The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What Happened, What Now, And Is Canada Ready? -- Good Talk

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Why Americans delivered the result they did, and then, they deal with how Canada is reacting to the decision and what it means for us. 

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Vansbridge here with Sean Talley Bear, Bruce Anderson. Another slow week, nothing really happened this week. I don't know what we're going to talk about for the next hour, but we'll figure out something. Yes, it was a week. It was a week. It was a week that I think everybody to a degree is trying to recover from, trying to sort out what it actually meant and what's going to happen as a result of the U.S. election

decision on Tuesday night. So let me start this way. We've all had a couple of days to think about this, to sort of go through the entrails of the voting patterns and who did what. What is your sense? Chantal, why don't you start us? What is your sense about the impact of what happened on Tuesday night and the reemergence of Donald Trump in terms of the presidency of the United States?

What's your take after a couple of days thinking about it? I guess the first take is the obvious one. Strip it of everything you saw in the campaign as you can in other campaigns this year, in particular, more so, I believe, than at any other time in recent history. It sucks to be an incumbent. And I saw a number on X, I believe it's accurate. There have been 10 major national elections this year, and in every single one of them, the incumbent, left or right, was kicked out of office. And the main reason for that is cost of living, inflation. I have been, you know, during the referendum on Scotland, I kept, I subscribed to BBC Scotland, and it's still on my feed every morning.

And as you know, it's the first thing I see, because by the time I start looking, the day is really on in Scotland. And I am always struck when I look, you know, if you took out BBC Scotland and the names of the places, it's the same issues that we heard about on the election trail in the US that we hear about daily here. Not so much immigration, although that's part of the mix, but housing costs, transit issues, generally cost of living issues. And I don't think we're going to be immune from that. But it basically gives people who campaign and who are not the incumbent a very big pass to campaign on the issue. And yes, rationally, a lot of people understand that the Prime Minister of Canada, Joe Biden,

go down the list or not. Emmanuel Macron really cannot wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to solve this for you. But still, you know, we heard the word anger left all week. But I'll come back to that later. But I heard from people who actually were happy in this country about the result. And in their minds, voters voted for hope. The notion that a change can only bring something better. That may be wrong. Probably wrong. Probably voters set themselves up to be disappointed. But it's not just anger.

It's not just we don't like, you know, woke or we're racist or we dislike immigrants. It goes way beyond that. And I looked at the vote of younger men and I was struck by, again, the fact that it wasn't so long ago that if you didn't feel like going to university or couldn't, you could get a really good job, a well-paid job in manufacturing. And a lot of those jobs have disappeared. They've not been replaced by well-paid jobs. And increasingly, you have an alienated working class that feels that the times are good for people that are not them and that they are not becoming better for people who used to have dads who did well and got everything working, but that's not happening now.

And I think that's a major issue. Bruce. Yeah, Peter, I think that there are, I think of this as a bit of a layer cake. What added up to the victory of Trump starts with a base layer of racism, another layer of misogyny. Together, maybe those add up to somewhere between 15 and 25 percent, depending on how you look at it. That's not enough to win the presidency, but it's a significant headwind if your candidate happens to be a black woman. On top of that, whether the preferred term is low information or ignorant or lacking knowledge doesn't matter to me. We're talking about a significant number of people who don't know much about the issues,

who have not maybe done the kind of reflection on the issues, studying the issues that would have been easier to do when there was less media coming at us, less other forms of entertainment or information coming at us all the time. So we see a breakdown in the degree to which people can kind of focus and reflect on issues maybe over time. And so that allows people to hear a discussion about things like tariffs and then decide that it doesn't need to preoccupy them. They can just kind of move on to the next thing that they want to think about.

But then, and so that gets Trump in his, in this case, closer to a victory. But for me, the X factor that layers on top of that, and one of the most important things for progressive parties in Canada and elsewhere to think about, is this idea that the progressive party has gone from being the logical champion for the working class person, the regular person, to being a political party that doesn't feel like it's really in touch with their interests. It doesn't feel like it reflects their sensibilities. And more, that has adopted a posture that sounds like they believe it's the role of the politician to tell you what's unacceptable or acceptable as a thought. Now, I hear a lot of things said that I think are offensive, that I completely disagree

with. But if we think about how we talk about this kind of situation in our personal lives, with our friends or family members, would we say that's completely unacceptable? Or would we say something like, I really disagree with that? And why I'm kind of at this is I do think that the reflection that progressive parties, the Democrats for sure, and I think the Liberals to some degree in Canada really need to take on board is whether their language and their posture sends out that signal that we are the people who think we are elected to tell you what is the right way to think and what is the wrong way to think. So I think that's part of it too.

And obviously, I'm with Chantal, if you're an incumbent, and Aladdin showed up with his lamp and said, you only get one wish, not three, one wish, what would you ask for? You would say, give me a 25% decrease in the price of groceries. And if you did that, if you got that, you would be instantly more competitive. And in the case of Kamala Harris, it might not solve for all of those other things. But for progressive parties, they need to see more hope on the cost of food in particular. There are other issues, obviously, in the cost of living, but that's the one that, in my research anyway, is a kind of a recurring pain point. People know what the price of bananas used to be,

and they know what it is now. They know what the price of chicken used to be, and they know what it is now. And if you're a politician and you say, look, it's hard, the inflation rate is coming down, we're on you know, we're on a path. It's not going to work. Last point for me, I should have said this last point point earlier, but I liked Kamala Harris's campaign. And in reflection, I liked it because I was terrified of how bad Joe Biden's campaign was going to be. And so I measured it on a curve.

But if I think about it now, what did she do that might not have been the right choice? Well, she embraced this idea of joy. And if you've got an angry population, a frustrated population, and you go, you know what, let's just kind of embrace joy. It's not going to work. I felt some when she got that nomination. But I think it was a kind of a sugar high for people who wanted a better progressive candidate that Joe Biden was going to be. And the second thing that she did is she kept on saying, we're not going back. Now, I interpreted what she was saying when she said that as women aren't going to accept going back to a time when their rights were decided by men, were limited by men. And I liked what she said when she said that. If I'm a voter who thinks that four years ago, the price of food was cheaper, the economy worked better for me, I felt more in touch with the country and the sense of the direction of the country.

We're not going back doesn't sound like what exactly I want to hear. Like some people didn't want to go back to some things that they thought were better four years ago. And so she, by emphasizing those two themes early on in the campaign, which felt right, I'm sure, for the supporters who came out to her rallies in very large numbers, who were relieved that the Democratic Party was going to have a chance in the election. But they might have been bad strategic choices in terms of that middle group of voters who were interested in hearing a message of joy and for whom going back didn't sound like the worst idea that they ever heard because they were thinking about it not from a feminist right standpoint, but from a cost of living standpoint. So let me pick up on the price

of food with a word of caution to incumbents and successors alike. Grocery prices are not going to be going down on many of the things that people pinpoint. Why? Because of climate change. And no president or prime minister is going to change that reality tomorrow. But it is happening. It's happening where oranges are being grown, where those bananas come from. And if you compound that with energy costs that can only go up, they never really go down. They just don't go up as fast. You are still going to be paying more for that chicken than you used to or that you would like to. So I understand the temptation for opposition politicians to campaign successfully on the price of food.

But it is at one's own peril. I was also struck, and we're not going back, and I too think that that was a reference to abortion rights and women's rights. But I think on that score, it is possible that the Harris campaign did not notice that women can actually walk and chew gum at the same time. And for this, I point at the referendums that took place on abortion rights to repeal abortion bans in 10 states. The majority of those states, seven, voted to repeal bans. But in many of those states, the Republicans also won. In clear, you can deal with abortion rights and at the same time decide you're going to vote for Donald Trump. And that, I'm sorry, guys, I'm always struck by this ever since Kim Campbell was supposed to be a great solution to everything that ailed the Conservative Party federally because she was a woman. And this notion that because she was a woman, women would suddenly want to vote for her, as if women voters just sit there and say, right gender, you've got

my ballot. But it was a bit of the same with the abortion debate. It's as if voters, and in these cases, it's very striking. Female voters had a choice. They could say what they wanted and do what they needed to do to get rid of an abortion ban and still decide they didn't want to vote for Kamala Harris. And those lessons keep getting learned every single time. A lot of the time, by the way, by male strategists to believe that they know best, which is called mansplaining, I guess. Obviously, I want to get to the impact it's going to have on us. You both kind of touched on it in terms of

the kind of campaigns that we're likely to see here in the next year and what's been learned from this one. But let me, let me just ask one last question about, you know, what we witnessed on Tuesday night, you know, for the last,

I don't know, six, eight months back to when Biden was, you know, the, the candidate, but continued on through this. The Democrats try to say that, tried to say that the issue on the

table, aside from the things you've mentioned, was democracy. And this was the opportunity to really take a stand on democracy. Well, you know, democracy means you've got to take part, you've got to participate. And the best way to participate is to vote. Well, they're still counting the numbers. They're still working out the turnout figures. But at this point, it appears the turnout was down, not up. And it was particularly down for the Democrats. Trump numbers are kind of in the ballpark of where he was last time around in 2020. But for Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party,

their numbers are down considerably, actually. And it makes you wonder whether that theme, I hear what you're saying, the issue was the price of eggs or chicken or whatever. But they tried to push democracy, and a lot of people fell in line with that argument especially in the media that that was what was at stake but if turnout means anything nobody seems particularly worried about democracy in the big numbers well it's a big question you know to sort of put to people like what you choose here is going to determine whether or not your democracy is going to survive

there's a certain amount of um look i i mean let me let me be clear i i dislike donald trump as much as anybody else does i'm not saying you guys do. I'm just saying I am not a Trump person. You've got that, right? If it wasn't clear. You know what? It's funny how you feel like you have to say it every once in a while, because if you say anything that sounds like it explains how Trump won, your social media feed becomes full of people going, I knew you were a Trumper or something like that. So, but look- Worst things will happen, Bruce, don't worry. Exactly, exactly. So I think that there was a, I don't know if I'd call it, it's somewhere between realism and arrogance that the Democrats talking so much about democracy will die if Trump wins.

For me, their democracy was already imperiled by a variety of factors that affect our democracy to foreign interference, all kinds of stuff. But it's back to this whole thing of is the posture of one party saying, if those guys win, our democracy is over and trying to pull a thread from, you know, Donald Trump saying, I want to be a dictator, but only for day one. And, you know, lots of other kind of crazy sounding things, which might turn out to be really serious threats. But at the end of the day, didn't seem to convince people that their democracy was really that much in peril. Instead, what it probably made some people think is there's the Democratic Party again. They don't have an answer for me the other side is horrifying, why Donald Trump is the worst human being ever. Again, I think he is one of the worst people ever. Okay, Bruce, we get it. We've got that message. You are not a Trumpist.

But I think, you know, I do think that the whole idea of the Democrats are out of position with a lot of mainstream voters, in part because they say, elect us and government will solve your problems. Republicans don't say that. They say elect us and we will remove government from problem making. I think that turned out to be a more credible and effective pitch. And I think in part it's because it's a more credit, it's on the heels of a Biden administration with two really important signature bills, which I think were really good policy, but which most people just have no recollection of,

no understanding the CHIPS Act and the IRA. And so people don't accumulate that knowledge of what works for them, but they still see the Democrats as saying, give us a mandate and we'll bring some policies and we'll do some programs and that'll help solve your problem. And it just didn't land as well as the Republican message and we'll get out of the way. Two points. One on the threat to democracy, which is an abstract question to wake up to in the morning on the way to the ballots. I think in this case, Trump was helped by his first term. A lot of people probably told themselves, wait a minute, this guy was the president for four years. And, you know, my democratic rights, as far as I can see them, are still intact. So that kind of hollowed out the argument. If this had been his first campaign, the counter argument might have been a lot more effective. Look at the kinds of people this man

is bringing and the things he's saying. But voters usually work from experience. We've all covered campaigns where, what was it, Brian Maloney was going to hand every civil servant a pair of running shoes and a pink slip. They say outrageous things, but based on experience, you say, well, but that didn't happen. If it happens, I think the question becomes more valid. So that's one. The one you ask about turnout, and I'm curious about whether it could be in play here. We talk a lot here about the fact that various communities that are more directly impacted by geopolitical events outside of Canada feel about their vote in the next federal election and how heavily what's been happening in Israel and Palestine and Ukraine and in Russia has impacted communities who have strong ties to the region, more so than many non-from-the-region voters. And I'm wondering if part of the reason

the turnout did go down is that there were people who, for those reasons tied to geopolitical events, did not want to vote for one, but could not bring themselves to vote for the other. And in the end decided, a pox on both house. So maybe I don't like Harris's stance on this issue, which is my issue, my ballot box issue, but I can't bring myself to go vote for Donald Trump or the reverse. I think Harris has the right position, but for all kinds of reasons that I can't do this. Even if Trump sounds like more of a threat, I can't move over to... And I think a lot of voters were a lot more torn about how to vote than we have given voters credit for. That the many voters went to vote thinking, as usual, that both choices were problematic for them. And that would lead people to stay home.

And who stays home the most in an election like this? Usually people who have backed the incumbent in the past and are disappointed. We see it in this election. I expect to see liberals stay home. They're not going to want to go to Pierre Poiliev or Jacques Mitzing or Yves-François Blanchet, but they will decide to sit on their hands and not go vote. And I think that explains why it's the Harris column that seems to have declined and not the Trump column.

Well, it's certainly the case so far in the counting. I appreciate there's still some, especially California, I think is there's still quite a few votes to come in from there. But overall, Trump more or less where he was last time, Harris well behind where Biden was last time. Okay, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about, you know, Chantel just touched on a little bit right there, but the impact that this could have on Canada, both in terms of the leadership, you know, Justin Trudeau, the planning of the next election,

and, of course, how they deal with the Trump administration, whoever is the government in Canada. That's coming up right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode. That is, of course, Good Talk with Bruce Anderson, Chantelle Hebert. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us wherever you're tuning in from.

Okay. I guess one of the things that surprised me in the last couple of days, and maybe it's just what you have to do to sort of calm things, but there was a sense from a lot of the Canadian government leaders, whether it was the prime minister or cabinet ministers, of sort of saying, oh, you know, it's no big deal. We were ready for all of this, and we can handle it. And, you know, we're not that far apart, really. You know, what's that all about?

Chantal? I'm guessing. It didn't work on me. And it seemed to me to be down-deaf to what Canadians had been watching for a number of months and how theyost in the minds of Canadians that, yes, the Trudeau government has been there before and has handled the Trump presidency. Except I think the point is being driven home to most Canadians who kept track of what was going on in the U.S., that this is not the first Trump administration coming back as is. Trump 2.0 is very, very different. Fact that we've been watching for a number of months, the people who worked for him beg Americans not to reelect him.

It kind of sends a powerful signal that it seemed to me, you know, that the liberals in Ottawa were whistling past the graveyard of their past contacts in the first Trump administration. Now, Bruce has worked for political parties, so he would know that. I know that from doing a book on the referendum and talking to all the elected officials who were big players then. It was 15 years later, we talked to a lot of background people for context. And what was striking about every single one of them was how they still had only good things and were still loyal to the politicians they'd work for. It's not normal to have people work so close to a leader of a party, of a government, and to be telling voters, please don't vote for this person. So there was this gap between the government's message, don't worry, be happy, we've got this in hand, which they don't, because they can't. Because I could tell you that I've got next winter in hand,

but I don't even know when it's going to snow. They have until January 20th when the inauguration comes to figure out what they think the early directions of this government, this White House will be. And they will be campaigning against the backdrop of its first decision. So I hope for them that they will have everything in hand because they will be judged on performance over the course of an election campaign where they come from behind.

But the other problem I saw this week in the liberal governmental reaction was that the last time, Justin Trudeau made significant changes to his cabinet and significant changes to his government. This time, he resuscitated a committee. The response is, to tell you the truth, underwhelming. And I don't believe that at a time when more than 70% of Canadians have lost faith in Justin Trudeau's government, that anything that was said and done this week has redeemed that faith. Do you think you could boil down your reaction to maybe like two initials? Oh, because I said on that issue that normalizing this result and saying it's going to be business as usual and nothing will happen that will be important is BS. Yes, I'm happy to use those words again. Remember, I'm a Francophone. They carry no pain.

I could go further and it would carry no pain to me. As Chevy Chase would say, I love it when you talk dirty to us. Yeah, right. That sounds like it's getting you onto a dangerous slip, slip, hurry, slope, let's back off here. All right. Well, let's hear what Bruce has to say about all this. You know, when a political party is on its game,

one of the ways that you can tell is if an issue comes up and you can immediately sense whether that party sees it as what is known as a sword issue or a shield issue. with and are enthusiastic about and have specific things that they want to land as messages for people to take away or an issue a shield issue where the boat the most that they're hoping for is that it doesn't hurt them too much and that they're trying to kind of avoid confronting the issue or talking about it too much want to change the subject, that kind of thing. As I was watching the reaction of the Liberals in the last 48 hours, I couldn't tell whether they thought that this was a sword issue or a shield issue. And I think that was evidence of a lack of that kind of political discipline that's part of the challenge that Justin Trudeau has right now, which is that there's a lot of bureaucracy that gets in the way of effective politics

on the liberal side. There's a lot of, what about this? What about that? Before, you know, bright lines are drawn and clear messages are delivered. Now, I'm not arguing in favor of a more thoughtless approach to this. I think this is a really serious issue. But what I saw in the government's reaction was, trust us, we're the Trudeau government. And, you know, go back to what I was saying about the message of Kamala Harris, out of touch with the times. Trust us, we're the Trudeau government. It is not going to convince anybody. Or it will convince the number of people who currently say that they're going to vote liberal, but it will not convince other people.

Instead, you know, the only times that we've seen Trudeau have the ability to kind of break out of the public opinion penalty box that he's in is when he says things that reveal a level of knowledge and specificity that seems like he's not playing the role of Justin Trudeau, that he's telling people actual things that they should be thinking about. And there's an abundance of them on this issue. Chantal's absolutely right. This is Trump with the Senate, probably with the House, with the Supreme Court, with no shackles, not worried about running for re-election in four years. And he's going to be surrounded by, instead of a bunch of people who kind of lucked into the bus ride with him in 2016,

people who want to go into office with him to accomplish very specific and massive changes in the size and scope of government, in regulatory areas, in pushing an America First agenda, in seizing, almost as David Frum put it, from a predator standpoint, seizing economic opportunity from wherever they can find it in the world, not building partnerships, not looking at everything as a kind of a mutual benefit exercise. So I think it's time to be much more preoccupied with the substantive risks for Canada. And I think that the Prime Minister has the natural advantage to some degree in understanding those. But I would have loved to see him and Minister Jolie talk about, well, here are the things that we need to be thinking about and working hard on. Water,

immigration, tariffs, defense spending, critical minerals, and just lay out a little bit more of a sense of we're not just going to develop a strategy, trust us, because we've done it before. But this is different. These are serious issues. Here are the ones that we're most focused on, and we're working on them, and we're going to go to Donald Trump with proposals. Because I think that's the other thing that everybody who knows Trump knows, is that if you just kind of go in the door and say, well, we've been friends for a long time, that's probably not going to work very well.

Really? You need to go in with something that says, I've got a deal for you. Exactly. And if you don't, you know, it does end up looking like you're not thinking this through well enough, or at least if you are, you're not prepared to share with people what the elements of your thoughts are. You know, we all know that he's a Mr. Transactional President, and you better go in the door, you know, with that in mind when you're going to have those opening discussions. Thinking of a Canadian audience, and, you know, I was listening to Bruce.

I think what he was being polite about saying is that all week the government has spoken to us through its various voices as if we were a kindergarten class. Behave, kids, the teacher is here. Rather than speak to Canadians as the adults that they are. And that has been a trend of this government. And they don't even see it. They don't see themselves in the mirror doing it. But they always sound like they know best. And you don't even need to ask what they know because they just know it.

Accept that premise and go back to your play and to your games because we're doing what we need to do. And on a week like this, that's a major communications failure. But why does it happen? It's not just that they've spent the past eight years thinking that telling people bromides, like we have your back. Most people, I think, who have a family and a mortgage and a job think that the first person that has one's back is one's own person. Didn't call Justin Trudeau to say, well, you have my back while I try to figure out my mortgage. But they themselves, I think, have a very poor understanding of how the Harris campaign went off the rails. And why do I say that? Because was it only two weeks ago that suddenly they basically cut and pasted, they were not going back, slogan, onto their great

new ads that are supposed to turn things around? Was it only two weeks ago that they decided that they were going to make abortion again? A big issue in the next election with this idea that Pierre Poilievre is going to end abortion rights because that's been happening in the US. So if you're thinking that the person who lost on Tuesday was on to a great thing and you were busy copying or getting a strategy book to apply it here, and you wake up on Wednesday morning and that didn't happen. All your premises, and it's not true that they have two brains, one for strategy and one for government. What they felt was successful directs where they go, which is why I say they have between now and January 20th

to get their act together and to act like the adults that people expect governments to be and to stop talking to Canadians as if they were infantile brains waiting to be fed some pablum of rhetoric. We'll see how long it takes them to flip those ads back to a different direction. You've both listed a lot of the issues that are going to confront this government, or any Canadian government, as a result of the Trump re-election. The one that, to some, may well be the most serious is the immigration issue. And in terms of what might happen at the Canadian border, you know, let me find it here.

I was looking at the Reuters headlines that went out to the world from that news agency today. And one of them, the headline is Canadian police brace for worst case scenario of asylum seekers fleeing Trump. The worst case scenario is millions, literally millions of people heading north under the threat that Trump is going to put them in, you know, in camps. These would be undocumented immigrants in the United States, and they're going to try to rush to get out. Now, we've seen some spillover from that in the last couple of years, but nothing like the kind of numbers that are being suggested here. What are you hearing on that front, Bruce, in terms of preparations or the fear that this may in fact turn out to be true, that this may well happen? Well, I believe this is an area where behind the

scenes people in politics and policymaking have been for some number of months looking at this from the standpoint of it's something that could be very difficult to manage. Because the natural instincts of some Canadians will be, well, we need to help these people. And the natural instincts of other people will be, well, we can't afford homes because we have more people in the country than we have homes being built right now. So we already got a degree of tension around the number of new people coming into the country.

That's what caused the government to revise downward its immigration levels for the next couple of years. So this arrives as a bit of a unique thing. As people seeking refuge go, they will not feel the same as people fleeing, to many Canadians, as people fleeing a war zone or a civil war as we've seen in the past. And even in those cases, sometimes we can have situations where Canadians are quite uncertain or at least there's mixed opinion about whether or not we can accommodate large numbers of refugees. This won't feel quite like that. And I don't know at this point how it will end up feeling, because I think we don't know what pictures people are going to see, what stories they're going to be told about what's happening, how much of it is families being ripped apart? How much of it is

people kind of fleeing for their lives in the sense that if they go back to the place that they came from originally, that their lives are in peril? How much of it is people who've lived in America for a very long period of time being told that they can't stay. How that story gets told to Canadians will have an impact on how Canadians respond, and that will also have an impact, I think, on the politics of it and the political leadership of it. I think it's a good thing that Mark Miller, who I think is one of the very best ministers in this government, has that file, because I think it's one that requires a real clear-eyed, solid judgment kind of approach. But it's going to be a very, there's no question in my mind, it's going to be very difficult.

And it may be the most difficult issue. The one that we won't hear as much about, but maybe even more problematic is what will happen with the climate change issue with four years of a president who says, I don't really believe in this and I want to produce as much fossil fuel energy as possible. Canada's economy has been gearing up for a transition, which I think has been the right thing to do, both from an economic and a climate standpoint. But whether it carries more economic risks now is going to be a question that people are going to debate in a different way, because what Trump 2.0 will look like. You want to touch on this, Chantal? Yes, on immigration, I agree that Mark Miller has been doing a lot as immigration minister, but the scenarios we are talking about are more the purview of the public safety minister, frankly. We're not talking about the immigration department

handling millions of applications. We're talking about people trying to walk across the border. I'm not totally convinced that millions would show up. Why? Because Canada is sending some very significant signals, as opposed to last time, that there will be forces on hand, police, et cetera, to send people back. And if you try and fail, you've basically outed yourselves to immigration authorities in the United States. So that is something that many who are thinking about their options and who have managed to live undocumented in the U.S. will be weighing. That it will impact public opinion, depending on on the coverage is impossible to doubt. The picture of a drowned child in the 2015 campaign changed the conversation on Syrian refugees in a major way,

and the conservatives paid a heavy price for not having picked up on that. Moreover, chances are that we will again be in an election campaign when those first pictures start to surface. That's one of the major differences between Trump's first version and 2.0, is that we just elected a new government that was still riding high on the polls, that still had three years to go before its next election, three or four years. We will be in an election campaign, probably just as the first realities of the new Trump era kick in, including on the front of people trying to leave the US. And that for all parties, but especially the two main parties, will make for a very delicate balancing act.

I am convinced that there are liberals who believe this is kind of good electorally because it will put Pierre Poilievre on the spot. Maybe, but maybe not. They don't know how the conservatives will adjust to that situation. I expect it's always easier for opposition parties to adjust to crises that befell a government that is campaigning for re-election and then the rebirth. Okay, we're going to take our final break and come back

and we'll do the other obvious question. Is this good for Justin Trudeau? Bad for Justin Trudeau. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. Time for the final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantelle and Bruce are here. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

A couple of reminders. Your edition of The Buzz, the newsletter, will be out tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. in your inbox. If you subscribe, there is no charge. You can get it at nationalnewswatch.com.m. in your inbox. If you subscribe, there is no charge. You can get it at nationalnewswatch.com. Okay. It's been interesting watching the different opinion pieces that are kind of being floated out this week

and some of the remarks from different commentators and analysts and MPs and senators about what the Trump election victory means for Justin Trudeau in terms of his political future, in terms of what lessons may have been learned for him as a result of what happened on his personal decisions that he's in the midst of making or has made already, about whether or not he should stay on as Liberal leader or whether he should punt and find an exit ramp. Okay, Bruce, let's hear what your thought is on this.

Well, look, I think in one sense it is an opportunity for Justin Trudeau. And I say that in the – what I mean by that is that his biggest challenge in some respects in recent months has been people don't know why they should listen to him anymore. They're not that interested in what he has to say or how he says what he says. And part of it is a fatigue. I've heard everything he's got to say. Part of it is a fatigue. I've heard everything he's got to say. Part of it is a stylistic issue.

I just don't like the way that he kind of manufactures his message so that it feels so manufactured. So anytime you have a break in that pattern where for reasons that didn't really have to do with you, people are interested or will feel like they should listen to what you have to say. That's an opportunity to be taken advantage of if you're an incumbent facing all of these headwinds that we've been talking about. What would you do with that? You would not lose a single opportunity to speak really frankly about what these issues are and how you're going to be thinking about them. I think the Liberals have tended in the past to, you know, do this bromide thing and to then go behind closed doors, figure out their strategy, and then wait for a moment

where there's a meeting somewhere and they unveil some form of handshake agreement or something like that in the hopes that the cumulative effect of that is voters going, thank God they just took the problem away, figured it out, solved it. And I don't think it works that way. I think in this particular instance, there are people who are going to say, this is a serious set of threats. I want somebody to talk to me, you know, to Chantal's point, like a grownup. Tell me what's at stake. Tell me how you're thinking about water. Tell me what you're going to do about the energy trade between our countries. You don't have to lay out all of your negotiating strategy, but you have to give me something to

chew on. You have to give me something to make me want to come back to the screen and to listen to what you have to say. So I think it's an opportunity for him. I watched what Pierre Pauliev was doing, and it felt a little closer to that mark of I'm going to talk about tax cuts because he's going to talk about tax cuts and we need to keep our economies competitive. Whether one thinks that that's a good idea or a bad idea, politically, it's more astute, in my view, than trust us, we're going to smile at you and tell you that we've got your back or we're going to sort this out. Now, the last thing I will say is nobody is enduring more withering criticism right now in the United States than Joe Biden.

Among people who are in his party, have been around his party forever. The indictment of his decision to not be the transition president that he said he would be, to decide that he was going to fight to stay on against all kinds of evidence that he wasn't competitive, that he wasn't as strong a candidate as he used to be, that people were not that interested in hearing him describe the things that he was doing. I think I listened to some commentators the other day saying, you know, what will the Wikipedia entry be for Joe Biden? What will his legacy be? Had he left two years ago or said he wasn't going to run, let his party have a race, let people be stress testing each other as candidates. He would have had a pretty important

legislative record. He would have been seen as an important president. But the commentary I was hearing yesterday is that he will be seen as somebody who is too stubborn to recognize that the writing was on the wall for him. And the best thing that he could do for his party in his country was to step back and let somebody else give it their best shot. There's no guarantee that anybody would do better than Justin Trudeau, but Justin Trudeau has 65% negatives. It's very hard to win an election with that. It's hard to imagine even saving very much furniture with those kind of numbers. John, tell you got a couple of minutes.

I actually think the result will relieve the leadership pressures on Justin Trudeau. He's already Joe Biden. He's already left it very late in the game. And what did we see in the U.S.? Something we saw in this country with John Turner and Kim Campbell. Late in the game, the leader retires. New face shows up. It works until it doesn't, which is on election day. That's exactly the pattern that you saw in the U.S. Harris up, and then slowly but surely, the balloon just deflates, the way of

incumbency gets put on your shoulders, and you end up with the Kim Campbell, John Turner, Kamala Harris kind of a finish, you lose. So I think for those who still believe that with so few months left to an election, it's time to change leaders, a lot of steam just was let out by Tuesday's result. I agree with that. Yeah. I mean, Bruce talks about two years ago in the case of Biden. I'd say that last year in the case of Justin Trudeau, we're not there. So those who were, you know, playing with those scenarios about having him quit so he's replaced by the spring, maybe they should think again, because I don't think that it's going to save a lot more furniture.

I was struck by the fact that Harris did not do better than Biden in the last election across the board. That's right. Wow. That kind of... I also don't think that in this country, Wikipedia entries about prime ministers who've been around for 10 years, even when they end badly, i.e. Brian Mulroney, will be just about how bad it was that he stayed to fight another election.

No one ever says that about Stephen Harper. Maybe you could make that case. I think it's bad electorally for Justin Trudeau, what has just happened. Why do I say that? It's totally based on anecdotal evidence this week. I was traveling to Kingston and places outside Montreal where you would not see that. And what I saw was a liberation of speech in the sense of people telling me they were happy with the results in the US.

I didn't need to ask them if they planned to vote conservative in the next election, but basically the subtext was that the Americans have given themselves permission to vote for Donald Trump. It's a lot easier to give yourself permission to vote for Pierre Poitier, frankly. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. As always, a good discussion

on good talk for this week. So thanks to both Chantelle Hebert and to Bruce Anderson and to you for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll be back again next week. Look forward to it. We'll see you on Monday. Bye for now. See you guys.