The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - To Come Home or Not To Come Home - That Is The Question.

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

With the country in rail turmoil, with indigenous protestors blocking traffic, what's a globe trotting prime minister to do? He's getting lots of advice, but what should he do? And, another milestone for social media, breaking convention and setting the law. Should it?

Well, hello there. Peter Mansbridge here with The Bridge on this Family Day weekend, at least in this part of the country. Good chunk of the country. It's Family Day weekend, but not all of the country, as these things bounce around in different places. But here in Ontario, it's Family Day weekend, so I encourage all of those of you who are listening from areas where it is Family Day weekend to take advantage of it, not only to relax for three days, but to be with family, if that's possible. It's a nice idea to enjoy family time. And if you're not physically with them, call them. Right?

Okay, I've got a number of things I want to talk about this week, and I'm going to start by telling you a little story about the place I live. As you know, as you may know, I live in Stratford, Ontario, southwestern Ontario, and I'm back and forth to Toronto all the time, so we have kind of a place we can stay in Toronto as well. But our main home is in Stratford, and we love this town. City, really. Cities, at least in Ontario, are 20,000 or more than you're a city. So Stratford's somewhere around, I think, 32,000, 33,000.

So it's a city, city of Stratford. We moved here in 2002. And at the time we moved here in 2002. And at the time we moved here, they were right in the middle of a local election race, the race for mayor. And the incumbent mayor was in hot water. And here's why. She was in hot water because,

almost literally, there had been, in the summer, a tremendous rainfall. It had caused all kinds of havoc in the city. Lots of flooding. Basements flooded. Streets flooded. I think the river bank, which is normally controlled, the Avon River, it overflowed. Lots of problems and lots of questions. For the mayor. Where was the mayor?

The mayor was not here. The mayor was away on holidays. Now, you know, people are allowed to go on holidays. That's okay. That happens. They don't determine whether there's going to be some kind of natural calamity while they're away. The issue became, though, whether or not she should have come back to Stratford immediately. She didn't.

And as a result, that became this issue. And it eventually cost her the election race. The new mayor and mayors in surrounding towns and cities all learned the lesson. My gosh, if there's a problem at home, you better get home. If they didn't realize that already. Now, why do I bring that up? Well, you know why I bring it up.

I bring it up because the Prime Minister of Canada is away. Not on holidays. He's at work for the people of Canada. And we'll get to what he's at work for in a moment. But meanwhile, there's chaos in the land when it comes to the issue of rail traffic. It's shut down almost everywhere. And that's built up over the last, what, week? Because of protests. Now, I'm not going to get involved in all the protests that exist because the issues are complicated and they're the subject, I think, of their own discussion in a podcast. And maybe if it's still going on next week, I'll deal with it.

But right now, I want to talk about the optics of the situation because it's pretty clear there are some people who are very upset that the Prime Minister hasn't come home to deal with this. Where is the Prime Minister? He's, for the most part, in Africa. And why is he in Africa? He's trying to gather support for Canada's bid to be one of the non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

There are five permanent members and have been there since October of 1945 when the UN and the Security Council were formed. And those permanent members are the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, and China. Those are the five permanent members. And if any one of those five decide to veto a motion that's before the Security Council, it's dead. You have to have all five permanent members in agreement on any motion.

Now, non-permanent members, there are another 10. Elected, I think, for two-year terms, and they kind of alternate. Canada's running for one of those terms now, but they need support from other countries to be on there. Canada used to be on there quite often. Hasn't been for a decade or so. And for some who spend a lot of time

worrying about foreign affairs and diplomacy and our role in the big picture, they feel that Canada has to be on that council. Remember, this is for a non-permanent position, not one of the veto-holding nations. So while it has some prestige, it doesn't have the clout. Now, any motion that passes the Security Council needs all five,

but it needs at least four more of the other members. So it needs a total of a majority of nine votes of the 15 council members' votes to pass. So Canada's trying to be one of those extra 10 in the 15. So that's wise away. Now, I don't know how much you think about the UN and about the Security Council and about how important it is in today's world,

but clearly Ottawa thinks it's important. Is it more important than a country in some degree of paralysis over a rail strike? I don't want to overstate it here, but listen, a rail strike has a lot of impact with service industries and the movement of goods and services across the country. It does have an impact. So clearly, the federal government, through a variety of different ministers of transportation and other areas, indigenous rights, because the protest is an indigenous protest, they're heavily involved in trying to find a solution to this. But the prime minister is the prime minister. And does he need to be at the head of the table, seen to be a major player in the negotiations?

Well, clearly some people think so. The leader of the NDP is demanding that the prime minister return home immediately. Now, I don't know. You know, it is 2020. You don't need to be here to be involved here. There's all kinds of ways through today's technology to be involved but nevertheless that's the NDP position

and it has garnered some support from others who feel the prime minister he's the leader of the government this is a national issue perhaps to some a national crisis he should be here he's not here. Not yet. The conservatives have a different approach. They say this cannot be allowed to go on, that the protest has to be ended. Well, you know, that's what they're trying to do,

but the only way to actually physically end it, which seems to be the suggestion coming from some of those in the Conservative Party, is to use force to end it. Whether that means the provincial police, the RCMP, the Army. We've seen this movie before. I don't know whether the name Dudley George is familiar to you or the name Oka is familiar to you. Let's take the Dudley George example, 1995, Ipperwash there was a protest in a provincial park that was causing a degree of havoc.

And the new Ontario government made it known clearly, and it was very clear when you read the report that was issued after the investigation took place, the new provincial government made it known clearer when you read the report that was issued after the investigation took place. The new provincial government made it known they wanted the OPP to get in there and end this. Well, they went in. There was shooting. And Dudley George, one of the protesters, ended up dead. That's what can happen when you try to force an end to something.

So you look at all these different options, and you look at the optics of the big picture, and you realize that governing isn't easy. On a situation like this, this is where government shows what it can do or shows what it cannot do. And we are in the middle of this. And what happens?

Well, I guess we're going to have to wait and see. But there's pitfalls in every direction. I've given you what they are. All right. I got a lot of letters on that issue, and that's why I took the approach I did on the optics of it. There were some letters trying to get me to explain the actual issues behind the protest.

I'm going to, I want to think some more about that and let's see where we are next week at this time on this story to see whether we can take it in a direction that heads into that area, the issue behind the issues. Now I want to talk about something else and I will right after this. Okay, so I've been thinking a lot this week because of, once again, things that are happening south of the border. I've been thinking a lot about the power of social media and whether we're finally starting to realize that that power goes beyond all the obvious things we've been talking about over the last few years,

ever since, you know, Twitter and Facebook and all the latest iterations of those forms of social media have come along. But there's something else that seems to become very clear, and this is what it is. In the past, by convention, I got some mail on my use of that term, by convention, last week. People were sort of unclear as to what I exactly meant. Well, by convention means, you know, this is kind of the way it's always been,

and it's accepted to have been in a certain way, and it's maybe not law, but it could be considered law. Because it's always been the case. Remember in the 1981 Supreme Court decision on the patriation of the Constitution, it was a split decision, and part of it was on this issue of by convention, this is the way things have been done.

Anyway, let's not go into that. But by convention, it's always been considered that governments and leaders cannot interfere with the judicial system. They can't say, hey, judge, I want you to do this or that or whatever in some official form, either by phoning a judge, by giving a speech about a court case, by saying something in Parliament or in some legislative body about a court case

or about a judge. Couldn't do that. And we've seen examples in the past where penalties have been assessed because of that. Jean Charest, when he was, I believe he was Minister of Sport at the time in the Mulroney governments of the 80s, he phoned a judge about something. I don't remember the particulars of it. I think it was about a case. Anyway, he phoned a judge. Didn't realize that there was something wrong about doing that. But when it came out that he'd done this, he had to resign.

So Jean Charest, who later become leader of the Conservative Party, later become Premier of Quebec, and just of late, toyed with the idea of running for the Conservative leadership now. But there was a time as a young cabinet minister, I think he was the youngest minister in the Mulroney government, he had to resign. It was a scandal. He had to resign because he called a judge. And the impression was

that just by simply calling the judge, he was trying to influence the judge in a decision that that judge had to make. And that is a no-no. You cannot do that. At least that's what we thought. You cannot do that. At least that's what we thought. You cannot do that. So,

nothing is as it was when you talk about the Trump administration and the Trump White House, is it? So February 11th, just a couple of days ago, Donald Trump tweets. And the issue at hand here is about his buddy Roger Stone, who has been on trial, was convicted on a number of counts, and what his sentence was going to be.

So that doesn't come down until next week. So Donald Trump tweets. This is shortly after it became clear that on the guidelines, the guidelines for the particular crimes that Stone was convicted of, the maximum sentence was seven to nine years. The prosecution didn't say it was asking for that. The prosecution said that's the maximum. So the implication was they were asking for it.

But that's not what it says in their presentation to the judge. But nevertheless, 7 to 9 was the thing that made the headlines. So Trump tweets, this is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Then this, cannot allow this miscarriage of justice. That's his tweet.

Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice. So, is that the President of the United States saying he cannot allow that? Is that the President of the United States directing towards the judge or the Attorney General of the United States? His preferred direction, which is you can't allow that miscarriage of justice, in his opinion. Well, I don't know, but within 24 hours, the Attorney General of the United States, Bill Barr, had entered the picture and said 7 to 9 is outrageous.

That's not going to happen. And minutes after Barr moved, Donald Trump tweets again. Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller scam was improperly brought and tainted.

Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress. Most of that is not true, certainly not borne out by the facts. But nevertheless, Trump's direction from the day before seems to have been followed. Can't have just been a coincidence that all these things happened over a period of less than 24 hours. But whatever happened to by convention? You know, the U.S. Department of Justice is supposedly

those who are actually working at the kind of middle level, not at the top, is in turmoil. Because they look like they've been politically influenced. And Trump's saying, I didn't tell anybody. I never spoke to Barr. Well, let's assume he's telling the truth when he says that. And that's a hard assumption, based on a guy who's told more than 16,000 falsehoods.

That's the nicest way of putting it. I prefer the L word, the lie word. But if you assume he's telling the truth, that he never talked to Barr, Barr is not immune to looking or hearing about the tweets the President of the United States sends. And when he says, cannot allow this miscarriage of justice,

I think he gets the message. So there you go. You know, we have our own examples of by convention, as I gave you the one with Charest. We don't have our examples of this. At least we don't have it yet. And I wonder whether the page is turning now, once again, because of social media, in a direction that, you

know, we may eventually regret. Meanwhile, the U.S. presidential race keeps on going and, man, they're slugging it out, and they're just saying all kinds of things about each other. I mean, it's so unlike anything we've ever witnessed before. Do you see the stuff between Mike Bloomberg and Donald Trump this week? This is how I'm going to end the podcast this week, because it's just like it's mind-boggling. Bloomberg says he wants the democratic nomination although he's not officially part of the package he's not

in the debates he hasn't been in any of the either caucus or primaries yet won't be for a couple but he's getting a lot of attention and his he's going up in the polls the battle of the billionaires, some people say. Bloomberg versus Trump. How Bloomberg says, two billionaires? Who's the other one? He's definitely a billionaire. Bloomberg worth more than $50 billion.

Is Trump a billionaire? I don't know whether you read the New York Times, but last weekend they had a feature piece on the Deutsche Bank, the German bank, that has been implicated in some of the money manipulations and movement of cash on the part of the Trump family over the last 20 years. And there was a lot of turmoil inside Deutsche Bank over whether or not they should be lending money to Trump. And they did an investigation on his net value,

and this is like 10 years ago. They came up with a figure, when Trump himself was telling them he was worth billions, they came up with a figure, I think it was $788 million. Who knows? Anyway, Trump and Bloomberg have been hitting Twitter with all kinds of weird stuff. Here's Trump.

Mini Mike, you know how he loves to come up with names for people. Mini Mike is a 5'4 massive dead energy who does not want to be on the debate stage with these professional politicians. No boxes, please. He's claimed that Bloomberg stands on a box. He hates crazy Bernie and will, with enough money, possibly stop him. Bernie's

people will go nuts. So that's Trump trying to get at Bloomberg. But Bloomberg's different than the others. Bloomberg replies quite quickly. Here's his reply. We know many of the same people in New York. He's talking about him and Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, two of the elite class of U.S. politics in the year 2020, they could be ending up going against each other in the presidential elections. Wouldn't that be something? And when we see that type of name-calling and petty back and forth. You wonder, where is all this heading?

And is it going to be kept just to the U.S.? Are we going to see it spread over the border? We've seen it in some places. I don't know. Maybe people want this. Maybe they love this kind of stuff. Maybe this is what they've been waiting for to engage themselves in politics. We've seen turnout rates.

They're down. Maybe they want more of this. Let's see. All right. Family Day weekend. Get out there. Enjoy it. let's see alright family day weekend get out there enjoy it be with your family where that's possible

and if you're in a province that is this weekend family day not everywhere is don't you love it isn't that Canada in some ways it will be family day eventually in all the provinces. But a good chunk of them, it's this weekend.

Anyway, wherever you are, I hope you have a great weekend. Thanks so much for listening to The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll see you again in seven days. Thank you. you