The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Bridge: Encore Presentation - Good Talk: Top Picks of 2021

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

We're looking back at The Bridge in 2021.  Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on December 17th.  It is Good Talk: Top Picks 2021.

You're tuned in to a special Encore presentation of Good Talk. This episode is dedicated to the top picks of 2021. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Yes, it's Good Talk Day, and it's not just any Good Talk Day. This is the last good talk of 2021 and man are we looking forward to seeing the back end of this year and hoping for the best for 2022 uh and as any good show at a year end time likes to do we like to kind of review the year in a way by asking some very pointed questions of the good talk team chantelle bears in montreal bruce anderson is in ottawa

are you two ready for this because i know every year at various shows the three of us have done over time that there's a lot of tension builds up around Chantal is always ready for anything. She's always ready. I'm totally happy with this, considering that we are not having a quiz where I would have to beat Rose hands down. But since you would be keeping score, you would declare him the winner. So I have memories from those quiz moments and the poor judging of who was winning and who was losing. She's got some fight in her. She's already working the rest. She sounds like Trump. You know, she's already building up her excuses before the contest begins.

It's not even a contest. Why let a good lesson go to waste? Look how well it's turned out for him um well you don't know that yet though that's true we don't i have a trophy behind you guys it says i won i must have won oh you didn't get a trophy oh not only that trump may end up having not been in power at a time when it's almost impossible to come out of it with flying colors. Did that not happen to one of our prime ministers at the time of a world war? That you're happily in opposition just when there is no way to win in power? I don't know where we're going here.

I'm trying to keep you away from your questions here and i have no idea where you're going with that but i i'm just killing time it's working i do recall the the one thing that used to drive you crazy chantelle especially was when we put up a picture and we'd say, who is this? I have no TV. I don't watch news on TV, but I also, my heart drifts. The one in my brain has no, the chip for recognizing faces is deficient. So when you add all of that up and you put a picture in front of me, the result will be a blank look and a, why are we doing this? And then one year, none of us could name the person. And the poor person was a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper's cabinet.

And that tells you a lot about cabinets today. I bet you could do the same thing with some. Oh, yes. Quite easily right now. Sometimes someone stands up and I say, this is a Liberal cabinet minister, or in the case of the CAQ here, this is a Quebec cabinet minister. Oh, well.

Right. Okay. Well, we're not going to do any pictures today. You'll be happy to know. But we are going to get started. And we'll get started with, these questions are a little different than the ones that I've asked and others have asked over time,

but they're also fun. Here's the first one, and we'll start with Chantal. So I'll give Bruce time to think of an answer. That's always useful. Yeah. Here's always useful. Yeah. Here's the question. If you could sum up the political year, 2021, in a word, one word, what would that one word be?

Chantal. I'm guessing if there's an hyphen and two words, it's one word. So I would say, mind sobering. We may have had the illusion that we were in control, but what this year has shown us, and not just because of the pandemic, but also because of climate change, and both of them came home to roost big time over the past year. I think climate change really started to register for the reality of it and the damage of it more so in 2021 than any other year. Possibly 2022 will be worse,

but any notion that we or governments were in control of some of the biggest issues that affect our lives has kind of gone out the window. It may be that that has a silver lining in the sense that having understood that, we may be better equipped not to mitigate climate change, this is a policy issue, but to kind of live or accept or adapt to the consequences of it. But if anyone believed that there was a magic wand hidden in a prime minister or a government or a president's office and all could be fixed,

this is the one year where anyone in politics and anyone watching would have said, nope, it's a matter of doing the best you can with whatever cards fate deals you. All right. Mind sobering. Bruce, what's yours? It's grind. I think the year was a grind for everybody in politics that I know, for everybody observing politics,

and probably for most of the news organizations and individual journalists who cover politics i think they i think that in one of our earlier conversations i talked about how over my lifetime of being familiar with politicians in some cases working for them certainly working close to them one of the reasons why people are motivated to go into a life in politics is there's some joy to it, usually. There's some disappointment and frustration, and it can be really taxing. But they're in it on some level because the high points are really chemical high points that they can't get any other way. And there's a sense of accomplishment of being part of a team, of feeling like you're working towards some goal that's bigger than your bank account.

And I think all of that is gone in a pandemic year. Almost all of it is gone. I shouldn't say all of it is gone. There certainly have been some areas of public policy where people, no matter what party, probably can rightly feel like they accomplished something that was important to them. But without the physical contact, without the feeling of being part of

coming to Ottawa and participating in this kind of historic process, it still wouldn't deliver the same kind of psychic rewards. So I think for politicians, it's definitely been a grind. And I think for journalists trying to figure out how to find that balance between telling people what's going on and telling people what's going wrong, it probably felt on a lot of days like maybe they wanted to tell more good news stories, but there weren't a lot of good news stories. And it probably didn't feel like a very joyous job for them either. And certainly for the public, I'm stunned at how still so many people say they're optimistic

and they're feeling good about their situation because it's been a tough year. It sure has. I'm not sure how optimistic. I'm finding a real hard time finding people who were optimistic in those last week of final days of 2021 with the whole. We're not going back into that dark hole, are we? No, no. Everybody's optimistic, Peter. It's just you.

That's not. It doesn't really help that it feels like ground hockey. I was listening. I'm not telling any secrets here. I was listening to how you package clips together when you do year-enders for at-issue. And the one for the year-ender that will run next week, I believe, it felt like they were clips from the past year, not the past week, and it felt like they were clips from that day.

Yeah. And that tells you a lot about how 2021 is kind of ending not exactly in the way that I'm sure lots of politicians had hoped. Okay. Well, I like both those words, grind and mind sobering. I can tell you that if we're going to get through the 127 questions that I've got here, we're probably going to have to tighten up our answers because we just sort of zipped through a good chunk of time here on that. I think I don't want good questions towards the end. There are, so let's move. And political junkies will be happier if we answer them than if we philosophize our way through the next 40 minutes. Okay, as I should share with the audience,

I did share these questions earlier in the week with Chantel and Bruce so they could be thinking about it. So here we go. They don't know each other's answers, obviously. All right, here's the next one. What's the political news story that we missed this year or we kind of overlooked this year? What would that one story be?

And this time we start with Bruce. I think that the thing that I'm really struck by is that I've been doing some survey work on how people are gathering their news and information. environment, the newspaper environment, to gathering news to the extent that we still gather it using social media and other sources. I think that it's hard for journalism to cover that story. It's not a criticism of journalism. I think it's hard for politics to address the story but the amount the the frequency and the degree to which we don't all know the same things about major public policy issues or bigger political issues or what's happening with ukraine or what do we make of china i think those changes are very profound and i don't think that um that we that we collectively figured out what we're going to do about that in order to be more informed as a society. There's an excellent new book on the market

that deals with that in one of the chapters. Okay, I'm going to shift to some actual news stories that were overlooked or that we missed. And the one I picked, and it's not because we did not talk about the issue, is Canada-U.S. relations. I think it's just now sinking in that the post-Trump era is not the pre-Trump era. And that while Donald Trump is no longer in the White House, the challenges that the Biden administration poses to Canada on a lot of fronts and the irritants are real. And we are now taking stock of the fact that this is a president that does not have the political capital to smooth corners in the way that Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or

the Bushes could have done for past Canadian prime ministers. I believe that story is going to become bigger and bigger as the months pass and will eventually end up being a major economic story for Canada. I think it's one that the government of Canada takes more seriously than the news coverage suggests. Let's try the flip side of that question in a way, which in line and the vaccine rollout around the world with country after country and how we were going to be sitting back at the back of the bus looking at the landscape of the blessed vaccination paradise. Not only was that overblown, but it was also completely off base. And it does go to show that if you're, Bruce was talking about journalism,

if you are looking at the story that is evolving, and this was one of those, sometimes it pays off to hold your fire long enough to see where the story is going. Justin Trudeau kept saying he would have enough vaccines. He said it so much that if he didn't, you could tell that he was going to pay a hefty political price. I believe it's worthwhile once in a while to let politicians prove what they say before you hang them for lying to you or for saying things that are wrong. Well, there's no doubt that that theme was the early part of this year,

and especially so by some pretty big news organizations, one in particular, put all their chips behind that story, and they're probably hoping that nobody wants to remember that. Bruce, the most overblown story of the year? Yeah, that was going to be my answer as well. The vaccine hysteria, it went on and on and on and on and on. So since Chantal said everything that needed to be said about that, I also felt like

there, there was still some lingering discussion of the so-called we scandal, which I felt like it never made that much sense to me as a scandal. It was another one of those scandals that didn't actually happen. And so it was a scandal about a potential scandal. But anyway, finally, at the end of the day, it dissipated. But it was there for a while, and I almost felt like it never really deserved the kind of the oxygen that it got. And related to the COVID, it was also the border issue. Remember all of the talk about, and there were ads that were run by Premier Ford talking about how COVID was coming in through our airports. And I, you know, the people that I've talked to who kind of follow the, and Peter, you talked to way more of these folks, the way that this spreads, we're saying, well, some of these, some of those kinds of comments were not really

reflective of the science and i just thought that was a little bit overblown it was politicized and we would have been better off without that it's been it's been clear that the spread was only in a very small way um encouraged by travelers coming into the country. Next question. What was the strangest moment in politics this year? It can be because of COVID. It can be because of something else. But what was the moment that left you shaking or scratching your head?

Bruce. Well, actually, it's kind of related to what I was just talking about. It was just this week watching one of the conservative MPs kind of dismiss the idea of the encouragement that the government was giving for people not to travel. It was strange for me, not because I know the science of this, but I know the politics of it. And for the conservatives to put themselves in a situation where they're saying an airplane is the safest place you could possibly be is really simplifying

conversation about the broader question of how do we minimize risk for ourselves and our loved ones heading into this holiday season? And how do we keep this still somewhat unknown Omicron from becoming a huge pressure point on our healthcare system? I think that's really the question I'm preoccupied with. So with all of that, for the conservatives to sound like they're against caution, because that really is what it sounded like to me, I was really surprised at that, because I don't really get the political upside. If it turns out that, well, first of all, I don't think they're going to change the way people behave by saying that. And secondly, all of the experts seem to be saying we're all going to get this by middle of January or something like that. And so why wouldn't you err on the side of safety at this point, at least from a political calculus standpoint?

Yeah, there's an increasing number of people who are saying that, right? We're all going to get it. We're all going to have it at some point. Almost like, you know, why don't you just get it now and get it over with um i don't know i i really have a problem with that that line i also have a problem with it i don't know whether you saw it today speaking of air travel a couple of airline executives in the u.s yesterday speaking to congress or some form of committee saying masks on airplanes don't really do anything. They don't really need them. I'm going, what?

Seriously? These guys who have enough trouble running airlines, most of them are into the ground, you know, financially. And now they're also experts on health care. Anyway, I find that bizarre. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. It would be interesting to see what their employees who work on airplanes think about that concept. I'm going somewhere else entirely, head-stretching, as in what in the world?

The entire Annamie Paul episode with the Green Party, a party that wants three weeks from an election to take away the membership card of its leader, a leader who actually hires lawyers to take the party to court, a leader who is running a national campaign, but only campaigns in a very uphill riding in Toronto. I mean, the entire adventure, which I believe was a bad adventure for both the Green Party and for NME Paul, left me with, you know, wonderment as to will wonders never stop? And there was one more. And I'm not going to go into it at length, but I am mystified by what the Leaders' Debate Commission believes it's doing to the leaders' debate in an election.

It's twice now that they've kicked that can in their own faces. And at some point, somebody has got to say, let's forget this bad, good idea or fix it and come back to basics because the leaders debates that we saw this year especially on the english side for the second time do not do justice to the exercise agreed apparently they've been having meetings again um lately god knows what they're talking about but uh hopefully it's along the lines of you just mentioned. Quickly, this one, because we are dragging on time. What was the political moment that made you smile and why?

Chantal. Yeah, but you want to know why and you want it to go quickly. Sadly, it's going to take a bit more time than you'd wish. On Thursday this week, yesterday, the House of Commons passed Bill C-3 unanimously. That's a bill that gives you more sick leave. In that bill, they put in a new provision that gives parents who lose a child up to eight weeks' leave. That wasn't on offer. This is only for federally regulated businesses. But the person who's responsible for that, and I hope I do justice to his name, Calgary MP Tom Kimmich, presented two private members bill to have that happen after he lost a daughter three years ago at 29 Days.

And, you know, we always talk about MPs and how they're kind of made to do whatever their leaders want. But he was talking about this yesterday after the bill passed and how if someone had told him in 2015 that he would be doing this private members bill, he would have said, no, I'm a guy who's interested in equalization. That's not my forte. And he took on this cause after he lost his daughter. I think many parents will be grateful. And it did make me smile as a nine-year-old dude's nine-month-old sister who died of creatinine. Oh, dear.

Bruce. Well, I don't know if smile is exactly what i felt but i was happy to see the progress being made on the question of compensation for those affected by residential schools i think that the uh there was a lot of legitimately voiced skepticism about why is the government continuing to pursue a legal posture with respect to some of these claims for many months. And I think that what we knew was that the government was essentially trying to figure out what's the best way to resolve this issue and to need to are involved in the conversations that seem to say we are close to arriving at a point where we might put this kind of legal friction, at least behind us. And there was obviously a substantial price tag attached to that. And it was included in the financial update. And for me, it was good news that that didn't become a political football, that it could

have been and it wasn't. Okay. It's a quick break and a couple of quick questions uh on the election and we're back with the good talk year end edition uh chantelle is in montreal bruce is in ottawa and uh we're moving on with the questions here, because I want to try and get as many of these as possible. They're good questions, as Chantal mentioned earlier. Which political slogan from the election turned out to be the most accurate one,

and why? To help Bruce out, because I know the dog ate some parts of his homework. The liberal one was forward for everyone, then the conservative one was secure the future. And if many of the listeners knew that before I mentioned it, I congratulate them because I think neither hit the mark and the results of the election, with almost the same result for every party, kind of shows that whatever they were doing, and I include the NDP and the Bloc in there, it did not strike much of a chord with voters who would not support them a year and a half, two years before. Bruce? I felt like the, thank you, Chantal. And if you

could do that for each of the subsequent questions, that would be extremely helpful to me. Run through the answers that you thought of and then reject it in case I pick some of that litter up to some degree as well. I don't think it was a completely unnecessary election, but there was some accuracy to it from the standpoint of how much was really resolved and how quick and dramatic was any sort of pivot after the election. I think those are legitimate criticisms of the government in terms of when it launched the election campaign, did it have a real sense of, here are the things we must get a mandate for, or rather, as many critics suggested, we just want a bigger mandate. And so I think on balance, that was a fairly accurate criticism on whether voters took it into account or not. It doesn't seem to me that they particularly did. Might have been accurate, but it's hardly an invitation to vote for someone else.

Exactly, yeah. I'm sorry that I have to present myself as the alternative prime minister. It doesn't sound like a great message to win an election. I'm sorry that I have to present myself as the alternative prime minister. It doesn't sound like a great message to win an election. I'm just saying. I agree with that. I don't think it was effective as a way to campaign, to say every time this is an unnecessary election, but you must go out and vote for me. Because that just leads to the question, well, what would that produce that is necessary? So, yeah.

And it's also limited everybody's options once the election was over as to what they could do, given a minority situation. Who was the best candidate for any party who didn't get elected to parliament? So, I picked A.V. Lewis, son of, but also a person who is an activist in his own right, along with his spouse, Naomi Klein, and who ran NBC and a writing that was not necessarily winnable for the NDP. And why I picked him is because I find the NDP a bit, it's like they're on a reel that they keep replaying. It's never enough. It's never enough. It's never enough. But there are a few sparks coming out of that reel. And I think he would have challenged and shaken things up, possibly even from the inside. And I think at this point, the NDP and the House of Commons, with the liberals having taken up so much of their territory, needs shaking up. If they're happy to be just

a movement or an influence, then they need to sharpen up. And if they're seriously looking at government, then they really need to find something better to say than the perpetual and impossible thing. We would have solved climate change and indigenous reconciliation, Justin Trudeau isn't, because it takes away from whatever role they may have in the process. So I would have been interested from a journalistic point of view in having A.V. Lewis to kick Jagmeet Singh and others around. Yeah, I think journalists would have loved to see him there. Unlucky, perhaps, for the NDP.

Lucky, perhaps, for Jagmeet Singh, because it would have been a constant thorn in his side, because nobody tells Avi what to do. He's like his own guy on issues. Bruce? What's your answer, Peter? You go first. I just gave it. You know. Chantel copied me.

She saw my notes and away she went. The credit always goes to the person who says it first, so I'm not going to reply to all this. That's why she keeps jumping in, right? She doesn't wait. Okay, Bruce, you've treaded water here for enough time. You're doing a really good job. I honestly think that the – I was thinking about Maryam Monsef, who I believe was a good contributor to the cabinet

and who lost her seat in Peterborough, but I guess that's the next question that we're going to deal with. I believe Lisa Raitt not being in parliament is a mistake for the country and the Conservative Party. She didn't run this time, but it was clear that she was sort of given no opportunity to really consider it. And I was surprised that people in her party didn't kind of rally to the idea that she should have a chance to stand again if she wanted to. She was, you know, I think she's doing well outside of politics, but I think her voice inside that party and inside parliament and for Canada

is an experienced voice, a thoughtful voice. I think she's really well respected across the political aisle. And she's young enough that she's got a lot still to contribute to a public life if the Conservative Party would kind of embrace that. You know, you'd think Erin O'Toole would be heading out to Milton or wherever Lisa Raitt is living these days for a serious discussion about how she gets back in the game because you're right. I think everybody agrees she's –

Or maybe he shouldn't be going to Milton to get her back in the game. Well, you know, I mean, he's got enough other people who are ready to run against him. She is on my short list. Yeah, I don't know when she should be. If a train should hit Mr. O'Toole. But let's say he survives. Let's say he survives these next couple of years

until the next election. Having Lisa Raitt beside him on the campaign stage would be a good thing. Anyway, moving on. I'm going to jump a couple here because I want to make sure we get through some of these things. If Justin Trudeau resigns, name three liberals, sitting or not sitting, who are not named Chrystia Freeland, who would be in the race?

And Bruce, you can start. Well, I think Melanie Jolie, Mark Carney, probably. And I think Francois and Philippe Champagne. Those are the three that I think are most likely to get in the race. I think they'll be interesting candidates. I think they bring different things to the race. And, you know, I frankly like to see a race in two or three years and see what it produces in terms of ideas and direction and energy. But those are my names. Okay. So, yeah, well, I'm glad I sent my list to Bruce. I have the same list. I'm not sure that adds up to much of a race.

The Liberal Party is a longstanding tradition of alternating between Francophone and Anglophone leaders. I'm not saying Quebec and non-Québec. Paul Martin was after Jean Chrétien. They both had seats in Quebec, but alternating. And Mélanie Jolien and François-Philippe Champagne would be at the wrong place in the cycle. And I'm not sure, I mean, time will tell, but I'm not sure they've demonstrated

such overriding qualities that would make the party look over Christia Freeland and that rule of alternating to pick one of them. Mark Carney, well, at some point, Mark Carney is going to have to decide whether he's running for something or just teasing forever. I'm not so sure that he should enter that campaign. I think it would be very, very hard for the Liberal Party, if Chrystia Freeland is a candidate, to suddenly turn to another white male with no experience in politics rather than the most qualified, based on experience in cabinet and in public life, woman

to have run for the leadership of that party. I'm not trying to diss Sheila Cox here, but Chrystia Freeland will bring, if she runs, to the floor credentials that no woman who has run for the leadership of that party has ever before. And it is the only federal party represented in the House of Commons that has never had a female leader, which is becoming a bit of an embarrassment, frankly. I'd add, I like your list, both of them. I'd add Anita Anand to it.

I don't think she can win, but I think it would be smart for her to get in a race and be a player in a leadership race because I think she has real leadership qualities. And speaking of mark carney i gave him a check for fifteen thousand dollars last week because that's the kind of guy i am i'm the chair of the national business book awards and his book values ended up tied on the jury presentation first time in the history of the award, 40 years, tied with Stephen Bound's book on the Hudson Bay Company. And Carney. You just play that out.

You wrote a check personally to him for $15,000. I said I gave him a check for $15,000. Right, right. Yes, because if you're going to start writing checks to Mark Carney, Bruce and I will send you our address and our banking information. And I'll tell you, he immediately donated it to his favorite charity, so good for him. All right.

Same question, but about Aaron O'Toole. Who are the three people who you see in that race, who are not named Christopher? The three people who you see in that race? Well, at the top of the list, Pierre Poilievre, who was obviously campaigning from his seat as finance critic. So all he needs is a vacancy to make it official. And I believe he would have fairly significant backing from inside the party. We talked about Lisa Raitt. She does have family issues, a partner who's got Alzheimer's.

So she's got a very heavy burden on the family front at this point. Who knows where we will all be if and when this happens. There are those who would like Doug Ford, mostly people who work for him, to run for the federal leadership. I put him on my list to take him off the list for two reasons. If he is reelected premier, he'll be busy elsewhere in a better job. And if he's not, he's going to be a spent force. And also, despite his best efforts, he does not speak French.

And most premiers, former premiers, have no success on at least running for the Liberals or the Conservatives over time. Very limited success. Bruce? I think, Pierre-Paul, I agree with Chantal. It looks pretty obvious that he's, even in the role of finance critic, which you normally would expect to be extremely closely aligned with what it is that the leader has to say about economics, that's not exactly what I feel when I watch him,

especially the other day, he was making pretty sharp comments about if we are elected, we will kill the childcare deals. I don't see, I haven't heard Aaron O'Toole say anything that sounds like that. I would be extremely surprised if he wanted to campaign on that position going into the next election. The, you know, the argument that Mr. Polyev used was clumsy, I thought, in the sense that it was, we believe in giving the money back to the people who earned it. And I just don't understand how that works in a political campaign. But it felt to me like a declaration of I write my own lines, and I say my own things. And if anybody wants to stop me, well, I guess they won't, because they took me out of this position once, and then they put me back in. So I think he's declared that he's got his own kind of rogue operation there. I think that

there will be a candidate from the social conservative side. So perhaps that will be Leslyn Lewis, who, you know, who looks like she developed some support in the last race. And I think she'll be a controversial candidate. Because I think that's, that's her preference, probably. I don't know that she could win, but I also don't know what to make of the Conservative Party heading into another leadership race, given the way that the last couple have kind of worked and how close they've been and how much the fight has been.

Will social conservatives kind of dominate the outcome? And then the last for me is, I think there will be a candidate that represents the more progressive side of the party, whether it's Lisa Raitt, whether it's Doug Ford, whether it's one of the Mulroney children, whether it's someone else that decides to get in. I don't know.

I think it's too early to say. But I think the question of Doug Ford is in part a question of timing, as Chantel alluded to. Okay. We've only got 10, 12 minutes left. I'm going to take a break right after this question, so short answers.

If you could give Jagmeet Singh one piece of political advice, what would it be? Bruce. one piece of political advice, what would it be? Bruce? I think that more Canadians self-identify these days as socialists than capitalists, which is kind of remarkable. And I think that there are lots of reasons why the NDP should be able to arguing against whatever the status quo is without really providing substantive alternative solutions. And I think that's the thing that's been the hardest for Jagmeet Singh to do is to sound like he has more to offer than just a trenchant criticism of Justin Trudeau. And instead, really solid practical ideas that would make you think an NDP government at the federal level run by him would be a solid government.

Because when I say there are more people who self-identify as socialists, it's socialists with an asterisk. It's a Canadian version of socialism, which is inherently very pragmatic and still pretty centrist. Chantal. It's a problem that predates Jagmeet Singh, but it is still there. And it is the incapacity of the federal NDP to reconcile with the realities of power when it is in power in provinces like Alberta or British Columbia. And they may think that voters don't notice, but they do. And I'm not just talking about people who vote NDP provincially in Alberta and British Columbia, but people who look from

the outside and say, and, you know, if you go back to the Bob Ray experience in Ontario, some of that gap between how the new Democrats present themselves in opposition and the realities of power were part of the unresolved issues that sank the NDP over the years. At some point, it is possible to have a left of center party that is not the liberal party and that is serious. But Dirk Mead saying is not running that kind of party these days. All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. And you're listening to Good Talk on The Bridge. And that could be on SiriusXM Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or wherever you download your podcast.

Chantal's in Montreal, Bruce is in Ottawa, and I'm Peter Mansbridge. I'm in Toronto. All right. I'm going to close this out with some questions about kind of our COVID life, okay? If you could pick a COVID MP, MVP, sorry, not a COVID MP, you know, a most valuable player in COVID in Canadian politics, federal or provincial or municipal, who would that be?

And keep in mind, you picked Anita Anand back in June. So she too is disqualified from this at this point. Okay. So who's your MVP? There's too many rules. And also, Chantal, could you run through the list of names that you considered in answer to that question? It sounds unfair to say, but after two years, it's really hard to say this has been the most valuable politician

who has provided the most leadership. Because while you don't want to say that they have not done great work or that it's hard to see how much more anyone would have done in the place of many. COVID fatigue does not lead you to admire people who have to lead in these times. But if I did have to pick someone who, in difficult circumstances, has managed to preserve his connection to voters, which has tended to be crucial in this day and age. I would have to pick François Legault because, and I was listening again last night to,

you know, the premier explaining that everything he said would happen two weeks ago is now off the books and preparing Quebecers for really bad times. And he has really a significant connection with voters. It's quite unique. I have not seen very many politicians. Brian Mulroney had it with this caucus, but François Legault has it with voters who otherwise will never vote for him, which is really particular.

And I would wager that, you know, some of the people who most oppose this politics who are not necessarily francophone will also recognize that when he talks about COVID, he communicates in a way that is more effective than the average politician. Okay, Bruce. Yeah, I think Legault is a good choice. My answer, though, is Canadians. I really feel like my big takeaway from how we've reacted as a country is that people,

by and large, the large, large majority said, okay, if we have to take a newly developed vaccine, we will. If we have to wear masks, we will. If we have to socially distance, we will. If we have to wash our groceries, we will. If we have to do all kinds of things that are frustrating, that are frightening, that are stressful, that are inconvenient, that are costly, we're going to do it. And we're not going to spend a lot of time deciding, you know, these are things that are visited upon us by politicians, or woe is us. And so I think that collective wisdom and consideration for each other and willingness to try to do what we can to solve this thing. I think that's where I would go. You know, I'm going to mention the municipal politicians because I think they've played

a role in all this. You know, I kind of live in three different cities, Stratford, Toronto, Ottawa, Dan Matheson in Stratford, John Tory in Toronto, Jim Watson in Ottawa, have all had their moments on dealing with this. They've borne the brunt of a lot of criticism at different times, but they've also been in a difficult situation. And I think sometimes we tend with our focus on Ottawa and some of the provinces that we tend to forget municipal politicians.

Okay, quickly. Who would you bench in politics based on their performance on COVID? I don't bench politicians, but Albertans want to bench Jason Kenney. Dan, you let her answer first and she took my answer. I knew you were going to say that. I figured having done all my homework, I wasn't going to let you. There was a second part to the question, which was one who is not named Jason Kenney. It's not in the rules.

It's not in the rules. It's not in the rules. You just made it up. Okay. He's a unanimous winner on that front it appears and he seems to be still angling for votes on that front with his latest moves on covid in the last couple days he's decided it's a prize it's a trophy that he wants to two or three pete he just can't stay away from it it's too too, you know, it's one that he can win. Eventually, he is going to be right on this. The position he's in. Yeah, if it finally ends before the next election.

He could be running out of at-bats. This might be the last at-bat. Yeah, it might be. Has COVID impacted politics anywhere in a positive way? We've only got a few minutes left, but it's a good question. Has COVID impacted politics anywhere in a positive way? You wanted to go first, Bruce, go ahead. idea that people understand the connection between themselves and their local businesses, that's been a positive. I think there is a lot more support for local businesses and businesses feeling the support from the local community than there was before COVID. And it's not just choices that people were making because it was a safer choice. It's a choice they were making because they kind of felt like this was the time when people had to come together and support each other.

Chantal? I think going into this, we had a lineup provincially and federally that promised a very, how would I call it, a very unproductive federal-provincial relations between Justin Trudeau's government and premiers who, for the most part, were not of his persuasion. prevented Premier Ford from going out on the campaign trail in the federal election to depict Justin Trudeau as whatever, and that it will almost certainly prevent Justin Trudeau from going on the campaign trail to campaign implicitly against Premier Ford in the next election. And I think that is healthy. You know, put parenthesis around François Legault's anyone who admires him was reminded that you may have a strong connection, but it doesn't mean that you can command people to do what you want at every turn in the rope. That's reassuring, I think. This last question is kind of a personal

one. Wait, did you answer that question, Peter? Or do you just ask the questions? Well, I have to manage the time. And, you know, and therefore I get to answer some of the questions when I feel that I can actually add something to the conversation. All right. All right, carry on. I do think that the two of you summed that one up really well. Thank you.

And how, Bruce, you were able to peek through Zoom into Chantel's notes, I'm not sure, but nevertheless, you achieved it. Here's your last question. What's something you personally miss doing from the pre-COVID days? And Chantel is first on this. Besides travel, I give presentations, and I've given a lot of them virtually. And then recently I went to Toronto and presented in person to a group,

not a big secret, Colleges Ontario in this case. And I realized how much I like interacting with an actual audience rather than a bunch of faces online. I'd forgotten how much fun it is. Yeah, it is. And virtual is great when we started it, right? Started doing it at the beginning of this. But it's just there's no, it doesn't feel in any way personal.

Bruce, you got 30 seconds. Every year for 10 years i think we would all go up to the black sheep inn in the fall and by we i think all three of us probably attended all of those peter i know that you did and chantal i think you were at every single one with a whole bunch of people from politics and from the news media and from the Ottawa kind of political community. And we would listen to music and we would drink beers or whatever together, and we would raise money for an internship, putting young people in jobs on Parliament Hill in the summer. And that was such a joyful and useful and fun thing that I think about it a lot. And I really hope we get back to it this coming fall. I think we all agree on that. You want an answer from me?

It's about those connections that you have with family. I mean, I've got three grandchildren. They all live in Manitoba. I've seen them, but hardly at all. And the older you get, the more important those connections are. And so hopefully this will be the year we get back to it in a better way. All right. For Chantel, for Bruce, I'm Peter Mansbridge.

This has been fun, real fun. And we'll do it all again next year. That's it for Good Talk for 2021. Take care. Stay safe.