The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Whatever Happened to the Concept of Budget Secrecy?

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

There used to be a time when the finance minister's budget speech was the most closely guarded secret on the parliamentary agenda.  Not so much anymore. These days many budget policies are released weeks before the speech. That's certainly the case this year. The budget speech isn't for another few weeks but daily we seem to learn more about what will be in the speech. The Canadian correspondent for The Economist, Rob Russo, gives us a history lesson on budgets but also takes us inside this year's process. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today's topic, is there anything secret about the budget process anymore? That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Toronto today. And today's topic is, well, it's timely in the sense that the federal budget comes down two weeks from now. And after years of total secrecy around the budget process, over the last decade or so, secrecy is not a part of the equation anymore and never more evident than it has been this year.

We know pretty well what's going to be in the budget already, and it's still two weeks away, which raises all kinds of questions about the process We know pretty well what's going to be in the budget already, and it's still two weeks away. Which raises all kinds of questions about the process and about the reason budgets are dropped inside Parliament. So we're going to discuss that. We're going to talk with Rob Russo about that. Rob is the economist correspondent here in Canada. He's based in Ottawa, and he's covered Ottawa politics for years, a former bureau chief of the CBC in Ottawa,

former bureau chief for Canadian Press in Ottawa, and he was in Washington and Quebec City, and so he's got lots of experience in covering things political and covering things financial. And so we're going to draw upon him to help us out on this topic. But first of all, a reminder got all sorts of nominations, if you wish, for an answer to the question of the week already yesterday. But there's room for lots more. And, you know, these questions have been interesting because they tell us something. I think the answers tell us something a little bit about ourselves.

You know, we talked about the Canadian book that's had the biggest impression on you, the biggest impact on you. Last week we talked about what place outside of your own province you'd go to on a holiday and recommend it to others. And we had some wonderful answers on that. There's always some obvious answers to these questions. But what's been beautiful about this process is that we go beyond the obvious.

And we're hearing things and learning things that perhaps we'd either forgotten or didn't know about. So it's been a good process. This week's question is interesting, especially for those who've been around for a little while, but not just those who've been around for a little while. Here's the question. Looking for the one Canadian television program that you remember best.

Could have been in your childhood, could have been last year, or it could have been, as I said, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Television's been around in Canada since the early 1950s, Canadian-produ produced television programs. So some of us are old enough to remember some of those programs. So we're looking for the Canadian television program that you remember best. And, you know, people talk about, oh, there's not very many Canadian programs. Actually, there are a lot of Canadian programs, certainly in our history.

So that's what we're looking for. And once again, there are some obvious ones, but there are also some that perhaps we've forgotten. And perhaps they were pretty good. So I'm anxious to hear from you. So here are the conditions. First of all, you write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. You have to have your answer in by tomorrow evening,

6 p.m. Eastern time. Okay, if you come in after 6 o'clock, it's not going to make it. So 6 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow night is the cutoff. Don't forget to include your name and the location you're writing from, and keep your answers fairly tight. So we're looking for the name of the program and why. Why it is that you remember it best. What was it about that program that still impacts you today?

And again, you know, a younger audience obviously doesn't go back as far. But there are lots of programs in the last five years, last ten years, that have had an impact. So looking for those answers, and once again, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Looking forward to hearing it. All right, today's topic. The budget.

As we said, it's come down a couple of weeks. The Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, the Prime Minister, will walk into the House of Commons, and the budget speech will follow. It's usually somewhere around an hour, sometimes longer, or rarely shorter. But it's supposed to, in that moment,

that the finance minister stands in the House of Commons and starts reading that speech, it's all supposed to be a surprise. At least that's what tradition said. But that doesn't happen anymore. And it's certainly not happening this year. We know a lot of things already. And we know a lot of the arguments. So we're going to talk about that, plus we're going to talk about, you know,

something I mentioned a few weeks ago. Seems to have been mentioned by a lot of other people. Well, not a lot of other people, but some other people, even in just the last few days. And this is the idea of some kind of a conference between the Prime Minister and the Premiers about some of the issues of the day, and mainly the issue of carbon pricing, carbon tax. The Newfoundland Premier, Premier Fury, I think it was just yesterday, suggested that there be such a meeting.

Now, I've raised it because I think it would be a good process for all of us to witness. So, in other words, some kind of First Ministers' Conference that's in the public realm, that we see, that we witness, they sit around a table and we watch it. It's on camera like it used to be. And Canadian history is dotted with some pretty intense moments of discussions

between the first ministers of the line, the premiers, the prime minister, the territorial leaders about big issues. You know, they can get quite intense. But at least in this format, you would actually see the discussions. I mean, it's pretty heated now from a distance. Six or seven of the first ministers don't like the carbon pricing proposal by the prime minister and want to have it rejected. The prime minister says they're lying about what they're saying

about his carbon pricing program. The opposition leaders are on the outside of the kind of First Ministers Club, but they're very much a part of the discussions right now. But if there was a First Ministers Conference, you'd see the people and the players who are making the decisions. You'd hear the people and the players who are making the decisions. You'd hear their alternatives. So I want to bring that up, and I will bring it up, with our guest today, Rob Russo.

And Rob rarely agrees with me, so let's see what happens this time around. Okay, why don't we, well, here, let's take a quick break right here, and then we'll come back with my discussion with Rob Russo. We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favourite podcast platform. Time for our guest and the discussion around this question.

Is there anything secret about the budget process anymore? So let's get right to it. Here's our guest for this week, the Economist correspondent in Canada, Rob Russo. All right, Rob, two weeks from right now, news organizations will be getting ready to report the budget. It's supposed to be a secret document, or at least that's what the folklore says it has been in the past. But it seems to be years since this process was in any way secretive. That's right. And I imagine over the next two weeks, very, very little will be left to the imagination. There's always a surprise.

I mean, every government likes to have one or two surprises so that they get a bounce in coverage. But we're a long, long way from the first lockup, which happened about 110, 115 years ago. A guy named Sir Thomas White in the Borden government was the first guy to not lock us up, but give reporters an advanced copy under embargo. And he trusted the reporters not to leak it. And they generally played the game. And the game was played that way really up until about 10 or 15 years ago. And then it became less apparent. But I can tell you, Peter, there was there's some great stories about budget secrecy. times have changed. Louis Saint Laurent used to force his minister of finance, C.D. Howe at the time, to type out the budget entirely himself. He didn't want a secretary

or a clerk to do it because he was so afraid that the word would get out. And right up until the 80s, governments used to fly out advanced copies of the budget in military cargo planes and have them then, when they landed, escorted by Mounties to bank vaults owned by the Bank of Canada so that nobody could get at it the day before. And so it was taken very, very seriously. And that all changed. Let me stop you there. I want to try to understand, in those days, why it was so important.

What was the fear, that people would take advantage of knowledge of what was in the budget to play the markets or what have you? Is that what the fear was? And if that was the fear, why isn't it the fear now? Because the impact has been slackened because much of what's in there, people have already guesstimated. People have become much more sophisticated bank economists, financial prognosticators about most of what's in the budget and about the size, the shape, the state of the Canadian economy.

And it's really been since the digital revolution that that's been the case. Again, another story that you and I have vivid memories of. I know I did. About 35 years ago this month, Doug Small got handed to him something called the Budget in Brief. It was a pamphlet that was a highlight of the budget. And he got it the day before. And I can remember him holding it up on the air, saying, I have in my hands here a copy of what's called the Budget in Brief,

and then proceeded to read it all out, sending everybody in Ottawa, skidding and careening out the National Press Club doors, back into their newsrooms to say, you know, we've got to get something on this. And Michael Wilson, who was then Brian Mulroney's finance minister, saying, we've got to do this. We've got, who was then Brian Mulroney's finance minister, saying, we got to do this. We got to go with the budget. And an hour later, he was standing on the floor of the House of Commons delivering the budget. What was noteworthy about that was that Doug Small became the only parliamentary gallery reporter ever charged with a crime, possession of stolen goods, which was later

dropped. You know, people talk about recently Mulroney's love of the media, love-hate relationship with the media. He hired eight reporters and surrounded himself with them because he so loved the media. But I remember Mulroney thundering in the House of Commons, a crime has been committed here. He convicted Doug Small before he went to trial, and he was livid. So we're a long, long way from those days when any kind of a leak was considered the kind of thing that people could take advantage of on the market and the kind of thing that could rock a government. Well, it seemed to start in the late 80s, the early 90s, especially when Paul Martin was finance minister,

was kind of a selective leaking or planting of possibilities that were in the budget to kind of float them out there to see how they play, right? It didn't mean they were going to be in the budget. It meant they could be in the budget if there seemed to be a positive attitude towards these particular policies. Yeah, and often they were floated months in advance. The reality is that these things have to be prepared and locked up pretty

much a month or so before they actually stand up, because they're so complex now. The size of government, I think the first budget in 1867, Sir John Hayes' first budget was $5.3 million for the entire country. And now we're a $400 billion plus a year enterprise. That's a huge, huge, huge undertaking. So these things can't be floated like they used to be in the weeks before. They got to be in the months before. And so instead of getting trial balloons handed to us, we get the Gainesburgers. We get the high calorie, low nutrition news that the PMO wants to give us. Very thin veneer between that and advertising, really, to tell us, to make sure that we get the word out that something's going to be in the budget. Now, because of what's going on in the media, they've decided that even that isn't worthwhile anymore. And so now we see the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, going ahead himself and announcing measures that would normally be

announced on the floor of the House of Commons, money measures like the $15 million for a renter's fund to challenge landlords. But we see them announcing those a week, two weeks, three weeks ahead of time. And nobody is kind of scandalized by it like they used to be. Although I think people need to ask questions about the value of the House of Commons if they're able to do that outside of the House of Commons, outside of Parliament. Well, I was going to ask you that because it seems like with these, as you said, you know, Trudeau's been dropping stuff and Freeland's been dropping stuff for the last week or two weeks. There's still two weeks to go. This stuff is going to be in the budget. We know that. What's the point? What's the point of having a budget day? What's the point of having a speech to Parliament? Because this way they get to control what the news is or they think they get to control what the news is on any given day.

And it's true. They get a cleaner shot and they get a cleaner shot and they get it concentrated on what they want it to be concentrated on on that particular day. We've all been in these lockups and it's a blizzard of information coming at us. And often real news is buried. And often the bad news is buried. We have to go looking for it or we have to go to an official in the lockup and say, what about this here? This doesn't look right. And if the official is honest, they'll tell us. But this is a way for governments to control the news agenda so that it's highly favorable to them. And this is a government that's now in its ninth year struggling with popular support. And this is a way for them to not just target what they want people to pay attention to, but target the demographic that they are in dire need of trying to solidify support from.

And in this instance, the instance we saw last week, it's millennials. It's people between the age of 25 and 35 or 40 who were critical to electing Justin Trudeau and keeping him in power over the last three elections. And they have deserted him in massive numbers. In one of the biggest shifts we've seen in public opinion, younger people who see their dreams thwarted of affordable housing are now going to the Conservatives and Pierre Poilier. And if Trudeau and the Liberals have any hope at all of staying in power, they need those people to come back. And so what do they do?

Well, they announce measures to try and help renters. I suspect that there will be more. I don't imagine that they're finished, but they want younger people, renters, to hear the message loud and clear that the government is thinking about them. They're trying to do something for them. The question for pollsters and for the Liberals is, is it too late? And does using their own money to buy votes back work anymore. I mean, it used to work. It used to have an impact. But when you're 15 or 20 points down in the polls,

you've got to wonder whether it's not about that anymore. It's not about particular programs, how they work, how much money is behind them. It's got more to do with how people feel about the government and power and whether it's been there too long. On the way back from Mr. Mulroney's funeral last week, I was on the train from Montreal to Ottawa with one of the prime minister's most important councillors. And I asked him about that. Are there new ideas coming? Yeah, there are probably new ideas coming, this person said. But the problem that Mr. Trudeau is going to have is that when you're proposing new ideas,

people are more apt to take a chance on these new ideas when you're on the way up. When you're on the way down, it's very, very difficult to get them to A, pay attention to you, and two, or B, take you seriously, that you're actually going to be in a position to put some of this into practice. And that's a huge, huge challenge for Justin Trudeau. I don't know of too many governments in Canadian history who are in their ninth year, or as they approach a decade in power, who've been able to do this. We've talked about this before, Peter. Really, since Pearson, we in the government of Canada, except for a couple of aberrations,

have kicked governments out after about eight, nine, ten years. We just get tired of them. It doesn't matter what's right conservative or liberal and in the ninth year this this former strategist for the prime minister said it's going to be very very difficult for the prime minister to connect with voters and they and that um get them to believe that he has any kind of credibility in terms of delivering whatever it is he's going to promise you know they they tell me hey i mean i was at the mulroney funeral as well and you know there was a long

wait before it started you had to be inside the basilica early and so it was a couple of hours and you fill a space like that with people who are sort of have been raised in in politics or covering politics and you get a lot of fascinating conversations and i was right party to many of them um but what you find is what you find to wash around ottawa these days as well as montreal and that is that justin trudeau's gonna once the budget's done, he's going to quit. He's going to resign. He'll do his walk in the snow or walk in the springtime air, whatever it may be.

Now, of course, he keeps saying he's not going anywhere. But that's the rumor that he's going, that he'll be leaving. Let's assume, let's take him at his word that he's staying. He has to do something to change things around. And so the budget is the immediate thing on the horizon. But I think we've, unless there's some real surprise, and there's always a surprise even as much as there are leaks, as you've said before. But unless there's a real surprise, he much as there's there are leaks as you've said

before but unless there's a real surprise you're going to need something other than the budget and so i i have this this idea in my head so you tell me why this won't work or couldn't work um the big issue and certainly federal provincial big issue is and certainly federal-provincial big issue, is the carbon tax, right? Right. Everybody, the premiers mostly, are against it, and they've had quite the tussle and the fight. The Conservative leader, Polyev, has had a field day on carbon tax

and carbon pricing for a couple of years, but never quite as much as he's had in the last couple of weeks. So here's my idea. If you're Justin Trudeau and you're looking for a way to look good in front of the Canadian people, you take on that band of premiers, and there's at least a half a dozen of them who are adamant against him. They're up to seven now.

I think Bob Canoe has said that he thinks Manitoba should be exempted as well. Right. But he's willing to talk about it in terms of how to do that exemption. But anyway, whatever. Let's say there's six or seven. So why doesn't he just call a federal provincial first minister's conference? Like a real one. The ones like we used to see,

where it's in one of those conference rooms in front of the cameras, and they go at it. They have a different vision of the future of Canada. They have a different vision of how to raise money to fight climate change. And let's see it. Let's hear it. Let's see them go head to head on this issue, not behind closed doors, head to head. Why doesn't he do that? Well, first of all, I'll give it two or three reasons. Number one, it's numbers. It would be,

except for the premiers of Quebec and British Columbia. It would pretty much be eight against one. So there are numbers. Number two, you know, those conferences which were replete, brimming with drama often during the constitutional era, always had a great deal of negotiation that led up to them. They weren't held willy-nilly. They were held after talks led all parties concerned to come to the conclusion that there was at least the possibility of an agreement. And when that didn't happen, that provided great, great drama. And when they did happen, that was great drama too,

and they were drawn out of fair. I don't think that there's anybody who believes they could come to any kind of an agreement. Number three, I don't know that there are very many politicians who would have the courage to suggest that while we're in an affordability crunch, it's a good time to raise a tax. And that's the position that the prime minister is in. He's essentially saying this is terrible medicine. I know you're going to gag as the medicine makes its way down, but it's necessary medicine. Very, very few people are prepared to do that. And there isn't a provincial premier

outside of Quebec and BC who is prepared to do that right now, including liberals, we must say, right? Now that Newfoundland has joined the others and Bonnie Crombie, Liberal leader in Ontario, is running as fast as she can from the carpet tax. And the fourth thing I would say is it's the timing. If he would have done this, and he's saying that he did do this in 2015, in 2019, he would probably have a better shot. But we're now three or four years into what has been a kind of pummeling of the Canadian population when it comes to their economic well-being.

We've got 6 million mortgages, I think, coming due this year. And I know historically, it's not a high interest rate. People are paying between 5% and 6% for mortgages. But it's triple what they were paying four or five years ago when Mr. Trudeau first proposed a carbon tax. And then on top of that, we've got all the other increases in inflation that have been applied to food, not because of the carbon tax necessarily. I think the barometry budget officer has put a rest to that argument, but they're feeling the squeeze. So woe betide the politician that proposes an increase in any kind of tax when there's an affordability crunch. So those three or four things are the reason why I wouldn't suggest that he do it. Although, should he do it remotely like he's doing it now? I don't think it's a bad idea to challenge the other guys to come up with a plan. What is your plan? Because the truth is, there hasn't been a credible plan that's been put forward that I've seen that would replace the carbon tax. Anything else is probably going to be more complicated.

We've seen Joe Biden use regulation in the United States with the Inflation Reduction Act. And what that does is, in effect, allows the government to pick winners and losers in industry there. Less efficient than a carbon tax. But it's just a tough, tough time for anybody to bring in taxes, particularly somebody who's in, let's say he's on the back nine of his time as prime minister. Okay. I don't disagree with you on any of the points you've made.

I would not expect that he could win the argument over a tax, especially right now. I'm looking at the drama of having the face-to-face confrontation. Not with Polyev, he wouldn't even be in the room. He's dealing with the premiers who he calls, some of whom he calls, I guess the six or seven he calls liars for the way they're portraying his carbon pricing program. Right.

What I'm looking for is, okay, you get these people in a room instead of a distance, having their little scrums, all of them, including Trudeau, in their various camps. You put them in the same room. Okay, let's argue it out. Let's argue not just the tax, but the whole issue of climate change and what you're going to do about it and how you're going to fund whatever areas you're going to do, and thus you just simply don't believe in it. Let's have that discussion, and let's have it so the Canadian people can see it.

I think it's a long shot, but it's probably a shorter shot than all the other long shots he's facing right now. And I think it would be, you know, maybe I just miss those old days. You know, there was a different lineup of people. You know, there was another Trudeau, but there was Lovac, there was a different lineup of people you know there was another another trudeau but there was levac there was law he there was davis there was blakeney i mean it was a pretty impressive group and they were all smart people and they all had you know varying differences on the issues of the day and for the Canadian people, they got an opportunity to really see it close up

and watch the debate play out. I think that that effectively happened in 2019. Let's not forget that Justin Trudeau wedged Andrew Scheer on the climate issue and on a carbon tax. And it was because Scheer did not want to talk about climate change. He did not want to talk about a carbon tax. He did not want to talk about what he would do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it hobbled him. It hobbled him.

Even though he did very well in the popular vote in 2019, that was the wedge issue in 2019. The wedge issue in 2021 was vaccine. Liberals are very, very good at slicing and dicing the electorate. And but so we've already had one election where that was the issue. I think it would be a real challenge for anybody to to go to to the people or go into a debate right now and say, I need for everybody's taxes to go up. I know that it sounds like it's tough medicine, and I'm going to give 80% of you a rebate. It's true. Again, the parliamentary budget officer has said 80% of Canadians are going to get more money back. But it's confusing. People, polls have shown over and over again, people are asking the question,

why am I paying the carbon tax if I'm getting the money back? What's it doing for the environment? Tell me how it's stopping a flood. Tell me how it's preventing a forest fire. But even then, people are hurting so badly now that it's slipped way down the list of priorities. And the priorities for people are, I got to get a roof over my head and you're making it more difficult for me by me having to pay this carbon tax. They don't hear the rebate part. There are no rallies for rebates. Right. There are none. There is a clamor in the land for for affordable housing. And that's the issue that and I think fatigue with Trudeau that that the next vote is going to is going to turn on as it stands now. But I always say to people, the polls six months or a year before an election bear no result, very little resemblance to the results on election day. And I think that we

should be very, very careful when we talk about what could happen in October 2025. I, you know, I agree with you on that. But let me put it to you. Let me come at you in a different way. After you gave me that opening. What could possibly change in the next six months to a year to alter the picture? Well, the election of Donald Trump could change things, I would say. I think that that would be a sobering event for the rest of the globe. And I'm not saying in any way that Poiliev is Trump. He's not. He's pro-immigration to a certain extent, although the numbers are going to obviously

come down under a Poiliev government. He is not Donald Trump. But would there be a shudder and a shiver as a result of Donald Trump? Yes. Would that allow people or compel people to get over what is an obvious antipathy towards Justin Trudeau? I don't know that, but it would be seen as a seismic event that could have an impact. You know, the Liberal Research Bureau has proven very, very good over the last 25, 30 years at unearthing material, video, audio, that embarrasses the Conservatives. Again, would it be enough?

I don't know, but I would not be surprised if they didn't already have material that they're holding back and prepared to release if need be. And then Harold Wilson's event, dear boy event. We have no idea. There are no facts in the future. My crystal ball is so cracked that I've given up trying to prognosticate and it's a dangerous, dangerous thing for us to do. But time is his friend. It's his only friend right now. And the grains in the

what's it called there, that sand thing, they're flowing faster and faster. If the fear of Trump winning could be the biggest factor in this, then they better call the election before the American election, because Trump's not going to win. Okay, I just warned about the dangers of masquicating, and that there are no facts in the future. You can take it to the bank. You heard it here first.

He's not going to win. Oh, dear. Okay, well, you've beaten me up on all my theories. I still think it would be great to watch it. When was the last federal provincial conference? On camera? Yeah. in front of the cameras it has been i think it was i think it was you know i think it was the health the health one that uh martin held yeah so that was where was that somewhere in the the

noughties somewhere in the 2000s yeah and i think I think Quentin had one or two, and Harper basically broke that tradition, and he decided it was, it did the Prime Minister no good at all to get it in a room especially if cameras were present. He did a whole bunch of one-off deals with the premiers, because he

realized that one-on-one he was pretty good. Ten against one, the odds were not in his favor. Yeah, I mean, though, the ten against one ones that were on camera, including Mulroney at some, but the big ones, I think were probably the Pierre Trudeau ones. And that made stars out of all of them. And it gave Canadians a better understanding

of how their system works. Absolutely. And here's, I'll give you a, we were talking about budget secrecy and how there is no budget secrecy anymore. Well, I would wish that this government, the Trudeau government,

would adopt the same attitude towards information in general. Because I can tell you that under the Trudeau government, would adopt the same attitude towards information in general. Because I can tell you that under the Trudeau government, it has become almost impossible to get routine information from ministers' offices, from departments. So if they're all for openness when it comes to the budget, let's have a little bit of that openness when it comes to routine information. I have no trouble often calling up a minister because I'm, you know, I'm old. I've been around a long time. People know who I am. But it can still be frustrating to try and get,

like I tried to get some information on Haiti a couple of weeks ago. And I got, you know and I got a tossed word salad three days after I requested it that was generally useless. Please, if we're going to be more open, apply that to things like access to information as well. There's no reason why the system has become so opaque as it has under this government, a government that, like every government, came in promising to be more open, more transparent. And like every government, they have become more opaque, more secretive, more deliberative, and miserly when it comes to releasing information. It's funny, eh, how governments or parties, they make these promises before they achieve power,

and they rarely live up to them. Promises like that, about transparency, about open government, about the end of secrecy, blah, blah, blah. I can remember interviewing Justin Trudeau before the 2015 election. And I said, are you going to be, you know, if you win, are you going to run one of these PMOs that controls everything, doesn't allow ordinary MPs to make decisions for themselves? They said, no, no, no, it's going to be totally different if we get into power and I said you know it was

it was your father who kind of started this I remember that and he agreed he said yeah that was wrong it shouldn't happen that way he's made his father look like a biker on some of that stuff

it's quite something. I mean, look, I met with a diplomat yesterday who marveled at the 12-minute long exchange between Tim Rape and Pierre Trudeau on the War Measures Act. Can you just imagine that? A scrum, a question and answer session outside the House of Commons, lasting 12 minutes? Doesn't happen. No, it was an amazing exchange. That's the famous Just Watch Me exchange. And the thing was, it was a scrum. There were other reporters there, but they

unlike today, they stayed out of it. They just let Tim Rafe go at it with Pierre Trudeau. And the jostling was quite something. Neither man was afraid of the other by any stretch of the imagination. And it produced some of the best clips that have ever existed in Canadian politics. And now we get a prime minister who is prepared to answer every question and take a follow-up while saying as little as humanly possible. Right.

Yes, that is where we are. This went a lot longer than we'd planned, Rob, but I'm sure glad we did it anyway. It was a great conversation. I appreciate it much. We'll talk again. Thanks, Rob. Look forward to it, Peter.

The great Rob Russo. And if you missed it at the top, Rob is now the correspondent in Canada for The Economist magazine. And it's great to have him with us. And, you know, he was a former boss of mine, he was a bureau chief in Ottawa for the CBC, and he was a bureau chief for Canadian Press in Ottawa as well, and formerly in Washington, Quebec City, other places as well.

Rob Russo joining us. And Rob will be back later this week because Bruce is away this Friday for Good Talk, so Rob will join Chantal on Friday's Good Talk episode. Okay, quick reminder before we go, get your questions in by 6 p.m. tomorrow night to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The question of the week is, name that one Canadian television program from your past plus a short argument, a paragraph or less, as to why you picked that program. Got it?

Look forward to reading your answers. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.