Juno News - October 18, 2020


Trudeau stonewalls while Ford changes his mind


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

215.08525

Word count

1,518

Sentence count

1

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

What's the difference between a flip-flopper and a stonewalling politician? In this episode, we compare two Canadian politicians and see how they have handled tough spots or challenges and see if there is a difference between the two.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 so why is political messaging different from almost all other forms of communication well
00:00:12.140 there's one simple answer and that is elections or re-elections politicians cannot do anything
00:00:17.480 unless they are in office and so they constantly have to think about what they're doing and what
00:00:21.700 they're saying how that's going to play with voters and if it will hurt or increase their
00:00:25.500 chances of re-election now i want to compare two canadian politicians and talk about how they have
00:00:31.200 handled tough spots or challenges and see maybe what the difference is in messaging and how that
00:00:36.380 has worked out for both of them so the two people that i want to compare number one is doug ford and
00:00:41.700 you can see by a lot of the news articles that i'm going to pull up here he's often quoted as
00:00:46.020 changing his mind or being flexible willing to listen to experts so doug ford changes his mind
00:00:51.320 on the autism funding plan doug ford changes his mind about bigger class sizes doug ford changes
00:00:56.940 his mind about the green belt and there's really a trend here you can just look up doug ford changes
00:01:01.600 mind and there's tons and tons of articles that will pull up on the search results and in a sense
00:01:07.040 that's really interesting because ford has really walked that tightrope between being able to change
00:01:11.940 your mind versus being called a flip-flopper or walking back or taking back or some of these kind
00:01:17.940 of terms changing mind has that semi-positive connotation where you're you're changing your
00:01:23.520 mind it doesn't necessarily have the negative about your flip-flopper you're walking back
00:01:27.180 but it can definitely be spun as a positive in the sense that you say well i'm willing to listen to
00:01:31.940 experts uh you know i come in with a preconceived notion and so then experts or the public speaks to
00:01:37.140 me especially about the the autism that was very very tough um for ontario members of provincial
00:01:42.100 parliament um they took a huge beating on some of the original autism changes and it doesn't even
00:01:48.700 matter whether or not by the way the changes were good or bad it's just simply the we're just simply
00:01:52.300 here talking about the messaging uh and the response from the public and what ford was able to project as
00:01:57.040 an image afterwards so changing your mind seems to be uh working well here this is a negative changing
00:02:02.980 your mind from reddit but changing your mind seems to be the thing that doug ford has got going for him
00:02:07.300 and he somehow avoided being labeled as a flip-flopper when you compare that to our prime
00:02:13.080 minister justin trudeau uh he seems to be more the stonewalling type and there's pros and cons to both
00:02:19.380 but let's go through some of the stories here just refresh our memories uh this one is a doozy i will
00:02:24.560 see if we can get that linked in the comments for you because it was great the opposition asked 18 times
00:02:29.620 if uh the prime minister had spoken to the ethics commissioner and uh all 18 times he gave the exact same
00:02:35.360 answer it's i don't know whether to laugh or cry it was a pretty ridiculous exchange in the house but
00:02:40.140 definitely something you should watch especially if you're an avid uh political person like i am
00:02:43.860 then there was uh this one uh you know they're just kind of leaving it without a budget they're not
00:02:48.340 really paying attention i guess uh you know sideshow issues are really taking the center stage and so
00:02:53.760 uh you know who needs a budget we're just kind of going to ignore that one um then there's uh this one
00:02:58.940 which my colleague leo knight spoke about this is regards to the uh the um we scandal in the
00:03:04.820 committees uh and how they're really just trying to filibuster waste time and uh you know just delay
00:03:09.860 and and obfuscate and so these are really the two sort of strategies you can take i mean there's more
00:03:15.180 but these are the two main strategies that people can take it's either changing your mind or really
00:03:19.880 holding firm and they have some pros and cons we already spoke about the potential downside of being
00:03:25.560 labeled a flip-flopper if you change your mind what's the downside about stonewalling well stonewalling
00:03:31.920 you try to control the amount of information out there and so you have there's a certain amount
00:03:37.920 of ammunition which you already exists which can be shot at you but you are basically trying to close
00:03:42.700 that down and you're not trying to give the opposition or any critic you're not trying to
00:03:46.020 give them any more information i think that is really what the conservatives are picking up on right
00:03:50.540 here saying that there must be something to hide if the liberal government is working very hard to
00:03:56.080 uh to bury everything in in the we scandal there's got to be something there but the stonewalling 1.00
00:04:02.520 actually really seems to be working i don't know to be honest how far this is penetrating how far this
00:04:07.920 news is penetrating to the average canadian because there's just simply so much going on we are very
00:04:13.620 distracted by what's going on in the united states uh we're very distracted by obviously the
00:04:17.740 coronavirus which is constantly hanging over our heads and so the two different types of political
00:04:22.940 messaging are here for us to see now i think the final thing that is important to keep in mind when
00:04:28.680 thinking about political messaging again is the re-election now when we're talking about ford so
00:04:35.420 ford seems to be a guy who's changing his mind and he can definitely use that when we're talking about
00:04:39.780 re-electing ford saying listen you know i'm coming in with a certain amount of perspectives they might
00:04:44.080 might be conservative perspectives um but i'm willing to listen to experts and i think this is sort of
00:04:48.900 where he is getting into some trouble with the uh renewal to stage two in in a modified stage two
00:04:54.780 in some areas in ontario where it seems to be that ford is listening to the experts and the experts are
00:04:59.380 telling him well we've got to you know we've got to do something because the cases are going up again
00:05:02.900 and so this is maybe the downside of ford changing his mind being willing to listen to experts or other
00:05:08.300 people but it's definitely you know there's got some some room to play with uh for a re-election
00:05:13.400 campaign or for trying to position yourself as a leader a real responsible leader someone who listens to
00:05:18.600 experts listens to the people uh that i think fits with doug ford's overall brand he was for the
00:05:22.820 people he you know that's his big thing being for the people and so it'd be very difficult on one
00:05:27.100 hand if he did not take this tack because unless you're going to start saying well i know what's
00:05:31.780 better and i know what the people want i know what they need you know then they start complaining
00:05:35.860 and showing that clearly that's not what they want or what they need uh and pull the rug out from
00:05:40.040 under you so this is on one hand based on ford's positioning his messaging this is really the main
00:05:45.760 route which he which he can go um which which makes the most sense trudeau on the other hand
00:05:51.760 stonewalling and simply not allowing any any information you know he might be relying on the
00:05:57.540 fact that uh the conservatives have a new leader erin o'toole who is less known less popular uh than
00:06:02.720 he is um they might be relying on the fact that uh the government is giving out tons of money
00:06:08.260 for the covert response and so maybe they're just going to hope that um the conservatives will will say
00:06:13.520 something they can frame negatively negatively and say well you know you got to stick with us
00:06:17.820 because we are going to ensure that you are getting uh food on your table and uh you know that's kind
00:06:22.540 of the way so these are the two different perspectives um you know they seem to be they seem to be more
00:06:29.280 a natural fit for each person uh but you know what do you guys think simply on a communications
00:06:35.080 perspective what do you guys think if you were a justin trudeau advisor or doug ford advisor and i know you
00:06:40.480 you might not even relish that thought being able to put yourself in those shoes but again simply
00:06:44.500 from a messaging or communications perspective what do you guys think uh what is working what
00:06:49.240 is not working and uh you know where do you guys think these things will go so hopefully you guys
00:06:53.860 will think a bit differently about political messaging remember elections are always overhanging
00:06:57.980 them and uh again i am sam ashkenazi for true north thank you so much for watching and have
00:07:02.740 yourselves a great day