The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Will The Israel-Hamas Pause Continue?

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

We are in the final day of a four-day pause in the Middle East war, but the question now is will the pause continue? The hostage for prisoner swap seems to be going fairly well and there are now calls for it to be extended, but are the two sides willing to do so?  Middle East analyst Dr Janice Stein is with us for her regular Monday conversation about the situation.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Is the fighting about to begin again in Gaza, or is the pause going to continue? That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Good to have you with us. Good to begin another week of The Bridge. Big week for me. I head out on a book tour in a couple of days on my new book, How Canada Works. And I'll be going to different parts of the country, starting off in southern Ontario, then heading out to the east coast, Halifax, then out to Ottawa, Winnipeg, Calgary, and back again to southern Ontario.

So quite a bit of traveling over the next 10 days or so. That should start on Thursday of this week. Looking forward to it, always looking forward to the opportunity of meeting Canadians, talking to them about the various issues that are on their mind, while at the same time trying to tell them about my new book. And that, of course, is co-authored with Mark Bulgich. Last week, Mark was one of the guests on the program, and we had a good chat about how Canada works and what the book's all about. So if you missed it and want to hear it, dial it back to last Tuesday on the bridge. You can have a listen right there.

All right. The topic for today, once again, it's Monday, and Mondays since October 7th have been focused on what's happening in the war between Israel and Hamas and specifically around Gaza. As you well know, we're in day four of a kind of truce, a pause, where there have been exchanges from both sides. The fighting stopped. Hamas has given up some of the hostages. Israel has exchanged prisoners, Hamas has given up some of the hostages. Israel has exchanged prisoners, Hamas prisoners,

Palestinian prisoners who they were holding, and released them. That's been kind of the deal that's been going back and forth as well as a lot of humanitarian aid going into Gaza. Will it continue? That is the big question. And if it is going to continue, how long should we assume it could continue? Could we be looking at the possibility that this is going to end now? Or is it simply just a pause? Well, as we've done ever since this started,

we turned to Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto, Middle East expert, expert in conflict management, advisor to governments and organizations literally around the world. Janice has been fantastic. It's interesting. I was watching a discussion on an American television program over the weekend.

And it was like they just discovered that all the hostages weren't held by Hamas. Some were held by Islamic Jihad. Some were held by different kind of gangs. Funny, eh? Janice told us that a month ago. There's been this assumption on the part of a lot of the coverage that it's all Hamas controlling all the hostages. Well, that's not the case.

And it's part of the problem right now is these different groups that are holding some of the hostages. Some of them don't talk to each other. Okay. Let's get to the real expert, and that, of course, is Janice Stein. And our conversation for this week, in terms of what's really going on in the Israel-Hamas war, and the situations around Gaza. So here's Dr. Janice Stein. Well, Janice, so far, and I realize these things can go off the rails at any point, but so far things seem to have gone without any major problems

on the hostage release, the prisoner swap. How do you see it when you look at the big picture surrounding these past few days? I think that's exactly right, Peter. And partly because this was such a well-crafted architecture. This was done by professionals. Sometimes we ask ourselves, well, why do we need diplomats? And why do we need experts? This package was put together in such a careful and skilled way and it was put

to the test on the second day when Hamas raised objections to the amount of aid that had come in that morning and also to the kind of prisoners that were being released, while the emergency mechanisms that were pre-built, pre-constructed, swung into place. Qatar got on the phone. Egypt got on the phone. And ultimately, Joe Biden, and it was Thanksgiving weekend, reached out and put the pressure uh on qatar interestingly enough saying you're you're you're part owner here um you make this work and the other piece of it and that's going to tell us

a little bit about the future um israel said very clearly if those hostages are not across the border before midnight, the war starts at 12.01. The hostages crossed the border just before midnight. Yeah, like 11.59. Let me back you up just a second, because I found your point about how well crafted this deal has been and who was doing the crafting because this is a this has been a little different than past and hostage negotiations we've seen because it wasn't it wasn't really the diplomats at least at the beginning in qatar uh it was heads of spy agencies like the CIA and the Mossad who were doing the dealing.

Really interesting, Peter, because the one really, really accomplished hostage negotiator and one of the U S is best. Roger Carson actually went to the region to start work and then came home. And that, I think, was a Joe Biden decision. And he put Bill Burns, the director of the CIA, as the point man. He went to Qatar, joined by the head of Mossad, David Barnett. Again, not exactly whom you would expect to be at the table. And they sat there and worked with their counterparts in Qatar along

with the director of Egyptian intelligence. And they built this agreement step by step and i think there's two remarkable things about this how they structured the incentives so that's we're going to talk about that in a moment when we try to figure out what's next but also they built in a crisis management machinery for when it broke down they knew that either israel or hamas would test this and it was hamas who tested it first and frankly lost um yesterday because they activated that crisis machinery they had it ready it was in place um and worked really, really well. You didn't have the usual kind of fumbling around that takes place when these arrangements break down. Really impressive, really impressive.

And in the past, they've taken not days, not weeks, but like months and in some cases years to pull off a thing like this so what does that tell us about about the future of negotiations we'll get to the future of this situation in a moment but the future of negotiations are we does this signal that there there could be a difference in the future that others will use as a as a pattern for negotiating out of difficult situations like this? This is such an anomalous one, Peter, because it's a hostage negotiation, but it's not. And I think that's what Biden and Jake Sullivan realized on day one. First of all, the largest hostage negotiation other than Boko Haram in Nigeria, where they kidnapped so many young girls. But this one's in the middle of a war, an active war. So really, this was just as much about one, getting a pause to get all that aid in. That

was very, very important. And secondly, trying to set a path for the future. So no matter how good a hostage negotiator you are, that's not in your skill set, really. They needed people who had a firm grasp of two things. One, the bigger picture, but also who were connected to each other, who could pick up the phone and were confident that those relationships would work, that they had each other's cell phone numbers, literally,

and could reach out and get those messages through in real time. And that's what went on yesterday afternoon, and it was really a matter of hours, and it worked. And not to think how difficult, Peter, because they had to reach the military leadership of Hamas that's underground in Gaza.

So to get that done in four or five hours, that's remarkable. Seeing as you've brought it up, let me ask you this question about before we go on to what we should expect in the days ahead. Seeing as you mentioned underground, I want to ask you this question because we had a few letters last week asking. Yeah. There seemed to be some confusion around how the tunnels started, basically.

And one of the questions that had come up was, I thought Israel built those tunnels, or at least built some of those tunnels. And, you know, we're putting it forward like it's all about Hamas building the tunnels. So what is the explanation on the tunnels? How did those tunnels start? So let's go back to the 1980s.

I wish we could. I wish. There are many who would agree with you there, Peter. When Israel had not yet withdrawn from Gaza, it was the occupying power in Gaza, right? Because Israel withdraws from Gaza in 2005. So Israel helped build al-Shifa hospital. And there was an interview

that the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, gave to Christine Ananpour of CNN in which she said to her yeah we built the underground basement was what he said for the Al-Shifa hospital for storage so we knew about

that's absolutely correct that's what happened it was a big he described it as a big storage room. That's different from the whole tunnel network that was built subsequently. After Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, first takes control when Israel withdraws in 2005. Then there's an election in 2006. As we know, PLO wins in the West Bank, but Hamas wins in Gaza. And in 2007, Frank, there's a coup by Hamas against Arafat, and that's where that split happens. The tunnels that we're talking about, what, you know, the 300 miles of tunnels, those are all built by Hamas after 2007.

But the beginnings of the tunnels or the underground beneath the hospital. It was built as a very large storage room for the al-shifa hospital okay right but if again just to come back because it's so easy it's hard to separate these um because there's a storage room but what was also videoed and again we have to make sure that it's geolocated properly and that it's in the right place but what was released last week was 170

meter tunnels with steel reinforced doors that connected in to the El Shifa hospital that was built after 2007 okay alright so the two stories fit together as stories often do That was built after 2007. Okay. All right.

So the two stories fit together, as stories often do. They're not incompatible. Okay. Let's get to, you know, we all have our fingers crossed that the exchange is going to go forward. And the primary people who are going to benefit from this on the hostage side are are women and children a lot of children have come out already on the hamas side the benefit obviously is they're getting some of their the prisoners back a significant number of them i think you know 300 for 300 now the question is once the hamas has run out of uh women and children hostages are they going to still want to keep doing deals because the expectation is there'll be some kind of you know movement towards you know extra days in this four-day pause with more hostage releases.

But at a certain point, I mean, it's one thing to give up women and children. It's another thing to give up men, especially men of fighting age and army. There's a lot of army, Israeli army people being held as hostage. What is your expectation of how this is going to unfold? So let me get really down in the weeds here for just one minute because the story is in the details. So at the end of four days, roughly 50 women and children in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners. But Israel released a list of 300,

which is a signal to Hamas. We will continue to release at a three to one ratio, but for whom, Peter? For more children, because they will release all the women, but all the children that have been taken hostage are not yet on that list and

where are those kids right where are the children so Palestine Islamic Jihad may have some gangs that came in that morning may have some so the question now becomes

can Hamas find those kids? Has been able to use the pause to find these kids somewhere in Gaza so that it can put an extra 10 on a list in return for which they'll get another 30 prisoners. And here's where let's talk about the people who crafted this deal. Here's the incentive structure. Every day that Hamas puts 10 more women and children. Now, of course, if they were willing to put men on, that would be fine,

but they're not willing to do that for the reason you just mentioned. They have to put 10 more on the list, 30 more Palestinian prisoners, right up to 10 days. Not clear how many more and we won't know. Each night we won't know. So what did I learn from this glitch that went on yesterday? Right? Two things. One, the ball's in Hamas's court. So if this fighting starts again,

if the war starts again, which is clearly what the Israeli military wants, it is clearly what the Biden administration does not want. And the political wing of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said we want now a long-lasting truce. It's going to be really hard to persuade anybody in Israel that the political wing carries any weight given what happened. But if the fighting starts, it's going to be on Hamas for failing

to bring additional children or moving and releasing some of the men who are not soldiers. That's part of the dilemma that Hamas now finds itself in. Secondly, well, does Israel really mean it?

Will it start the war again? What they did on Saturday, as I said, that was a test. It was a game of chicken, as we might say, between Israel and Hamas. Hamas blinked because they must have believed that Israel would start firing again at 12.01 if those hostages didn't cross the border. So that tells you if Hamas doesn't find kids that they can put on the list or they don't move up and start to release some of the men, Israel is sending a message.

It is determined to resume the war. You've talked to us before about the kind of split between the Hamas political wing and the Hamas military wing, and we may be seeing a little bit of that playing out right now. But on the Israeli side, there's no question where Netanyahu stands. He wants to keep fighting. His own political survival may depend on him stretching this war out. But in the wider Israeli cabinet, not just the war cabinet, but the wider cabinet, and the Israeli people themselves, do we have a sense of where they are on this issue about continuing the war

at whatever time the hostage process runs out so they are the same divisions uh peter let's start with the families of the remaining hostages because there still will be 140 israeli hostages being held by Hamas after Monday night. That's a large number. And they have proven themselves to be a very powerful bloc. When this war started, releasing the hostages was something that Netanyahu talked about in a rhetorical way, but it was not his highest priority. And the fact that

these people took to the streets, they demonstrated on Saturday night in the thousands, they were able to pull out thousands of people is what forced Netanyahu to agree

to this setup, which he had rejected a version of this the week before. It didn't change very much, the deal, in some details, but not much. So they are a domestic political force that has to be counted on, and they do not want a resumption in fighting because they rightly fear that it will jeopardize the lives of the remaining hostages. It is very clear now, Peter, from the release that hostages are being held in tunnels. It's very, very clear that intelligence is already leaking out. And to the extent that there are miles and miles of tunnels

that have been sealed in northern Gaza just before the ceasefire with the intention of blowing them up or flooding them, it's got to be a huge concern for the families of the hostages that their relatives are going to be killed in this next round. So they're going to put huge pressure on the Israeli government. Military mission not completed, not fully complete in northern Gaza and not started in Southern Gaza. The intelligence agencies, I think there's much greater division there than there is in the military.

And partly because, let's just talk about this for a minute. The way there's been the highest number of civilian casualties in the shortest amount of time killed in Gaza in those six weeks of fighting. That happened even though people were told over and over and over again, move south, which they did. So northern Gaza, relatively speaking, is much less populated than southern Gaza. If the Israeli army has to move south, how do they deal with a part of Gaza

that is densely populated, but now doubly densely populated because of all the people who've moved south. How do you construct any kind of safe havens? They can't go back north because, in fact, there's no place for them to live. The destruction is so big. The challenges are enormous, frankly, for another campaign. So I think there are those divisions between the intelligence community

and the military community. I wouldn't be surprised if some are hoping for extra time, frankly. But ultimately, this is going to be a Netanyahu decision. Right. The incentives are running the wrong way for him. If we speak plain English here, he has a horrible conflict of interest. And somebody who,

I was saying just yesterday, just imagine if the Brits had left Neville Chamberlain in office in a war, right? And let him run the war. And by the way, he was facing criminal charges for some malfeasance as soon as the war was over. An awful situation. Yeah, Netanyahu's been running in a conflict of interest situation

for a number of years now, long before October 7th. Let me, let me ask you, you know, maybe we should think about it in the United States and either might be interesting to have a regulation that if you're, if you're criminally charged, you step down, right? Maybe we haven't got that right. I always thought that was the case, but apparently it's not. Let me, let me ask you this. I mean, I know you're Dr. Janice Stein, but it's not a medical thing. And

I'm Dr. Peter Vansbridge, but they're all honorary. So our ability to judge the medical condition of people is not appropriate. But when we watch these hostages come out, and let's face it, the major concern is going to be the impact on their emotional and mental state, given what they've been through. But when you look at them and their physical state, and what we've heard in the early, you know, analysis of this. They look in pretty good shape. Yeah.

So, you know, what do we know? And we know very little. And it's actually right that we know very little because they're trying to protect the privacy of these people. But we do know just a little bit. So one third approximately have serious physical problems as well. Right. And part of it, you know, it's not surprising. People are having problems with their vision because they were held in

tunnels for 45 days or so. But the largest issues are the emotional and the mental health issues. And, you know, some of them learned only after they got to the hospitals that their family members were dead, had been killed. They are not going back to the original homes because those homes are completely destroyed. It's almost impossible to imagine what that does to a young person. And some of these, you know, yesterday,

13 and a 17-year-old were released to find out that one of their parents had been killed. So beyond the hostage experience, any professional who has spoken about this said this is a years-long problem for many of these people who will come out. So the joyous reunions on both sides, right? Palestinian prisoners who, detainees, and we should distinguish for a minute between a detainee and a prisoner. Prisoners charged, a detainee is not, is held without charge.

Some of them for quite a long time too. Yeah, that's right. Two, three years sometimes without being charged. So the joy is paramount at the moment, but then comes a really terrible, terrible adjustment. There's almost no trained psychologist who doesn't think that this is going to be very, very hard. You know, one of the stories,

because we all human and you focus on one story, one family. There was a father who was interviewed and he was told that his daughter was dead. And he said, yes, because he rather, he felt that what his daughter would go through, she was some eights, I think, would be far worse. And that he wanted to spare her that. Well, the information was wrong. And she was released

yesterday. And I thought to myself, you know, as a parent, you would rather, you would want that child no matter what, right? No matter what condition she would in, you would want that child alive.

So the suffering is on all sides of this, Peter. I mean, we're talking about an unbelievable number of children killed in Gaza. The children that you see coming back and having gone through this. You know, you have to hope, although I'm pessimistic because I know enough about politics, but you have to hope people will say enough after all this, right? You would certainly hope so. Let me just leave the Middle East on this last question,

and then I want to shift. I've got a couple of quick questions on Ukraine. But the last question on the Middle East is, given what we know now, what we've seen these past few days, what we expect in the next few, where do you, we will be, in the best possible world, we'll be at the end of the longest period of the existing agreement. And we will be

right up against the wire. Well, how badly does Yair Sinwa, how badly does he want the time to regroup, to reorganize? Because of course, any fighting force

takes advantage of a ceasefire. What does he see the advantages? And if he can't find children, is he going to take that next step that you talked about, Peter, and release some men? And there's two kinds of men, right? There were men who were captured in uniform,

Israeli soldiers, and there were men who were just living in those villages. But every man in Israel up to the age of 55 is a reservist. So it blurs the distinction. Is he going to release some of those who were not captured? Because he will have to. I don't think there he will find 60 children.

If he doesn't, next time you and I talk, the fighting will have resumed. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. We come back, we talk Ukraine for a couple of minutes. But first of all, this. And welcome back.

Peter Mansbridge here. Janice Stein is with us, and we've just spent the first half of the program talking about the situation in the Middle East. We're going to switch for our final thoughts on this conversation with Janice on the situation in Ukraine. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. All right, Ukraine. Interesting discussion. This has been sort of going on in

the background for for a little while now but uh came up again uh this weekend ukraine was scheduled uh for elections presidential elections in march of uh of next year so in other words three or four months from now martial law in ukraine which exists right now because of the war, has put those elections aside. But there is a growing call among some, mostly in the United States, but not exclusively in the U.S., but mostly in the U.S. on the part of some in the Republican Party, that there should be elections because it will give the people of Ukraine an opportunity to, you know,

judge their president and judge the situation in terms of the war. He's resisting and rejecting that, but their pressure is on, and there's lots at stake, obviously, american uh support for uh ukraine what uh what is your take on this it's a really interesting story of peter you're right it is coming from the republican side of the house and from the minority um and they are claiming that given the volume of aid here, they want somebody held accountable. It's put in this language of accountability. And that's why they're pushing for election. So I think how seriously I would take that argument, not very, In terms of the real substance of the issue,

they're using this as a lever, frankly, to delay and possibly withhold further aid from Ukraine. So how does that play in Ukraine? Interestingly enough, the former president of Ukraine, who's the leader of the opposition party, Poroshenko, was in Halifax with us. Now, you'd think he would be out there. Oh, yeah, you know, I support elections.

He was apoplectic at the thought of elections, and he was open. He opposed any call for election and his you know the argument he made is of course we cannot run an election when our soldiers um are fighting the front and it's not trivial to think about how you organize an election in the middle of a war very few societies do that but the bigger issue is here. He knows he'll lose. We have a wartime president in Ukraine.

You know, if Zelensky held an election at this point, he would probably come back stronger than he did when he was originally elected. And he ran on a pro-peace platform and anti-corruption. That's what he ran on when he was first elected. So the opposition has more to lose here than the governing party because of his enormous popularity, which is not exactly, I think, what the Republicans have in mind when they push for an election at this point. They probably just don't understand the internal dynamics well enough. I think the prospect of it is fairly low just because it's such a transparent dodge.

It is really about refusing to authorize additional aid for Ukraine. I've seen as the Republican Party moves into an election year. I mean, look, we had a little show in Canada too here. Right around carbon taxes and that being an argument to vote against. How credible that was, we might leave to one of your other panels. Yeah, well, they had a pretty good go at it on Friday. They did. Let me, you know, this issue of, you know,

aside from all the politics involved in the military situation, just the simple fact of trying to run an election at a time like this, as you mentioned, with, you know, soldiers scattered all over the place uh but worse you've got you know hundreds of thousands of millions of ukrainians displaced because of the war left the country they're either in poland or you know some are in canada some are in the u.s i mean they're all over the place how do you do it how do you do it you know we've had we essentially, some governments allow their citizens

out of the country to vote. Italy does that. We have a huge Italian community in this country that votes. Can you imagine Ukraine trying to organize an election under those circumstances and ballot boxes in Canada

and ballot boxes in Poland? It would be an enormous achievement. And what a distraction, frankly. And, you know, last two nights, missiles, drones, again, the next generation, they've iterated on the technology, so it's harder again for the Ukrainians to knock these out of the sky, they imagine. But imagine that occurs the night of an election, the night before.

It would be so difficult. That's why, to me, it's a fairly transparent dodge, political dodge. It's not real. What is real? There was another issue you wanted to bring up on Ukraine. So the issue i think this is a a much bigger issue it's tied up really in a very dispiriting package uh for zelensky first of all the war between israel and hamas pushed ukraine off uh And it is much more difficult for him.

And he's a great salesperson for Ukraine. It's really hard for him to get the kind of international attention he was getting even six or seven weeks ago. And he's aware that that reduces support, because if you're not getting attention, it's harder to maintain the political support. Secondly, his chief of the general staff released a document that you and I talked about, which essentially characterized the war as a stalemate, which opened the floodgates to pressure on him.

And there are all sorts of rumors and leaks now that some of the governments in Europe and at least people who are close to the government, to the administration in Washington are pressing him to think about what would be acceptable terms for ceasefire, which is, of course, what he does not want. You know, he's been asked privately, what would success look like to you? He's been asked repeatedly, what would success look like to you? You've been asked repeatedly what would success look like to you?

He won't draw a boundary even in private conversation because here's the other side of the election story. He's well aware that if he suggests

any kind of territorial compromise even Crimea which he has signaled in private he would be willing to postpone way into the future but were he to say well we'll leave the 20 percent of Ukraine which is what it is now in Russia's hands for 10 years and then we'll have a referendum, he would lose political support in an hour or a second. He just can't carry his public with him for any kind of a deal. He just can't. Well, you know, it's really interesting. These two situations are so different, the Middle East and Ukraine.

But what we've outlined today is situations of both sides where the pressure is on certain sides, certain people to keep the war going. Yes, that's right. You know, it's always true. There's domestic politics in wartime, right? Yeah. And the politics don't go away because you're fighting a war. And it's so true inside Israel. And it's true inside Ukraine, too.

You know, I think back again for a moment. In the first month after the war started, there were negotiations. And Zelensky put a compromise on the table. He can't make that compromise now. You miss the opportunity before public opinion hardens and before the politics shifts. If you miss that moment, it's gone, and you can't get it back. What was that phrase that guy that you and Brian talk about all the time,

Clausewitz? Yeah, Clausewitz. War is politics by other means. Exactly. It is. It is. Okay, well listen, that's another great conversation and as we always do, we thank you for it and look forward to talking to you again next week. We'll see where we are at that point. Thanks, Janice.

Thank you, Peter. Dr. Janice Stein, University of Toronto, the Munk School. Janice is Middle East expert, as we know,

and a conflict management expert, an advisor to governments and organizations literally around the world. And we're so lucky to have her with us each week through this process. Before October 7th, Janice was a guest roughly every month with a segment we called, What Are We Missing? In other words, what stories we're kind of getting, well, not swept under the rug, but weren't getting the attention that perhaps they should have been getting. And Janice would take us on a, you know, kind of a world tour,

you know, half a dozen or eight or sometimes 10 different stories in different parts of the world that we should focus on occasionally. We should at least have in mind. I'm sure there's a possibility that one day we'll be back to that segment of what are we missing. But right now we're so focused on these two, Israel, Hamas, and Ukraine. And Janice has been good enough to give us time every week on this. We're missing our old friend Brian Stewart, a good friend of Janice's too, right?

Brian is off writing his memoirs and begged for time, begged for a hiatus from his work with us, and we certainly gave him that, and we're looking forward to that book. That's probably a year away. Because, of course, who would want to go up against How Canada Works? Mark Bulgich in my book, which is now out on bookshelves in bookstores across the country. All right. A little plug for tomorrow.

We've discussed this before, the difference between misinformation and disinformation. And just in case any of you are still perhaps a little confused on that, it's actually quite simple. Misinformation is basically when journalists or news organizations make a mistake and they misinform you. Not deliberately, accidentally. And they, you know, they pull back, at least they should. They should regret their mistake and correct it.

That's misinformation. Disinformation is very different. Disinformation is deliberate, informing you of the wrong facts for any number of different reasons, but basically trying to twist your position on something by offering up disinformation on whatever the subject is. Disinformation is the scourge of our time, and it is very evident in a lot of different ways. Well, tomorrow our guest is a leading expert on the issue of disinformation.

His name is Lee McIntyre. He teaches at Boston University, has taught at Harvard, has a number of books out on a variety of things around the issue of disinformation. And I called him up last week and he said he'd love to be on the bridge and so tomorrow he will be. That's the plan to have Lee McIntyre on the bridge tomorrow, the Tuesday episode. Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, Bruce will be by.

Thursday, it's The Random Ranter on part two of his three-part series giving advice to the leaders. Plus, of course, your turn being your thoughts. So drop them by at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Friday, good talk. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson. Last week's Good talk. Chantelle, a bear, Bruce Anderson, last week's good talk.

It's set, you know, record numbers for us on the podcast. I assume on Sirius XM and certainly with our new YouTube, it had numbers of 20,000 views. The last time I looked. More subscribers to our YouTube channel. You know, lots of wild comments in the YouTube comment section. I don't know.

Most of them are, you know, bots. You can tell, you know, half a name and a whole bunch of numbers and the same thread going through them all. It's pretty ridiculous. But having said that, there were also some really constructive comments, both ways, agreeing and disagreeing with what they heard on the panel that day. But I'll tell you what they heard on the panel that day seems to have been mimicked in a lot of different areas since that panel

in terms of the thrust of what we were getting at. Anyway, enough rambling from me. Time to let you go. Great to have you with us on this day, on this opening day of yet another week of The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours