West Block Transcript: Season 6 Episode 6

THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 6, Season 6
Sunday, October 16, 2016

Host: Tom Clark

Guest Interviews: Luiza Savage, Molly Ball, Erin O’Toole
Plane Talk: Navdeep Bains

Location: Ottawa

On this Sunday, Donald Trump unshackled, unrepentant, unhinged: Does he still have a path to power?

Then to the race north of the border, another Conservative leadership hopeful declares. Why Erin O’Toole thinks that he’s the one.

And we go flying with Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains for some Plane Talk about what it’s like to tease Barack Obama.

It is Sunday, October the 16th and from the nation’s capital, I’m Tom Clark. And you are in The West Block.

Well, the number of women who say they were molested are up. His poll numbers are down. But Donald Trump is pushing ahead by pushing back against his accusers, and doubling down on his claim that Hillary Clinton should be in prison.

Donald Trump: “But, let me state this as clearly as I can, these attacks are orchestrated by the Clintons and their media allies. The only thing Hillary Clinton has going for herself is the press, without the press, she is absolutely zero. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed as sexist, a racist, a xenophobe, and morally deformed.”

Tom Clark: And there’s still nearly a month to go. How did things get this far and far out, and what’s to come?

Joining me now from Washington, Luiza Savage, a journalist at Politico and Molly Ball, a political writer of The Atlantic Magazine, welcome to you both.

Molly, I want to start with you because last week you were in Florida attending a Trump rally. Trump rallies these days are notoriously media unfriendly. In fact, Donald Trump, as we all know, is really aiming the finger. How is it for a journalist at those rallies right now? Do you feel any sense of danger?

Molly Ball: No, I’ve never felt personally threatened or unsafe. I think the reporters who really put themselves at risk are the ones who go to actual war zones. You have to have a thick skin in this business. And while it is new to be actually threatened by a candidate and have him sort of encourage the crowds to turn on journalists—and do you do get yelled at a little bit—it’s certainly nothing new for political reporters to be heavily criticized and publicly unpopular.

Tom Clark: Yeah, truth is, we probably get yelled at by our editors a whole lot more than we get yelled at by the Trump people. But Luiza let me go to you for a second. We’ve seen the polls; we’ve certainly seen the trends that are more important. Is this race effectively over?

Luiza Savage: It’s increasingly looking like that Tom, and in part, because early voting has already started in a number of places and more of it will be starting to come on, so some of these votes will be locked in. But beyond that, the whole drumbeat, the news cycle of stories, has been so relentlessly negative for Donald Trump that it’s hard to see how that turns around without some kind of a cataclysmic news event that would somehow hurt Hillary Clinton. And so far, we haven’t seen that. So if you remember it wasn’t that long ago they were going into the first debate tied neck and neck in the polls and since then, it’s been a series of self-inflicted wounds by Donald Trump and it shows no sign that he is taking any kind of strategic effort to turn that around. He seems to be doubling down on the very issues and the very problems that have gotten him here in the first place.

Tom Clark: With the proviso that I may be entirely wrong as a lot of journalists have been wrong with Donald Trump in the past, but let’s cast ourselves ahead. It’s November 9th. It’s the day after the election. President Elect Clinton is savouring her victory. But my question now is this what happens to all of that anger that we have seen at the Trump rallies, those thousands upon thousands of American who don’t like the political establishment, who thought that Donald Trump was their saviour. What happens to that Molly in the American political fabric?

Molly Ball: I think that’s really the question. I think that this election has revealed so many deep cleavages and fissures in our social fabric; it’s really much more than just a political argument. And the question is, given how many people are so alienated and have been receptive to Trump’s argument that essentially it’s everybody against everybody, pitting people against each other based on class, based on race, based on gender, it is hard to see where that goes. In very concrete terms, you have Trump now talking about having people monitor the polls, particularly in inner-city areas, which raises the spectre of voter intimidation and potentially laying the groundwork for an argument that the results of the election are not legitimate. So in the near term after the election, there’s the worry that people may not accept the results if they don’t favour Trump, and then in the longer term, I think the question you raise is very important, which is how do we as Americans figure out how to get along with each other and make the political process work given how divided we are.

Tom Clark: Luiza, what’s your take on this?

Luiza Savage: Well, I think there’s going to be a huge realignment within the Republican Party. Right now you see it fractured into several camps. You see the Paul Ryan camp, the more traditional Republican business pro free trade camps. And then you see this populist Donald Trump camp and I don’t think those views are going to go away, even if Donald Trump loses. And you could imagine a scenario where he goes on to create some new media channel or media platform to keep airing those views and building that kind of a movement. You saw the influence of the Tea Party movement. This is almost part two of that and you see the Republican Party dividing into different directions. I think we’ll see after the election very clearly in the Congress where you’ll see a much more Conservative Republican Party because all those people in the moderate swing districts are most likely, according to the polls, going to lose their seats to Democrats. So you’ll have Speaker Paul Ryan dealing with a more entrenched, more Conservative Republican Party and broadly in country, Republicans trying to figure out what does it mean to be a Republican in this day and age and is the Trump wing going to be on the ascendants and will there be more moderate Republicans, pro free trade Republicans leaving that party? These are all big questions that have been brewing now for a couple of years and this election has really brought them to a head.

Tom Clark: Let me turn this to the other side of the coin and take a look at as I said, president elect Hillary Clinton if we want to jump that far. But you know, if she does walk into the White House, she comes in with an enormous amount of baggage that’ll fill all the hallways in the White House. She comes in as one of the most unpopular presidents ever elected to that office. Molly, how difficult is it going to be if Hillary Clinton wins for her to effectively govern the country with that fabric that we’ve just been talking about? This very divided class and cultural warfare that’s going on.

Molly Ball: I think it’s going to be very difficult. And I think that without making any predictions about how the election’s going to turn out, we can expect potential president Hillary Clinton to call for a sort of moment of national healing, to say we can put all of this divisiveness and bitterness behind us and try to all come together. But given the type of polarizing figure that she is, I think that will be very difficult for her to do, and also given that the Republicans who do seem to be keeping their heads above water in tough races are casting themselves as a check on her saying to their constituents you have to send Republicans back to the House and Senate to stop whatever it is Hillary Clinton’s going to try to do. So that partisan polarization that has been the rule rather than the exception in American politics for the last several years, looks like it’s going to continue. And Hillary Clinton and her people believe that she’s always more popular when she’s governing than when she’s running for office. She was a popular senator from New York. She was a popular secretary of state. She’s a hard worker. She’s better at dealing with Congress than President Obama is; I think it’s safe to say. But a presidential race is a different ballgame. I think she will come into office tarnished and it’ll be very difficult for her to build those relationships.

Tom Clark: And you know, Luiza, I wonder too that the WikiLeaks revelations on the e-mails and what was happening in the Democratic camp and in the Clinton camp, it hasn’t really surfaced right now because there’s so much else going on. But should Hillary Clinton get elected, those things aren’t going away either. I mean it’s a corrosive thing on the first day of the presidency to have to face all of this. From your perspective, how tough a role is this going to be for her?

Luiza Savage: Well, I think there are two things to say about that. The WikiLeaks e-mails that have been emerging, most of the damaging content there is really damaging her reputation with the progressive wing of her party, which was already pretty fraught as it was. So how does she bring in, unify the party where they see her as a person of Wall Street, a person whose pro free trade, pro open borders? Well she could do a lot with personnel if she gave big jobs to people who were endorsed by the Elizabeth Warren, the Bernie Sanders within her own parties. Elizabeth Warren has already said, “Personnel is policy” and she’s going to oppose appointments to the administration in a hypothetical Clinton presidency who are too close to Wall Street. So that will be one source of internal tension. But externally, to follow up on Molly’s point, and as you know from having covered politics here, it all depends on who’s controlling the Congress. Will she have a Democratic Senate to work with or not? If it’s a Republican Senate, it’ll be clash after clash after clash. She’ll have difficulty getting officials confirmed by the Senate. It’ll be a lot of conflict from day one, if it’s a Democratic Senate that’s a little bit easier. That doesn’t mean she can get all her agenda through because they can still filibuster. She’ll need a lot more votes in the Senate. And then the House, if it’s a wave election, I think it would take a huge wave for Democrats to take the Congress for a variety of reasons.

Tom Clark: Fascinating election, certainly on this side of the border. It’s been interesting, shall we say to watch. We’ll do this chat again. Molly Ball of the Atlantic and Luiza Savage of Politico, thank you both very much, great conversation.

Coming up next, why Erin O’Toole thinks he can lead the Conservative Party into the future.

Tom Clark: Welcome back. Well, with just over six months to go, the Conservative leadership race is already a crowded and at times a confused one. On the very day that a poll put Tony Clement in second spot, he quit because he couldn’t raise enough money.

Well late last week, another hopeful threw his hat into the ring, Erin O’Toole, former air force captain and Member of Parliament for Durham, just outside of Toronto. And he joins me now. Mr. O’Toole thanks very much for being here.

Erin O’Toole: Thanks for having me.

Tom Clark: You know what they say in politics is that you generally got anywhere between 11 and 15 seconds to make a good impression on the voters. So let’s call it 15 seconds, what’s your 15 second pitch?

Erin O’Toole: My 15 seconds is I have the experience and the track record, in uniform in the military, and the private sector as a lawyer, and as a volunteer, and as a cabinet minister, to help the Conservative Party reconnect with Canadians. We’ve got a strong record, but we need to reconnect with more people before the next election.

Erin O’Toole: Absolutely, I think the leader or our party as a strong national party that hopes to govern again has to be able to understand and communicate with people in French, that’s a given. I spoke French when I was in the military. One of the requirements of leaving military college was having functional French, but it’s an area that I’m going to work very steadily on to make sure that the base I have continues to get better. But already I’ve been using it and people see that I have that capacity and I’m committed to making sure it’s better and better. So I do think it’s a fundamental requirement because the person leading the party needs to connect with Canadians in both languages and to listen even more than they speak. So you have to have that ability.

Tom Clark: Let’s go back to the definition of who you are in this race as a candidate. You know the modern Conservative Party in many ways is the Stephen Harper party. He created it. He was the leader. He was there for more than a decade. How are you different from Stephen Harper?

Erin O’Toole: Well there’s a different leader for a different time, Tom. You know I’m describing this as the next chapter for the Conservative Party. Stephen Harper helped bring together two parties into a merger, the modern version of the Conservative Party and then very quickly formed government first, minorities then majorities. I’m now at the ability that I can build on some of the success that Prime Minister Harper had, particularly on the economy, on trade, on rebuilding the Canadian Armed Forces, all elements I’m very proud of being a part of as a government. And now reconnect with Canadians, with a leader from a different generation, with a bit of a different style and focus on the fundamentals because did vote for change. But they didn’t vote for $30 billion deficits. They didn’t vote for new taxes. And so people are getting a lot of a different approach and they’ll probably start to miss that sound economic management Conservatives offer.

Tom Clark: Okay, let’s go to one issue where there seems to be a growing divide among Conservatives and that’s on the question of pricing carbon. As you know, the Conservative leader in Ontario, who is doing very well in the polls is in favour of it. Most oil companies are in favour of a carbon tax, are you?

Erin O’Toole: I don’t support the government’s approach on their carbon tax for a couple of reasons, Tom. First, it’s foisted on provinces, something the prime minister when he was running for office said he wouldn’t do. But second, this program needs to be on a North American basis. And I’ll tell you, I represent an auto assembly area of Ontario. They’ve just come through the economic storms of recent years; the Harper government helped them do that. And now plants that they compete against in Michigan, in some cases 20 kilometres away from Windsor will not have that tax imposed. So the government doing a top down approach is not the answer.

Tom Clark: Okay, but if that’s not the answer, what is the answer then? The Harper government, your government, promised government regulation. You didn’t do it for the oil and gas sector, so what is your solution if it’s not to put a price on carbon?

Erin O’Toole: Well there was some success in transportation and in electricity generation working with the provinces to—

Tom Clark: Yeah, but zero on the oil and gas industry.

Erin O’Toole: That was an area that we should have moved faster on, absolutely. But there’s ways that you can actually work on getting emissions down without imposing a tax that Canadians will have to pay embedded in all the things that are touched by fuel and things in the economy.

Tom Clark: Well, is it regulation?

Erin O’Toole: I think you can use the tax system potentially in the reverse as opposed to just being a stick requiring people to pay. Perhaps there’s a way where the government can actually incent and actually the government forego some revenue. So I’m looking at a lot of these potential solutions because what we’re seeing right now is a government that wanted to move, had a bit of resistance because province wanted their own approaches respected and that’s supposed to be how collaboration works. And then the prime minister imposed it on him. So you see even a Liberal premier in Nova Scotia balking against this. So I think there’s a way you can do it in a way that doesn’t put our economy at a disadvantage but still makes some progress on emissions.

Tom Clark: Ms. O’Toole we’re out of time, but it’s a good start. It’s going to be a long road between now and the debate when the leader is elected. But I appreciate your time today. Thanks very much for dropping by.

Erin O’Toole: Thanks for having me, Tom.

Tom Clark: Coming up next, Plane Talk with Cabinet Minister Navdeep Bains on what it’s like to be one of the most wanted people in government. That’s next.

Tom Clark: Welcome back. Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains arrived on Parliament Hill when he was just 26 years old. Since then, he’s been defeated and then re-elected, and now, appointed to a key cabinet post. And not surprisingly, he is now the most lobbied cabinet minister in Ottawa. I took him up for some Plane Talk about his faith, his family and meeting President Obama. Here it is:

Okay, you really want to do this?

Navdeep Bains: Oh absolutely, looking forward to it.

Tom Clark: Navdeep Bains welcome to Plane Talk.

Navdeep Bains: Well thanks very much for having me.

Tom Clark: Bollywood or Hollywood?

Tom Clark: You were born in Canada. Your parents came over from India.

Navdeep Bains: Yes.

Tom Clark: Have you found in your life and your political life that that has been a hindrance to you? Have you found that being Sikh has prevented you from getting where you wanted to go?

Navdeep Bains: The exact opposite. I think being a Sikh has been actually on a personal level, opened up a lot of doors for me. My grandparents raised me and taught me a lot about my faith, taught me a lot about my identity and I think that created a lot of confidence, which enabled me to do well in school, which now has enabled me to be in politics but also in sports as well. So for me, I’ve always seen it as an opportunity to shine. I look different. When I go in the room, I get a little bit of attention. Either I take advantage of that attention and do something good or I shy away from it. And I would say by enlarge it’s been a very positive experience.

Tom Clark: You’re in one of the hottest portfolios in this government right now. You’re also the most lobbied minister on Parliament Hill. How does that feel?

Navdeep Bains: I have a few friends now. In 2011, when I lost the election, I would ask my wife to call me to make sure my phone was working. And now, I can tell you, I’ve got a lot of people that are reaching out and calling.

Tom Clark: Single toughest thing about being in politics is what?

Navdeep Bains: For me personally, being away from my girls.

Tom Clark: You’ve got two.

Navdeep Bains: I’ve got two girls, Nanki is nine and Kirpa just turned six. And I’m in Ottawa, or travelling across Canada, or even internationally. And yes, I get a chance to call them or go on Skype, but it’s very, very difficult to be away from them.

Tom Clark: What do you do to relax when you’re away from politics?

Navdeep Bains: Sports, I love to play basketball. When I get a chance, I do play pick-up ball with my friends. When I went to the U.S. and I had a chance to meet with the president as part of the Canadian delegation during the White House dinner, the only thing I talked about with the president was sports and basketball. And I put down the Chicago Bulls and I picked up our Toronto Raptors.

Tom Clark: You just sort of throw that off. You sort of say, you know when I was down at the White House talking to the president. Now, for a kid from Mississauga, that’s kind of something to say.

Navdeep Bains: It’s as big, big deal. It’s a huge honour. As I said, my dad came here from a remote village in India, very humble beginnings, very modest, a few dollars, worked hard and now to be a Member of Parliament to be minister of innovation and to represent Canada at the White House, it’s a big deal and I don’t take it lightly. And it was a very, very special moment for me.

Tom Clark: What was your inside voice saying when you walked into the White House and there was Barack Obama in front of you?

Tom Clark: People have said, in fact there was a book written about it, that the people in the 905 area—that’s that area around Toronto—are fundamentally Conservative and that because there are so many recent immigrants in that area that it was going to be a Conservative stronghold. That didn’t turn out to be true in the last election. What’s your take on that 905? Are they fundamentally a Conservative group of people?

Navdeep Bains: No, I think they’re pursuing the Canadian dream. You know they’re living the suburban life where they have a home; cars they want their kids to have a good education. They want to enjoy a good quality of life. They might be Conservative in terms of some elements, fiscally Conservative but socially, a lot of those people are progressive, particularly as a community of minorities; I think they really truly value the social cohesion we have.

Tom Clark: You’re of an age when you’ve got a big lexicon of music, favourite song?

Navdeep Bains: So, I’m not a music guy, but my wife really loves country music.

Tom Clark: Country music?

Navdeep Bains: Yeah, so she grew up in Peterborough.

Tom Clark: Okay.

Navdeep Bains: So she’s a Peterborough girl and she grew up listening to country music. She never got into the whole Bollywood thing and she listens to different artists, but the one artist that I follow—Shania Twain, because she makes me listen to it.

Tom Clark: Your favourite Shania Twain song, can you sing me a little bit of it?

Tom Clark: That’s just saying.

Tom Clark: I don’t know, hearing Navdeep Bains singing country and western, I think is a slam dunk. Navdeep Bains, it’s been awfully good having you on Plane Talk. Thanks for joining me today.

Navdeep Bains: Well thank you very much, Tom for having me. I really appreciate it.

Tom Clark: Well that’s our show for this week, I’m Tom Clark.

Just a final thought before we go. And it is for the family of Jim Prentice: As good and decent a man as has ever graced the stage of public service, he was courageous when it mattered. See you next week.