has mentioned to us a couple of times

in the last few weeks about the Bay du Nord project. If you don't know anything about it, it's quite a spectacular project off of New being friends with the oil industry actually owns its own pipeline and this week environmentally improved the Beta Nord project. What does all that mean and what spin should be had on that one? We'll do that when we come back. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk from Scotland. Iverson would be proud.

He'd be proud we're in Scotland, or at least I am. Chantel's in Montreal. Bruce is in ottawa special uh well we call it a budget edition but we're done with the budget we've moved it aside pushed it aside because bay du nord is here now and it's a big energy project supported heavily by the newfoundland government desirous of the federal government's approval in terms of environmental approval, and they got it this week, which is interesting. It's had some people scratching their heads about what exactly is going on here. How could this government, federal government, approve this project?

Chantel, you've talked about this before in terms of telling us to focus on this issue because it's an interesting one and you get the opening shot at it so this is a decision that the federal minister of the environment stephen gilbert struggled with for a while he twice postponed a. He has had on his desk since last fall a favorable recommendation from the federal assessment people who looked into the project for four years and who concluded that this would have little negative impact on the environment or a minor impact on the environment. You don't wake up in the morning if you're Stephen Gilboa knowing his environmentalist credentials

to be a person that will have to go to microphones to defend approving a fossil fuel project of a significant magnitude in any event. But the recommendation was favorable. It's a project for Newfoundland and Labrador that would really give an assist to the province's economy, and it is not in great shape, as everyone knows. This is a project that also has a much more modest footprint than a fossil fuel project. And environmentalists who are listening to this and will jump to their keyboards to say that's not totally true. What I mean is that the carbon footprint to get the oil out is immensely more modest than to get oil out of the oil sands. The environmental argument is that, yes, but once that oil is out there and it gets burned, its contribution is virtually the same to

climate change emissions, and that is also accurate. So, what's the political decision here? And there is politics in there. It divided cabinet for a while. one um if you were going to say no to that project you would never approve another fossil fuel development in this country again because it is almost impossible to imagine for instance that anything related to the oil sands could result in a new project that would have as modest a carbon footprint. And I'm not saying that by a tiny margin, a huge margin. By the way, on the same day, the same minister, federal minister, told Alberta that it was going to be turning down a project of an oil sands mine by Spancor.

And there is no scale, comparable scale between between the two the other issue that came into play beyond the economics and this uh was is the fact that the government of newfoundland and current premier premier furby is one of the main allies of prime minister justin trudeau at the provincial table the other one being john horgan justin Trudeau doesn't have that many allies that he can afford to just throw out the window. The environmental movement reacted with predictable furor to the decision this week. But I suspect that if it had gone the other way, the reaction in Newfoundland and Labrador and in energy circles would have been even more vocal than what we saw in the case of the environmental movement. Now, to I think Minister Gilbo's credit, he did not hide from his own decision. And he gave interviews to all comers and he defended it in the House of Commons. And I believe that if he did himself any good with this decision,

it wasn't with the people who are the environmental lobby and who used to be his companions in arms in a previous life, but probably within the government itself, where he showed that sometimes he would go along with decisions that would not have been his first preference and then would do the after sales job of defending it, even if it was, by all the evidence I saw and heard, pretty uncomfortable. Bruce, obviously, I want to hear your thoughts on this. I mean, on the face of it, there is this look. Newfoundland's pretty well tied up by the liberals in terms of seats.

They're very popular on the rock. The opposite is true in Alberta. And the decisions have been going, you against the industry in alberta and now for the industry in newfoundland does that really look right true i don't know that that's true i i think that a lot of what industry in alberta was asking for was included in this budget in the form of tax credits for emission reduction effort, specifically a lot of support for the idea of carbon capture and storage and more openness than we've ever seen so far for the idea of using small modular nuclear reactors as part of the mix of how we produce energy and meet our energy needs in this country. So

I actually think we're in a different phase in the relationship between Ottawa and the Alberta oil patch. But I think that for me, that just means that the politics of fighting climate action has dissipated somewhat. It's dissipated in part because in the corporate boardrooms, there isn't much appetite for it. You cannot get sustained long-term investment from the biggest investment pools around the world unless you have a net zero emissions target, unless you're committed to reducing emissions. And our biggest players, they don't need to hear that from Stephen Guilbeault or Jonathan Wilkinson or Justin Trudeau, they hear it from their chief financial officers, their chief investment officers, and their sustainability

officers. So I think that's a good place for us to be. Now on the Bay du Nord thing, sorry, Peter, I interrupted you. Did you want to make another point? Well, I was going to say, I wasn't talking about the boardrooms. I get it. And you've been, you've strongly argued that position now for the last year or so, that there's been a real shift in the boardrooms. I get it. I hear it. I was talking about the voters. And they're angry. A lot of them in Alberta.

And not just their premier for a variety of reasons but they're angry at the federal government feeling that they've been screwed on the on the energy front and now they watch a province that votes liberal get a helping hand a lot of those voters are angry at the government about everything all the time and i don't know that that the policy mix. I mean, I think there is disinformation that gets into the political conversation in Alberta, to the extent that it suggests that all you need to do is have a conservative government in Ottawa and one in Edmonton. And the world of climate action isn't going to affect you. Politicians shouldn't be telling Alberta voters that that's not responsible. It's not true, but it does happen.

And it is a it is part of the political dynamic. And of course, we allathy to the idea of what federal liberals in Ottawa do to the resource base income that Albertans count on. And not without some justification, some of that tension, but I think the modern version of it is over-torqued, overheated, and kind of misplaced in terms of what the Alberta economy and the workers of Alberta really need for the long term. On the Bayden Ore project, I think the thing that I'm struck by is that Chantal said a couple of times a really huge difference in the emissions intensity. That's really basically a way of saying how polluting are these barrels of oil from a greenhouse gas emissions standpoint?

And if we think about this differently, if you could make all of the barrels out of the oil sands be as low emitting as these barrels would be, we'd really be well on our way to achieving climate targets. These barrels are five times less emission intensive than the barrels from the oil sands. That's a huge thing. So you know, Chantal's right that either you believe that what our goal should be is this net zero target by 2050, in which case, choosing to support a project like this isn't necessarily going against that goal. It's kind of creating opportunities within the market for oil that better reflect the drive towards lower emissions. And at the same time, the government putting all of this money on the table for carbon capture and storage tax credits, to me is a fairly balanced policy. And I have to say, I think that

of all of the efforts that have been made in recent years, to take some of the political heat out of this issue and put hard policy ideas on the table. This has been a good week for Stephen Guilbeault and Jonathan Wilkinson, in terms of managing managing the really difficult politics of climate and oil. Just a couple of points. Yeah, just a couple of points. Of course, people who are in the climate change debate will say it's all good that we can reduce our carbon footprint by being better at extracting oil without having a huge carbon footprint. But climate change is a planetary issue.

And you're basically saying we are having a more modest carbon footprint to give the world more oil to burn to increase the world's carbon footprint. And that is where the notion that there is a so-called green oil project versus a dirty oil project kind of does not pass the test. But on Alberta, it's easy for political elites and others to just turn their guns on Justin Trudeau at every turn and say, this is all Justin Trudeau's fault. And I saw the reaction to the budget and to the decisions this week from Ottawa within Jason Kenney's government, some pretty strong talk about we are going to take matters in our own hands, and we maybe should set aside the rule of law. I was looking at this from the perspective of someone who has lived in a province that has had debates like that.

I was thinking, what are Alberta's goals? If they are saying that the current country as it is set up is stifling their energy ambitions. How do they explain Keystone XL? How is that Justin Trudeau's fault? Are they really saying that Andrew Scheer would have had a different answer from Joe Biden? How do they explain the opposition in BC to the building of more pipelines or the failure of the Energy East project

to take place in Quebec? Do they really believe that by taking the law in their own hands or going on their own, of more pipelines or the failure of the Energy East project to take place in Quebec, do they really believe that by taking the law in their own hands or going on their own, their neighbors would suddenly become more friendly to those projects? It's kind of a way, this blaming the liberal government is kind of a way to avoid looking at reality. And that, you know, Justin Trudeau did not prevent Alberta from having a great budget a few weeks ago because energy prices went up across the world, and no one from Ottawa came to say, stop the party. But that is the reality they live in.

They live in a global market that is going in a certain direction as a result of climate change, something that there is not a switch to turn off for a government anywhere, including on Parliament Hill. I know Bruce wants to argue that point and say you're absolutely wrong on all of that, Chantal. No, no, you're absolutely wrong on all of that chantal but no no you're right that's exactly right the world oil prices is such an important impact and you know it wasn't very many months ago that people were talking about the offshore and newfoundland uh with a view to will it survive uh the downturn in oil prices and um so look i i mean i i i'm kind of right where chantal is which is it you know it might be well it would be ideal i suppose if we weren't as a planet going to use

fossil fuels starting tomorrow but we are and there's nothing that ottawa can do beyond a certain amount to affect the demand. What we can do is improve the quality of our supply in terms of its impact on the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. And we can participate in a pretty aggressive effort to transition our transportation infrastructure, electric vehicles, and there's stuff in the budget to further kind of push in that direction. And a lot of effort in the budget to retrofit buildings and to build new buildings to standards that are better from the standpoint of emissions. So I actually think the government's got a pretty good lineup of policy measures in this space. And it's, and it's balanced, but I don't stay balanced in the sense of, you know, that there's a there's a hypocrisy baked into it that you say you care about this, but you're also doing that it's balanced in the sense of understanding

that, that the demand for our resources is going to continue. And we can provide that demand to a better standard of environmental governance than some other countries can. That's true in mining for sure and in forestry as well. And it can be increasingly true in oil and gas. The irony is what made Christia Freeland's budget look better, which was setting aside some of the revenues to bring down the deficit, is what allowed Jason Kenney to present that great budget. And that's the increase in energy prices. So it's not just Alberta that's got a stake in Canada's energy industry. It is all wedded to our public finances in ways that Canadians don't always measure.

And just in case anybody was thinking I was serious, I was kidding about how Bruce might react to what Chantelle just said. You were also kidding about us being in Scotland. Thanks for pointing it out. Well, you're more than welcome to come over. Are you coming? Yeah, right. I'm waiting for that it out. Well, you're more than welcome to come over. Are you coming? Yeah, right. I'm waiting for that plane ticket. The snow-capped mountains in the highlands today.

It was spectacular. While there's beautiful sun in the foreground on the mainlands of the highlands, if there's such a thing. Anyway, it's great over here. We have one more topic to discuss uh the latest on the conservative party leadership and we'll do that right after this and welcome back here listening to Good Talk here on SiriusXM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform here on The Bridge, Chantel's in Montreal, Bruce's in Ottawa. All right.

While I was jetting my way across the Atlantic last night and this morning, something was happening on the Jean Charest front, which is interesting to hear about and to try and theorize as to why he did what he did. So, Bruce, first of all, give us the facts and then give us your theory. Yeah, well, I have been struck by the fact that by two things. First of all, one is I'm looking at all these pictures and video of Pierre Poliev's events and they're they're busy. There's a lot of people there. It does kind of look like the world that COVID forgot. I almost want to go to those because it seems like there must be no covid there because nobody's wearing any masks and there's a lot of people um i'm only kidding about the there's no covid there there's probably covid there and there's a lot of it around ottawa right now and so everybody's kind of like is pretty anxious about the idea of being in those kinds of situations but

there's no doubt that he's putting that information out into the marketplace to as a kind of a shock and awe operation to let his competitors know that he's having no trouble getting large numbers of members of the Conservative Party signed up and ready to go and raring to go for him. And I think it's having an effect, which brings me to the second thing, which I've been thinking for some time that the chance for Jean Charest was really? Or is he going to sound like somebody that wants to create a different kind of conservative party than Pierre Pauliev would do? And I think he's, he's been trying the first approach a little bit, in my view, he doesn't, he hasn't until today, or maybe it was yesterday, taken really direct shots at Pierre Poliev. But I don't think anybody's going to beat Pierre Poliev.

And certainly nobody's going to beat him unless they criticize him, unless they go right after him and say, here's what's wrong with him. And so Charest started to do that. He picked a particular issue of you can't expect to be prime minister. He called it the chief legislator of the country and decide to cherry pick the laws that you think should be applied or enforced. And he was talking about Polyev's support for the convoy in that particular area.

But just for the sake of having the competition that I'd like to see, I hope that Sheree keeps this up, steps it up, attacks Polyev's embrace of cryptocurrency, which I think is a pretty terrible idea, at least the way that Mr. Polyev has talked about it so far. And I hope we get to see a real dynamic fight between now and when the memberships close and then between membership closing and when they choose? Well, you will have to step it up. From what I saw before I left, mainly on Twitter and elsewhere, was a pretty low-key, not very interesting, sparsely attended couple of rallies. I mean, it had loser written all over it. So you're going to have to step up his game.

And he's capable of stepping up his game. We've seen the guy. Now, it's a few years since we saw him that way, but he knows how to campaign. He has in the past. Whether he can in today's world, I don't know. He certainly hasn't shown it yet um chantal okay let's be clear about those uh pictures that pierre poilievre is putting out on his social

media feed we have all covered a couple of conservative leadership campaigns over the past few years and we have not seen scenes like those the last time i saw scenes like those justin trudeau was running to be liberal leader and people were coming out in droves because they were curious they wanted to see him they wanted to have a piece of him that doesn't usually happen in a leadership campaign, and it is happening. And there is a point where the chariot camp cannot continue to ignore it and pretend that all is under control. Because in this case, those images that come from Atlantic Canada, Ontario, British Columbia, soon in Alberta this weekend. You can't deny them. They are not your usual elderly crowd that comes out for the party that is having a leadership campaign. And they will translate into members.

From the start, the proposition was that Pierre Poilier had a lead, a significant lead among existing members. But what we're seeing now are crowds that are going to add members for Pierre Poilievre to the conservative take. So I suspect that Mr. Chagas, who has seen more campaigns than the average politician, knows all of this and has decided and been told that unless he goes for a scorched earth campaign, he cannot win. But the problem with scorched earth campaigns is that they take a toll on you. They are hard to sustain for months and months on end. And the people who are attracted to Jean Chagall are attracted to him mostly for positive reasons. So I listened to an interview he gave in French today, which was a two-part interview. It started off on the budget, and Mr. Chagall went through his analysis of the budget, which, as you can guess, was not terribly positive for Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau.

And then he switched to attacks on Poiliev for picking and choosing who can break the law, as in the trucker's convoy, and it was as if someone had given him a shot of adrenaline. But Pierre Poiliev is not in front of him. They will have maybe two, maybe three debates. There will be more than two persons on that stage. It's increasingly hard to see how he overcomes or catches up to Pierre Poiliev in the membership sales or in energizing people enough that they show up to vote on September 10. Yeah, I agree with that. And if I were advising him, I would have, I listened to a part of an interview today where the interviewer said, you used to lead the Progressive Conservative Party. Are you still a progressive conservative? And, you know, every fiber in my body wanted him to say, well, yes, I'm still a progressive person and I want to lead the conservative party or words to that effect.

And he said, well, I'm a conservative. And to me, his only possible winning strategy is to is to be that option that doesn't push away progressive oriented voters, voters that care about equal rights for people of color, equal rights regardless of gender identity, that care about a child care program, that care about climate change. You can be a conservative and win in this country while still embracing those voters who care about those so-called progressive things. And it isn't all about labels. But if you don't define yourself as different from the guy who was standing with the convoy, don't expect people to to guess at that would be my advice. And I don't think he can win by running to secure the same kind of voters that not only Pierre Pauliev, but others in this race are going to be trying to secure as well. Well, if he has one thing on his side, it's time. September 10th is the voting day. But as Chantal points out, right now, it's all about momentum and selling memberships. And that cuts off long before September 10th.

Less than 60 days from now. Right. So if he's going to make a move, he's got to make it now. And whether it's in the debates or in some other fashion, it's got to happen soon. Or it could be an unfortunate decision on his part to have run for the leadership. But let's see what happens.

A couple of things to note before we leave. Next week, I am taking a little bit of a break. And as a result, we're into encore editions all next week, including right up to and including Good Friday. So there'll be no Good Talk a week from today. But we will be back two weeks from today with Good Talk, and we'll be back with a full slate of The Bridge episodes

for the week following next. One other thing I want to make you aware of, April 18th, that's a week from Monday, 8 o'clock, CBC Television is my documentary from the Arctic, and it's incredibly timely right now. It's about Arctic sovereignty. It's about climate change. It's about the changing nature of the Arctic

and the role the Inuit should have in that change that's taking place. But everything from defense, sovereignty, climate, they're all in there. 8 o'clock, Monday, December 18th. It's a good one. It's called Arctic Blue. Enjoy it. Thanks to Bruce.

Thanks to Chantel. Have a great weekend out there. And we'll talk to you through the encore editions all next week.