Carney’s high-flying promises come crashing back to earth
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Summary
After a break of 87 days, Parliament is back in session! This week, The National Post's Tasha Carradine and Stuart Thompson and TSN's Terence Tonay take a look back at the first week back and give their thoughts on what they saw from the House of Commons.
Transcript
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After 87 days away, Parliament resumed this past week.
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It was the first time that Pierre Polyev, the newly minted MP for Battle River Crowfoot,
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had faced off against Prime Minister Mark Carney in the House of Commons.
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The return of the political panel that entertained you so much during the federal election.
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From the National Post, Stuart Thompson and Tasha Carradine.
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Let's play a bit of a couple of clips off the top.
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I thought that Pierre Polyev had a bit of humor in him when he showed up and said he apologized, essentially, for being late.
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So please forgive me for my late arrival to the session.
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I had some meetings with extremely important people in East Central Alberta.
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Mr. Speaker, after which I was honored to be elected by the great people of Battle River Crowfoot.
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And on that same note, Mark Carney having a bit of a laugh and a joke when he mistakenly called Pierre Polyev a minister and invited him over to his side of the aisle.
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So, Mr. Speaker, I understand the minister or the minister promotion.
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So my question to you after the first week, how do you grade it?
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You know, I think Carney and Polyev both hit a new tone.
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It's a nicer tone than we saw back when it was Polyev versus Trudeau.
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I think the opposition's asking serious questions.
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Carney's giving serious answers and much as ministers always are.
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What are your thoughts after a week of watching the House back?
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I think the conservatives are saving their fire for some real moments, such as, you know, the budget obviously coming up.
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But I think also the continued negotiations or lack thereof with the United States.
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Now they're going to be hearings into the tariffs on both sides or Kuzma rather on both sides of the border.
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So I think that the sense I get is that they want to be seen as more serious.
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They attacked everything he stood for and everything he did.
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And I think Polyev wants to look more like a prime minister in waiting.
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So, Stuart, on that note, I found it interesting that they started off as saying that in question period,
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they're going to hold Mark Carney to account using his own words.
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And they kept quoting him and saying either you didn't deliver or you didn't deliver enough or you're not meeting your problems, things like that.
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It's kind of a way to hold the government account that, to Tash's point, isn't super aggressive, combative.
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And actually, it's, I think, taking advantage of a big weakness or maybe just something in their favor as the opposition,
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which is that Mark Carney has made a lot of big promises.
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He's also made promises that have extremely long timelines.
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So we're not going to see things on the ground.
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We're not going to see tangible results on major projects or on housing or anything like that anytime soon.
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So what that means is in the interim, the conservatives can just keep hammering away at Carney about that.
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And I think that is really their tone right now, which is we will support the government when we agree and we will oppose them when they're not doing well enough on the things we agree with.
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The conservatives told me there was no Team Canada and they were going to oppose Trudeau even on the Trump stuff.
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And I think that's just strategic from the conservatives.
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So on this issue of is he delivering, you know, one of the things that you're supposed to do in politics is undersell and overdeliver.
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And so far, in my view, the serious knock against Carney and look, I get people are still giving him benefit of the doubt and all of that.
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But he has oversold and is so far under delivering that major projects list was they're all good projects, but they were all going ahead regardless.
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And when he said throughout the campaign and on election night, we need to think big, act bigger, and move at speeds we've never seen before, I was like, yeah, yeah, go for it.
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And then that list came out and I was like, well, the copper mine's almost done.
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I think actually what he's done is he hasn't given, for a lot of these things, actual benchmarks.
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Yeah, I get a little fatigued with the hockey stuff personally.
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But the point is that he's not tied himself to specific metrics that the conservatives can come back and say, you said that there would be, you know, this many houses built by this time.
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The shovels are going in the ground basically next year.
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Well, this means that by the time the election rolls around, I don't know if those houses are going to be built.
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But the point is that I don't think people are going to be measuring specifics.
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They're not going to be looking at the port of Montreal and going, or the port in Quebec, it's actually not in Montreal, but going, oh, wow, is that, look how great that is.
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Or the LNG terminal at the other end going, oh, yeah, look, it's great.
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People are going to care about what's in their pocket.
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They're going to care whether they can afford a home.
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They can afford whether their kids are, you know, able to move out of the basement.
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They're going to care about the groceries price.
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Those are the metrics Carney has to worry about.
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Unemployment, inflation, interest rate, that stuff.
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If I can stay with you for a second and then get Stuart.
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On that measure, the Conservatives on Monday, before the new inflation numbers came out, before the Food Banks Canada report came out, they were saying, Mark Carney said, judge me by your experience at the grocery store.
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And they kept using that line in several questions.
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So they sent me the video of Mark Carney saying, a reporter on May 13th at the Swearing Inn at Rideau Hall, they said, how should we, how should you be held accountable?
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And he said, well, judge me by the experience at the grocery store.
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And then, of course, food inflation is, is still up.
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And part of it is the tariffs that we put on things like coffee.
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So, I mean, he's got the, there are potentials for, you know, this strategy of the Conservatives using his own words against them working.
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I haven't heard it anywhere for that exact reason.
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I think so much hinges on what happens with the U.S.
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All these things, our steel industry, the price of the food, like you said, anything that's brought into this country and it's tariffed.
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Also, just, you know, issues of trade with China, canola, seafood, like there's all these big picture issues that are affecting our economy that Carney's trying to juggle and manage.
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That people will hold him to because that is a concrete thing.
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But the rest of it, again, it's, you know, all those projects and stuff.
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The metric is going to be the very basic things that touch people's lives directly.
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Your view on the groceries comment and how the conservatives and the liberal government have been doing in question period, because I know you watch it closely, Stuart.
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I mean, I was there on Monday, deeply disappointed at how tame and collegial it was.
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But, yeah, I think this is such an interesting part of Mark Carney, because I think we're still in the honeymoon right now where it's not being evaluated in the way that it might be in the future.
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We all knew that Trudeau was a little bit silly in 2014.
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But by the time it was 2020, I think we had a different impression of his silliness.
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With Carney, there is a little bit of sort of casual arrogance.
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I will never forget that line when he took Rosemary Barton.
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I see it at certain points, but I don't see it in his performance in the house.
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I see a guy who's having more fun than I ever thought he would.
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I thought he would dread question period, because quite frankly, it's dreadful.
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I think Carney's sense of humor, this is what happened to Trudeau, is his sense of humor
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And yesterday, Carney made a joke, picking up on something Pierre Polyev said.
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Polyev said, well, I know you're such a great fiscal expert.
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And Carney said, well, I am a great economist, and I am a fiscal expert.
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And he was clearly joking, but he wasn't fully joking.
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I think Carney actually does think of himself that way.
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And we see this as reporters every now and then.
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There's a little kind of flare of condescension or arrogance.
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Yeah, I see it more with speaking to journalists, in particular, female journalists.
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And that could be something that bites him in the butt.
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But I think we're still seeing it through the lens of the honeymoon right now, where we're
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sort of like giving him the benefit of the doubt on those comments, whereas two years
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Or if the economic situation gets worse, and we're hearing this kind of stuff, we just are
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I especially in the first couple of days of Carney being in the house earlier in the spring,
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I was really surprised by how well he took to it, especially because, for example, Tim
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Hodgson, who was also new at it, looked terrified when he got up to talk.
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I think Tim Hodgson still looks terrified in the house.
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And Carney took to it right away, which surprised me.
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Um, I appreciated that the excessively combative tone from both sides was not there between
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And then, um, I think it was Tuesday, Carney was gone.
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Guys like Champagne, Frankie Bubbles, getting super aggressive and dismissive in their responses.
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And I was like, Ooh, this is the ugly side I didn't want back from, uh, you know, last
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The nature of the house is that the more time you're in there, the more irritable and partisan
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And we noticed this on the sort of month to month scale, where if there's a three month
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sitting, they're pretty raw by the end of it and nobody gets along and the heckles get
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And that's, I think just human nature, but the people who've been there for 10 years, looking
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at basically the same people and hearing the same insults back and forth, I think that
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they are in that same spot where they just, they're sort of done with this.
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And you can see it on the conservative side too.
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Steve McKinnon got up on Monday, a long time liberal.
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I thought, um, in his press conference with reporters sort of kicking off the house sitting.
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He doesn't have this sort of built up, um, irritability or sort of partisan angst.
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And, uh, it is refreshing when you see Carney and it is jarring when you see someone like
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Well, it also is a bit of a good cop, bad cop routine.
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I think that Carney, um, doesn't want, like you said, we discussed earlier is this, you
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He can slip into condescension sometimes, but he is so much more pleasant to listen to than
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Like I cannot, you know, I, I just, he's, he's got intellect.
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He, uh, will make comments and, and humor that doesn't, you know, drive me up the wall
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The rest of them though, like you said, they've been there, right?
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But they also have a function and the prime minister, if he wants to be above the fray,
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um, knowing that the other side is going to punch at some level, he needs, he needs some,
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you know, I won't hockey metaphor here, but he needs a big goons on the, on the ice too.
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Um, but that's the enforcers and he has to have some.
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And if Sean Biden wants to do that, it's, you know, he's a bit of a, he's a smooth guy.
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He's, he was that hostile this week, but I think he's also going to be wearing a lot
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And, uh, sort of stealing himself maybe for what a lot of the stuff that's going to come
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But before we move on to all the people that left, uh, as one person, uh, said it to me,
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Um, before we get to that, let me ask you about quick thoughts on Polly.
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Uh, how's this rookie MP from, uh, from Alberta doing in his first week back?
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And, you know, and he's trying to be more pleasant.
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I thought, um, like I said, I thought he was more serious.
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He, he seems to be adopting more of a gravitas, serious kind of tone because he doesn't have
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The routine he did with Trudeau wouldn't work on Carney.
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And if he's going to position himself as I am not just the opposer, but the proposer, which
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is something Scheer said that the party would do too, um, then he can't comport himself
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I think, um, we're waiting to see if he, if the other Polyev comes back because maybe
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Um, but generally the tone was, uh, was more civil, let's just say.
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I, I've, you know, we'd like to turn the temperature down and it's the leaders who do set the example
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and maybe not everyone follows it, but at least they are setting an example this week.
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Um, it was less exciting for journalists, but probably better for Pierre Polyev politically.
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And I, I know that he has to actually, his muscle memory is to be combative in the house.
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He thinks that's how you hold a government to account is you ask them really strong prosecutorial
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And I think that it wasn't like he was pulling punches, but it is just the tenor of the questions
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And I think that's something that Polyev is getting better at and it was on display this
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I know his muscle memory is to be strong, so he might go back to it.
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I mean, the difference, uh, as someone put it to me, um, about a year ago is that by the
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time Justin Trudeau was done, the public was done with Justin Trudeau and you could not
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punch him hard enough to make Canadians satisfied.
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Um, so, uh, in, you know, it's not like that with, with Carney, but he oddly is having a
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bunch of people leave and I'm not shocked by Christy Freeland in part because I guess
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The first time I heard that she was looking for a diplomatic appointment and trying to
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leave, I was surprised she ran in the last election because of that.
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Um, so I'm, I'm not shocked that she's leaving, um, cabinet anyway, she's not leaving as an
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MP until the next election, but she'll be Canada's special envoy, uh, on the rebuilding
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But, uh, Bill Blair, Jonathan Wilkinson, David Lamedi, uh, potentially Stephen Guibault
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I mean, Christia Freeland, I wasn't surprised at all because her career is like, she's gone
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She, she's, she was demoted, uh, she didn't win the leadership.
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So if she wants another kick at the can, she may well, she figures, okay, I'll go and cool
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my heels in Ukraine for a bit and then maybe come back in someday when Carney's no longer
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Um, the rest of them, I think it was a question of, uh, also feeling that they didn't have the
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That was his, I mean, this is a guy who, you know, jumped off a CN tower to protest, uh,
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Um, and as for Lamedi, um, yeah, that, that was a bit surprising.
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Um, you know, I thought he would be around longer.
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I thought that this was something that, you know, that, that was a role he was moving
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That would be the Aminos Gris advisor, that sort of, you know, uh, that sort of behind
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the scenes, but maybe he doesn't want to be behind the scenes.
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So there's a variety of reasons that people are, are either leaving or thinking of leaving
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And I think it's a lot to do is their personal ambitions and what they feel they want to
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So on Lamedi, I was speaking to, um, a plugged in liberal in Ottawa who said, um, that the
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fighting between, so Lamedi's leaving, according to the reporting, shout out to Bob Fyfe and
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I'm going to, you know, criticize Bob Fyfe and the Globe and Mail in a minute.
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They got good reporting on why Lamedi's leaving, uh, and, and talking about the infighting
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with Tom Pitfield, who they had two principal secretaries on no planet.
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Um, and so they were constantly battling for the right to be top dog.
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Apparently this goes back to the election campaign is what this liberal was telling
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Uh, but I, I did a post where the headline was Tom Pitfield smokes David Lamedi.
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And the reason I put it in those terms is that, do you guys remember about two, three
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weeks ago, the Globe had another story and it was a really weak, crappy one that said
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Tom Pitfield's former, or his company used to work at before he went into government data
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sciences had Philip, uh, Morris, a tobacco company, uh, as a client.
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And they try to, you know, get Carney to say, oh, he, you know, that, that should disqualify
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It's clear now that David Lamedi planted that story to try and get Tom Pitfield out.
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And now Pitfield's still there and Lamedi's out.
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And I don't know if you rolled your eyes when you saw that, uh, tobacco story a few weeks
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This is my favorite thing about this world is I do remember three weeks ago going, why
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would we care about connections to big tobacco?
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And, um, that is, that is a weird thing because Pitfield was originally supposed to be interim
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principal secretary and then Lamedi was supposed to come in.
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And then, you know, you can only imagine what was happening in the meantime with the fighting
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So, um, I, I think this is pretty the, like the Freeland one and some of the other ministerial
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ones that may happen in the future, pretty normal stuff.
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Um, you have people who maybe aren't as on board with the new era, uh, as others.
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And then you have people like Freeland who, you know, basically you've hit your ceiling
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and there's not a lot of use and just sort of, uh, hanging around.
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Um, the interesting thing is that we had been hearing that Freeland was angling for the
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And, um, that is the job that Lamedi seems to be going to.
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So, um, it is that, that just shows you who really has Mark Carney's heart in this world.
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Uh, well, they, they, they've been buddies since Harvard, uh, and then Oxford.
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So I want to read to you part of my column on all of these changes, just the part about
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Bill Blair going to replace Ralph Goodale as Canada's high commissioner in London, Ralph
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Goodale, you know, he's an easy to get along with guys.
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So I wrote whatever one thinks of Ralph Goodale, no one can ever say the former cabinet minister
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wasn't jovial, that he had the gift of the gab and could ensure people who might be hostile
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Blair by contrast is a gruff, grumpy, do it my way, old police officer who's
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unlikely to succeed in one of Canada's top diplomatic posts.
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You don't win friends and influence people by barking orders at them.
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And Blair has the bedside manner of a drill sergeant with a bad temper.
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That's who we're going to make our high commissioner.
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I mean, the Brits are not, you know, they can be grumpy too, but they do, they, they
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don't like someone from the colonies being grumpy at them probably, you know, they, they
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want to be the ones, if they're going to, anyone's going to be grumpy in the room, it's
00:21:57.760
Was it a question of, you know, figuring out just the chess pieces and where they could
00:22:01.960
go and what's available and how do you get people out?
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Maybe, but, um, yeah, I know I, I think, I think of John Baird in the UK, right?
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I think to your point, um, Goodale, smiley, jovial, uh, it's a totally different look.
00:22:17.280
And I think it probably definitely a better fit for a diplomatic post, which is what this
00:22:26.080
After I posted, um, that column, I heard from senior Harper person who said, you should
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have seen, they, they described Blair in less than favorable terms and then said, you should
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have seen how much she begged us to let him run for them before the liberals took him in
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And they just looked at him and said, no, we don't think you're a good fit.
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So that's why in my column, I'd actually consciously not said, I said, Goodale was a liberal.
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I never said Blair was, he was just someone looking for a place to, to perch since we're
00:22:59.820
talking about ambassadors, apparently the, uh, Canadian and American negotiating, uh, teams,
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Um, they haven't been talking about a trade deal in quite a while.
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Um, can, uh, the American ambassador to Canada the other day, Pete Hoekstra was saying, well,
00:23:22.720
We're just going to, you know, move forward on public consultations on renegotiating Kuzma.
00:23:27.820
Um, I, I've been saying for a while that we've got the Rana ambassador in Washington again,
00:23:36.420
Well, unlike Bill Blair, I'd say Kristen Hillman's a smart person.
00:23:39.760
Um, and, but she's not the, the diplomat that you need to move the goalposts, good trade
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negotiator apparently, but we need a diplomat there.
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Are, are we, are we taking the U S seriously or what are we doing with the Americans right now?
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I, I, I'm trying to understand the strategy of saying we've got a great relationship and
00:24:01.820
we've got the, uh, best deal when a little while ago it was, they want to break us so
00:24:10.940
Well, Carney did say recently that he texts all the time with Trump and Trump's a modern
00:24:16.940
How much would you pay to see that text thread?
00:24:21.740
I would kill to see that, um, and on all the capitalizations, like in Trump's true social
00:24:28.220
And I'm sure Mark Carney's, I bet he's got impeccable grammar in his texts.
00:24:32.060
I bet he's one of those guys that perfect punctuation, no emojis and would confuse Trump
00:24:38.060
with all the British spelling, which apparently he told his staff he's demanding.
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Um, so I, there's a couple of theories on this.
00:24:45.740
One is that, um, you know, there's just nothing to talk about at this point.
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Like this is Carney's turning to Mexico and maybe they're trying to team up with Mexico
00:24:56.460
to put pressure on the U S which, you know, given the relative sizes, I don't think is going
00:25:02.860
Um, but I'll give you the contrarian perspective, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago and
00:25:07.980
I think is interesting enough to put out there, which is that Tim Sargent, who's an economist
00:25:12.540
at the McDonnell Laurie Institute wrote this piece and I chatted to him about it.
00:25:16.380
Um, he made the case that with every week that goes by, it gets, the pressure is on Trump,
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not on Canada because we're so covered by Kuzma, uh, except on steel and aluminum and some auto
00:25:29.580
Um, but with Trump having all of these tariffs globally, the economics of it are going to start
00:25:36.540
biting soon and he's got midterms coming in a year.
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It's going to start to get harder and harder for Trump to push the tariff thing.
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And he will be more inclined to negotiate with Canada as time goes on.
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So in pure game theory terms, it might be better for Canada to rag the puck and just
00:25:55.180
wait and see if they can get a better deal out of the U S the other side of that though,
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is the politics of it, which is that if Canadians start to look at Carney and go,
00:26:03.820
Like we're hearing you haven't spoken in weeks.
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Are you the guy that's going to solve this problem?
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Are you the guy who's going to text them and then fly off to Mexico and fly off to the UK
00:26:14.860
So I think there's competing, um, interest here for Carney because the politics of it might
00:26:20.860
get harder, but there is a case to be made to be made that the longer you wait, the better
00:26:27.100
Well, I think, um, I think there's too many cooks in there too.
00:26:29.820
Uh, Kirsten Hillman, um, was the ambassador for, she's been the ambassador for,
00:26:34.540
Uh, and, um, is, as you said, very capable, very smart.
00:26:39.740
Uh, that's not what she went there to do initially.
00:26:42.140
Um, but Dominic LeBlanc, it's taken up a lot of space in this file.
00:26:46.780
And I got the, I always got the sense that the reason they didn't replace her, I had
00:26:50.460
I had heard Joshua Ray was up for the ambassadorship to, uh, to the U S, um, that they were going
00:26:55.500
to put someone in there with political gravitas.
00:26:57.340
Like you said, but with LeBlanc in the new year, well, seriously, that that's the, that's
00:27:03.980
the latest is that in the new year, they will maybe, maybe it's delayed then.
00:27:08.460
I heard this from like right after around the election that as, as the things were,
00:27:12.540
but then LeBlanc came on the scene and LeBlanc takes up a lot of room.
00:27:18.140
Like, you know, if he's the one leading this file, now he's going to be internal trade
00:27:22.300
minister because Christian Freeland is skipping off to Ukraine.
00:27:24.860
So he's going to have more responsibilities at home.
00:27:26.940
So maybe it is time to say, okay, we need to have the heavy political, like the smooth
00:27:32.300
person to your point, the non Bill Blair in this kind of role.
00:27:35.420
Someone who's got a lot of connections, a lot of weight knows the players gets along
00:27:39.340
works a room, like, you know, has experience in politics as sure.
00:27:43.180
He would, for example, I, I'm not, I'm not sure if that's the strategy here or if it's
00:27:47.260
just accidentally the dominoes are falling this way.
00:27:49.340
Um, but I, like I said, I always felt that LeBlanc, you know, that, that he didn't want
00:27:54.540
to necessarily be big footed by someone, a superstar in that space.
00:27:57.500
Um, but now maybe it's the time to do it because things are not moving.
00:28:04.620
Uh, I moderated a fireside chat with Danielle Smith, uh, a couple of weeks back in Calgary.
00:28:10.860
And, and she straight up told me because they have a trade representative in that office
00:28:17.020
And she just said that the, the current team made no inroads and no attempt to meet with
00:28:23.980
or establish relationships with Republicans before Trump won.
00:28:30.540
Um, like the whole job is to constantly have relationships with both sides so that when
00:28:35.740
there is a turnover, you are able to call them up.
00:28:39.100
And then after the election, they were calling them up and I, uh, you didn't want to talk to
00:28:52.140
And when we come back, we'll talk about Mexico, EV tariffs and more.
00:28:55.660
This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada Did What?, where we unpack the biggest, weirdest,
00:29:00.860
and wildest political moments in Canadian history.
00:29:03.420
You thought you knew and tell you what really happened.
00:29:07.180
Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes.
00:29:11.500
If you don't want to stick around, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What?
00:29:21.260
Last time we were renegotiating NAFTA, we tried playing silly games with Mexico.
00:29:27.660
If you remember, we got frozen out and, um, and, and then the Americans were signing a deal
00:29:36.220
One of the things that I've been hearing about trying to get a trade deal with the U.S. is
00:29:39.340
we're using the same playbook as the last time and we irritated them so much.
00:29:46.060
Are we just making the same mistakes again, Tasha?
00:29:50.540
Um, I mean, I think the idea of, you know, don't, don't let the Americans divide and conquer.
00:29:55.420
Let's make a strategy with Mexico and we're all at the table.
00:29:58.300
We're on the same page is nice in theory, but we are very different interests, you know,
00:30:03.180
um, and very different bargaining chips vis-a-vis the U.S.
00:30:06.940
Um, I get, always get the sense with Scheinbaum that she's actually in some way happy that
00:30:13.740
Trump is, is, is forcing Mexico or enabling Mexico to deal with its crime problem.
00:30:21.180
She has so much social license now to deal with this because if she doesn't, the U.S.
00:30:27.100
Then that's what they, you know, they hold over their heads.
00:30:30.460
And there's several states in the northern part of the country that the government
00:30:39.180
I mean, the people were disappearing, thousands of people.
00:30:43.420
But the hold was so strong, uh, there was no political will.
00:30:46.780
There was no, you know, there was no cooperation with police that people were on the take.
00:30:55.180
And so that's been what Trump's quid pro quo is he wants them to clean up their act on
00:30:59.180
fentanyl and crime and organized crime and crime coming across the borders.
00:31:04.060
Canada, we've been told, oh, your, the problem is fentanyl.
00:31:08.780
Uh, it's also things like, you know, we're not, we're not pulling our way to NATO when
00:31:11.980
we are abusing them in trade, but fentanyl has been thrown at us repeatedly over and
00:31:17.420
Um, you know, we've cracked down, we've had more seizures, we've done things.
00:31:21.980
Um, I'm not sure, like we, we have different issues because dealing with fentanyl for us
00:31:31.900
Our fentanyl problem is a Chinese fentanyl problem.
00:31:40.540
And our banks have already been fined in the U S for this.
00:31:42.700
Like that's what our problem is that we have to deal with.
00:31:44.860
So when Trump says fentanyl, he really means all those things.
00:31:47.900
Um, so it's very different than what the, what the Mexicans have to deal
00:31:53.500
China's affecting it too, but it's a domestic crime problem with us is a foreign interference
00:32:01.980
No, I think it's getting short shrift compared to a lot of other stuff that, that is being
00:32:06.940
But I think that, you know, I don't think that a common strategy, I think it'll fall
00:32:12.220
Like you said, like, I don't think, I think we can sign all we want to trade with each
00:32:16.540
But at the end of the day, Mexico wants to deal with the U S it's more important than
00:32:21.260
Now, by the way, just, uh, for next time you're at the grocery store, uh, I interviewed, uh,
00:32:26.700
the food professor, Sylvain Charlebois the other day.
00:32:30.940
We were talking about food inflation and, uh, how high the price of beef is.
00:32:35.340
And apparently when you see ungraded beef, he says, it doesn't mean it isn't safe.
00:32:39.260
It just comes from Mexico and it's not very good.
00:32:47.180
Stuart, are we making the same mistake before we move on to Chinese EVs?
00:32:51.580
Yeah, I actually am glad you mentioned that because as soon as I saw Mexico on the itinerary,
00:32:55.580
I thought I just had a wave of flashbacks to those days in the NAFTA renegotiation.
00:32:59.980
And, you know, we were talking about Christia Freeland's legacy, and she will tell you she
00:33:05.420
was instrumental in renegotiating NAFTA with the Trump administration the first time around.
00:33:10.300
Trump will tell you that she was so annoying that she delayed the renegotiation of NAFTA
00:33:16.780
And Jameson Greer, who is his trade representative now and was Robert Lighthizer's number two,
00:33:25.020
And, you know, this is what you were saying about Canada's diplomatic teams, too, which
00:33:29.020
is that, you know, even if you are sympathetic to the sort of anti-Trump, the sort of Trump
00:33:34.300
resistant resistance forces in the US, you still have to do your job as a diplomat and
00:33:43.260
But I think especially in the Trudeau years, there was too much of that, you know, we just
00:33:47.820
can't abide these guys to talk to them normally.
00:33:50.700
And I think Canada has to be really careful with that.
00:33:55.980
I don't think that's his MO, but some of the remnants of this government and some of
00:34:00.060
the remnants of the diplomatic teams probably do.
00:34:02.620
And I think that is our biggest fear right now.
00:34:05.660
Let me tell you what the diplomatic team is like, whether it's at Fort Pearson in Ottawa
00:34:13.660
They had a cardboard cutout of Trudeau for all the staff to go take selfies with just after
00:34:21.660
They ordered one off Amazon and had it delivered.
00:34:25.100
The issue of Chinese EVs back in the news, Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan went to China along
00:34:31.740
with Mark Carney's parliamentary secretary, Cody Bois.
00:34:38.140
Moe came back to Canada, was in Ottawa last week, had meetings with Carney, industry leaders,
00:34:45.420
And the simple answer is lift the EV tariffs that we have placed on Chinese electric vehicles,
00:34:51.580
and they'll, you know, take away the canola tariffs.
00:34:55.180
Even Moe has told me and others, it's not that simple.
00:35:01.980
Angus Reid Paul, just out the other day, 57% of Canadians say lower the tariff on Chinese EVs
00:35:09.700
to secure lower tariffs on Canadian canola, 57%.
00:35:14.060
Only 24% say no, Stan Pat, and 19% aren't sure.
00:35:18.420
That goes a majority in every region of the country and in every party.
00:35:24.560
I think that's the wrong move because China is an unreliable partner on canola.
00:35:30.760
And every time there is an issue, they're just going to slap tariffs on canola.
00:35:36.460
The government is too stupid to be nakedly telling Canadians that this is about national
00:35:43.300
The reason we put tariffs on EVs and it was to follow the United States, they did it for
00:35:57.220
This is the reason is because there is a security threat.
00:36:00.580
If you want to have a car with, I mean, it's bad enough we have TikTok.
00:36:04.120
You want to have a car with Chinese software in it that tracks your every movement because
00:36:09.520
Um, you know, we want millions of these on the road would be crazy.
00:36:16.000
And in these cars, by the way, they've got cameras everywhere.
00:36:26.320
Like, you know, you want to know what Canadians do with their time.
00:36:37.200
If you put it in those terms, maybe people wouldn't be answering the way they are.
00:36:43.380
What the government did do was get rid of the EV mandate or push it off anyway by a year
00:36:56.780
The uptake for EVs isn't as fast as people thought.
00:37:00.360
But they're not willing to go hardcore and say what this is really about.
00:37:03.260
And until they do, it's their own fault then that this is, I mean, sure, that would blow
00:37:06.420
up probably negotiations on canola and seafood.
00:37:08.600
But like you said, the Chinese are not reliable partners on that anyway.
00:37:13.720
And if you're going to be blackmailed into putting spyware into your nation's cars, really,
00:37:20.780
Stuart, between 2020 and 2022, China banned all Canadian exports of canola or canola products.
00:37:30.260
Again, 2017, there was a mixture of tariffs and non-tariff barriers on canola.
00:37:38.960
Premier Mo said to me the other day, yeah, every five or six years, they come after us
00:37:43.140
and they come after canola because it's the biggest crop.
00:37:53.560
Yeah, I am sympathetic to Tasha's argument on this one.
00:37:56.440
And I think the last thing I need is the Chinese government knowing how many times I hit up
00:38:01.740
It's like information I need to keep to myself.
00:38:04.260
But just in general, it's something to be concerned about increasingly.
00:38:08.300
Like when you have adversary countries like that, as Tasha says, TikTok is bad enough.
00:38:13.340
And there is an element of the Dane geld here where as soon as you do something with this
00:38:19.400
kind of blackmail, then it makes people think that you are submissive to it.
00:38:24.680
Next time this happens, all we have to do is put some tariffs on the canola.
00:38:28.420
And I think Tasha raised a great point, which is the EV mandate was one of the big issues here.
00:38:34.320
And there were environmental voices saying we need to remove that tariff on Chinese EVs
00:38:41.320
because we're not going to hit our mandate if we don't get there.
00:38:44.540
But I've looked at some of those guys and they would say that whether there was an EV mandate or
00:38:49.860
not, they just want cheap EVs and like it could be an armed EV that would shoot at us.
00:38:56.340
And they would be like, yeah, but it's electric.
00:39:04.720
Are you surprised at how well Scott Moe and Danielle Smith are getting along with Mark Carney?
00:39:12.140
I mean, after the major projects list came out and there was no pipeline, I would have
00:39:16.800
thought, you know, based on my conversation just days earlier with Premier Smith, that she
00:39:33.300
I mean, I think the issue is a private partner, right?
00:39:35.820
Which is why that pipeline hasn't been built at all in the first place.
00:39:42.580
Yes, but the point is private partners won't come in unless you have someone in the wings.
00:39:47.660
It's not going to be on the list of the first cut of things.
00:39:51.160
The second is the pathways plus, as they're calling it, of carbon capture and sequestration.
00:39:55.420
And so I don't know if she's taking an incremental approach to this or if she knows something
00:40:00.240
we don't know, that maybe there is a private partner that is being courted and she's confident
00:40:04.500
there'll be, you know, by the time the next election rolls around for her or of a referendum
00:40:07.960
on Alberta Sovereignty, that project will be on a go and they'll be able to announce
00:40:12.280
it then because, you know, if they announce it then, imagine Alberta Sovereignty Act and
00:40:16.160
then just before the vote, not Sovereignty Act, but the referendum, and just before the vote,
00:40:23.500
Gee, maybe it's better to be part of Canada so you don't have to, you know, there's no
00:40:27.540
borders between you and BC and who knows, right?
00:40:35.140
Yeah, well, I'll just say that I did not expect to see Danielle Smith tweeting in all
00:40:43.740
And I so there I think there was a very under read Reuters piece about negotiations about
00:40:53.600
And it seems like this happened around that time that there will be some grand bargain
00:40:59.940
on the emissions cap where if Alberta puts in place certain measures, the feds will remove
00:41:06.520
And, you know, we're talking about a private partner in a pipeline.
00:41:09.260
That's the thing I think that would draw somebody in is removing that policy.
00:41:14.080
So if I were guessing what made Danielle Smith so giddy that day when she was tweeting in
00:41:19.740
all caps, it's that she had gotten some pretty reliable signs from Carney that that policy
00:41:25.680
I think the province will have to meet them halfway.
00:41:29.360
But I think that would solve all those problems and maybe put a pipeline in the future.
00:41:36.720
As someone that's known Premier Smith a long time and has met her several times since the
00:41:41.700
election, what's fascinating to me is she's saying the same thing in public as she does
00:41:47.060
She's not saying nice things about Mark Carney in public and then saying that SOB is just
00:41:53.340
She's still singing his praises and saying he's good to work with.
00:41:56.960
You know, I'll give you a comparison of how various Premiers have described working with
00:42:06.580
Trudeau would show up late, lecture them for the first 20 minutes, not pay attention if the
00:42:11.860
Premiers were talking, not take notes, not ask follow-up questions, and leave early.
00:42:26.080
You're going to be happy if you dealt with the other guy for 10 years.
00:42:29.860
Is that our baseline now, just that you act like a normal professional and that's amazing?
00:42:40.120
I mean, you know, I think Carney does raise the bar to where it should have been all the
00:42:46.280
I think there might also be some, you know, conservative politics going on, too.
00:42:51.620
You know, Daniel Smith, Pierre Polyev, not always, always on the best of terms.
00:42:56.480
So I'm wondering, I'm wondering if there's some rivalry there, too.
00:43:02.640
What ambitions do they have down the line someday?
00:43:07.860
What powder, what bases are they keeping, you know, stoked?
00:43:11.620
You could speculate all you want, but I don't think it's wrong to think about those things
00:43:15.040
because people do think about those things and relationships and getting stuff done.
00:43:18.620
Daniel Smith wants, her interest is to get stuff done.
00:43:25.440
She's not going to be the Parti Québécois if they get elected in Quebec and say, hey, you
00:43:29.160
know what, it's our advantage to not get things done because we want to separate.
00:43:36.660
And then who knows what's in it for Alberta and for me.
00:43:41.640
Same thinking of Ford, who people all think has some greater designs eventually, potentially
00:43:48.860
The man can't stand sleeping out of his bedroom in Etobicoke for more than a night.
00:43:56.780
I don't know, I, you don't think he would want to, Prime Minister Ford, think about it.
00:44:01.280
Just, just think of the optics, folks, like folks.
00:44:03.360
Unless we're moving the Prime Minister's residence to his home in Etobicoke.
00:44:13.200
Sit in the backyard and smoke with the new Prime Minister for meetings.
00:44:17.860
He also announced a housing plan just before the House of Commons came back.
00:44:23.300
They named Anna Bailau as the, I will call her the new housing czar, because I can't
00:44:30.580
She was dismissed by some as just a failed politician.
00:44:41.260
But, you know, I also think that that's a bit of a bad knock against her.
00:44:45.740
She's someone who sat on the board of Toronto Community Housing, the largest social housing
00:44:53.020
And for the last several years, since leaving elected office, has worked with Dream, one of
00:44:57.600
the country's biggest developers and real estate investment managers.
00:45:04.400
So, like, she's got the social housing and the private sector experience.
00:45:11.360
I don't want another bureaucracy, but at least he's put someone in charge who has a clue.
00:45:16.580
I'd like your thoughts on that in the context of one of our colleagues describing Carney's
00:45:28.880
So, this is the most Trudeau-type announcement from Carney that I think we've seen, which
00:45:41.300
Like, is anybody excited about 44,000 factory-built homes?
00:45:47.360
It's going to be more than that, because that would put the price tag at $3.25 million per
00:45:56.960
And I, maybe I'll try not to be too cynical about this, but I'll read you what they're
00:46:04.060
Across the country to build 4,000 factory-built homes on federal lands, with the possibility
00:46:07.960
of adding up to 45,000 additional units on these sites.
00:46:12.000
There's a lot of words in there that don't ring with certainty.
00:46:16.160
And I think this is just the nature of the housing problem in Canada, which is it's multi-jurisdictional.
00:46:23.720
It also cuts across different demographics, too, where some people aren't necessarily
00:46:28.540
excited for lots of new homes in their neighborhood, because it's going to add traffic.
00:46:34.360
And I think that on the housing file, the federal mission is to look busy and hope it
00:46:42.620
Just hope that immigration goes down enough that maybe it's not as big as a problem as
00:46:47.380
Hope that rates go down so people are less stressed about that.
00:46:50.200
And make an announcement every now and then where you stand in front of a house.
00:47:02.440
I'm going to quote you something else they said that got me.
00:47:04.780
They said that this agency, Build Canada Homes, will fight homelessness by building transitional
00:47:11.320
and supportive housing, build deeply affordable and community housing for low-income households,
00:47:17.480
and also build affordable homes for the Canadian middle class.
00:47:29.580
All these projects that are happening are not vulnerable because of the deliverables.
00:47:34.140
They're vulnerable because of corruption, graft, overspending, giving contracts to your friends,
00:47:41.080
all sorts of the stuff that gets politicians stuck, a rive can all over it.
00:47:47.460
And the amount of money that's being thrown at it for the results that they are promising,
00:47:54.120
But it's way more than they would spend if they just went into the market right now,
00:47:57.880
where there are 5,000 condos sitting in Toronto, unsold right now, of already built stuff,
00:48:07.560
There's like another thousands of pre-construction that are being built that will come online.
00:48:13.080
You could snap this stuff up and house people tomorrow if that was your goal.
00:48:17.120
If your goal is to house the homeless, if your goal is really to...
00:48:22.900
They are going to be giving contracts and building on these parcels of land.
00:48:31.720
Usually developers choose places people want to live.
00:48:35.580
There's no infrastructure, roadways, you know, sewers, the whole deal.
00:48:43.020
It is mind-boggling that he's doing this and he's selling it like it's a new thing.
00:48:56.340
The government is acting against the market because developers are getting out of the market.
00:49:02.000
If government's going to give them money over here, they're never going to do it on their own.
00:49:06.580
They'll say, oh, yeah, give me some money or I won't build anything.
00:49:10.960
When I read the press release, the constant mention of affordable made me worried because
00:49:19.860
when most of us are thinking about we want to make homes more affordable, that's different than
00:49:26.720
And, you know, what we want are for all of us to be able to buy a home that we can afford
00:49:35.340
And housing has become incredibly unaffordable.
00:49:38.980
And my worry is that the bureaucrats do not like the idea of regular people owning homes
00:49:46.700
And so they really want this deeply affordable housing.
00:49:54.740
And if that's all they're going to focus on, that is not going to solve the big housing problem
00:50:01.340
in Canada, which is that young people are just looking and saying, I can't even get into
00:50:06.480
Yeah, I would if I were in government, I would be extremely worried about this.
00:50:11.600
And this is the thing that's propelling Pierre Paulieff.
00:50:14.760
I was born in 1983, bought my first home in 2019.
00:50:18.980
And that is the last helicopter out of Hanoi in terms of the housing market.
00:50:24.720
And I look at anybody younger than me, anybody who's trying to get in.
00:50:28.740
And I just think, I don't know how you do it at this point.
00:50:32.660
And, you know, if people start to get hopeless about this, and then everything else starts
00:50:37.420
to get unaffordable too, then we see the political movement that it's created for Pierre
00:50:43.480
The age demographics and voting have switched, like we talked about this, all through the
00:50:49.340
But what we don't want is just fury coming from these people who I think rightly think
00:50:55.180
that things have gotten unfair for them, and the government doesn't seem interested in
00:51:00.540
So if you're in government, I think it behooves you to take this seriously.
00:51:06.480
They bought their home for a dozen blueberries in 1954.
00:51:12.760
We'll ask last question about bail reform, because Sean Fraser, the man who wanted to
00:51:21.620
I did like that line from Chrystia Freeland in her resignation letter that she, or her
00:51:26.060
announcement that she's leaving cabinet, that she's not going to spend more time with her
00:51:31.060
Sean Fraser, he of spending more time with his family, now justice minister, has no clue about
00:51:38.980
He actually stood in the house as the conservatives were asking serious questions about bail reform,
00:51:44.720
because the current law says that you've got to release people as quickly as possible under
00:51:49.660
the least onerous conditions, and that you have to practice the principle of restraint when
00:51:57.640
So bail is de facto automatic, except in very rare circumstances.
00:52:02.460
And they're asking him about that, because we all see the stories of so-and-so was out on
00:52:08.040
A 12-year-old, out on bail recently in Toronto, along with a 20-year-old, also out on bail,
00:52:18.140
They're asking serious questions, and Sean Fraser stands up and says, oh, the law doesn't
00:52:26.360
I don't have hope for bail reform after hearing the comments from the justice minister this
00:52:35.120
There should be that, you know, to show that bail is not an automatic, like you said, or
00:52:39.360
it's not, the judges are not looking for the easiest grounds on which to grant it and the
00:52:45.920
It should be the opposite, especially for the certain crimes.
00:52:50.140
And I think the liberals, this is one of their weak thoughts, too.
00:52:52.700
And this was something that the Harper Conservatives did extremely well on in the election in 2004,
00:53:04.620
But that was one of their, when Jane Creeba was killed in downtown Toronto.
00:53:07.580
And there had been a wave of other, you know, murders.
00:53:11.700
And this poor girl was gunned down in the crossfire of a gang shooting just around Christmas,
00:53:16.720
And the conservatives said, no, this ain't enough.
00:53:20.460
And they proceeded to put into place a lot of the kind of bills that made sense.
00:53:24.900
But then some of them were not very well drafted.
00:53:32.220
The liberals, you know, they are soft on crime.
00:53:35.120
They are, they're not the party of law and order.
00:53:40.060
And I agree, Fraser is like a weak link in this chain.
00:53:43.160
He doesn't come across as somebody who's really that committed to this.
00:53:48.160
So that and the accountability stuff that we talked about just before with the housing
00:53:53.200
and spending lots of money and wasting it are two things the liberals have.
00:53:57.140
That is the concern to go for those jugulars because they are, people are legitimately frustrated
00:54:02.420
and angry when they see the kind of headlines you were talking about, Brian.
00:54:08.380
Is that a weak point for the liberals as we head into this fall session?
00:54:24.700
He was there, the former MP and cabinet minister.
00:54:29.900
Somebody's, somebody was writing an email just now.
00:54:32.920
But yeah, I think speaking to Tory strategists, they'll tell you that Mark Carney has eaten
00:54:39.340
their lunch on a lot of things and that's a concern for pure Polyev.
00:54:42.480
But the two areas where liberals will just never, for ideological reasons, they'll just
00:54:50.820
Crime and immigration, two big issues right now.
00:54:53.640
And that's why you saw Polyev go hard on the temporary foreign workers program, because
00:54:57.900
he needs to find some space on that issue to speak to his people and people who don't think
00:55:03.980
And then on crime, something that's worth noting is that the liberals didn't win as
00:55:09.860
many seats as they thought they would in the GTA.
00:55:12.640
And they have chalked that up to messaging on crime.
00:55:16.460
The Trump thing faded in the last couple of weeks there, and they just looked soft.
00:55:22.580
And I don't think that they have the ability to not look soft on crime because they just
00:55:29.500
And if you look at a guy like Sean Frazier, he just doesn't, he just doesn't have it.
00:55:40.280
Maybe we'll reconvene before the house leaves for the summer, maybe even for Christmas.
00:56:06.780
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00:56:28.660
Two years later, he was still opposition leader and he lost again to the Pearson Liberals.
00:56:35.320
Despite this, Diefenbaker doesn't resign as leader of the Progressive Conservatives, which
00:56:41.000
put the party in an awkward situation that hasn't really happened before.
00:56:45.500
The typical rules of a Canadian political party were that you stayed leader until you
00:56:51.560
And if you lost twice in a row, you were supposed to do the honorable thing and step aside.
00:56:59.820
Prompting the party to take the unprecedented step of forcing a party convention in Toronto
00:57:04.560
for the singular purpose of crowbarring Diefenbaker out of the leadership.
00:57:10.700
Diefenbaker shows up, pretends everything is fine, and gives a finger-wagging speech chastising
00:57:19.120
I followed this party when I didn't agree with policies.
00:57:32.860
He's politely cheered by the assembled Conservatives, and then abjectly humiliated in their subsequent
00:57:40.480
On the first ballot, Diefenbaker gets a distant fifth place, and even then he refuses to admit
00:57:49.000
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