Full Comment - Carney looks more like Trudeau with every update

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00:00:30.000 Most Canadians underestimate just how fragile our economic advantage is in politicians,

00:00:38.180 while they keep missing the real opportunities to turn things around.

00:00:41.800 This week's spring economic update from the Kearney government in Ottawa was no exception.

00:00:47.340 Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. I'm Brian Lilly, your host.

00:00:51.220 More cost, more debt, more taxes, more on the national credit card,

00:00:56.980 and more interest payments for Canadians.

00:01:00.280 So once again, with Canadians spending $3,000 per family

00:01:04.720 on interest for the debt,

00:01:05.840 is there any limit on the Liberal credit card?

00:01:07.780 The Right Honourable Prime Minister.

00:01:12.700 Mr. Speaker, in the face of a tariff war,

00:01:15.320 in the face of an actual war,

00:01:17.360 this government has reduced the deficit by $11 billion.

00:01:21.820 This government...

00:01:23.260 Well, that's not exactly true.

00:01:25.780 we'll get into that. The big question, though, is, is there really a difference? Have things

00:01:30.560 changed from the old government? That's part of what we're going to discuss in this episode of

00:01:36.220 Full Comment as we welcome back Professor Ian Lee from the Sprott School of Business at Carleton

00:01:40.680 University in Ottawa and Carlo Dade. He is Director of International Policy and the New

00:01:46.620 North America Initiative at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy. So, gentlemen,

00:01:52.320 And let me start with you.

00:01:54.060 We'll start with Ian.

00:01:57.440 Quick thoughts.

00:01:58.640 And I mean quick, Ian.

00:01:59.760 I know how you talk.

00:02:01.000 Quick thoughts on the fiscal update.

00:02:04.020 Did it deliver for Canada?

00:02:06.120 Or was it, like I said in my column, not much there, there?

00:02:12.880 Brian, I agree with you.

00:02:14.260 There wasn't much there, there.

00:02:15.780 To do the one hand this, on the one hand that,

00:02:18.080 It was, I believe, empirically much better than any of the budgets of the last 10 years under the previous government.

00:02:25.080 So let's acknowledge that.

00:02:26.460 Maybe a low bar.

00:02:27.700 In what way?

00:02:29.140 Well, the former government, in a book I'm now doing with Larry O'Brien on the outlook on the economy, took the economy backward.

00:02:37.700 Our GDP per capita went down.

00:02:39.660 Our productivity went down.

00:02:40.740 most many of the economic fundamentals have declined in this country using stats can data

00:02:46.900 bank of canada data so that is you know irrefutable and then they were had policies that

00:02:52.540 were so hostile to the development of economic of natural resources in this country the no pipeline

00:02:57.540 bill the tanker ban bill and so forth so what carney has been reversing uh many of those policies

00:03:04.880 But I thought he had a wonderful chance to take it to the next level, and he didn't.

00:03:10.580 I thought that it was a stand-pat, stand-still budget.

00:03:13.240 They didn't go to the next level, which they have to do to overcome the economic damage of the past 10 years.

00:03:20.800 Carlo, your quick thoughts on the fiscal update.

00:03:25.100 Look, I want to keep trying to cheer on this government.

00:03:28.540 They're in charge, whether I want them to be or not.

00:03:31.160 And I want the country to succeed, but I felt like this was, just like the budget last November, a missed opportunity to take moves to kickstart the economy.

00:03:43.260 Yeah, no, it was great news.

00:03:44.920 Just imagine how infinitely greater it would have been if we had another pipeline.

00:03:51.080 Look, you know, where we have built the expansion of Trans Mountain, where we have built, we have seen rewards.

00:03:58.900 This should be the chance to hammer that case. I think Canadians realize the dire financial situation. Everyone, I think, in air quotes, was worried about the deficit. And this was an object lesson in the need to build the infrastructure to earn the money that Canadians want to spend on other things.

00:04:20.940 So, look, from the West, it was, yeah, the missed opportunity was the object lesson in the need to build the infrastructure to move products to market.

00:04:32.320 I love that term, the luxury of complacency, because it sums up so much of kind of the feeling that we have in Canada.

00:04:40.980 It's like, well, no, things are fine.

00:04:42.640 Things are good.

00:04:43.860 This is all just because of Donald Trump.

00:04:46.300 You know, if it wasn't for Donald Trump, we'd be doing great.

00:04:48.500 i'm sorry but you look at the economic growth over the last few years and the budget did brag

00:04:55.240 carlo about how we're going to be the second fastest growing economy in the g7 according to

00:05:01.400 the imf at 1.5 that is that that is not an economy on fire i have to ask both of you gentlemen though

00:05:11.700 So this fiscal update, just like the budget last fall, I was expecting more.

00:05:18.920 You know, you listen to the rhetoric of the government and how they've positioned themselves and you think, okay, this is a group that wants to move fast, that wants to do things differently.

00:05:30.740 And I'm having trouble seeing what they're doing differently than the old government, other than you've got a nice new guy from Central Casting, who's a central banker, who is at the front of it.

00:05:46.660 Ian, are you seeing in significant ways a departure from the former Trudeau government?

00:05:55.920 If you had asked me 90 days ago, I would have said yes.

00:05:58.300 His announcements were reversing a significant number of the Trudeau government policies on energy, on carbon tax and the MOU at the Premier of Alberta and so forth.

00:06:12.340 What sandbagged me and caught me off guard, because I thought he was going to go in a different direction as a blue liberal.

00:06:17.780 What caught me off guard was his announcement, and I'm going to focus, we'll probably talk more about it, but this sovereign welfare, sovereign investment fund, which is not a real sovereign investment fund.

00:06:31.460 There's a slip of the tongue, sovereign welfare fund.

00:06:33.980 Yes, that was a Freudian slip.

00:06:36.700 Why I think it's, we're now seeing a regress.

00:06:40.220 My criticism for years has been that we've made a mistake for 60 years with what John Ibbotson called the Laurentian elites.

00:06:48.080 And I'll say it very succinctly and why I thought Carney was reversing it, but he isn't, that the Laurentian elites believed in the superior efficacy of state central planning.

00:06:57.760 The French call it de regisme.

00:07:00.360 And he thought that that was their belief, that their view was government planning was superior to market forces.

00:07:07.840 And so they did all their, you know, the national energy program and that kind of thing for the last 60 years.

00:07:14.300 Carney said, a fund about a rupture, and we've got to do things very differently.

00:07:17.940 And he started down that road.

00:07:19.320 And then in this announcement of this fund showed that they have not learned their lessons.

00:07:27.100 And the lesson is we don't have a shortage of capital in Canada.

00:07:30.900 Capital is mobile around the world.

00:07:32.380 It seeks out the best returns at obviously least cost and least barriers to entry.

00:07:38.360 And why we've seen so much capital flight to the states is simply because they're better investment opportunities.

00:07:44.300 And so, you know, things like the no pipeline bill, the tanker ban bill, the incredible red tape that's been documented by both the OECD and their analysis of the OECD countries were near the bottom, as well as the World Bank separate study on red tape and regulation were at the bottom.

00:08:00.040 I thought he was going to strip that or start that to go down that road to strip it aside.

00:08:05.520 What he's done is he's really gone back down, gone to the status quo ante of the last 60 years, including the peak, the peak period under Trudeau, which is where the state is going to allocate capital.

00:08:18.020 The state is going to make the decisions to make battery plants or subsidize Bombardier to take on, you know, Airbus and Boeing.

00:08:26.220 That's a failure.

00:08:27.260 We have 60 years of failure of that belief that the state has superior strategic decision

00:08:33.820 making capacity.

00:08:35.560 I thought Kearney coming out of Goldman Sachs and and being a central banker and an economist

00:08:40.920 was going to say, you know, not the way to go.

00:08:43.740 But he didn't.

00:08:44.760 And that's why I think this is not a he's not setting up taking the country in a new

00:08:50.320 direction.

00:08:51.680 All right. 0.78

00:08:51.800 So, Carla, since Ian raised the issue of the sovereign debt fund, because we're borrowing all the money that's going into it, this is not a sovereign wealth fund in the way the Norwegians have.

00:09:04.780 We have to borrow every penny of it.

00:09:08.800 It's, you know, I look at what we have already, and I know that Prime Minister Carney was asked about how is this different from the Canada Infrastructure Bank?

00:09:17.560 And he said, well, that focuses on loans.

00:09:20.160 And then you go to the Canada Infrastructure Bank website and you find out that, no, they take equity stakes.

00:09:25.580 And you look at the Canada Growth Fund.

00:09:28.800 And so the Canada Strong Fund, the new one, is $25 billion.

00:09:34.200 The Canada Infrastructure Bank is $45 billion.

00:09:38.320 And they take equity stakes in companies.

00:09:41.320 The Canada Growth Fund takes equity stakes in companies.

00:09:44.400 and is there also to try and encourage private sector investment.

00:09:49.020 The Strategic Innovation Fund is also there

00:09:52.060 to try and encourage all of this other investment.

00:09:56.640 How many funds do we need, Carlo,

00:09:58.940 to try and encourage private sector investment?

00:10:04.420 You don't need funds, as Ian's pointed out.

00:10:06.860 You need to fix the fundamentals.

00:10:09.060 Money is fleeing Canada to the U.S.

00:10:11.440 because there's a better return.

00:10:13.820 But hold on.

00:10:15.660 Hold on.

00:10:16.160 The Carney government tells us that we've got the best foreign direct investment ever.

00:10:23.040 BS.

00:10:24.100 Tiss.

00:10:25.740 But look, you do have to.

00:10:27.900 I'm on the phone with folks in the States, and they're trying to get money to Canada, and no one's buying.

00:10:34.840 The issues are the fundamentals.

00:10:36.620 Are you going to get a return on your investment?

00:10:40.320 Where is the highest return?

00:10:42.360 and where is the lowest risk?

00:10:44.900 I would, though, just briefly, on Carney and, you know, action meeting words,

00:10:50.220 I still give him some runway.

00:10:52.000 The fact that he's continuing to say largely the right things on building

00:10:57.160 is encouraging, but we're running out of runway.

00:11:02.860 So he's got, I don't know how much more runway he has left,

00:11:06.560 but he's got to start delivering.

00:11:08.540 The flip side to that is it's hard.

00:11:11.180 If it was simple, we would have already done it.

00:11:13.900 But the reasons we haven't aren't just the Trudeau government.

00:11:18.640 Turn the mirror back on the country.

00:11:20.540 Turn the mirror on to the lower mainland in B.C.

00:11:23.480 Turn the mirror on to communities across the country.

00:11:27.160 Turn the mirror on to Quebec.

00:11:28.580 We have been our own worst enemy.

00:11:30.820 And the government's maybe aided and abetted the worst tendencies apart.

00:11:36.060 But it's also us.

00:11:37.740 It's also, we've been yelling about this in Alberta.

00:11:41.500 Had we had the ability to get pipelines, we wouldn't be as dependent on the U.S.

00:11:45.840 But that's also a self-inflicted wound.

00:11:49.600 And I worry about that going forward.

00:11:53.400 Okay, so, Carlo, if I can ask you to just back up a little bit and explain how have we been our own worst enemy?

00:12:01.740 Because there's an awful lot of Canadians who don't see that.

00:12:05.500 They just see Donald Trump is bad.

00:12:09.360 Okay, I can accept that.

00:12:11.820 The Americans are attacking us.

00:12:13.700 Okay, I can accept that. 1.00

00:12:15.420 And they're to blame for everything.

00:12:17.620 That's not accurate.

00:12:19.320 So how are we, at times, our own worst enemies?

00:12:24.120 Because too many Canadians will not understand that.

00:12:27.840 Sure.

00:12:28.740 And those are the Canadians who, with us out West, have been yelling and screaming.

00:12:33.560 We is the collective of the country.

00:12:35.980 So we have elections, and the results of those elections have consequences.

00:12:40.820 At the end of the day, you can go riding by riding and put people on one side or the other.

00:12:46.160 But really, what matters in terms of the international perception in how we function is the end result.

00:12:53.800 So I would argue there are folks that are upset about this.

00:12:57.100 But at the end of the day, the collective we has, when you look at the results of the election, wound up where we are.

00:13:05.080 I would also argue that I don't know that folks who are suddenly aware of this or suddenly becoming vocal about it were as vocal as they needed to be early on.

00:13:15.620 And I include, so I was just in Speedy Creek, swift current over the winter, talking to the only.

00:13:22.380 Brad Wall from Speedy Creek, he's a first-time caller.

00:13:26.300 I'm making a joke about how we used to call into the local radio station there.

00:13:30.780 He'd call himself Brad from Speedy Creek.

00:13:33.580 Brad is actually outside.

00:13:35.520 He's down by Cypress Hills.

00:13:36.820 But that's beside the point.

00:13:37.800 Now he is, yes.

00:13:38.780 The point is I was talking to them, and I said, look, with the issues on trade infrastructure and moving grain to market,

00:13:45.960 When you hand out paychecks or envelopes, do you have a flyer in there informing the workers at the terminal how important this is and to raise that message every time an MP comes home to take a stand?

00:14:02.820 Those who have wanted to prevent us from building have been very active.

00:14:08.440 my history in international development, working with NGOs and foundations, these folks will go to

00:14:15.820 the front line. I don't disagree that there's been opposition and folks complaining in Canada,

00:14:21.680 but I don't know that the industries, I'm just speaking at crop life, I don't know that agriculture

00:14:28.320 has been organized. They're too busy fighting amongst themselves to fight against the real

00:14:34.080 threats, those who prevent us from building things. So I think the weakness is twofold.

00:14:39.580 It's one, the majority, I guess, or the minority that was able to form a government in the past,

00:14:47.400 but also those of us who are committed not doing enough. And I would argue that the fact that we

00:14:55.220 are where we are is a condemnation. And I'm looking at myself here. As much work as I've

00:15:02.200 done arguing, raising the case, doing the research on a national trade infrastructure plan,

00:15:07.880 trying to figure out how to communicate. I didn't do enough. I wasn't successful in getting the

00:15:13.800 message across. So the results are what they are. We are where we are because of what we've done

00:15:20.340 and what we haven't done. Brian, can I follow up on that? Because I want to add to this to

00:15:25.440 answer your question and add to what Carlos said. I agree with everything you said. You said, well,

00:15:29.420 what how can we be our own western man what have we done well let me give you exhibit a

00:15:32.940 we have interprovincial tariffs in a very recent monograph i think it was trevor tone but from

00:15:37.780 calgary but it was an economist converted all of the interprovincial trade barriers using some

00:15:43.360 sophisticated economics converted it into the equivalent of a percentage of tariff

00:15:47.820 quebec 25 the effect of the interprovincial trade barriers in quebec are 25 tariff against the rest

00:15:54.040 of canada you looked at ontario and the other provinces there between 15 and 20 percent the

00:15:58.600 American tariffs are 6%. So we're screaming at Donald Trump, and yet the provinces are charging

00:16:03.280 three and four times what Donald Trump's charging us. That's just exhibit A. Exhibit B, RBC Thought

00:16:10.960 Leadership has a graph where they computed and compared us to the OECD. We have the highest

00:16:16.000 corporate income taxes in the OECD. Finance Minister Flaherty, some years ago, talked about

00:16:23.920 tax advantage where he said, I want to keep our taxes a little bit below the Americans so we

00:16:28.560 don't incentivize our companies to go to the states i've been arguing and i get some progressives

00:16:33.300 very angry what we've done is put a great big bullseye on ourself to our own investor class 0.56

00:16:38.260 and business class in our country go to america we are exploiting the hell out of you with the

00:16:45.200 highest corporate income taxes in the wealthiest most successful countries in the world go away

00:16:50.980 third one the the the for the demonization of resources which trevor tome and before him

00:16:57.720 steven gordon at laval the university and other economist showed had the highest productivity

00:17:02.340 over the last 30 40 years the the resource sector as steven gordon showed in the 90s

00:17:07.400 was responsible for almost all of our increase in our prosperity and our standard of living

00:17:11.520 so what did we do over these many last years we went out of our way to try and inhibit and put

00:17:17.780 barriers and penalties on the development of resources the ring of fire has been talking for

00:17:23.340 35 years to build a road and we haven't built the road on mining. We are the worst on planet

00:17:27.960 earth from developing a mine from scratch. It takes 21 years in Canada, the worst in the world.

00:17:33.700 So there's many things. Why is that a problem? Why shouldn't it take 21 years? Because it drives

00:17:38.560 down GDP per capita. It drives investment out of the country to the United States and it's reducing

00:17:43.820 our standard of living. I call it in to be colorful. I've called it in my classes for years,

00:17:49.080 the argentinization of canada ouch ouch ouch ouch from from from a latin americanist that's a

00:17:57.740 ouch but let me just jump in quickly okay what has the government done hold on carlo hold on

00:18:03.300 um here's what i've got in front of me because i was just writing about this today

00:18:08.360 yeah is that canada's combined corporate tax rate comparisons all right uh com we are at a

00:18:16.540 combined federal provincial territorial rate of about 26.5%. That is just below the G7 average of

00:18:24.640 28.6, but above the OECD average of 24.2. Like that's not overly competitive. And I would say

00:18:33.760 that going back to the time of Laurier, if not before, part of Canada's industrial policy was

00:18:42.200 have a tax rate that is more competitive than our neighbors and the others.

00:18:51.940 And so just so that people know, the U.S., which has cut taxes,

00:18:56.960 their combined federal and state tax on average,

00:19:01.120 and it depends on which state you end up in, is about 25.5%.

00:19:04.760 So we're a full percentage point above on average.

00:19:08.580 And, you know, if you're going to Alberta, if you're going to Ontario versus Ohio or Florida or Tennessee, whatever, it will all change.

00:19:17.660 But on average, we're now higher than the Americans.

00:19:20.380 That's not a good spot for us to be in, Carla.

00:19:22.880 It's worse than that. 0.98

00:19:24.440 It's one thing to have high taxes and get services that make you more competitive.

00:19:30.120 If taxes are an investment that created a climate that provides services to business or that give you an advantage,

00:19:36.880 We're paying higher money and getting worse quality.

00:19:40.560 So it's worse than, I think, just the high rates.

00:19:43.740 The Nordics can have high taxes, but I don't think many people would argue that folks aren't

00:19:49.300 getting decent health care, pensions, and other services.

00:19:54.580 So it's worse, I think, than just paying high taxes.

00:19:58.760 I don't mind paying high taxes if I walk into a health clinic and I'm treated right away,

00:20:03.920 if i get uh the streets are clean hold on what i have what did you say you're treated

00:20:10.160 you're treated right away what is this you speak of it's called being an american and having tons

00:20:17.780 of money and walking into your your private doctor's office but if i'm paying that sort of

00:20:23.520 money i want that sort of service um but very quickly on the government you said what has the

00:20:29.220 government done. Here's one thing that they have done. Interprovincial trade barriers are important.

00:20:35.300 The cost, as Trevor Toome and others have pointed out, is high. It's disaggregated.

00:20:41.280 It's disaggregated. People don't know this. But here's the point. We've cut provincial trade

00:20:46.220 barriers and then turned around and said, well, there you go. Barriers are cut. Now you,

00:20:52.740 small company in Lethbridge. There are opportunities all across Canada. Forget about

00:20:58.880 Mizzou, Bozeman, and Boise. We've got opportunities here in Canada and places in Canada you've never

00:21:06.160 visited. Talk Rivière, talk Pistole. You can't tell the difference between the two. But trust us, 0.73

00:21:11.760 there are opportunities out there. What the federal government announced this week, or no,

00:21:18.260 late last week was the creation of an internal trade commissioner service. So the company in

00:21:25.800 Lethbridge that trades across the border but has no idea what's in Newfoundland or what's available

00:21:31.280 in Ontario will now have assistance in finding those opportunities. When we cut trade barriers

00:21:38.260 with Honduras, we don't say, okay, job's done, the market's down there, hit Mexico, keep going,

00:21:44.280 and you'll find tons of opportunities.

00:21:46.380 We have an analogous situation in Canada,

00:21:48.960 and I've argued for over 10 years

00:21:51.240 that we've needed this internal trade commissioner service.

00:21:55.680 Quebec has an internal trade commissioner service.

00:21:58.840 So the company in Lethbridge

00:22:00.320 that has no idea how to find opportunities in Quebec,

00:22:03.880 the Quebec company calls the Quebec Trade Office in Calgary

00:22:07.520 and they can find opportunities.

00:22:09.740 So the federal government has come around

00:22:11.920 to this realization that cutting barriers only helps companies that are already trading. Companies

00:22:18.160 that have lost business in the U.S. and are desperately seeking alternatives are going to

00:22:23.900 need help to find foreign markets, which could be Newfoundland. It could be Manitoba. It could be

00:22:32.620 Quebec. So that's one thing that they've done that's concrete, that's real, that's learning

00:22:37.500 a lesson from the past.

00:22:39.060 So tip of the hat for them

00:22:40.420 for only taking 10 years

00:22:42.560 to come around to that idea.

00:22:44.660 I'll admit that that's a good idea.

00:22:46.320 And at that point,

00:22:47.560 I'm going to take a pause.

00:22:48.660 We'll have some ad breaks,

00:22:50.820 pay some bills.

00:22:51.680 And when we come back,

00:22:52.740 we'll talk about other things

00:22:54.140 that could be happening

00:22:55.560 beyond the trade scope

00:22:56.920 to try and boost Canada's economy.

00:22:59.860 Back in moments.

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00:24:29.380 human. There were so many missed opportunities to catch this before the devastating thing

00:24:38.800 happened. A third of them we found literally in the phone book. These people were not afraid.

00:24:45.420 They knew that nobody was effectively hunting them. They knew they had escaped justice,

00:24:50.340 that they were going to die in their beds. When I give talks at law schools is that the charter

00:24:54.060 ultimately is empowering a minority and it's empowering a minority that's a guilt across

00:24:58.320 the country and it's a fairly elite guild and the guild is lawyers families who were split by

00:25:03.520 referendum and brothers and sisters who never talked to each other for years after the referendum

00:25:09.520 because they were so angry at each other because of her emotions on both sides the reason he was

00:25:14.800 assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space but because

00:25:19.600 Because the gun that he was creating had other applications that made him and the gun very dangerous.

00:25:29.160 It's finally here. A new season of Canada Did What?

00:25:32.980 Host media podcast that revisits the big Canadian political events you might think you remember

00:25:38.360 and tells you the real story you never knew.

00:25:41.520 I'm Tristan Hopper. The voices you just heard are from our brand new season two.

00:25:46.280 We will unpack some of the pivotal moments that helped define our country,

00:25:50.480 often without a vote, usually without a plan,

00:25:53.100 and sometimes without anyone admitting what they've done.

00:25:56.860 We'll find out how Canada became a welcoming paradise 0.72

00:25:59.940 for untold numbers of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War. 0.85

00:26:04.540 We let them build monuments to their wartime exploits

00:26:07.300 and even ended up honoring a Nazi fighter in the House of Commons.

00:26:11.360 And I'm sorry to say that none of that happened by accident.

00:26:14.860 We'll bring you the little-known story of a troubled Canadian rocket scientist

00:26:18.780 who turned to a sinister life of selling giant guns to terrible people.

00:26:24.220 And if that sounds like a spy novel, it ends like one too.

00:26:27.580 You'll hear the behind-the-scenes story of Quebec's attempted secession from Canada

00:26:31.400 and how very close we came to a political crisis that would have made Brexit look like a picnic.

00:26:37.800 You'll hear about how the much-celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms

00:26:41.680 turned into something its creators never wanted, and how many of the most extravagant warnings

00:26:47.000 about the document were all quickly proven true. And you'll even hear about how authorities

00:26:52.840 bungled multiple chances to stop the deadliest terrorist attack in our country's history,

00:26:57.700 and then proceeded to pretend it never happened. These aren't dusty history lessons. They're

00:27:03.160 stories about power, ambition, madness, and the things about Canada that a lot of people

00:27:08.260 would rather ignore.

00:27:09.640 But not you.

00:27:11.000 You won't want to miss an episode.

00:27:12.960 Subscribe to make sure

00:27:13.980 you get all of Season 2

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00:27:16.940 anywhere you get your podcasts.

00:27:22.080 So above and beyond

00:27:23.580 trying to figure out

00:27:25.260 what to do with sovereign wealth funds,

00:27:26.880 what to do with taxes,

00:27:29.020 how do we actually boost

00:27:30.740 the Canadian economy?

00:27:33.120 I had both of you gentlemen

00:27:34.700 on the full comment podcast,

00:27:37.460 about 15 months ago,

00:27:39.980 shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration,

00:27:42.320 where I watched his inaugural speech

00:27:45.160 and he not only talked about tariffs,

00:27:48.320 my favorite word,

00:27:50.000 but also was talking about all the other things

00:27:53.440 he was going to do to the American economy.

00:27:55.600 And I thought, oh, wow,

00:27:57.080 we're in for a world of hurt if we don't move.

00:28:00.920 Have we done enough within Canada?

00:28:05.560 And we were talking about this a little bit

00:28:07.460 Just before the break, Carlo, on the, you know, as you were describing, the internal trade side, have we done enough in terms of tax reform, cutting back on red tape, reforming things like immigration, which has led to a horrible situation where it's just, Justin Trudeau said, we're bringing in people faster than we could absorb them.

00:28:35.480 Um, on terms of corporate welfare, have we done enough to reform our own internal systems

00:28:44.320 to make things work?

00:28:46.580 Ian?

00:28:47.360 I'm glad I got a chance to kick in on this because I have a pet peeve of mine that I've

00:28:52.140 been talking about most of my adult life.

00:28:54.260 And that's writ large, what I call protectionism.

00:28:57.720 I mean, interprovincial trade barriers are a form of internal protectionism.

00:29:01.520 But I'm now talking about our external protectionism.

00:29:04.040 let's put right up at the top supply management okay it's only a small amount but it's symbolic

00:29:08.320 of our larger problems the bigger one for example is the telecom act where the parliament expressly

00:29:13.460 states no foreign uh cell phone telecom can come to canada and as a consequence we have some of

00:29:20.160 the highest cell phone fees on planet earth this is straight out of you know adam smith and economics

00:29:26.640 101 when you reduce competition by keeping out foreign competition what you do is you reduce

00:29:33.660 the incentive to innovate. Schumpeter taught us you innovate because you're terrified of getting

00:29:38.380 clobbered and killed and put it into bankruptcy by your competitor. So you innovate to differentiate

00:29:42.740 yourself, to become a unique, provide something unique. And that allows you to succeed and compete.

00:29:48.760 What we've done, we have many, many protected industries in Canada, oligopolistic, where two

00:29:54.600 or three or four firms control 60, 70, 80 percent of the output. And so no wonder our productivity

00:30:00.820 has been going down and and carolyn rogers at the bank of canada the deputy governor has talked

00:30:06.340 about this we don't are not as competitive our productivity is going down because we have

00:30:12.220 deliberately uh created the opportunities for multiple oligopolistic uh very low competition

00:30:19.420 industries to emerge and so they don't compete because they don't have to there's no conspiracy

00:30:23.500 here it's it's just if you don't have to compete you won't adam smith taught us that 250 years ago

00:30:29.940 And so we've got to open up the economy.

00:30:34.000 I visited his grave site in, is he buried in Edinburgh?

00:30:37.420 I believe so.

00:30:39.420 But the, so there's two things.

00:30:42.640 Supply management is one thing.

00:30:46.080 And the telecom thing that you talked about is another.

00:30:50.720 Let's deal with the supply management side first,

00:30:53.480 because this is highly political, even more so than telecom.

00:30:56.940 and we keep seeing in media report after media report well the americans want to take over

00:31:05.600 our dairy industry and they want to get rid of supply management and then you talk to

00:31:09.360 american trade negotiators you talk to ambassador p hoagstra you talk to members of congress at the

00:31:15.720 senate and they're like no no we we don't want to get rid of supply management we have our own

00:31:20.240 subsidy system. We just want you guys to stop being jerks when it comes to the agreement that 0.99

00:31:28.180 we signed in 2018. That's a world of difference, isn't it, Carlo? Yeah. No, the Americans don't 0.99

00:31:35.940 want to destroy supply management. They want a bigger cut of the racket. They look on Canada,

00:31:41.480 worry to truly reform and force liberalization and efficiency gains. We'd be a competitor for

00:31:49.460 them they'd have a whole nother problem oh like all the dairy farms would be in alberta and 1.00

00:31:55.000 saskatchewan and would make wisconsin look like a you know a piker right like we would be selling 0.99

00:32:02.760 them all kinds of milk and butter and cheese and they'd be hating us if it was fully free market 0.92

00:32:10.060 that's what would happen but that would annoy quebec and instead they have a protected market

00:32:16.040 in canada where they can elbow us to get another a bigger slice a bigger taste of the action as

00:32:21.540 they say in the mob it's like a mobster coming in you've got a racket going they're not going

00:32:25.740 to put you out of business they're going to take a bigger cut so that's the way the america but i

00:32:30.340 mean we are our own mob with uh yes you know yes compliance management uh we we negotiated with

00:32:38.520 absolutely and a bigger mobster has come in and said i want a bigger mobster has come in and said

00:32:44.640 I want to cut the rack.

00:32:46.780 But we negotiated with them that they would have

00:32:48.800 whatever percentage it was,

00:32:50.520 whatever amount they could export to us.

00:32:53.700 And we said, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, you can have that.

00:32:56.540 And here's your quota.

00:32:58.420 And then we turned around and we gave that quota

00:33:00.700 to Agripoor, Saputo, Armstrong,

00:33:03.940 and all the Canadian suppliers.

00:33:06.100 So the Americans can't even export to us if they want.

00:33:10.180 They've got to wait for their competitors in Canada to say, 0.94

00:33:13.240 yeah we want some of your cheaper stuff and because the sm5 did this the americans are now

00:33:20.180 going to come back and say not only do you have to honor the previous agreement but we want a

00:33:25.480 bigger cut you pissed us off and now we we want more so that i think was always a potential on

00:33:32.320 the table but that is certainly going to happen um going forward our own worst enemy um well

00:33:40.740 Well, you know, every other industry I talked to, Ian, says the dairy industry, the dairy cartel in Canada could kill the entire Kuzmin agreement and and messes all up.

00:33:54.520 This is why I, you know, at the end of the day, there's eight thousand five hundred dairy farmers, mostly in Quebec and eastern Ontario, more in Quebec than eastern Ontario.

00:34:02.960 But let's not quibble, you know, whether it's 60, 40, who cares?

00:34:05.500 It's a small number, but it's extremely symbolic.

00:34:08.240 I mean, Donald Trump talks about it endlessly.

00:34:09.820 the americans have been talking about if you go and look at the ustr trade report tabled in

00:34:14.380 congress every year it's a public document they have been listing that at the top of the list

00:34:18.500 since the clinton administration that's a third of a century ago and so we should if we want to

00:34:24.400 cause my agreement and i think it's absolutely essential because if it is revoked or canceled

00:34:28.240 you watch the canadian dollar crash and you watch more business exits to the united states it's

00:34:33.780 going to haul about canada and so we should look at that ustr report and say look at the four or

00:34:39.120 five or six top irritants, the digital services tax, you know, the Telecom Act, the supply

00:34:43.920 management, we should be looking at that instead of saying, as many Canadians are, we're not going

00:34:49.060 to give up an inch to that Donald Trump. We should see this as an opportunity to open up our own

00:34:55.220 economy, which will benefit us and stop us from exploiting ourselves, which is what protectionism

00:35:01.320 does because the protected industries raise the prices to Canadians to charge us more because they

00:35:07.720 can get away with it because of lack of competition. So what we should be doing in the

00:35:11.980 KUSMA negotiations is saying, hell, man, we'll give you that. We'll give you supply and management.

00:35:16.580 We don't want it. We'll open up the telecom. We'll open up airlines. But in exchange,

00:35:22.340 this is what we want. We want complete open access, tariff-free to the United States across

00:35:28.320 the board. And this is an opportunity, but we're seeing it. A lot of pundits and politicians are

00:35:34.280 We're seeing the giving up of these.

00:35:36.440 They're saying, oh, my goodness, don't do that.

00:35:38.260 It'll show we're weak to Donald Trump.

00:35:39.900 So we're trying to keep these industries that are exploiting the hell out of us.

00:35:45.780 We're trying to keep their exploitation racket in place.

00:35:49.840 I mean, this is upside down, backward and nuts.

00:35:54.080 I find myself reaching for my copy of Robert Lighthizer's book, No Trade is Free,

00:35:59.380 because he would disagree with you.

00:36:04.200 And that's the kind of the sense

00:36:06.120 or the area that Jameson Greer,

00:36:10.540 the new U.S. trade representative, is in.

00:36:13.540 Look, we don't have to give up

00:36:15.760 all of supply management.

00:36:17.260 We just have to honor the past agreement.

00:36:19.720 And I think that would work.

00:36:21.800 If we gave up all of supply management, 0.93

00:36:23.700 then Carla would retire 1.00

00:36:25.900 from the University of Calgary 1.00

00:36:27.320 and become a dairy farmer

00:36:28.500 somewhere between Calgary and Lethbridge

00:36:31.700 and be making out like a bandit.

00:36:35.220 Let me ask you both about this.

00:36:38.240 So the telecom bit.

00:36:41.140 You know, I've been looking at this for a long time

00:36:43.460 and I don't love that you've got three or four companies

00:36:47.860 that control all of it either.

00:36:49.760 But when you look at what, say, T-Mobile or AT&T,

00:36:58.500 or any of the big companies in the States, Verizon,

00:37:02.540 what do they want to do?

00:37:04.380 They just want to come in and compete in Toronto,

00:37:09.100 Vancouver.

00:37:10.360 Maybe if they're bold, they want to go to Montreal

00:37:12.680 because it's a big market,

00:37:14.000 but then they've got to become bilingual.

00:37:17.160 But they don't want to do everything else.

00:37:19.540 And the argument from the Canadian telcos,

00:37:22.420 which has some merit,

00:37:24.820 I'm not going to say all merit,

00:37:26.160 but some merit is they are constantly being pushed of why don't you have service in this

00:37:31.740 far remote region of my province and you know it's somewhere where there's no money to be made

00:37:39.900 that's why they don't have cell service there and yet for them to be able to sell in these major

00:37:47.940 markets they're told you must provide the cell service there so how how do you balance that out

00:37:55.120 between allowing the American companies in,

00:37:58.400 but also telling the Canadian companies

00:38:01.000 to sell in Toronto, in Vancouver, in Montreal, in Calgary.

00:38:05.100 You've got to provide service in who knows where.

00:38:09.500 I went back to school in 82 after nine years in banking,

00:38:12.960 and this was just when the whole deregulation

00:38:15.620 of airlines broke out.

00:38:16.620 And it was ferocious and it was fierce.

00:38:18.400 And all the small towns and all the politicians said,

00:38:21.820 we're going to be doomed because they won't fly into the little tiny towns anymore. We're going

00:38:27.220 to lose our air service and we're going to die. And they trotted this out endlessly ad nauseum.

00:38:32.840 They still pushed it through. And what happened? Well, they segmented and rationalized the market.

00:38:38.160 So yes, the little towns and villages stopped getting jets flying in. They got little putt-putt

00:38:42.480 propeller airplanes. So what? In other words, they rationalized the market and said, we'll put big

00:38:47.440 planes flying into big hub airports, Toronto, Chicago and L.A. and that. And we'll put medium

00:38:52.940 sized planes for the medium sized airports and so on. They did not lose their service. The market

00:38:58.620 grew three, four, five fold over the next 20 years. This is one of the canards I read all the time

00:39:04.900 that if you allow the foreigners in, we are going to lose. The market will shrink. And that is not 1.00

00:39:11.080 the evidence. Hold on, Ian. Hold on. That is not the argument that I'm making. The argument that

00:39:18.360 I'm making is that we have a regulator called the CRTC, an organization that I would love to

00:39:25.060 dismantle tomorrow brick by brick, and I would happily do it by hand. They tell them that if

00:39:32.780 you want to sell across the country, you've got to go to these small markets. That is not what

00:39:38.280 the Verizons and the T-Mobiles and the AT&T's want to do if they come to Canada. So if we let

00:39:44.440 them in, do we also tell them that you've got to supply cell service to Flin Flon and LaRange

00:39:52.480 and, you know, the tiny town in northern Alberta that I was in last year?

00:39:57.600 That's an undocumented assumption. I have traveled across the United States over my lifetime and road

00:40:03.520 trips to 44 or 50 states. Okay. I have, trust me. And I can go into little podunk places,

00:40:09.920 rural Texas, rural South Carolina. I've been there. Okay. Rural Ohio. And they have cell phone

00:40:15.860 service. I go to upstate New York. It's only an hour from my city in Ottawa. And I'm telling you,

00:40:21.040 they have excellent cell along highway 37, hugging the St. Lawrence. So this is one of these urban

00:40:26.980 legends, you know, that, you know, the people out in the world, they're not going, they're not going

00:40:30.240 to get any service and not it's not accurate that cell phone companies first off they've gone

00:40:35.760 digital completely and they're going more and more wireless and they're going more and more

00:40:39.440 satellite based and so i'm not worried about that and and we're and they are getting excellent

00:40:45.040 service in these rural and remote communities in the u.s and increasingly in canada because we've

00:40:50.060 been rolling out the broadband strategy which is extending that service with government subsidies

00:40:55.300 to rural, remote, northern communities and rural communities.

00:40:58.620 So again, I think this is a canard to justify keeping their protected market

00:41:03.680 so they can charge some of the highest cell phone fees in the world.

00:41:08.380 So I would disagree with that.

00:41:10.220 We are a lot more dispersed than are the Americans with lower population density.

00:41:15.800 The government does have an obligation to assure that service does reach communities.

00:41:21.280 I think the dynamics of the U.S. market are different than the dynamics of the American market.

00:41:27.360 You can spread those costs more easily amongst larger populations in the U.S.

00:41:32.620 It would be more difficult in Canada.

00:41:35.140 And in the States, you have special provisions on getting cell phone service to First Nations,

00:41:41.620 to reserves, to places where there's low density and low incomes.

00:41:46.840 So the Americans have dealt with this.

00:41:48.720 look, I think it's not a question of whether or not we require them. It's a question of whether

00:41:54.460 or not the requirement is intended to serve the Canadian public interest or whether it's intended

00:42:01.100 to serve the interest of the cell phone providers. And I think as long as we have a policy that

00:42:09.120 balances the interest between the two, it's workable. I would agree that I don't know that

00:42:15.080 We've had that balance in terms of letting the Americans in versus keeping them out.

00:42:21.060 But I want to get back to the comments about the trade agreement.

00:42:25.080 If I can just pause here for a second, Carla, my concern would be that the CRTC, as much as Ian wants to look towards Adam Smith and being purist on this, and I get that, Ian, really do,

00:42:40.760 is that the CRTC is a horrible organization

00:42:46.940 that cannot regulate telecom,

00:42:49.920 it cannot regulate broadcast,

00:42:51.720 and now it's being put in charge of the internet

00:42:54.160 with a website that looks like it was designed

00:42:56.120 in the Netscape Navigator era.

00:42:58.500 And these guys would not find those fine dividing lines

00:43:05.180 that you're seeing.

00:43:06.280 They would just say,

00:43:07.640 no, you must do this or you must do that.

00:43:09.640 By the way, the small town in northern Alberta I was in last summer was Provost, and then a ball tournament in Macklin, Saskatchewan.

00:43:19.800 Try and get cell service up there.

00:43:21.400 Actually, you can, and they also have a subway.

00:43:23.680 It's good.

00:43:24.520 All right, so, Carlo, your thoughts on the trade agreement.

00:43:26.980 So, you've made the point that if we lose the agreement, we'll see jobs flee, we'll see the Canadian economy tank.

00:43:41.580 We're undertaking a project as part of this new North America initiative to bring trade economists together to actually run the scenarios for the review of the North American trade agreement.

00:43:56.340 No agreement, two bilateral agreements, 10% across-the-board tariff, which is what I think we'll get, two separate agreements, a zombie agreement, etc.

00:44:06.660 And we want to not just come up with the scenarios, but quantify, model the impacts.

00:44:13.060 What we've seen with the Bank of Canada announcement in their modeling and what we're seeing from some of the private banks is a quantification of what the damage would be.

00:44:27.220 And we're seeing things range from 1.4% to 2% hit and GDP for one year.

00:44:34.960 As a country, we could survive that.

00:44:38.240 But that 1.8% maybe countrywide could be 25%.

00:44:42.220 percent in Windsor, but it could be 0.08 percent in parts of Alberta. So with thinking about the

00:44:52.680 review, we need precision in statements that are overly broad and overly general. Our work

00:45:01.520 on the Section 232 tariff impacts, we've done the only provincial level analysis,

00:45:07.120 makes that distinction quite clear.

00:45:11.360 So I think we need, I don't know that leaving

00:45:14.940 or the end of the North American agreement

00:45:17.580 will wreck the Canadian economy.

00:45:19.480 I'm not willing to say it will or it won't

00:45:21.940 until I have the numbers,

00:45:24.220 until we've gone through these quantification exercises.

00:45:27.000 And the banks are doing it,

00:45:29.440 but I think we need data that doesn't have

00:45:32.460 client-side encumbrances upon it, shall we say.

00:45:37.120 So we need this independent work. And we're doing that now. And as we get the numbers, we'll actually be able to understand what's at risk and who's at risk and be able to take proactive measures instead of being driven by fear and assumption about what lies ahead.

00:45:53.400 Carlo, you'll never get me arguing against empirical studies, and I'm really pleased

00:45:57.940 that you're doing that. And I think Calgary is doing a fabulous job, University of Calgary

00:46:01.420 School of Public Policy. What I was really referring to, and I've seen a lot of stuff

00:46:06.080 on this, is the psychology of the capitalist or the owner. If I'm an owner of a business

00:46:11.980 that's doing $5 or $10 million a year, and I lent nine years, I lent money to SMEs in

00:46:16.560 the Bank of Montreal, millions and millions of dollars. And if I'm sitting here in eastern

00:46:21.260 Ontario or anywhere near the border. And I'm doing a third of my business going to the states

00:46:26.040 and the, and the, and the Kuzma disappears. I'm sitting there and the cost structure is higher 1.00

00:46:30.760 in this country. The tax structure is higher in this country. Okay. And we have a government

00:46:34.580 that's much more interventionist. And I'm saying, gee whiz, I can just walk across that border or

00:46:40.120 drive across the border. They'll welcome me with open arms because they're very aggressive towards

00:46:44.060 recruiting capital in these upstate border states. I can go into that country and my tax rates will

00:46:50.520 go down my personal tax and my corporate tax and i have a much bigger market i'll never have to

00:46:54.940 worry about tariffs again and um you know it's it the barriers to entry or to going into the states

00:47:01.380 are low and i think the barriers to staying in canada are very high and so you know there's

00:47:07.240 businesses that are exiting we know that capital is moving to the states i don't have the breakdown

00:47:12.100 of it i wished i did but i think we will see i'm not saying every last business is going to exit

00:47:16.900 to the states. Of course not. But there will be some significant capital flight to the states,

00:47:21.100 I'm sure, if we lose Cosmo. There's already capital flight. It's been happening with the

00:47:27.120 agreement. And you will have more businesses. So we're doing the on-the-ground work in Alberta.

00:47:34.180 And what we're seeing is that businesses are moving the necessary production to the U.S.

00:47:41.420 and keeping in Canada. No one wants to uproot their kids. Yes, you can move across the border. Yes,

00:47:45.920 You can have an easier time.

00:47:47.320 But do you want to uproot your life?

00:47:49.240 And we're finding, interestingly, in Alberta, Montana, that dev agencies on both sides are working together.

00:47:57.200 There are also American firms that would love to trade with China or that would love access to the TPP.

00:48:02.680 Not the same number, but we are seeing this arbitration of the difference.

00:48:10.120 But again, on the agreement, look, we are not going to get an agreement.

00:48:15.920 period. Look at the 17 economies that have negotiated agreements or frameworks with the

00:48:24.380 Americans. Look what happened to the UK. They made concessions. They agreed to take a tariff

00:48:30.960 on pharmaceuticals before the Americans completed their Section 232 investigation to set one.

00:48:37.720 They got an agreement that gave them a baseline tariff and a deal on steel and aluminum. That

00:48:43.620 lasted two weeks before the administration came in and changed it. You're going to make concessions

00:48:49.880 and you have no certainty that the Americans are going to honor the concessions you made.

00:48:55.700 So the idea that we can have a new agreement with the Americans is an illusion. Until we change

00:49:02.280 executive tariff authority, we're not going to have an agreement the way people understand the

00:49:08.320 term and again 17 examples of economies that have negotiated so this isn't subject uh subjective

00:49:16.280 thinking we've got facts and evidence on this well so carlo you've led me to where

00:49:23.760 i wanted to end on and that is should we be looking at trying to find a different agreement

00:49:32.000 um there are some people who just say we should walk away from it you know i was speaking

00:49:38.200 with economist Joseph Steinberg

00:49:40.480 from U of T last week.

00:49:42.080 He thinks that both the booze ban,

00:49:46.940 which doesn't apply to your province,

00:49:49.420 doesn't apply to the great provinces, Saskatchewan,

00:49:52.400 but every other province has an American booze ban.

00:49:56.100 He believes that between that

00:49:57.680 and the way that we have been applying

00:49:59.820 the dairy quotas on the last agreement

00:50:04.680 will lead to Section 301 tariffs

00:50:07.080 under the Trade Act of 1974

00:50:09.560 and that this is going to happen to us soon

00:50:14.800 if we don't do something.

00:50:17.200 So I'll ask both of you,

00:50:20.160 should we be looking for a new agreement?

00:50:22.920 I am a fan of finding a new agreement.

00:50:28.640 I believe that we are in a position of strength.

00:50:31.400 I don't think we are as weak

00:50:32.860 as most Canadians believe we are.

00:50:34.920 We have a lot to offer.

00:50:36.520 If we go in in the right way, I think we can get an agreement and both countries can move forward.

00:50:43.140 I'd like to hear both of your responses.

00:50:45.980 I agree with you, Brian.

00:50:47.380 I believe an agreement, a new agreement, is important.

00:50:51.360 I believe that we have advantages.

00:50:53.420 We've all been doom and gloom about we've got nothing on our side to offer, which I just think is preposterous nonsense.

00:50:59.180 The Americans are freaked out, to use a very unacademic term, over China.

00:51:04.580 I read Foreign Policy Journal and Foreign Policy Magazine out of Washington Weekly, written by, you know, former generals and undersecretaries of state and so forth.

00:51:14.080 You know, the elite of that. 0.83

00:51:15.820 And they're freaked out by China, especially because they have whatever it is, 90 or 92 or 94 percent of critical minerals.

00:51:21.620 We have a huge supply.

00:51:24.260 We're not developing them yet, but we can.

00:51:26.300 And there is the basis of a deal there.

00:51:28.320 I mean, I think it was Kissinger who said the role is to find mutual interests.

00:51:32.200 And that's your zone of agreement.

00:51:34.320 You know, nations don't have friends, they have interests.

00:51:37.080 And so we do have interests, common interests between the two countries,

00:51:39.700 which is why we've been dealing with each other for 200 years or more.

00:51:43.160 So we've just got to identify, which are not difficult, that zone of agreement.

00:51:47.880 And we're going to have to focus on that and get a new agreement

00:51:51.000 because I still think we cannot walk away and pretend

00:51:54.440 that the largest economy on planet Earth isn't really there.

00:51:58.280 And that we're going to go off and search for what some partner halfway around the world,

00:52:02.960 such as china or some other country where we don't speak their language they're very different

00:52:08.000 culturally from u.s and canada we have common interests and common out we have cross marriage

00:52:13.420 i mean we have common uh harmonization of regulations and so forth i still believe we

00:52:18.220 should diversify our trade absolutely but that does not mean we shouldn't have a deal with the

00:52:23.580 united states or walk away from the u.s i i mean china likes to sell us stuff they don't like to

00:52:28.920 buy exactly i think that okay going either one of you can correct me but i believe that

00:52:37.700 we sell them about 21 billion a year this is 2024 numbers but 21 billion a year we sell them and

00:52:44.700 they sell us about 65 billion it's so you know far far so so again you've got to get down to

00:52:52.920 the specifics on that. There are industries and wide swaths of the country where the trade is

00:52:59.200 balanced heavily in favor of our exports, and that's out West. So, you know, guys, leave the

00:53:06.440 Laurentian bubble and come out West. Oh, come on, Carlo. You know I'm out West a lot.

00:53:13.320 Yeah, but that statement requires a Western rhetoric. But look, let's back up to the

00:53:18.740 agreement again. We are going to trade with the Americans. That trade will occur with an agreement

00:53:24.960 or without an agreement. The trade can be easy or it can be hard, difficult, and expensive.

00:53:30.760 The Americans are going to make it more difficult. And with the baseline tariff,

00:53:35.580 you go down the 17 countries that have negotiated 10%, 10%, 15%, 10%, 10%. We're more than likely

00:53:43.480 headed for the same. We can survive that. Trade will go across the border. The purpose of

00:53:48.420 negotiating is to try and make trade easier. We do that with the understanding that when we make

00:53:55.900 concessions, we're not making concessions to gain certainty with the Americans because certainty is

00:54:01.460 not on the table. We're making concessions strategically where we think we have a

00:54:07.360 convergence of interests that will force the Americans to hold through. So it's a complete

00:54:12.560 revision of how we think about this. But one of the problems we have is that the illusion

00:54:18.680 of certainty with an agreement exists. Look, we have the only legally binding agreement with the

00:54:25.240 U.S. The 17 agreements I referenced are our executive orders. We have a binding agreement

00:54:31.740 that was ratified by Congress. In that agreement, we have protections from 232 terrorists.

00:54:38.220 That agreement yielded us no benefit whatsoever.

00:54:42.520 The Americans ignored what they agreed to.

00:54:45.680 But other elements of the agreement have held.

00:54:48.780 Other elements of the agreement do facilitate trade.

00:54:52.480 So, again, specifics matter.

00:54:55.700 So when you think about an agreement, it's not, okay, we signed, we're done, that nightmare's over, we can get on with our lives.

00:55:01.920 Every dollar that we invest in trade diversification to foreign markets going forward has to be matched by a dollar in keeping exports that we have to the U.S.

00:55:14.840 Intelligence gathering, advocacy

00:55:17.100 This is not going to end with Trump

00:55:19.380 It won't end with the shift to the progressives in the states

00:55:22.520 It may get worse

00:55:23.420 So we've got to get back

00:55:25.940 We're still living in the freaking 1970s and 80s when we think about the U.S.

00:55:30.740 Yes, we need an agreement, but we have to understand what that word agreement means.

00:55:36.480 It doesn't mean when Reagan and Mulroney were talking.

00:55:40.780 It means something different.

00:55:42.600 I love that you summed it up that way, Carlo.

00:55:46.540 I keep trying to point out to people the protectionism that we're seeing now out of the White House really started under Obama,

00:55:56.800 got worse under Trump the first,

00:56:00.640 worse under Biden,

00:56:02.220 and is worse again under Trump the second.

00:56:04.960 And I don't expect that it will be any different

00:56:07.580 regardless of who takes over

00:56:09.360 after Trump's second term.

00:56:13.160 God help us if Bernie Sanders comes in.

00:56:15.720 You thought Trump was better.

00:56:18.380 We'll all just wear parkas and mittens

00:56:21.200 and say, I'm waiting to help you.

00:56:23.560 All right, gents, thank you very much for your time.

00:56:25.960 I've taken up too much of it, but I appreciate you both being here.

00:56:30.500 Thank you very much.

00:56:32.080 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:56:34.720 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:56:36.400 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:56:40.380 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:56:42.640 Please remember to hit subscribe, leave a comment,

00:56:45.140 share this on social media, and help spread the word.

00:56:47.900 Thanks for listening.

00:56:48.720 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:56:50.420 there were so many missed opportunities to catch this before the devastating thing happened

00:57:00.360 a third of them we found literally in the phone book these people were not afraid they knew that

00:57:07.000 nobody was effectively hunting them they knew they had escaped justice that they were going to die in

00:57:12.760 their beds when i give talks at law schools is that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority

00:57:17.140 and it's empowering a minority that's a guild across the country

00:57:19.780 and it's a fairly elite guild and the guild is lawyers.

00:57:22.340 Families who were split by referendum

00:57:25.080 and brothers and sisters who never talked to each other for years after the referendum

00:57:30.320 because they were so angry at each other because of the emotions on both sides.

00:57:35.100 The reason he was assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space

00:57:39.780 but because the gun that he was creating had other applications

00:57:45.860 that made him and the gun very dangerous.

00:57:50.140 It's finally here.

00:57:51.720 A new season of Canada Did What?

00:57:54.000 Host media podcast that revisits

00:57:55.720 the big Canadian political events

00:57:57.700 you might think you remember

00:57:59.360 and tells you the real story you never knew.

00:58:02.540 I'm Tristan Hopper.

00:58:03.840 The voices you just heard

00:58:05.360 are from our brand new season two.

00:58:07.740 We will unpack some of the pivotal moments

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00:58:18.180 We'll find out how Canada became a welcoming paradise 0.72

00:58:21.040 for untold numbers of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War. 0.85

00:58:25.540 We let them build monuments to their wartime exploits

00:58:28.300 and even ended up honoring a Nazi fighter in the House of Commons.

00:58:32.360 And I'm sorry to say that none of that happened by accident.

00:58:35.940 We'll bring you the little-known story of a troubled Canadian rocket scientist

00:58:39.780 who turned to a sinister life of selling giant guns to terrible people.

00:58:45.220 And if that sounds like a spy novel, it ends like one too.

00:58:48.580 You'll hear the behind-the-scenes story of Quebec's attempted secession from Canada,

00:58:52.640 and how very close we came to a political crisis that would have made Brexit look like a picnic.

00:58:58.800 You'll hear about how the much-celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms

00:59:02.680 turned into something its creators never wanted,

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00:59:09.020 were all quickly proven true.

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00:59:15.260 to stop the deadliest terrorist attack in our country's history

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00:59:21.720 These aren't dusty history lessons.

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Full Comment - May 04, 2026

Carney looks more like Trudeau with every update

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