Transcript
Transcript: 2026 Manion Lecture: The Canadian Political Conversation in the Age of Social Media
[00:00:00 A series of images of people walking in to the auditorium.]
[00:00:22 We see a dimly lit conference hall. The title page can be seen on a large screen at the back of the stage. It features a portrait of Chantal Hébert. Text on the screen: 2026 Manion Lecture: The Canadian Political Conversation in the Age of Social Media, featuring Chantal Hébert. The chatter of the audience can be heard.]
[00:00:26 The animated title page appears full screen, ad shows a montage of images as the narrator speaks.]
Narrator: The political conversation in Canada has changed.
Not slowly. Not quietly. But in a radical, sometimes chaotic, and irreversible fashion.
For decades, communication between governments and citizens followed a clear path. An imperfect model, but a structured one, nonetheless.
Today? The landscape has been turned inside out. Political conversation is instantaneous, emotional, fragmented. Social media is now the new public sphere, open to all, shaped and driven by algorithms. This new reality begs the question: who and what truly drives public conversation in Canada today?
To shed light on this transformation, a preeminent voice in Canadian political journalism. A journalist and columnist since 1975, she has covered Parliament Hill for Radio-Canada, La Presse, Le Devoir and the Toronto Star.
Across radio, television, and print, she is recognized as one of the most respected voices in political analysis in Canada.
Chantal Hébert.
Welcome to Manion 2026.
[00:01:56 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears on stage at a lectern. The screen at the back of the stage has a portrait of her, and her title: Master of Ceremonies.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 2026 Manion Lecture: The Canadian Political Conversation in the Age of Social Media.
[00:02:13 Text on screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, Senior Vice-President, Public Sector Operations and Inclusion, Canada School of Public Service]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: My name is Nathalie Laviades Jodouin. I'm the Senior Vice-President at the Canada School of Public Service, and I'll be your master of ceremonies this afternoon.
I would like to begin by acknowledging and respecting the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, on whose unceded lands we gather. We honour their rich history, culture, and languages, and recognize their continued connection as guardians of the lands and the waters. We are grateful to live, work, and learn on this land, and we honour their enduring presence and stewardship. As we continue to acknowledge the importance of reconciliation, we are committed to building meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples and recognize the significant contributions of Indigenous communities. Let us all take a moment to appreciate the land, the people, and the history. Thank you.
For over 30 years, the Manion Lecture has been one of the School's most important annual events. The Manion family can take pride in the legacy of John Lawrence Manion, the inaugural director of the Canadian Centre for Management Development, whose name is honoured through this event. It gives us the opportunity to engage in dialogue with eminent speakers from diverse backgrounds, professions, and points of view.
It also gives us an opportunity to be challenged by other professionals who question the status quo, wonder about the future, and help us expand our horizons and insights. Our keynote speaker this afternoon fits perfectly into the Manion Lecture tradition. Following her presentation, she will be joined by a panel of experts in order to delve deeper into the forces that are shaping the political discourse between the government and Canadians.
And now, about our keynote speaker. Chantal Hébert is a political columnist. In this capacity, she regularly participates in various radio and television news programs, including the weekly political panel At Issue on The National, CBC's newscast, and Good Talk on SiriusXM, hosted by Peter Mansbridge. She participates in the French programs Les coulisses du pouvoir and Tout un matin on Radio-Canada. Her columns are published monthly in L'Actualité magazine.
Since 1975, she has successively held journalistic positions at Radio-Canada covering Parliament Hill, Le Devoir, La Presse and the Toronto Star.
Chantal Hébert is a graduate of York University's Glendon College. She is a Senior Fellow of Massey College, University of Toronto, and holds honorary degrees from 12 Canadian universities. She has received scholarships from the Asia Pacific Foundation, Malaysia and Japan, on two occasions. She was awarded the APEX Public Service Citation in 2005. In 2006, she received the Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism and the York University Pinnacle Achievement Brighten Award. In 2012, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Her second work, entitled Post-Referendum Confessions, was published simultaneously in both languages in 2015. In 2019, her colleagues at the Parliamentary Press Gallery awarded her the Charles Lynch Award in recognition of her pan-Canadian political coverage. In 2024, she received the Michener-Baxter Award for Excellence in Journalism and in 2025, she received the National Order of Quebec.
Whoa! An impressive journey. An incredible list of accomplishments. We are so, so fortunate to welcome her and have her with us today. So, with that, please join me in welcoming Chantal Hébert.
[00:06:11 As the audience applauds and cheers, Nathalie Laviades Jodouin leaves the stage, and Chantal Hébert takes her place. The large screen now shows Mme Hébert's portrait. Text on screen: Keynote Speaker.]
[00:06:34 Chantal Hébert appears full screen. She is shown from several different camera angles during her presentation. Text on screen: Chantal Hébert, Canadian journalist, author, and political columnist.]
Chantal Hébert: Thank you, it was kind of you to come. No, seriously, every time I hear that, I think to myself: that poor woman must be terribly tired. Especially since along the way, I still managed to have two children, five grandchildren now, and my main task outside of journalism since the pandemic has been helping with homework. I even discovered over the weekend why they don't learn the "past participle" rule: it's because it no longer exists. For someone like me who spent all of 5th grade learning how to use the past participle, it was such a revelation because I was telling them: [translation] "The past participle agrees with a direct object." And then I would say: [translation] "The sandwiches that..." And I didn't understand why this explanation was never given in class. So, I am up to date with French language teaching. I understand there is a debate about this, but I am totally in favour of ending past participle agreement. I have chosen my side.
People who know me and follow me know that there is one thing I have always tried not to do, and that is preach. So, if you came here looking for an instruction manual with solutions, you're in the wrong place.
In words I never wanted to see in the title of my columns, and yes, I'm going to do what everyone else before me has already done, and I'm sure many of you have heard this before, we don't write the titles, it's not our fault. But I didn't want to see the words "should" or "devrait" because I thought that to preach, in a previous life, when I went to primary school in Quebec, I was taught that people who preach are religious and are not of the same sex as me, and that's perfectly fine, so I never thought of myself as a priest. I'm basically going to give you some observations of what I've seen. It's not scientific at all, but from what I've seen of the evolution or degradation of the conversation between the public service and the journalistic class, and the changes on both sides that have led us to where we are today,
What will follow is largely based on what I saw over my decades covering politics. I started off at Queen's Park and landed here once. Didn't stay. Came back 10 years later. And that time it stuck a bit more.
It wasn't my game plan, by the way, to be a political journalist. I had a great notion of what I would do in life. I was going to be a journalist, but I was always going to be behind the scenes. Things like that – microphones, cameras – not going to happen. I saw myself as a future editor. And, like more journalists who cover politics than you would know, I applied for a job as assignment editor early on and I didn't get the job.
And so, they shipped me off to Queen's Park to get me out of the newsroom. And I never came back. I did a panel once at the Université de Montréal for journalism students. There were 3 of us. And 2 out of 3 had landed in political coverage for the same reason. Someone wanted to get rid of them in the newsroom. And so, said, what a great parliamentary reporter you will be. Yes, right. Someone who doesn't want to spend any time with microphones or with cameras? Yes, I'm well suited to that.
A lot of the observations that are going to follow are based on a lecture on the media's influence on public policy that I gave for a couple of decades at the Queen's School of Business, so if there are any of you in this room that did take it – it runs for 2 weeks. It's just for public servants – so if you attended, then I apologize in advance. You will have heard some of those jokes and some of those anecdotes.
When the session started, I thought I had landed a really good gig. So, they asked me in 1999, and I was about to switch from La Presse to The Toronto Star, and I thought, "Meh, that sounds interesting. Why not try to give this? " I was doing it with Jeffrey Simpson, so we were sharing the work at that point. So, I wrote out my observations. And then they asked me again, and it became a twice-a-year thing. And at first I thought, "Wow, teachers have a great time", because I wrote it once and now I can just keep giving it.
Yes, except the media changed on me. And after a couple of years when they hired me to do this, it was the beginning of what was known, or what came to be known as the newspaper war. The National Post had just come into being. And a lot of that newspaper war was being fought on the field of politics. I believe my friend Paul Wells has probably benefitted from that war. It is the reason why I landed at the Toronto Star. Everyone was kind of beefing up political reporting staff so as to win the war. Obviously, there is very little left of who won that war because the main protagonists, like the dinosaurs, have kind of faded off. And it wasn't because a meteorite fell on them. It was just progress in technology.
But the two questions, or the two things that have not shifted, or the main thrust that has not shifted since I started giving this lecture was the question that was asked back then was the media's influence on public policy. And I still would argue to this day that then as now, the media's influence on public opinion at large is largely overrated, at least when it comes to public policy outcomes. I believe that to be just as true, or even more true today than it was then. There's this impression sometimes when you read about the state of the media, and I don't spend a lot of time looking at the state of the media because I'm more interested in the state of the Canada-US relationship for some reason. But there's always this impression that we all got the same facts and we all came to the same conclusions and on that basis there was a lot of the so-called now mainstream media had a lot of influence on public opinion.
But really, even back then when the media mobilized to promote a given stance, it usually didn't work. And I'm going to give you one example. I know there's at least one person in this room that has had some of that experience. The Charlottetown Accord, that was supposed to fix the constitutional war, was backed by every single editorial in the country, outside Quebec, and in Quebec by most, including La Presse, by most newspapers, editorially and in the coverage.
The Globe and Mail's title on the first day the Charlottetown referendum campaign was "The Battle for Canada Begins Now". And we all know how it ended, with a massive failure of the political business elites that were promoting the Accord.
It's interesting to note that even back then, you didn't need to be someone who had a lot of power, or a lot of sway, to change an outcome like the outcome on a referendum on the Constitution. The main politicians who opposed the accord were Jacques Parizeau and Preston Manning – and obviously they didn't work together on a strategy, although in later life they could have gotten along, they were both policy wonks, of sorts – and Pierre Trudeau.
That was the "No" camp. And yet the No camp prevailed massively across the country, versus a yes camp that included just about, well, every premier in the country, every leader of the opposition in the country, all federal leaders except for those associated with the Bloc Québécois, and the business community, and every editorial writer at the time.
That also happened at the time of the Iraq War. We tend to pride ourselves for the fact that we didn't go to Iraq with the Bush administration. What people forget is that back then, public opinion was split 50/50, and editorial opinion outside Quebec was massively in favour of participation. And yet, a couple of months after the war started and before it went sour, public opinion had shifted in support of Jean Chrétien.
So, these are things that I covered. And it convinced me that when you read that there was a time when the media was a light that guided people in the right direction, forget that. That light was dim and sometimes it led people astray. But in any event, people took note of it and then moved on and made up their own minds, which I think is a sign of a healthy society, to tell you the truth.
But where the media is at its most influential, and I believe it has gained influence, not necessarily in a great way, is within the so-called political fishbowl. And that was true back then and it is still true now. Politicians, policymakers, probably many of you, are more likely to react – I would say overreact – to media reports that touch you directly, than any normal reader.
And I understand that, because from experience, if you see your name in a story, or something that you are working on or your boss's name in a story, it becomes the only story. It doesn't matter that the website has 15 stories or, back then, that the newspaper has put the story next to the obituaries, it is the top story. The only one, while most normal people will probably not even have noticed the story.
But what is interesting and what hasn't changed is that the public service, the political class, in the larger sense, is much more likely to take its cue from what it sees in the fishbowl than the public is. So, I can't influence voters, possibly, but I can influence you into doing things that, maybe if you talked about them seriously, you wouldn't do.
These days the political class, and again in the larger sense, spends a lot more time in the so-called social media fishbowl than the average voter. Yes, I know people walk around and they're looking at their phones. But people, they're not having that conversation that is going on between us in the fishbowl. Whether it's on Twitter or X, or on panels, increasingly we are engaged with each other, but not in a conversational way. We are engaged with each other because we get instant responses. You're still there responding quickly, but not necessarily in the way of the old days.
That fishbowl, it's changed dramatically over the decades. It's become murkier. The glass around it is thicker. And I would say that maybe it's made up of reflecting glass. It's always more interesting to see oneself in action than to look at what's outside. And increasingly, I think we spend a lot of time looking at ourselves and a lot less time at looking at reality. In particular, when you are in the Ottawa environment, where I do not live anymore, but that has many of the characteristics that I left behind when I moved to Montreal.
In my last incarnation at the Star, when I would go to Parliament Hill every day, some days I would go to QP and then I would get in my car and think "this/that happened". And then I would ask myself – you know, you take the 417, there's Herb's, that where apparently you can exchange children and probably get some gas – and I would ask myself as I drove past Herb's, "So, does this still matter now that you've driven past Herb's? Or did you leave it behind? "
And I would promptly discover if I switched to a Montreal radio channel, even Radio-Canada that does pay attention to a lot of these things, I would quickly discover that what I thought was really, really important had not happened in the real world. Or it wouldn't matter in the larger scheme of things. And I thought, this is really great to be driving back and forth.
When I started giving the Queen's University session, and that was the late '90s, so 1999, here are some concepts that did not exist. Social media, I think people would have thought it was a dating agency. The first time I saw the Twitter bird on a TV screen, I didn't understand what was going on. Like, why is there a little bird suddenly with someone pointing at things? Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google. Ah! Filing to the internet, that sounds like a prescription for something weird. And the top question moved from who's the newspaper that's going to win the newspaper war, to who's going to survive and what is the model for journalism.
And we haven't found the answer. In case you think we found the answer, as an aside, Paul Wells here is doing great, doing something really different with Substack. Peter Mansbridge with Good Talk and his podcast is doing great. And I think they are examples of ways to get to break the box.
But whenever I look at that experience – mine, Paul's, Peter's – I always ask myself the same question. Paul and Peter and Chantal were not born to be the people that they are today. There was a newsroom somewhere that taught them the ropes, that got them where they are. Where are those newsrooms going to be that will be doing that for the Paul and the Peter and the Chantal of tomorrow? Because you can't just show up and say, I'm me – I know it's being tried – I'm me, and then you're going to get an audience, and you are going to be able to deliver actual useful facts to that audience if you haven't had the training ground.
I always compare covering politics, or at least my experience, as I showed up at Queen's Park with a xylophone, and eventually it became a piano, and if you're very, very lucky,
you play the organ, but you start with the xylophone. And if there is no more space for you start with the xylophone, [translation] "You will never get to the piano and the organ." And no, that's not true. I know it's tempting to believe that some of us are Mozart, that we can compose perfect music at our fingertips and go straight to the organ, but that's not the case. And if there's one thing you learn when you arrive on Parliament Hill, it's—and this goes in all directions—that you discover everything you didn't know. And that's when we start learning everything we don't know. But, if there is no place to do this, one day, the journalists who are considered today as people who have experience, who share it and pass it on to the public or to other generations, there will no longer be a place to train them. Or to be, like me, someone who at age 21 entered a newsroom thinking that my future was to stay away from microphones; grand game plan. I still managed to pay off a mortgage and raise two children. My fear, when I look at the state of journalism, is that it will become an "entry level" job, but when we become adults some day and things get serious, we will have to find a real job. And that worries me a little.
So, what has this done to the interaction between civil servants and politicians? Well, I believe that despite all the technology, the first and biggest change has been the advent of a 24/7 environment. And that basically means that stories – and the internet – stories no longer are dependent on a deadline.
They will not happen, can be published at 9 in the morning, or at 10 o'clock at night. They are forever available and people who are searching for them are also looking for them. The internet has changed the quest for information dramatically. It has turned the media's fishing expeditions, if you can call them that, into hunting trips. And let me explain why.
In the old days, I would have called a public servant to get some basic information and gone on from there. These days, if I call up someone, I will be loaded for bear. I will know all the basics. If I'm calling, I'm trouble. Because otherwise, I wouldn't be calling.
On that basis, the person who answers is no longer someone who is necessarily knowledgeable about the field that I'm asking about. It is someone that is knowledgeable in crisis management, i.e., Chantal Hébert left a message. Do you think they're going to look for the most knowledgeable person about the notwithstanding clause to talk to me? Or someone who actually would be good at fending me off and sending me in useless directions?
When I started off, I used to cover the Francophone education system in Ontario [that] was coming into being. And so, my job every September was to call someone I've never met but that I talked to 3 years in a row who worked at Queen's Park in the Ministry of Education. And we would go together through all the numbers of the enrollments in French language elementary school, how much— it was a business in growth at that point because the system was just getting in place. And using all that information, then I could do a number of news reports about what was happening with the school system.
But today, I would get all those numbers off the internet, and if I were calling Queen's Park, it would be because there is a problem somewhere. And I would be saying, "Please tell me how you're going to solve that problem." Which at that point, becomes more political, which at that point, brings about the person who's not there to help me but to get me off the back of whoever the minister is who is in charge of the problem that I have found.
If you think of government information shops, when I started off they were like walk-in clinics. So, mm, I hurt my elbow, some bad cases. Now they are more like emergency rooms. Heavy cases are showing up, and the response has been kind of transformed to along those lines. At the same time, there are less so-called beat reporters than ever before.
And part of the reason is that the capacity to cultivate solid sources in a given beat has taken second place to the need to be able to come up with reports and information in a timely fashion. And in many ways, not always, but in many organizations now, well-sourced journalists are often considered less valuable than speedy ones. And it's hard to be one and the other.
I've worked radio, TV, print. When I went from radio to print, I thought that I had landed in paradise. Suddenly, I could work all day, talk to people all day, and then write. When I worked in radio, it's like having a new baby. You need to feed the 8 o'clock, the noon, the 5 o'clock, the 10 o'clock, and you start again the next day. So, you're forever thinking, where is the formula? Have I heated it enough?
These days, print journalists, who do not necessarily work for print anymore, are expected to produce the same amount that I was producing as a radio reporter. i.e., they are feeding that beast 5 times a day if possible. And that doesn't give you a lot of time to think and to react. It cuts both ways. The reaction time for governments has been cut dramatically.
When I covered Meech, way back then, someone could say something in Newfoundland, and before it landed in Ottawa and someone in Ottawa had to react, it might take 24 to 36 hours. And in that time, there was time to figure out what was being said in one place rather than say anything in the other. When News World came about at the tail end of the Meech Lake debate, all of that changed in the sense that you could now see live. You weren't at the mercy of a reporter who asked something, who got on the wire, the wire story finally found its way to Ottawa, you were asked to go and get a reaction. You could actually see things happen simultaneously.
The weekend that Meech died, I had to decide where I wanted to be. The Manitoba legislature was going to vote on the Meech Lake Accord. Clyde Wells had to decide what he was going to do with removing the resolution. The Liberals were picking a new leader in Calgary, that would be Jean Chrétien. And for the first time in my career, I knew exactly where I needed to be. That was my office on Parliament Hill. Why? Because I had a TV set. And that was a revolution. It was the only place where I could actually see Clyde Wells, the vote in Manitoba, and whatever the Liberals were up to in Calgary, without missing out on the rest of the stories.
To give you a sense of how much that changed – not only the reaction time for governments, and even more so now that there is this capacity for journalists and politicians to communicate instantly with each other – let me run you through what control of the message was about and how it was possible back in the day.
In the mid-'80s, 1985, I was covering the Ontario election campaign. Frank Miller was the premier. I was on the Conservative campaign. And this was the day when Article 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was becoming enforced. And so, the premier was asked questions about the equality section of the Charter. He was completely out of his depth. He screwed up totally.
We were in Kingston. They put us on a bus, the tour bus. They drove us just outside Kingston to a very nice place that had a bar and a barbecue, and no phones, and no neighbours. And they fed us. But we couldn't file because we had no phones. And by the time we got – and you would have had to walk 10 miles to find the house, a very nice, picturesque place – by the time we came out, the Attorney General had given a news conference, and he'd fixed everything. Imagine trying to do that today. I mean, I sit on one campaign and if the other campaign says something, it's on my phone instantly. And I'm already turning around to get a reaction. And that does complicate the way that information can be dealt with by governments. The public is also consuming information differently, and that also changes the way that the political class and the public service can interact with the public.
Back in the days of the Constitution, every night I would see someone from the Prime Minister's office or others briefing Peter Mansbridge about what was going on behind the scenes. And I already knew that Peter would open the newscast by saying, "CBC News has learned." And there was nothing I could do about it because by the time he was on air, I had filed for Le Devoir and the story, my story, would be out in the morning.
But that meant that governments, the government, had a way to get its message out and its narrative out to a massive audience that would be impossible to ignore. Today, you can spend all the time you want briefing whoever you want. It doesn't matter. The news will be covered the way it is covered. And taken together, the changes I have listed above translate into one reality and it is that, so far, most governments have found that the best way to deal with the new information reality is to retreat behind a wall of relative silence, or with platitudes and slogans, rather than account for their policies.
And last example, because I'm going to give my friends from the panel a chance to say all their interesting things. So, in the old days, I would call one of you up after the "she left a message" thing, which didn't happen back then, so I could make phone calls and leave messages without putting anyone at risk of anything, including a heart attack.
So, I would call you up and I would ask you a question. And if the answer was to stonewall, the first answer would be a stonewall answer. But the second time I asked the same question, as a normal human being, you would add a few things because it's hard to say the same thing over and over again. And by the third question, usually coming at it sideways, you would tell me something.
But now if I send you an email, it doesn't take anything off your soul to respond. We are doing great, and this is all that we have to do because we are perfect. And if I ask again, you can answer again, we are doing great and we are perfect. And it won't hurt you. And, as a result, our conversations have become non-conversations.
We should have – because the internet, all of this free-flowing information – we should have had chance to have better conversations, but what we have done is retreat inside silos because it is impossible to control messages, and when you can't control messages, you increasingly default to dumb messages that are meaningless. And so, instead of an expanded dialogue we have, at best, a series of parallel soliloquies and at worst, thick cones of silence.
The last thing I want to say, because I always want to say it every time I speak about this stuff, and it's a word about the so-called good old days of political journalism. Yes, I was around for the tail end of that period. I was telling people before we came here that the first Christmas party that I attended on Parliament Hill, I had come late '70s when TV came in, clerking journalistic position, [I] discovered that Parliament Hill wasn't a great school for a young woman to be at. So, [I] decided to quit and go back and learn my job in Toronto. But before I left, because it was Christmas, I was invited at a Christmas party. My Radio-Canada colleagues said, "This MP – who shall remain unnamed here – is having a party in his office and we're all invited." So, we show up on Parliament Hill, MP's office, door opens, and I am the only woman who's not paid to be there. I'm also the only one not wearing fishnet stockings.
So, when people talk to you about the good old days, think that I wouldn't be here in the good old days. It wouldn't happen. And when people talk to you about how great the mainstream media was doing at doing this, my last anecdote, it's 1981, it's November. I'm waiting for a taxi outside the conference centre. The great stars of the English and French media in the press gallery – that's not me. I'm there to cover Bill Davis and I don't have a clue what I'm doing – but they're doing their stand-ups.
And one of them is, in English, is talking about Quebec and clearly he does not speak a word of French and doesn't have a clue what is being said in French. And the other one is giving a stand-up in French and he's talking about the rest of Canada, the big blob that moves every morning, he wakes up saying: [translation] "What could we do to tick Quebec off?" That's journalism from 1981–82, people who don't speak a word of French, but explain Quebec to Canadians. Great! And people who know Canada so well that the farthest they've visited is by crossing the interprovincial bridge to get to Ottawa. So, if you think there was a golden age, I invite you to forget that and then try to improve the one you have today. There are plenty of things that are better than before. Thank you.
[00:38:49 As the audience applauds, Chantal Hébert leaves the stage, and Nathalie Laviades Jodouin returns to the lectern. The camera shows various angles of Nathalie, and the entire stage that is set up with four chairs.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you very much, Madame Hébert.I think you've set the stage for what I know is going to be a very, very rich discussion.
[00:39:11 Text on screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, Senior Vice-President, Public Sector Operations and Inclusion, Canada School of Public Service.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: And maybe I'll just speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure this could be the case for all of you here, but next time I see the Herb's sign off the 417, I will be thinking of you, Madame Hébert.
So, with that, we have an opportunity to get into the next phase here with an esteemed group of panelists who are going to bring a range of perspectives to the discussion. So, to guide us through this conversation, I first want to introduce our moderator, Taki Sarantakis.
As president of the Canada School of Public Service and with a long career in public policy and leadership across the federal government, he brings a wealth of insight and experience to this conversation. Please join me in welcoming him to the stage.
[00:39:53 The audience applauds as Taki Sarantakis walks on stage and sits in the moderator's chair. The large screen at the back of the stage shows a portrait of Taki Sarantakis. Text on screen: Moderator.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: We are also thrilled to have Althia Raj with us today. Althia— I know, I heard some gasps— Althia is a national columnist with the Toronto Star and a regular panelist on CBC News, The National's "At Issue" panel, as well as Peter Mansbridge's "The Bridge" podcast on SiriusXM. Prior to joining the Star, she was HuffPost Canada's senior editorial manager and Ottawa bureau chief.
[00:40:28 The large screen at the back of the stage shows a portrait of Althia Raj. Text on screen: Panelist.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: She is the former host and producer of the HuffPost's "Follow Up" and the Toronto Star's "It's Political" podcasts. She's been nominated for several industry awards over the years and won the National Newspaper Award, John Wesley Dafoe Prize, for political journalism in 2021. Althia has covered politics for more than two decades and has co-moderated leadership and election debates, including the 2022 Ontario and 2019 federal election debates. Welcome, Althia.
[00:40:56 The audience applauds as Althia Raj walks on stage. Taki shakes Althia's hand and motions her to a panelist's chair.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: We are also delighted to welcome Paul Wells. Paul is one of Canada's leading independent journalists. He publishes a best-selling subscription newsletter and is a frequent commentator on English-language television and radio.
[00:41:16 The large screen at the back of the stage shows a portrait of Paul Wells. Text on screen: Panelist.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Paul has previously written for the Montreal Gazette, the National Post, Maclean's Magazine, and the Toronto Star. He has won the Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism, the Charles Lynch Award for Outstanding National Affairs Coverage, and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Thank you for joining us, Paul. Welcome.
[00:41:41 The audience applauds as Paul Wells walks on stage. Paul shakes Taki's and Althia's hands as he passes to a panelist's chair.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: And, of course, our panel would not be complete without our keynote, Madame Chantal Hébert.
[00:41:58 The audience applauds as Chantal Hébert shakes Taki's hand and then takes her place with the other panelists. Nathalie Laviades Jodouin leaves the stage. The large screen now shows Mme Hébert's portrait. Text on screen: Keynote Speaker.]
[00:42:12 The large screen shows named portraits of each of the panelists. Text on screen: The Canadian Political Conversation in the Age of Social Media
The camera shows various angles of the stage, including full screen views of each of the panel members as they speak, throughout the discussion.]
Taki Sarantakis: All right, so we're going to get going. We're going to give Chantal a few moments to catch her breath, maybe have a sip of water. We'll start with—
Chantal Hébert: Is that water?
Taki Sarantakis: Yes, more or less. It's not Sir John A. MacDonald water, it's regular water.
Chantal Hébert: Yes, well.
[00:42:34 Text on screen: Taki Sarantakis, President, Canada School of Public Service.]
Taki Sarantakis: So, we're going to start with our other two guests, and if you have tender ears, you might want to close them, because we've got three pretty opinionated people in terms of, they get paid to give their opinions, and they're pretty good at it.
So, we will get going. I want to ask Althia and Paul the same question to begin. I think if I was to take Chantal's core thesis and compress it into a sentence, it would be, "Don't lament the passage of a bygone wondrous age. It was never thus in journalism."
What's your reaction to that?
Althia Raj: I think we should start with Paul because he might have more <inaudible>.
Paul Wells: What's that?
Taki Sarantakis: And I have a very easy job because they talk so much, but I also have a very hard job because I'm not going to be able to control them.
Chantal Hébert: This is a trap that Paul is about to walk in. Go ahead, my friend.
[00:43:30 Text on screen: Paul Wells, Canadian journalist, and pundit.]
Paul Wells: First of all, if you're taking pictures, send me some, because what I'd like to do right now is take a group selfie. So, I'm very pleased to be with this esteemed group. Also, always happy to be speaking to a group of public servants, because I know how few of you are allowed to speak to me.
I sat myself down 3 years ago and tried to think about all of this in a systematic way, and I wrote 12,000 words in installments on my newsletter. And basically, the relationship between politicians and public servants and the people who write and talk about them has always been a matter of stimulus and response. It was much tighter and more trusting and more intimate, for good and for bad, 30 and 40 years ago because we were the only way they could get their message out.
The moment that fascinates me is at the crucial last step in the ratification of the Meech Lake Accord, Brian Mulroney invites two The Globe and Mail reporters into his office, Susan Delacourt and Graham Fraser, who quote him accurately and thus all is lost because he said he was rolling the dice on the future of the country. But Mulroney was not being reckless. It was the only way on earth he had to talk to Canadians that day.
Now there are millions of ways. And so, just as a matter of stimulus and response, no one is doing anything but responding to the avalanche of information that engulfs us all. And the opportunity that comes from having a million ways to reach at least many Canadians without having to go through the likes of me, that has uncoupled the relationship in complex ways.
The old world wasn't perfect. My gentle advice to communications professionals in this town over the last decade is, your response to this new world is also fraught and imperfect. And you should think about it. But I'll stop there for now.
Taki Sarantakis: Terrific. Are you willing to talk now, or –
Althia Raj: Yes, yes.
Taki Sarantakis: Are you going to pass it off to somebody else?
Althia Raj: No, of course not. I just thought Paul has more direct experience with the older way of doing things. When I started on the Hill, the internet existed. So, we did have to write several times a day, like we were wire reporters. We also had to shoot video. And we had to write stories on our BlackBerrys. It was quite a time. I'm glad I am no longer a print reporter.
[00:46:29 Text on screen: Althia Raj, Toronto Star national columnist.]
Althia Raj: I would say, I'm not sure the relationship between the politicians and the reporters has changed or the journalists has changed. I do think the relationships between the journalists and the public servants have changed. When I started on the Hill, you could call a department and get a background briefing, as Chantal was talking about. You could get, "I don't know much about the story, but like airport rents, it's not my beat. I've never written about it before." And sure, somebody would give you a call at 1 o'clock and tell you all about how it works and how the government negotiates deals and different size planes and this and that.
Now you send a media request, even early in the morning, and 3 days later you will get a comment saying, "The Government of Canada is doing a great job doing X, Y, and Z," that has absolutely nothing [to do] with the question you asked about 3 days ago that very early in the morning.
And when you can negotiate a background briefing, it's very often given by political staff who actually don't know anything. So, it's really not that useful. And so, there's not enough information flow that comes at you in a non-biased, objective way, and so you're forced to go outside of the government, obviously, to stakeholders who all have an interest in giving you a certain slice of that information in the way that they themselves want it portrayed, even in academia and whatnot.
So, I do think that that has changed. But I don't think the relationship between the journalist and the politician has changed, because at the end of the day, the reason that they are talking to us – you're right, I do talk a lot. Chantal already knows this.
Taki Sarantakis: I didn't say that.
Chantal Hébert: That's why Paul was lucky to get a word in.
Taki Sarantakis: She said you talked a lot. I didn't say you talked a lot.
[00:48:18 Althia holds a pen with both hands pointing upwards under her own chin.]
Althia Raj: Usually she does this on her chin. I can see it on the TV, and I know to wrap up. And I don't know where I was going, but yes, they will talk to you because they want you to know what's really happening. Usually they're angry about something and they want you to know what you're not reading in the headlines, what their leader is not saying. That hasn't changed in 20 years.
Taki Sarantakis: So, I'm going to bring you in in a moment. I want to go back to something else that was implicit in what Chantal said. And I want a kind of – a shorter from you –
Chantal Hébert: Oh, he's already roasting you here!
Taki Sarantakis: There was this notion that journalists didn't have power. Chantal was saying –
Chantal Hébert: Influence is not the same as power.
Taki Sarantakis: Thank you. Influence. The notion that the whole country, all the media, everybody lined up on one side, everybody reported, and Canadians kind of went, "Meh, I make up my own mind." What do you think of that thesis?
Althia Raj: I agree with what Chantal said. We hear it. People will come up to you often and say, "Oh, I love what you say." That usually means they agree with you. But politicians here pay a lot of attention to what you say. This government also, this Prime Minister's Office, the first time I met Mark Carney, he basically told me, "I don't watch anything that you say, and I don't read what you write, but also don't worry about this thing that I had said on TV, we're working on it." So, I'm not really sure, maybe he doesn't watch, but somebody in his office certainly does. So, I do think we have probably more power than we should have to influence the decisions that the government is making. And the other political parties. Do we have a lot of influence on what the public thinks about something? I don't know. We certainly have influence in terms of putting issues in front of the public. That I don't think has changed.
Taki Sarantakis: Paul, do you think you lacked influence in the past? Do you think you have more influence now, less influence now, as an aggregate profession?
Paul Wells: I think as a pretty strong rule of thumb, whenever someone comes up to you and says, "You have a terrible power, and you have to use it responsibly", they're greatly overstating the "Who gives a rat's ass what Paul Wells said this morning? " The short answer to that is the people who were terrified, so terrified of the prospect of talking to Paul Wells, that they're the ones who overestimate things.
I do think that there used to be a much greater commons, which boiled down to what was on The National last night, what's in The Globe this morning, and what is local talk radio and your local newspaper discussing. And I remember a couple years before the National Post launched, there was a sort of a proto-online publication called The New York Sun. Which later had a decent run as an actual print newspaper. Its main role was to tell people what the New York Times got wrong today.
And I was astonished at the idea that somebody in public would question the New York Times. Now, they weren't the first people to do it. The Village Voice in their print columns had done that, but the New York Times was the newspaper, and it was like the tablets down from the mountain. And the idea that there could be a different choice of topics, and treatment of topics, seemed very cheeky in the mid-'90s.
And by now, it's of course universal. So, that even people who would declare their undying loyalty to the notion of a free press will come at you with a hatchet if you badmouth their preferred candidate. When a few of us, very distant from the campaign in 2024, pointed out in the late summer of 2024 that Kamala Harris was doing not great, God, woe betide us. The breathless defenders of free speech were lining up to stop people from saying that because –
Taki Sarantakis: Because it might happen.
Paul Wells: The emotional stakes were too high. It was about Donald Trump. Everyone is The New York Sun now. Everyone is their own best critic of what the MSM, an acronym that I cannot, have never been able to stand, is getting wrong. It's all ages can play, and what could be more fun? Criticize the media.
[00:53:11 Text on screen: Chantal Hébert, Canadian journalist, author, and political columnist.]
Chantal Hébert: But I think in this country we have a different experience in the sense that if you see coverage for a long time, and less so now, interestingly enough, because I believe social media broke down some silos and restricted the license that some on both sides of the language divide, felt that they had to say just about anything about the other side, and it would go unpunished because they were catering to their audience.
But if you followed coverage in both languages, as I did, sometimes from the minority position when I covered Queen's Park, and the opposite from Montreal or Parliament Hill, you knew that there were different choices of topics. There was not a tablet that came down, and especially if you looked at the French language coverage, you knew that there was not one truth about federalism versus sovereignty. You were offered various alternatives of it. And they were legitimately debated. There are reasons why people – and they're normal reasons – the people who want to vote yes are not stupid, uneducated people, and they're not evil and good.
And that proposition was always presented differently in the French coverage than in the English coverage, where the good guys – when I got to the Star, my first column, I talked about sovereigntists and someone said, "In this paper, we call them separatists." And my answer was, "The day I see that word in my column is my last day with you guys." So, think before you act, because if people do not want to be called something, and it is used as a demeaning term, you may find that you're happy with it. But that's not how coverage works in a place where there is a divided society that holds different points of views.
But to Paul's point – and we are on the eve of a Quebec campaign, but we saw it also – do any of us remember the #WeStandWithTrudeau tag on Twitter every time someone dared say that Trudeau was going down the drain? He could have been dead, and we would have been castigated for saying this poor guy has died. "You don't understand, he's just sleeping." So, we are back in the –
Paul Wells: It's a tactical faint.
Chantal Hébert: Yes, he knows what he's doing, you just are too dumb to see.
Paul Wells: He's playing 3D chess, and you can't keep up.
Chantal Hébert: And the equivalent crowd exists for Pierre Poilievre, so it's not just a Trudeau phenomenon.
But in Quebec, we are coming back to – I've, in the past few weeks, gone again from being a staunch federalist to a closet sovereigntist. And I will be going back and forth in my identity for the next 4 months at least. And then if the PQ wins, then I've got the rest of my career to switch allegiances every second month. And that has been the case.
So, the thing to do is to do what you do and be the bearer of bad news for someone.
Althia Raj: Be hated by everyone.
Chantal Hébert: Yes.
Althia Raj: Then you know you're doing it right.
Taki Sarantakis: Exactly. Let's talk a little bit about the business of journalism, and maybe after this we'll talk about the business of politics, because they're both businesses in their own way. So, the business of journalism has dramatically changed. You guys each, you're kind of multimodal now, you've all got podcasts, you all write, you're all on different types of radio.
You, Paul, have probably gone the most on your own with your Substack.
Paul Wells: Yes, but I wasn't running to Substack, I was running away from my last employer.
Chantal Hébert: That's how it happens.
Taki Sarantakis: We're not going to say Maclean's, are we? But anyway –
Paul Wells: They didn't offer a buyout, so I didn't sign an NDA, and I am going to make them pay for that for the rest of my days.
Taki Sarantakis: You know, in Ottawa we have 2, 3 initials going on right now. One is WFA and the second is ERI. So, a lot of people in the room can relate.
So, we had a world where, generally speaking, ads sustained things. It was eyeballs. And we think today we live in an eyeball world again. We always lived in an eyeball world.
I remember there's a famous quote from Roy Thomson, who was the scion of The Globe and Mail, and he was called in front of a Royal Commission, and he was being grilled on news, news, news, and he said something like, "I don't know why you people are obsessed with news. News is just the stuff we stick between the ads." Like, that's the only thing that matters to us. We don't care about the news.
But the ads now are – the biggest advertiser in the world is Google. I think the second biggest advertiser in the world is Facebook. We all know about clicks and click baits and headlines. The economics, it seems to me, of this business have changed dramatically, and I think that leads us to a different type of coverage, maybe a little bit more sensational.
Chantal Hébert: I don't think I agree with that.
Taki Sarantakis: Fire away.
Chantal Hébert: I do think the business model is in trouble. But journalism is journalism. I see a lot of appetite for stories that are not spun out of proportion. I tend to go for the boring thing, and it seems to work. I have almost 300,000 followers, and I do not fight with people on Twitter. And I do not post pictures of my kids or my dead cat. Not happening. So, I'm basically a boring person that retweets stories once in a while. And these people, they are there for it.
Taki Sarantakis: So, you're not into, let's call it sensationalism.
Chantal Hébert: But I think "If it bleeds, it leads" was always the case. If I wanted someone to read the story that I wrote on equalization, I needed something to bleed on the front page.
Taki Sarantakis: Do you write your own headlines?
Chantal Hébert: Nobody writes their own headlines.
Taki Sarantakis: Exactly, that's the point. Why don't you write your own headlines?
Chantal Hébert: Because that's the way the system has always worked.
Taki Sarantakis: And why does the system always work that way?
Chantal Hébert: Because they know how to write headlines and I don't.
Taki Sarantakis: Yes. So tell us about –
Althia Raj: They'll have different headlines. The paper headline is often very different than the web headline. And they'll A/B test the different web headlines and then eventually land on something slightly different than what was there earlier in the morning. We have nothing to do with it. We know that there are stories, topics that click well, and you can see journalists gravitating towards that. You can see how well your story is doing online.
Taki Sarantakis: Like in real time.
Althia Raj: In real time. Yes, Yes, yes. In the last 10 seconds, how many people are reading your story, where they're going after they've read your story, where they're coming from, if they're coming from Apple News or they're coming from social media, or they came on the landing page or they read it through the newsletter.
And a lot of readers seem to like reading about Pierre Poilievre. It's not clear if they really dislike him or they really love him. They fight about it in the comments section. But the newspaper is financially incentivized to keep you on the page as long as possible. And so, you're fighting with other people in the comments section, the newspaper loves it.
And I would say there's probably more Pierre Poilievre stories than there deserves to be, but people like writing about him and people like reading about him, so we have a lot of stories about Pierre Poilievre.
So, I agree on some parts of your story, but in no newsroom have I ever been in has an editor come and said, "These are the topics that are trending, please write about these topics."
Paul Wells: For my entire career, the stuff I've written that's gotten the most reaction, the most traffic since we were able to measure traffic, has been the stuff that I cared the most about, that I had put the most work into. There's very few cases where something cheap and quick and easy has blown up. I think the readers have spent most of my career rewarding my highest instincts and punishing my most tawdry instincts, as a journalist.
And I think, because it's been an indescribably difficult 20 years in our industry, when people say, "You don't know what it's like", most of my friends in journalism have lost their jobs from one day to the next. Most of them. But that's bred a kind of a Skinner rat oversensitivity on editorial desks and a tendency to badly underestimate what the reader will tolerate and have patience for.
My business model, what I do, selling electrons on Substack, is not a model for the industry. It works very well for me. My business model is to practice the kind of journalism that 30 or 40 of my colleagues practiced in the 1990s and that my readers can't get anywhere else now except frequently at The Globe and Mail, The Star, La Presse, and CBC and Radio-Canada.
But they used to expect it just routinely in the Edmonton Journal and the Windsor Star. And now they've got to pay me.
Chantal Hébert: I think they should, by the way, if you're not –
Taki Sarantakis: So does Paul. He's constantly telling us.
Chantal Hébert: No, but he is right. I have to read I don't know how many papers at 4:00 am. But when I see his stuff land in my email, it's kind of the fun part of my day.
Taki Sarantakis: It really is.
Chantal Hébert: You work for the public service, but in a town where you are a bit insulated sometimes from the country at large. And that's okay. That is not criticism. But I will give you an example of why I think that when voters need to be there, they are there. And the rest of the time, when we write all those Poilievre stories, they move on because they don't need to decide anything about him anymore.
When the 2008 election took place and Stephen Harper won – a minority government but still won – there were budget cuts coming everywhere. And one of the notions that most newsrooms had was they were going to cut back on political coverage. They'd spent money in '06 and in '04 and again in '08, and then the government was just elected, let's cut down.
And then the parliamentary crisis happened. And you talk about clicks? The clicks went like this on every political story. That crisis that almost saw Stéphane Dion become Prime Minister of a coalition, of all things.
Paul Wells: Because it would have taken a crisis.
Chantal Hébert: Yes, it did. And even that didn't work.
Taki Sarantakis: Somebody was really amused by the fact that –
Chantal Hébert: Well, with good reason. I'm not sure it would have been funny, but it's a funny concept. But that crisis probably saved a lot of political coverage jobs on Parliament Hill. Because suddenly, The National, which was thinking, "Ah, those panels, blah, blah, blah" and then their numbers go over a million.
So, it's not that people aren't paying attention. It's that they are smart enough to know that they have a lot to do, and there are times to pay attention and other times to stand down. These days, as you know, they are paying attention. For obvious reasons, we all live in the same world. And it's both healthy and unhealthy. But they are engaged.
And it's not true that because the media is spread out, people have become indifferent to what is going on. It's the opposite. For an entire summer, when we were talking about Kamala Harris, Quebecers would come to me – lots of people talk to me, I don't know why – they would come and talk to me about politics. And I realized that for 6 weeks, no one had mentioned the name of Justin Trudeau or Pierre Poilievre or a Quebec politician. It was all Biden, Harris, Trump.
So, they are there. They've always been there. They make up their own minds. But you are not doing what you do for a bunch of people who don't care. That is not what's happening.
[01:06:02 Text on screen: Taki Sarantakis, President, Canada School of Public Service.]
Taki Sarantakis: So, let's talk about the people in this room for a moment. Most of the people in this room, and most of the people who will be watching this later on rebroadcast, they're public servants. And I have sensed a little bit of lack of happiness with the way we interact with you, the way our tribe interacts with your tribe.
Chantal Hébert: We don't interact with you. You send us inane emails.
Taki Sarantakis: Talk to us a little – you're lucky to get them, too.
Chantal Hébert: Yes, actually.
Taki Sarantakis: Talk to us a little bit about— because I think this is a very serious point. I think we have some culpability here, as public servants, because I think the fact that we aren't available to give solid, factual background to issues, I think that does a disservice to democracy. Talk to us a little bit about why we need to do better in this respect.
Chantal Hébert: I'll let Althia and Paul speak to this because they work in this town. But my understanding, from a distance now, is that it's not easy for a public servant to talk to a journalist these days because there are people who do not want that to happen. And political staffers are literally – Althia was quite right on that – it's useless to me that a political staffer calls me. And in any event, it's dangerous for that staffer. So, maybe we shouldn't waste each other's time.
But it does mean that the access to expertise of the public service, we don't necessarily think, and I don't know if the others will agree, that it's because public servants do not want to share their knowledge. It is that they are prevented.
Taki Sarantakis: Go ahead.
[01:08:07 Text on screen: Althia Raj, Toronto Star national columnist.]
Althia Raj: I feel like this question is probably better placed to the group than to us, but my experience is that there is a natural risk-adverse culture. Nobody picks up the phone anymore. You can call –
Taki Sarantakis: We don't have phones, by the way.
Althia Raj: But –
Taki Sarantakis: SSC took them away.
Althia Raj: Well, you get an email response back to the phone call on the voicemail that you left if you tried to call somebody. The government does not want you to talk. I mean, I said I think it's a problem, I think it's a big problem, but you also work in a hierarchy, and if your Deputy Minister does not want you to talk to the media, then we have to make a stink about it at the political level so that that culture changes.
I'm very worried about the secretive nature of the government. I'm really troubled by the Access to Information recommendations, proposals, whatever you want to call them, that the government has set forward that emails will no longer be kept. So, you know –
Taki Sarantakis: This is Ontario.
Althia Raj: No, here. I'm not talking about Doug Ford introducing a law, so he doesn't have to hand over the records that he was supposed to hand over. No, the government is part of an Access to Information review. I think it's every 5 years the law has to be reviewed, and Treasury Board has submitted guidelines. They do not want to keep emails as long as they have in the past. Now, we're going to have different views –
Taki Sarantakis: That hasn't passed yet.
Althia Raj: No, no, no, they're in the process of reviewing. This is the proposal the government has made. But to me, I find that really troublesome, and I think – it's very easy to get information from the United States, for example. And in fact, some of you who watch the news will know all about the Epstein files and why we have the importance of keeping emails for a long time. There is a natural risk-adverse culture from the public service and the politician and the political staff, and I think that's why we get less information.
But it also means that our stories are less complete, and the public is less well served. And if there's anything – it's kind of my public service message – that you can do in your own little box to communicate more fully or suggest more fulsome answers to the reporter's question, it would be really appreciated, not just from the reporters but I think from the public as well.
Taki Sarantakis: We actually do give you fulsome answers. Look it up.
Paul, you used to get people to talk to you. I don't know how you did, but you would always be breaking stories. And they were clear they weren't from politicians.
Paul Wells: So, it still happens, and I actually believe that the almighty clench up of the mid-2010s has started to relax.
Taki Sarantakis: The almighty clench up. Is that where – the muzzling, is that what you're referring to? I thought that was a sign of this.
[01:11:05 Text on screen: Paul Wells, Canadian journalist, and pundit.]
Paul Wells: The self-censorship, the utter horror of saying something that hadn't gone through an email chain. I think people have started to realize – and I think people at fairly senior levels have started to realize the futility of it.
Here's the futility of it. It's a practice in this town to ATIP the response to one's own questions. You ask a question, you wait a few weeks, they send pablum back, and then you ATIP the conversation and then it's like lifting the rock up and seeing what was underneath. And for a long time there, it was just routine to have an extra meeting to debate whether the answer would say, "The government is working with stakeholders," or "The government is working in cooperation with stakeholders." That was worth an extra meeting.
At some point, people started to realize that this was all in defence of the spotless government of a prime minister who had worn blackface so compulsively through his young adulthood that he'd lost track of how many times he'd done it. And that, to the extent that was the progressive side of the debate, they lost to a US president who's a compulsive bloviator who can't stop talking and tweeting all day long.
And message control does not help. It does not make governments last longer, it does not make them more successful at delivering policy, and it is a gigantic time suck. And people have started to –
So, there's this new Sovereign Wealth Fund, and I had questions about how it articulates with the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the Canada Growth Fund and BDC and E-I-E-I-O, and I asked a question about it on LinkedIn of all places, and it blew up, 25,000 impressions, 30 people added me on LinkedIn. I'll never understand what the significance of adding somebody on LinkedIn is because you never talk again. I think LinkedIn is a collection of everybody in the country who wishes they could talk to me.
Chantal Hébert: Exciting.
Paul Wells: But I sent a very bitter letter into the Finance Minister's office, and I said, "Look I've been wondering about this shit for a decade, and it'd be kind of swell if someone would sort of explain it to me as if I was a child." The Minister's Communications Director came up to me in the lockup yesterday and said, "Let's set that meeting up." I think people are realizing that the old ways are ridiculous.
Taki Sarantakis: Well, I think...
Althia Raj: Can I just –
Taki Sarantakis: Yes, yes.
Althia Raj: I think John is also a different – not all political staffers are the same and take agency upon themselves to respond.
Paul Wells: Yes.
Taki Sarantakis: We have – it's very strange in the government – we call them communications departments, but they're not. They're messaging departments. And like communication –—
Paul Wells: Can I tell an anecdote?
Taki Sarantakis: Absolutely.
Paul Wells: You thought Althia would be the one to talk. Some public service asked me to come to their gathering and talk about communications in public service. I said, "Okay, absolutely. Happy to do it. Thrilled to do it. My message will be that communication should be about communicating. And that what you should do if you're given a question is to endeavour to answer it."
Chantal Hébert: That's profound.
Taki Sarantakis: Is that an original thesis?
Paul Wells: Several days go by. One of this group says, "Could you send us your remarks? " I said, "I haven't written them, but what I'm going to tell you is that communications is about communicating."
A little while later, another meeting. A few people in the meeting who weren't in the previous one said, "Could you just go through what you're likely to say? " And I said, "Well, I'm going to say that your job should be to spread information to the people who elect governments in democratic society."
Third meeting.
Chantal Hébert: You are patient.
Paul Wells: Very senior guy.
Althia Raj: Are you being paid for these meetings?
Paul Wells: No, God, no.
Chantal Hébert: Well, you're being too patient.
Paul Wells: Very senior guy says, "You know, morale's not great in the public service these days. I just don't want you to say anything that might be shocking or demoralizing." An hour after that meeting, I sent them an email that said, "I'm the wrong guy for you. Find someone else who'll blow sunshine up your ass."
I later found out that what they got was two friends of mine who used to be journalists who now work in public relations, who told them that they are partners in the great democratic adventure of doo doo doo doo doo. And nobody went home any the wiser.
Taki Sarantakis: So, last question because –
Althia Raj: He's not bitter at all.
Paul Wells: I got to take the afternoon off, whatever.
Taki Sarantakis: Two of you have hard stops because you're going on to a very prestigious gala after this. So, some of your colleagues changed sides. They come to the government, they come to political staff jobs, they even run for Parliament.
Chantal Hébert: They go over to the dark side, we say.
Taki Sarantakis: Good thing, bad thing? Indifferent thing?
Chantal Hébert: I mean, I'm safe from that. It takes more diplomacy than I was born with, so it's all good.
Taki Sarantakis: I don't know, I'd vote for you.
Chantal Hébert: I mean, in this, it's always been the case. The guy who replaced me at Queen's Park became David Peterson's press secretary, and I can say this now, leaked the Meech Lake Accord to me an hour before deadline and hours before it was out. So, I have nothing against them crossing over to the dark side.
Taki Sarantakis: Paul, what's it like? Because if you pause for a moment, it looks like it could be like double dealing. Like there's something that kind of you go, "Oh wait, you were covering that yesterday and now you're – you were the umpire yesterday, or the something, and now you're the player.
Paul Wells: Yes. There's a limited number of jobs for people who read and write for a living, and you've got to work somewhere. Most of them love large parts of their new existence. By the second or third day, they know aspects of what goes on, on the political side, that I will never know. It's like they've been given the "One Ring".
And everybody involved in all this, the elected people, the public servants, the journalists, are good people who are trying to do their best for the country. And what I find upsetting is that so often the perception of the rules, or the perception of the sociology of the thing, keeps us from talking to each other during the workday the way we've so often spoken to each other like at –
Chantal Hébert: Grocery stores.
Paul Wells: Yes, exactly. And I've been at it long enough that I've got friends who were journalists who went into the public service and then retired. And in a couple cases, a name that would be familiar to Chantal, at least, say, "You were right all along. It was fun while it lasted, but my God, this is not a way for adults to interrelate."
Chantal Hébert: And we have noticed that you're all in the dark, so we can never identify you.
Taki Sarantakis: Althia, I'm hearing two for "very healthy, very normal, has always been like that". Do you agree?
Althia Raj: I don't like it.
Taki Sarantakis: A little more?
Althia Raj: Now you want me to talk. This is not a personal comment on the people who have crossed the floor. I do think, genuinely, people want to serve, and it's an opportunity to serve in a different way. And it may be an opportunity to see how things are done on the other side.
But so much of our democracy or social media existence is like, "Ooh, are you" – Chantal was talking about – like, "Are you a sovereigntist? Are you a federalist? Are you a conservative? Are you a liberal? Are you trying to gauge the tea leaves about your criticism of this policy means that you must be in this camp? "
And I don't even vote on elections I cover. I don't want to be personally involved. Frankly, I think if I did vote and I felt disappointed, I'd be a lot tougher on the government of the day. I just feel like it harms our profession that that happens, and I wish it didn't, but I also understand why people do it, and....
Chantal Hébert: You know, most of us have had the occasion to say no. And people always talk about those who go over to the dark side. I had this argument with Stephen Harper, who I believed had a case after he lost the '04 election.
Three or four of the journalists who covered this campaign went over to the dark side with Paul Martin. And for some reason, they were reaching out with those of us who did not. And when I walked into Mr. Harper's office, he was not in a good mood. And he said, "What am I supposed to think about all those people who gave me a hard time on my campaign and are now on the government's payroll? "
And my answer was, "Well, maybe you should think of all the people who said no." Because we also exist, except we don't publicize it. You don't go around saying, "I just told Paul Martin a tall tale because I don't want to work for him." It's just as bad to say no and say it publicly as to – What my rule is, if you're offered a job like that, you do not sleep more than one night on it. You can't be just doing what you do and thinking about it for 2, 3 weeks. That is dangerous.
Taki Sarantakis: Go ahead.
Paul Wells: Harper did pretty well fishing in the gallery after 2006.
Chantal Hébert: Of course.
Paul Wells: They always work for the wrong party after the right party loses, and then they come and work for, you know.
Taki Sarantakis: Okay, so you guys have been so great, we're going to thank you twice, but hold on for a sec.
You guys are three of the best journalists in Canada. You are insightful, you help democracy, and what I personally love about all three of you is you're irreverent. Each of your writings, every time we see you on TV, you make all of us kind of smile a little bit with the fact that you go out on a limb a little bit beyond just reporting the facts. You hide your personalities as much as you can, but they slip out a little bit in print and in paper.
Althia Raj: I didn't know that we were hiding.
Taki Sarantakis: So, for the first time, please join me in welcoming and thanking.
[01:22:15 The audience applauds as Taki Sarantakis thanks the panelists. Nathalie Laviades Jodouin returns to the lectern. The large screen shows a portrait of Nathalie. Text on screen: Master of Ceremonies.]
Taki Sarantakis: Now, you've got to sit, and we're tossing it back to Nathalie who will give the official thank you.
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Yes. That's right. So, thank you again to our panelists, our keynote speaker first and foremost, Madame Hébert, Paul Wells, Althia Raj, Taki, for the discussion today.
[01:22:50 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen. The camera then shows views of Taki and the panelists.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: And, if you'll indulge me for a moment, as we conclude this year's Manion Lecture, I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the recent announcement by the President of the Canada School of Public Service, Taki Sarantakis, who has decided to retire after 29 years in the public service. And if you know Taki, you know that he doesn't like fanfare, he doesn't like the spotlight, and I'm sure he's quite uncomfortable right now. And I have just put my PMA rating at risk, but that's okay. That's okay.
I think it's, however, entirely appropriate, Taki, in the presence of your colleagues and your peers and your family to take a moment for me to say the following. You are a disruptor, you're a truth teller, and you are a fearless decision maker.
[01:23:32 Taki Sarantakis appears full screen, then moves back and forth from Taki to Nathalie.]
Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: And since you joined the School in 2018, you've really evolved the organization to be highly responsive and relevant to the needs of public servants.
So, today we came together to listen, to learn, to be challenged, and in exactly the way that Taki encourages all of us to do. So, with that, Taki, you've had a lasting impact. I want to say thank you, on behalf of all of us, for your work for Canadians in the public service. We're going to miss you. And I wish you well in your retirement.
[01:24:07 The audience applauds and cheers. Taki stands and shakes hands with each of the panelists.]
Taki Sarantakis: Thanks so much.
Althia Raj: Thank you very much.
Taki Sarantakis: Thank you.
Chantal Hébert: You're welcome.
[01:24:35 The audience continues their applause as the panelists leave the stage.]
[01:24:38 Following the lecture, several attendees share their reflections in brief on-camera interviews.]
Interviewer: Is this your first Manion?
Speaker 1: Yes it is.
Speaker 2: It sure is.
Speaker 3: No, it was my third Manion lecture.
Interviewer: And what did you think?
Speaker 3: It was great. I mean, Chantal Hébert is a clear leader in this field. She's such a prolific commentator. And she has so much to offer to public servants, in terms of what Canadians are thinking about, and how to bridge a lot of the divide that's happening in the world these days.
Speaker 1: It was a great conversation, really appreciated hearing the perspective from the other side of the wall.
Speaker 2: I loved it. I think it was very inspiring, and to be able to hear the journalist talk about how as public servants it is for us to control the narrative and to be able to provide the information so they're not getting it from elsewhere and to be able to present facts I think was quite important.
Interviewer: What was your favourite part? What do you think was the most standout part of the event?
Speaker 1: I really appreciated how open the panellists were in telling us their truth or what they saw as the truth in an unvarnished way.
Speaker 2: I think it's making sure that when you're reading the news, you're looking at the sources, right? Because I think right now, from the conversation that we've had, it seems like they'll publish anything, because they're not getting enough information. So making sure that the news that we're reading and that we're using as part of our own briefings is really based on the truth and it's factual information.
Interviewer: Do you think this is something that you're going to be taking away with you and trying to integrate in your own work?
Speaker 3: Well, I work at the Canada School of Public Service, so a lot of what we do is about engagement and the need to talk to people with opposing views and to really put aside politics and be non-partisan and to find out what the other perspectives are and really think deeply about issues. So I think the answer is yes.
Speaker 1: Definitely, I actually already sent it to some colleagues. Chantal Hébert said at one point that we don't interact with the media, and I view that as not interacting with the public. We actually send inane emails.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think it's looking at the news in a different way, where in some ways we're working together to tell the story of what's happening in government and what's happening in Canada. So just making sure that, I mean not that I'm able to actually feed information to the media, we've got a communications team for that, but when we are requested to provide information that is going to be public information, trying to make sure that it's as concise as possible and that it really does give the content and the bone so that when we do put it out there, there's a bit more meat on the bone.
[01:27:17 The CSPS logo appears on screen.]
[01:27:23 The Government of Canada logo appears on screen.]
