The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Bridge: Encore Presentation - The Final Goodbye

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on September 19h. The long goodbye for Queen Elizabeth is over with her body now on its way to its final resting place at Windsor Castle.  The end of an historic ten-day period since her passing.  Today the Bridge deals with that with Andrew MacDougall joining us from London.  But today's program also deals with issues surrounding journalism and its coverage of politicians. Andrew, a former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper helps us on that too.

The following is an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge, originally broadcast on September 19th. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. The long goodbye is over. Well, I don't think it's the first time I've said it, and I'm sure it won't be the last time I've said it, but nobody, nobody does special events like the British. Now, I know they have gone over the details of what would happen during these eight or ten days

for years now, decades in fact. But nevertheless, when it happened, when the Queen passed ten days ago, they had to institute the plan. And everybody had to be ready. And my gosh, they were ready. This seems to have gone off. I mean, I imagine in the days ahead,

we'll hear various things from the background of this story, but it seems to have gone off without a hitch. Amazing moments that we've witnessed together, that the world has witnessed together. And again, in the funeral procession through London, the service of Westminster Abbey, it was all quite remarkable. For a remarkable person, let's face it, the final goodbye of a long goodbye.

With precision, with emotion, with class. And now we look forward to what's going to happen in the future. Nobody knows for sure, of course. We'll all look forward to seeing that. Now, if you watch any or all of the services today, you saw that there were an awful lot of people there. And I don't just mean the ordinary people. There were an awful lot of dignitaries

from around the world. Once again, underlining the fact that this was queen of the world. But there was, of all the pictures that were taken, the Canadian picture that I found the most interesting, I'm sure there'll be lots of pictures of the Mounties that were kind of leading the procession away from Westminster Abbey. But there was a picture that came out last night

that was taken of the five prime ministers of Canada who were in attendance for the funeral procession. Two were missing, Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney. They were both at the Ottawa service on this day. But the five others, including the current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Kim Campbell, Stephen Harper. They had a picture of the five of them taken together.

And I always get a kick out of these kind of pictures because, you know, maybe it's just the moment. Maybe it's just the photographer saying, smile. But they're all smiling. They all look like members of a club. They all look like they're pals. We know they're not. The two extremes in the picture, the two, one of the extreme left, one of the extreme right are Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.

That was not a great relationship, especially near the end of the Chrétien and Paul Martin. That was not a great relationship, especially near the end of the Chrétien years. Kim Campbell always seems to be happy. In spite of the fact she took her party to the worst defeat in parliamentary history. They went from a majority to just two seats. And then there is Justin Trudeau standing next to Stephen Harper. This was not a great relationship when it was in parliament,

when Harper was prime minister, and in the early days of the Trudeau prime ministership. Not a great relationship. But that's not what it looks like here. And special moments create their own special moments. And that picture is one of them. And it's worth looking at. It is, as our friend Jerry Butts said in a tweet when he tweeted the picture,

it's an awesome photo. And it is. We don't see enough of moments like that. Now, the Prime Minister made news, Justin Trudeau made news last night, because he kind of answered the question about whether or not there is going to be a debate surrounding the end of the monarchy in Canada. Now, it's already come up a number of times, not surprisingly. But he gave an interview yesterday to Global News,

and on Global News, he made it clear he doesn't think that discussion's going anywhere. I'll just read you a little bit from the story. Prime Minister Trudeau says, the complicated process that would come with any attempts to abolish the monarchy are likely a non-starter for Canadians amid pressing national problems like inflation, climate change, Trudeau reflected on what the Queen's death means for this country and why he thinks Canadians have bigger things on their minds than abolishing the monarchy. This is the quote. We're able to have all the strength of debates that we need to have

in Canada about worrying about the overarching stability of institutions because they are embodied by structures that have been in place for hundreds of years. Canadians have been through a lot of constitutional wrangling over the past decades, I think the appetite for what it would take when there are so many big things to focus on is simply a non-starter. So there you go. It's not going to be Prime Minister Trudeau who introduces any discussion on the end of the monarchy in Canada. And something tells me it's unlikely to be any of the other parties

in Parliament at this time anyway. If that discussion's going to happen, it's not in the short term. Last point on the services that we've witnessed, services and moments that we've witnessed, services and moments that we've witnessed over these last few days, that I would say, I mean, you, if you haven't been there, you've watched them on television.

And it's moments like this where television can really shine because the power of television is the image, right? It's not necessarily the commentary. And on days like today, that shone through. The broadcasters that did the best job today, in my humble opinion,

are the broadcasters who limited the commentary and allowed the pictures and the sound to carry the day and carry the day they did. So congratulations to those that kind of went with that idea in their coverage. And perhaps those who didn't might want to take a hard look at what they did and why they did it. All right. Let's figure out what we're going to talk about today because I think there are two topics. They're very different.

Very different. One is, what did this last 10 days tell us? Especially when we're looking at Britain, a country that's got all kinds of problems right now, but was so united in their grief. So that's one story. I want to try and understand that, what it meant. And was it just a short-term thing,

or does it actually mean something for the future? And the second story, totally different, is a Canadian story. And that's this discussion we had a couple of times last week, but I don't think we finished it. And that is the idea of a politician running against the media. How successful can you be in doing that? So I look at these two things. I wanted to do them both today.

And I thought, who am I going to get? Who am I going to talk to for this? And I thought, well, there's one person who can deal with both these issues and deal with them really well. His name's Andrew McDougall. He's been on this program before. He's a friend of the bridge. He's the former director of communications for Prime Minister Harper that's where I first got to know him

in dealing with that office and trying to get interviews and what have you but for the past few years Andrew's been living in London where he's the director of a strategic analysis group in London. Trafalgar Strategy is the name of it. And so he looks at all kinds of things, including the monarchy. And he's a keen observer of things that have been happening in Britain and the UK, but he stays very much in touch with his old kind of area of expertise, which is Canadian politics.

So, who better to talk to than Andrew McDougall? So let's have at it. Here's the discussion. I tracked Andrew down over the weekend, and we had this discussion. So enjoy. So, Andrew, let's start with a sense of what's been happening in that country over the last eight or ten days. It has been remarkable to watch when I watch, and I don't watch all the time, but I watch every once in a while. And just the size of the crowds and the emotion that you witness in every picture you see. What is it telling you?

Is it something about the country and its relationship to the monarch and the monarchy or is it all about her? Is it all about Queen Elizabeth? I think it's maybe even something more than that, Peter. I think it's about that sense that there are very few things in our lives, particularly our adult lives, that we can recall being there the whole time. And Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was certainly that. And I think that constancy, that idea, you know, you can't mark a change unless there's something that's been the same the whole way through. And if you think about the span of her life, you know, you have the rise and

the end of the Cold War. You have a dozen Canadian prime ministers or so, 15 British prime ministers. You know, there are very few people that have been through those events, met those leaders. And so when they depart this earth, it's a tremor, you know, and I think that's what we're feeling. And it's a very weird sense being here in that, you know, I think we're used to being part of history in our lives in small ways, you know, there's a Canadian election. Okay. The world will note that, but it won't stay with people. The death of the monarch, you know, former empire country. So there's a natural tentacles that shoot out into the world. And then there's all the people that will have met her over those years that will have their remembrances. And then there is that sense of, you know, a loss of a parent would. And I think it's all of that put together that's produced this very real

kind of sobering and somber effect, but an appreciation for the institution of the monarchy. And I think to answer your question, I think it's equal parts her as a person and the span of her life and the way she conducted it and her steadfastness and her sense of duty. And also the fact that these institutions do matter because that the immediate installation of, of King Charles, the third has given that sense of continuity. Sorry, I don't know if you can hear my child snoring there on the monitor. If you need to, but I think just to put it, it is that sense that something big has happened

and a figure that we're familiar with in our lives is gone, and that means change. But the institution of the monarchy has snapped back into form and shape, and King Charles has had a pretty steady start. Is the country any different than it was eight or 10 days ago? Will it just return to where it was when this is all over? Yeah. I mean, I guess we'll see in a sense, but my sense is yes. I'm a lot more confident saying that it will than I was in theory, thinking about the death of Queen Elizabeth the second, because in my mind,

you know, I'm not, I'm not staunch monarchist, Peter. I'm not, I'm not a staunch monarchist, Peter. I'm not a Republican either. But I thought a lot of it was tied up in her and her unique kind of skill set and her way of doing things and her familiarity. And I think having been through this now, I'm more minded that it's more the institution. And A, we're starving for institutions that work. You know, politics these days is so much about institutions that don't work.

And I think, you know, the trick of the monarchy, of course, it doesn't do much work. But its symbol at the top of the constitutional order does matter. And that kind of constancy that I was just mentioning, I think that kind of stuff does matter. And so I think, you know, I think that's we'll get this country back to where it has to be. And look, come the end of the funeral service and the kind of period of mourning, the country does have very real problems. And it's almost easy to forget now a very new prime minister that had just met Her Majesty the day before she left this earth to do the transition from boris johnson to liz trust and and you know the fact that inflation is still in double digits and climbing and and the fact that trade volumes aren't recovering from brexit and ukraine and gas supplies you know they're you know consumer energy

prices were set to go up 80 percent uh here in the uk in october and the government's now come in with 150 billion pound package to try to cap that. So these are very real issues that have just been wiped off the map by this new supernova. So I think it's good that the monarchy has done its bit. Now it's time for the governing institutions of this country who have been kind of, quite frankly, poor for six, seven years, if not longer, to kind of take up the mantle of service and get a result for their people. Does this make the job such as it is harder or easier for King Charles? Yeah, I think it makes it easier in that they are now the de facto part that works and they're not expected to meddle.

And hopefully, you know that the transition and how seamlessly and kind of flawlessly it's been run will maybe give a bit of inspiration to the to the kind of mere mortals that occupy whitehall that have to crack on with with fixing some some pretty tough problems um and you know king charles the third has said all the right things about limiting his interventions recognizing the role of the sovereign now is not to opine, as he has done for most of his life on issues, but rather to provide that constancy, to really provide that certainty in the constitutional hierarchy of the

United Kingdom, that the sovereign is there, her majesty's, or his majesty's government. I have to catch myself now, you know, one of those many things, you know, it's the, it's the King's council, not the Queen's council and et etc um yeah so i think uh you know hopefully they'll pick up the baton and and the governing elite and and do their bit it'll be interesting to see whether he really can resist from opining on on things like that he has in the past especially on things like the environment um i i understand as you suggested that that he has said he won't but it's going to be hard for him not to i mean it's like one of the number one issues in the world and he's been a part of it yeah and and

you know i think history will treat him quite kindly in terms of when you look back at when he was worried about the things, you know, leave aside the interventions he wants. It is clearly been something that's been on his mind. And I think one thing or two things, Peter, that help is that the kind of classic small C conservative view of environmentalism is kind of in that custodians of the land and good stewards of the land and, and, you know,

not taking more than you can get from the land and good stewards of the land and, and, you know, not taking more than you can get from the land. And, you know, Liz trusts for all her kind of out there ideas is still committed to Boris Johnson's net zero agenda for 2050. So there shouldn't be huge ructions from the off, but as we all know, the devil's in the detail and how are you going to do what in what order to get to that result is going to be the is going to be the trick. And we've already had, you know, wobbles about nuclear investment.

You know, we had the ongoing issues with the spot market for natural gas and what that's going to cause. And so, you know, one of the first actions the government made was trust government made was to kind of, quote unquote, lift the ban on fracking, which really wasn't a ban, which nobody can really lift because the communities have to give their consent. And then North Sea oil, making sure you can kind of go back out there and get every last drop, which on its face seems incongruent

with being an environmentalist. But look, we're in the frying pan right now. And we either take the emissions from Vladimirladimir putin or we take them from ourselves and i know which side of that equation i'd rather be on so hey ho let's go all right well speaking of let's go let's go to a different topic uh one that you are equally familiar with if not more um and that is the situation that we've witnessed over the last week and in fact we've witnessed for some time now and that is the relationship between the politicians and the media and specifically in this past week Pierre Palliev in his first week on the job as a leader of his majesty's

loyal opposition had a real back and forth with uh with a journalist and it got out of hand on both both ends of it all uh but it does raise the question and i i'm really interested in obviously your take on this because you know both both these situations well having given your your your past job in ottawa you know polyevev because he was in Prime Minister Harper's cabinet, you know, David Aitken because he was David Aitken when you were here as well. But what I kind of want to get at is, can you successfully run for office by attacking the media?

Because there's no question there's an attack on the media going on here uh on the part of the conservative party they're not the first to do this other parties have done it at different times but they're really they're really doing it right now yeah look great great topic that we can spend all night talking about and and i think in short you know what's that what's the, what's the expression? You never put the fight with someone who buys their ink by the barrel. That was the media in the post-war era. They dominated, they were the colossus. If you wanted to say something, you had to say it through them. That was just a fact, you know, there weren't very many national

broadcast networks. There still aren't, there weren't that many national syndicated radio spots. And the papers loomed over every metropolis, two or three. And if you didn't get in there, chances are the average citizen wouldn't hear you. That has changed 100%. Now anybody, including a political party, can be a credible media platform they have the same access to the technology you need to get as far as you need to get to

they can target audience um you know they can raise money uh you know through advertising they know uh how to manipulate all that machinery it's not just the preserve of people trained as journalists or people who invested. Think of the difference in spending to get the CDC, to get all the nuts and bolts and broadcast technology a decent microphone, and you can produce content that is as professional looking as that. And that's just changed the game. them out of the business of news and taking all the advertising money that used to go to those dominant players not because people truly cared about the news although most did or some did at least but because advertisers knew that that's how they had to get um you know their their their product message across was was that and and they it was only the news business that could aggregate those eyeballs now it's a facebook google tiktok uh know, even like gaming platforms now will give you a bigger audience than a nightly news broadcast. And so politicians would be dumb, Peter, to not try to find ways to go, you know, why dilute your message through an imperfect medium, meaning one that challenges the kind of bull spit you might be talking when you open your mouth.

You'd be dumb not to try to go around the media, whether that's a good thing or not, a whole separate question. And, you know, as much as conservatives like to rage against the media, I bet you they would not for one second want to live in a world that didn't have the challenge function of the fourth estate out there holding people to account. And they love it when the media does it to their opponents. They hate it when it gets done to them. That's politics that will never change. But, you know, getting to David Aitken, I know David. David was at my backside every day I

was in that office because he's a good journalist. He finds stuff out. He wants to find out what you have to say about it. He's always fair about it, always gives you a chance to get in the story. And if conservatives want to look back through David's journalism, you could find, you know, the Aga Khan story comes to mind. That was David's exclusive, like Justin Trudeau jetting off to the Aga Khans. That was the first big ethics kerfuffle that Trudeau had. It got him wrapped on the knuckles by the, um, by the ethics commissioner, uh, for the first time, uh, that doesn't distinguish David. Cause there's been several other ethics investigations of Trudeau after that, but he was the first, uh, and you won't find a straighter, uh, person to deal with than David Aiken. Uh, you know,

he'll go after anyone all the time. And, and, you know, it takes a bit of maturity to realize that, but that's not the point here. That's not the game. The game is to create that fight, to make the media a partisan player in a partisan game. And when, when journalists as good as David let the mask slip through frustration, I expect at, you know, they've been shut out virtually through the entire leadership contest, but let's not forget was seven or eight months. And this is his first appearance as leader. And he's basically said, you're going to come be stenographers and listen to me say things and you tell the people what I say. And there isn't one journalist I've ever met in my life that would like the descriptor stenographer. You know, that's not why you're in the game.'re in the game yes to listen to what these politicians have to say but then to challenge and ask them about it uh and if you

don't get that opportunity you're basically a eunuch and a journalist doesn't want to be that uh so david went alpha and and started talking over him before he he did and that just you know right into the trap and the next day pierre polyev's team puts out an email look at what i'm up against people right you know liberal hacks you know liberal hecklers and wasn't even it wasn't even the next day it was it was that night yeah and he puts out that line and he raises money on it yeah and i guess that's the issue because um not the money angle but the the fact that he made the decision to do what he did i mean when he went to the microphone that day there were going to be no questions he just wanted as you said make a statement and and the journalist could

go with the statement now you know maybe he thought of that on his own the odds are that others suggested that to him as well. This is the approach we've taken for six, eight months. It's worked. Let's just keep it going. And I guess that's my question. Can you, it's one thing to appeal to, you know, your loyal audience, you know, the party partisans.

He needs to take it to a to a national audience now is there that much interest out there on the part of the the the ordinary people so to speak about media bashing and ignoring the media and and and not allowing them to be part of the um you know the process that brings forward analysis of the political parties. Yeah, I think a couple of things to unpick there, maybe flip that around to start with here, is that I don't think people care about media bashing as much as the media thinks that people care about media bashing.

I think most of them are too busy getting on with their lives and probably have calculation too worried about inflation and the cost of living and the fact that they can't get ahead, that if a couple of reporters in Ottawa moan about the fact that Pierre Polyev's not nice to them, it's not going to lose, you know, anybody any sleep. And I think that's because reporters understand the kind of unique role they have and the importance of that challenge function and the accountability function. But I don't think that's something that's appreciated by the general population. And if it's just a question of, you know, people shouting at each other in Ottawa, well, I've heard that

story for as long as I've been alive. And is that really different? But to get your point about does he need to change gears now that he's got to make a different play? Yeah, during the conservative leadership race, he could put two fingers up to the media every single day and not only not be heard by it, he'd be applauded for it. And, and it's the Jean Charest of the world that kind of knew that they couldn't be that because it's not in their character because they lived as politicians and they've dealt with the press and, and no, and I feel kind of ashamed or too chastened to kind of try to be that brazen

whereas pierre it's just like forget it whatever you know i know how to do this role and i'm going to do it because it's the right thing to do for this audience will he be able to switch that you know i think he's counting as much on his own ability picking up our earlier conversation to broadcast his own thing out there and if you look at the pierre polyev in his videos that he puts out talking about inflation at breakfast time and how it's jacked up the cost of your bacon, et cetera, or, or talks to the small business owner that can't make the Nanaimo bars anymore because the input costs are too high. That's the message the liberals need to be listening to not the with the press and the kind of theatrics about tactics and process. They need to listen to what he's saying to average people through his channels.

And, you know, in his launch video, say what you will about it, it got millions of views. When's the last time anything CTV, CBC, or Global put out got millions of views? You know, it's, you know, and maybe that's uncharitable, you know, and I know that, you know, broadcasts can still get a million a night, but that's, that's not for one rarely, rarely these days, I'll tell you. It's been a while. It's been a, you know, it's been, it's been a while.

Things have changed dramatically on the landscape and, you know, we all understand that you understand that. But, you know, if this was, it seems like a, you know, if this was, it seems like, you know, a generation ago, but it was only five, six, seven years ago that you and I were plying our trade on, you know, trying to ensure that Stephen Harper appeared before the press every once in a while. At times that was difficult because it's not like he loved dealing with the media. But have times changed so much in what's really a short period of time in years that it's a totally different equation today than it was back then.

Yeah, Peter, maybe the way to look at that is it's not what's changed on Parliament Hill or in the media, but what's changed in the information economy. And I can tell you everything's changed. You know, the algorithmic power of TikTok to pick but one example. There's never been a piece of technology that can tell your little brain what it wants to see more than that algorithm made by the Chinese, yay. And that's the kind of supernova that's changed. There's no algorithm that can make me read a 3000 word investigative journalism piece on, on some contractual malfeasance, even though that is far more important than the football videos that TikTok gives me. But my brain, it's like, it's the evolutionary thing. It's like, it's why we're all fat now because, you know, out in the Savannah, we weren't, we never saw sugar and, and, and, you know, carbohydrate and, and we had to run for our lives all the time. And then

now we live in a world where, where there's, you know, processed food and sugar everywhere. And our bodies are still Savannah bodies. And so when we eat it, we get fat. And it's the same with the information economy for me is, you know, we like to think that we're cerebral and some of us are maybe more than others, but at the end of the day, we want to watch stuff that we like. And the internet has just made everything about the likes and the plumbing of the internet and the algorithms behind the Facebooks, you know, Google's tick tocks are meant to give us what we want. It hits that little button in our, in our brain that goes, yeah,

more of that, more of that, more of that. And, and politicians get that right. They know that's where they have to play. They want to get a big audience. It can't be one of those. Well, on one hand, on the other hand, if you look at this reasonably, it has to be that guy's an idiot. He sucks. They're the problem. They're screwing you over. Here's what I'm going to do about it. And it doesn't matter if the here, here's what I'm going to do about it has any semblance to reality.

Cause who's going to fact check that the media. And then you get this kind of impotent feeling in the media of like, well, what are you saying is crap. And you're a partisan actor. Of course, you'd say that you're trying to keep us down. And the information economy is it rewards all of that. And so it's not like how you want to do your job and how I want to do my job. It's the way information swirls around us that makes it that makes it hard to catch and frame and squeeze into a format that we might recognize. When you used to sit down with Harper and do a 30-minute interview, it's rare that anybody has 30 minutes to think about anything,

let alone a politician at the apex of whatever power they have. I always used to like get nervous when you just ask those simple questions about how's that going? Or what do you think about that? And you just invite somebody to kind of think and offer some expertise. Whereas now I think, you know,

partly to get that kind of partisan or kind of really zingy stuff, it's even journalists now feel they have to come in with their studs up and kind of play that kind of really zingy stuff. Even journalists now feel they have to come in with their studs up and kind of play that kind of really kind of partisan actor voice to it, whether that's Aitken example or not, like whether or not what he was asking are fair or not. The tone and the kind of self-righteousness was a kind of very partisan thing.

You could see a liberal MP jumping up in the house and kind of playing that role. And I think that's kind of where we've lost ourselves is we're dancing to somebody else's tune now, but we were all trained on the old classics. And the savvy politicians are the ones that know what the new Coke is and the new Coke doesn't suck. They actually know how to juice it up

and make that content travel and get people excited about it. And I think, you know, people of us stuck in the older bits of the world go, how could that work? And, and look at all the memberships that Pierre got, right? Where do you think those people came from? Those are people that probably don't watch too much news or read too many newspapers, but feel a lot in their lives about what they're not getting out of the

institutions that the media covers and go, yeah, this guy's telling it like I want to hear it. So I'm going to listen. And now we'll see if we can do that in a general election. Well, let me ask you a two part question, because people have always appreciated your advice, especially your various political masters over the years. But if Polyev was to phone you and say, how do you think I should deal with the media? What would you tell him?

That's the first part. The second part is, what would you tell the media about how to deal with not just Polyev, but politicians today that they're not doing now? Yeah, I think we'll start in classic sense with the part I want to answer most, which is the second one. And this was true in Harper's day as well. Harper was always happy to talk to the press if he thought he was going to get a good, literate, serious conversation. You know, he never worried with you, Peter, for example,

he was going to sit down and kind of who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out. You know, that shouty thing that some MP said on social media. I'm going to ask the Prime Minister of the country about that. So it would be, kind of be serious on the substance of what's going on and less

on the process side of the kind of stuff that people in Ottawa love talking about, but ordinary people don't care. So like, how are you treating the media? You know, when the media in the 2011 election campaign started using one of their four questions of the day that we granted them to ask, why aren't you letting us ask more questions? You know, and then Harper's like, well, what's your question? Why aren't you asking? Well, what's your question that you're not, you know, it's one of those things, but if, you know,

if Harper's going to sit down with somebody at Bloomberg for 45 minutes, he knew that he was going to have a pretty serious conversation about the plumbing of the global economy. And he, and he would talk about that until he's blue in the face. Or if you think about the kind of, you know, the one press conference, I still get reporters mentioning to me on the odd occasion is when we had to change the foreign investment rules in Canada, because the Chinese had started buying up the oil sands, and we couldn't kind of do the outright change and say, yeah, we're doing this because of the Chinese. But we brought Harper onto Parliament Hill, where he hadn't been to do a press conference

in a dog's age. There were probably 20 reporters in attendance, They all got a crack at them and they all stayed on tune. They all, they knew this was a big decision, a complicated decision, one that was important to the country. And they rose to that and asked serious questions about a very complicated policy that then Harper gave serious answers to. And then everybody left that room going, why doesn't he do that more often? Well, you know, the subject matter of the day is befitting of a prime minister. And the journalists recognize that.

So on the journalist side, I'd say as much as you can, hold your nose about the form and really look at the problems, the structural problems that Canada has that politics isn't solving. And Pierre wants to talk about the economy a lot. You know, if you want to walk out on marginal tax rates, I'm sure he'd probably have a go at that or what the true role of the Bank of Canada should be. So not like, why did you bump on Tiff Macklem, Pierre? But like, what's wrong with the Bank of Canada's mandate? You know, and maybe what should we be doing about it? Because, you know, they didn't see this spike in inflation coming. So get into the substance of it. And if I were advising Pierre, I would just maybe give almost a similar piece of advice in that the inflaming is useful to build an audience.

But there comes a point where you have to deliver for that audience and they're not going to accept just that someone's on their side anymore. If you then have influence and can do nothing to fix problems, you're not going to be any further ahead. You're going to have to feed that, that crocodile in the hopes that, that, you know, it won't eat you. Uh, and, and the problems facing Canada, particularly the people he's trying to represent, are real and serious. And unless he's done some serious thinking about it, he's going to be found out. So that would be the kind of ultimate pivot is if you think he's this kind of populist showman, but then he actually looks at kind of

how to fix 50 years of failed neoliberalism and is the conservative that can grip the fact that it screwed the working class completely over and people in small communities in single industry towns, because we have oligopolies everywhere and the concentration of wealth and opportunity in cities, then maybe that would be a nice act. And that, like, we'll see what he's got. but i really hope he's got something there or else it's just going to be theater and the world does not need more theater now we are up to the back teeth with theater i i've watched justin trudeau give me nothing but theater and and and mock empathy for for seven years now and the problems are are stacking up

and unless we want some kind of pitchforky moments out there politicians on both sides of the aisle are gonna have to have to put their heads together and figure out what to do great conversation and i want to i want to note andrew that it only took you 26 minutes and 45 seconds to get into the the partisan nature that you have that you have at times on topics and on people so but that was great i listen i'm glad we did this because i think it's a it's an important discussion it you know it's an important time it's kind of a critical time in that relationship between what is a very important part of the democratic process, and that is the media. When it acts responsibly and does its part in trying to inform people

so they understand what's going on, and the other half of that relationship in terms of the politicians on how they react to a media that is, you know, its role is to try to make politicians accountable and understandable and to challenge certain assumptions that are being made. But right now, that relationship is kind of off the rails, not just between the media and the new conservative leader, but it's kind of off the rails all along. And it's one of the reasons why the people, as you said in one of your first answers

about this issue of how the people look at national institutions these days, unlike the way they used to look at them not that long ago, that they're kind of wondering whether these national institutions really are delivering on what they're supposed to be delivering on. And in the case of the media, it's a whole issue surrounding trust. And so this is an important conversation. I'm glad we had it, and I'm always happy to talk to you. Likewise, Peter. Thank you so much for having me on.

I really do appreciate the opportunity to chat this through because I couldn't agree more and let's hope the news uh industry figures out its bottom line quickly so I think that that tension is something we didn't talk about but that sense that the bottom is falling out um doesn't make it any easier to do that job and particularly if your bosses don't want to fund the kind of accountability journalism that we know our institutions need, because that's not what gets clicks, but that's what needs to happen. So they have to find a way to pay for it. Yeah.

So get a subscription people pay for your media. And, and stay away from the clicks. Amen. They are, they are a problem. Andrew, thanks so much. We'll do it again. Cheers. Andrew are a problem. Andrew, thanks so much. We'll do it again. Cheers. Andrew McDougall, former director of communications for Stephen Harper

when Stephen Harper was prime minister, now at Trafalgar Strategy in London where he's a strategic analysis on all things from politics to the monarchy. And we got it all in that conversation. Glad we had it. We're going to take a quick break. We're not quite done yet. We've got a couple of end bits that relate to both these two topics

that we just had. So we'll be back with that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday edition on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. You know the difference between linear and digital when you're talking television? Of course you do. You're a smart audience.

You get it. You understand it. That's the big, I was going to say the big crisis going on in television these days. It's not really a crisis, but it is a big issue for decision makers at television networks around the world, not just in Canada. But linear is basically the way you've always watched television.

You know, you either used to hook up your rabbit ears on top of the television for us really old people, and then you started using cable. And that's kind of the way it's been. And cable delivered you lots of different channels. Trouble is, it charged you lots of money for channels you didn't even want, never watched. So a lot of people have been cord cutting. In other words, ending their cable relationship and going kind of fully digital, right? Hooking up their various little TV boxes to the internet and watching streaming services where you can get everything from.

Well, you can get everything. Basically, you can get everything if you get the right streaming services and the right access. It costs a little less, gives you more choice. And in some cases, it gives you a choice that goes beyond commercials. It's not cheap. It can be less expensive. In some cases, it can be more expensive than the old way

but that's the basic that there are other differences between linear and digital that i won't get into here because i'm not technical enough but those are the basic that's one of the basic arguments and that's why traditional networks are so worried about their declining audiences. And they're all facing this. And on top of that, there's this whole issue of trust in news, trust in journalism, which has impacted the number of viewers who are watching television news. Well, here's my first-hand bit for this day, and it deals with this issue of especially

young people who've been sort of bailing out of traditional news formats. And the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has just done a study that concludes a number of things, and I'm not going to go through it all, but you can find it on the Kaleidoscope, which is, you know, a web service. And what they talk about from this study is that for young people, news can be narrow or broad. Young people make a distinction between the news as the narrow traditional agenda of politics

and current affairs, and news as a narrow traditional agenda of politics and current affairs, and news as a much wider umbrella encompassing topics like sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, culture, and science. The news is associated with mainstream, traditional media brands who are expected to act impartially and objectively even if there are doubts that this is achievable. News is topically broader and afforded more tonal latitude. Alternative media is felt to operate better there. Rather than simply avoiding news, there is news to be avoided, often to guard mental health. Because of this, young people seem to engage more with news than the news. Avoidance of narrow news has implications for mainstream brands

who are felt to operate primarily at this serious end of the spectrum. That's interesting. I mean, the study goes on a lot more than that. But there is one of your reasons why traditional news formats that are desperately trying to find a tweak to the way they do stuff. That's one of the reasons why. Because the future is in today's young audience, and if you lose it now, you're likely never to get it back. So they're trying to find

ways of holding on to it. Here's the other end bit. And it's kind of the last point we'll say on the long journey home for Queen Elizabeth, which basically ends today. We have witnessed these huge crowds in Britain,

huge lining streets right up to and including today for the final journey home to Windsor. But here's an interesting point. Have you ever heard of FlightRadar24? FlightRadar, one word, two four. FlightRadar24. It's a website. What it does is track planes and anybody can get on flight radar 24

and see where different you know you know the name of your airline that you want to find out where it's going in some cases private aircraft in some cases military aircraft if you have like the tail number you can track it some are able to kind of block this. But more and more, it's kind of available on any number of different things. So up until the Queen died, the most tracked by people who were subscribed to FlightRider24, the most tracked aircraft anywhere was U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when she went to Taiwan last month. That flight was tracked.

Like, you can track it. You can sit there and watch it, okay? Like, you know, it's just little dots on a map, but nevertheless, you know where it is, what height it's flying, what speed it's flying, all of that stuff. It was tracked by 2.2 million people. That was the record for a flight tracking.

Well, that record is long gone now. when the Queen's Coffin was flown last week from Edinburgh to the RAF base north of London, it was tracked by almost 6 million people. That's directly on the website or watching the YouTube stream. And that's pretty remarkable. Queen's Coffin was flown on an RAF Globemaster C-17 after it had been lying in state in Edinburgh.

And it flew to London. That was her last flight. She was accompanied by the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, her daughter, and her husband. And people kind of watched it, just watched this little dot going across the screen for her final flight. And today we witnessed the final services at Westminster and the final march

from Westminster up the Mall past Buckingham Palace to the Wellington Arch. And then the final ride into the hearse, the coffin taken to Windsor Castle. The final journey. The last stop. The last goodbye. At the stop. The last goodbye. At the end of a long goodbye. So that's it. That wraps it up for the first day of this week.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. You've been listening to an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge, originally broadcast on September 19th.