00:00:27.240Thank you so much for coming on today.
00:00:30.000My pleasure. Happy to do it, Joanne. Looking forward to the conversation.
00:00:34.360I'm excited. I'm very excited. My text message back and forth was, we're just going to take
00:00:39.440an hour and fix the political system. So we got 60 minutes and we just need to push through and
00:00:45.620get her done. Absolutely. Before, I would love to talk about today. I want to talk about the past.
00:00:51.460I want to talk about the future. I want to talk about the whole gambit. Can I ask, maybe if you
00:00:56.780can give our listeners, I have a lot of listeners from the United States, maybe give a bit of a
00:01:01.820synopsis of your career and maybe some of the highlights, some of the not so highlights and
00:01:08.860what it is to be Premier of Ontario. I try to compare it for my U.S. followers so they get a
00:01:14.040concept of what our political system looks like, but I'm sure you do it 10 times better than I.
00:01:18.140I always say that being the Premier of a province in Canada is like being a governor,
00:01:23.480but you don't get a mansion what a what a rip-off there is no mansion um yeah so so i i began this
00:01:33.560journey um as a young mom um i'm 69 now and i sort of started out doing this when i was like
00:01:43.000under four under 40 uh ran for the school board in uh the part of toronto that i lived in
00:01:49.640with my kids. I was involved in local education politics. That's really what drove me was
00:01:55.520publicly funded education. I have a master's of education. My whole political, my whole career
00:02:02.140has been in education in one way or another. I worked as a mediator. I trained teachers.
00:02:07.980I taught adult education. So I have worked in education or I worked in education until I got
00:02:14.760involved in politics. And the way I got involved was I ran for school trustee, I lost that election
00:02:20.040by 72 votes in 1994. And then, and then what happened in Ontario was a very conservative
00:02:28.360premier named Mike Harris was elected. And really, my life changed, because he undermined the
00:02:34.720publicly funded education system, he undermined the relationship between the province and
00:02:39.180municipalities. And so I had to, I had to be even more of an activist that I, than I already was,
00:02:45.740and I needed to get involved. And that's, that was my path to, to provincial politics. And in
00:02:52.740and around all of that, I was in the process of coming out. I came out in 1990. Yeah, when I was
00:02:59.78037. And so my partner, Jane, and I, and my three kids and their dad were working out our living
00:03:07.240arrangements so there was a lot going on in 2000 yeah oh my you know what's so funny so in 1994 i
00:03:15.800was in my oac year again for listeners ontario used to have grade 13 and i and my mom was and
00:03:24.120was a nurse for her whole life so mike the knife by the way that was his nickname um he just slashed
00:03:31.000and amalgamated and slashed so many public services and gutted so much from education and
00:03:36.600from healthcare um i saw i started seeing the cuts in my high school that year yeah i felt and and
00:03:45.000the initial cuts were very much extracurricularly based so like sports programs and music programs
00:03:51.800and stuff like that those were sort of the first to go and i remember feeling that and seeing that
00:03:56.840and you know you're a kid you're naive or whatever not thinking much of it and then soon thereafter
00:04:01.960I remember they shut down Wellesley Hospital because they amalgamated and whatever. My mom got laid off, which was insane because she'd been a nurse forever and had to switch hospital. So what a crazy, it's so funny that you're saying that because I'm starting to feel that push. I'm a little bit older than you were, but I'm starting to feel that push. And for very, very similar reasons.
00:04:23.900funnily enough all those boys still chat exactly you know what i mean um federally and provincially
00:04:31.700so you get into politics and so it gives you this push you you get elected first as a trustee and
00:04:38.820then when are you into do you go right into provincial or did you start municipally so what
00:04:43.360happened was i lost that election in 94 by 72 votes and that was before harris was elected he
00:04:49.280was elected in 95 and so then what happened was I was I was really thrown into the anti-Harris
00:04:57.360opposition you know I mean I um I became involved with a former radical mayor of Toronto John Sewell
00:05:04.920we together formed um and led a group called Citizens for Local Democracy and we were fighting
00:05:10.660the amalgamation of the city of Toronto at the same time I started a group with some other moms
00:05:16.120you know kitchen table activism called Metro Parent Network and we were fighting against the
00:05:22.740cuts to the school board and and all of that work really took from 95 through till 2000 when I again
00:05:32.980ran for school board and you know through that time I'd been building relationships relationships
00:05:39.160with education unions, with activists in healthcare, with municipal activists and municipal
00:05:47.380councillors, provincial members of the legislature. And then in 2000, I ran for the school board again
00:05:53.900because I decided that I needed that platform. I had tried in 1999 to get a nomination to the
00:06:03.720provincial party the liberal party that didn't work out and so I ran for the school board in
00:06:09.9402000 and then it was in 2003 that we finally defeated Mike Harris and I was a member of the
00:06:15.740provincial government at that point so I had one term as a school board trustee and in that term
00:06:21.820Joanne we as a school board I don't know if you remember this you would have gone on to whatever
00:06:26.720was next after OIC but we defied the provincial government we refused to balance the budget
00:06:32.780and we were taken over by the provincial government there was a supervisor sentient so it was an act
00:06:37.860of civil disobedience on the part of the school board or at least a majority of the school board
00:06:41.840and that started my profile as sort of a spokesperson for this opposition to the cuts
00:06:50.940that mike harris was making and the destruction of the relationship between the provincial government
00:06:55.920who is the funder of publicly funded education and the frontline workers and the parents
00:07:02.360I always felt that, I think it was under Mike Harris, I believe, that he disjointed the union,
00:07:09.160meaning he took principals and vice principals out of the union. And I remember when I did my
00:07:16.260undergrad in political science, and I did a master's in political science as well. And when
00:07:21.900I was working on my thesis, it was about teachers unions, but sort of from an international scope.
00:07:26.940And I looked at a lot of the media stuff that Mike Harris had done. And then the move, which I think was devious, but unfortunately very smart, to separate those two bodies was probably the single most destructive and intelligent way to start dismantling sort of that kind of consistency and that kind of activism that was going to come from a school.
00:07:53.660because if I can separate management from teacher, if I can put them on opposite sides
00:07:58.020of that table, oh, I've done a really nice job. And then they move them around all the time.
00:08:03.380Well, and you know, you're so right. And you're so insightful. Not many people get that. And
00:08:09.400I have said that so many times that that was the single most destructive thing that he could have
00:08:16.480done to the cohesion of the school and so it did a whole lot of things it it meant that different
00:08:24.100people were aspiring to be principals and vice principals because in the time that my kids my
00:08:31.340kids are just a little bit older than you my youngest is about your age but so they were going
00:08:36.360through the system at the same time and when the teachers were in the same union as the principals
00:08:41.920and the vice principals there was a there was a common cause in every school in the province you
00:08:48.160know there wasn't a differentiation and so teachers would see themselves as principals and in fact at
00:08:56.400the time that harris came in there was a conversation in the toronto district school
00:09:00.880board well at the toronto board of education the old toronto board of education where we were
00:09:05.520talking about you know what would it be like if principals and vice principals actually cycled
00:09:10.800through the role and went back into the classroom like uh you know so that they they would reconnect
00:09:17.360with kids and so what he what what harris did was he absolutely stopped that whole conversation and
00:09:24.560took it in entirely different direction but here's the interesting thing from my perspective joanne
00:09:30.000so i became the minister of education in 2006 i spent three years as a backbencher and then the
00:09:35.520premier who was dalton mcginty at the time and very committed to publicly funded education he
00:09:40.320made me the um the minister of education and one of the first things that i did was i said to my
00:09:45.840team i want to see if we can undo this if we can talk to the both the teachers and the principals
00:09:53.760and the principals council and if we can undo this because i would have been willing to make the case
00:09:59.520with my caucus and with the premier that that was something that that we should undo what's
00:10:04.960interesting is that neither side wanted to do it because there's already so much rancor that
00:10:10.800it developed in those few years and the the people who were in the principals and vice principals
00:10:17.280ranks they didn't want to go backwards and the teachers were already mad so you know it was
00:10:22.960really hard for me to to swallow that we couldn't undo that but that was and that was a political
00:10:30.240learning for me that it's really really hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube
00:10:34.000Well, it's an unfortunate but very common principle of divide and conquer. You make one smaller group feel more powerful and more important than the larger group. And I have all the respect in the world for principals and vice principals, but the teachers are in the classroom. If you can't connect with the teacher, you can't connect with the kid anymore. That's doing a disservice to education, period.
00:10:58.740but he didn't care about that. He cared about weakening the union because he could already
00:11:03.540see it kind of fracture. Look, unions have implicit problems anyway, right? You have
00:11:09.360people that think they're good workers and people that are just taking advantage of the system and
00:11:13.780they and them and my dues. And he just played right into that to try to at least drive that
00:11:20.300wedge. And once it's driven, once you create sort of an upper class within that same school,
00:11:26.380they're not going back no no right you know i what what shocked me was that it was such a short
00:11:33.240period of time because he only did it i guess he did it 97 98 something like that and i'm talking
00:11:39.280about 2006 so it wasn't like it had been 20 years it was a few years but it was long enough for
00:11:46.540exactly what you're saying to have set in and uh it was very disheartening it was the same thing
00:11:53.380with the with the Toronto District School Board, I would have been willing to make the case that we
00:11:58.880should cut the school board in half, or we should try to undo the amalgamation. But the school
00:12:04.340trustees, they, you know, many of whom had said to me and had been my colleagues that had said to me
00:12:10.260that they wanted the school board reduced in size, they didn't want to go backwards either. So,
00:12:15.100you know, and I know going backwards is tough. But I sort of saw it as okay, let's evolve this
00:12:21.260into something that's better and smaller because the the toronto district school board is a huge
00:12:27.580huge board it's the biggest board in the country fifth biggest in the in on the continent i think
00:12:32.540so so you know it makes sense that it would be smaller but you know i couldn't i couldn't undo
00:12:38.860either of those things and i certainly wasn't willing to take the heat from both sides for
00:12:44.220doing well there it is right an ally i needed somebody to be on side and here we come you know
00:12:50.780i i'm gonna fight the urge to jump all over the place here because i just have like so many
00:12:55.020thoughts in my head and so many things i want to talk to you about because this is the thing right
00:13:00.460is that i have a very uh and it's it's american but i i have a very uh or a favorite political
00:13:07.260quote it's a lincoln quote says i like to have god on my side but i must have kentucky
00:13:11.980and the reason why i like that quote so much and not because i love lincoln or because of
00:13:16.860religious because because he says something that is fundamentally true and i think fundamentally
00:13:24.380the most problematic thing in politics or in life in general is the notion that we know what's right
00:13:31.900we know what needs to be done we know what should be done but in order to get support
00:13:39.820we gotta we gotta water it down we gotta change it a little bit we gotta pull back here how many
00:13:45.740times do you feel as though you had to just get Kentucky? Oh man. All the time. I think all the
00:13:56.080time. I mean, you just, you have to search for who's on side with this. Now, sometimes those
00:14:03.100people present themselves. So if I think about when I was premier and we were looking at raising
00:14:08.320the minimum wage or putting the basic income pilot in place, there was a groundswell of support
00:14:13.960for those things so i didn't have to look very far for kentucky you know but um but there you know
00:14:21.320there were lots of moments like when we were changing the um sexual harassment policy in uh
00:14:27.640in ontario it wasn't that it wasn't that it was hard to find a support group but it was just that
00:14:35.160it's not something we had run on it was something that came out of a teachable moment you know we
00:14:40.360had, you know, whether it was Weinstein in the States or young Gomeshi here, and I wanted to
00:14:46.900do something. And so when something comes out of the blue, you have to build a bit of a coalition
00:14:51.500around making something happen. So it's a constant, it's a constant, constant quest for
00:14:59.420where's the support for this? How can I, you know, how can I move this forward? Because
00:15:05.600you're constantly persuading people to to get on side whether it's fellow caucus members or
00:15:14.560whether it's the bureaucracy or you know whether it's the public and you know to your point about
00:15:19.280we we know what should be done that we is that's a big question mark because you and i may share
00:15:29.300a worldview and we may agree on a lot of what needs to be done but if you look at what's going
00:15:35.040on in politics today, somebody like Pierre Polieva, who is running for the Canadian,
00:15:41.800the leadership of the Canadian Conservative Party, he is, he is not, he does not share the same world
00:15:48.980do as I do. So what he believes needs to be done is not what I believe needs to be done. And I think
00:15:54.200that's, that's a huge political reality for us in Canada and in the United States right now.
00:15:59.120Do you think that, whether it's him or not, but do you think that an individual like him, or if we're talking about the state, somebody like Trump or somebody like, you know, going through all of those different, do you think that they're playing on divisions to gain popularity and gain votes?
00:16:21.560Or do you really think this is his fundamental belief?
00:16:25.360I probably would respect him more if I thought that, but I don't buy it.
00:16:30.300I don't buy that's his fundamental core belief.
00:16:47.560You know, I mean, obviously, I don't know Donald Trump, but watching him, I actually think he's a bit more of an opportunist than somebody like Pierre Paulyabre.
00:16:55.780I actually think a guy like Pierre Paulyabre, who we will remark, has been in politics from the time he was a young, young man.
00:17:04.700It's all he's ever done. He hasn't done anything else.
00:17:08.180And so I think he is a dyed in the wool, right wing, small government politician.
00:17:15.820And so, yes, I think he is playing on divisions and I think he is to some extent using those divisions in a way that magnifies his actual beliefs.
00:17:27.960But I don't think the magnification actually takes away from his core belief set, which is, you know, which is that no government is good government.
00:17:39.540We told it basically, we don't need the Bank of Canada, we don't need government, and we don't need politicians, even though he has been a politician his whole life. The contradictions are just rich.
00:17:51.640I've always found the fundamental flaw in conservatism, and I always say that word wrong. I think it just, I choke on it a little bit here. The fundamental flaw is, and I'm not talking about just the Conservative Party, I'm talking about big, you know, little C, kind of like broad base.
00:18:08.440This notion that tradition and whatever religious premise, whatever country you happen to be in, is our core value.
00:18:18.640And somehow, because the foundation of those principles are, we're not good people.
00:18:29.600We shouldn't have freedom because we're going to screw it up.
00:18:32.200And yet, and then it somehow switches to less government is astounding because if we are fundamentally bad people, then government is made up of fundamentally bad people. It's like who's leading the disaster, right?
00:18:49.600Because I think foundationally, liberals believe, and again, we're not just talking political parties, individual parties, the notion that people are fundamentally good, we're going to make some mistakes, we should have as much freedom as we possibly can have until my freedom hurts your freedom.
00:19:06.180And we should go like that, because that's how we're going to have progress. That's how we're going to have all of those things. But we are putting faith in people, not institutions of tradition and history.
00:19:18.840And I don't under, I can't get around the inherent contradictions of conservative governments.
00:19:24.300Well, and, you know, what's interesting is you, because you're right about the freedoms, you know, that they, I think there is a belief that we're fundamentally flawed, we're, you know, we're out for ourselves, we're mean, nasty people, human beings are.
00:19:42.620And and that we need the freedom to be that. And it's so interesting that the cri de corps for the convoy in Ottawa was freedom, you know, that somehow freedoms were being curtailed because people were being asked to have a vaccination or they were being asked to wear a mask.
00:20:06.320and um you know underlying that is such a disaffection with our society that that's
00:20:16.940what makes it scary to me and that makes him scary and i think he's i believe he's a very
00:20:22.060dangerous man in canadian politics i i 100 agree i 100 agree i mean i can't even say the word
00:20:29.220freedom anymore without um it doesn't mean the same thing anymore yeah i i can't say the words
00:20:35.280freedom it has been so mutated and and tarnished by the right in the united states and up here
00:20:43.040and the freedom convoy and all of that kind of thing it doesn't even mean the same thing anymore
00:20:48.320so they've bent it and mutated it in order like our flag oh i i never thought i would see the day
00:20:56.320when i would be afraid of a truck with two flags on it listen i don't i right away and i know this
00:21:03.440this is horribly stereotypical, but right away, you have something attached to the back of your
00:21:07.400truck. I'm thinking we're not going to get along very well. And forget the people that have the
00:21:11.940F Trudeau on their flag or have their kid holding it like it's some sort of badge of honor.
00:21:17.940Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, as I have the same reaction, and I think it's something
00:21:26.180that we have to fight against you know I think we have to we have to understand I have I'm talking
00:21:34.800to myself now I have to understand that that person driving that truck has a right to his or
00:21:40.520her expression of you know uh opinion um is probably angry about a whole lot of things that
00:21:47.780that are going on in his or her life and I don't know that person so yeah I have to try I have to
00:21:54.660try really hard not to prejudge but but I you know I'm I'm confessing to you that I have a momentary
00:22:02.280sharp intake of breath because I think this person and you know I have the added thing of this
00:22:07.920person's going to recognize me so this person's going to look at me and is going to say oh that's
00:22:12.760that Kathleen Wynne and I hate her because in the election in 2018 when I lost so badly
00:22:19.920and i take responsibility for that you know um a lot of it came down to people saying that they
00:22:28.140hated me the vast majority of whom had never met me or had never spoken to me but they had decided
00:22:34.480they hated me and so to this day i am a little on guard when i go into public spaces you know
00:22:43.140just for a moment, just until I, until I make sure that, um, I know, I know what, what's going
00:22:50.380to come at me. Cause I'll take whatever's coming at me. I've taken lots of crap, you know, and
00:22:54.400that's, that's fine. I just want to know whether it's going to come or not. Let's talk about the0.97
00:22:59.060crap you've taken for a minute. Cause I think again, and I know I'm jumping all over the place0.99
00:23:03.520here, but I, you know, I, I've, I've looked at your record. I, I've been an adult throughout
00:23:11.380your entire you know office terms uh both you know as a backbencher and as premier and when
00:23:18.820i look at the analytics when i look at all those markers that that you know strategists and and0.77
00:23:25.220and economists and whoever like to look at you you're you're kicking butt right like you look
00:23:32.980at the objective facts about how ontario was doing and you are doing all of those markers
00:23:42.820are off the charts off the charts and nobody can argue that how much and you you talk about people
00:23:49.940hating you i don't even know how much do you think it rested on your shoulders in that kind
00:23:58.100a personalized way because let's be honest being a woman and being gay in 2000 it's not easy today
00:24:07.940but let's it's we've come a long way but in that time how much do you think you were carrying on
00:24:15.220the basis of those facts that had nothing to do with your job in office so i you know i think um
00:24:22.980when i said when i lost in 18 so badly and i take responsibility for it i recognized that there was
00:24:27.780was a whole lot going on there was the fact that our government had been in office for 15 years
00:24:33.200we'd been there since 2003 there was the fact that you know I had taken over from Premier McGinty and
00:24:39.420there had been stuff that our government because I was part of that government there was stuff that
00:24:43.340we had done we'd been through an economic downturn but as you say the markers were very good we had
00:24:49.820the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD, you know, in 2018, like we have done really, really
00:24:56.540well. But we were an old government, like we'd been there for a long time. And so I think on top
00:25:04.720of that, when you put the fact that I was a woman, and I was a lesbian, and I had made some very,
00:25:10.940you know, I made at least one very, very unpopular decision with people who had supported me. And
00:25:16.280that was the partial sell-off of a public asset hydro one um the transmission grid part of the
00:25:22.320transmission grid um all of those things came together and we know from our polling that um
00:25:30.700although people in ontario weren't coming out and saying i don't like her because she's a woman i
00:25:35.760don't like her because she's a lesbian they weren't saying that but there was a a kind of um
00:25:42.260inchoate uh unarticulated i just i just don't like her and there's a feeling yeah and we think
00:25:51.040that's where the homophobia and the misogyny resided and we'll never know that for sure
00:25:58.180joyanne but um i just don't believe that we would have lost that badly if there hadn't been some of
00:26:04.940that. And, and every campaign I fought, from the time I ran in 1994, through to my last election in
00:26:13.4202018, there was a homophobic undercurrent, you know, there were whether there were flyers, or
00:26:20.680whether there was a whisper campaign, it was always present in my campaign. So I'm not under
00:26:25.960any illusion that homophobia wasn't part of the mix. Well, and I mean, homophobia, and very,
00:26:33.200very very interconnected a lot of people don't see how connected homophobia and sexism are
00:26:37.840but but very much interconnected is that that element and i think a lot of you know female
00:26:44.400politicians are constantly dealing with it i mean i have a very very clear memory of listening way0.96
00:26:50.480back when to kim campbell speak who i um again i i my party loyalty is pretty clear but she was
00:27:00.560charismatic yeah she was intelligent she was articulate and i was a little blown away but
00:27:07.280and because i saw her speak in person and when i i remember seeing you know those ads that said
00:27:14.640things like if she can't keep a family together yeah how can she keep a country together and
00:27:20.480that's not ancient history right that's that's front and center now did i think the conserve1.00
00:27:25.840the conservatives knew they were going to lose 100 they put her in that boat watched her go1.00
00:27:30.080downhill so they could say look we tried to have a woman it just didn't play out it didn't work for
00:27:35.440us and we won't have one for a very long time and that's such a common story there's a podcast that
00:27:41.440i think you may have listened to called no second chances certainly your your listeners might be
00:27:46.640interested in it so it's a it's a pod a series of uh episodes that brought together all of the um
00:27:54.240all of the women in this country we're all still alive who have been first ministers so kim campbell
00:28:00.880plus all of the women who have been premiers in uh in this country not a single one yet
00:28:07.760has been re-elected to a majority government many of us have been elected so i was appointed
00:28:13.520you know i became the leader in 2013 but i won an election in my own right in 2014
00:28:18.640but wasn't re-elected christie clark was re-elected in british columbia but she was
00:28:24.000re-elected with a minority and lost government within a few days so so that that um reality of
00:28:31.360coming in when a party is in trouble that notion that well we'll try this because what have we got
00:28:37.200to lose right um and then you fall off the cliff that is a very very common experience we're
00:28:45.120waiting now to see, I think, if Rachel Notley, who was the NDP Premier in Alberta, whether she
00:28:51.460will be re-elected now that the Conservative leader, Jason Kenney, has stepped down. And I
00:28:57.420think she's got a good shot at it, but we'll see. I'm worried. Yeah. I'm not worried. Yeah.
00:29:05.460The wild rose. I can't decide. I can't figure that province out, to be honest. I speak to a
00:29:11.500lot of people from Alberta all the time who are like, it's horrible here. It's horrible here. I'm
00:29:14.980like who's voting who's in charge of that province who's taking it that way so so far
00:29:21.280because i think are really important so you talked about selling off hydro one do you regret it
00:29:25.700or did it have to be done you know four years ago i would have said it had to be done
00:29:32.580um i'm i certainly i certainly certainly regret the way it unfolded you know um and what i
00:29:44.940do it differently um i certainly i certainly think i would go through that whole process differently
00:29:52.340right i would try to bring people along with me i would try to i would try to bring people along so
00:29:58.680that they would understand better why we needed to build new assets because that was all it was
00:30:02.720about for me it was not about taking that money and that five billion dollars or nine billion
00:30:07.460dollars and putting it to our bottom line it was about building transit i'd made a commitment to
00:30:11.520build transit and we needed we needed money to leverage our borrowing against because we were
00:30:16.280running out of borrowing room you know right bond agencies were not going to they weren't going to
00:30:21.360give us a decent rating so so we needed some liquidity and i wasn't selling off the generation
00:30:27.440of power it wasn't you know niagara falls it was the transmission which was already partially
00:30:33.260privatized but you see that's a that's a policy wonkish conversation and it it was not easy to
00:30:41.160explain and people didn't buy it. So I'd love a shot at it again. That's my bottom line.
00:30:48.460I think you tapped into something that's incredibly important because, and it's going
00:30:53.420to get into something else that I think is a real, is our fundamental problem is that
00:30:57.040you just took a couple of minutes to describe a very, very, very complicated issue. You talk
00:31:03.920about being liquid. You talk about bond agencies giving us ratings. You talk about something
00:31:09.240and a structure that let's say 75% of voting Canadians don't have the educational background
00:31:18.580or the time. I'm not saying they're not intelligent. Or the interest. They may not have the interest
00:31:22.900either. They don't really get it, right? But what they do get is when somebody simplifies it to,
00:31:30.860unfortunately, and I call it stupidity because I do think it's that kind of level. They simplify0.98
00:31:36.060it to a stupidity kind of level so you can point a finger and say you know she did this she sold it0.99
00:31:42.880now this is going up and that's where it's going and and it's so easy to simplify and people walk0.99
00:31:48.300away from the issue thinking they have a handle on it and i honestly believe because i look at
00:31:54.880pierre and i look at ford because ford's mastered the art right i don't know that's a i can't believe
00:32:01.880I said that in the same sentence, but you understand what I'm saying? He's mastered the
00:32:06.100art of oversimplifying things to the point where people think they get it. They don't.
00:32:12.280Well, and- But he simplified it. Yeah, but, and it's, you know what, I would argue it's more than
00:32:17.080simplification, oversimplification, because what happened in the case of Hydra One, yes,
00:32:22.620it was oversimplified, but it was also misconstrued. I'm not going to say anybody lied,
00:32:27.960but it was it was a misconstrued kind of conflation of issues so the notion that our
00:32:39.160broadening the ownership or privatizing part of hydro one and increased electricity prices
00:32:45.960those things are not related but they were pushed together by the opposition and and people bought
00:32:52.920it because electricity prices were going up they were going up because we had you know we'd made
00:32:58.760a huge investment in infrastructure across the province we'd built we'd literally rebuilt
00:33:04.280thousands of kilometers of line you know because we'd had brownouts and blackouts in the uh
00:33:10.120previous years anyway um it's what you're saying it is an oversimplification and it tips into a
00:33:17.800misconstrued of course it does yeah but that's the point the point is to simplify and then push it
00:33:24.440one way right a hundred percent that's the point and i think you know we're seeing it happen all
00:33:31.880over the place you see it happen with biden you see it happen with trudeau and more and more and
00:33:37.960more we are blaming our provincial leaders our federal leaders for things that aren't in your
00:33:44.360control right we talk about gas prices i i'm so tired of talking about gas prices as though the
00:33:53.240keystone pipeline would have fixed everything i'm like well that doesn't make any sense it
00:33:58.520wouldn't have been built right like it doesn't make any sense and if you want to talk about fixing
00:34:03.880gas and fixing our reliance on foreign supplies oh my we got to go back to 1970 what three was opec
00:34:12.280like we got to go way back and then we got to blame every subsequent government since then
00:34:17.480that didn't invest heavily if that's the way we want it to go but again people are just looking
00:34:23.800for somebody to go it's them so it's them and we're desperate in this country uh because we have
00:34:31.640such a fossil-based economy fossil fuel-based economy in the west we're desperate to find a
00:34:38.280scapegoat you know because the hard work of making the transition off fossil fuels is just that it's
00:34:45.720really hard work and nobody really knows how to do it and it you know we have to tackle it because
00:34:54.280you know if we are if we are going to meet our targets and if we want to be part of a
00:34:58.600an international movement to um you know to actually deal with climate change
00:35:04.360then we've got to support Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland. We've got to support those people
00:35:10.520as they transition into a different economy. That's a tough conversation. It's very tough.
00:35:19.080And here's where it gets really messy. It's an expensive one.
00:35:23.640It's very expensive. And at the end of the day, what people are dying to hear,
00:35:30.040which is why guys like Ford got elected and heaven help us twice, because he looks you dead in the
00:35:39.080face and says what people want to hear, which has always been my frustrating point, which is why I
00:35:45.720don't know if I could ever step into the ring. Don't worry. You're not going to have to pay a
00:35:51.540dollar more, but everything's going to get better. Don't worry. I'm going to fix education and
00:35:59.260healthcare, but your taxes aren't going up. In fact, they're going down. Yeah, that's even
00:36:05.400better. They're going down. And that is such a deception because, you know, I'm going to send
00:36:12.340you $350 for your val tag from your license plate sticker. And that's going to take a billion
00:36:20.980dollars out of the treasury. Well, and you know what that does? A billion dollars a year. That
00:36:26.600means there's a whole lot of stuff you can't do in education for example I just I don't even
00:36:32.940first of all it wasn't just the billion because he gave me three years of it right right he gave
00:36:38.240me back pay yeah what I don't understand is how people can it seems like a bot but again it's a
00:36:46.120bit of a bribe right here's your three hundred dollars please vote for me uh what I don't
00:36:50.940understand fundamentally is how anybody rationally can think I'm going to take a billion every year
00:36:57.020out of your budget and we're going to be better off. My healthcare and education is going to be
00:37:01.980fine. I don't understand how anybody could rationally believe that because then I start
00:37:06.620having to blame us. And I say this all the time. The people are so quick to blame politicians and
00:37:12.420they said this and they said that and they lied and they didn't do what they said they were going
00:37:16.120to do. I'm like, okay, wait a minute. But if you are going to allow yourself to believe in Santa
00:37:22.440Claus, I think as an adult, you're going to have to carry a bit of that weight. And that's the
00:37:29.680frustrating part because when people say, Joanna, why don't you do it? I said, because I'd have to
00:37:33.740look people dead in their face and say, you want better social services? You're going to have to
00:37:38.100pay. Pure and simple. The education system's falling apart, if not fallen. The healthcare
00:37:44.560system. My mom was a nurse, well, for my entire, for 60 years. And to watch the destruction of
00:37:54.740that system is ridiculous. To watch how they've manipulated nurses and RPNs and RNAs in order to0.72
00:38:02.540save money. And it's mind boggling, but unless you're in it, you don't talk about it. And unless
00:38:10.400you get sick you don't care right right and people in their day-to-day lives I mean this is something
00:38:17.280I've learned over my time in in politics you know I've knocked on thousands and thousands of doors
00:38:22.660in my own riding but in places all over the province and people as you said before I would
00:38:30.000say even more I'd say like 90 percent of people not 75 but 90 percent of people have their own
00:38:35.880preoccupations. They're concerned about, you know, buying their kids clothes and getting groceries on
00:38:42.680the table. And right now they're really worried about that, you know, buying a home, finding
00:38:47.620some place to live. Those are the things that people worry about on a day to day basis. So I
00:38:52.640understand why a politician, a populist politician like Doug Ford wants to give you $300. Like I
00:38:59.020understand why he wants to do that i just think that that kind of short-sighted policy
00:39:08.060hurts people in the long run more than it helps them but that's a very hard thing to explain to
00:39:13.980someone who is trying to feed their kids and that 300 makes a difference you know so finding the
00:39:20.140balance between how do i help you with your immediate concerns today as opposed to you know
00:39:27.740the long-term needs of our society. I mean, that's what we grapple with all the time, constantly.
00:39:35.020And I think, yeah, I think also having your term limit, right? So like we talk about big things
00:39:41.340like transformation and education and healthcare. That's not going to happen in five years,
00:39:45.340four years. That's not going to happen. I'm going to take billions of dollars,
00:39:49.180but you're not going to see that. You can't see it in that short of time, right?
00:39:53.980the environment the reason why nothing significant really significant is happening is because i could
00:40:00.460spend hundreds of billions of dollars and we're not going to see the impact for 20 years yeah
00:40:05.820quite literally i'm not i don't even think i'm being you know you're not going to see it for
00:40:11.260that length of time so while i'm taking your money that you need to get your kids clothes and whatever
00:40:17.260and i know in 20 years your kids are gonna you're not gonna make it through that time period right
00:40:25.020you're not gonna re-elect me because you're just gonna be upset i took your money and there's
00:40:28.780nothing to show for it instantaneously and that's the problem you know that is the problem with
00:40:33.580long-term policy but there are there are some things like when dalton mcginty shut down the
00:40:39.740the gas fired plants you know the and we saw smog days basically disappear in Ontario there are
00:40:47.060things that can be done that do displace workers you know those gas plants there were workers
00:40:52.800associated with those gas plants but you know we tried to create a green economy green energy
00:40:58.100economy um and so what politicians what we have to do is we have to look for those things we have
00:41:05.140to look for things that have the big impact. And then we have to, you know, we have to hope that
00:41:10.420there's enough of a consensus in the population that those things don't get undone. Now, with the
00:41:15.400gas plants, they didn't get undone. You know, those gas plants were shut down. The coal, I mean,
00:41:21.880not gas plants, sorry. The gas plants was another issue. The coal-fired plants were shut down.
00:41:29.640But when we put, and there was a lot of consensus around that, people were ecstatic.
00:41:33.200But when we put a cap and trade system in place, and we joined with Quebec and with California to reduce our emissions, people didn't understand that. And that was, you know, that's on us that we weren't able to explain it better. And it just seemed like it was sort of pie in the sky.
00:41:54.720And so when Doug Ford came in, even though our emissions were going down because those big emitters had to pay, Doug Ford canceled it, you know.
00:42:05.160And so those are two, you know, the shutting down of the coal fired plants and cap and trade.
00:42:09.520They're two good examples of really different policies that one that took hold and people could see an immediate result.
00:42:17.220And another is more like what you're talking about long term that people didn't understand.
00:42:22.820And so they didn't care when Doug Ford came in and canceled it.
00:42:28.460It's incredibly frustrating to watch that happen and to watch people buy in.
00:42:36.260And somehow, like, I'm astounded at this last election.
00:42:40.040I don't know what to say about the voting turnout.
00:42:45.920Well, unfortunately, I do know what to say.
00:42:48.300I don't know what to say about the voting turnout.
00:42:49.680And I sure as heck don't know what to say about, obviously, our system of democracy, our first past the post system, for those who don't understand that, the notion that the popular vote doesn't very rarely equates to seats earned in the House, which is obviously problematic.
00:43:08.880because Doug Ford, I think, got 17% of the popular vote in Ontario.
00:43:15.840I might be off a little bit if they've done some more math,
00:43:18.960yet a significant majority of seats in the legislature.
00:43:27.840And I think the primary problem, and I was talking about this the other day,
00:43:32.840is I think people are starved for authenticity.
00:43:38.880And what I mean by that, everybody's seen the, you know, Paulette, you're supposed to wear the right suit and roll your sleeves up at the right time and have your shoes new, but not too new.
00:43:49.720You know, all of those kinds of, you have handlers, you have people, you have other people writing your speeches.
00:43:55.680You have people telling you what to wear, where to go, how to wear your hair.1.00
00:44:00.020Like women have a whole other level of expectation.
00:44:04.600and then now people aren't buying it and when you're not polished so when you step into like
00:44:13.300a doug ford or or a trump for that matter because i think trump was purposefully0.98
00:44:18.620unfortunately not polished yeah people mistake simplicity and stupidity and i and i use that0.99
00:44:29.060word purposefully they mistake those for authenticity they mistake his I just love0.98
00:44:36.420the egg sandwich from Tim Hortons as as an actual personality trait yeah because all they want to do
00:44:45.380is is have a politician speak let's say their language and stop rolling up your sleeves or stop
00:44:52.360stop get off the teleprompter for him you know what I mean they're so starved for that
00:44:56.740but it's so interesting it's so interesting you know so doug ford um he has he used a teleprompter
00:45:05.440more than any other politician i've ever seen he used a teleprompter at every single
00:45:11.160press conference that he did during covet i never had i never ever had a teleprompter at a press
00:45:18.440conference i had teleprompters when i was making big speeches for sure sure you know that i'd worked
00:45:24.480on or we my team had worked on but and in a huge room but I did not have a teleprompter when I was
00:45:30.300doing scrums with the media no way I never would have done that but you don't you see the problem
00:45:35.360you're refined you're articulate you know what you're speaking about and people don't trust that
00:45:41.180anymore we trust a guy that can barely read a teleprompter yeah I mean that's cool yeah that
00:45:49.700folksy approach appeals to people. And I would also say, just to go back to an earlier conversation
00:45:58.440we were having, I think that there are mannerisms and sort of, I don't know, I don't even know what
00:46:12.280it is characteristics that men can can and take on there are ways men can be that would be not0.97
00:46:22.940available to a woman right so you know patting people on the back and and being a little bit
00:46:30.260um jocular you know that doesn't fly with no for a woman to do you know yes you have to have a sense
00:46:38.140of humor but it's very different than that old boy kind of slap you on the back hail fellow well met0.62
00:46:44.760and that's a whole area of interaction that's not available to women and I'm not complaining about0.87
00:46:51.300it it's just a reality and so Doug Ford being kind of bumbly and kind of you know inept that would0.60
00:47:00.460not nobody would have accepted that from me no they would have because they they already think
00:47:06.400i'm not qualified and then if i can't if i can't perform it would have been a real problem so i'm
00:47:15.200not you know i'm not saying i got the authenticity thing right because i i don't think i did i think
00:47:19.580i you know i i actually was being myself but it it didn't fly you know here here's the problem
00:47:27.600though authenticity is also a level of honesty i don't think the public affords politicians
00:47:35.320Doug Ford or anybody you know what I'm saying yeah like I just the authentically truthfully
00:47:43.320I can't cut your taxes and give you better health care right truth that's true that is just truth
00:47:50.520any other incarnation of that is is bullcrap is manipulation you know and and I just think that
00:47:59.040yeah so starved yeah so what I you know what I really wanted to find a way to say about health
00:48:08.840care was that we have got to have a serious conversation in this country about what the
00:48:15.300health care system can cover and what it can't cover because in 1969 when I was a kid you paid
00:48:23.440and this started and my dad was a doctor um people had private insurance before we had
00:48:30.920medicare people had private insurance and people fell through the cracks so my dad was very
00:48:35.540supportive of um publicly funded health care yeah but but then there was not the technology
00:48:45.200there were not the procedures there was not the scope of what we were paying for was so much
00:48:52.280narrower and your mom would you know she would know this as well you know the the expectations
00:48:59.000of the health care system have just expanded and expanded and expanded to the point where
00:49:05.360you know we have we have got I think unrealistic expectations about what our health care system
00:49:12.840can do and I think one of the prime examples of that is in long-term care you know yeah you know
00:49:20.100we are just not going to be able to pay for everything that every senior wants and needs.
00:49:27.000And we're going to have to find a way to find housing that is more rational, that, you know,
00:49:32.380supports from the community, that supports family, because all of those players have to be involved.
00:49:40.380And yet, as we went through COVID, there started to be this notion that we just have to put more
00:49:46.940money into long-term care and build more long-term care beds and that's going to solve the problem
00:49:51.220it's not going to solve the problem because that's not where seniors want to be they don't
00:49:55.940want to be in long-term care and that's not where families want to put them anyway that's a whole
00:50:00.660other conversation but i love it though it's an important it's hugely important though and it's
00:50:05.820one of those things that it's really hard to find a way to stand at a podium and say that
00:50:10.780but that's what he said yeah yeah absolutely and I mean it's so funny going back to education
00:50:16.980because I will I will I mean I've been a teacher for 20 years and I always circle back to education
00:50:21.620we want to start talking about health care why the hell is gym not mandatory yeah well we tried
00:50:27.960we tried with PDA right listen just so you know my school still teaches your sex ed curriculum
00:50:36.020because I'll be damned if I'm going back to 1998 now here's the funny part I don't know if you
00:50:40.500this about me i do teach at a private school um i didn't know that it's very it's a unique
00:50:45.700alternative private school so it's not i don't think i would do well with the suit and the tie
00:50:50.260well i know i wouldn't um but the reason being is because i didn't think i could do a good job
00:50:58.100i i'm teaching 30 grade sevens or 30 grade eights i think it's it's asinine uh you don't you manage
00:51:06.740that classroom. You don't teach that classroom. And I think the broken parts of education,0.94
00:51:11.900when people talk about education, they talk about all these other stuff. It really does come down
00:51:16.320to one thing. We have amazing teachers. They're amazing educators. They're innovative. Most of
00:51:21.200them are paying for stuff out of their own pocket. But if you think they can teach 25, 30 kids with
00:51:28.700five kids on this learning platform and five kids on this learning platform and do it successfully
00:51:34.220and inspire and support. You're insane. You're insane. It can't happen. And then, and then you0.98
00:51:40.340have people, which I thought was a pretty big misstep on Dilduka's part is this notion about
00:51:46.300bringing back grade 13. I'm like, what, what do you, don't, don't say that. Don't, everybody
00:51:52.100doesn't want more money in education. You're going to add another layer to education. We,
00:51:57.300we need, or I'll say he'll lower class sizes, but I know people that are like, where do we put the
00:52:01.500kids we don't have any more class spaces right we've shut down schools we've amalgamated over
00:52:07.300here we've shut down so now you're making promises that seem like they're supporting education but
00:52:13.520educators know they can't you can't facilitate that it's we don't have the infrastructure to
00:52:19.220do that and so now everybody's like well wait a minute I don't know what we're doing here
00:52:24.600But here's the thing, Joanne, here's the thing. You know, when we came into office in 2003, there were a lot of the same arguments about full day kindergarten. And, you know, we don't have the space. How are we going to get the space? And there were arguments about lowering the class sizes in primary. And the fact is, we built more space. So yeah, we closed schools and we consolidated schools, but we net built 800 schools.
00:52:52.220like right there was a huge amount of money put into building schools and in the campaign and this
00:52:58.340got lost you know del duca basically said we're going to take the 10 billion dollars that should
00:53:02.700have that that doug ford is saying i'm going to build highway 413 and we're going to put it into
00:53:07.140education infrastructure because we know we need we need more space the grade 13 was a temporary
00:53:14.940and optional way of helping kids who are falling through the cracks and i was knocking on doors
00:53:21.320during the election and there were a lot of kids actually who said that's a good idea because
00:53:26.440remember there are kids who go back for a victory lap now all that we were saying was the government's
00:53:33.900going to fund those credits because right now you can take you have to have 30 credits you can take
00:53:40.16034 credits and the government will fund those credits but after 34 the school board has to
00:53:46.180fund them so all we were saying was we are actually going to if we're elected as liberals
00:53:52.040we're actually going to fund kids to come back for a full victory lap you know what that i'm a
00:53:59.160teacher i'm in politics and i didn't get that message i know that there it is right there it is
00:54:08.420like what a beautiful way to explain it and maybe it did get explained at a press conference i never
00:54:13.520I never thought that he got nearly enough coverage like I didn't actually get explained
00:54:19.720like that at press conference it should have it got explained door by door and that was one of
00:54:25.740my frustrations was that we didn't have we didn't have a policy discussion about anything in this
00:54:31.300election right yeah it was just you know it was Doug Ford getting it done well what's it
00:54:36.140getting what done right that's building a road that's all the election was about in terms of
00:54:41.800policy. Anyway, I don't want a very long time about this. So I, well, but this is, this is
00:54:48.020the important stuff, right? Because I think I look at the voting turnout. I remember going to vote
00:54:52.720that day and I'm like, am I in the right place? Cause there was nobody there. I literally thought
00:54:57.440I checked my card. I'm like, did I, did I read this wrong? And it's that kind of either apathy,
00:55:04.380which scares the heck out of me. Or, you know, again, I'll vote simplistically. This guy says
00:55:12.600he's going to give me 300 bucks back or he's going to build some roads so I don't have to
00:55:15.600sit in traffic. I don't even know where the 413 is. Most people couldn't even pick out the road
00:55:21.120map. And yet it's still a thing. And I'm also looking through pages and pages of people's
00:55:28.540complaints about either federal or provincial. And I think our government, we live in a very
00:55:36.780different world in the past, well, for a long time, but significantly in the past 10 to 20 years.
00:55:43.800The notion of globalization and the notion of interconnectivity of our economies throughout
00:55:49.140the world is so pervasive that the idea that a federal leader or a provincial leader can control
00:55:57.140the economy of there is it doesn't exist no but it doesn't exist but politicians want to give the
00:56:05.140illusion that it does so i want to go back to something you said which i think is the most
00:56:09.660important part of this conversation which is you saying that you're feeling like you're going to
00:56:15.300have to jump into an activist space that you haven't necessarily been in before and that's
00:56:21.760what I took from what you said because of what's going on and I I think that whether you do that
00:56:27.640as an individual or not your generation um is very needed right now in terms of all those issues
00:56:35.620you've you've identified you know the apathy the disengagement the need for oversimplification or
00:56:42.200the desire for oversimplification it's really important for people who care about who care
00:56:48.380about the institutions that we've built over 150 years that they get involved and that they
00:56:56.620take the reins you know it's the passing of it's the passing of the torch and I feel like
00:57:02.500the reason I'm having conversations with people like you is that I want to be as helpful as I
00:57:08.520can in sharing my experience not because I think that you know that I'm I've got any particular
00:57:14.920wisdom to share, but I've got experience and I want you to take what you need from it so that
00:57:24.060you can then save the world. How very Buffy. Thank you so much. I know you have an hour and
00:57:33.380I want to be very respectful of your time. I want to thank you so much for coming on. I would love
00:57:38.240it. If you can make time in the future, I would love to have you back on. We can target specific
00:57:45.280things. There was a whole list I didn't get to today, but you are amazing. Thank you for your
00:57:50.060service and thank you for spending the time with us and sharing everything. My pleasure. I'd love
00:57:54.800to, I'd love to come back. It was a great conversation. So let's do it again. Thank you
00:57:59.320so much. All right, guys. Thanks for hanging out with us. I'll see you next Tuesday. Same bat time,