The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Your Turn and Ralph’s Turn

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Some insightful letters from listeners today on everything from Covid to the issue of history’s accuracy. But first an equally insightful interview with Ralph Goodale, long time cabinet minister now a brand new diplomat as Canada’s High Commissioner here in the UK.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Thursday, that means your turn, and today it also means Ralph's turn. I'll tell you what that means in a moment. Our podcast is brought to you by Questrade, Canada's fastest-growing and award-winning online broker. Tired of getting dinged with fees every time you buy or sell U.S. stocks? Well, good news. With Questrade, you don't have to. You can hold U.S. dollars in your trading account and avoid expensive, forced conversion fees every time you trade U.S. stocks. Switch today and get up to $50 worth of free trades. Visit Questrade.com to open an account and use

promo code QUEST. Conditions apply. And hello once again from Scotland, Dornick, Scotland. Peter Mansbridge here. Keeping an eye on things Scottish, but also things Canadian. And that's very much what this episode of The Bridge is really all about. It is Thursday. It does mean your turn. And I've got some terrific letters from you.

I got to say, and I don't mean to be over promoting here, but I had a lot of letters from people who've already picked up the book off the record and have been reading it and seem to quite enjoy it. I'm not going to read through the parade of those letters. That would be too much. You'd say, Peter, get over it. Move on. But I will read a couple because they're interesting, but that's not the main body of the Your Turn letters this week.

But before we get there, I want to talk to you a little bit about Ralph Goodale. Okay, I'm sure some of you remember that name for all kinds of different reasons. I first bumped into Ralph Goodale back in 1975, I think it was, when I was the nationals correspondent in Saskatchewan. And Ralph Goodale had been elected in the summer of 74 federal election the year before. And he was one of the youngest MPs, if not the youngest MPs in the House of Commons. And he kind of made a little bit of a name for himself as an MP, but it was short-lived

because he lost in the 79 election. He dropped out of the federal scene for a while, got into the provincial scene, was a provincial MLA in Saskatchewan. And then once again ran for the Liberals in 93. And he was in and out of cabinet with the in and out nature of the Liberals in power for the next, what, 25 years? And was always regarded by those on both sides of the House as a good guy. There were times, there were difficult times for Ralph Goodale,

especially when he was the Minister of Finance. But overall, he was well regarded in the House of Commons. Then he lost in the 2019 election. That was a bit of a setback for a guy who'd spent his life in politics. But he transitioned. The Prime Minister asked him to become Canada's High Commissioner. That's like the ambassador to the United Kingdom. And that's one of the top diplomatic posts

Canada offers up in the world. And that's where Ralph Goodale is now. If you're in London, you know, you go by Canada House in Trafalgar Square. That's where his office is. And that's where I tracked him down for this little conversation. Because it talks about the transition from politics to diplomacy. That's not easy.

And we also talked about the nature of his work which has almost been exclusively since he got this appointment just earlier this year has has been related in one aspect or another to covid but a lot of a lot of canadian, business, trade, all of that. And because COVID has had a huge impact on that, he and the staff at the High Commission in London have been pretty busy. Anyway, let's get to it. And once we've had our conversation with Ralph Goodale, I'll get to your letters.

So here we go. Ralph Goodale, Canada's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. So after 50 years in Parliament, almost 50 years, senior positions, cabinet positions. You're now one of the country's top diplomats. Was there any difficulty in transitioning from active politics to diplomacy? Well, I think the jury's probably still out on that one, Peter. In fact, I'm just about exactly now six months into this new job,

and it's a pretty steep learning curve. A lot of what you do in political life is good training ground for diplomatic activity, but there is a clear distinction between politics and diplomacy. And I constantly have to remind myself which arena I'm in to make sure that I'm operating according to the right set of rules. But it's a gradual process, and I think I'm getting there. I've learned, I think, about the four fundamental things about diplomacy. Number one, there's a lot of ceremony where you dress up nicely and stand in the right place and you're part of the symbolism of it all. That can be a little tedious, but that's part of the process. Secondly, there's process where you can do difficult things, but if you do them according to the right diplomatic procedure, you can continue to survive another day and fight another battle later on, especially when

unpleasant things need to be done. There's a surveillance kind of role. I don't mean intelligent surveillance, but simply London is a very important listening post for the world. A lot of global affairs take place in this city. And it's important for Canada to be well informed about those affairs. So listening and reporting is part of the job. And then the substantive things that you want to get fixed or you want to get solved, like the border issues that have to be sorted out as a consequence of COVID and the travel rules and restrictions that apply from people from Canada coming to the UK, people in the

UK going to Canada. That's a substantive issue that needs attention. We've been working on that all this past summer, dealing with events like the G7 meetings and the COP26 meetings and so forth, helping with some of the back office work in the Afghanistan situation where people had to leave the country quickly, working on the Commonwealth, trying to revitalize that organization. Now, the free trade negotiations with the UK, it's the substantive side of it that occupies most of the time. But process and ceremony and surveillance are also a critical part of the function. So I'm learning it as I go along. On the nitty-gritty aspect of the negotiations, et cetera, I mean, by its very definition, the word diplomacy, you've got to be diplomatic in terms of the way you go about

things. Is there a big gap between what you can achieve as the High Commissioner and what you could achieve, say, as, you know, the Minister of Finance, which you were at a certain point? You know, are those differences obvious? I think they are, certainly when you're in the job and suddenly in a different role. If you're a minister in the cabinet, minister of finance, minister of trade, minister of anything else, you are the final decision maker subject to cabinet support. And people are providing input and advice and guidance, but it's the minister who takes the decision. In the diplomatic role, as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, you're not the final decision-maker, but you assemble a lot of the input that goes to ministers or to the prime

minister for them to make the decision. What you want to make sure of is that the information you're providing and the advice that you're offering is as accurate as it can possibly be. So the final decisions are based on a true set of facts with hard information to back it up. So it's that advisory role instead of the decision-maker role. Is that frustrating for you as somebody who was in a decision-making role for all that time? It has some frustrations, but it also has some great satisfactions. For example, get the advice going into the government of Canada about how the border situation was working for travellers back and forth between Canada and the UK, what needed to be adjusted, what needed to be fixed.

If we wanted the UK to do this, what would we have to do in exchange in order to make the system work? Putting together all of that business case for action that you want to see happen, and then seeing the ministers or the prime minister execute and get the job done on the basis of the input that you provided, there's real satisfaction in that function as well. Well, let's talk a little bit about that on the COVID travel situation because for a lot of Canadians, they found it kind of frustrating

that the UK was sort of holding back on Canada, conditioning us as not a green country. In other words, where the flow was pretty normal, as opposed to the other listed color countries where there were problems in terms of entry and the various tests you had to do. It did seem, from a Canadian's point of view, that it was taking the UK a long time to treat us as Canadians the same way they were treating other countries

who were not in as good a position on the vaccine front for one as we were. It was frustrating for us too at the High Commission because once Canada dealt with its supply issues back in the winter of last year, once we were able to secure those contracts to get the vaccines imported into Canada, the vaccination process in Canada, with one or two exceptions across the country. But basically, the vaccination process went well in Canada. And while we were behind the UK at the beginning, we are now ahead of the UK and ahead of the US and certainly ahead of places like Australia and New Zealand and others around the world. So Canada's performance on vaccines, on the vaccinations, has come along very, very well.

We didn't start out so well, but we made up lost ground and moved very quickly. So now we're among the world leaders in terms of that performance. And quite frankly, we thought the United Kingdom was not moving quickly enough. So what we did during the course of the summer, with the assistance of the UK High Commission in Canada, the two of us working together face to face over the the the Internet to to to go through all of the evidence that would bear upon that question. Is it red, amber or green? And getting that that scientist to scientist conversation going was critical in the solution. Once that happened, the solution was forthcoming very quickly. But there was a tremendous volume of material to go

through. And bear in mind, the UK was doing this in relation to 120 different countries around the world. So they had a big volume of work to get through. But we moved it to the top of the pile. And by the end of August, that issue was resolved. Of course, we're Canadian. Actually, it was resolved faster for people coming into the UK than it was for people going into Canada. We actually resolved it more quickly on this end, but it all worked out about Labor Day. It's funny when you talk about the 120 countries that it was dealing with.

We like to think as Canadians that we should be near the top of that 120 when it comes to dealing with the UK. I mean, it is one of the, you know, founding nations of our nations of our country. Absolutely. And we tend to, you know, feel that we should have some kind of special access. Where are we right now on that? I mean, a lot of us tend to think of, you know, Canadians coming to the UK as either with family connections or as tourists. But really, I guess the main bulk of this access that's needed, it must be business.

Would I be correct in that or no? Business is a big part of it. There's $41 billion worth of trade and business activity that goes back and forth between Canada and the UK every year. It's a big, important relationship. And the relationship is expanded by all of the personal exchanges, the academic exchanges, tourism, when it gets back to full flow after COVID and so forth, quite literally millions of people that move back and forth. So it's important that the system work well. And it is moving from what was that traffic light system, as they called it, where certain countries were red, certain countries were amber, certain countries were green. Canada now is solidly in the green category. But they're moving from that system to one that is totally based upon vaccinations. For those who are fully vaccinated, the travel will be relatively simple and straightforward.

There will be fewer tests required before or after you travel, and there will be no quarantine restrictions for those who are fully vaxxed. But in the case of people who are not fully vaccinated, the quarantine and testing requirements will remain. It is very important, therefore, that we finish the work, which is now moving along very well, on the COVID vaccine documentation of a national character across the country. You may recall at the end of the summer, the prime minister made some changes in senior public servants and some budgeting decisions were announced that put some real heft behind this to, to, to get the job done so that there could be a national vaccine

certification document that would work for all purposes of international travel. We're not quite there yet, but we're very close. And we made really great progress on that. And it does meet the requirements of the UK and other countries to facilitate that travel for everyone. Now, the world is not out of the COVID problem yet. And there have been perhaps some premature decisions made in some jurisdictions. We still need to be careful. We still need to follow the public health rules and regulations and guidance to make sure that travel is safe, but we're getting the rules in place to be conducive to that. You know, for any Canadian who visits London and they end up at Trafalgar Square, which is a normal kind of gathering spot for a lot of tourists, they look over and they see this wonderful structure which is uh

canada house which is your headquarters for the the high commission and i'll give you a moment to explain that you're not operating this all by yourself it's not ralph goodale sitting in an office in the in the high commission uh doing everything it is one of the bigger staffed offices in terms of high commissions or embassies around the world that Canada has. Is that correct? It is. This is the second largest mission that Canada has in a foreign country. It was the first one that we had, the first Canadian diplomatic office in a foreign country. And a former High Commissioner, Alan Larkin, made the decision and got the job done back in the 1920s that acquired this particular piece of property. Part of it is the former head office of the Royal College of Surgeons in the UK, and part of it was a private club, but it was combined together in a historic building that sits just on the corner of Trafalgar

Square. As I look out the window right now, I see the fountains in the square and Nelson's Column in the middle of Trafalgar Square. The building is festooned on the outside by Canadian flags. So it's a landmark in the heart of London, clearly identified as Canadian. And the staff here are extraordinary, Peter. I've come to meet most of them.

Now, COVID has slowed this down. I would have wanted to do that in the first week or two of being here. But there are about 300 people who work on Canada's behalf from the High Commission. About one third of them are Canadian based and the other two thirds are locally based here in the UK. But about 300 in total. And they deal with consular services.

They deal with trade issues. They deal with political and public policy questions. They are very active and vigorous in the community. There's a whole cultural side of our diplomacy where we exhibit and promote Canadian artists and active performers in a whole range of cultural activities. So it's a full set of activities and talented people aimed at making sure that Canada's interests are properly represented, that when we have an issue, we get the doors open to get those issues solved as rapidly as possible, and that we collaborate with the UK on international policies as two countries that are allies and friends and have been so for hundreds of years. Last quick question. We've just witnessed a new cabinet swearing in Ottawa with a new government after the election. You've been in that lineup and been in that group picture many, many times

over your years since first being elected to parliament in 74 out of Saskatchewan. Do you miss it at all? I think once you've been in that process and had the great privilege of being on the front lines, it's always a part of your being. So there are some twinges on occasion where you do miss it. And then on the other hand, you remember those difficult question periods or those tough interviews for a minister of finance right after the budget. I remember a couple of those, Peter. You were on the other side of the interviews. Yeah, those were fun.

There's a great privilege involved in being able to participate in that process, part of our fundamental Canadian democracy. But times change and circumstances change and you move on from that. And I'm enjoying this function enormously, trying to contribute to good public policy in Canada through a different avenue, a different means. But I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Canadian politics, as rough and tumble and hard-edged as it can sometimes be. Canada's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Ralph Goodale.

Thanks so much for joining us. And it's been a treat to talk to you, as it always has been. Thank you, Peter. All the best to you. I look forward to a visit another time. At any time you're in London, drop into Canada House on Trafalgar Square. And I'll do just that the next time I'm in London anywhere near Trafalgar Square. Ralph Goodale, Canada's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Soon to be joined across the English Channel, if the rumors are true, by a former cabinet colleague, and that's Mark Garneau, of course. Canada's first and one of its most famous astronauts. Mark Garneau, not in the cabinet, that was announced just a couple of days ago after serving as the foreign affairs minister, global affairs minister, still always fall back to that foreign affairs term.

But global affairs is the way that portfolio is described now. And the rumor is that Marc Garneau is going to Paris. And if he does go to Paris as Canada's ambassador to Paris, he won't be far away from Ralph Goodale, and I'm sure the two will talk every once in a while because obviously a lot of issues between Canada, Britain, and France that go back centuries, right?

Anyway, it was good of Ralph Goodale to spend a few minutes to have a chat with us and bring us up to date on any number of things, including that transition from politics to diplomacy. Not easy, but as he says, it's been fun and he's enjoying it. All right, when we come back, we're going to talk to you. In other words, we're going to listen to you and some of the letters you've sent in the last few days. That's when we come back.

This is The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. And you're joining the bridge. It's Thursday's Your Turn section coming up right now. If you're listening to us, you're probably doing that on one of two ways. Either on Sirius XM, channel 167 Canada Talks or you are listening to us on your favorite podcast platform because we are on both and thank you for joining us all right some of your letters this week there were a lot and as I said earlier There were a lot, and as I said earlier, there were a lot in relation to my new book, Off the Record, and I very much appreciate all your comments and your support of the book, which, once again, this week is

number one in the Canadian non-fiction section. So if you have a chance, pick up a copy. People are seeming to enjoy it. It was different for me as opposed to last year's number one bestseller that I wrote with my friend Mark Bulguch, Extraordinary Canadians. Different from that one in the sense this one's, you know, it's about me. It's about some of my experiences and anecdotes from my, well, from my life and mainly focusing on my journalism career up to this point. It's not over yet.

All right. I'm only going to read a few of the letters today. I'm not going to go through all the letters on the book. But I will tell you some interesting stories. Some of them by people who've written at different times over the last couple of years while the bridge has existed. And the first one comes that I'm reading a part of from Karen Bolshey, or Boshy from Edmonton.

She's a retired teacher, and she drops me a line every once in a while, just with her general thoughts on things. Here she says, and once again, I'm just reading an excerpt from her letter. Experiencing COVID has exposed our vulnerability, not just as workers, but as human beings. We've taken many things for granted for a long time with our eternal feeling of good faith and perpetual naivety, which keeps us going to work day after day with blinders on, following routines, earning paychecks, and not thinking much about the potential consequences and risks. They are right in front of you. I've sat countless times reading

it aloud to children, coughing, sneezing, and wiping runny noses. Germs were always the hazards of that territory. Bottle of hand sanitizer on my desk and my own survival rule, never touch your face, enabled me to teach healthily for 39 years. But then things got serious with COVID. Hindsight will be 20-20, and although I don't have to go back to a new normal in the classroom, many others are, and will be returning because their job can't change that much. A school is an essential and social place. Besides, we're social creatures,

and I wouldn't want to have missed any of those wonderful experiences that I had there. Children shouldn't either. There's already a push for a return to normalcy, another reality of the human experience. Soon children will receive their vaccinations. Hopefully we will have all learned something from the human experience. Soon children will receive their vaccinations. Hopefully we will have all learned something from the COVID experience, at least for a while, at least until the next time.

Thanks, Karen. It's always great to hear from you. Cindy Kilpatrick writes, and I'm not sure where Cindy's writing from, but she was a listener to our Is History Accurate podcast the other day with Dan Snow. I appreciate your podcast very much for all that I learn. I'm also a listener to Dan Snow's History Extra podcast and very much enjoyed listening to the two of you discuss the ever evolving nature of historical facts in your recent episode. During your discussion of the continuing appeal of World War II history, it occurred to me that one of the reasons might be that

in that era we find heroes, the likes of which don't seem to exist anymore. I'm not suggesting that heroic people don't exist, but only that, unlike the one-dimensional figures we revere from history, we are, willingly or not, confronted with the exposure of the flaws and frailties of anyone we might admire, tainting our perception, even if not our regard. It takes more rational thought now to identify our role models, our exemplars. Thanks, Cindy. Good point. Colin Carmichael.

And Colin is in Goderich, Ontario. Just finishing up the episode with Dan Snow, and it reminded me of my first few months at Wilfrid Laurier University. I began my studies as a history major and became most frustrated in my first few courses because it seemed against the rules of history scholarship to attempt to relate what we were learning to the present day. What, then, is the point of studying history?

By the end of first year, I had switched majors over to political science, where I was actively encouraged to analyze the present and the past together and never looked back. Pun intended. Thank you, Colin. Sean McKinley, Kamloops, British Columbia. Really enjoyed your podcast with Dan Snow today. By the way, if you want to listen to the Dan Snow podcast, it was great.

I mean, Dan is such a terrific personality. It was Monday of this week. So just flip back a few episodes, and if you missed it, it's certainly one you want to listen to. Anyway, back to Sean's letter. What a great birthday gift for my 40th, that Dan Snow podcast. As a student of history and a soon-to-be teacher thereof, the question about the accuracy of history is such an interesting topic.

As an elder millennial, I got to see the shift in history from a more great man perspective to a more socially driven version of history, and it being out a lot of new perspectives. All that being said, my favorite history podcaster, Dan Carlin, had a quote from Pierre Bryant that sums up how we should approach things. Even if it's not true, you must believe in ancient history. After all, we thought Troy was a myth until Heinrich Schliemann found it in 1873. Thanks for all the great discussions over the last couple of years. Oh, thank you, Sean, for listening.

Albert Versteeg, as he describes himself, he's the octogenarian from Grimsby, Ontario. And he's interested in my discussion of libraries a couple of times. We're coming up with a library special beyond next week as it relates to a number of things, including the Carnegie Foundation, which supported, constructed many libraries around the world, including in Canada. Well, Andrew Carnegie was a Scot,

and he's well known in this particular area of the Highlands. In fact, tomorrow night, I'm having drinks, they do that occasionally in Scotland, with a great-grandson of Andrew Carnegie. That should be interesting. The Grimsby Library is located on 18 Carnegie Lane and received an $8,000 grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation in 1911. It's now the home of the Grimsby Historical Society and still part of the library complex. During my formative years in the Netherlands, we, my dad and five kids,

would walk the five minutes to the library every Saturday, get three books each, that was the limit, to be read over the weekend. Some of us would return them on Wednesday and get another three. I'm still an avid reader, as are my kids. I've read your new book and will re-read over time, as is my habit. For a news and political junkie, it was a great read. Hey, Albert, thanks for the plug. Donna Edmondson writes from Winnipeg I continue to be a loyal listener to the bridge whether you're talking about Canada

Canadian politics the pandemic or hockey I enjoy it all your passion and love for Scotland was very evident in Thursday's episode of the bridge that's last Thursday taking time out to do your podcast while overseas is outstanding and And I look forward to you sharing your escapades with your listeners.

Warmest regards from Winnipeg. Thanks, Donna. Oh, she has a P.S. Do you have a book tour in the works? You know, it's so tough to do a book tour in an era of COVID. There are all kinds of problems with that, as you can imagine. I've done virtual book tours already. I did them last year for Extraordinary Canadians. I've done them this year as well. They're usually organized locally in different places.

They're either bookstores or book clubs. And I kind of pop in virtually and talk with the readers about their feelings about the book and them asking me questions about various aspects of the book writing process, which has all been new to me. When you're in your 70s and you're challenged to do something new, it's fun. It's energetic. Now, one of my favorite correspondents for the bridge is Aaron Consor.

And Aaron wrote a great letter this week, and I'm going to close out on that. Aaron's from Sherwood Park in Alberta. And it's a, you know, it's not a short letter, but it's a great letter, as all hers have been, and so many of your letters are. You know, they're really wonderful. And sometimes they connect to the podcast. Sometimes they're just stories about life, stories about our country. And it's a great way for me to pass the time reading these letters

and reading them on the podcast. So here's Erin's latest letter. I haven't heard from her in a while. And it explains why. Peter, I'm not sure why I'm writing to you. It's been a very long couple of weeks and perhaps I'm just trying to hold on to some bittersweet nostalgia. My mom passed away suddenly on September 30th. not due to COVID, thankfully, but from a heart attack. She'd been sent home from her local hospital that evening, a small hospital that's only running at 80% capacity due to staffing shortages and full of COVID patients. My family can't help but wonder if things were different. If she'd been admitted, perhaps things would have ended differently.

I'm choosing to believe that her passing was inevitable, for my own sanity. But I think the question of the fourth wave's effects will linger with us for a very long time. My mom still lived on our family's farm, and I went for a walk to one of my favorite places in one of our pastures, our slough with a beaver dam. There was something about that walk that helped me reconnect to the land I grew up on.

The sky was the piercing blue it becomes during the harvest season, but seems so much bigger than I can remember it being. The trail to the slough is overgrown now, reclaimed by the prairie grasses and cattails, but the slough itself is still as I remember, the hoof prints of cows replaced by deer and coyotes, but scarred now by the drought in 2002 and the changing water levels that seem to have left a mark across the province. This fourth wave has been devastating in Alberta, and not just to my family. It feels so divided in this province, not just between political party lines, but within the people themselves.

There's been so much anger, so much vitriol, that I don't know how we can begin to recover and become more open to each other, to new ideas. I'm not sure if this will be a permanent scar, like the water line, or if we'll be able to heal the fracture and be whole again, reclaimed into one community again. It's nearly impossible to find the end when you're still in the middle of the journey. For now, though, I'm just holding on to memories of my mom, a quiet constant in my life and in her community, a constant volunteer, my mom, Barb Granikin,

was always the first person to show up and the last person to leave, often the one washing the dishes after an event. She'd gotten her commercial pilot's license in 1973 in her spare time from working as a home economist and always had huge, full gardens. She was loved by so many and is missed deeply. I hope you have a good trip to Scotland and I just want to thank you for reading so many of my letters on your podcast. I never actually believed you'd read them, let alone read them on the podcast. So I just want to thank you deeply for that.

I'm looking forward to reading your newest book. And I received one of the book plates you signed this week, so that was a nice surprise for me. Thank you, Peter, for listening to me ramble so many times over the last 18 to 20 months. It's really meant a lot. Well, Aaron, it's meant a lot to me, and I know it's meant a lot to the listeners of the bridge as well. It's been great to hear your thoughts and your travels through life, the various paths you've been on, the difficulties you've faced and how you face them. I love that paragraph about the visit to the slough and how that helps you reconnect,

just walking along that particular path. All right. That wraps it up for this day and this episode. Tomorrow, of course, Friday, good talk. Chantelle Hebert will be here from Montreal.

Bruce Anderson will be here from Ottawa. Gee, I wonder what we'll talk about. Oh, I think you can probably guess. All right. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you again in 24 hours.