The Paul Wells Show - Marc Garneau on space and politics

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Marc Garneau looks back on his time as an astronaut and Trudeau Cabinet minister. He talks to Paul about truth telling in politics, why he stuck around after being ousted from Cabinet, and his thoughts on the current political landscape, from the fate of the Liberal party to Quebec sovereignty.  Marc Garneau’s new autobiography is called A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream. Season 3 of The Paul Wells Show is sponsored by McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy.

I want to say a word about the people who are supporting this podcast. McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy is committed to the research, teaching, public outreach, and practical advocacy of sound public policy, grounded in a solid understanding of the overall policy process, with all its imperfections and limitations. With their one-year intensive Master of Public Policy program, they teach a principle-based design of policy solutions to important problems. Learn more at mcgill.ca slash maxbellschool. Imagine making it through astronaut selection and then getting kicked out of Justin Trudeau's cabinet. To quote what I said in the book, it was like a punch in the stomach.

This week, Mark Garneau on space, politics, and telling the truth, even when it's hard. I'm Paul Wells, the Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellow at McGill University. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. Art Garneau's book, A Most Extraordinary Ride, got a lot of headlines when it came out at the beginning of October. Misleading headlines, if you ask me. There were stories about how the former Liberal foreign minister and transport minister was settling scores with Justin Trudeau. Garneau said Trudeau was hard to reach, even for senior cabinet ministers. He said he wasn't sure centrist blue liberals were still welcoming the party. And sure, he did say that. But if you read the book,

you see that he didn't exactly structure it to deliver a body blow to his former boss. Garneau's memoir is a tidy book, because he's a tidy guy. It clicks methodically through a most extraordinary life, from a young man with a rebellious streak, to a naval career, to outer space, to the Trudeau years. Along the way, he makes useful observations about all of it. I decided not to spend too much time trying to get headlines out of Garneau. He's seen too much and lived too much for that. We just had a good chat, the most relaxed conversation I've ever had with him. I hope you enjoy listening in. ever had with him. I hope you enjoy listening in. Mark Garnell. Good to be with you, Paul.

Where are you today? I'm in Toronto on a one-week sort of blitz in the GTA and doing my book promotion. We were chatting just briefly before we turned on the recorder and you said you'd been in Meaford and Uxbridge, and this is why I'm excited. You're heading to Sarnia with Chris Hadfield. Yes, tomorrow night. Looking forward to that. Chris Hadfield, of course, everyone knows him as one of your successors in the Canadian Astronaut Corps,

and I grew up in Sarnia, so I know him as the guy from Sarnia who everyone knows better than they know me. Is there a real sense of fraternity among former astronauts? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We're sort of linked by blood in a sense or by common sort of risk taking. So yeah, we stay. In fact, we had our annual astronaut dinner last week. We're going to talk about politics, but I'm not in any particular rush to talk about politics because you've been on just about every morning show that I can think of since your book came

out and you had an extraordinary career even before you began to contemplate politics. So let's kick that around a little bit. You will not remember this, but the first time I heard directly from you was you sent me a letter while you were the president of the Canadian Space Agency. This would be about 2004, 2005. While the Liberals were still in office, the Kretsch and Martin Liberals, you were very concerned about funding for space exploration back then. And you point out in your book you're still very concerned how come why because space has done so much for canadians one of the things i do when i go and talk to the

public here in canada is i pull out my cell phone and i say do you ever wonder why you can talk to anybody on the planet using this from here or why you can figure out exactly where you're standing on the surface of this planet with this device. Do you ever wonder how we can track a hurricane coming off the west coast of Africa and crossing the Atlantic and developing into a really dangerous weather phenomenon? dangerous weather phenomenon. This and many other examples are why space is important and how it's changed the lives of Canadians. And Canada was a pioneer in space. We were the third country to design and build a spacecraft back in 1962, and it was successful from the beginning.

We were the first country in the world to have our own national communication satellite system and operator, Telesat Canada, which the government created back in 1969. We had some visionary people in Canada because they realized how a country the size of Canada with its population spread out could exploit space, how Earth observation can help us to look down on our vast country and help us see the changes that are occurring because of climate change. So space has been useful to Canadians and has bettered their lives. We were innovators. We've always been innovators. We were the world leaders in robotic arms used for space. So I want Canada to continue to not only exploit space, but increase its involvement with space, especially at a time when other countries now are all getting on the bandwagon and the competition is becoming

fiercer. And so I feel that Canada needs to devote more money to its space budgets. And they are putting more money into space. But what they're not doing, and this is perhaps a little bit of inside football, but what we call the A-base, which is the operating budget of the Canadian Space Agency, has actually diminished in the 20 years since I was at the Canadian Space Agency. And that's a very fundamental and important part of the budget. So the total has gone up because there's more targeted funding for specific goals. I mean, that's a story we could tell in so many areas of policy

where organizations are not trusted to tend to their knitting in a general way. We see this in the science granting councils, for instance. Instead, successive governments, not just this one, tell them what to concentrate on by targeting their funding. That's got to feel awfully constraining for the organization. It does. It does. Because when I was president of the Canadian Space Agency, my job was to recommend to the government where we should take the space program. And I could make all the recommendations I wanted, but ultimately, the government decides. It's the ministers that decide. And they have a tendency sometimes to

take the advice, but sometimes to want to target it. I said we were going to talk about politics later, but what the heck? When you were in cabinet and you were making those decisions, did you come to understand more clearly why governments don't want to just trust organizations to make their own decisions and why they want to determine the outcome and then claim the credit? I mean, you must have had voices in your ear whispering that this is the better way. There's more accountability and we get more political pop if we run things from the center. I think that if you forget the quote political side of governing and you let the good ideas come up from below, and that includes coming out of government departments towards the top in terms of recommending to the government what they should do. I think ultimately you end up with a government that better serves the interests of the country as opposed to a top-down decision-making process, which is more motivated by political considerations. Now, that's a challenge that every government faces. But from my experience, and I was basically a civil servant,

I was, you know, even though I wore a funny uniform when I was in the Navy, and then I was an astronaut, but I was basically a civil servant. I have faith in the civil service in this country, at least during the time that I was a civil servant. And I think if you empower them to bring forward their solutions to a lot of the challenges that Canada faces, then I think that you end up with a better result. But there is a tendency for that top-down kind of direction, motivated by factors that are perhaps not always the most important ones for the nation. Okay, now let's back up. I mean, to some extent, we're repeating

a conversation we had when you retired from politics, and I wrote about you for my newsletter, but I find these things fascinating to revisit. And one question that you talk a little bit about in the book is wrapping your head around the notion of becoming an astronaut. Almost everyone grows up at some point thinking about being an astronaut, but how did you get into your head the idea that I'm actually going to do this? That's a good point. Well, to some extent, you do certain things in your life when you charge in half blind, not really knowing what you're getting yourself into, but you're so attracted by the idea of what it could be. I've always loved adventure. And so to me, the idea of being out there on the frontier of space was just so appealing.

So to me, the idea of being out there on the frontier of space was just so appealing. But I really didn't know exactly what all of that entailed. You're 100% right. I had some notion of the fact that, you know, I would get in a rocket and it would take me up into space and there was some risk involved. And I'd watched some of the missions. One thing I didn't think about at all was that I was going to go from being a private citizen to being a very public citizen, because the moment that I was chosen in December of 1983, suddenly I had to live with the reality that now I was a public figure and that for whatever reason, the media were now interested. Initially, they wanted to know, are these astronauts some curious species of human being? What makes them different from everybody else?

And so there was this enormous fascination, and it brought the cameras and the microphones and the lights into even my children's bedrooms while we were reading them, you know, goodnight, bednight stories, because that was how interested Canadians were in finding out more about these astronauts, what makes them tick. I had not anticipated that at all when I, you know, send in my application to become an astronaut. So to some extent, you go into certain experiences without fully knowing what you're getting yourself into. And that's understandable.

And perhaps if somebody explained exactly everything to you beforehand, you might be a little bit more hesitant. But I'm glad I didn't know what I was getting myself into because I do believe that, you know, in life, you've got to take certain risks. One of the things you were getting yourself into was a walk-on role at the Reagan-Malroney Summit in Quebec City. Quite a spectacular walk-on role. Never again.

Yeah, no, I had to come up. A forklift lifted me up through a trap door onto the stage at a big venue in Quebec City. And President Reagan and Prime Minister Mulroney and their wives were all watching. The place was filled and there was smoke swirling around me and light beams going all over the place and dramatic music playing. And I was in my astronaut suit. This was something thought up by, I think, somebody in PMO. And as I arrived at stage level, I had a microphone on and I had to pronounce the words, take me to your leader. Now, how goofy is that? I swore to myself, definitely the crowd loved it. So it shows you how bad a judge of these things I am. But I went back to my hotel room that night

and I said, I'm never going to do anything like that again, even though everybody loved it. I mean, the contrast with the actual work of being an astronaut could hardly be greater. I mean, it's deadly serious and it's grueling and often kind of, I think, tedious, isn't it? The drilling for every possible outcome and water tank stuff. And I don't know what else you would have been doing in that time. water tank stuff. And I don't know what else you would have been doing in that time. It is grueling. It is sometimes tedious. But in the end, you have everything at the tip of your fingers. You are ready to pounce on anything that goes wrong. And that's the secret formula. That's how you train for a space mission. The other thing that it does is it creates an incredibly strong bond between the different members of the crew because we're depending on each other for our life.

And so being together and going through so many simulations and getting to know each other and in some cases, you know, the idiosyncrasies of each of those individuals is a very, very important part of that preparation for going into space. is a very, very important part of that preparation for going into space. But when all things are said and done, the incredible reward that you get from it is just so much worth it. Now, the lessons that you learned at NASA and as a naval commander are lessons that you took through the rest of your career, including in politics. What are the things that you learned in those environments that maybe other people could stand to benefit from? Everything I know I learned at NASA, what would those lessons be? Well, despite the fact that NASA is not a perfect organization,

it's an incredible one. If one looks at what NASA has accomplished over the years, I think it truly is an inspiring organization. And NASA has a culture. And I speak about it in the book. The most important thing that I observed during my time at NASA in terms of the culture was the concept of honesty. Now, that may sound pretty sort of self-evident. Well, of course, you got to be honest in this business. Yes, it's particularly important because lives depend on it. And to give you an example, when I was a CAPCOM, which is the person in mission control who talks to the crew, is the voice of Houston Control. We participated in dozens of simulations

with each crew that was going to go up in space in order to prepare them. And after each simulation, we did a post-mortem, which involved all the flight controllers who work in mission control and the crew. And those simulations are designed to test the crew. You throw in all sorts of malfunctions, and they've got to react to that and reconfigure so that they can survive. And after that's over, you have a debrief. And what struck me was the absolute honesty of people. You know, so often I would hear a flight controller say to the flight director who's in charge of everything, that was my mistake. I screwed up there. I didn't see what happened.

I made the wrong decision about how to remedy the situation. And the crew would do the same thing. And the same would apply after the mission when everybody had the debrief afterwards. Why? Because if we were totally honest with each other, then we would help future crews avoid the mistakes that perhaps we made. That concept of total honesty, and I use the expression, honesty breeds excellence, I wish applied in every walk of life. And it is something that I think would benefit, well, for example, governments. So it is something that I tried to bring into the job when I was a parliamentarian. And I know I didn't do it perfectly, but I tried to be as honest as I could. I want to push at that a little bit, because the obvious implication is the government should be much more frank about their mistakes and errors.

But let's do a thought experiment. What if that debrief had taken place on national television and after the debrief, the people of the country, United States there or Canada here, had gotten a chance to vote on whether that cruise should continue, would they have been a little bit less frank if that was what was going to happen next? I like to think not, that they would have been just as frank. And you know what? If you apply it to the government setting, I think that Canadians know that everyone makes mistakes and I think are prepared to cut some slack to politicians who fess up that maybe that was the wrong thing to do or that was the wrong thing to do. might have been well-intentioned, but it didn't work out. That kind of openness and honesty, I think, is more respected by the Canadian electorate than trying to whitewash the thing, which unfortunately sometimes happens. Now, you take all of these lessons from an extraordinary career in the Navy and as an

astronaut, and then you take them into the political arena. First of all, a very basic question. Did politics feel harder or easier than everything you'd done before? In some respects, it's harder. And I've said this before, when you're dealing with being an engineer or an astronaut, you're dealing with the laws of physics. or an astronaut, you're dealing with the laws of physics. They're incontrovertible. When you're in politics, it's a much more nuanced field of work, which presented me with challenges because I tend to be direct. I tend to answer the question. And I can remember some of my staffers saying, Minister, let's have a debrief here. You know, maybe you should have answered the question this way. So you learn this as you go along.

But my instinct has always been to try to answer the question as directly and as honestly as possible. Sometimes you can't because it could be confidentiality, national security interests. It could be cabinet confidentiality, national security interests. It could be cabinet confidentiality. And there, unfortunately, you appear to be evasive to the public and they have difficulty understanding. Why aren't you answering the question? But I tried to where I could be to try to be as honest as I could. And that's not an easy thing to be able to do. But I think the public will cut you some slack up to a point if you say, look, I screwed up here. Before you were a cabinet minister, you were a member of parliament and a candidate for the party leadership. It didn't go great.

You didn't make it until the actual vote. You withdrew in the face of the astonishing Justin Trudeau juggernaut. vote you withdrew in the face of the astonishing Justin Trudeau juggernaut. Was it hard to decide to continue in politics after that? Did you think about just throwing in the towel? No, not at that point. I enjoyed the experience. And as you say, it was very clear to me a month before the end of the race that Justin was going to win. The reason I quit was because my campaign team was brutally honest with me and said, you're not going to win, Mark. And I said, yeah, you're 100% right.

And I thanked them for their brutal honesty. And that's important because in the leadership race, especially as you get towards the end, you spend more and more money. You have to pay that money back. towards the end, you spend more and more money. You have to pay that money back. And, you know, after I left the race, I spent, oh, the better part of a year with many, many fundraisers trying to pay back the money that I had spent. I spent over half a million dollars, my campaign. I had to pay that money back because of the Canada election rules. But it was what it was, and you were content to

continue? Yes, yes. And, you know, people bring up the fact that I challenged Justin pretty hard in the third debate in Mississauga. And I said, you know, what makes you think that you're qualified to be the leader and possibly the prime minister? And, you know, that was cutting pretty close to the bone, but I felt it was a fair question. You don't when you're in a leadership race want to cross a line because you're all going to work together afterwards. And you don't want that relationship to be soured. And people ask me whether that went too far in terms of how Justin Trudeau felt about me afterwards. with how Justin Trudeau felt about me afterwards. The fact that he offered me to be the transport minister when we were finally elected in 2015 makes me think that he did not bear me a grudge.

Nobody should in those circumstances because pretty soon after he became prime minister, something you might have said to him in Mississauga would have been the least of his problems. I mean, I've been critical of this prime minister, but I think it's fair to say he would absolutely be aware of that. Yeah, I think you're right. He had bigger fish to fry and bigger challenges as the prime minister of the country. There was this extraordinary euphoria around that new government in 2015, as there often is with a change of government. But you and your colleagues walking up the lawn at Rideau Hall and the brilliant line on gender balance in the cabinet because it's 2015. When did the bloom start to come off the rose? When did you start to realize this was not going to be easy?

Well, I think the first blemish, if I can put it that way, was Christmas with the Aga Khan. And I think that that was a demonstration of the fact that we would be criticized when certain things happened. And in fact, the conflict of interest commissioner found that that was something that should not have happened. Well, that rubs off on everybody. So that was something that should not have happened. Well, that rubs off on everybody. So that was one thing. The next big thing was the fact that the prime minister had said during the election campaign that this would be the last first past the post election, that we would be looking at other forms of election, including proportional representation.

What I think he meant was that he was in favor of a rank ballot, but he did say we would explore other forms. And that created quite a bit of a controversy. And suddenly, the bloom was coming off the rose. And let me add, I mean, every government that in my life that I've watched, eventually things happen to them as they settle into their mandate. But this one was one where I can remember the minister who was responsible for it, Minister Monsev at the time, having to get up continually and to defend the decision that proportional representation was off the table. And, you know, I remember that very well because we were all encouraged to hold in our individual ridings, public assemblies, where we listened to what people felt about how we should in the future conduct elections, especially since we had said this is the last first past the post kind of election. And we all took some flack for that because many people got up and said, we need to implement some form of proportional representation. And if I'm not mistaken, I think the prime minister has more

or less admitted that that was a mistake on his part when he made that promise. He said as recently as two weeks ago with Nate Erskine-Smith on Nate's podcast that he let people think he was more open to proportional representation than he really was. At the best, that was a bit of a fib. Did you feel that in your own writing? Did you feel like people were particularly upset about that electoral reform backtracking? Definitely a certain segment of my constituency was upset over it because I think they felt that, okay, we're going to gather all the input from across the country and then make a decision. And there were quite a few people who were in favor of proportional representation.

And for the record, by the way, I actually think that the rank ballot is the best approach, but I kept those opinions to myself. Do you think we're kind of done with electoral reform for the next little while? I mean, for the next several years, is anyone going to touch that anytime soon? Well, it depends who's going to form the next government. If it is the Conservatives, no, I don't think we're going to go anywhere near it. But if it's a Liberal government that is returned, I don't know, given the fact that the Prime Minister basically clarified his position, I don't know whether he would venture back into that if he is re-elected. It's a big if. I'm not sure we're going to have to test that question anytime soon. I'm not sure

he's going to get re-elected anytime soon. We shall see, yeah. All of the coverage of your book concentrated on two elements. One was the fact that you found, as a cabinet minister, as a senior cabinet minister, you found this prime minister not very easy to reach and to discuss issues with. And the other was that you were the fifth foreign minister in four years, fourth foreign minister in five years. Fourth in five years. Fourth in five years. And that you actually heard from other foreign ministers in other countries, gee, I hope we're going to get to have you a little longer than we had some of your predecessors,

that Canada's reputation was affected by the revolving door at the foreign minister's office. Now, I lump those two together because I was a little amused that the headlines on the publication of your book was, Garneau settettles Accounts. I have to assume that settling accounts and sort of settling your scores with Justin Trudeau was not top of mind when you wrote this memoir, that you had a bunch of things you wanted to address when you wrote this book. Absolutely not. That was not why I wrote the book. I wrote the book for my children, and I tried to give an honest account of how I have progressed through my life from my major blunders in my adolescence and screw-ups and my rebelliousness as a kid and to my passion for the Navy and for being an astronaut and for the very satisfying time that I had in politics. And I tried to tell it like it is. And, you know, on the points that you've raised with respect to my relationship with the prime minister,

I don't have to be buddy-buddy with the prime minister to do my job competently. As long as he trusts me, then that is what is required. And I made the observation that we were not particularly close. To some extent, I was happy with things the way they were, particularly at transport, because I don't believe in bothering the prime minister unless I absolutely have to. And I think of myself as being able to operate without adult supervision. It was a different matter with respect to foreign affairs, because I think that to do foreign affairs effectively, it is in part based on having foreign ministers who are in the portfolio for enough time to build up relations with their counterparts in other countries, because I think those are fundamental to strengthening the relationships with those other countries.

Whilst if it's a revolving door, for whatever reason, then they can quite rightfully say, well, what importance do you attach to our relationship, Canada, when you keep changing your foreign affairs minister? You run for re-election in 2021. You run for reelection in 2021 and the prime minister quite soon afterwards says, we won't be needing you as foreign minister. As a matter of fact, we're not going to need you as a minister any further. That's got to be one of the toughest days in your entire career. Yeah. To quote what I said in the book, it was like a punch in the stomach because if the prime minister had, and some prime ministers have done this prior to elections and months before and anticipated election have gone around and asked their ministers whether they intend to run again or told them that I'm thinking that I will replace you in the in the in the next cabinet if we're reelected as the government. If the prime minister had come to me before, and I say this in the book, the election, and said to me, Mark, I'm going to replace you.

Do you seriously want to run again? I would have said no, I would not have run in the 2021 election. I would have said no, I would not have run in the 2021 election. The reason I chose to go in it was because he had, it was a surprise to me, but he had appointed me seven months before to go into foreign affairs. And I had become very, very involved with it. And there were a whole bunch of things that I wanted to do during my time there. And since he didn't say anything, I made the assumption that I would continue my job after the election. And as you point out, he told me, we don't need you in cabinet anymore, three weeks

after the election. And by the way, he offered me to be the ambassador in Paris, which I felt, which I felt, no, this is like throwing me a bone. I have just been reelected in my riding, and to turn to my riding constituents and say, sorry, thanks for reelecting me, but I'm now going to go off to Paris, felt that that was totally inappropriate. And so I stayed on as a backbencher, wondering what the future held for me. And I felt that I would not necessarily stay for a full mandate, but that I owed it to my constituents to stay for a reasonable amount of time. And believe it or not, and I say this quite clearly, the last year and a half was very rewarding, even though I was a backbencher. But because I was given the job of being the Parliamentary Secretary of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, something that interested me a great deal. And because

I was appointed to be the co-chair for the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, which is an incredibly important responsibility, I think, because it affects all Canadians. I had a very satisfying 15 months. So I licked my wounds. I'm a big boy. And I carried on and I hope that I was useful in the last 15 months. And when I tabled that MAID report with its recommendations, I said, okay, now is an appropriate time for me to leave. But yeah, that day when he phoned me up and said, you're no longer in cabinet, it was a tough day. But it's his prerogative to do it. He is the prime minister. I was just as happy as I was sad the day he appointed me to be the transport minister. It was a lovely, lovely experience. And I'm so grateful for it. But that's the tricky thing. You can be very

upset at the choices that the leader makes, but the leader has their challenges and their prerogatives. But there would have been classier ways to go about it is what I think I hear. about it is what I think I hear. Well, I don't know how you tell somebody you're gone, but the reality is that he has all these other considerations in mind. I think I know what you're getting at. He didn't tell me why. He didn't tell me why. So I was left to speculate. People have said, well, why didn't you ask him why? And imagine you're me and I'm telling you you're no longer the minister of foreign affairs. I don't know if you would instinctively say, why are you taking me out of this job? It was not something that came naturally to me. And if I forced him to give me an answer, he might tell me something that I really didn't want to hear.

So I just felt, yes, sir, I understand. And I licked my wounds and carried on. To take your analogy a little further, though, if I were the foreign minister and somebody got me out of that job, I think a grateful nation would rise up to cheer. Well, if I can permit myself an anecdote since you opened the door, on my way out on my very last day on the 8th of March, I was scrummed by the media. And I was very grateful for being asked the question, why are you leaving? As opposed to, why did it take you so long to leave? Let's move on. I'm sure you're following politics as closely as ever. Are you surprised that the Liberal Party is in as much trouble as it is? And maybe the more interesting question is, are you surprised that the guy who's putting this thumping on the Liberal Party is Pierre Poliev?

thumping on the Liberal Party is Pierre Poliev? Ah, two very big questions. Well, I do watch politics and I see the polling and it's very, very clear that the Liberals are in a world of hurt. And it's the fatigue that sets in as it does with all governments after eight, nine, ten years. In this case, nine years. It's not unusual. It happened with Harper. It happened with Martin after Chrétien Martin ran for almost 12 years. It becomes a more difficult time to appear fresh and new and offer ongoing promises that appeal to Canadians.

They begin to think, oh, maybe it's time for a change. Am I surprised that this is happening when the main opposition is Pierre Poiliev? Yes, I am. Because I'm not sure how Canadians feel about Mr. Poiliev. He has certainly been able to tap into the things that Canadians are unhappy about and been very, very vocal about it. And he has made promises in certain cases to cut certain things like, you know, axing

the tax and, you know, he's going to close down CBC and do a few other things. But he has said precious little about what he would do instead of the current liberal government in terms of dealing with the challenges that preoccupy Canadians at the moment. Little, in my opinion, that's persuasive with respect to housing, with respect to the cost of living and those issues. So it seems to suggest that it's not because the Canadian electorate is grumpy at the moment with the Liberal Party. But I think the polling is not because they are drawn to the magnetic personality of Mr. Poiliev and his vision of the future.

I think it is because of the fatigue with the Liberal Party. If a friend of yours were running for the Liberal leadership, in the hypothesis that it's vacant, and they said, Mark, what are a couple of things that you think a next generation of Liberal leader should think about and concentrate on? What would be some of the subject headings on that memo

that you would prepare? What sort of things do you think need to be closer to the top of Canadian leaders' agenda for the next several years? I would say that part of it is how you talk to Canadians. And I think that there is a dire need for us to be totally frank with the electorate. And it's something that politicians seem to have some difficulty in doing. I think that taking the approach that, okay, we have these challenges right now and enumerating them and explain to Canadians that these are difficult challenges, but that we need to try

to find a way to solve them. And this is what we are going to do. And if it doesn't work, we will adapt and make changes to it. Speaking to Canadians that way, as opposed to just sort of saying, okay, we're going to do this. We're going to build a million homes in the next five years. I think Canadians would be open to a more, the kind of way I described it. We're all in this together. We have a difficult task ahead of us.

And this is what we, if you reelect us, plan to do. We may even make mistakes along the way, but we'll adapt as we see how what we do works. And if it doesn't work quite well, we're going to make some changes to it. That's not the way politics occurs normally, but I think Canadians might be open to that kind of an approach as opposed to making absolute promises

that if anything goes wrong, you're then going into spin mode as opposed to saying, okay, we thought that would work. It hasn't quite worked out. We need to fine tune it. And this is what we're going to do. I think that's a better approach. Maybe it doesn't make me much of a politician, but I think that leveling with Canadians and giving them some credit for their intelligence is a better approach.

Maybe one last question. When you were running for the Liberal leadership for a couple of years before and after, the question of Quebec's place in Canada was really central to your political thought and your messaging. And I wonder whether, like me, you're thinking a little bit about what might happen in the next couple of years, possibly new government, new prime minister in Ottawa, new government and a new premier in Quebec City. There's a very good chance that new leader is going to be Parti Québécois leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. We could be in a Quebec sovereignty referendum in a couple of years or less in this country. Do you think about that? Do you worry about how it would go?

Well, of course, I am watching the situation in Quebec, which is where I live, and the CAC is plummeting these days. And Plamondon is basically, at the moment, the most popular politician in Quebec. Never dismiss the possibility of separatism or separation in Quebec, because to do so is to provoke. But I honestly, at the moment, feel that Quebecers are past that point. It may serve their purposes to elect a particular party, but I believe that particularly young people are not as drawn to it as young people were back in the 80s and 90s. as young people were back in the 80s and 90s. That's my sense. And I can see the PQ getting elected based on the current situation.

But do I think that a referendum, which he promised he would do before the end of his mandate, could actually tilt Quebec towards separatism? actually tilt Quebec towards separatism. I don't see that strengthening to the point where it is a real possibility. I don't. Well, it's kind of reassuring. It is true that there have been far more party Québécois premiers who haven't had referendums than who have. And, you know, so this could be another case of that. There's also fatigue with the current government. And that's part of it. How much is we're looking at time on it because we aspire to separation, or is how much are we fed up with the current government? And this guy looks competent and has an attractive personality. Well, we may yet get a chance to test all of these theories because we live in interesting times. Mark, I know you've given us so much to think about.

Thanks very much for taking the time to talk. It was good to catch up. Well, thank you for your interest, Paul. All the best. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica. My producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producer is Stuart Cox.

Laura Reguerre is Antica's head of audio. Thanks to the Max Bell Foundation for their support and to all of my new colleagues at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill. If you subscribe to my Substack, you can get bonus content for this show as well as access to my newsletter. You can do that at paulwells.substack.com. If you're enjoying the show, give us a good rating on your podcast app. It helps spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday. you