The Paul Wells Show - The Liberal House leader on the human cost of politics

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

The job of Government House Leader is always a challenge, but it's especially so in a minority Parliament. For Justin Trudeau's outnumbered Liberals, that minister is Mark Holland. One of the Liberals' longest-serving MPs, he's responsible for steering the government's legislative agenda through Parliament. He speaks frankly about the perils of political life, his own struggles with mental health, and about navigating a partisan landscape to get stuff done.

How do you steer the Trudeau government's agenda through a minority parliament? Very carefully. You know, when you look at how few days we actually have for government legislation, when you look at how many obstacles there are to pass legislation, when you look at all of the vested interests to stop that legislation from occurring, it requires an exceptionally optimistic individual to navigate that. This week, my interview with government house leader Mark Holland, live at the National Arts Centre. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show.

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, government's gotta legislate. One of the first things an ambitious new government realizes when it gets to office is that it can do a lot of things, but it can't increase the number of hours in a day. Two of the best recent books about how governments work written by Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to Stephen Harper, and by Michael Wernick, former clerk of the Privy Council, both get quite quickly to fairly mundane calculations about how many hours a cabinet has to make decisions, about how many hours a government has to implement its agenda. And that's because it's just simple arithmetic. And the minister in charge of arithmetic in any government is the government host leader. Mark Holland's job is to make sure that at the end of the year, the government has

passed the bills that it wanted. And that is just a hell of a lot harder than it sounds. And Mark Holland has been quite a bit more thoughtful about how the pressures of getting that done impact the lives of the people who are trying to do it than some of his predecessors are. And we're going to get a chance to talk about that. Mark Holland, thanks for joining us. Thanks so much, Paul. Great to be here.

Did I get it right? Are you worried about time? Always. Yeah, I mean, I think time and life is the most precious resource. In Parliament, it's even more particularly so. When did you find out you were going to be the government house leader? And how did you feel about that? It was shortly after the 2021 election. I had been the chief government whip for a little over three years and got a call. I had an opportunity to meet the prime minister. And I was ecstatic. I dreamt of going to Parliament when I was a little over three years, and got a call. I had an opportunity to meet the Prime Minister,

and I was ecstatic. I dreamt of going to Parliament when I was a little kid. You know, this is something I wanted to do when I was, as soon as I understood what it was. I love Parliament as an institution. I have great reverence for it. To a lot of people, parliamentary procedure in Parliament, you know, could be a bit dry, but to me, I find it invigorating. Do you remember when you wanted to be a parliamentarian for the first time? Was there a big debate going on, or did they just all look cool because they… I don't, I mean, it's a good question. I don't know exactly. I mean, my grandfather told me when I was little, if you want anything done, you need to know people in politics.

And I really respected my grandfather. And I know that he respected people in public life. And so to my mind, I think, you know, why not skip the middleman and try to become a person who can go in and make that difference. And a really big moment for me was going and volunteering for somebody who became an MPP. She was running. I was 12. I brought my lunch in. And she was really great to me, a lady named Nora Stoner, who was just filled with optimism to try to change her community. Just a really wonderful, beautiful human being who treated me with, you know, frankly, a lot of respect, made me feel seen, made me feel like my voice mattered, like I had something maybe to contribute. You know, and that was at a time in my life where I didn't have a lot of light. And so it became a North Star for me, and I think from that point, from 12 forward,

politics became my raison d'etre. We're going to talk a lot about these considerations in the abstract and over the long term, but let's talk about what happens when they confront reality. People will be hearing this several weeks hence, but the week that you and I are talking is the week that Joe Biden came to Ottawa, and the week after that is the week that you and I are talking is the week that Joe Biden came to Ottawa. And the week after that is the week that Chrystia Freeland delivers a budget. How do events like that affect your world? Well, I think, you know, when you are looking at a legislative calendar, and I'm deeply lucky, I've got a phenomenal team of people that I work with. And we have a best laid plan of what we're going to try to do week by week. And we have to have a conversation

with cabinet and we've got to try to negotiate with opposition parties. So even if the water is still, it's an extremely complicated puzzle to put together. But the reality is whether or not it's a president visiting or a budget or, you know, some world event erupting that overtakes parliament, you know, you have to really draw on improvisation. You know, when we have elections, we talk about things in very static terms about what might be, but no one could have imagined a global pandemic. You know, no one could have imagined the war in Ukraine. No one could have imagined what's happening with global inflation. And so, you know, in each of those instances, you have to remain adaptive. So you have to build a lot

of flex into your plan and you got to flow like a river you just got to accept what walks in that day and it is in any given week your day your minute it can be completely turned upside down what you think is a huge priority in the morning is suddenly fixed and no longer an issue by one and now you're into something completely different and And that's the nature of it. And the challenge is, in spite of all of that tumult, you have to hold, you know, what are those legislative priorities you made commitments to? And how do you sort of navigate them through all of this displacement that's occurring by things hitting the water? How is that done? Are there flow charts? Is there software? Do you have people working through sort of multiverse contingency scenarios? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the part of it is you have to not be, you have to be

invested in the totality of what you're doing and not the moment that you're in. And so you have to be flexible to give up, you know, what you were hoping to happen in that individual moment. And I try to articulate that. That's one of the things I've tried to do since becoming House leader is to lay out at the beginning of a parliamentary session in broad terms what we're trying to accomplish, what are the things that we really want to put through. And when we lay out that calendar, you build a lot of flex into it, knowing that you're going to lose days and you're going to lose opportunities. But you put there what you believe based on prior experience of things going wrong and getting turned upside down, you're still going to be able to navigate through. And the complication in a minority government is,

you know, that isn't your story to write. You have to do that in collaboration with opposition parties. And their objectives are often to stymie you and stop you from passing anything. So you build flex into that. And you use the fact that, like, let's be honest here, people elect you to get things done. And that there is a certain point at which, you know, when people see an opposition party as being uncooperative and obstructing and using tactics of that nature, where it works against them, you know, so there is, I think, the public interest pushing at our back as a wind constantly for Parliament to be productive. And when one of us starts tipping into, you know, being too distracted with partisan interests or too distracted with obstructionist type tactics, then, you know, I think you can really feel that wind of public opinion pushing for things to get done and for Parliament to be productive.

There's a government house leader. There's also house leaders for each of the other parties. Can you remind us who the other party's house leaders are? So Andrew Scheer. Andrew is somebody who comes with a lot of experience, obviously, as a former party leader, as a Speaker of the House. He and I were both elected in 2004. Our teams have been able to work very well with over the last while. Alain Therrien is with the Bloc. He's been there since I've been house leader, a very reasonable individual who always, you know, is very straightforward in terms of what their position is and what is and what isn't possible. And Peter Julian, who I work most closely with, with the NDP, you know, given the supply and confidence agreement, but also just a, you know, really a phenomenal

individual, a phenomenal human being. I've gotten to know Peter very well, and we'll call him a friend. Now, I asked that because you reminded me backstage that Andrew Scheer was the opposition house leader. And I will admit, I spent a lot of time chatting with Andrew Scheer. I've known him for a long time. My first reaction was, holy jumpers, you've got to make this parliament work. Because I see Andrew Scheer on Twitter, and he doesn't seem very eager to cooperate. I think, look, I have dealt with a lot of conservative obstruction, and everything's on a spectrum. So, you know, when I first came in, you know, I was dealing with the House leader in Gérard Deltal, who was extremely reasonable, where I think we were able

to get a lot done. I understand for the Conservatives, they've got to answer to a base where if we have too productive a Parliament and they're allowing us to go too quickly, their base gets angry at them. And I understand that. And so Andrew's got to go out and do his thing and criticize us. But I've been able to have reasonable conversations with him about, you know, here is something that is good for parliament, that's good for Canadians, where we can get out of each other's way and do something good. And I think that we're all benefited from that and that Canadians expect that. And also, hopefully, I've laid out in other examples where conservatives have been extremely

obstructionist, that it's an unhelpful tactic to them. That I don't think when they go and knock on doors and say, hey, we blocked everything that the other parties are trying to do in parliament, that they're going to get people particularly pleased with that as a strategy. So, you know, I think he's been fair-minded. Does that mean that he does things I completely disagree with? Absolutely. I mean, you know, the Conservative policies are policies that I've spent my professional life fighting against. But that shouldn't mean we cross swords on everything. And I think that that is exhausting to Canadians. It's exhausting for parliamentarians. And it serves no purpose. I think it gains nobody anything. Now, you ran in 2015 on a platform, after having personally been out of the House for a few years, in which the Liberals

promised to sort of accomplish all good things when it came to parliamentary procedure. There was going to be more time for votes. There was going to be to parliamentary procedure. There was going to be more time for votes, there was going to be more free votes, there was going to be fewer omnibus bills, which meant more discrete bills going through that meadow of endless debate. The way I phrase it might hint at the question, was that a little optimistic that you could have more free votes, more debate, and more bills going through that landscape? Was there a bit of a reckoning after having to try and make that work in the House of Commons for a while? Well, yes and no. First of all, this job requires everybody who enters it to be an optimist, that you have to step in each day

with a belief that you're going to accomplish things that seem utterly unreasonable. You know, when you look at how few days we actually have for government legislation, when you look at how many obstacles there are to pass legislation, when you look at all of the vested interests to stop that legislation from occurring, it requires an exceptionally optimistic individual to navigate that. And I say yes, because I think, you know, are we perfect? Of course not. And there's lots of room for improvement. But, you know, I think when you look at the number of omnibus bills, when you look at the way in which we've engaged with opposition parties, the way that we have attempted to be fair and reasonable and allow reasonable time for debate.

You know, I'm very proud of the balance that we've struck of, on the one hand, pushing to get legislation done, which people elect us to do and have an expectation of us to do. But on the other hand, being fair-minded to the parties, the other parties that were elected and occupy places in the House, to make sure they have time for debate and that that's reasonable. And you try to feel that out in a moment. I mean, that's always playing out in Parliament, either side saying it's moving too fast, it's moving too slow. And that's something that public opinion has an enormous bearing on. Every once in a while, this government has seemed to become impatient with the limitations of, or the contradictions of trying to push an agenda through a House of Commons in which people are often in opposition, to coin a phrase. Your predecessor, Dominic LeBlanc, brought in Motion 6, which sought to force overnight debates on short notice, allow the government to adjourn the House for the summer without notice or debate, restricted opposition parties' ability to slow down debate. And the opposition went crazy, and Minister LeBlanc ended up withdrawing motion six. And then not long after, this is going to be almost the longest question I have asked

in the first season of the Paul Wells show. In the spring of 2017, Bardish Chagger was the house leader and she brought in a discussion paper that would remove the opposition's filibuster power committee and make other procedural changes. That got shouted down by the opposition. Minister Chagr had to withdraw that discussion paper and announce that she'd simply be moving more

frequently to time allocation. And then in the spring of 2020, Pablo Rodriguez was the government house leader. And in the first days of the COVID lockdown was circulating a draft motion that would have given the government unlimited ability to tax and spend without parliamentary approval for nearly two years. That got shouted down by the opposition, and he had to withdraw that. Now, it's possible to argue that I've just painted a long portrait of a government that listens to the opposition and withdraws bad ideas as soon as the opposition doesn't like them. But it also sounds like a government that's really in a hurry to get its agenda and every spring finds itself looking at the clock and noticing that that's not something that it's

guaranteed of being able to do. Absolutely. Look, I can tell you that at the end of each legislative session, and I kind of mark that for me as coming to the end of the session in December, coming to the end of each legislative session, and I kind of mark that for me as coming to the end of the session in December, coming to the end of the session the end of June, I face enormous personal disappointment. There is so much more ambition that you have to get things done than you can achieve. I'm sure you encounter this in your personal life. You have things that you want to get done, things that you want to achieve, and there are obstacles to that, and that can be enormously frustrating. I think it's remarkable that we live in a country

where there are checks and balances, where we do have debate about what is and what is not appropriate, where the criticism of opposition has weight and effect, and where we do listen to one another. And look, I don't want to go back and litigate all of those things. I mean, there's arguments to be made in each of those examples of what was trying to be accomplished, and there were good things and there were mistakes that I could re-litigate. It's just simply to say that it is an enormously difficult task, that I think what needs to be asked is, is it being done justly? Is it being done fairly? Is it being done with reason? And I can speak in my time over the past year and a half or so that I've done that, that that's the measure

that I use. I said when I first became House Leader that my objective was to be irrationally reasonable. And what I meant by that was to take a look at what an average observer not connected to partisan interests would say is reasonable if they were explaining the circumstance and try to be a little bit more reasonable than that. That's the standard I try to hold myself to. And I think it's the foundation of our law, our application of law, is what would the rational, reasonable person who's unbiased think on the street? I think that's a fair standard to try to hold ourselves to.

How much have you used time allocation in this session? Time allocation being an announcement at an early stage of debate that debate will only be permitted to go on so long, and then the government will be forcing move on to the next step. Sure. So on a very limited basis over the last number of months. So if we go from now back to September, we've used it on a very limited basis over the last number of months. So if we go from now back to September, we've used it on a very limited basis. I would say that I actually, we used it fairly aggressively at the end of the session that was the one prior to that. And the reason that we used it a lot in that prior session, and I used it with great reluctance, was we had extraordinary obstruction happening from

the Conservatives. We were in a situation, as an example, on the implementation of the fall economic statement, where we were into spring of the next year, when we're trying to deal with a fall economic statement. I mean, that's just totally unacceptable. And we were led down the garden path, oh, don't worry, just another day, another day. And at a certain point in time, you can't be played a fool. And so we had to start using time allocation and show that we were serious. But in that instance, we demonstrated, I think clearly, that there was incredible obstruction taking place. The sole purpose was obstruction for obstruction's sake, that there was many instances where

they were obstructing bills they supported. We had bills that were being supported unanimously where the Conservatives were putting up speakers and concurrence motions and doing everything that they could to block our progress. So it was with great reticence that you use time allocation. But look, I don't think time allocation should be seen as a great evil in the world. I think that what you should look at is, you know, is there a fair and reasonable time given to a piece of legislation relative to how much debate needs to occur on it for that debate to occur in a way that's fair and reasonable. You know, if you're hearing 57 speeches that are all the same on a motion where everybody knows how they're going to vote and it's all a protracted

amount of theatre, then is, you know, Canadians being served with that? Is that really, is debate being served by that? I don't think so. So I use it, you know, and we will use it again, but I try to be judicious about that. I'll continue my conversation with Mark Holland after the break. I want to take a moment to thank all of our partners, the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,

the National Arts Centre, our founding sponsor, TELUS, our title sponsor, Compass Rose, and our publishing partners, the Toronto Star and iPolitics. You mentioned that you are frequently in conversation with Peter Julian of the NDP because of the supply and confidence agreement. I've got it right. It was Mr. Julian, right? The supply and confidence agreement is the deal between the Liberals and the NDP that the NDP will not withhold confidence, will not vote to bring the government down for three years from the coming into force of the agreement last year,

as long as the Liberals deliver a certain number of agenda items. There was a fascinating column that Susan Delacorte had in the Toronto Star a few days ago about how that agreement is going along. And she said that there is just constant, constant coordination, consultation, checking back and forth between the Liberal Leader's Office and the NDP Leader's Office. And she said, in fact, the more one dives into the workings of this arrangement, the more one would almost swear there are two political universes in Ottawa. There's the squalor of the public fray, but there's also the plotting steady work of two

parties trying to spare Canadians an election in the immediate future. Does the plotting work reduce the squalor to so much theatre? I mean, is the real agenda being negotiated between you and Peter Julian away from the House of Commons and the House of Commons is just what it is? No, I in fact think the opposite is true. is? No, I in fact think the opposite is true. There is conversations that take place every day, not just with Peter Julian and I, and not just with myself and the other opposition House leaders, but with all members of Parliament on what the priorities of Parliament should be and what should be advanced. And that is a marketplace of consensus. And it is a very active marketplace that's moving all the time. And I think it would be a complete misread of the situation to look at Parliament and say that this

is only moving because of what's happening in the Supply and Confidence Agreement. Remember that the Supply and Confidence Agreement is just that. It is an agreement on supply and on confidence, basically the continuance of the government so that we aren't plunged into an election and so we can try to make this minority parliament work. But within the actual day-to-day operating of parliament is dynamic conversations that are happening with all of the parties to try to find consensus. And that consensus is found in myriad ways. And so yes, a lot of it is found with the NDP. Many examples that have nothing to do with the supply and confidence agreement. But in many examples, that's found in conversations with the

bloc and the conservatives or in committee or in conversations. And I think that's what people expect. I mean, they've elected a minority government. They have an expectation that it's going to work that way dynamically. But it is hard won every step of the way. Even the things that are in the supply and confidence agreement. Look, it's very easy to agree on what you want to achieve. Implementing what you want to achieve, manifesting it into reality is a completely different animal and an extraordinary complex one that is much bigger than just our two parties. I admit though to some concern because what Susan called the squalor of the public fray, and it often is squalid, it also has 156 years of checks and balances built into it, and it happens out in public on television. Whereas the steady plotting work of two parties trying to spare Canadians an election

happens entirely in private and is occasionally reported to sympathetic columnists. The transparency imbalance seems to me quite striking. There are two points to that. The first is, I would categorize the public debate that is being referred to as squalor or whatever word was ascribed to it. It is overly hyperbolic and it turns people off. But if you're following the thread of it, the major arguments are there every day in terms of where the parties stand and what they're fighting for and what they're trying to achieve. What people are talking about when they're talking about how do you get to an agreement, that is iterative conversations that are changing all of the time.

And one of the things, if we were to, five know, five minutes ago, we had a conversation with the bloc that X is going to happen. But then we had a conversation with the conservatives who said that was no good, so this has to happen. So then we talked to the NDP who said that has to happen. But then you go back to your own minister or the prime minister's office and they said, well, it can't really be that, it has to be this. and you restart the conversation all over again. And if you put that out in display for the public, first of all, I don't think anybody would want to consume it. And secondly, people would read into it all kinds of directions that aren't necessarily there. It is a vastly complicated bit of business to get to agreement on anything. And if we were to just lay that process bare, there would be no opportunity for the back and forth. And I do have to say, and this is true with all of the house leaders, you have to, you know, it's one of the things I try to do very early is establish trust. And, you know, to be able to say, I need to be able to share things with you that may not work out, just hypotheticals. What if we tried this? What if we did that? And you have to know that it ends there, that they're not going to be reported

that I was hypothetically thinking of something, because maybe it's a terrible idea. But you have to have a conversation about it. And there has to be a space for that to occur. The outcomes and what happened in that process, if you want to ask afterwards, how did you get to this conclusion? How did you get to the point of implementing something? That's very reasonable to ask, go through the entrails and ask how that all happened. But to do it in real time would betray the process's ability to get to that outcome. I've been happy to jump on Susan's word squalor because every once in a while it seems to fit. The opposition leader called you and Dominic LeBlanc a few days ago two stooges.

That never stops being hard to take for someone who's watching it, and maybe all the more so for someone who's in the middle of it. Yeah, and I have to reflect on my own time in opposition. How much was I responsible for squalor? How much was I overheated? How could have I tempered my words? We are having important debates about the future of the country and the policies that we're going to adopt and what we're going to stand for as a country. And I have a very ardent belief, I think informed by both opinion and experience, that the people who are in Parliament are not in whole, but in very large part, incredibly honourable, decent people who want to do right for their country and their community.

And our conversation should be centred in that. Calling each other names is incredibly unhelpful. And I think that it doesn't add to the debate. And I frankly think it's a false premise to think that it moves votes. It's true that on each side, every party has a partisan base that does love to hear that punch to the gut to the other side or the quick getcha. But those people were voting for you anyway. There's a very large preponderance of people who are in the middle, who aren't partisans, who frankly decide elections, who are looking for, I think, a debate that's a lot more mature. So I try to be more tempered in my language. I try to be more even in my arguments. I try to rest more on reason than on partisanship and more on the architecture of why I have an

opinion as opposed to just jumping to the conclusion and saying I'm right and they're wrong. But yeah, I mean, this is a lot of history. And I think it used to be a lot more good-natured. By 2004, when I came in, it was still pretty bad. But I talked to members of parliament who would have that debate and go for beers afterwards and talk with great respect for one another out in the corridors. And we're losing that. And that's dangerous. That's really bad for our democracy. Let me test what amounts to a rumor. Is it frowned upon for Liberal MPs to socialize with members of other caucuses?

Not at all. I would say it's the inverse. I think it would be actively encouraged. One of the things that we lost during the pandemic, you know, by operating virtually, is we had less opportunities to be in committees in person and to be in hallways in person and to be reminded of somebody person and to be in hallways in person and to be reminded of somebody's humanity. And I think when you meet somebody and you get to know their story, you can vociferously disagree with their opinion and think that they have disastrous policy for the country. But it's really important to realize they're a good person and to treat them as such.

Do I think conservative policies would be disastrous for the country? Absolutely. Do I think they're bad people who are bent on destroying Canada? No. So let me ask almost the inverse of the question I just asked. When one of your caucus colleagues spends all the live long day posting snide put downs of other party members on Twitter, does anyone ever take them aside and say, hey, stop doing that? Or do they get taken aside and say, that was a good shot? I think both happens. You know, one of the things that shocked me when I became an MP in 2004 is you're given an incredible birth to be whatever kind of MP you want to be. And if you want to be an MP that is excessively partisan and, you know, is clipping things all the time that are very aggressive

and pointy, you're going to find a huge audience for that and you're going to be celebrated. If you want to be somebody who's more measured and talk about things in a more calm way, you'll find an audience for that. And it doesn't much matter. I was whipped for three and a half years. I gave lots of people opinions on what they were doing. But you can't get them to stop. They have an audience. They have a group of people who they feel that they're representing. You can't tell somebody to be more civil. You can't instruct somebody to be less partisan. They will find an audience for that. And unfortunately, they will find success for it in all parties. The only way that you can do it is to demonstrate that there's another path that's

more effective. It requires more patience. It's longer to litigate. But I think at the end of the day, much more rewarding for those who pursue it. You gave an extraordinary speech in the Commons last fall about coming to terms that you had after your defeat in 2011 and how very difficult that was for you and how it kind of caused you to rethink some of some of these issues that we've been discussing i was in a really desperate spot i was told that uh you know i was toxic the conservatives hated me no organization would want to hire me my marriage failed as i mentioned my space with my children was not in a good place. And most particularly, my passion, the thing that I had believed so ardently in, was the purpose of my life, was in ashes at my feet in my career.

I'm not proud to say that I made an attempt on my life. Can you sort of recap what you talked about in that speech and how your thoughts have evolved since then? Sure. I mean, I think that, you know, particularly coming out of the pandemic, mental health is a huge issue. And that we talk a lot about speaking about mental health,

but in more abstract and less specific terms. And, you know, we have lots of social media to brag about our accomplishments, to, you know, post our trips and post our, the things that celebrate us. But there isn't a lot to say what those dark moments look like. And for me, you know, in that moment, it was the culmination of a lot. I oversimplified it, really, because, you know, any, you know, darkness that takes you to a point where you cease believing in life and you make an attempt on your life is a culmination of a lifetime of different weights that come to bear on you. I thought it was important to tell that story because I saw too many people, MPs and staff, with the same look in their eye that I had, you know, in the period leading up to that. You know, the kind of sprinting away from my problems, not really want to facing the darkness and not looking at the trauma that had happened in my life and not really embracing it and understanding it. And we can't afford to do that. it. And we can't afford to do that. The sad part is that, you know, and you see this as WIP, because I get to know intimately our members and so many of the staff that work to support Parliament. Life is tough, like really, really hard. And I think people have an impression

that there's people who get a free pass on life, that there is somehow these people that just have it easy and never had any difficulties and have cruised through life. I haven't met that person. Every person that I've talked to, when you bore deep enough, has a weight that seems crushing. And a lot of times we don't talk about that weight. I didn't talk about that weight because it was seen as weakness. I was supposed to be a leader.

How could I talk about the darkness that was inside of me without being seen as somebody who wasn't fit to serve, who wasn't fit to lead? So I was very nervous. I didn't know how it would live out there. I guess in many ways, I still don't. You don't know what people say when you're not around. And I don't think the internet is a good barometer to look for answers. people say when you're not around. And I don't think the internet is a good barometer to look for answers. But I do think that we have to have a much deeper conversation. And I think a lot of the trauma that we hide, we do out of shame. A lot of times we do it because it also tells somebody else's story. You know, the hardest things I've gone through in my life, I can never talk about because they're not my story to share. But I think if we can understand

that the person we're passing in the hallway or that we're debating on the other side of the aisle has probably had experiences that have brought them down to their knees at one time or another, that we would have a lot more empathy and compassion for one another. And I think that I see the world

in a lot less of a black and white way as a virtue of my own, I guess, facing my own darkness. Maybe one of my weaknesses is that I don't lightly hand out compliments, but that speech that you gave struck me as one of the bravest moments that I've seen since I've been covering politics. And I think a lot of your colleagues will do so too. Preston Manning, this will sound like a strange segue, but it's not. In his memoir, which was called Think Big, says that whatever your problem is when you get to Ottawa, Ottawa usually makes it worse.

Whether it's money management, whether it's gambling, whether it's substance abuse, relationship problems. And I bet you had a lot of colleagues coming up and quietly saying that you were speaking for them when you talked about some of this stuff. 100%. Not just colleagues as MPs, but staff. I had a lot of constituents, young people, people who really want to share what they're going through and are afraid to. And I think it underscores that. I think that, you know, we really should start from the premise that every person that we deal with in life has really gone through some incredibly difficult things. And we have a tendency to myopically think about our own circumstance and how

an individual incident is affecting us without understanding, you know, the impact of what the other person has gone through and what their story is. And, you know, the impact of what the other person has gone through and what their story is. And, you know, it's cliche to say we always talk about the importance of empathy, but I, you know, I don't know that we got the message. Like, I mean, we went through a collective trauma, every single one of us. Now, some of us went through it much worse than others when we went through the pandemic. But there isn't a person who wasn't viscerally affected by what we went through. And I think it shook a lot of our faith, whether or not you're a person of faith or not. Like, we all have to wake up in the morning and believe that doing our best, putting our best effort forward is going to ladder up to something good.

We watched what happened with the pandemic. And, you know, I think for a brief moment, we all said, I'm going to be a lot more grateful. When the world opens up and I can just go and do basic things, I can just hang out with my family or I can go to a restaurant, I'm going to be a lot more grateful. I'm going to be grateful for small things. But it went on and it went on and it went on. And then it was followed by a war and it's followed by global inflation and the fear of a recession and an onslaught of negative news and difficult, hard things. And instead of responding to that with,

well, that's got to be hard for my neighbor, or that's got to be really difficult for the person who has a different opinion than me that's experiencing this in a completely different way. I think we have just got fatigued and are kind of throwing up our hands and treating each other somehow with even less empathy and more anger and missing like what that other person has gone through. And I have no doubt that whoever is screaming and yelling and angry has gone through hell, but that's not going to help. One of the themes that's emerged through these conversations I've been having this season is I kind of sum it up under the rubric of what the hell are we going to do now as a society, as a nation, in our institutions.

And I really do think that so much of our politics, so much of the challenges that we all face at home, it comes down to we're all tired and hurt after these last few years in ways that most of us just individually have barely begun to process. And there's no way that's not going to play out in the life of our institutions and in our big public debates. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is you have to address that in the most practical of terms. How many minutes does so-and-so get? Are we going to launch this filibuster? Let that filibuster continue? Are there ever ways in which it's satisfying work? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, because it goes back to what I started with about being an optimist. Let's look back at history. And I think from history, we can draw great strength from what is going to unfold.

I mean, after the First World War, when you had the world ravaged by Spanish flu, and people went through something that they thought they couldn't possibly survive, they yearned to go back to the Victorian age, to a simpler time. They could never have imagined the prosperity of the 1920s. You know, after the Second World War, where you had the rise of the greatest evil the world has probably ever known, and with horrible atrocities, where you lost countless people that you knew and loved in a war that seemed never-ending. And then you ended it, and it was very bleak after that war.

Like it wasn't just, wasn't celebrations afterwards. They longed to go back to their roaring twenties. They could never have imagined the prosperities of the fifties and sixties. And this is what happens. You could go back, the inflation crisis and the energy crisis in the late seventies and the prosperity of the eighties and nineties.

That's what's in front of us. And I have full faith in that. And I think this is our dark time. This is the hardest time that humanity has gone through since the Second World War. And we all need to have a lot of faith. That has nothing to do with partisanship. It has nothing to do with the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party. It has to do with the resilience of humanity. That what happens in every moment in history is that humanity gets knocked down to its knees to a point where it does not think it can get back up, where it longs for something simpler. And look at all of the attraction right now to the 80s and the 90s and the nostalgia

that's happening. People wishing, well, I wish I could have grown up in the 90s. I hear, you know, kids saying now, it was such a simple time. And it misses what has historically always been true, which is better is ahead. And I think that we're going through something difficult because it's an evolution. It's a change. And I think that we are much more true, much more honest in demanding things that are much more true and honest than we ever did before. And that's going to lead, I think, to a profound transformation that is outside of the political, but demands on a day-to-day basis for us to rise to the moment and do our best minute by minute, second by second, hour by hour

that we have. Do you feel like the time you've had in Parliament since 2015 has amounted to a second chance? I came back to Parliament very reluctantly. I would not say that my first three terms were good for me personally. I loved my time in Parliament then, but I allowed it to totally consume me. And I had a great fear that returning to public life would displace all of those other things I'd made time for in terms of family and friends and other priorities. It was a second chance to try to do it differently. I really believed that I could do it differently. I had friends and other priorities. It was a second chance to try to do it differently. I really believed that I could do it differently. I had friends and people that I had met who told me, go back to it. You can do it differently. And I think that I've succeeded to some degree.

But I do think that we need to have a conversation about what we expect, not just of people in elected office, but just in general out of human beings. You know, people talk about a bubble in Ottawa. Well, you're going to have a bubble in Ottawa if you're asking people to work 90 hours a week and have no social life. You're going to have a bubble in Ottawa if you tell people that they're never doing enough and that they've got to keep slaving away at a job. And then they don't have any connection to what's actually happening to people out in the world. It's not healthy. We still have too much of a culture of, you know, how many events did you go on to on the weekend? And we had a constituency week.

And did you go to every part of the country? And did you, you know, fundraise for the riding association? And did you knock on doors? And did you, you know, meet with all the community associations? It isn't sustainable. associations, it isn't sustainable. And if we're going to get to a place where we have good mental health, where we have sane and rational conversations, then we need sane and rational people. Sane and rational people have personal lives. Sane and rational people spend time with their families and their friends on the weekend. And this virtue of sacrificing your whole life for a job

is dead backwards. It isn't productive. It isn't getting more done. Any person who's ever been in their life where they were working 80 hours a week can tell you, if they're at all introspective about it, that they were not the best 80 hours that they were putting. Where do you get the time to sit back and reflect? It's so important to take a moment to be in a real life and to get, well, that thing that I was really caught up in at work, actually, that wasn't a big deal. And I was turning my wheel on that thing and spending so much time on it. And I get into the real world, and I talk to friends, and I talk to family.

And they're like, what are you talking about? That doesn't matter to me. Why are you spending so much time on that so I think that you know we need to change that culturally I think we made improvements but I think we still have a long way to go I'm going to tell you a secret for the last few weeks I've had colleagues saying to me you're going to do one of your events at the National Arts Centre and it's going to be the government house leader? How come? And I've been saying variations on trust me.

You have repaid that trust and then some with your very frank comments tonight and I really want to thank you for that. Mark Holland, government house leader. Thank you very much Paul. government house leader. Thank you very much, Paul. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. I should let you know that this episode marks the end of season one of The Paul Wells Show. We're going to take a break now over the next few months

and come back in the fall with a second season. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the National Arts Centre, where we recorded this conversation with Mark Holland. Our publishing partners are the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Thanks to our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Haley Choi. Our executive producer is Laura Reguerre. Stuart Cox is the president of Antica. We'll see you again soon. Thank you.