The Paikin Podcast - Kathleen Wynne & Philippe Couillard: Are Canadians Losing Trust in Democracy?

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Former premiers Kathleen Wynne and Philippe Couillard join Steve Paikin at York University’s Glendon College to discuss the rise of populism in Canada, decreasing levels of trust in government, and the threat populism poses to democracy in Canada. They also discuss where things went wrong, rising levels of inequality, the disenchantment young people feel with the political system, why young folks are skewing right, and what can be done to restore trust in democratic politics. Panelists also include Obama Foundation scholar Victoria Kuketz and Allen Sutherland from the Institute on Governance.       Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail] 

Hi, everybody, Steve Paken here. What has happened to politics in Canada, given the influence of populism and a broken consensus on immigration, is liberal democracy in even more trouble than usual? Well, that was the subject of a recent symposium I moderated at York University's Glendon College in Midtown, Toronto. And we had a pretty blue ribbon group of guests, including two former Canadian premiers, Kathleen Wynn of Ontario and Philippe Cuyard of Quebec. Here is our discussion on populism, immigration, and democracy from Glendon College in Toronto.

First things first, you are not only on the campus of Glendon College, comma, York University, you are in the riding of Don Valley West. I wonder if anybody in this room might have a particular connection to that riding. This is Kathleen Winsold Stomp and Grounds, everybody. This is the part of Ontario she represented at Queens Park. And I'm going to urge everybody to snuggle up to the microphones when you talk. And perhaps we can just start with something Premier Wind totally off topic, which is, what's it like to come back in this room and hug people five seconds after you walk in here?

Because you probably know a lot of folks here. I do. And it's lovely. It feels like coming home. That's what it feels like. And it's a real pleasure to be here. So to all of you who I either represented or went to church with or who our kids went to school together, Hello and thank you for being here. It's lovely to see you all.

The last time we have met before and Premier Winn and I know each other a little bit, but you will not remember this. We were on a stage together about eight or nine years ago because it was the 50th anniversary of the Confederation of Tomorrow Conference that John Robarts had established in 1967 back at the top of the TD Center to celebrate the, the Confederation of Canada, and both of you were on my panel. And here you are again. And I remember the last question I asked both of you, which is, you are both about to experience your 42nd general election and your 42nd general election.

How do you think it's going to go? I'm sure we said it would go very well. That's not my recollection, but anyway. Anyway. Okay. Premier Wind start us off first. When you look at Ontario, when you look at Canada today, how would you characterize the populist forces

that you see gathering right now? Well, I would see them as very much in the vein of reacting to popular opinion and in some ways in a very dangerous vein. And I think that the lack of evidence that is being attended to in terms of making decisions about policy right now, certainly in Ontario, but I think we can be more general than that. But certainly in Ontario, the lack of attention to what the evidence is, where the evidence would point us and the decisions that would come from that evidence,

I think is meaning that we have a lack of coherence in public policy and in governance that is very dangerous. We will follow up on these things. Premier Minister Cuyard, what do you see when you observe Canada now? Maybe looking back, I believe this topic was from the main reason for my defeat in 2018. I was very much engaged with preserving rights for immigrants, minorities, and some people don't like it, you know.

I remember a few anecdotes of people shouting at me in the street. Why don't you take care of all of us instead of just them? I remember that. So I kind of knew that my associates would tell me, no, don't worry, everything we're going to win, no problem. But I started thinking that maybe it wouldn't be so easy. So that's the direct connection there. I would just say on the theme,

I think it's important to remember the importance of words and their meaning. In the word populism, you have people. So I remember a couple of radio animators telling me, why don't you like populists? Populists, you don't like people? You don't want to work for people? And in fact, all politicians in the democratic society do work for the people. This is what our path diverge. Victoria, what are you seeing?

What are you hearing? Well, first of all, what an absolute pleasure to be here. And thank you so much for the opportunity to Glendon. You know, I really started my career as a frontline public start. and community builder and have scaled it to public policy leadership and where I am today. I think I'd want to take a little bit of a different viewpoint is that I really bring this down to the affordability crisis. I think all of these kind of resentment politics and search of populism and all these different things really come down to the difficulty and the pain people are experiencing.

When you really boil it down, you know, we're on a university that has young people in it. Young people are not getting hired right now. People are sitting with the knowledge that, you know, a good chunk of the workforce is about to be automated. We saw META hired, sorry, not higher, I wish it was hiring, lay off 20% of their employees yesterday, and I think people are scared, and I think that they're upset, and they don't know where to look for answers. And so these are the kinds of forces and conditions

that if we don't speak to them really directly, we start to encounter the kind of problems that we're seeing now. Alan Sutherland, what are you saying? So my name's Al Sutherland. I have spent a career at the federal government level and are currently at the Institute on Governance. So I'm going to look at it as one of those rare creatures, an institutionalist, someone who cares deeply about institutions

and their enduring effectiveness. One of the challenges that populism raises is that it creates doubt on institutions. That doubt impairs government in a couple of ways. One very important way that impairs institutions is that by creating challenges, challenges on trust, it means that government is deprived of one of its most effective instruments, which is information in a knowledge age. If citizens do not trust their government, they will not

make sacrifices for their government, and why would you make sacrifices for something you do not trust? And that includes, even if you think it would benefit you in the long term, if you don't think government can deliver, you will not make any sacrifices. for them, and it undermines our ability to deliver for citizens, which is a fundamental problem. Premier Kriard said that he definitely had to face this down in 2018, the year of his election defeat. You suffered defeat at the same time. How much of this did you see in the air when you were trying to convince people to give

you another term in 2018? Well, I think just to go back to what Victoria was saying, and I agree about the affordability crisis, but I think it started, it started. the unrest was fomenting long before today. You know, I think that there was a disenchantment that you're talking about, Alan, with government. And government to many people means politicians, right? So the lack of confidence in politicians

and the lack of belief and respect for the office that politicians hold, you know, only Steve Paken in my realm actually believes in politicians and things that they do a good job and that they're important. So I think that this has been in the air for some time. I think there's been an anger that has been kind of percolating. And it has something to do with affordability, but I also think it has to do with expectations of what life was going to bring, whether we were going to be able to continue to grow and grow.

And I'm a baby boomer. I was born in 1953. And so in my lifetime, I have seen that expectation lived out in the optimism of the 60s, in the building of the 70s, in the 80s, and then you can feel, I have been able to feel the disappointment settling in, you know, that things just started not to work out the way we thought they were going to. I think the free trade agreement sort of, yes, it was a great thing, and we had a wonderful relationship with the United States, but there were a lot of people left behind, and that started

to make us wonder whether we were on the right track. So I think this has been building for a long time and has allowed people like Donald Trump, and I will say, Doug Ford, so in 2018, when Doug Ford ran against me, and we were a 15-year-old government, and I was unpopular on all those things. But there was an element of, I'm just going to be angry, and you're going to be angry with me, and that's going to be enough. And that, to me, was the dangerous element and is the dangerous element of what we're dealing with. Having said that, Premier Kuyard,

do you think politicians do have to take any responsibility for the current state of affairs in as much as during campaigns, many of you promised things that you know you can't do, yet you promise them anyway, which inevitably leaves people disappointed? True, more for some than others? Yes.

Exactly. Just for the record, I kept a large, very large number of my commitments as a principal, because I thought it was kind of a contract of the public. It was a serious business. The problem is, some don't take this seriously. They will not remember what the heck, you say in English. I'll say that, and nobody will remember and I'll carry on. But coming back to the societal change that you felt and you described so well, I remember

when Donald Trump, because it's, let's say, it's all about him. We know these days. It's a lot about him. I was visited in Quebec City by a governor who was a close associate of Trump. And at that time we were sure, really sure in Canada, no way could a person like Trump could be elected as president. Absolutely certain. And this guy comes to me, a governor, he said look, he was listening to us. You have absolutely no idea what's going on within society. People feeling rejected. They don't have a place to go. They will not be better off than the previous generation compared to what used to happen before. With a free trade agreement, they felt that they were pushed aside.

Trump is going to win. He was the first politicians from the U.S. to tell me that in a very high level of certainty. I was struck by that. Who is a politician? It's an former governor of Maine, Franco-American, by the way. Who's called? Paul Lepage. Paul Lepage.

And when he said that, did you say that? when he said that, did you say, oh, no, you're crazy. There's no way they're going to pick Trump. I said, very unlikely. How could this happen? And if you believe Trump, if you believe Trump, they elected him three times. That's good. There you go. Okay, I'm going to come right at you on this one, Victoria. You're a, you're a Obama Foundation scholar. Yeah. You have a, I mean, it's really a wonderful, actually, can you take 30 seconds just before I asked the question to tell everybody what an Obama Foundation scholar is. Thank you and it would be my pleasure. So I'm very proud to share that I'm one of two Canadians and a global group of 11 from around the world. We're

completely interdisciplinary, but the common thread is that we're building and scaling social ventures, nonprofits, and different elements of public policy together on the world stage. It's a cross-appointment between the Obama Foundation and Columbia University's World Project. And I'm just so proud to be able to bring our perspectives, our Canadian values, and the way that we're working through our issues and the polarization that we're experiencing with the United States right now, and to be able to bring that lens in advocacy. Having said all that, how much of what's going on right now that we're talking about, populism on steroids, disaffection with positions of authority, lack of belief in empirically

provable facts, how much does Barack Obama have to wear that in as much as, there were lots of Americans who thought, you're just too cool for school, Mr. And you don't really care about me. You know what? I think that's a really hard and important question. I think for the president would honestly wear some of it because I think that that kind of self-awareness is necessary when you hold this level of public office.

I think that we saw the rise of social media. We were unable to regulate in the ways that I think were very, very important during that presidency as well. And if we're going to be honest, a lot of the immigration policies that are being used now were continued to be developed then. So I do think it's important that we all take responsibility in the ways that we're trying to enact a certain vision or trying to enact certain policies. And I was actually invited into a two-and-a-half-hour roundtable with the president in December

and was able to ask about AI regulation and policy and, you know, what his current thoughts are on this and where we may have missed the mark in a group with the rest of the other scholars, because self-awareness is the first step, right? I think admitting that, I think the question is, what do we do now, where do we take it, and how do we also see ourselves as people who are advocating for the kinds of regulations and policies that we think of maybe missed the mark

a little earlier on? When you asked him that question, this is President Obama, when you asked him that question, how long was his answer? Well, I think you know, because I told you last night, but it was about 13 minutes long, because you know what, I appreciated it,

because he actually took the time to look me in the eyes and think and talk through the issue. And part of the question I asked him was, given the guardrails are off, and we're in a very different place with AI as a community builder and someone who practices democracy every single day, should I be preaching abstention at this point? Or should I be trying to democratize the tech and create a culture of literacy and adoption? Because there's a huge ethical divide in the populations that I work with and the kind of practitioners I work with too. And he looked at me and he said, if your parents had decided not to adopt AI 20 years ago, where would they be in terms of their economic opportunities now

and how great would the digital divide be? So I think, you know, this was a very clear message for me to go out there with the values of responsible AI ethics in the work that I'm doing and to really try and skill up and bridge that trust gap and help with adoption. Can't help with everything. I can't promise tomorrow.

But what I can do is make sure the populations that I serve have a fair chance at learning how to use these technologies. Ellen, can I ask you one of those big sort of philosophical, airy-fairy questions? You can try. Okay. Is populism the way we see it today simply inconsistent with the kind of liberal democracy you would like to see us preserve? Well, populism, of course, is a range, right?

And I would not want to be one who argued that simply because someone agrees with the status quo that they are somehow, and is highly critical of the status quo that they are somehow being anti-democratic. So part of the message I would give people from the Institute on Governance, and having a background in democratic institutions is that we have to be very careful about shunning people as the other. And we have to be very careful about demonizing people

and excluding people. And that so far, Canadians have been doing a pretty good job of making sure everyone feels included, notwithstanding the challenges we face. I think that if you look at, there's a great phrase, since you raised philosophy, I will counter with my favorite French philosopher, Paul Valerie, who says,

when I'm regard, I'm desol, when I compare, I'm counsel. When you look at Canada in a global perspective, there are many good things happening in Canada today, and relatively speaking, we're doing pretty well. Pretty well, but we think that we're hot stuff. Well, I would never want people to think, complacency can be a Canadian disease, right? So I think we should always be on our toes. So let's amend that pretty well with we're going to continue to be dynamic. We're going to face the challenges, whether it's missing disinformation or anything else.

Let me get all of you to weigh in, and none of us is under the age of 30 here, and yet this is where the biggest crisis we're told. You know, polls suggest that people under 30 have the most disaffection from the political system. They don't trust institutions. They don't think they're going to be able to buy a house. They are putting off marriage. They are putting off having children because of all of the issues that have been raised so far. When you were the Premier of Ontario, I know you thought about this.

How, you know, are we losing the youngest generation? And what do we do about trying to kind of repatriate them? What did you come up with? Well, we spent a lot of time in government trying to, make sure that young people had opportunity you know and I and that starting with kids who were three and four years old making sure that they had access to high-quality education full-day kindergarten you know when I when I talk with my my students because I teach a public policy course we talk about public policy

that sticks you know and junior can full-day kindergarten is one of those because it is so beneficial to people across the board. But right through to trying to open up post-secondary education to young people whose families never would think of themselves as able to support their kids going to post-secondaries. So I think that what I thought about was that, trying to provide opportunity. But I also felt really strongly, Steve,

about engaging with people face-to-face and trying to have conversations, going to where kids were, to try to have conversations with them about what was going on, and to try to break down the preconceptions about what politics was, who politicians were, and how the system works. And I think that social media, you know, I'm not an academic.

I left academia a long time ago. So my experience is what I draw on when I, when I have these conversations. And so I think that social media has done a lot of good things. It's done a lot of bad things. It's certainly contributed to the Malays, the isolation that we're talking about. But we have a responsibility to work to try to break that down,

you know, to try to reach across that divide and engage people where they are. We're not going to be able to, whether we can put the guardrails, that we need on AI or not. We're not going to be able to stop kids from having phones. They're going to have them. They're going to use them.

But that doesn't mean that we can't, as part of the political process, do more to engage with human beings face-to-face. And I'll just give you a perfect example. In campaigns now, there are these iPads, minivan, with the lists of houses that you should go to because that'll be a warm, in my case, a liberal door potentially. I think they are a skirt, you know. I think that we should be required to knock on every door. We should talk to everybody because it's the people who don't agree with

them, who we really need to have a conversation with, because that's the humanizing possibility. You know, somebody who's voted liberal for me or for Philippe or forever, I don't need to convince that person that I'm a human being that I have good intention. What I do have to do is talk to the person who really has a lot of misconceptions about who I am and have that conversation, because otherwise, we just feed polarization. You know, if I'm only going to talk to the people who agree with me, I can do that on social media. In the real world, I need to talk to people who don't agree.

In the real world, does that work? If you go to a door that you know as an opponent politically, you think you can engage in a civilized conversation and turn them? Steve, I can, well, you know what? It wasn't even about turning them. What was important to me was that, and there were so many people who said to me, I never voted for you, but I really liked you. Or, you know, you seemed like a decent person.

Fill in the gap. But we don't have to vote for each other. You know, we don't have to vote for each other to have a civilized society. But we do have to talk to each other to keep our democracy strong. And the best thing about democracy is the disagreement. That's where the shared meaning comes, you know? And so the more I can have a conversation with people who disagree with me, and people as part of a mob, right after the 2018 election, I was on Ontario today, the phone in show on CBC, and we were talking about the locker up calls that came into some of the rallies in Ontario when I was running. and the radio host said, you know, what did that feel like?

And I said, you know, I think if I had a chance to talk to some of those people, they wouldn't say that to me. They wouldn't say I needed to be locked up. We'd have a conversation. And a man phoned in. And he said, she's absolutely right. If I'd been, if I met her, I would have had a conversation with her, but I was part of the group and, you know, all those things.

That is not the venue where we find our humanity. It isn't when we have those one-on-one. conversations in real, in face-to-face. And we'll be back right after this. You're the closest to 30 of all of us here, so I should ask you, why do you see so much disaffection among young people as it relates to their democracy these days? I mean, I can remember a poll that came out probably a year or two ago, which showed that,

you know, young people are really not sold on democracy. They didn't see a hell of a lot of difference between this and sort of, you know, old Soviet-style communism. They thought, maybe let's give authoritarianism a shot. What the heck? So this is the exact data point that I use to scale what's considered now to be the most systemic intervention on polarization in Canada. I had the opportunity to design and build a, it's called foreign widening, the rise of polarization in Canada. And it was because of that data point that we actually put the voices of 1600 young people age 18 to 35 right at the center. And then we built layers on top of that by an academic

research series, doing off-the-record interviews with sitting politicians, journalists, across 321 locations in Canada. So I was able to learn a couple things. Number one, young people actually do believe in the promise of democracy. They question whether or not the promise of democracy is being delivered to them. And the very way our system and society is set up is not really resonating with them anymore. So I'll tell you, their biggest fears were around things that won't surprise you, you know, intergenerational divide, sustainability, the land back movement, pieces like that. But their number one concern was polarization and the inability of our society of some of our politicians, maybe not the ones in the room, but some of our politicians to be

able to work together to actually achieve good policy outcomes across the lines. And so they were really disaffected with the way things were being delivered. I think the other interesting thing you'd find you'd find to be interesting is the left-right. Binary doesn't have. actually resonate with them at all. And so it's for lack of choices that feel meaningful, that feel like they actually want to get in the ring and start to build and do these things that matter that actually starts to make them feel like they want to count themselves out. Now, I don't agree with that premise. I think we have to get in the ring no matter what and do the difficult work that Premier Winn is talking about here. And I just want to maybe make

this personal for a second. I grew up in a family that is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religions. I was raised by a single mother. I have a very mixed background, which I think is very much a Toronto story. Tell it. You told me about it last night. Your background's amazing. Oh, thank you very much. Well, I'm part Trinidadian and Indian on my mother's side, and I have a father who is

Australian, who is of Italian and Croatian descent. That's how I wind up with this last name, Cucats. And, you know, my uncle who's in the audience here is married to a wonderful Sikh woman. my aunt is married to a Pentecostal, my other aunt is married to a Unitarian. I grew up in both a Hindu and Catholic household, and we have an incredible matriarch who's 99 years old,

whose household will be racing to after this, who grew up in the Anglican tradition. Victoria, you are Canada. I know. So what I will say amongst these 24 family members on this one side is that religious observances were negotiated, how we gave grace at the dinner table,

table had to be, again, negotiated. The kinds of values that we have while loving and being an interconnected family, we don't agree on things that come to really fundamental things for me, like bodily autonomy for women, or things that feel really fundamental about our political choices. But I will say that every single family gathering, and my mom and my uncle are here, so they can keep me honest, all 24 sit down, we break bread together, we help each other, and if we're not, we're pulled into line by my grandmother. 99-year-old. Exactly.

So I think, you know, to zoom back out for a second, this is the job that we have to do every single day. Alan, what would you add to this? Plus, I see your mother nodding there, so I guess she endorses what you just said. Well, it's always good to have your mother agree, so I would add that. Maybe on the young people's side,

one of the things that will determine whether or not these young people who are maybe democracy doubters actually solidly embraced democracy is how we deal with some of the big challenges we're facing today. So whether that's on the national scale with questions around our economic promise, whether it's in our national sovereignty and defense, national security, or whether it's in the national unity space, not to mention other challenges that young people feel particularly like climate change, just economic progress. Democracy has to deliver.

the goods and that will ultimately be whether and that will ultimately determine how our young people view democracy in the society they're a part of. So let's some ideas. Well, can I just, what gets my students worked up is more capitalism than democracy. They are more worried about the income inequity in the society and the lack. I mean, you were talking about empathy. So those are the issues that they really find hard to wrap their minds around or that they reject our progress to this point. They reject the world we've built, and they talk about capitalism as opposed to democracy.

Now, I don't know the degree to which they're conflating them, but they're pretty clear that they would like to see democratic reform. They'd like to see proportional representation, but they haven't given up on that. process, but they're pretty disenchanted with a lot of the aspects of capital. Can we, while you have the microphone, can we put some ideas forward now? Let's not just leave everybody with the impression that nothing can be done about this. I remember when you were in government, you brought in free tuition for some post-secondary students because the idea was there's some people who don't see themselves necessary as post-secondary students, so let's make it easy.

You get to go for free. What other ideas did you kick around? It wasn't even so much about making it easy. It was about making it accessible at all for some families. So I still think that that's important. And I'm very aware that right now, because I think education is foundational to this whole conversation. But I'm very aware right now that the Ontario government, for example, is hyper-focused on skilled trades. And I have no problem with skilled trades.

And I was very much moving towards experiential learning. I think that's extremely important. but I think that if we are, if we're going to bridge the divide between, you know, the elites, as they've been as they've been sort of portrayed by many politicians at this point, if we're going to bridge that divide, then we've got to make education accessible. We've got to make, we've got to make economic opportunity accessible. So things like child care, you know, are extremely important. And when they're not implemented in a way that,

equitable and people don't actually have access to the service, that's almost worse. When you say you've got a child care program and then it's not actually implemented across the country in an equitable way, that's worse because, again, that's a disillusionment with the policy that was supposed to help people. So I think that right now, what I would say, Steve, is that we are engaged in a very important exercise in terms of our economic existence. And I understand that. But if we shunt aside all of the issues that, you know, whether it's the social issues that I just talked about,

or whether it's climate change, which I think actually is an economic issue. And Philippe and I worked very closely together on our cap and trade program when we were both in office. If we neglect those issues, then I think we are going to be worse off. So I guess the flip side of that is we need to pay attention to the things that are keeping young people on the end. that are making them anxious because they see it is their future. I'm 73. I am not going to live in the same world that my grandchildren are going to live in. So we'd better pay attention to what those kids are saying right now. So that's what I would. That's what I would.

What's what I would. What we can. DEMOCLEEN, let's get a voice. The young people want to give them to them to give them to have an impact. Young people want me. Young people want meaning in their lives. They don't want to be relegated to a kind of non-job or semi-job for the rest of their lives. Generations have done this before for a long time.

Many people have done this all their life. They want to have a sentiment to contribute very, verytablement, at the height of their talent. But for having the talent, it's to develop, again, once, the education. I think the most great initiative on this question, and to make more an effort on a program of education that's attack on development of the competences personnel that are necessary, who are now, that are necessary in today, and that are necessary, tomorrow.

We talked about the technology, the intelligence artificial AI. I was reading recently that some large consulting firms have stopped hiring entry-level consult. But no advantage, you know, the machine will do it as much probably faster than the do. So that's a practical issue in terms of this generation and the next generation access to prosperity and happy night.

Let me throw an idea out here, Victoria, and you tell me if this makes any sense. There's 124 writings in the province of Ontario. Should we have a law that says every major political party that wants to run candidates, at least pick a number. 20% of the writings have to be staffed by candidates who are 35 years old or under.

Would it make sense to do that? I was just going to say. There was a liberal. That was the Ontario liberal policy. Now, he didn't get there, but he tried. Yeah, 30 under 30 is what the Ontario liberals did a couple of elections ago. I think this is a really interesting idea. I'm not sure I'd make it a law, but I would make it a public call to action

for a politician or a political party to really put their values to action. If youth employment is something they actually care about delivering on, I don't think we need to mandate it so much as we need to see if they're willing to do it. I also think more broadly than that, you know, this data point that you just put into the equation, I read earlier that it's not just consulting firms, but many organizations are no longer hiring not only entry-level positions, but positions that they feel will be automated soon enough and just leaving those gaps. And the question is, are we actually going to accept that of corporations?

Are we going to accept that for the biggest employees? in Canada and of society. And we're at the beginning of it. So, you know, when a problem is at its smallest point, that's the only time you can really do a large-scale intervention. So what are we actually going to do about this in terms of our public sentiment, in terms of our buying power? Because we have different kinds of power, right? We have voting power. We have public sentiment. We have, as you were talking about with capitalism, we have buying power. And then we also have the power to organize. So the question is, what are we going to do with the things that we're learning right now? What can we do, Alan, in terms of our democracy?

to get young people more engaged. Maybe voting online, maybe this idea about candidates? What do we think? So I actually like the paper ballot system because it's less likely to be interfered with by foreign entities. So I'm happily a Luddite when it comes to paper ballots, and that's the federal approach. In terms of engaging young people,

I think it has to do with delivering policy. that serve them and I think a lot of young people are skewing to the right actually overall and that that is the overall direction and so I think that's primarily a jobs it's a housing agenda it's services that they need and care about some of them will be in the education area some of them will be daycare and related they want to be able to have families and they want to thrive you do those things and that'll create the entryway for young people I wouldn't mandate age or any other restrictions,

but I do like the call-to-action idea. I think that's a wise idea. I could never get my party to agree with me, but the young liberals thought that voting at the age of 16 was a good idea. And the reason I say that is that a 16-year-old is not out of high school yet. And I think that if we did a better job

of giving a real task to young people earlier and that would be knowing about candidates and actually voting, I think that we might do a better job in civic education. And I know that people shake their heads and people will say to me, but they don't have enough experience. If you've knocked on as many doors and spoken as many adults as I have, you bloody well are better off with the 16-year-old. Maybe it helped me with this, because this is something I've never understood. If you want to vote at a nomination meeting for a political party, you can be 14. You can be 14. But to vote an election, you've got to be 18.

Yeah, I mean, anyway, it's a long conversation, but there are really good reasons to have younger people thinking about these serious issues, because the proportion of serious young people is probably analogous to the proportion of serious older people. So I think that it's something that we should look at. I wonder whether any of you are concerned about the political legitimacy of the governments that are elected in this country today, and again, since we are here in the province of Ontario, I will merely observe that the current government of Ontario got elected with 48% of the people turning out to vote, and they got 40, whatever it was, 43% of 48% turnout.

Anybody want to do the math there? What does that work out to? Does that work out to like 22% of the... I mean, it's low. Not even. So anybody concerned about the political legitimacy of the governments we're electing when so few people seem to actually be putting them in? Now, start us off. Well, I just point out the federal election in 2025, where you had a rich array of issues that came forward,

the voting rate actually increased to 69%. So that shows you. And you can regularly see it in the federal scene that when you have issues that mobilize that interest people, things that are at stake, then people will come out to vote in greater numbers. But it is disappointing. That doesn't sound like a juritarian democracy to me. You know, I have to challenge that.

Yeah, go for you. In terms of the, I mean, people think the federal government is more important than all the other orders of government. And yes, there was an existential crisis because of Trump, and I think that had a lot to do with the turnout. But the airspace, the kind of, real estate that the federal government inhabits as compared to the provincial or the municipal or school board.

In terms of importance for Canadians. People said to me, when John Godfrey retired, people called me and said, are you going to, are you going to go for a promotion? And, you know, I didn't see working in the federal government as a promotion because the issues that touch people's lives on an everyday basis, from my perspective, were the provincial issues, you know? So, so I think it's hard to, I guess what I'm saying is it's hard to compare voter turnout and then say that that is indicative of importance of issues. And that certainly wasn't what I was saying, and I don't think you thought I said. No, no, no, I'm just saying I have to be

careful about it. And yet we live in an attention economy and I think that's not going away. And so the question is, what do we do if this is the reality to actually be able to have different narratives, to be able to engage people in a different way, to make very digitally savvy politicians so that we can actually raise the issues because you're right. It is provincial and it's municipal issues that affect people's lives the most,

and yet there's this inverse of attention. I would say something a little controversial. I am a huge fan of mandatory voting. I think it's a really important thing. I would love to see that happen. That is my own team coming out. And I think with that, it makes people a little bit more alive and a little bit more awake.

But I think one other thing we have to do, we also have to reverse engineer this little bit. You know, I'm going to go back to where I started. Our affordability crisis started a long time ago. And the more I talk to youth, the more I talk about the fact that they can't get to third spaces because bus fare is too expensive. They can't, they're not going to bother voting because even though their boss, you know, said, I guess you can go take three hours off from work, but I'm actually not going to pay you for that. They're not going to do it. Young people have childcare.

They have, you know, studying to do. They have a couple hundred resumes due to get one job. And so when they're already feeling like the system isn't built for them and serving for them, are they really going to give up the things that are right in front of them in terms of direct rewards to go out and vote? I'm not exactly sure, but I'm very, very committed to changing that perception and having it deliver. There is a sense of responsibility, though, right? We make it pretty easy to vote. I take your specific comments, but we provide advanced voting.

we will see a future where more people vote in advance polls at times that are convenient to them than vote in the final day of polling. So we are trying really hard. Elections Canada has a 15-minute rule that doesn't always observe it, but that's the standard that they have, the service standard. What's that rule? 15 minutes. Oh, you don't have to wait longer than 15 minutes before?

Is your democracy worth 15 minutes? I think everybody in this room would say, yeah. That's my hunch, yeah, it's worth it. Okay, I want to circle back to something you talked about a while ago, which was the issue of L'Otre, the other. How much do you think right now immigration has not just become an issue in Canada, but become something to weaponize for politicians to help them get elected? When we talk about populism and try to define it, again,

the importance of defining it is quite significant because a lot of people use the word and no one exactly gives the same meaning. One of the characteristics of populism is the tendency to scapegoat people. My life is not good. I'm not happy with the way I'm going. It must be the fault of someone else. Usually it's easier to point to a person of different skin color, different origin, different behavior, different way of dressing.

That must be that person. because of that person, that's why I'm having these issues. And of course it's accentuated by bad people that are on the waves, radio waves and all of that, but we have to be conscious of that. Just going back to voting as you touched briefly, I see two issues. Turn out, I agree with my colleague here.

Look, it's not that difficult to go out and vote. I think people have to take their responsibilities and fulfill the duty. There's not that many obstacles. now between them and deciding to go and vote. That's one thing. The other one is the quality of the representation. This is where the question of first past the polls

versus proportional representation comes into play. And on this, I have a slightly different perspective because I live in a remote Nordic area in Quebec with huge writings. The candidate and the member cannot even go from one end to the right to the other sometimes in the same half day. So in terms of quality of representation it raises an issue. So when I saw the first models that were circulated in Quebec on proportional representation

It always led to a lower diluted level of representation with people living in the areas where I live now Northern areas based on natural resources Mono-industrial places etc etc So for that reason I refuse to follow the I would say the true Everybody wanted to go there said well once once we saw this But everybody gets access to a good representation I may be happy to go forward and support it, I didn't have the chance because it didn't happen. Each model that we see has this flow. And because in large cities where most of the people are, they don't look at it

that way because it makes a lot of sense, one person, one vote, et cetera, very logical. But when you live in an area which is remote and where the population is sparse, it's a very different, a very different situation. So I think we have to solve this issue of representation, both of the turnout, but I wouldn't do much more for the turn out, I agree with you, and also for the type of election we have. I'll come back to the immigration question, but you've prompted something in my head. You were part of a government 2007 that ran a referendum here in Ontario at the same time as the election, so people could kind of vote for who they wanted representing them, and on the question of whether we wanted to change our democratic system, and it failed.

It failed. Yeah. Yeah. And it failed in BC as well. Well, sort of. They got 58% support, but they needed to hit 60%. and they didn't. Yeah. Yeah. So honestly, I don't think people, I don't think enough people understood what the question actually was and what the outcome. I don't think people knew what it was

going to look like and we needed, we needed to do a, we need to have a better process. I think that, you know, maybe the time has come for another conversation about this. You will know that our government put in place the permission for municipalities to have ranked ballots, which would have been a, that was repealed by the Ford government. But I think we, We need to start to experiment in some of these things and let people see what it would actually look like in a jurisdiction and get a sense of whether that's where they want to go. Can I pull the audience here? Just by a show of hands, how many people like the current system we have for electing people

in provincial or federal elections? First pass the post, whoever gets the most votes wins. Hands up. Hands down. How many people would like to see something else? Hands up. Okay. For those who can't see elsewhere, what do you think?

75% of the people just put their hands up? But do they want the same thing? But people always want... People always want something else. That's a good point. They always want change. When they see change, they don't like it anymore.

And the thing about proportional representation is there are a whole lot of different models, and I sat on the select committee that looked at them, and a lot of the models come down to whose name the parties put on the list. And so if the name's on the list, because we were looking at how do we get more women into politics, well, if their names aren't on the list,

they're not going to be elected. So it's very complicated and it would need a lot of study. But it may be time to do that again. I'll tell you an inside baseball type of story about proportional representation. It's always the same pattern. One in opposition.

Parties want to change a system. Let's make it proportional because they have been defeated before, so they want to change a system. Once they are in office, particularly if they are a majority, well, you know, what impact will it happen? on me and lose my job, not that happy. I have a few years to go for my pension. Why would I risk it?

And this is usually defeated within the government caucus when it's presented. That's just a reality of things. It's like a voice. It's amazing how your perspective changes, right? So when you're in government, freedom of information doesn't seem like a very good idea when you're out of government. Just saying.

Okay, circling back to immigration now. From what you see, Victoria, how much has this issue of immigration, xenophobia, call it what you want, how much has it been weaponized in politics today? I think it's been quite weaponized, and I think it goes far beyond politics. It's actually one of the most powerful narratives of our time, unfortunately. And I think it becomes a very good proxy for hiding behind a whole lot of other things that are going on. I would really encourage people to read Tim Wu's The Age of Extraction. I think people know that there's a problem with scarcity of resources, with scarcity of opportunity.

They're feeling uneasy. They're feeling resentful. They don't know who to blame. And then there's a very smart, coordinated narrative on blaming immigrants. And I think it's really sad. And it's these myths and the myth busting that we have to do to undo this. And let me be clear about immigration. It has to be done in balance as well.

There needs to be infrastructure in place to accommodate it. There needs to be coordination of different levels of governments so that there's enough hospital beds for everybody so that all these things can happen so that our country is safe, productive, can deliver on the resources promised to all of its citizens. But what if we had no immigration? What would happen to the cost of everybody's houses? The housing market would decline.

We're in Toronto. What would we do without dim sum? Honestly, what would we do without our... incredible neighbors who, you know, contribute to the innovation economy, who give us a diversity of experiences, who make our restaurants seen as incredible as it does, who bring the stories and traditions of their country to help make ours. I can tell you right now, I wouldn't be here without immigration, and neither would be the incredible family I come from who have worked as public teachers across generations

to, you know, serve the country in return. And so I think the question is, how do we actually help explain and narrate and break down on what's actually going on in the greater forces of power and decision-making, not just in Canada, but in the world, that people have a clear picture and they're empowered to make decisions about who to blame and how to understand things, and, again, how to get back into the ring to make things better. Well, let me follow up with Alan on that.

And, you know, we'll get specific here, okay? For the longest time in this country, quite amazingly, we had multi-party, right across most of society, consensus that immigration was a good thing and that we had the level about right. And then under the Justin Trudeau government, they really ramped it up, and that consensus disappeared. Right. How much does he have to wear whatever this issue has become if we've lost that consensus?

Right. So it's certainly the case that it was the Canadian miracle, right? We were a major G7 country that where immigration was seen as part of the deal that made Canada. you saw the reaction to discussion of Victoria's family, you probably wouldn't get that everywhere, right? It's part of what makes us Canadian. And that miracle, by raising up immigration levels across all the systems, not just the permanent, but it's asylum, it's refugee, temporary foreign workers,

the challenge was you moved every dollar to 11 at the same time. And so that that is what has caused the consent. to break down. That doesn't mean that a new consensus can't be found later, but it does mean that we need to kind of reestablish kind of system integrity. And I think the federal government is starting to do that. We saw the report of Canada's population growth having stopped for this past year. And part of that is because the tightening of controls. We, earlier in the day in the conversations with Jeff Cameron and his panel there was discussion about the asylum system and how it's still under considerable stress i mean part of the deal for canadians for all of our society is that we need a system with

integrity that can deal with people compassionately and in a timely way we're not at that point we have to find ways to break down the backlog get the numbers into more reasonable space and so then if we do that then i think the ingredients are there to get the consensus back I don't think it's gone forever. It's too much a part of us. There's something else going on, though, because I just finished doing about six International Women's Day events. And the theme of those conversations was that we are seeing an increased permission for misogyny,

increased permission for racism, which may be related to this immigration, the blaming of other, the LGBTQ plus community in the guise of anti-trans, rhetoric is definitely the whole parents rights movement in Saskatchewan and in Alberta and New Brunswick that is about undermining the LGBTQ community and making it less safe so I think that there's something other than just the the consensus on immigration breaking down I think that's why that's why the anti-woke kind of movement and

the companies that are stopping doing their DEI you know that that's because become trivialized in some way. So I think that this more general malaise that we're talking about goes beyond immigration. I think that the immigration piece is probably the most concerning for the country, but I can tell you, as a woman of a gay son and a queer family, That part is disturbing as well, you know, because kids are not safe if we go, if we roll the clock back.

Do you feel that every day when you are just living life? An increase in misogyny. I hear it. I feel it in the news, Steve. I hear it in the language and the harshness that is used. I hear it in the sort of, what did somebody say, that the muscular policies that are seen, as essential right now. So whether it's building huge buildings

and building another island in the lake or whether it is bombing Iran, you know, that kind of male, powerful, big, those are the things we need to pay attention to. And all the other stuff is, it always was nice to have, and it's now relegated again to nice to have, as opposed to it being core to our humanity.

And, you know, when we talked about the economy in my government, I talked about the economy as being all those things. Yes, we have to build things, but we also have to care for human beings. And so I think that we're in a dangerous period right now. Come here, this issue of wokeism found it very strange. I'll be honest. What does the word mean?

It was born in the civil rights movement in the States, and it was just paying attention to discrimination. That's what it meant. If it's the case, I'm 100% woke. don't mind. But when it becomes transformed in an aggressive tool to hurt people's lives, indirectly or directly, now nobody's on board anymore. But I don't think we should let it go. We can change the word if the word is so bad for some people, which would let it go. Because at the same time, as people have expressed feelings towards women now publicly, you hear the same about xenophobia and racism.

I would never thought I would hear this in our country. Somebody say very strongly and very proudly, I'm a racist. I never thought I would hear this one day. So somebody or something gave them the permission, because before we had a break, even if we had these feelings, we wouldn't say them. Now the break is off. Do we blame Trump for that?

The strongest, yeah, most powerful man in the world, said vile things about everyone. Yeah, he has to take some of the response. I think while President Trump gave a permission structure to all of this, I think these things were bringing for many years before that. But I think that, you know, in addition to being a democracy builder, I've been a corporate advisor to major corporations at an organization called Catalyst and where I led inclusion efforts with chief inclusion officers. So a couple of things. Number one, many of them are walking back because they're federal contractors.

And preserving that is the most important thing, not because they don't want to do inclusion work anymore. And I think that's a really important differentiation. So in the states that would be good. Many in Canada are federal contractors as well, which is surprising. And it's against federal? Well, I mean, researchers in Canada are also getting, you know, letters about the different kinds of research they're doing. Unfortunately, it's not a border thing as much as we would want it to be,

or if they're trying to expand and have to work with the FCC. These are all considerations, right? So I think a couple of... I love that you two were discussing this, but I need you close to your answer. Sorry. Sorry. So I would just say maybe two things. Number one, the work of inclusion, I think, necessarily. had to cast a wider net if it was really going to be responsive to 2026 conditions. You know,

we're talking about these muscularized policies. And while I agree, we also see that young men are dying in huge rates from a mental health crisis, from an isolation crisis, from lack of employment. And we're seeing, you know, economic anxiety across the country. And so the question is, you know, how does that become a necessary segment of the work of inclusion in organizations and in society? So I think for it to remain relevant, it had to evolve. I think that this purpose, you know, permission structure around saying really hurtful, vile things is inexcusable. And I also think it came from like wanting to push back on the things we couldn't say anymore. People don't like being told what to do. And while I don't agree with that as a premise, I think that, you know, there's a pressure

valve coming off. The question is, how do we work with that? I'm not 100% sure how to do it, but I do think that underneath someone who's proudly saying, I'm a racist, there's got to be more to that person that can be kinder, that can be softer, that there can be a pathway towards. And so, you know, not all of us have to put up our hands to do that, especially if you feel like you're in harm's way, but I'd like to put up my hand. In our remaining moments here, we have been sort of talking about and around the issue of reclaiming confidence in our liberal democracy. And I'd just like to get, let's go around here. I'd like to get one idea from each of you on something that the people in this room, the people watching or listening to this could do to make our liberal

democracy better and have people have more confidence in it? See buple. Alan, come on say. First of all, everyone should vote, right? And then I would add to that is just continued engagement with people you disagree with. Victoria. I think if you're not seeing a political culture or politicians you want to see, I think we need to count ourselves in. The amount of people that I see who talk about their data not being listened to, their voice not being heard, policies not being enacted they want to see, this is a call to action. We have. We have to be have to run for politics regardless of whether or not we saw ourselves there in the first place.

Are you going to run someday? I'm thinking about it, but we'll see. Okay, here's the follow-up question. In what country? Asked a question. Canada. Okay, glad to hear it. Philippe Cuyah.

We have to keep talking about the importance of checks and balances in a society, in a liberal democracy or democracy in general. And also constantly repeat that being the majority does not give you the right to do what you want. That's a problem I see right in the new discourse. I can do this because I have the majority. In Quebec, we hear this. What about minorities? What do you mean?

We are the majority. And that is something that has not been taught, obviously. It's Vincent Jefferson and others that being the majority does not give you the right to oppress minority. On the contrary, being the majority. give you the duty to protect minorities through a parliamentary system with the right legislation. So that's something that needs to be put back out there, very visible for people.

Kathleen Wood. So I know so many of the people in this room that I know I'm preaching to the converted in a lot of ways, but in terms of what we can do, we need to talk to our politicians. Whether we agree with them or not, we need to talk to them. We need to bring people who have concerns

to them and engage with them. I spend a lot of time counseling people on how to approach a politician who doesn't want to have a meeting with you, who isn't interested in your issue. We have to continue to have those conversations because politicians need they need to hear from not just their constituents, but the people who are concerned about issues in their world. If you try to talk to a politician nowadays, you can't. You can't call their office anymore. You send an email it may not be responded to it's really hard to get FaceTime now so you just did an article

on Bill Saunderson I did and he was a very nice man but he decided he didn't want to talk to me during the Harris year he locked his door and there were a few moms standing in the hall and we were saying you know it was it was about the amalgamation of the school boards he didn't want to talk to us but we persevered Steve so it's not just now that politicians don't want to talk to to talk to us. There are politicians who for years haven't wanted to talk to us. And what I want to say to people is, you need to persevere, you need to find a way around that. You need to go to them, talk to their staff. There are ways to engage. So I don't want to give up on Bill Saunderson or anyone else. I don't know if somebody is planning to come up here and wrap this up, but just before he does, I know this audience wants to join me. thanking these four for a splendid discussion here at London College this afternoon.