Full Comment - Carney projects calm but he’s facing serious trouble

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00:01:11.320 Ready for you.

00:01:15.260 After more than five months away, the House of Commons returned this past week.

00:01:19.300 We had the election of a speaker.

00:01:20.720 We had the king read the speech from the throne.

00:01:22.660 Donald Trump insert himself back into Canadian politics.

00:01:26.380 And Mark Carney make his maiden speech and appearance in question period in the House of Commons.

00:01:31.920 Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:01:33.780 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:01:35.720 And to break down what we saw, what we witnessed, what matters, and what comes next, two great

00:01:41.460 colleagues who know and understand politics quite well.

00:01:44.700 Stuart Thompson is the Ottawa Bureau Chief, the Parliamentary Bureau Chief for National Post.

00:01:48.480 And John Iveson is a long-time political watcher, no longer constrained by the cold, damp weather

00:01:54.960 of Ottawa.

00:01:56.380 Gentlemen, thanks for joining me today.

00:01:58.360 How are you?

00:01:59.520 All good.

00:01:59.920 Thank you, Brian.

00:02:00.640 Great, Brian.

00:02:02.380 I said that, you know, in order of what happened, you know, we elected a new speaker and all of

00:02:06.700 that, but we'll get to the speaker.

00:02:08.380 The important thing, I guess, really was the king delivering the speech from the throne.

00:02:13.180 Here's a clip.

00:02:13.720 It has been nearly 70 years since the sovereign first opened Parliament.

00:02:19.900 In the time since, Canada has dramatically changed.

00:02:24.140 Repatriating its constitution, achieving full independence, and witnessing immense growth.

00:02:32.260 So, if you paid attention to the election, you knew what the contents were.

00:02:36.780 There was not a lot new in it.

00:02:39.280 Was there, you know, the whole idea of having the king deliver the speech as some sort of message

00:02:45.260 to Trump, a show of Canadian sovereignty?

00:02:48.200 Do either one of you think that that worked, that that bore out?

00:02:52.720 I do.

00:02:53.360 I think the message was received in Washington.

00:02:58.440 I mean, the coverage of a Canadian throne speech abroad normally would have been, you

00:03:04.460 know, a nanosecond, and it got coverage.

00:03:07.800 There was, you know, I read pieces in the Washington Post and elsewhere.

00:03:10.800 So, this was noted.

00:03:12.560 It was more about the speaker than the speech, in many ways.

00:03:17.320 I think it was probably helpful to the royal family as well, frankly.

00:03:22.800 Keir Starmer had been in the White House and had refused to defend Canada in the face of all

00:03:28.320 these annexation threats.

00:03:29.940 He had then said, oh, by the way, Donald Trump's coming for a second state visit to Britain.

00:03:36.520 I mean, in the wake of that, the royal family was in something of disrepute in Canada, as

00:03:42.380 the polls showed.

00:03:43.140 There was an Angus Reid poll showed that the majority of people are not in favour of the

00:03:48.160 monarchy in the long term.

00:03:49.120 So, I think this did, did Canada some good?

00:03:52.400 Did the monarchy some good?

00:03:53.500 And I think, from the currently government's point of view, it reinforced this idea that

00:03:58.080 this is a different government than Justin Trudeau's.

00:04:00.760 Stuart?

00:04:02.080 Yeah, and I think domestically is an interesting question.

00:04:05.040 And I know I run the risk of being a little bit Ottawa-brained with this take, but I really

00:04:09.900 enjoyed the pomp and the circumstance.

00:04:11.900 And it was nice to see a kind of big event in Ottawa.

00:04:15.300 And my kids went out and met the king and queen.

00:04:18.240 And it just felt like maybe this is still a kind of pandemic thing where it's just nice

00:04:23.440 to have a big event happen in Ottawa.

00:04:25.180 And I think it was a really smart move by Carney to do this.

00:04:28.540 Whether or not the message was received internationally, I think it probably was.

00:04:32.580 I agree with John.

00:04:33.260 But even if it wasn't, I think domestically, it probably was a win for Carney in general.

00:04:39.140 I agree with you on the pomp and circumstance.

00:04:41.860 I used to love events like the speech from the throne or a new governor general being sworn

00:04:47.100 in, the return of party.

00:04:48.220 All these things are wonderful.

00:04:50.240 And there's great tradition among them.

00:04:51.660 And we've all been lucky in our jobs that we get to see them up close.

00:04:56.020 But is there still a connection to the monarchy?

00:05:00.780 Is it still a thing in this country?

00:05:04.560 Because it appears to have been waning.

00:05:05.860 We went through almost a decade of a government that would pay lip service to it, but really

00:05:11.380 wasn't interested.

00:05:14.900 You know, we were led by a guy who called us a post-national state, no core identity,

00:05:21.180 genocidal, all these things.

00:05:23.460 CBC, by the way, cheered along with him for that whole decade.

00:05:26.020 And then was suddenly all about the king when he was here.

00:05:28.960 So has the connection been watered down by both a government, previous government that

00:05:36.500 didn't care, huge immigration levels from countries that don't have that connection?

00:05:42.020 Is it still there?

00:05:44.040 I think, I mean, it's a good question.

00:05:46.460 But this poll that came out suggested that in every region of the country, people reject

00:05:52.740 the idea that Canada should continue as a constitutional monarchy for generations to come.

00:05:58.480 You know, nationally, only 30% said yes, again, 46% said no.

00:06:02.480 So clearly there is a waning of that because that number is lower than it has been in the

00:06:09.680 past.

00:06:11.320 But I think this is a government that is intent on reviving transatlantic relations, not just

00:06:19.720 with the UK, but with France and other European partners.

00:06:25.680 And clearly, you know, Carney spent a lot of time in Britain.

00:06:28.940 He has a personal connection with Charles, obviously, as you could see when he was talking

00:06:33.080 to him.

00:06:33.500 His brother works in Prince William's household.

00:06:36.860 I mean, this is going to be a bigger thing for the Carney government than it was for the

00:06:40.660 Trudeau government.

00:06:41.900 And I do think there is still...

00:06:44.240 Perhaps even in the Harper government.

00:06:46.240 Well, the Harper government was pretty keen on it.

00:06:47.740 I mean, you know, Jason Kenney would have the Queen's portrait in every office that he

00:06:52.400 had.

00:06:52.700 I think that events like this and visits like this do revive that sense of tradition in

00:07:03.120 history.

00:07:03.520 I mean, I remember that somebody thought it would be a great joke to send me to cover

00:07:07.180 Prince William and Kate when they came on their state visit.

00:07:09.960 And I've trekked around the country following them as a Scotsman, sort of lukewarm to the monarchy.

00:07:16.260 And I ended up declaring that I'd surrendered.

00:07:20.600 I laid down my sword and felt that on balance, it was a good thing.

00:07:26.740 And I think, you know, of all those people, if you rephrase that question and said, on balance,

00:07:32.180 do you think that monarchy is a good thing?

00:07:34.060 Should we become a republic?

00:07:35.500 You would not get 30% against 46%.

00:07:37.700 You would get probably the reverse.

00:07:38.880 So basically, you washed off the blue paint, stop yelling freedom from atop your horse.

00:07:44.940 Yes, yes, yes.

00:07:46.000 I call myself a reluctant monarch often because I, you know, similar background, except we're

00:07:53.780 Irish Catholics.

00:07:54.540 We have even less desire to love the monarchy.

00:07:58.180 But, you know, to Churchill's quote about democracy is the worst form of government, except all

00:08:03.640 the others.

00:08:04.440 What would we do if we, you know, decided to leave the monarchy?

00:08:09.240 I can imagine them appointing a blue ribbon panel of academics coming up with the worst 1.00

00:08:15.720 constitution you could ever find, a constitution by committee.

00:08:20.060 And then we would literally become the Soviet Socialist Republic of Kanakistan.

00:08:23.620 Yeah, I will, uh, that, that poll that John was talking about, I just want to point out

00:08:28.080 that even people who like the monarchy, half of them don't think it should do anything.

00:08:32.760 And it's like, it's just this really funny, um, it's a, it's a weird thing.

00:08:37.860 And I thought Ben Woodfinden, who's actually pure poly of his former director of communications,

00:08:41.560 wrote a good piece in the national post about just the weirdness of a monarchy.

00:08:46.060 Like it, it should be hard to explain why we need this.

00:08:49.700 And I think you can sort of see this in every aspect of life.

00:08:54.620 We always like to have a totem.

00:08:56.080 We always have to have some kind of anchor like this.

00:08:58.620 And, um, you could kind of see that, uh, or like the, the display of the king sitting

00:09:05.460 on a throne, the, the, with the gold outline is a little odd in today's day and age, but

00:09:11.220 it's weirdly appealing.

00:09:12.720 Well, I mean, I think I, I said in the column I wrote on the day that there's an inherent absurdity

00:09:17.980 to the whole event, um, you know, the monarch or his representative reciting a prepared speech

00:09:24.260 written by somebody else.

00:09:25.840 I mean, it's not his words.

00:09:27.260 So what, why, what does it matter?

00:09:28.960 Who says it?

00:09:29.500 But, um, but despite all of that, I think it worked.

00:09:35.820 I mean, there was just, there was just a sense of this is what makes us different, if not

00:09:40.940 unique, uh, from the United States.

00:09:43.020 Okay.

00:09:43.800 So we, we sent a message to Washington specifically to Donald Trump by having King Charles III

00:09:51.440 and Queen Camilla appear in Ottawa and read the speech.

00:09:54.800 He sent a message back because on true social at 5 41 PM Eastern time on the day of the throne

00:10:03.480 speech being read, he wrote and posted, I told Canada, which very much wants to be part

00:10:09.600 of our fabulous golden dome system that it will cost $61 billion if they remain a separate

00:10:15.620 but unequal nation, but will cost $0 if they become our cherished 51st state.

00:10:22.600 They are considering the offer.

00:10:24.940 Stuart, that was a, um, uh, you know, kind of a shot back, wasn't it from, from Trump?

00:10:30.120 It's just trolling.

00:10:31.260 That's, that's really all this is.

00:10:33.280 And I, since the beginning of the year, we've had to make, um, you've had to make them too,

00:10:38.840 I bet, Brian, where it's, you have to decide, is this real?

00:10:42.840 Is this something we cover?

00:10:44.240 Is this part of a negotiation?

00:10:46.220 Is he setting something up for later? 1.00

00:10:48.860 Or is this just a dumb tweet? 0.98

00:10:51.560 And I think that is always the question with Trump and, um, who knows? 0.97

00:10:57.160 I mean, the Canadian government isn't going to show its hand or lose its leverage if there

00:11:00.280 is some kind of negotiation going on.

00:11:02.300 So, um, they kind of have to let these things stand sometimes with sort of, you know, maybe,

00:11:08.960 you know, a couple of lines of denial about how we won't do this.

00:11:12.640 Um, but I think this is just the thing you have to endure as a Canadian government while

00:11:17.400 Trump's in power.

00:11:18.180 We'll get to the value or lack thereof of the Golden Dome system, the missile defense

00:11:22.860 system that he's proposing in a minute.

00:11:25.140 But John, your thoughts on, on the message, was that Trump trying to say, yeah, but I'm

00:11:30.880 still living in your head rent free.

00:11:32.500 Uh, I'm still here.

00:11:34.260 Well, what could you say?

00:11:35.300 I mean, the U S ambassador to Canada just come out and said, nobody's talking about the

00:11:39.200 51st state.

00:11:40.320 And then, you know, Trump just leaves him hanging.

00:11:46.920 So, uh, you know, I think it's, it's going to continue.

00:11:50.560 It, it, it's great for the government because it, it validates everything Carney said during

00:11:55.440 the election.

00:11:56.440 And, you know, we've had columns since then saying, um, you know, peace has been declared.

00:12:03.600 Were you, were you hyping up the threat during the election?

00:12:08.000 And, and, and then suddenly Trump appears again, he's not giving up on this thing.

00:12:12.440 So, um, great for the government.

00:12:16.440 Okay.

00:12:16.520 Before we leave the speech from the throne, uh, let's talk about the Peter Pan peacock that

00:12:22.140 appeared in the form of Justin Trudeau with his green and orange suede gazelle Adidas running

00:12:29.240 shoes.

00:12:30.060 Um, you know, I've heard from liberals who were annoyed at this because they felt it

00:12:35.580 was Trudeau taking the attention away from King Charles, from the new Carney government

00:12:42.340 by saying, ha ha, look at me, you know, I'm still here.

00:12:45.660 Forget my socks.

00:12:46.420 Now look at my shoes.

00:12:48.780 You know, you can't make too much of it.

00:12:50.800 Uh, you know, it's a serious event and that's an unserious statement, what he did, but it

00:12:56.240 did feel like maybe, you know, uh, after that great piece by Chris Nardi on how Mark

00:13:02.560 Carney expects people to dress professionally, uh, that was Justin Trudeau's way of saying,

00:13:07.960 yep, to heck with you, Mark Carney.

00:13:10.640 You can't tell me how to dress and I'm never growing up.

00:13:13.260 Well, I had, uh, heard this rumor, which I have not confirmed, but there was something

00:13:17.400 doing the rounds that, um, people were expected to wear black dress shoes, uh, in government.

00:13:23.480 Now, whether this came from the top or wherever it came from, but, um, and that this was Justin's

00:13:29.880 not so subtle rebuttal to that, whether that's true or not, I don't know.

00:13:33.600 But I mean, I remember seeing it and going, that can't be right.

00:13:37.360 And then the camera came back round again and it is right.

00:13:40.920 Like what statement is he making there?

00:13:43.000 Well, I first, uh, what, what about you, Stuart?

00:13:44.940 I first saw photos on, uh, on X and I'm thinking, oh, come on, that's gotta be AI.

00:13:51.520 People are, people are taking the piss with us here.

00:13:54.080 This can't be true, but it is.

00:13:57.120 The easiest wins for Carney so far have been just the sort of, you know, superficial stuff

00:14:03.840 about being serious.

00:14:04.860 Like you have to be here on time.

00:14:06.900 We're going to have actually organized cabinet meetings.

00:14:08.820 We're going to, I'm going to dress in a suit and I'm going to answer questions seriously.

00:14:12.260 And that has been the contrast that Carney has really exploited is, you know, we're here

00:14:18.180 to do an actual serious job, kind of implying that Trudeau government was either never serious

00:14:23.360 or it had moments of deep unseriousness, which I think a lot of, uh, the disapproval numbers

00:14:28.820 were pointing to with Trudeau.

00:14:30.240 And I think if you're Carney, as much as it is kind of annoying to see a guy in green

00:14:34.960 shoes at the speech from the throne, um, it is good for him to keep that contrast going

00:14:41.540 because the contrast with Trudeau, I think is a huge benefit to Carney.

00:14:44.960 Well, can I just talk on that, Brian?

00:14:46.600 I was going to say that, um, you know, what the speech was really about was, was about this,

00:14:52.460 what he called a fundamentally different approach to governing and focusing on these seven

00:14:56.440 priorities.

00:14:57.780 Now we can argue about whether he's ever going to achieve them or whether, um, there's enough

00:15:02.520 specifics yet later on, but, you know, they're pretty clearly spelled out and they're primarily

00:15:09.260 economic.

00:15:10.220 You know, the barriers to inter-provincial trade coming down, making housing more affordable,

00:15:15.060 um, spending less on government operations, et cetera.

00:15:18.000 I look back at the 2021 throne speech.

00:15:21.240 Trudeau's focus was on government mandated max vaccines, fighting climate change, capping

00:15:26.960 oil and gas emissions, increasing the carbon tax, mandating the sale of electric vehicles,

00:15:31.860 strengthening gun control, equity, justice, and diversity, fighting systemic racism, et

00:15:37.360 cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:15:38.980 I mean, these are the many of the reasons that the country is so divided today.

00:15:44.780 And none of these things got airplay or certainly not as part of the seven main priorities

00:15:49.940 in this, uh, new government.

00:15:52.720 So that, that does tie into the piece by Chris Nardi that I mentioned earlier.

00:15:57.140 And it was really, I read the piece beginning and fascinated going, okay, this is really interesting.

00:16:03.700 But then I got to the end and I had people sending it to me saying, isn't this great?

00:16:08.660 Wow.

00:16:09.180 Mark Carney's punctual.

00:16:10.560 And by the time I got to the end, I was like, wait a minute, should we be happy or excited

00:16:16.260 about this?

00:16:17.200 Shouldn't this just be expected?

00:16:18.840 But that's how much Trudeau lowered the bar.

00:16:22.560 As I said in my column, we're now elated that the top elected official in the country

00:16:29.480 expects results.

00:16:31.480 That should be the bare minimum.

00:16:33.900 Shouldn't it, John?

00:16:35.200 Yeah, I think so.

00:16:35.920 But I think, um, you know, I think all of us on this podcast have been calling out for

00:16:39.860 years for the things that he's now talking about doing, you know, productivity.

00:16:44.720 I mean, yeah, I'm not taking away from, from Mark Carney here.

00:16:47.200 But, but it doesn't that speak to, well, I think, I think how we were conditioned to

00:16:51.760 expect so little from, there was a reason why Trudeau, the Trudeau government ended up

00:16:56.960 at 16% in the polls.

00:16:58.400 People just got fed up with this nonsense.

00:17:00.340 Stuart?

00:17:01.040 Well, yeah.

00:17:01.500 I mean, we were just thinking about last fall, because I was quite happy to have the house

00:17:06.460 reopened.

00:17:07.400 And I went to question period, Carney's first question period.

00:17:10.380 It was really fun just to be back there.

00:17:12.220 But it reminded me of how bad the house got last fall when it was basically closed, because

00:17:17.760 the government just didn't have the will to break that log jam, which they could have

00:17:22.000 done.

00:17:22.780 The green slush fund scandal, they wouldn't release the documents.

00:17:25.420 The question of privilege.

00:17:26.880 There's a few ways they could have done it.

00:17:28.260 They could have released the documents, or they could have worked with the NDP to break

00:17:31.320 the log jam, but they didn't.

00:17:33.060 And it just kind of spoke to this really exhausted government that didn't have any ideas left,

00:17:38.240 didn't have any sort of innovative staffers left who were thinking outside the box.

00:17:43.280 They were just sort of grinding away.

00:17:46.000 And, you know, it's great for Carney, because the contrast in just being normal and halfway competent

00:17:51.020 is pretty huge.

00:17:52.940 He did make an appearance in question period this week.

00:17:57.820 Here he is answering the very first question, not asked by Pierre Polyev, but by that blast

00:18:02.900 from the past Andrew Scheer.

00:18:04.000 Mr. Speaker, our tariffs have maximum impact on the United States, minimum impact on Canada.

00:18:13.020 And we are dedicating all the revenues from those tariffs to supporting the workers and businesses

00:18:17.580 affected by the unjustified American actions.

00:18:21.020 So, first thing I noticed, gents, and wrote about it in a column, my colleague Brian Pasfume 1.00

00:18:26.200 wrote about it for The Sun in a news piece, is, well, he's quickly learned the old adage,

00:18:32.440 it's not answer period, it's question period.

00:18:35.940 He gave responses, didn't give answers.

00:18:39.100 I mean, it was really unsure, and I shouldn't be anymore.

00:18:41.320 He is adapting to politics quickly.

00:18:43.500 And quite well, I have to say.

00:18:46.260 I may not like where he's going with everything, but he obviously knows, has figured out how

00:18:51.100 to play the game.

00:18:52.740 You know, obviously the pressure amount later on, but he has adapted to politics quite quickly,

00:18:57.720 I would say, with his performance in question period and everywhere else.

00:19:02.220 John?

00:19:03.520 Yeah, I think, you know, I've known him a long time, and when his name first came up, the

00:19:09.600 Michael Ignatiev comparison was always raised.

00:19:12.480 And I never really bought that, and I probably maybe even said it on this podcast some time

00:19:18.320 ago.

00:19:19.340 You know, Ignatiev, politics just wasn't him.

00:19:22.400 It didn't come naturally to him.

00:19:23.760 He would be exhausted by crowds.

00:19:27.400 If you read his sort of political post-mortem, he wrote a book about it called Fire and Ashes,

00:19:32.680 which is brutally honest about how he just wasn't suited to it.

00:19:37.860 Carney is much more suited to it.

00:19:40.440 He feeds off people.

00:19:41.740 He enjoys talking to people.

00:19:44.580 I think something like question period, he's mastered the performance, not mastered it,

00:19:50.720 he's adapted to the performative side of politics.

00:19:54.180 Much better than anybody expected him to.

00:19:56.100 I mean, during the election campaign, he didn't love these photo ops.

00:19:59.020 You know, he nearly sawed his fingers off in some factory or other.

00:20:02.360 But he did like playing hockey with the kids and stuff like that.

00:20:06.240 And, you know, that's a totally different world than being a central bank governor, obviously.

00:20:12.300 So I think he's done pretty well.

00:20:13.760 I think your comment, though, about the pressure is now going to be on him,

00:20:19.720 that's where I would like to go next as far as talking about things.

00:20:24.500 We're already starting to see some signs of disappointment in what he's about to do.

00:20:28.740 Well, let's get to that after the break.

00:20:31.940 We'll keep talking for another minute or so.

00:20:34.000 But I'll ask you before I go to Stuart on how he's doing.

00:20:36.740 I'm sure you've seen the video.

00:20:38.860 We don't have the context for it.

00:20:40.600 But it's someone up in the gallery recording him.

00:20:42.780 As Melanie Jolie comes over to speak, and he doesn't even look at her.

00:20:46.360 He just gives a dismissive hand gesture.

00:20:49.400 Maybe he's not being dismissive.

00:20:51.620 But there's going to be a lot of pressure on the fact that he's in the most photographed environment,

00:20:57.060 video environment in Canada.

00:20:59.680 And whether he was being dismissive or not, it'll be taken that way.

00:21:03.500 And he's got to learn to watch himself in those situations.

00:21:06.120 Yeah, I saw that video.

00:21:10.560 I mean, Mark is a guy who prepares, prepares, prepares.

00:21:17.480 I don't know when that video was taken, whether it was before question period,

00:21:20.360 but you can be sure that whatever briefing notes were being given him,

00:21:24.420 he was absorbing them.

00:21:26.320 And probably no time for distractions.

00:21:29.520 I think there are going to be a lot more stories like this where he is quite dismissive of people

00:21:37.060 who he maybe doesn't quite have time for.

00:21:41.120 I've already heard of him blasting people, including his chief of staff,

00:21:45.840 coming in to talk to him who aren't prepared, who don't know the file.

00:21:50.640 Yeah, I wouldn't want to be there, to be honest.

00:21:53.700 Stuart, your thoughts on his performance so far and on that video?

00:21:59.520 Yeah, well, I was a writer who was hoping to write the

00:22:03.900 Mark Carney has a difficult week in the house piece this week.

00:22:07.580 And I just didn't, I wasn't quite able to write that piece because he didn't.

00:22:11.900 It was...

00:22:13.160 There is no way to say that he had anything but a very good week.

00:22:16.880 Yeah, so we had heard in that piece by Chris Nardi,

00:22:19.860 the people around him were worried that he doesn't quite understand how the house works.

00:22:23.620 And he's kind of assuming things will be smoother there than he realizes.

00:22:27.980 But I went to QP kind of hoping for a stumble or something to kind of latch a piece onto.

00:22:34.220 And it didn't really happen.

00:22:35.640 And you kind of, you saw the contrast with Tim Hodgson, who is also a new guy,

00:22:42.080 also a Goldman Sachs veteran, who had a rough go in question period,

00:22:46.080 where he was kind of holding his notes and his hand was shaking a little bit.

00:22:49.640 And it just was the classic newbie first response and QP moment.

00:22:54.100 But Carney was fine.

00:22:55.880 He handled it like he'd been there for years.

00:22:58.960 And I think that is kind of the vibe we're getting from him,

00:23:02.720 is that he is ready for this stuff.

00:23:04.400 He's coming in prepared.

00:23:05.480 He's not a complete neophyte to parliamentary life, though.

00:23:11.060 I mean, he's appeared many times at committees.

00:23:12.460 And as governor of the Bank of England during Brexit,

00:23:15.780 that was an incredibly political position.

00:23:19.220 He was somewhat dragged into it.

00:23:21.180 He said things at parliamentary committees in England that made clear he was not a fan of Brexit.

00:23:28.180 And that made him put a target on his back.

00:23:31.180 But he was, I mean, the day after Brexit, Cameron resigned.

00:23:35.640 And Carney was the guy who came out and gave the speech saying,

00:23:38.020 everything's going to be OK, folks.

00:23:40.180 This is not a guy who is like Hodgson, who is entirely new to public life.

00:23:45.920 But in last question before, or last comment before we take a break,

00:23:50.040 would you have expected him to look at as at ease as he did?

00:23:54.840 To Stuart's point, John, he looked like he'd been there for years.

00:23:58.660 He is a very relaxed guy.

00:24:00.760 I think that masks the fact that, you know, preparation allows him to feel relaxed.

00:24:09.100 He's not going into it completely cold.

00:24:12.480 But I think he works at, you know, you make your own luck.

00:24:17.520 He works at this stuff and then makes it look relatively easy.

00:24:22.860 All right.

00:24:23.040 We'll take a quick break.

00:24:23.880 Then we'll come back and talk about where John wanted to go.

00:24:27.080 Pressure is on.

00:24:28.600 Back in moments.

00:24:29.300 This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada Did What?

00:24:32.820 Where we unpack the biggest, weirdest and wildest political moments in Canadian history

00:24:37.520 you thought you knew and tell you what really happened.

00:24:41.120 Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes.

00:24:45.560 If you don't want to stick around, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What?

00:24:50.040 Everywhere you get podcasts.

00:24:51.580 Any job comes with pressure.

00:24:53.060 Mark Carney in a job with a lot of pressure,

00:24:55.520 although is it more than he had before with Bank of England?

00:24:58.100 I don't know.

00:24:58.640 John, you wanted to talk about the pressure mounting.

00:25:02.840 He's made a lot of promises.

00:25:04.460 I said in a piece this week that he's got to stand and deliver.

00:25:08.620 Like, the speeches are done.

00:25:10.060 The campaigning's done.

00:25:11.620 Now he's got to stand and deliver.

00:25:13.940 A piece from Canadian Press shows that he may be ready to deliver by Monday.

00:25:17.860 We're not sure if the, as we record here on Friday afternoon,

00:25:21.420 we're not sure if the first minister's meeting will actually happen in person

00:25:24.440 because of the wildfires and the state of emergency in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

00:25:30.460 But CP got their hands on a document showing that they are ready to allow certain projects of national interest to skirt C-69.

00:25:41.440 The opposition wants them to get rid of it.

00:25:43.080 A lot of industry wants them to get rid of it.

00:25:44.660 But they're at least saying, we'll come up with a way to deliver these projects.

00:25:49.400 I had said at the beginning, he's got to deliver something for the premiers, and it looks like he's set to.

00:25:53.880 Yeah, I think that probably is the big thing on Carney's mind right now, is that something has to be approved.

00:26:00.700 You've got to do something.

00:26:01.800 You've made a lot of big promises.

00:26:03.380 You've said you want to build, baby build.

00:26:05.480 And actually, in a minority government, you don't have a lot of time to do it.

00:26:08.360 Like, we're talking about the fast-tracked approval being two years as opposed to five.

00:26:13.340 So that doesn't leave a lot of room to show results to premiers and to Canadians.

00:26:17.860 So I expect they'll come out of this meeting with something big.

00:26:21.420 And I think we are – I would encourage people to check out a piece by Stephanie Taylor just sort of showing the lists from all the provinces.

00:26:30.900 She did actually literally call around the country to every province and say, what's your list of projects that you want Carney to approve?

00:26:37.900 And there were some good ones with some good projects.

00:26:40.900 Alberta's, though, I think shows you the challenge that Carney has to deal with, which is that they want Northern Gateway,

00:26:45.800 which is a pipeline that would be difficult, I think, to approve but isn't a crazy idea.

00:26:52.100 And then the other were things that were just not what Carney was looking for.

00:26:55.880 One was repeal Bill C-69.

00:26:58.920 And that's – I mean, that might be a noble goal, but it's not a national project like Carney was asking for.

00:27:04.200 So there is a little bit of politics going on here.

00:27:07.320 And I think if you're Mark Carney, you were probably hoping for good faith from all the provinces.

00:27:12.440 And I just – I don't know if that's exactly what he'll get.

00:27:15.360 One thing that's going to be difficult for Mark Carney to deliver on, John, is he's talked about reining in spending.

00:27:22.700 A couple of things on that.

00:27:24.340 A Canadian Taxpayers Federation came out with a piece showing we got 38% more federal employees than we did eight years ago under Justin Trudeau.

00:27:34.500 Population's only grown 15%.

00:27:36.380 And spending is still up.

00:27:38.760 The main estimates – Mark Carney's going around talking about keeping spending to 2%.

00:27:42.880 And the main estimates that were just tabled have it at 8%.

00:27:47.380 That's a world of difference.

00:27:49.820 And the Conservatives quickly latched on to that.

00:27:52.640 But he walked past it during question period, but he can't walk past it in terms of delivering on his promises.

00:28:00.220 Yeah, I thought the estimates were interesting because they are not the whole picture.

00:28:04.040 Obviously, you have supplementary estimates later in the year, and at some point we'll have a budget.

00:28:10.340 But they are the – this is the rubber heading of the road.

00:28:14.740 This is concrete spending plans by the government, by government departments looking for Parliament's approval to spend.

00:28:21.160 So this is not notional ideas in a liberal platform that were not written under –

00:28:26.700 It's not a press release.

00:28:28.080 No, it's not a press release.

00:28:29.260 And, you know, we may or may not see all the things that were in the liberal platform.

00:28:34.640 But this is actual spending plans.

00:28:36.740 In those plans, the 130 departments plan to spend $26 billion on consultants, professional services.

00:28:46.880 You're right.

00:28:47.240 Why did we hire all those extra bureaucrats? 1.00

00:28:49.320 Well, exactly.

00:28:50.060 I mean, both of them are going through the roof.

00:28:52.780 The – as you said, the spending compared to the main estimates last year is up 7.75% to $487 billion.

00:29:00.080 There were no signs of the restraint which Carney had talked about.

00:29:06.500 He talked about the operational side of this budget rising at 2% a year instead of 9% a year and being balanced within three years.

00:29:16.280 On the evidence of these estimates, that is going to be very hard to do.

00:29:19.680 So unless we see a major course correction in the budget, which I think we're going to have to, I mean, there's going to have to be some sign in the budget that this government is starting to cut operational spending if it's going to hit the targets that it said it was going to hit.

00:29:37.920 Okay, I want to play another clip for you of Mark Carney talking about this in his speech and reply to the speech from the throne.

00:29:47.340 It's a weird convoluted thing, but here he is talking about the old – the past government spent too much.

00:29:53.680 He's going to do it differently.

00:29:55.340 We will spend less on government operations so Canadians can invest more to build Canada strong.

00:30:02.060 Day-to-day government spending, the government's operating budget, has been growing by an unsustainable 9% every year.

00:30:12.080 We will bring that rate down to 2%, less than half the average nominal rate of growth in the economy.

00:30:18.700 So he's critical of the past government spending too much and he is basically in line with what they're doing.

00:30:25.140 How does he square that other than, I'm you, I just got here, I haven't had a chance to pull anything back?

00:30:32.060 Well, if I can just say one more thing on that.

00:30:34.920 I mean, you know, clearly this government has not had a chance to do a line-by-line spending review.

00:30:41.540 The estimates have to come out.

00:30:44.760 So maybe they've just said, well, let's let the bureaucracy do what they want, sign off on it and we'll correct it all in a budget.

00:30:53.380 But it's kind of odd.

00:30:54.880 You know, I counted up the departments.

00:30:58.100 There were something like 63 departments that will see their budgets rise beyond the rate of inflation and only 14 will have their budgets cut.

00:31:05.280 You know, the National Capital Commission, for example, will see its allocated spending rising to 179 million this year from 94.7 in the main estimates last year.

00:31:15.540 So it's not clear how much of that, of any of this is capital spending or operational spending because that's not easily broken out.

00:31:24.840 But they've sent the message out that this is business as usual.

00:31:30.240 The bureaucracy has basically filled its boots and increased operational budgets in every single department, more or less.

00:31:39.000 That seems to me to be very odd for a government that has said it's going to do things differently.

00:31:45.820 Stuart, will they be able to turn this around by September?

00:31:49.820 Do you think they have that ability?

00:31:53.520 It is a hard job.

00:31:56.220 You should talk to people who were involved in the Harper spending review, which I think was generally seen as successful.

00:32:02.020 Like it was a pretty well-run program.

00:32:04.120 It was tough for the bureaucracy to find those cuts.

00:32:06.940 But there is a political element to it because, you know, you're going to have the unions coming after you and, you know, you're going to have voters distressed by it a little bit.

00:32:16.800 Everyone in the Conservative Party in this election was talking about Tim Hudak, the Ontario PC leader who announced those big cuts and took a real political hit for it.

00:32:27.760 Well, Hudak said he'd lay off 100,000 people.

00:32:30.260 And then before the election even started.

00:32:33.240 And conservatives nowadays will use that as a lesson for why they don't want to do 3% cuts.

00:32:38.120 Like maybe they're over learning the lesson, but maybe that's also when you have a leader who's in trouble and is Carlton riding.

00:32:44.660 You don't want to do stuff like that.

00:32:46.060 But it is really hard.

00:32:48.200 And I don't think we should underestimate how hard that is, because as you can see from what's happening right now and from what happened in the Trudeau years, the bureaucracy on autopilot will grow.

00:32:58.020 And that's its natural state and restraint, even just neutral growth is hard and cutting it is even harder.

00:33:06.580 So that will be a multi-year challenge for Carney.

00:33:08.940 Well, as I was writing on Friday about the spending and the growth and the bureaucracy, as I'm sitting there typing away, on my TV comes Elon Musk in his final press conference as a special government employee from the Oval Office with Donald Trump.

00:33:27.780 And I thought, well, he's got a Canadian passport.

00:33:31.360 We could ask him to come to the Canadian Department of Government Efficiency.

00:33:34.900 And a lot of Canadians might laugh at the idea of a Canadian doge.

00:33:38.300 But whether it was Stephen Harper's spending review or Paul Martin's spending review, we have done this sort of thing before.

00:33:44.880 And it's important to do because otherwise you end up with parts of the government operating that people don't realize things are still going on.

00:33:55.680 And maybe the program that you established 20 years ago, you don't really need it anymore.

00:34:00.320 But, John, you know this.

00:34:02.140 It just keeps going and people show up to work or work from home and the money keeps getting spent.

00:34:09.000 Yeah, well, I think it's clear we're going to be spending much more on the military.

00:34:17.420 And it looks clear we're going to be spending much more on housing and policing and the border and other things.

00:34:22.900 I mean, these are non-negotiable.

00:34:25.240 And if you're going to at least bring the debt to GDP level down, then something's got to give.

00:34:33.600 And there are no signs as yet that anything's giving.

00:34:37.700 John Manley used to say he had to move spending from low priorities to high priorities.

00:34:44.460 Right now, as you said, the government's on autopilot.

00:34:46.980 We'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

00:34:48.380 They haven't had a chance to turn this around yet.

00:34:52.180 But everything is a priority and everything's getting more money.

00:34:55.980 How do you wrestle that down, Stuart?

00:34:57.980 Well, I'll make a quick point about doge, but I think it's a really salient example of these are guys. 0.87

00:35:02.880 Elon Musk is a guy who didn't fully comprehend the political incentives that were at play.

00:35:08.580 And he's got a kind of technocratic brain where he thought we can cut these things and people will thank us for our hard work.

00:35:16.060 But that's not how it works.

00:35:17.780 There are political stakeholders here who will always have a say and they are going to cause controversies.

00:35:24.520 So, if you are looking at the cuts that happen in Canada, the Harper ones and the Martin ones, the situation had to come to a crisis point for those to happen.

00:35:35.260 For Martin, it was the budgetary crisis.

00:35:37.580 And for Harper, they were in the wake of the financial crisis in 08-09.

00:35:41.880 So, they had a lot of deficit spending.

00:35:43.720 They wanted to calm down.

00:35:45.360 And I don't think we're in a moment like that right now.

00:35:47.940 So, it is a tough lift for this government.

00:35:49.700 John, you mentioned that we're obviously going to be spending more money on the military.

00:35:56.240 Let's go to the Golden Dome.

00:35:57.880 $61 billion.

00:36:00.820 We haven't said no to it.

00:36:02.380 The chief of the defense staff has said she's open to it.

00:36:06.800 This is something to consider.

00:36:08.060 I think right now, given the political and economic situation, going along with the Americans on defense issues is probably a smart political move and just the right thing to do at the moment.

00:36:22.420 It might be controversial with some Canadians, but probably the right thing to do.

00:36:25.660 Well, I think, you know, I've been writing about ballistic missile defense going back until since God was a boy.

00:36:34.520 I mean, when did it come up?

00:36:35.880 Paul Martin, 2005.

00:36:38.240 And I thought at the time there it was a no-brainer.

00:36:40.440 We should absolutely get involved with it.

00:36:43.120 But it was pretty early days then.

00:36:45.120 And I think it's pretty early days with this thing.

00:36:47.260 Because I have no objection to Canada being involved.

00:36:53.760 I think defending the North is absolutely what we should be doing.

00:36:58.020 But this thing does not look like it works.

00:36:59.960 It looks like it's never going to work.

00:37:02.580 I mean, I don't know if anybody's read the sort of technical specs, but, you know, the chances of knocking hypersonic missiles out of midair are apparently non-existent.

00:37:13.560 So I think we've got to be careful about throwing money after bad if this system is just not going to work.

00:37:19.780 Well, when Israel developed the Iron Dome, and that's a much smaller geographic area, what is it, the size of New Jersey, and we're looking at the vastness of North America, people thought that wouldn't work.

00:37:31.180 And eventually it did.

00:37:32.820 You know, Houthis got a missile through and it struck the airport.

00:37:36.040 The Iron Dome was successful.

00:37:37.860 They're not firing hypersonic missiles.

00:37:39.620 I know.

00:37:40.260 It's a world of difference.

00:37:41.320 But it did take some effort to get there.

00:37:45.200 And so perhaps this will work.

00:37:47.020 Perhaps it won't.

00:37:47.840 But I think we should probably politically, Stuart, at the time being, be saying to the Americans, yes, sure, we'll work with you.

00:37:56.880 Yeah, I think that is what the Carney government's plan is, is to sort of rag the puck and not look like they're just saying no.

00:38:03.360 But I agree with John, the Golden Dome.

00:38:06.940 I mean, the name does not inspire confidence.

00:38:09.000 It sounds like a bad Chinese restaurant.

00:38:10.900 And it's not like the Iron Dome.

00:38:12.800 It sounds actually intimidating.

00:38:14.080 But the price tag of, like, the ultimate price tag in the hundreds of billions of dollars and the likelihood of success, which I'm not an expert in this, but I've read experts who seem to have a low opinion of that likelihood.

00:38:27.780 And then the likelihood of this becoming a sort of militarization of space, because that's the only way to get these hypersonic missiles, is, I think, a little concerning for everyone.

00:38:38.280 And I think the only thing that maybe gives you a little bit of solace is that it has all the earmarks of a Trump fantasy that, you know, in three years from now, it won't be anything anyways.

00:38:50.500 There is talk still, including from the new prime minister, about reviewing the F-35 contract.

00:38:56.440 As we join this, re-arm Europe, I would not be against us buying, what is it, the Saab jets from Sweden.

00:39:08.500 I wouldn't be against buying those.

00:39:10.480 But canceling any part of the F-35 contract, I think, is a foolish move, both for the politics of it.

00:39:18.520 I think we would face economic punishment, but also because our military, our Air Force needs these jets, and they need them sooner rather than later.

00:39:27.460 We should be flying them already.

00:39:29.560 The jets that we have in service now first came on board when Jack and Diane by John Cougar Mellencamp was a new song.

00:39:38.420 That's how old they are.

00:39:40.060 You know, I don't think angering the Americans and leaving our troops with, you know, equipment not old is a good idea.

00:39:49.460 But, you know, I actually like the idea of saying, no, let's buy 30 or 40 of these Saab jets.

00:39:55.960 We needed more than the 88 F-35s than we bought.

00:39:59.460 And there really shouldn't be a problem running two different fleets.

00:40:03.800 I know there's a bit of extra maintenance costs, but it shouldn't be an issue.

00:40:07.660 What are your thoughts, guys?

00:40:10.060 I think that we are, I mean, we're committed to buying, what is it, 16 in the first tranche of the 88 that we've ordered.

00:40:19.280 That seems to me to be a done deal.

00:40:23.620 We're not going to renege on that.

00:40:25.500 But the suggestion that we have a mixed fleet using, with either Saab jets or French jets, I think is possible.

00:40:37.280 You know, talking to people who know about this stuff, there are good reasons why you would have F-35s.

00:40:44.680 It's a generational shift in air power to advanced capabilities.

00:40:49.440 All the Allies are getting them. 0.93

00:40:51.680 So you would have, you know, a bunch of these planes dotted around the place.

00:40:56.900 But we might not need 88 of them.

00:41:00.320 And given the price tag rise, the idea that we would buy the French Dassault Rafale or the Eurofighter Typhoon or the Saab Gripen seems to be in line with what Carney's talking about when he's talking about diversifying away from U.S. suppliers.

00:41:23.960 Because Saab would build the jet in Canada using IMP Aerospace of Halifax.

00:41:30.960 This is not Carney's fault because he was nowhere near Canada at the time.

00:41:37.060 But the fact that Trudeau cancelled the existing F-35 contract cost us tons of jobs.

00:41:44.660 And you hear the Prime Minister now say, we're sending 8 out of 10 capital dollars from the military to the U.S.

00:41:52.440 Because the way that the Harper government structured it, our companies couldn't just bid on supplying parts for the jets we were buying.

00:42:02.000 We could bid for the entire supply chain.

00:42:04.900 And some of them were.

00:42:06.260 And then once we got out of it, well, you can't, if you're not part of the project, you can't bid, you can't supply it.

00:42:12.460 So we lost out a huge amount for our aerospace industry as a result of that daft political decision.

00:42:19.580 This would be a way around that.

00:42:20.640 I mean, the Portuguese cancelled the whole thing. 0.65

00:42:22.940 This would be a way around that.

00:42:23.880 You stay in the program, but you maybe don't order 88 of them.

00:42:27.580 You have a mixed fleet of, I mean, one suggestion was that you could order 45 F-35s and 120 grippens for the same price that we're paying now.

00:42:37.600 Yeah, well, I get an allergic reaction when I hear about canceling contracts like this because it just is, it can be so frustrating to get these things moving again.

00:42:46.660 And I'll tell you, when I was at the hub, we did this exercise where we took the money that you would have to spend to get up to 2% of GDP on defense, which is, you know, a lot of billions of dollars.

00:42:59.120 And we went to defense experts and people in the military, and we said, hey, like, it's Christmas Day, we're giving you this money, what would you spend it on, ideally?

00:43:08.960 And we were expecting a really fun piece out of that.

00:43:11.440 But their brains were so not in the mode of just offering up things to buy.

00:43:17.560 It was like, well, you would have to reprofile this, and the budgetary stuff on this would have to be X, and we'd have to do that.

00:43:23.080 And we were hoping they would just say tanks or fighter jets or something like that.

00:43:27.940 But it just shows you how tough it is to actually get these people to buy something.

00:43:32.680 And when the politics gets involved, it makes it even worse.

00:43:35.980 So, yeah, the cancellation, I think, would be a nightmare.

00:43:40.060 Let's talk about a couple of cleanup things at the end here.

00:43:43.820 We have a new speaker, Francis Carpelagia, Liberal MP from Montreal, defeated a fellow Quebec Liberal, Greg Fergus from Gatineau.

00:43:53.080 So, despite knowing both of them for a long time, I'm actually quite happy about this, because I thought Fergus was a disaster as a speaker.

00:44:02.520 Very nice man, or I knew him as a very nice man before politics.

00:44:06.100 He was ill-suited to speaker.

00:44:08.300 Carpelagia, as I said in a video for The Sun last week, what do you need to know about him?

00:44:14.300 He's boring.

00:44:15.680 And that's a good thing for a speaker, I would argue.

00:44:19.640 What are your thoughts on the change?

00:44:22.180 It is like the referee in a soccer game or a football game.

00:44:26.940 The less you think about him and the less you see him, the better.

00:44:31.100 And I think that's actually what everybody wants.

00:44:33.400 I think that even, you know, conservatives, liberals were all a little bit tired of Fergus and just the kind of tomfoolery that was going on in the house.

00:44:43.000 Like, it was getting on everyone's nerves and they were all blaming each other.

00:44:46.700 And I think taking a little bit of the steam out of that would be good for everyone.

00:44:50.960 Yeah, I agree entirely with that, with what Stuart said.

00:44:53.060 I don't know him well, but I've known him around Parliament for 20 plus years, I guess.

00:45:00.640 I liked his allusions to ancient Greece and how we were Athens and the U.S.'s Rome.

00:45:10.460 I don't know whether that was meant to allude to the decline of Rome.

00:45:14.520 But yeah, I think he's probably got the right stuff.

00:45:18.720 He obviously knows Parliament inside out.

00:45:21.140 He's well respected.

00:45:22.980 And Stuart's absolutely right.

00:45:24.740 He is a very beige man.

00:45:27.600 But that's good.

00:45:29.660 Now, I'll ask you both for your thoughts on this.

00:45:32.220 John first, Stuart second.

00:45:34.620 There was Chris, I hope I'm saying his last name right, Chris D'Entremont, Conservative from Nova Scotia.

00:45:42.600 I thought that if he had stayed in, that he was going to win because the Liberals might have been like,

00:45:46.960 yes, we'll take a Conservative off the board.

00:45:49.460 Let's back him.

00:45:50.420 Get rid of Fergus.

00:45:51.180 Why do you think the party, it looks like the party pressured him to drop out?

00:46:00.120 Well, I mean, for that arithmetic reason, precisely because of that, it gives them a better chance, I guess,

00:46:07.100 in their eyes of defeating the government at some point.

00:46:09.640 Not that I suspect they have any intention of defeating the government or any desire to.

00:46:14.140 I mean, all parties need to lick their wounds and rebuild their coffers.

00:46:17.960 So there's not going to be an election anytime soon.

00:46:20.560 But that's obviously, with that in mind, another example of the Conservative Party's central planning authority, it would seem to be.

00:46:29.660 If this guy wants to be the Speaker, then let him be the Speaker, or at least let him run to be the Speaker.

00:46:35.200 So I think there's a lot of discontent on Conservative backbench, not least with the fact that they're not in government.

00:46:41.900 And these kind of decisions are not going to help that.

00:46:46.800 And with the fact that they were basically pylons during the election.

00:46:50.440 Stuart?

00:46:51.860 Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

00:46:54.020 And this is brewing.

00:46:55.880 I don't think that pure Polyev is in any immediate trouble.

00:46:58.720 But there's a lot of stories going around Conservative circles about how mean the central authority is.

00:47:07.020 But, you know, whether it's Polyev, whether it's Jenny Byrne, campaign manager, whether it's other people around them.

00:47:13.920 I think they've just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

00:47:16.540 And that's because they were winning by so much for so long.

00:47:19.540 And it's easy to do that when you're in the lead.

00:47:22.660 But I think people are sort of thinking about this, like, why are we going to put up with three more years of however long this minority government lasts of being shunted aside?

00:47:32.940 And Don Tremont told the National Post on, I think it was the Friday, on the record that, yeah, I'll be in the Speaker race.

00:47:40.860 And then he was sort of mysteriously taken off on Sunday when they were having their caucus meetings.

00:47:44.700 So it's pretty obvious what happened there.

00:47:47.560 And I, as I said, I don't think there's any immediate threat here.

00:47:50.820 But people are upset.

00:47:52.980 And, you know, the more they're annoyed and the less things change, the worse it gets for Polyev.

00:47:57.420 All right.

00:47:57.940 Final point.

00:47:59.120 We started with the cane.

00:48:00.520 Let's end with the cane. 0.65

00:48:01.520 The Governor General's office tweeting and then deleting a post that said, a photo of the GG meeting with the king and said something about great of our two nations working together or bringing the two nations together.

00:48:15.740 Shouldn't the Governor General's office know, even if it's a lowly comms person at the junior level, shouldn't they know that he's the king of Canada and this is not about bringing Britain and Canada together?

00:48:29.400 Yeah, it's the one thing you should know in that office.

00:48:33.680 Like, it's not like you're in the industry department and you have a whole bunch of files you have to know.

00:48:39.040 But I think this is, we were chatting about that in the office and we were trying to imagine the Mark Carney GG pick, which will be upcoming.

00:48:48.340 And I bet you can expect the most boring GG of all time because that was, that's the opposite of what Trudeau did.

00:48:56.620 Trudeau tried to make a PR splash with his picks and sometimes you pay a price for that.

00:49:02.140 I actually think the Julie Payette pick started with someone sitting around the table sounding like Beavis and Butthead saying, boss, you know, it'd be cool.

00:49:10.500 And, you know, because they didn't vet anything.

00:49:13.480 John, your quick thoughts on the GG's office not knowing.

00:49:16.700 Yeah, well, that is a kind of blooper, I suppose.

00:49:22.160 Yeah, I hadn't even thought about a new GG.

00:49:25.100 I mean, when does the current GG's office end?

00:49:30.200 Is that soon, Stuart? 0.96

00:49:31.380 I hesitate to say it on this podcast because we were just shooting the shit in the office, but I believe it's next year. 0.95

00:49:37.520 Okay. 0.98

00:49:37.960 Right.

00:49:38.280 2026.

00:49:38.900 I mean, that will be fascinating because the Julie Payette thing was so Trudeau. 0.95

00:49:43.020 And it was, and I remember speaking to somebody, let's say close to him, who said, we've got choices too spectacular to turn down.

00:49:51.900 And, you know, no vetting required.

00:49:54.320 Nobody checked into the fact that she had this very checkered history or, yeah.

00:49:59.400 So, it will be somebody who is extremely well vetted.

00:50:03.460 Yeah.

00:50:04.000 I mean, she was responsible for a strike in a federal government department. 1.00

00:50:08.780 They didn't know about that.

00:50:10.040 It took the media 45 minutes to Google that she had been involved in an accident that killed a blind woman and then, you know, domestics and all kinds of stuff.

00:50:19.120 Within an hour, all of this was out about Julie Payette.

00:50:22.120 I do not think that will happen with a Mark Carney pick.

00:50:25.560 Gents, thanks for this.

00:50:26.740 We will chat again soon, I am sure.

00:50:29.000 Yep.

00:50:29.540 Thanks, Brian.

00:50:30.040 Thanks a lot.

00:50:30.980 Full comment is a Post Media Podcast.

00:50:32.980 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.

00:50:35.460 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:50:37.160 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:50:39.160 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:50:40.840 Please make sure that you're hitting the subscribe button.

00:50:43.200 Leave us a rating.

00:50:43.940 Give us a review.

00:50:45.040 Tell your friends and family about us.

00:50:46.400 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:50:52.120 Here's that clip from Canada Did What?

00:50:55.280 I promised you.

00:50:59.480 Castro would end up occupying a space in the Trudeau family similar to that of a beloved uncle.

00:51:05.680 They went diving.

00:51:07.000 They smoked cigars together.

00:51:09.060 They gathered sea urchins for beach cookouts.

00:51:12.080 Informal talks at an island hideaway intensified their respect for each other

00:51:16.980 and their mutual enjoyment of skin diving added to the rapport.

00:51:20.760 In addition to a well-publicized 1976 summit meeting, Trudeau took three separate vacations

00:51:27.340 to visit Castro after his time in politics had ended.

00:51:30.760 I can make, you know, just one reference to Pierre Trudeau's sons to show the closeness

00:51:40.480 of the relationship.

00:51:41.840 The nickname that the Trudeau's sons had for Fidel Castro was Papa Fidel.

00:51:46.220 So that gives you an indication of the closeness of the bond that existed between a communist

00:51:54.040 dictator, you know, thorn in the side of every American administration for the past 50 years

00:52:01.160 and Pierre Trudeau.

00:52:02.280 When Trudeau's youngest son, Michel, died in an avalanche in 1998, Castro called the family

00:52:08.360 in tears to express his condolences.

00:52:10.480 As an eight-year-old, Michel had referred to Fidel Castro as his best friend.

00:52:16.340 When Pierre died, Fidel declared three days of mourning in Cuba and flew to Montreal to

00:52:21.480 act as an honorary pallbearer.

00:52:23.480 Every time Trudeau went down to Cuba, all the people in South Florida, the, you know,

00:52:29.900 the exiles were thinking, why is this Western leader giving comfort to a murderous dictator,

00:52:37.420 you know, who is oppressing their people in Cuba and saying, you know, good things about 0.88

00:52:41.680 about Fidel Castro.

00:52:43.200 And as I've mentioned, to have him in the pew at Trudeau's funeral in the front row as

00:52:50.280 a dignified person when he had been such a brutal leader says more about Pierre Trudeau

00:53:01.680 than it does about Fidel Castro.

00:53:03.020 Here's where we should probably touch on what Castro had done and what he was continuing

00:53:07.600 to do while going on beach vacations with the Trudeau family.

00:53:12.220 If you want to hear the rest of the story, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What?

00:53:17.540 Everywhere you get your podcasts.

Full Comment - June 02, 2025

Carney projects calm but he’s facing serious trouble

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