The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge
Moore-Butts - Managing a Caucus - How To Spot Problems?
09 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday. That means more butts today. That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Gerald Butts and James Moore. It's another conversation and a couple of interesting topics today. We'll start with this one. Twice in the last week, a major newspaper in Canada...
has done reporting suggesting that there are tensions, let's put it that way, within the Liberal caucus meetings between the Prime Minister and those who are in attendance. There have been the occasional testy moments. Now, it's being denied by caucus management. I don't think it would be surprising that there were testy moments within any caucus at different times.
But how do you, as both of you have been in caucus one way or another, James as a member and Jerry as a principal secretary to a prime minister, and also earlier than that as a premier in Ontario, not Jerry as a premier, but as a principal secretary. How should we look at this situation? Kind of a story. James, why don't you start?
Also doing business, normal push and pull of things. When Prime Minister Carney is, though, at the mid-40s and the Conservatives are in the mid-30s, so you have this strong gap in terms of electoral outcomes. Some people say, well, he's really popular, so why are people speaking out?
I think people speak out or leak out, at least to Althea Raj, because they think that they can and there's not really any consequence to it. The Prime Minister has lots of strength and support. He has his majority in Parliament that will probably be a durable one, depending on how the by-elections go and other floor crossings and if other block MPs leave, the whole dynamic we know.
But if it turns into a durable majority and he's got wind in his sails, well... maybe now's the time to speak out. Maybe now's the time to sort of, you know, let my elbows out. If the, you know, what, seven of the last eight elections have yielded minority parliaments, six of the last eight, rather.
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Chapter 2: What tensions are reported within Mark Carney's caucus?
And so when you have a minority parliament, you feel really kind of, bound in by the risk of the limits of your mandate. You've got to support the leader. We've got to be careful. Things are thin. We're trying to accomplish what we can. But now that we have this, then people can start speaking out. To give credit as well, frankly, to the prime minister, it shows that he's trying to do stuff.
that he's willing to offend people and upset people. And that's okay. Because I think there's, there's, there's room for that. Another part of this is also just a very human element, you know, 175 people in a room, you know, these are 175 different people who come from different parts of the country who might have actually have a different cultural workplace expectation.
And so there's, there's actually cultural divides in Canada, but how you deal with one another, there are people who are elected, who have been elected for 20 years. There are people who come came in with the, frankly, with the Justin Trudeau crew who have a, hug hellos in a different way of doing things. At least that's your perception. Jerry can clarify.
But there's a different sort of habits and values and mores and dispositions and way in which you sort of operate on a daily basis. Mark Carney has a different one. Some people like the Trudeau one. Some people like the Carney one. The inverse is true. The people who don't like the status quo are going to whine a little bit. This is all kind of ebb and flow, normal stuff.
The fact there's a story about it, maybe it's a slow news week. It's not a slow news week, but it's an interesting news week. And So yeah, I don't think it's a big thing.
It could spin out of control if he's seen to be obtuse and you have a cohort of people from a particular region or a particular ideological window of the liberal universe who might coalesce around this dissatisfaction of style coupled with substance that could then weaponize against the leader. I don't think there's any evidence of that yet.
Okay, just to be fair to Althea, she wasn't alone on this story. She was alone for a while. She was alone for a while. And the focus was on her. But by the weekend...
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Chapter 3: How do personal dynamics affect caucus meetings?
The Globe ended up doing a piece, too, perhaps even more detailed. Different kinds of examples, but nevertheless, they fell under the same bucket, so to speak. So it wasn't just one news organization. It was two, and two of the best in the country. So it's interesting. Jerry, where are you on this?
Oh, well, this is dancing through a minefield for me, Peter, because I know some people involved. I'll try and stay true to our obligation to our audience here and just tell people what I think. I always find these stories, and every prime minister or premier deals with a version of this story at some point, that there are disaffected members of caucus or there are
people who don't like the way he or she does business. And there's always, as Richard Brennan once said to me, you need to learn that plain lands is not a story. So there's always a market for problems being caused by the prime minister's behavior or his relationship with caucus or a premier, et cetera, et cetera.
And I kind of put these stories in that context, but there are a couple of really interesting things about them to me. And the most interesting question is never to me the story itself, but why those stories are happening now. Right. And I think that a couple of things are worth observing.
One is that these are three very senior women journalists on Parliament Hill that have a lot of respect because we talked about Althea Raj, but it's also Stephanie Levitz and Marika Walsh. These are people who have broken stories themselves in the past and who command the respect of their colleagues.
So the thing you're worried about when you're the subject of these stories, and we all in different ways have been the subject of these stories over the years, is when is it going to stop? Is it going to create a trend? And what can I do to arrest the worst case scenario?
And another thing that's a perennial complaint from journalists is that they don't have enough access to what's happening in the prime minister's office or what's the prime minister's thinking behind things.
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Chapter 4: What insights do former officials provide on caucus management?
Those complaints are around Parliament Hill now with this prime minister. So to me, I do agree with James that it is a normal cost of doing business, but sometimes normal costs of doing business can kind of get out of hand and you have to arrest them before they become a negative thing.
I think in this particular case with this particular prime minister and this particular caucus, and I'll try and talk about the structural issues, You've got a person who didn't really know a lot of these people when he became their leader and vice versa is also the case. I don't agree with those who say that Mark Carney hasn't been as advertised. And you hear this complaint on the
uh mostly on the left i think mark carney is exactly as advertised i think this is who we built a campaign around a year and a half ago this is the core promise that he made that it was going to be a change in policy direction style and substance from the trudeau years and that's exactly what people are getting across a broad variety of fronts from a policy perspective
He's probably done stuff that has surprised people who voted for him, but that's always the case. And in his case, he doesn't have a long track record on a lot of the issues that were cataloged in these stories. So his caucus is probably learning how he feels about them for the first time.
Overall, I don't I also don't agree with people who are like, yeah, he got elected so he could kick the crap out of liberals. That's not what happened here. And you're probably terminally online if you think that that's germane to the discussion. I think he's got to make sure over time that he keeps his team together because as we've seen and.
prime ministers, first ministers of all kind learn at their peril that if they don't keep their team together, they don't keep their job. And I don't think we're anywhere near that with Mark Carney. I think the last dynamic I'll describe, which again, I think has happened in the past, is Because he has a majority, the media has decided to be the opposition, right?
I think a lot of people have written off Pierre Poiliev as leader of the opposition. I'm not one of those people, as you know, but I think a lot of people have written him off and the media has decided it's their time to not vote. And journalists are proud people, as you know, better than anybody, Peter, and they don't like being shepherded into consensus opinion.
And I think what you're seeing here is some of the most senior journalists on Parliament Hill saying we're not going to roll over for this government.
You know, we had a saying in the 70s when Pierre Trudeau had the majority from 74 to 79 and was the EPO, the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition, and the EPO was the media, right? And they were having to take the role as the Conservatives were somewhat disjointed. You know, Stanfield was on his way out as leader. Clark eventually was on his way in.
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Chapter 5: How do cultural differences impact caucus interactions?
Yes, it's meant to be. That's not always the case, obviously, depending on, frankly, depending on where you are on the polls, depending on how the follow-ups are followed up on or not, depending on whether or not the whole exercise is performative and garbage or whether or not it's actually meaningful and structured. Caucus meetings are really important.
I know that Prime Minister Harper, I know it's true, or I'm told that it's true by too many people for it not to be true.
that Prime Minister Mulroney and others, the caucus meetings are enormously important because you might have a majority of 211 seats or 175 seats or whatever, but if five members of caucus stand in unison down in the press room and they say, this prime minister doesn't get it, they don't understand our region, they don't understand our region, it blows apart. It all blows apart.
It doesn't take much. It It doesn't take many people to knock a government completely sideways and off message. And so caucus meetings are enormously important. And I know it's true of Prime Minister Harper. Other prime ministers have their approach, but he would have his chief of staff in the room.
I frankly often sitting to the side, but sort of angled to the front so that the chief of staff could observe the room and the body language, not, not as like a nothing awkward, but to try to get a sense that they said their thing, the prime minister saying his thing, the house leader said his thing. They're trying to reflect back and, Did we read the room right? What's the follow-up?
Who in the room said nothing but is clearly visibly really upset? Who needs to be reached out to? You're managing 200 people of really different personalities and egos, frankly, life cycles. Some people have been in politics for 20 years and this is their last chance and people are new and they're fresh and they're keen and they're... Maybe they have a misperception of things.
But it's a big group of egos and personalities that have to be managed. And you have to take it really serious. So this is a warning sign coming back to Prime Minister Carney. This is a big moment for his government and for his caucus management because he is new to this part of it, is that these are ā You know, wildly different personalities with different expectations.
Everybody wants to live a life of purpose. Most people have chosen public office as their one shot in life to do something really significant, high profile for themselves, their family, their community, their country that they think they can do something meaningful in.
It matters to them and it matters to them when you're asking them to reverse themselves after 10 years of doing going in this direction on carbon taxes or whatever. It matters to them that they're taken seriously and that you understand you're asking a lot of them to swallow a lot of pride and dignity and reverse themselves.
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Chapter 6: What role does media play in shaping perceptions of political leaders?
the most most importantly for practical reasons like the prime minister is a very busy person and if you're expecting him to keep a list of all the things that you need done then leave this two-hour meeting go have another hour-long debrief with his staff remember everything correctly and then farm out all of the tasks that need to be associated with the issues that have been aired in that caucus it's just a very inelegant way of solving problems in my
And it's going to create friction that will build up over time. And I'm fond of this, excuse me, this axiom that there are three kinds of conflict in any organization. There is a process conflict, which is, I don't like the way we're doing this. There's content conflict, which is, I don't like what we're doing. And there's interpersonal conflict, which is, I don't like you.
And you can usually solve the first two. If they become the third, it gets really, really difficult to solve. And I think that this is one of those moments, and James said it, this is one of those moments in the life of a government where, and for Mark Carney, a lot of the stuff is new. You know, I was chuckling when you said he's never been in a caucus before, James.
Goldman Sachs resembles a lot of things. The Bank of England resembles a lot of things. The closest he's ever come to a caucus is a hockey team. Yeah. And as he has for the last 14 months, and apparently, if you believe the polls, with great skill, he's got to learn new skills, new things as he goes along. I agree with all that.
Can I tell you a story that I think is apt to all of this? And it's a warning sign for this life cycle in the government, because you have, he's ported over so many people from the Trudeau time, and then he's trying to onboard his new people and all that. And so he's in this transitional phase. of understanding his caucus and all that. Everything. I don't agree.
Don't disagree with anything that you said. One of the warning signs that happened and I'll, I'll mention her name because she's told the story publicly. So I, so I don't think it's in any way unfair. Shelly Glover, for those who don't know Shelly Glover, Shelly Glover was a conservative member of parliament elected in St.
Boniface, Manitoba, a writing that, that pretty much since the, not by accident, pretty much since the, the, the,
The invocation of the Official Languages Act has been a liberal rioting, but it went conservative when we won a majority in 2011 because, obviously, a large Francophone community outside of the province of Quebec, they thanked the Trudeau government, Trudeau Senior, and therefore passed on to Junior why we lost it in 2015 with protecting the French language outside of the province of Quebec with the Official Languages Act.
But in 2011, there are 20 riotings outside of Quebec. that have more than, I think it's 15 or 20% of the population that speak French first. And the Conservative Party, we won like 15 of those 20 ridings. One of them was with St. Boniface, in part because Ignatieff wasn't saleable and yada, yada. Anyhow, we won this riding, unique riding. We don't typically hold the riding, St.
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