The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Bridge Encore Presentation - Good Talk Year Ender

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on December 16th. A different kind of year-ender as Bruce and Chantal focus on how 2022 may have changed our sense of democracy, leadership and country.  And yes, we'll still have the predictable best this and that of '22 but we wanted to use most of our time to discuss some of the big issues that make Canada, Canada!

The following is an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge, originally broadcast on December 16th. Are you ready for Good Talk, the year-end edition? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto on this day. And Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa, Chantelle Iber is in Montreal. Eastern Canada, or at least Central Canada, is kind of being hit with a snowstorm today, supposedly through the weekend. We'll see how it all goes.

You know what that means, you Westerners and you Maritimers, that, you know, if it gets too bad, you know who we call. The army's standing by, waiting to bail out. The only Toronto that calls. You're only talking about Toronto here. I know, but hey. The unserious place about snow. Montrealers can let you have the army. Right.

Well, you know, we are the center of the universe, so. The belly button of Canada. That's a good one. Okay. This is going to be a little different this year in the year. At least we're going to try something a little different. We'll still do the kind of predictable, everybody, every show does it kind of questions,

which they ask because they're good, and they do provoke some interesting answers. We'll do those later in this hour, but we're going to start with three areas that are roughly divided or about democracy, about leadership, and about the country. And so we'll try this out this year and see how we make out. I think most people can agree that the major stories of the year that affected Canada were the convoy, the reaction to the war in Ukraine, the election of Pierre Poliev, provincial elections in Ontario, Quebec, the Alberta story, the consequences of the Sovereignty Act, the notwithstanding clause,

language bill, et cetera, et cetera, the recession, inflation, the ever-looming possibility of an election because we're in a minority situation federally. All those are kind of the major stories of the year. But what do they say, first of all, about democracy in the country? Is the big political events that we've witnessed, and most of them listed right there, tell us anything about democracy in Canada? Is it actually democracy, that is?

Is it actually healthier than we think or not? So you can use any of those as an example or anything else you might have picked up. Chantal, why don't you start us? It's a mixed response. Probably democracy is in better shape than the coverage of democratically driven events reflects. And I believe it's still fairly healthy in Canada. But I'm going to start with the minus side that we saw this year. The record low turnout for the Ontario election, below 50%, which in a competitive election in the sense that there were alternatives on offer,

and the major, major distortions between seats and vote share in the Quebec election, where you've got, what, four opposition parties that all earned about 15% of the vote, but their seats score is wildly different. One has no seat. One has no seat. One has three seats. One is the official opposition. And what you are seeing, and that's not democracy, but it is the rules of a democratic exercise, the one that many citizens participate in, that the first-past-the-post system is not terribly suitable to a multi-party environment. It works okay if you've got two parties.

For a long time, we mostly had the liberals and the conservatives with the new Democrats far behind federally. And the same was true in most provinces. Some had three, two plus one. But now we've got five in the House of Commons. We've got five in Quebec. And not meant goes to leadership selection processes. The notion that you can build a fan base on a single issue and work your way to a decisive leadership victory. Pierre Poiliev, Daniel Smith got where they are by catering to a specific branch of the conservative movement. But it's not just them. I mean, if Justin Trudeau had not

also been a choice for many longstanding liberal members, he could have won the leadership just with his fan base for being a political rock star and a social media rock star and taken over one of Canada's main parties. What that does when you look at those recent examples on the conservative side is that there's very little serious policy discussion involved. The federal conservative campaign did not feature serious policy debates. It mostly featured a contest to fill rooms and tell people what they wanted to hear, to the point where the winner actually took a pass and preferred to pay out money rather than debate his opponents, which is not good for democracy.

Now I'm going to go to the pro side. It was interesting to watch our voters, the same people who sometimes did not show up to vote in the Ontario election, stood up to Doug Ford's government on the notwithstanding clause. This is a government that believed that had a sure bet we're going to keep the schools open by stopping education workers from shutting them down with a strike. And how long did it take?

What, 48 hours for the government to be forced to walk back its idea, which tends to show that maybe you don't vote, but you're still paying attention. And finally, voters are still able to think out of the partisan box to support measures that they agree with. And on that, I'm using the number of Canadians, 63% percentage that support the Emergency Measures Act that Justin Trudeau used. Well, 63%, that's a lot of people who did not vote for the Liberals last year. You know, you could probably duplicate that situation

of the walk back by Ford with Danielle Smith, right, in Alberta, where things went against her almost immediately, literally within minutes of introducing the Sovereignty Act, and within hours she was having to flip, still not to a lot of people's satisfaction, but nevertheless she had to change her mind. Okay, Bruce, you've looked at the list. What do you see there about what those events say about democracy in Canada? Are we healthier or not? Before I say that, I marvel at Chantal's skill. She was able to sort of say, on the whole, it's stronger, our democracy,

and then just the weight of all of the negatives. I felt that the balance was quite striking to me, and I appreciate her optimism, and I don't have that amount of optimism, to be honest. I think our democracy is a lot weaker. There are a number of things that occur to me. The single biggest political event of the year was a series of widespread acts of civil disobedience that were really about health measures that saved countless lives. It didn't seem, you know, if we sort of step back from that and just say, was that really the measure that government took that was supported,

as Chantal said, by many people? She was referring to the use of the Emergencies Act. I'm referring to the act of buying vaccines and distributing them and pushing people to use them, produced the single biggest act of civil disobedience or series of acts of civil disobedience that we've seen in decades. So that tells me something about the health of our democracy. I mean, in one sense, you can say it's great that people can protest. On another level, you have to look at it and say, what went wrong in a society where healthcare is important, where our health system works well, where we generally seek solutions together,

and where we believe in the role of medicine and science to protect our health. Second thing that occurs to me is that we've seen the election of two conservative leaders, one in Alberta and one at the federal level, who in one way or another champion obeying the laws that you agree with and maybe ignoring the laws that you don't like or trying to find a way to undermine the rule of law. I don't want to overstate that, but both of them, Mr. Poliev and Ms. Smith, have made it a fashion in terms of how they present their politics to undermine confidence in our institutions and to suggest that our institutions need to be broken one way or another. I don't think that's a healthy thing for democracy, although I respect that that is their right

to take that position. And at least in the case of, well, in the case of both of them, they haven't won an election with a broad part of the populace yet. They've won elections within their party. So it remains to be seen how that sells more broadly. Just a couple of other things. We're now in a situation where the far right hates the left and the left hates the far right. And there was always that tension in Canada, but it's much more marked now, as far as I can tell. The presence and the use of social media platforms didn't turn out to be something that created more social cohesion. It has so far turned out to be something

that is used for rage farming by politicians who want to take advantage of it. And we see deepening divisions as people use these kind of shorthand ways of exchanging ideas, not to find useful compromise together, but to become more embittered about the way that our politics works. And finally, Chantal mentioned the debate, the fact that some candidates don't choose to debate. I think that the decline of debates in our national elections and generally in our political apparatus, it's not like they're everything. It's not like lots of people tuned into them or went to them in a local debate context. But if you don't have those debates, what are you left with? If leaders of all the parties

can imagine a situation where one debate in a national election is enough, I don't think that's right. I don't think that's constructive for democracy. I think that's part of the weakening of our democracy. Okay, just briefly before we move on. I know the two of you have a lot of respect for each other, and it's shown over the years we've been doing this. But rarely have I seen you so apart on a basic question, a straightforward question.

Is our democracy healthier or less so as a result of the past year? And I'm just wondering whether you want to tie the knot on this before we move on in terms of that difference. You mean tie it around each other's neck? No. I don't think either of us is going to change our positions. I am wary of the notion that you would judge the state of democracy or the public debate on social media. I don't believe that it is anything but a distorted mirror of reality. And I believe many of the creeps that we see on social media were always there. We just didn't see them. Yes, they can join together when they're on social media. I also find that when Bruce says Premier Smith and Pierre Poitier have not yet been vetted by

voters, he's undermining his own argument in the sense that he's acknowledging that voters will have a say on them, already have a bit earlier this week in a by-election. But you cannot at the same time say that you mourn for debates and not want people to take positions and defend them that are unpopular. I, for one, strongly believe that the Quebec Conservative Party, which was the anti-vax party, was a good thing in the election debate in Quebec, that it gave a voice in the democratic process to people who totally disagreed, and they are allowed to disagree.

I'd rather have them in the National Assembly debating than on the streets. And when I hear Bruce's arguments, I'm always reminded of the reaction of a part of the punditry, and I don't mean Bruce, to the advent of the Reform Party, and the notion that, oh, they wanted to get rid of official bilingualism. There's a non-spoken rule that we don't ever go there. It actually made official bilingualism stronger, that it was debated in the House of Commons, and not by people who turned their opposition to official bilingualism into anti-French-Canadian So me, I think that the shock of ideas is the healthier thing about the democracy and that you cannot have it without having people defend views that I totally disagree with. Bruce? Well, you know, I was surprised that you thought our perspectives were that far apart. I was kind of half joking at the beginning, cause I agree with a lot of things that Chantal said, but I do

overall have a, um, you know, I net out at a different place. And I think that maybe part of the reason is that my perspective isn't from a journalism it's from public opinion. And either lens may be incorrect in some respects. But on the balance, I think that the role of the media as an institution is not what it used to be in terms of pulling people together, in terms of forcing a conversation about the actual choices. And I do think that that has been a useful role in the past. I think that literally almost all of our newspapers are owned by one company, which has a very decided point of view. I thought I made clear that I felt like it was good that people had the opportunity to take hard positions that were controversial and that that was healthy for our democracy. But I also feel like for Pierre-Paul Lievre to pay money to not debate those ideas in

the context of leadership is a sign of a weakening. I think our media don't have the same pull with voters and citizens that they used to so that they can't apply the guardrails that used to be applied. I completely don't count on social media to do that. And social media doesn't do that. So I find that we're without those guardrails a little bit. But look, I respect what Chantel says, and I'm going to reflect on it. But yeah, a little bit different. All right. The second area that I wanted to discuss was leadership. So keeping some of those things in mind in terms of that list we talked about, who showed real leadership in this past year? And has our concept of leadership actually changed? Bruce, you start this one. You know, when I thought about that question,

you know, has our concept of leadership changed? I think that I don't know who our is anymore. I know who our is when you and I are talking. But I think that, you know the the base of the conservative party the people's party voter and the further right part of the they want a different kind of leadership from what people on the center of the spectrum want and people on the far further reaches of the left they want a different kind of leadership as well and at the heart of what I think is missing is this idea that a compromise is kind of essential as the output of politics. If politics is working well, that's what happens, is that we pool our resources together to accomplish things that we may disagree slightly on, but the direction of which we generally agree on.

I think that's being eroded. So my answer reflects my own kind of personal biases in terms of the issues that I think are important and the way in which politicians deal with them. And Mark Miller would be a good example of somebody, in my view, who shows real leadership. How do I mean that? I mean, he knows what it is that he's trying to do in terms of Indigenous reconciliation. He's perseverant with it. He is a bit understated about it. He's blunt when he needs to be blunt. He doesn't try to kind of lionize the work that he's doing. I think all of those things are good qualities.

But the other name that came to mind, and I'll end on this point, Peter, in a curious sort of way, and it's going to sound a little bit backhanded, is Jason Kenney. Jason Kenney, to me, found himself in a situation where he had to say some things that he probably never thought he was going to say about the nature of the conservative movement as he experienced it in Alberta. Now, I think his critics are entitled to wonder if he created some of the problem and helped nurture some of the problem that eventually came to haunt him. And so I'm not offering him untrammeled praise here, but I am saying that he chose to say some things that conservatives need to say to each other at a

point in time where he had still had a podium. And that was an act of leadership. And I'm happy that he did it, even though I don't like what brought it to that point. Chantal, who showed real leadership in 2022? I've been listening to Bruce, and I don't think, before I go into that, that our difference on optimism versus pessimism about democracy stems so much from different perspectives as a pollster and journalist. I think Bruce is more personally affected by what has been happening to feel things, but you are paid to step back from that feeling. We are not part of this. It's not happening to our people. the examples that tend to underlie is pessimism always come from the conservative side of the spectrum.

And I understand why, because I believe that 2022 was a big year for conservatism in Canada in the wrong sense of the word. This movement that provides the main alternative to government federally is kind of lost for lack of leadership in the sense of saying, let's be serious here. If we want to be a big tent party, we have to respect the notion that our base and our orthodoxy is getting in the way of reality increasingly, is making us increasingly detached from Canadians.

It's not that the Conservative Party has become right-wing or more right-wing. It is that it has become more sectarian. The message from conservatives is we don't want you. We don't even want Jason Kenney in our tent. So I can understand that if I were or I had invested in a party that has been at times really compelling, I would be more disquieted than I am now. My example of leadership. Well, for one, it's circumstantial. You can be a television star that becomes the president of a small country, and you're a funny story, and then you become the beacon of what leadership is like because some big country decides to attack you.

That would be Ukraine and Zelensky. But the circumstances kind of create the leadership. I believe, for instance, that over the time that I covered politics, Jean Chletien showed leadership on the Iraq war. He stepped in front of the public opinion parade. It wasn't massively on his side when he decided not to join that. And leadership is not only taking a decision that makes you look strong, but also bringing people on to where you are trying to lead them, doing the work of convincing people, which is the opposite of what we've seen in the conservative movement this year, converting people to why, with fact-based argument,

why you think you're right. I'm also reminded that leadership is usually, or not always, rewarded instantly, and that some ideas take time. When Brian Mulroney set out to create a free trade zone with the United States, he faced a hell of a lot of opposition. No politicians did not come together in the pursuit of a common goal when it came to free trade. And Mulroney certainly was not seen by those who opposed it as someone who was doing something that was good for Canada and Canada's future. But here we are, what, 30 years later, and free trade has become

something that is part and parcel of what the Canadian political class at large will defend, as happened over the course of the renegotiation of NAFTA. So it takes a while. And politics is also about staying in power. So the cost of demonstrating leadership can be fairly consequent. You have to decide why you're in public life before you go ahead. If you're only there because you want to be on top, probably you're not going to be looking to show too much leadership too often because the costs of acts of leadership are by definition divisive and they will usually land you in opposition. But still, I don't think the definition of leadership has changed, which was your original question. I think that the expression of it, we get to see

when governments and leaders are tested. Okay, we're going to take a break in a minute. But Bruce, you wanted to make a point here. Yeah, just I appreciate what Chantal was saying about, you know, me feeling personally more aggrieved. And I do think that that's true. I'm not sure if it's how much of it is only about past participation in the Progressive Conservative Party, although that's definitely a part of it. So my work as a pollster hasn't left me feeling dispassionate personally about what's happened to the right. But I wanted to add that I think that the phenomena that is disconcerting for me isn't happening only in Canada. Trumpism really was a big kind of wake up call, I think.

The role of Putin as a fascist leader that is now sort of coddled or embraced by too many right wing leaders around the world, the UK and Brexit. There are a number of examples for me that showed a similar pattern of the right generally becoming more sectarian, less communitarian. And I find that an unhelpful thing for peace and stability and quality of life for the largest number of people. And I think that this division between what feels like a finger-wagging superior left and a kind of an angry, willing to kind of break laws, right? These are caricatures, but there's some truth to them. And it would be better if our leaders found ways to kind of reduce those effects rather than to mind them. Okay, we're going to take that break and come back with the third of our three pillars of this discussion,

and that is about the country itself. But first of all, this. And welcome back. You're listening to the year-end edition of Good Talks on Telebaris in Montreal. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa. I'm Peter Mansbridge, and I'm in Toronto. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform,

or you're watching on our youtube channel you can get the link at my bio on twitter or instagram no charge have fun watch us put the podcast together um okay the third pillar of this discussion is loosely titled country um And that's based on, you know, we've sort of come out more or less of the pandemic. It's still hanging around, as we well know, but we're more or less coming out of it, straight into a possible economic downturn. So how has our sense of community, of country, of Canada itself changed?

Or has it, Chantal? I think over the past decades what I've seen where I live, which is Montreal, has been that people have very little difficulty with being Quebecers first, but they are no longer being asked to put that in opposition to being Canadians. And that's been the biggest change the past political decades in this province, that you can have a government that has managed to obliterate the, if you're a good Quebecer, you want to leave Canada,

or if you're a good Canadian, then you don't self-identify as Quebecer first. But I think provincial identities were always strong in this country, and they remain fairly strong. I remember when Joe Clark was talking about community of communities. I think that's as true as ever. And I know that there are people who mourn that, who crave a more unitarian shape to the country. If only we all saw life together in the same way and had exactly the same priorities.

You see it in all kinds of debates. The gun control debate over the past few weeks is a reminder to people who live like me in downtown Montreal or in downtown Toronto and Ottawa that there are communities, many communities in this country whose relationship to hunting and guns is not just something that they see in Westerns, that it's part of a way of life, and that that too is Canadian. And I think it's safe to remind ourselves of these realities punctually rather than believe that what is Canadian is defined

by big cities and those who live in them and who mostly have access to the national media as a platform to talk about realities. I also think that you talk about our sense of community. I don't think there is anything very Canadian about looking out for each other. Most countries do it. Just this week in Montreal, a seven-year-old Ukrainian refugee girl was killed in a hit and run

and the entire city has been in shock, which I think distinguishes Canada from many comparable countries in the sense that the sense of community has come to embrace diversity. That might not be the institutional case, but it is increasingly a reality. And my pessimistic poster friend will agree with me that his numbers show that on immigration and refugees, the public outlook in Canada is a lot more positive than in most comparable jurisdictions. Let me, before Bruce starts, let me just say this about our friend in Ottawa. You mentioned that story about the young refugee girl in Montreal, and it is heartbreaking what happened. And you hear about these kind of stories every once in a while.

And you do see how the country and community react in our country, you know, in the same way that they've reacted in Montreal this week. And I know that in Bruce's case, you know, Bruce has led the charge, as we both know, Chantal and I both know, for raising funds on the refugee front in Ottawa and has got together, you know, a really diverse group of people, whether they're politicians of all stripes, media, everybody to do just that.

But it's just yet another example of how community operates in our country and does at certain times. But on the wider question that Chantal answered as well, Bruce, your thoughts about Canada and community and country after this year. Yeah, I agree with Chantal that we are strong and pretty united when we think at the community and the local level. I don't think we're necessarily deeply divided in terms of the broader nationalism. I also agree with Chantal that not forcing people to put in opposition their provincial identity from their national pride

has been a good development. It reminds me a little bit of uh of my family where we're all pretty close but we have one rule which is we can't all play monopoly together because then things go badly and i kind of feel like it's a metaphor for um the the idea of federal provincial meetings where we try to figure out something as complex and uh and wrenching as health. But it works for us not to play Monopoly together. And in the same way, I think that the less time we spend trying to force the issue of how unified are we nationally, the better it is for our sense of unity overall. The one thing that I'm maybe a little bit more concerned about

the more I watch the political developments is how does this question land for people who are 25 or 35 years old or 20 years old and who are from diverse communities? And part of what I'm relating to is the there is an emerging debate. Again, it's in the United States, particularly right now about wokeism. And it's another one of those things that's kind of being weaponized by the left and by the right. But the pushback against wokeism probably does sound to women, people of color, other minorities, as being a rejection of their aspiration and the idea that they should have more participation in certain aspects of society. So I'm cognizant of the fact that I'm a white male of a certain age,

and my experience has been different and that it may be harder for young people to feel the same sense of the collective, I guess, in a different way. But I don't think that's so much a question of national unity as much as this kind of identity in place in society, which is not only a debate that's happening here, but it's happening in other parts of the world, too. You've mentioned health care, and I wonder, you know, it's the first time we've mentioned it in this kind of year-end review, even though it's on the minds of everybody, whether it was COVID, whether it's the situation in emergency wards right now as we speak, and the general issues surrounding the funding of health care in Canada.

That's going to play a more dominant role this year in the year ahead, one assumes in 2023, with various discussions about whether or not the First Minister should get together and try to hammer something out or not. What will, you know, if you kind of put the crystal ball into effect and look forward into this year, just briefly on the health care question, is that going to define or redefine the country as we see it now? Chantal? No. I don't believe that a health insurance system is what defines a country. And on this, I have been in disagreement for decades with Roy Romano, who wrote in a report that Medicare defined us.

Give me a break here. We're not going to start defining ourselves on the basis of a health insurance scheme, as worthy as it may be. But I don't think I've been watching the health care debate this round because we've been watching it for a long decades. And what I find interesting in this round is that while people rightly are not satisfied with the way the health care system is performing, that it is on the brink and in crisis. No one is connecting those dots to the existence of Medicare, or those who are certainly not in the public space having this discussion. No one is saying, oh, if only we went to a two-tier system,

everything would be okay. But I think there are two discussions that are happening at the same time. The one about the current state of the healthcare system, access to family doctors, emergency wait times, is also related to the aging of the population and the fact that the baby boomers are retiring in droves and creating vacancies in essential service places where there is not the people to take their place. And that goes some way to explain the current crisis. It's not a financing issue. It's a staffing issue, to put it bluntly. But there is that other discussion, which goes with aging of the population. And it is that as people age, their healthcare tends to become more intense and more costly. Provinces are bearing the brunt of that. And unless the federal government

does contribute more to healthcare, increasingly a larger section of provincial budgets is going to have to be devoted to it. And that means that you are taking to take care of Peter, what Paul needs in school. You are the money. There is only so much money. If you're putting more into health care and the provincial budget, you end up putting less in education, infrastructure, go down the list, environmental protection. And that's a second discussion. And the two are getting confused. We are not. If the premiers met tomorrow and sang Christmas songs because they all agreed on something, it wouldn't resolve any of the issues that will come

up this winter in the hospitals of this country. But I'd pay to watch that. Yes, we would too. I'd like to see Danielle Smith do a duo with Justin Trudeau. That'd be good. Okay, Bruce, briefly on this. Yeah, I think I agree with Chantal that people are very frustrated with what they see happening in the health system right now, but it doesn't make them feel less Canadian when it works poorly. And it doesn't necessarily make them feel more Canadian when it works as it normally has. I do think that we have a problem, which is that we have too many health care systems rather than one. And so we're not using the potential to learn from one another, to share resources and information and best practices. And so I hope that the prime minister succeeds in pushing that kind of reform agenda forward alongside whatever funding arrangements need to be made. But I don't think that the sense of unity of the country hangs on it.

I think that people care about the health care that they get, which isn't to say they're indifferent to the health care in other parts of the country, but it isn't of the same order of magnitude for sure. All right. We're going to take our final break. When we come back for short snappers, That section of the program today that gives, I guess, kind of the predictable year-end questions, but they're predictable because they're good,

and they'll be right with us after this. And welcome back for the final segment, the final blast from Good Talk for 2022 on this, our year-end edition. Chantel's in Montreal, Bruce is in Ottawa, I'm in Toronto. So I call this, you know, predictable, because these are the kind of things we've been asking of each other for years now uh in terms of year-end shows i really enjoyed that first uh chunk of the broadcast today i thought was really really good really good discussion um but these are our ones everybody can join in from home if they weren't already here's's the first one. The most impactful piece of legislation passed in the year gone by.

And I guess that could be federally or provincially, just impactful piece of legislation. Why don't you start, Bruce? I'd like one answer from each of you on these things, but I know in some cases you may want to offer a couple of things. But, Bruce, go ahead. I hate to disappoint you. I was going to say that the Emergencies Act seems like the obvious answer, but for me, the most impactful legislation is the fact that the federal initiative to reduce child care costs for a lot of families families starting to bite this year. And in a world where a cost

of living matters so much to so many people this year, especially coming out of COVID and with the inflation the way that it is, I think that that's a very material piece of legislative activity, which spread over a couple of years, obviously. Chantal? I went provincial because, and it's not so much impactful as impactful on litigation and court rulings. A bunch of provincial laws, the one in Quebec dispensing with the old monarchy and unilaterally taking Quebec out of a section of the Constitution. The bills or laws in Saskatchewan and Alberta about so-called provincial sovereignty and where that takes us, the debate over the notwithstanding clause. I think all those are symptoms of a debate that is going to eventually make its way to the Supreme Court. So I'm guessing the first impact is going to be on the capacity of the Supreme Court to come up with consensual positions on all of those issues

should be fun to watch. The story the media missed in 2022, and we always have fun with this one, seeing as at least two-thirds of this panel are in the media. Chantelle, why don't you start on that? Yeah, and if we knew that we'd missed it, we would have known it was there and vice versa. So I'm not ever good at this question,

but I am increasingly curious about the trend that nobody really seems to talk about and where it will lead, and that's the connection between a very, very weak NDP federally. It's not, I mean, I understand Jagmeet Singh is saying he might want an election. I don't think that he wants to get his wish anytime soon, looking at the by-election results this week in Mississauga Lakeshore, where they lost half the votes, the share of the vote that they had a year ago. But at the same time, the NDP is strong provincially, and it's particularly strong west of Ontario.

It could, over the next year, win Manitoba and Alberta. It's already well in place in BC, which is kind of interesting. But at the same time, the liberal brand, provincially, has never been weaker. Historically weak in Quebec and Ontario, non-existent just about, sorry, liberals west of Ontario.

And I sometimes I wonder if the system is organically evolving towards one main progressive option at each level rather than this competition between the liberals and the new Democrats. And I find that that trend is kind of interesting because it goes against the trend we've seen of a multiplication of parties at both levels.

That's an interesting discussion to have that one. Bruce? Yeah, I almost didn't want to answer this question because the precept in it or the pretext in it is that the media missed something. And, you know, I don't like to criticize journalism. Safe answer. Right? Because you asked the question and said, Bruce, you have to have an answer to this. My question is actually a symbol. My answer is

sibling to Chantal's, which is the apparent demise of the Green Party and the People's Party. These were two pretty important political influences in the last couple of federal elections. And we don't hear anything about them now. And I do think that it is part of a potential trend towards consolidation of progressive voters and consolidation of conservative voters and maybe ultimately a two-party system, setting aside the question of what the brand names of those parties are provincially versus federally. I do think that the instinct for progressive voters might be to coalesce around the thing that will keep the thing that you hate from winning

and vice versa on the right. And I don't know whether that will continue to accelerate over the next five or 10 years, but it could. And the things that could change it would be leaders that have that kind of impact but right now we don't hear anything about Max Bernier and Elizabeth May is back as the interim leader I'm not sure exactly what but that party seems dormant now both those parties seem dormant

you know I have the luxury of being the host of the bridge and therefore it's quite a luxury too it is a lot for you enjoying it yeah very comfy very comfy it's a comfy pew to be in um and one of the comfortable parts about it is on shows like this one i don't have to answer i don't have to have an answer i just have to ask the question however on this one i'm gonna i to offer an answer. The story the media missed most in this past year, and I'm generalizing here the media, because in some cases, some media organizations did deal with it, but not many. The story they missed the most was about themselves

and about how they've lost trust on the part of their viewers, listeners, readers. They still have some trust, but they've lost trust. The numbers are down, and it's a big problem for the media, not just in Canada, but worldwide. It is an issue, and it's an issue that the media, a good chunk of it, has missed in meaningful discussion. Okay, next one.

MVP out of the premiers. Who was the most valuable premier of this past year? Bruce. I think probably John Horgan. I think that John Horgan, you know, was pretty popular within his province, all things considered. And also he made arrangements with the federal government that were materially helpful to the people of his province. And he, in so doing, put some distance between himself

and the leader of the national NDP, but did it in a way that didn't cause more friction than was necessary. And yet ended up getting the child care arrangement and the transit arrangements that were in the interests of the people of the province of BC. And so he would be my answer. Chantal. I'm not sure about the word valuable, but I think François Legault is the first incumbent in Quebec to win a second consecutive majority government since René Lévesque.

That goes back some way. And in the process, he has reduced the Quebec Liberals and the Parti Québécois, the two parties who, for all those decades, alternated in power and were the leaders on each side of a fundamental debate, these reduced them to ruins and crumbs. And he is, with that party, it was a new party, the Coalition Avenir Québec. People forget how recent the founding of this party is. He has completely changed the terms of the Quebec conversation about its political future and its place in Canada in a really fundamental way. And that second election kind of seals that deal. It says this wasn't just a musical break in between two pieces of the main orchestra. We have changed the piano player and the orchestra leader,

and we are applying to a different tune. Last one. And if you have more than one choice here, you can, we'd have a bit of time, not a lot of time, but a bit of time. The MP to watch in the next year, 2023, and why would that be? Chantal. Okay, so I picked Chrystia Freeland for two reasons.

One, because the faith of the government up to a point will rest on its capacity to convince Canadians that the economy is in safe hands at a time when the times are stormy. So that is one. But the other main reason why I'll be watching her is if and as it becomes obvious that Justin Trudeau is serious about leading his party in the fourth election, I wonder whether Ms. Freeland would not start thinking that she's got other challenges that she could be tackling outside the political arena. And whether in any event after another election, whether that liberal crown, even if the liberals are in power, will be worth waiting, what, two to five years for? Because if Justin Trudeau wins, he's not going to resign the day after his victory. Or if he doesn't win, it's a leader of the official opposition's job. And based on recent experience, that could be for a while.

So I'm going to watch for signs that maybe she gets interested in other challenges. Okay. It's interesting because you do hear, or at least I've heard more recently. We did a few months ago talk about her as NATO Secretary General, and that sort of disappeared after a while, although it's kind of still out there. But I've heard increasingly in the past couple of weeks people saying, you know, she's moving on. She's not going to hang around.

We'll see. Bruce, you get the last word. The MP. Christy Freeland was one of my three answers. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have a couple more. her, the prospect of spending four more years doing this in the hopes that at that point, you're still a fresh enough idea that the party embraces you and that the country embraces the party. Those are a lot of ifs. And if I'm her, if I do want to be prime minister one day, I should probably leave and spend a couple of years doing something else. But the other two names for me are

Michelle Rempel-Garner and Michael Chong. And both of them are really important voices in the conservative movement for different reasons and in different ways. But as I'm a little bit preoccupied, as Chantal correctly pointed out, with the future and the culture of the conservative movement, I'm going to be very curious as to see how those two individuals use their platforms, which are considerable within the conservative landscape. All right. That's good.

That was a great discussion, all of it. And I do thank you both, as our listeners do, for everything you've contributed in this past year, in 2022, to our understanding of how the system works and how it doesn't work. It's been a challenging year to watch. Chantelle in Montreal, Bruce in Ottawa. So I'm Peter Mansbridge. Have a great holiday season. Be kind out there and be careful.

Still a little tricky out there, not just the weather. All right, take care from 2022. Signing off for this year. You've been listening to an Encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge, originally broadcast on December 16th.