ep 25 audio

welcome to the bill kelly podcast critical discussions in critical times here's your host bill kelly and welcome this is the bill kelly podcast critical discussions for critical times i'm your host bill kelly uh... today we want to focus on what's happening within our own borders and and god knows there's a lot to talk about in the middle east and and the concerns about uh... what's going on of course with the uh... the war uh... with ukraine and russia and uh... canada's commitment to that but in the meantime uh... we need to get our own house in order here and we're hearing a lot about that over the last couple weeks uh... with some of the things that are happening at the provincial level and the federal level to talk about that uh... we're so pleased to welcome to the podcast dr laurie turnbull uh... dr turnbull is the professor chair of public and international affairs department uh... and uh... the faculty management of how the university and laurie great to have you back on the show thanks so much for this today thanks for having me bill it's always good to be here i am not a fatalist and i'm not one who likes to deal in hyperbole uh... but i read an editorial from uh... i can't remember which one of the newspapers it was one of the ones actually in the east coast uh... that said we could be witnessing the demise of canada uh... and and uh... which sounds a little bizarre maybe a little extreme but when you look at some of the things that are happening individually uh... that the the legislation that was passed in new brunswick about pronouns for instance uh... and then of course you've got scott mull with his legislation similar to that uh... and then there's danielle smith we can spend an hour and a half talking with what's going on in alberta right now uh... and first of all to do with the energy policies and now uh... where this morning is that uh... leaked documents indicate uh... that they are talking about and probably planning to deconstruct our health care system the delivery of that health care system uh... i i guess the overall question a lot of people are probably asking right now laurie are we still a country or just a collection of of of ten different governments that are trying to get their own way uh... i think that's a very good question i think we can see that the premiers are pulling on the threads that tie us together and i think part of that is that we have they have political reasons for doing so some of it is they have true values based reasons for doing so and that they don't see the world the same way at all i think that for a federation there has to be like elasticity there has to be sometimes where things aren't going well and we are pulling on that but yet the ties that bind us are still strong enough that we don't actually rip the thing apart and i think we're seeing some really really trying times at this point where there's a zero-sum-ism that's part of the conversation and like to me the pension issue from alberta is the most clear example of a government saying well we've done the math and we're better off alone and if we are reducible to that right if we're just kind of like the same as you make this this vision of these ten provinces in different governments different entities if we boil ourselves down to a series of transactions where you know are we better off together are we better off apart and we start doing that math in a way that's really transactional then that's not a country that's you know a kind of relationship of convenience that is subject to i think constant questions about whether it's working well and then we see this and you know the alberta situation is not new of course i mean they've been talking about splitting from canada for a long long time uh... we all know about uh... how trudeau senior was viewed by the albertans with his national energy plan so that's there and there's been some rumblings about bc but but i always get the impression that yeah there was that element that had those feelings but at the same time the general consensus within the population in those provinces is yeah that sucks and yeah that sucks but you know what we're better off in than out uh... as a matter of fact even the people of quebec came to that decision some years ago with that last referendum uh... and and i'm not suggesting that we're going downhill without any breaks on here but it just seems as if what the previous of doing now is they're looking at a government say these guys are weak and vulnerable and we're going after the right now i'm not just true himself but i mean all of these other elements of this right now and i i i think they just met of course uh... these coast uh... in halifax as a matter of fact uh... an area from which i know you're very familiar uh... and and as a result they they came out with a basically a list of demands uh... they didn't even get around the health care which is usually the number one issue for me because they had so many other things on the plate uh... where we going with this i think that that there's a lot to unpack in terms of how we got here and that's part of where we're headed with all this too you can look at different examples of reasons why we've gotten here i think like a lot of people would point to covid excuse me we can do a pick up don't worry i will i have to cough this up yeah what we'll do is uh... we'll just get jordan here's my question start your answer all over again we'll just do an edit i've got all morning i hope it doesn't take all morning but we have a lot of time okay i'd offer you a lozenge it's not like the tv commercials where i can reach over into the other frame and give it to you that's so good it's a fallacy sorry anyway go ahead i get it especially this time of year well let's do the edit at the question because i can't remember how i phrased it and laurie can just pick it up with the answer and jordan can do the editing on it when you're ready uh... so i think there are different reasons we can look at for how we got here in the first place i think covid is one thing that people are kind of doing a bit of a look back to and saying is this was that a moment where things actually started to really break down because a few things happened everybody being put inside i think all of a sudden everyone having to go inside social distance, you can't go to work, you can't go out, you can't see your friends, you can't see your family depending on where we were in the covid cycle the government was telling you how to live your daily life and you were being isolated from people for some people that meant financial ruin for some people that meant financial stress for some people that meant this is dangerous but i still have to work because i'm on the front line so everybody else is home and being safe and i actually can't do that if i want to make my living uh... there are people who were better off because they could save the cost of driving and parking to work but they didn't lose their salary like it created i think and then it exacerbated tensions that were already there on top of that the fact that we were all isolated away from one another for long periods of time i think had a significant impact on social cohesion and the sense of being empathetic toward people and thinking about how things affect your neighbor we all felt a weird sense of isolation for a period of time that we weren't really prepared for when it first happened and also there was obviously a backlash to the types of measures that the government was using at first it seemed like we're all in this together, we understand why there's social distancing but then when there were vaccine mandates and mask mandates clearly a lot of people had a problem with how the government was wielding its power at that point and so i think a lot of the things that we are seeing now are linked back to a time where it was like it was a moment where things really started to unravel and it was long enough that these types of tensions took hold now we can see the effects of disinformation there's a lot of opinions out there that are not true and are not based on truth they're able to continue to make traction and have effect on people we can also link that back to a certain extent anyway how much time people spent online during COVID Canadians spent a ton of time absorbing online information misinformation, disinformation during COVID and that is linked to definitely a proliferation of misinformation and those kinds of attitudes having effect on parliament and sorry on politics not just parliament we now seem to be we're organizing ourselves into groups of like-minded people there's not places, even like we need more of this still we need more of people like having we're having a conversation, I might not agree with you, you might not agree with me but we both feel safe having a conversation we're seeing less of that now people are gathering with people who they know agree with them and then developing a sense of other about anybody who doesn't agree with them and then there's a demonization and so I think a lot of that you know as politicians are partly responsible for all this crap and they're also seeing a way to profit from it because a lot of this is like kind of dog whistle we're going to pluck this thread because it's going to make that group of people more angry at our opponents so let's see how far we can go with that and you see trial balloons that are dangerous but can have effect on the political debate and can encourage a kind of wedge driven politics and I think politicians on all sides are playing those kinds of games the fact that we've devolved into this sense of tribalism I guess is going to make that much more difficult for us to try to come together on major issues and we have some major issues right now it's almost as if as you say after a couple of years of being isolated and spending a whole lot and probably more time than we should searching the internet and coming up with some of these ideas as soon as we could, okay you can come up now and we just it was like we're going to storm the Bastille now, you know I'm so pissed off about all the stuff I've read and now I've got to take it out and that's how we got the convoy and that might sit still there I mean every weekend when I go from Ancaster up to our place in Blue Mountain there's a place, there's this guy's house, it's in Mansfield, Ontario and it's right there on the road and it's got the F Trudeau stuff and the oh I want my freedoms and another rally at some local barn or something just as strong and just as vile as it was three and a half years ago people are not letting go of this, if anything it seems to have drawn these people together now and they see strength in numbers Oh 100% and like I think that now like living in Ottawa I think we probably have better protocols in place if something like a convoy ever happened again I think we'd manage it better but as you say like the sentiment, the division, the frustration the anger, the fear, all of that is still there and I think that's a big reason why to me the Liberals' fortunes will not be reversed like sometimes people are saying you know is there anything the Liberals can do and what have they chosen to do I'm like maybe somebody else will stop the bleeding a little but not really, I think a lot of this is going to bundle up and then kind of cascade with what's typical voter fatigue anyway when a government is this old and then it's turning into we want somebody else, there's so many people who want to see a change in government because they are tired of the way things are and they want a breath of fresh air but even if you watch, if you go through the pain of watching question periods the back and forth, like civility is gone, it is out the window like it's worse in there than it used to be and you know it's not like there was a wonderful golden age where they were all civil to one another in a question period but people used to be able to talk and now it is just like painful to have to listen to and I don't know what that means in terms of the future of these sorts of institutions but to get back to your original question about you know is the country coming apart I think part of that is a lack of trust and engagement with public institutions it's not just the people, it's that more people are asking whether these sorts of institutions work and that's not a bad question it's good for us to be accountable about how our institutions work whether they're not working, what we can do better but I think when there's a breakdown in the consensus around the rules of the game then we see really dangerous stuff in politics like people denying the results of elections the concern here of course and you just touched on it a second ago that I find very bothersome is as you say politicians that play into this I don't believe for a second that a lot of the big players on the scene these days provincially and federally in this country are wholly buying into this but they see an opportunity here to score some political points with a pissed off population how's that for alliteration and because of that those people that are angry about this and disenchanted with this buy into this and those are their leaders I don't know really what Pierre Paulier thinks about almost anything because all he says is that's Justin Trudeau's fault I really don't know if Scott Mueller has a problem with pronouns but he certainly pushes this because there's a part of the population right now that is pleased that stuff like this is happening and then Danielle Smith well the people in Alberta they're complaining about some of the initiatives I said you knew what you were buying I know you didn't like the previous government but you knew what she was all about she didn't hide anything yet now they're upset about the way things are going right now so the biggest concern that I'm seeing right now is that okay we're angry and we're going to do something about it but do you really understand what the alternative is or is there an alternative and what are the consequences of that alternative I think you mentioned to us in a previous conversation if there is a change in government in the next federal election whenever that might be you got to pretty much assume that they're going to be in power for about 10 years that seems to be the way things go in this country these days you get a majority maybe another majority maybe a couple of minorities like Stephen Harper and others but they're going to be around for a long time especially because history is any indication it doesn't take the liberals a short period of time but a long period of time to understand that hey we screwed up and we've got to kind of reinvent ourselves it took them a long time to do that and I'm not sure they still got it right so you know when you're angry isn't that the old thing that your parents used to say don't make decisions when you're angry because you can live to regret it we're angry this whole country is angry right now and that's why I think a lot of people are saying so where are we going what's this going to bring us oh yeah I agree 100% because yeah you can make a decision when you're angry but you know a short time later when you calm down and then you look at what you're stuck with you might not it might not look as good and I mean I think we are at a point where even if we didn't see anger build up as much as we have I think this government is on its third term by its own design because it went to early elections that he's been leader for over 10 years now that the government's eight years old like people are going to get itchy around now anyway but I think if we didn't see the kind of anger that we do now it would be possible hypothetically that the conservatives wouldn't be in like majority territory like from a liberal's perspective if things weren't as bad as they are now it's possible that a liberal NDP partnership could actually carry into another minority and I've always sort of wondered whether that was the point of that deal in the first place is to try to condition some acceptance and normalization around a partnership that makes up the majority of seats whether it's a coalition or not and that way hypothetically even if we had an election in a year's time and the conservatives got the most seats but not the majority would a liberal NDP arrangement whether coalition or not be able to keep going that was the question to me for a little while now I'm like okay well the NDP isn't making any traction at all somehow even though every like the liberal numbers get worse by the day the NDP are harnessing none of this and so they're still stuck you know quite a bit less than 20% of the national vote and so they don't look like they're going to pick up anything in the next election so I'm not see like you know it doesn't look to me like they're going to improve so they don't have a big incentive to go to election and you know it just looks like it could be really bad for the liberals and people are and as you say it takes them a long time to rebuild I think this could be you know depending on if any of these measures like the carbon tax exemption and things like that are going to save them in any case what if it's a real bomb for the liberals and they're like picking up the pieces big time and because he was in a circumstance true though where he inherited the party with 34 seats in the house the worst showing they ever had and he rebuilt the thing and very much in his own image and so if it blows down then I think it's across the board right like it's not like when parties used to change hands decades ago and there was a sense of transition from one leader to the next and it's different now it's like bam the whole thing is right down to the studs and you got to start again and so I think that yeah if the conservatives come in you know it would history would suggest they will get two terms like everybody else and so what do they do beyond the anger I wonder like what are their actual policies going to look like and he's being asked questions now about where are you on like previous environmental commitments but he deflects all of them he still doesn't answer them and by the way just to you know to try to well we went through this a number of years ago when the country was tired of Stephen Harper for a variety of reasons and we elected a guy who as you say came from third place with only 34 seats under the guise of sunny ways in other words I'm going to make things better you didn't say how he's going to make things better and we bought into that because we were so angry and so apprehensive about what was going to happen are we in the same position again yeah it hasn't been sunny for a while I don't know I think there is definitely a sense even for people who had been supportive maybe really among the people who have been supportive of Trudeau that there are things that the government promised that didn't come true that's the case with any government but I think when it comes to this climate thing for example and his attachment to the carbon tax people are asking are there going to be more exemptions he's saying absolutely not and I think this is a really key piece of the Trudeau legacy I think like to me he's had an opportunity in these in the last couple of years like does he want to use this time to say yeah I'm probably going to lose the next election well since that's true I'm going to do what I actually want and if people hate me for that I'm going to cement the legacy pieces because I'm prime minister and that's what I'm here to do and when I leave I can leave with a sense that I made the difference I wanted to make now it seems like he's yeah but the Atlantic Canadian MPs got really ticked off and they pushed him into this carbon tax exemption that's blowing up in their face because it just looks like they're selling out on something that means a lot to them and they're not doing so in a way that's equitable and so I don't know like it could be a pretty big implosion for them possibly like I mean I'm not a pollster but it doesn't look like anything's getting any better for them but it's putting the leaders in a rather precarious position Trudeau as you just outlined has some challenges and some decisions to make we pretty much know what Polio is going to be it's anti-liberal, anti-Trudeau but here we were just a couple of months ago talking about alliances I mean the motion about extending that rebate that carbon tax rebate when you've got the NDP and conservatives voting on the same issue and voting together on it against the government I mean this is like wow what universe are we in now where something like that could happen but Jagmeet Singh has been rather nuanced in that certainly because his supporting that of course makes all kinds of sense because that's been one of the party platforms all along but Singh did say that he could blow up the agreement but he didn't say he was going to bring down the government he did say that we would support legislation on a one-off basis so in other words I don't think he has any idea or any inclination right now to blow this thing up and have a non-confidence motion well Polio would love that it would be the best Christmas gift he could ever get but I get the thing that Singh is really being rather tricky here about how he's phrasing this in other words we're not going to bring the government down we're just not going to say that we're on your side on all issues right now so I don't know if that makes it more complicated or where we are now I don't think it matters I really don't I mean I don't I think for one thing that the NDP and the Conservatives supporting that motion obviously Conservatives supported it was theirs to extend the rebate on the or sorry to extend the exemption I thought that was smart politics on both their parts but I think that this deal has never helped the NDP at all I think that it has always been the case that the NDP I think they probably could have gotten more from the government if they had positioned their support as being on a case by case basis and maintaining their independence I don't see what they've ever gotten out of this particularly given the fact that they end up having to be on the defensive for why they're supporting the government as opposed to saying we're an opposition party and our support depends on this and putting themselves in the driver's seat as the kingmaker they gave that up and instead they're now expected to support the government because they put themselves in those positions and whether they are gonna keep going is sort of like, well, they're stuck with this like it's all, you know, and if they move away from it then it's all like, well, you're gonna go to election and what's that gonna do for you? And like, I don't know I just don't, I don't feel like this worked out for them I feel like this is, they gave away what leverage they had and now the expectation is that they're just gonna support the government and yeah. One other thing again because we're talking about what's gonna happen next steps I have a propensity for quoting Shakespeare I love the Shakespeare work but I guess to paraphrase the Bard who's gonna be the Brutus here? We know there's internal dissension within the liberal caucus these days we know that there's at least a handful of people that wanna be the next leader a couple of them got smacked down like Anita and others by being demoted in cabinet positions but that hasn't changed and as the numbers continue to slide I don't know that too many people are gonna jump ship but they're gonna try to push the captain out and see if they can take over the ship and we know most of those names right now but does anybody actually have the strength or the inclination to say I'm taking the leader on? See that's interesting about his style of leadership it seems he doesn't trust very many people and he keeps people around him who he knows and so people like Mark Miller, Melanie Jolie, Artis Chagger, I'm just, that's the three names off the top of my head they're people who he's known for years went to McGill. Well, Dominic LeBlanc is a category too. Dominic LeBlanc's been a close friend. They grew up together. Yeah, exactly. People like Christian Freeland who was a star candidate for him and he brought her in like all this relationship based stuff which makes it very difficult for people like any of the people I just named to say be that Brutus, right? Cause they're stabbing their friend which is much harder than somebody like, you know, who's more distant from the leader who's just been an MP and who says, you know what? I'm going to take this because I'm going to take a run at this because this guy's tanking. We kind of heard some noise from Mark Carney last week. I don't know if that was just him saying, you know, throwing out his opinions for what it's worth kind of thing and taking a shot at career politicians because most of the leaders now are career politicians and he's not, I don't know, right? Like, but I think like within the party, sorry, within the caucus right now I don't see it happening. I think it would have to be like Trudeau tapping somebody on the shoulder and saying, I don't want to do this. Can you take over? Otherwise, I think it would be a bloodbath. That'd be ultimately worse for the party than anything else. Is Carney serious? I don't know. I don't know if he's just sort of making waves to, cause he doesn't want to go and lose. Mark Carney is a, you know, like. Well, and let's think about that. Yeah. Let's talk about, I mean, we could, I want to wrap up in a second here, but I mean, Carney, as soon as I heard that and you're right, he's been kicking the tires for a while, but can the liberals actually go down that road? You know, let's get a guy from outside who doesn't have any political experience. Says, yeah, that worked with Ignatyev. Yeah, let's do that again. I mean, do they not learn from their mistakes? Well, that's it, right? Like in some ways I think, you know, someone who's, Mark Carney's a smart man. He's been, you know. So is Ignatyev. So is Ignatyev, true, yep. And in some ways I could see Carney coming in and putting on a clinic with every kind of thing that Polyev ever, every inflammatory thing that Polyev says about the economy. Carney could knock that out of the park in his sleep. However, on the other hand, Carney in some ways is exactly who Polyev wants to run against. Here is a member of the elite, never been elected, never been accountable to you, doesn't care what happens to you, rich guy, blah, blah, blah. And then he'll use every picture of Carney with some other rich person and it'll just be a disaster, right? So in some ways, you know, I think the conservatives would be quite happy to see that outcome. On the other hand, I can't, like if the writing's on the wall and the liberals are gonna have to basically, you know, do some sort of miracle of what was efficient here to be able to win the next election, I can't see why somebody like Mark Carney would say, yeah, I'd love to take that on when I've got about a thousand other things I could do. All of which would be far more lucrative and far easier on my head. Yeah, as you say, there's gotta be a healing period and when the election is finally over with whatever that's gonna be. Laurie, as always, great to get your insight into this. Thanks so much for this today. Thank you too, take care. Take care, Dr. Laurie Turnbull from Dalhousie University. And that's it for this edition of the Bill Kelly Podcast. Thanks for listening and thanks for subscribing too, by the way. As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions. 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