The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Night After the Day After the Night Before

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Canada's 2019 Federal Election. | Thank for subscribing and for submitting a rating and review! * TWITTER @petermansbridge | INSTAGRAM @thepetermansbridge ** https://www.thepetermansbridge.com/ *** Producer: Manscorp Media Services

And hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is the bridge for the day after the night before. Or is it the night after the day after the night before? I don't know anymore. I don't know what to call the bridge on these days after the fact, after the election, after the thing we've been talking about and getting ready for for the last six weeks, having a little fun with it along the way.

It was hard to see anybody having too much fun today. They were trying to kind of sort out a lot of different things about what happened last night, what it means, what it means for the future of the country, what it means for the future of the parties, what it means for the future of the leaders of those parties. We'll try to tackle with a few of those things now. There was a lot of talk today, a lot of people sort of commenting.

I just got off, I was on a radio program, one of the all sports shows wanted me to talk about the election. I was on with them. And one of the questions was something that I'm sure many of you have talked about today as well. And that is a bizarre moment last night where all three leaders were talking at the same time. I'm still not fully convinced what actually happened there.

Everybody's trying to say they were all trying to upstage each other, make it difficult for each other. I'm not sure that was the case. It might have just simply been a logistics issue. The way these things normally happen on election nights is that the parties all talk with the kind of main television pool producers and work out a system of who's going to speak when. And usually, not always, but usually it sort of works from the

bottom to the top. The most person at the bottom of the polls up to the winner on the night being the last person to speak. That's usually the way it works. Sure didn't work that way last night. And there have been a number

of stories out about one person asked for extra time and another one started earlier than they should have and it suddenly it was a train wreck it suddenly turned into this this mess where well first jagmeet singh was talking and talking and talking and seemed to go on forever in one of the longest end of election night speeches I've ever heard. And so Andrew Scheer just started. Now, when he walked up to the microphone and started talking, whether he was under the impression that Singh had already finished, I don't know,

but I would suspect so. And somebody said the Liberals were under the impression that Scheer wasn't ready and they wanted to get going because it was 1 o'clock or 1.30, whenever it was, it was awfully late. And so the Liberals decided they'd go ahead, thinking that the moment was available to them. Well, it obviously wasn't. So you ended up, as I said, with this train wreck of everybody talking at the same time,

which reminded a lot of people of kind of what the whole campaign had been like, especially that night of the English language debate. Anyway, that was last night. Today I have the situation where people are starting to speculate. Well, they started speculating last night, but speculating along with challenging the leaders themselves about their own futures. And I guess the major spotlight was initially on Andrew Scheer.

Can he possibly survive? You know, parties tend to eat their leaders. They don't like losers. And Andrew Scheer, in spite of the fact that he brought the Trudeau machine down from a majority to a minority, was seen by many in his party as a loser because everything seemed stacked against Trudeau. He'd had a disastrous last year and a half.

I'm not sure we can think of too many other leaders on the national landscape in this country over the last 30, 40, 50 years, who've had a disastrous year like Justin Trudeau had, right up to and including during the campaign with the whole brownface, blackface thing happening. And so the feeling was on the part of some in the Conservative Party that, come on, you'll never

get an opportunity like that again. You should have been able to win. So they were making moves already, and I've got to tell you, I've got to be honest, they were making moves before the end of the campaign. Some of them were talking privately about

getting ready, and you saw some things pop up in the press. There was that strange story a week ago about Peter McKay, that his people were getting ready to launch him in a leadership race against Andrew Scheer, which created this awkward moment in the campaign where Peter McKay turned up at a rally for Andrew Scheer in Nova Scotia. Anyway, the Doug Ford people were upset. They did some polling in some of the ridings around Toronto in the famous 905 belt of ridings around Toronto. And they claimed their polling data

showed that Doug Ford was actually more popular than Andrew Scheer. And therefore, Andrew Scheer should have used Doug Ford instead of basically having him locked away in his basement for the campaign. Doug Ford surfaced today talking about how he either called or sent a note to Justin Trudeau

congratulating him and how they were going to work together trying to make things better. That was a shot, seen as a shot by some at Andrew Scheer. So the drumbeat is out there in terms of what's happening in conservative circles. You know, it was Jason Kenney, the Alberta Premier, who made that kind of strange campaign trip in the middle of the campaign to Ontario, where the Ontario Conservative Premier wasn't even allowed to campaign for Andrew Scheer, but Jason Kenney was.

Was he doing it for Andrew Scheer, or was he doing it for himself? He's popular in parts of Ontario. Peter McKay. Is he really interested? Well, it's clear that whether anyone's interested or not, there are some people interested in the Conservative Party that Andrew Scheer should step down, make way for a leadership convention.

He made clear today at a news conference that he wasn't going anywhere. And so it's going to be a fight. But we've seen this happen before. Those are hard fights to win. They get messy and they're terribly damaging to a party. But we'll see. Ipsos polling firm came out already with a poll saying 63% of Canadians believe Scheer should resign for not winning a majority government last night.

That was a fast poll. They got that out in a hurry. That doesn't make it any easier. So that's the situation with Andrew Scheer. Let me talk a little bit about the challenge now for Justin Trudeau. There were some, and myself included, who felt that Justin Trudeau's speech last night didn't really stand up to the situation he was confronted with.

Two-thirds of the country had voted for anybody but him, and yet he made it sound from the stage, certainly in the first part of his speech, like it had been a tremendous triumph, the evening. He finally got around near the end of the speech in a sentence or two talking about the problem that's being created with no government representation from Saskatchew, or excuse me,

from Saskatchewan or Alberta. Well, that is one of the problems that's front and center now in front of him. What do you do? There are no Senate seats available in Alberta at the moment. You can create one by getting somebody to resign and opening up a seat. But the appointments have been made by conservatives in Alberta and it's unlikely they're going to cooperate. Not impossible, but unlikely. Because if you could get a senator appointed to Alberta for the Liberals, they could put that person in the cabinet and be the cabinet representative

in Alberta, or in Ottawa for Alberta. Same thing in Saskatchewan. Neither province has any Liberal MP. So there will be no liberal from Saskatchewan or Alberta in the cabinet. So how do you get around that? Well, it's not going to happen through the Senate. And it's unlikely to happen through a by-election

unless suddenly somebody decides to quit. And you through a by-election unless suddenly somebody decides to quit, and you create a by-election. In the meantime, there are a number of possibilities, I assume, of getting people from either one of those or both of those provinces into a key position in Ottawa that can have an impact. And the best place to have an impact is in a senior role inside the Prime

Minister's office. So if you can get a credible person from Alberta who has the attention and the respect of Albertans. To take a position like that and have real influence, that's one way. Now the Saskatchewan situation is interesting because the longtime Liberal MP with a vast amount of Cabinet experience, you saw last night,

lost his seat in Regina, Wisconsin. Regina. You know who it is? I'll give you a minute to think about it. That's right. Ralph Goodale. Now, what happens with Ralph Goodale?

He's 70 years old. He's still a very active guy. He's still extremely well-suited to any number of different roles in Ottawa. He's not going to have a role in the House of Commons. He's not going to have a role in Cabinet. But he, too, could have a role of some sort in the Prime Minister's office, one assumes.

One of his areas of expertise is in being the government house leader. He was that in past cabinets. They're going to need somebody who's really good at that job with a minority government. So there will be somebody in cabinet as the government house leader. But maybe you need somebody like that in your office as well, who's dealing with the caucus all the time. One of the complaints that faced Justin Trudeau over the last year is there was no serious communication between his office

and many of the MPs in his caucus. Ralph Goodale would make that happen. I suppose that's a possibility. But I'm just, you know, talking off the top of my head here. Somewhere in those two provinces is likely to be a woman or a man who is going to be heading to Ottawa in some serious capacity

in the next little while because they're going to be needed not only to advise the Prime Minister but to indicate to those two provinces that their concerns are being taken seriously at a time when their concerns are serious. There's a gap between what those governments of those provinces and the federal government,

the Trudeau government, consider as the right path forward. But finding a way to get those two paths closer together is going to need some help. So we'll see what happens there. Also keep an eye on these next two weeks, 10 days, two weeks, before the new government is sworn in. Justin Trudeau has to determine

who his cabinet is going to be. And he'll look carefully at all the new MPs that are coming in. There are some. He's lost MPs, and he's lost cabinet members members like Ralph Goodale. But there were others. So they've got to be replaced.

I'm assuming he will once again try to form a cabinet with gender parity. The key positions in cabinet always are Minister of Finance, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Those are key positions. The Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, Southern Ontario MP, the Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, Southern Ontario MP,

has been in that portfolio since the Trudeau government was sworn in in November of 2015. Will he still be there in two weeks' time? My guess, it's just a guess, is no. That there will likely be a new Minister of Finance, but who will that be? And will it be somebody who has an impact in Western Canada? The rumoured favourite for a replacement,

if there is going to be one, for the last couple of years, the rumoured replacement has always been Chrystia Freeland. It's interesting when you flip through her background. Well, look and see where she grew up. She grew up in southern Alberta. Keep that one in mind. I talked to Nahed Nenshi, the mayor of Calgary.

Very fantastic guy. And I remember the day I met him. It was the day he became the mayor of Calgary. Whenever that was, eight years ago. I happened to be in Calgary giving a speech that night, but this story had just happened. It caught everybody by surprise. It was kind of an unexpected result in Calgary.

And I called him up and went over and interviewed him. He was great, and we've maintained a relationship ever since. We talk every once in a while. He's, in fact, been down to my hometown of Stratford, Ontario, and has taken part in some of the activities surrounding the Stratford Festival, and I've interviewed him on stage there as well. Anyway, I talked to him. What's going to happen here?

Because everybody's always rumored that Mayor Nenshi should be in Ottawa. And that he's kind of aligned with the liberals. And this was in the middle of the evening. It was kind of an hour after the result. He said, I've already had three people call me and say I should be in the Senate. And he kind of laughed that off because he knew, as I know, that there are no openings in the Senate. And he doesn't seem to be in any rush to leave Calgary anyway.

He loves Calgary. But he understands that something has to happen, and there has to be an Alberta influence of some sort in Ottawa. And it's more important now than ever. So, we'll see how things unfold on that front. All right. One letter in the mailbag today, and I'll read it right after this. So did you watch the program last night,

the election night program on the CBC? Because I was on there a little bit last night. And I was sitting next to Bob Ray, you know, the two septuagenarians who were sitting there. And there were people making fun of us online.

I said, you know, you look like those two guys from the Muppets. Those two old guys are sitting there babbling away. Because we were doing some babbling last night trying to teach those young pups our little Canadian political history. Anyway, David P. Clark writes,

Peter, we laughed so hard at the comparison of you and Bob Ray to the two grumpy old Muppets. They are Statler and Waldorf. That would be a good title of a podcast with you and Bob, says David P. Clark. It might be. There were a number of people wrote in and said, you guys should do a podcast together.

I showed Bob that in the middle of the election night broadcast. I showed him one of those tweets or one of those emails, and he just laughed. He has his own podcast now, and I have The Bridge, and maybe we'll do a joint one someday. Develop our act, get a routine. Anyway, David's letter, or sorry, actually it's David P. Clark,

and he signs the letter Paul and Nancy Clark. So I guess the P is Paul, and he prefers to go with Paul and David. I'm guessing here. In Barrie, Ontario. I used to live in Barrie, or very close by. I used to, when I was in theie, Ontario. I used to live in Barrie, or very close by. I used to, when I was in the Navy, I was stationed at Camp Borden,

just outside Barrie. You're probably trying to figure out that. The Navy in Barrie, Ontario, north of Toronto? That doesn't make any sense. Well, it does if you were in flying training, because that's where we took primary flying school back in the mid-1960s.

Flew chipmunks at Camp Borden. Then went on to Portage to Prairie in advanced flying training, where we flew C-45s, bug smashers, expediters, they called them. And that was kind of the end of the road for me, as far as I got. Great times, and great times in Barrie. Anyway, I digress again, as I often do. Paul and Nancy Clark say,

the one remaining question about the election is, do you think Prime Minister Trudeau can learn from this experience and find a way to bring this country together? Rather than finding ways to appeal to special interest groups, can he find something for Canadians to be willing to forget their differences

and focus on what makes Canadians the most respected people in the world? Well, that's the question, isn't it? Can he do that? That is the job, of course, of every prime minister when they take office. Can they do that? We're at a particularly difficult crossroads in our nation's history. There's, you know, a lot of questions about the road forward and the kind of decisions and actions that the Prime Minister will take.

But I think he understands the stakes. He certainly should after watching what happened last night. And we'll have to see what he does. A lot of people are saying, oh, you know, he's finished. The ticket is a one-way road downhill. He's gone from a majority to a minority, and the next thing will be a loss. That's certainly what Andrew Scheer thinks. Keep in mind, 68, a Trudeau-mania majority for Pierre Trudeau,

72, almost lost it all in one election. Squeaked by a two-seat minority government, made arrangements with the NDP and David Lewis, brought in some legislation that the NDP wanted. It was the price of support. It was followed up two years later with another majority liberal win. So it doesn't always work out the way Andrew Scheer thinks it will.

But it might. So we'll have to see. Won't we? Anyway, it's time to wrap this baby up for the night because I'm going to the Raptors' home opener. The NBA champions, they're going to do whatever they do, you know, hang the rafter up in the ceiling, bring out the rings.

It'll be fun to watch. Looking forward to it. And as I mentioned last night, we'll keep the bridge on standby in the days ahead, and we will definitely get something on the air if the day's developments warrant it. Until that next one, and there will be a next one, this is Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.

We'll talk to you again soon.