THE WEST BLOCK: Election Edition
Episode 4, Season 5
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Host: Tom Clark
Guest Interview: Brad Duguid
Political Strategists Panel: Robin Sears, Rick Anderson, Lindsay Doyle
Pollster: Darrell Bricker
Unpacking the Politics Panel: Susan Delacourt, Evan Solomon, Mark Kennedy
Guest Interview: Colonel George Petrolekas
Historian and Author: Charlotte Gray
Location: Ottawa
This week, on The West Block: The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the politics of the biggest proposed deal in history. The debates are done and we’re down to the last two weeks. We’ll take the pulse from a pollster, three pundits and professional strategists. Plus, why preserving our archives should be on the election priority list.
Welcome to another Decision Canada edition of The West Block. From the nation’s capital, I’m Tom Clark.
Tom Clark: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: 12 countries from 4 continents, a proposal for the biggest trade deal in history. In Canada, it will affect almost everything, including the auto industry and the dairy business. Joining me now from Toronto is Brad Duguid. He is the Minister of Economic Development and Infrastructure for the province of Ontario. Minister thanks very much for being here.
First of all, can you tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10, how is Ontario looking at this deal? You don’t know what’s in it, but there have been some leaks. Are you worried or are you encouraged?
Brad Duguid: Well, you’re asking me to rate something that I haven’t seen yet, so that’s nearly impossible to do, but on a rate of 1 to 10, are we concerned by what we’re hearing? I would say we’re probably up in an 8 or 9 range for that. We’re concerned, in particular, about talk about challenges that could impact the auto sector and the half-a-million direct and indirect jobs in Ontario in that sector, and challenges around issues like supply management in particular are something we’re paying close attention to. We don’t have details, but I think it is cause for concern.
Tom Clark: I don’t want to get too far into process here, but is Ontario concerned that the provinces are not being consulted? I mean this is a caretaker period for the federal government, do you feel you should have been consulted on our negotiating position and what’s in this deal?
Brad Duguid: Well, this is being done a lot different than the European Trade agreement was done where provinces were actually at the table with the federal government and it’s a different process. We recognize that. The federal government has responsibility for negotiating these types of trade deals, but it would have been helpful to us, I think, for us to be a little more informed as to where they’re going on areas that are going to impact our respective provinces. In Ontario’s case, information about the auto sector, we get more from the media than we do directly from the federal government. So it’s challenging to say the least.
Tom Clark: Let’s take a look at some of those rumours that we’re hearing, particularly as it would hit Ontario. Changes to the content rules of cars which, as you point out, could place tens of thousands of jobs at risk. What are the options for Ontario? I mean, when you take a look at a deal, when and if a deal is done, and worst fears are recognized about the auto industry, is that something that Ontario would try and reject? Have you got any options at all?
Brad Duguid: Well, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t have any legal options. I think we have to recognize that a trade deal of this size is something you would not want Canada or Ontario to be excluded from. At the same time, and we recognize there’s give and take, but you want to make sure what you’re given is not more than what you’re taking back and if you’re dealing with something that’s going to be potentially impactful negatively to our auto sector and the half-a-million direct and indirect jobs in that sector, that’s cause for concern and we’ve been continually trying to make overtures to our federal colleagues to negotiate very aggressively and do everything they can to ensure that they stand up for our auto sector. Thus far, we don’t know whether those pleas have fallen on deaf ears, or whether in fact the federal government has worked hard to protect the auto sector in Ontario.
Tom Clark: Is one of the options, maybe your only option here because the deal’s going to be a take-or-leave-it type of deal, you can’t go back and renegotiate it, so is it a question internally of then saying to Ottawa, well if you’ve done this to the auto sector, Ontario wants compensation? Is that something that you might consider?
Brad Duguid: Well the word “compensation” has come up, and it has in supply management as well. If changes are made there — and I guess after the fact, if you don’t get a good deal to start off with, you have to consider what is the federal government now going to do to ensure that Ontario’s not left out in the cold and our manufacturing sector, our supply part, auto sector is not left out in the cold — certainly that’s something that we would be interested in talking about and hopefully the federal government would be open to. But for now, the agreement’s not signed yet. I mean, my message and my government’s message to the federal government is: get a good deal, work really hard, protect our auto sector, it’s an important part of Ontario’s economy. It’s an important part of our national economy. We’re talking about $16 billion dollars in Gross Domestic Product impact that we’re talking about in our auto sector as a whole. That’s a sector worth standing up for.
Tom Clark: And, if there is compensation, presumably, that could be in the billions of dollars.
Brad Duguid: Well, I mean who knows? I mean, it really will depend on the details as they come forward, how much they are going to reduce that domestic content equation. Right now, it stands at 62-and-a-half-per-cent. Of autos produced in Ontario that are tariff-free, need 62 and-a-half-per-cent of the parts to come from Canada, and you know there are talks about reducing it significantly lower than that. It really will depend on where they land.
Tom Clark: Okay, well we’ll keep an eye on it. Brad Duguid from Ontario. Thanks very much for joining us minister, I appreciate your time.
Brad Duguid: Tom great to join you, we’ll have to see what happens.
Tom Clark: It’s going to be fascinating.
***
Well, to look at how any TPP deal is going to play out domestically in the last two weeks of this campaign, I’m joined by three political professionals. Joining me from Toronto, Robin Sears of the NDP. And here in Ottawa, Rick Anderson of the Conservatives and Lindsay Doyle of the Liberals. Welcome to you all.
Robin, I want to start with you. Your party has doubled down on this, saying that no how, no way are they going to be bound by anything that’s agreed to in Atlanta, especially if it compromises supply management. This is a pretty hard and fast position. You’ve taken a decision, or your party’s taken a position, without having read the text. Does that create any difficulties for you at all?
Robin Sears: Frankly, Tom, I cannot believe how stupid the Tories are being about this because they’re really going to be caught in a very difficult trap. They won’t be able to announce the details of the agreement, so the Liberals and the NDP will be able to call it all sorts of names without their ability to push back saying no, it isn’t that, it isn’t this. It will be the claim rather than the reality that will drive the narrative. Not a good place to be in if you’re in this game. Secondly, how stupid is it for a government to pretend it has the freedom to negotiate two weeks before it might be defeated? No negotiating partner will believe anything they say at the table anyway, so I just think this whole strategy is nuts from the Tories’ point of view.
Tom Clark: Well Rick, over to you.
Rick Anderson: Well Prime Minister Harper of course has made it his signature part of his prime-ministership — negotiating trade agreements — and he’s signalled for years that this particular agreement is very important to Canada. It’s the world’s biggest trading block. It’s a big part of our trading partners, United States, Mexico, and China and so on. Sorry, China’s not part of this agreement, but they eventually will become, and this is going to be the rules for Asia-Pacific trade. And Canada is a trading nation. Many, many jobs in Canada depend on it. We need access to that market.
Tom Clark: Okay, but let’s go to a specific thing that Robin brought up, and Lindsay join in on this as well. Under the caretaker convention, in other words, during an election campaign, you’re talking about signing the biggest trade deal in the history of the world, is there not an obligation to consult perhaps with the other parties or consult with the provinces if we’re sort of signing this? This seems to be a sticking point.
Rick Anderson: Well, there have been tons of consultation of course with the affected sectors all the way through the negotiating process, but to your point Tom, if all around the world the 12 countries that are part of the negotiating table left the table every time they were in the middle of a political process there would be no negotiations. It can’t work that way. I was surprised of what Mr. Mulcair said about this, he’s usually pretty precise in what he says, but of course, as you know, this agreement just because it gets the Canadian government’s signature, if that’s what happens, won’t be final. It still needs to come to Parliament. It still needs to have implementing legislation. If the government and Parliament of the day decide not to ratify it, that’s going to be their prerogative.
Tom Clark: Lindsay Doyle, I want to come to you because the Liberals have not— just hang on a second Robin because I want to get the Liberal point of view in here. The Liberals have not been consulted on this, even though there’s a caretaker convention in place that would seem to suggest that that’s necessary. Well, we can discuss that, but the Liberals have said that they are not committing themselves to this. I’m not quite sure what the Liberal position is.
Lindsay Doyle: So we think that—well the Liberals have obviously said that from a trade perspective, any type of agreement that is going to benefit a variety of groups domestically, especially those groups who are for free market deals were very much in favour of that. What we’ve consistently said throughout though is that we have grave concerns around the fact that supply management has been so heavily factored into the final issues around ratifying this deal or agreeing to this deal. Ratification will obviously come later, so I think that from that perspective, they’ve said this deal can get done without putting at risk dairy farmers, poultry farmers, who have raised major concern, obviously those in the auto sector same thing. So I think that you’ll see again—
Tom Clark: Well let me ask you quickly because I asked your leader when he was here last week. I said is supply management a deal breaker for you? In other words, if supply management disappears, does that mean that the Liberals would oppose this deal the same way that Mr. Mulcair is doing and I didn’t really get a straight answer from him.
Lindsay Doyle: No, and I think that that’s probably a wise choice at this time because again, as you mentioned earlier, no one has seen the text of the agreement or the subsequent agreement, whatever’s going to come down today, tomorrow, or the next day so I think it would be wiser for the Liberals, especially in this critical time to step back, take a look at exactly what’s been put on the table, have there been any significant concessions and then come out publicly in favour of that because I do think that the NDP have jumped the gun a little bit here and it makes them look a little bit naïve when it comes to these larger issues.
Rick Anderson: Not even, scare-mongering.
Tom Clark: Yeah Robin get in, I mean it almost seems like the three bears here. I mean, you know one’s too hot, one’s too cold, and one’s sort of in the mushy middle, but—
Lindsay Doyle: And the Liberals, honestly, in their defence, they have not been part of this. They have not been consulted, so they’re not aware of the details.
Robin Sears: Tom, the problem is this; Rick is talking like a trade lawyer in policy. Lindsay’s talking like a Liberal who can’t make up her mind — a comfortable position for them often — but the reality of this is politics, it’s not policy. I bumped into a friend yesterday and a veteran Liberal strategist. She was very angry at me, said you guys have lost your message, my guy has momentum. And then she said sadly, but we don’t have the math to get there do we? And I laughed and we both were a little bit sad about that kind of conclusion. This is a message for Mulcair. He’s in rural Quebec today saying what is obvious to everybody who’s ever done these negotiations, without concessions on supply management, there is not deal. So if there is a deal, there would have been concessions.
Tom Clark: But Robin, this comes at the same time that polls are showing a definitive drop in the polls for Tom Mulcair, especially in the province of Quebec. And some have suggested that going doubling down is actually sort of a bit of a desperation move on their part that if you’re talking to your base the same way the Conservatives talk to their base on things like niqabs and stripping citizenship and so on, that that is more an indication of desperation than anything else.
Rick Anderson: Well, look, I think that all the parties are going to go to their normal—
Robin Sears: Anybody in the auto sector, anybody in farming is absolutely affected by this deal.
Tom Clark: Okay.
Lindsay Doyle: They absolutely are affected by this deal but they’ve been consulted throughout.
Rick Anderson: Well of course, and most agriculture is going to benefit directly from this deal because this is our—
Robin Sears: How do you know that Rick? You’re making that up.
Rick Anderson: Most Canadian agriculture is exported, as you know—
Robin Sears: You’re making that up.
Rick Anderson: Really, I’m not.
Lindsay Doyle: This kind of protectionist move by the NDP is actually going to harm them amongst more sectors than it is going to help them, and that’s very evident so far.
Rick Anderson: Right, that’s right.
Tom Clark: But the difficulty is, I would think, that if we know the details of this, that there’s going to be good and bad in the deal Rick, and certainly part of the bad is going to be for the dairy and poultry business and also for the automotive sector. And in 10 days of campaigning, or nine days of campaigning, it’s easier to exploit the negative part of this deal than it is the positive part of the deal.
Rick Anderson: That’s what’s going to happen, Tom. Exactly.
Tom Clark: So that places your guys in a tough spot.
Rick Anderson: I was going to say this is a gift to all three parties. They’re all going to revert to their traditional positions on these kinds of things. The Conservatives are going to be a champion of open trade and they’re going to make the argument, as I think is right, contrary to what Robin’s saying today, that this is extremely important to Canadian jobs. The NDP are going to scare monger the daylights out of this and say oh trade will be the end of this and that and health care, the end of fresh water, the end of the CBC — I mean that’s probably not bad news from your point of view, but you know they’re already out there. Broadbent Institute, Press Progress, we’re going to have to sell Canada Post, I mean where do they get this stuff? They just make it up. That’s what the NDP is going to do for the next two weeks. And the Liberals will try to have it both ways. This part of the deal needs to be renegotiated or whatever they’re going to say about it.
Tom Clark: Okay, let Lindsay. Are you going to try and have it both ways?
Rick Anderson: The “but’s” important here.
Lindsay Doyle: Yeah, but — but what I’m going to be a bit critical is that from a negotiating standpoint, negotiators from other countries must be smelling a bit of blood in the water when it comes to the Canadian team because here you are, one of the most political elections we’ve seen in our country’s history, I would go so far as to say, and then on top of that, you’ve got leaders of the opposition who are coming out saying, you know what, I’m actually not going to be bound to this deal in any way. So, from that negotiating standpoint, it weakens us in a significant way where this government may be willing to make more concessions to get this deal done to go and parade it for the next 10 days, but the NDP certainly isn’t helping that narrative either.
Tom Clark: Robin, I’m going to give you the last 20 seconds.
Robin Sears: Here’s the problem, when we last fought a free trade election, the Conservative prime minster at the time had the honesty to fight for a deal before he put his signature on it. This one wants to sign the deal and then give us a chance to vote about his decision. This is not a dictatorship Rick.
Rick Anderson: The process argument again. Well there we go. So we’ll forget about Canada’s participation in the world’s biggest trading sector because you think that we can’t negotiate these things while there’s an election going on, even though there is a convention—
Tom Clark: Okay, I’m going to have to jump in here and say that this is obviously — we’ve demonstrated how this is going to perhaps dominate the last two weeks of this campaign. Lindsay Doyle, Rick Anderson, and Robin Sears in Toronto, thank you all very much for being here as always — really appreciate your insights.
Lindsay Doyle: Thank you.
Tom Clark: And coming up, what do the polls tell us about the next two weeks? That’s next.
Tom Clark: Welcome back. Well, there are polls and there are polls, and the polls are different from everyone else, but they all seem to agree at least on one thing at this stage of the campaign that this election is still too close to call with any certainty at all. But how are they going to impact the campaigns in the final two weeks? Joining me now from Toronto to break all this down is Darrell Bricker, the CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs.
And Darrell welcome, I just want to say for full disclosure to everybody that Ipsos is the pollster of record for Global News, but I wanted to start with you on this. What is a Canadian to make of the fact that one poll will be way over here and another poll will be over there, one says the Liberals are leading, the other one says the Liberals are in last place or any combination thereof. What’s the deal here? Why are polls so radically different even when it’s supposed to be this close?
Darrell Bricker: Well you know, not just Canadians are confused, pollsters are confused. I mean the problem is that what we used to do in order to do a political poll is not the same as what gets done now. There’s a variety of different methodologies, a variety of different techniques, some people are doing one thing. Other people are doing another thing in order to get a gauge on, on what’s going on. And the problem of course, is that each of these methodologies has different types of biases. So the question really is, you know what are we disclosing about what we’re doing, so people who want to get some sense of what’s going in polling can actually figure out what’s going on. And the problem is different people provide different levels of disclosure.
Tom Clark: I just want to move on to what you’re seeing right now in this campaign Darrell, and the polls that Ipsos has done for Global News in the last couple of weeks have been interesting. They haven’t shown a great amount of movement, but here we are two weeks out, from the attitudinal surveys that you’ve done in terms of where the minds of voters are right now, how are these numbers going to move and do you expect them to move between now and voting day?
Darrell Bricker: Well, I think we’ve seen a couple of general trends. One of them is that this isn’t a campaign of national numbers, it’s really a campaign of regional numbers and wherever you’re seeing movement in the polls, it’s really been around a couple of regions going up or down. So, the biggest change that I think the consensus of polls shows over the last little while is that NDP support has been softening in the province of Quebec. So I think that that, since it’s consistent across all of the polling, I think that that’s probably one thing that you can count on. The biggest place of confusion where we’ve seen ups and downs in various polls that is really material for the campaign is the province of Ontario and some polls have shown that the Conservatives are way ahead, some polls have shown that the Liberals are way ahead, and still other polls have shown the two parties are really close. So getting Ontario straightened out between now and the end of the campaign, I think is really going to determine how this thing is going to turn out.
Tom Clark: And from what you’ve been able to see in terms of, again, those attitudinal surveys, is there one thing, is there one subject that can move those numbers, especially in Ontario?
Darrell Bricker: Well right now, it’s really a conflict between change and the fear of change, so the other side of that being continuity. So the real question here is whether or not there’s enough impetus for change that people are really going to consolidate around one of those opposition parties in order to knock the Conservatives out and that still hasn’t happened.
Tom Clark: Okay, I know you don’t predict seats and I’m not asking you to, but in terms of most likely and least likely scenarios on the 19th, the numbers would seem to suggest that we’re in minority territory no matter who forms the government, but can you give me, at this point anyway, the most likely scenario that you see and the least likely?
Darrell Bricker: Well you know it’s a real jumble compared to what’s happening in the various regions or determined by what’s happening in the various regions. The party that has the most efficient vote, gets the most seats out of the votes that it has and has grown more efficient since the last election is the Conservative party, so I think, even if they look close, as they do in most of the polls right now, that puts them in a pretty shape. The party that has the hardest time actually getting a lot of seats for the votes that it gets is the Liberal party and their vote gets distorted by the fact that they do so well in Atlantic Canada where there’s few seats, but they also do really well in places like the West Island in Montreal and in the City of Toronto that makes, based on their national numbers, it looks like they’re winning more seats than they probably are. So the issue is whether or not they can get a more efficient poll before the election. The real question for the NDP is what makes you strong, makes you weak. So if the NDP gets into a series of four party races in Quebec as it looks like is happening right now, they’re in very serious trouble.
Tom Clark: Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs we look forward incidentally to your next poll coming out in the next couple of days. Thanks very much for being here.
Darrell Bricker: Thanks Tom.
Tom Clark: Coming up next, some of the smartest political minds covering this campaign are here to unpack the politics of the week. And then later, Charlotte Gray, historian and author, is one of Canada’s best loved authors of popular history and she’s worried that Canada’s history could be a black hole if politicians don’t start paying attention to one key issue.
Translator: In fact, in an open society, from time to time, one really must not hide one’s identity.
You are using this as a massive distraction weapon, equality between men and women and it’s really quite a sacred issue. And Mr. Harper’s being totally hypocritical, so here you are talking to us about personal values and personal choices. Now, will you tell us please, are you pro-choice or against?
Tom Clark: Well, that’s just a sample of the Friday night TV A debate and it was amazing how quickly we went from the niqab to abortion, but welcome to Election 2015 and welcome to Mark Kennedy, Parliamentary Bureau Chief for the Ottawa Citizen, Susan Delacourt author and columnist for the Toronto Star, and our friend Evan Solomon Sirius XM Radio Everything is Politics. Welcome to you all.
So, the last, as far as we know, the last debate of this campaign, most people in English Canada would not have watched that. They may not have even seen many of the clips, so how important was it, Mark?
Mark Kennedy: It’s important, not just for who watched it, but how the partisans themselves felt when they came out of it. If you’re a Liberal, a New Democrat or a Tory, you have to feel that your guy is on the roll and on the move. And if you’re a New Democrat, you have to be fearful that he’s on the move because we’re all reading about — writing about — polls, and he had to go in there and he literally had to knock it out of the park and I’m not so sure he did. He did well, but it’s all about perception and everyone has their own bias. And those biases need to be confirmed.
Tom Clark: Susan?
Susan Delacourt: Yeah, I didn’t think he did badly, but I think he had to do—
Tom Clark: He meaning Mulcair.
Susan Delacourt: Mulcair. I didn’t think he did really badly, but he had to do, as Mark said, really well. I think that the most pronounced difference I’ve seen in the debates between last week when we were here and this week, was Trudeau. It was like a different Justin Trudeau showed up. I almost said Pierre because of what he did on Monday night at the Monk Debate, but in the first French debate, he was robotic and saying: “I have a plan, I have a plan.” And then last night, far more animated, interested, getting some shots in there. So will it do any good in Quebec though? I’m not sure.
Evan Solomon: Very important debate for Tom Mulcair. He had to knock out Trudeau. He’s tried to do that in each of the debates, didn’t do it. Gilles Duceppe was a spoiler and is eating away and they’re bleeding orange there and he’s deeply worried. Harper has made the questioning Quebec about the niqab … Calgary mayor (Naheed Nenshi) called it dog-whistle politics. It’s no longer a dog whistle, it’s just a whistle. We all know what it is, especially now with the tip-line for barbaric practices. Stephen Harper has got that question and Thomas Mulcair is desperate to make it a different question which is, dump Harper. He didn’t do it and that’s why Trudeau brought the abortion question up. Why? Because he’s saying, if you want to make this about values, I’m going to broaden the question on values from the niqab to other issues, like abortion and women’s rights and Trudeau thinks that plays not just in Quebec, but where? In Ontario.
Mark Kennedy: Yeah, but the thing about this campaign is that all three men have surprised us. Stephen Harper, the resilience of Stephen Harper and the Conservative campaign is remarkable. Never count this guy out. People have counted him out far too many times before and now he’s seen doing fairly well in the polls and he might win. The NDP, who goes into a campaign thinking they’re going to do well when the frontrunner’s campaign? Well the NDP did and it’s turned against them. The Liberals under Justin Trudeau, we all thought the guy was going to explode or rather implode during a campaign. He never did well in the House of Commons. He had stupid remarks. He hasn’t made stupid remarks and what has he done in the debates? He’s done well. It’s been surprises throughout the campaign.
Susan Delacourt: Yeah, I think even the advertising has been a bit of a surprise too. You know, first I think we’re in for a barrage in the next couple of weeks, but people did think Trudeau would be done in by the ads. It turns out that he disobeyed the rules of political communication and actually repeated the allegations — I’m ready — and refuted them and polls say that worked, too. So, I agree with Mark, it’s been a weird campaign filled with surprises.
Tom Clark: It’s the benefit of the world of low expectations, isn’t it? Because we all judge politicians against what we expect, and in this case, in the case certainly of Justin Trudeau and I think the other parties have found, is that a lot of their campaign strategy was based on the fact that a long campaign with a lot of these smaller debates was going to expose that Justin Trudeau really just wasn’t ready. And I think that most fair-minded people would say, even if I’m not voting for him, you can’t really say he’s not ready anymore.
Evan Solomon: He certainly did well in the debates, but the next phase is critical because remember, if this was a normal campaign, we’d still be thinking we’re just past the halfway mark, there might still be another debate. There’s not, so we have a much longer close and the question now is, after this debate to me was, boy this is about a culture war now. It’s not just about the economy or about — so there’s a values issue and a culture war going on that I think Stephen Harper is very happy because a lot of those issues play into that. And you just wonder, if that’s the case, what happens to the other big question from the Mulcair-Trudeau position: which is the change question. And which one dominates, values or change? I think that’s the collision.
Mark Kennedy: I don’t think that that’ll go away. I really don’t think that’s going to go away. I think any time you have a government in power for 10 years as we now have, and it’s fair, it ought to happen. Any populous ought to look at whether or not that government deserves to remain in power and I think Canadians will look at that. Stephen Harper has a challenge. He has to convince them that he should get another mandate. But I think we’re heading into a zone here now in the campaign where Canadians, on that left side of the spectrum, 60 per cent, perhaps more are going to say to themselves, yes I want to get rid of him and I have to decide the best way to do it.
Evan Solomon: Well does it trigger that strategic vote?
Susan Delacourt: The interesting thing about the last few weeks or couple of weeks of the campaign may be the geography of it. I think all of them did not expect that they would have to spend time in the places they’re going to have to spend time. I think Mulcair thought Quebec was safe. He was probably going to spend more time out. He’ll probably be spending more time in Quebec. Justin Trudeau is going to have to pay attention to his riding, you know, that its close there. And Alberta is not a slam dump for the Conservatives anymore either and I think the nature of where they’re going in the last two weeks speaks to the surprise element in this campaign.
Tom Clark: Including Stephen Harper going to Newfoundland this weekend, which was a real surprise, especially to the people in Newfoundland.
Susan Delacourt: Ches Crosbie, especially.
Tom Clark: Listen, I’ve only got a little time left, but something came up in the leaders’ debate on Friday that really caught my attention because it’s been going around and that is this whole business of being trapped by social media, being trapped by what you had said or written on social media a number of years ago. More than 18 candidates have fallen for this. Now that the nominations are closed, you can’t replace them anymore and last night in the Quebec debate, the leaders were talking about that. They were accusing the other leader of signing the nomination papers of somebody who had said something stupid 15 years ago. Where are we on this because a lot of people are saying this is crazy, how on earth could anybody live up to the pristine standards going back to the time you were 12-years-old? Is this now just a part of the landscape for ever and ever in Canadian politics?
Mark Kennedy: It’s not going to change. Five years ago, 10 years ago, it would not have been an issue because the internet as it now exists didn’t exist. In the next campaign, it’s going to be a problem. In the campaign after that, no doubt, but the bottom line is this, if you’re 20-years-old and you’re on Twitter all the time, you better remember that if you ever think about a campaign or a future in politics, anything you now say or write can come back and haunt you. I do think it’ll be around for a while.
Tom Clark: And the political parties are going to have to spend a lot more time and money and hire people to vet their own candidates before they vet the opposition.
Susan Delacourt: But I think we’re going to have to change our feelings about it too. I think we’re going to have to learn to distinguish between bad behaviour on Twitter and bad people, bad personalities or bad character. And you know some of this is just antics. There are some—a lot of the candidates are gone because it exposed a bad side of their character, but I think bad behaviour is bad behaviour.
Evan Solomon: Look, now we live in the digital tattoo world, right? It just stays with you. It’s tough to erase and I get it, but you know it was Pierre Trudeau who said once MP’s are 300 feet from Parliament Hill where we’re looking over, they become nobody’s. Well now with digital media, they actually don’t become nobody’s because their brands are linked to the leader and the party, and that’s the difference. They’re not nobody’s. They reflect the brand, so it’s not about your MP disappears. Your MP becomes a brand extension and they can be used against the leader. And that means the vetting process has to change and that’s why they’re using it. They don’t care about the candidate, they care about splashing paint on the brand of the leader and that’s what happened last night.
Mark Kennedy: Listen, it’s all about character, what you writ eon the internet now means it tells people a lot about who you are as a person. Generally, you are who you are by the time you’re 20-years-old.
Tom Clark: I’ve only got 20 seconds left, so I need a one word answer from you. Next two weeks in the campaign, one word to describe what we’re about to see.
Mark Kennedy: Unpredictable.
Susan Delacourt: I agree, unpredictable.
Evan Solomon: Culture wars.
Mark Kennedy: Two words.
Susan Delacourt: Two words.
Tom Clark: And that’s it.
Evan Solomon: But no, culture wars, is a hashtag now after that tip line.
Tom Clark: Evan Solomon, Susan Delacourt, and Mark Kennedy thank you all very much as always for being here. I appreciate your time.
Well coming up next, the expanding war in Syria with Russia fighting for Assad, who are we fighting for? That’s next.
Tom Clark: Reports from Moscow this weekend claim that the Russian Air Force has completed more than two dozen bombing missions in Syria in the last two days alone. And while it claims that those strikes have been largely against ISIS, some have been other insurgent groups fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Canada too, is bombing in Syria, although without any coordination with Russia, so what does this mean for our mission and what exactly are Canada’s objectives now?
Well to look at that, I’m joined from Montreal by Colonel George Petrolekas, Former Strategic Advisor to the Chief of the Defence Staff here in Canada. And George thanks very much for being here. I just want to start off a little bit locally here. We do have CF-18’s that are conducting missions in Syria. When you have so many planes in the sky, meaning the Russians here that are not coordinating with us, does this pose any immediate threat or danger to Canadian pilots?
George Petrolekas: I really don’t think so and the whole subject of deconfliction has been overtaken by an awful lot of rhetoric. From what we’ve seen so far, the Russians are primarily flying in the western part of Syria, obviously as you mentioned, helping some anti-Assad forces, but also the western part of ISIS, whereas as we generally tend to fly missions in the eastern part of Syria and the northeastern part of Syria, so I really don’t think there’s a risk of any kind of accidental engagement and I just don’t think deconfliction is an issue at the moment. Certainly, we’re going to try and improve that through talks between the Russians and the coalition, but at the moment, it doesn’t pose any significant danger to our pilots.
Tom Clark: Let’s go to the broader issue then, and what strikes me about the Russian intervention in Syria, is that for better or for worse, the Russians have decided who they’re fighting for. They’re fighting for Bashar al-Assad. They don’t want him thrown out the way that the western coalition does. So, if the Russians are fighting in a sense for Bashar al-Assad, who are we fighting for?
George Petrolekas: Well, there’s two things to that. First of all, the Russians aren’t necessarily fighting for Assad. What they’re fighting for is preventing a vacuum from arising if Assad falls. The groups that would be best positioned to take advantage of an Assad fall would be ISIS who would able to move west or parts of the anti-Assad opposition which are anything but moderate like the al-Nusra Front. In our particular case, we’ve drawn the line between the anti-Assad fight and that civil war, and we’re primarily fighting against the Islamic State in the eastern part of Syria to try and keep that down. So there are two different issues within the same geographic entity that we call Syria.
Tom Clark: Okay, but in the sense though that Russia has created, in a sense, a new ground in Syria because of how they see the outcome being. They’ve sort of got a map as to where they want to go, as you say, not supporting Assad, so much as doing a controlled exit for Assad. Talk to me about—let me put it this way, are there any potential benefits to having Russia doing what Russia is doing?
George Petrolekas: Well, I think there are. Russia has signalled several times and in fact, our allies have picked up on it, like the Turk’s Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, who was one of the most vocal or strident anti-Assad people in the coalition, who has now started to talk about potentially a managed transition. The Russians have certainly started to speak in that tone of voice as well, so I think it’s incumbent upon us to actually, once we get past this initial rhetoric of surprise of the Russians of the last 48-72 hours, to see that there might be a confluence of interest. And that confluence of interest is, setting up some sort of a managed transition, ensuring that moderate parts of the Opposition get reflected in a new government, while at the same time not forgetting that Assad’s core represents Alawite Shiites and Orthodox Christians, so those minority rights would have to be respected. So, I would see something emerging, like it did in Bosnia 20 years ago with a date and agreements where we did speak with Milosevic and Karadzic, who were war criminals at the end of the day, but we managed in partnership with the Russians to move towards a political settlement made possible by some of the military moves on the ground.
Tom Clark: George Petrolekas joining us from Montreal. Thanks very much for your insights George, I appreciate your time.
George Petrolekas: Yeah, my pleasure.
Tom Clark: Well coming up next, award winning biographer and historian, Charlotte Gray on why preserving our archives should be on the list of election issues.
Tom Clark: Continuing now, our series of prominent Canadians and their thoughts about this election. When we started this, the criteria was that we wanted to talk with people whose life’s work was involved with the telling of the story of Canada. Our next interview subject is all that.
Charlotte Gray came to Canada from England in 1979 and immediately she became entranced by this country and especially its people and their history. In nine books, so far, she has looked at our early beginnings, sisters in the wilderness, to our geniuses, Alexander Graham Bell, to our mysteries, the Massy murders. History and Canada are her twin passions. Charlotte Gray good to have you here.
Charlotte Gray: Great to be here, Tom.
Tom Clark: What issue should we be talking about in this campaign that we’re not talking about?
Charlotte Gray: I’ll tell you the issue that really worries me, and that is that we are turning into a nation of amnesiacs. A nation of know-nothing’s that we don’t know our history and we have, not just a sort of reckless disregard for information, but we’re allowing the destruction of information. What’s happened in the last 10-15 years has really sort of broken my heart in terms of being somebody who loves history. We’ve seen so little attempt to actually enjoy our history. In fact, we’ve seen deliberate attempts to reduce our access to it. Look at the cuts to the archives, for example.
Tom Clark: Is it just a question of money though? Is it a question of putting money in to preserving the archives? Is that what the solution is?
Charlotte Gray: That’s certainly part of it and in fact, all that’s happened is there have been these savage cuts, it’s also a question of priorities—you know that the world is going to open access. The world is increasingly saying that this is a knowledge economy; there should be evidence-based decision-making. Canada’s going in a different direction, in fact, the reverse direction. You know, we are having less and less access to material, to data that as taxpayers’ we’ve paid for. The government libraries are closing. Government websites are disappearing.
Tom Clark: From a historian’s point of view, are we near that point where future historians are not going to have even as much information as you had when you were examining the origins of the wilderness when we first started going there?
Charlotte Gray: Absolutely, people are going to have much, much less access because we are not investing in the kind of digitization of our records that every other country is investing in and that future historians will rely on in order to get access to the past. History is no longer seen as a source of strength to this country and it’s what makes Canada unique. Our history is so different from any other countries. History is just seen as a sort of wonderful sludge pile that you can pull myths out of, you know, that sort of the Franklin myth. In fact, I tell you Tom, if I hear one more person saying that Canada was born on, and then fill in the missing words, you know the battlefields of the First World War, the beaches of Dunkirk, the northern oceans as Franklin sailed through the Northwest Territories. Such a distortion, that’s not history. That’s not understanding sort of the extraordinary evolution of a country that reinvents itself in every generation. That’s just political propaganda.
Tom Clark: Let me put you in the uncomfortable position of saying that you’ve just been elected a Member of Parliament of the governing party and now you are the Minister of Heritage, which is the ministry that has control over these things. What would you do?
Charlotte Gray: I would absolutely reinstate the budget of Library and Archives Canada so that we can enjoy our archival heritage again. I would open the National Portrait Gallery that in fact, was promised several years ago and was cancelled, in fact by this government. And I would also go with opening a history centre that was cancelled by the previous government, the Liberal government.
Tom Clark: Cast your mind, 50 years, a 100 years from now, how are historians in a 100 years going to be remembering this period in our history?
Charlotte Gray: I think that the debate for historians when they look back on the 2015 election, they’ll be wanting to explore the sort of shifting ideological and regional patterns in Canada which are really extraordinary at the moment and they will also see whether the fundamental character of Canada through the late 20th century, which was of the Liberal Progressive society, whether in fact that came to a halt and the country took another direction, or whether in fact, in this election, that we go back to the default Liberal Progressive Canada that so many Canadians grew up with.
Tom Clark: Charlotte Gray a great pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for doing this.
Charlotte Gray: Great pleasure.
Tom Clark: And coming up next, a moment in history and the reminder that it sends.
Tom Clark: Well just a final thought, 25 years ago this weekend, we saw one of the great moments of the 20th century. The final triumph of freedom over the Soviet era with the reunification of East and West Germany, it had started the year before when the Berlin Wall came down and the Iron Curtain was raised. I was there when that happened with a small group of East German’s, who had known nothing but the iron fist of the Soviet back state. Our journey across no man’s land into the embrace of freedom was only a few hundred metres, but it opened a whole new universe for millions of people. Twenty-five years later, we now stand on the eve of another election in this country. Many Canadians say they are cynical or bored. Many won’t even bother to vote and that’s a shame because if Berlin said anything to us over the years, it is that free men and women everywhere should never take it for granted. Freedom needs to be fed and defended. It’s glorious. On October 19th, vote.
Well, that is our show. You can find us online at www.thewestblock.ca. You can also reach us on Twitter and on Facebook. We always appreciate hearing from you. Thanks for joining us today. I’m Tom Clark. We will see you back here next weekend. Have a great week!
Comments