Full Comment - September 07, 2026


If Carney and Trump are at war, why are they enjoying it?


Episode Stats


Length

54 minutes

Words per minute

180.16

Word count

9,780

Sentence count

579

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:21.760 you're at war when you get attacked we got attacked is canada at war with the united states
00:01:29.020 well that's what mark carney said on august 22nd the day after the trade talks collapsed with the
00:01:33.820 americans the americans they don't call it a trade war they dispute that idea they also dispute how
00:01:39.420 the trade talks collapsed and who is to blame what's that old saying truth is the first casualty
00:01:45.060 of war hello and welcome to the full comment podcast i'm brian lily your host and today we
00:01:49.680 try and pierce through the fog of war the competing claims and break down well what actually happened
00:01:55.340 to help me do that two very intelligent people some people say the smartest some people say the
00:02:01.100 best i don't know if that's true but some people say it i'm speaking of course about stuart thompson
00:02:05.920 and tasha keridan stuart thompson is national post parliamentary bureau chief national political
00:02:10.840 columnist Tasha Carradine, the team behind Political Hack, PostMedia's exclusive VIP
00:02:16.580 community for twice-weekly deep-dive politics newsletters and early access to some guy named
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00:02:29.620 Stuart, Tasha, welcome to you both. It's been a quiet summer, not much going on, huh?
00:02:35.400 Yeah.
00:02:35.800 All right. Before we get going into who's to blame, I want to play a little bit of Mark Carney and a little bit about Donald Trump. So here's Mark Carney at a recent news conference in Thunder Bay describing why he says the talks and the deal on offer were not acceptable.
00:02:53.300 In terms of Canada's position, our position is clear.
00:02:58.140 We need to have retained the right to protect and promote the French language,
00:03:04.760 Canadian culture, Quebec culture, fundamental.
00:03:08.360 We need to maintain our ability, our sovereignty to conclude trade deals with other countries.
00:03:15.920 There needs to be some stability and credibility, if you will, to an accord
00:03:20.220 so that we would have the most favoured nation elements to the Accords.
00:03:26.020 So that's Mark Carney about two weeks after the trade talks collapsed.
00:03:30.700 He's not talking as much about autos now, talking more about sovereignty, the French language.
00:03:35.820 And here's Donald Trump just a couple days before that, describing what's wrong with trading with Canada.
00:03:41.580 A lot of people say, who's the toughest one to deal with? Is it China, sir? Is it China? Is it Vietnam?
00:03:45.940 I said, no, actually, it's Canada.
00:03:49.340 Canada has felt emboldened.
00:03:52.440 They had presidents that didn't know what was happening.
00:03:55.340 Not only the last one, all of them.
00:03:57.060 I mean, they just were taken into, our country's been taken advantage of by Canada.
00:04:02.960 So out of that clip, just after those words, he went on to talk about how we took 20% of their auto jobs.
00:04:09.760 And he talked a lot about autos.
00:04:13.280 I'll let you guys decide who wants to start.
00:04:15.520 I think that this fell apart because Mark Carney couldn't get an acceptable deal on autos, and when he realized that, he pulled out and jumped on the hand grenade of, I've got to protect the French language, I've got to protect our sovereignty, and he used that for all it was worth for the by-election in Chicoutimi.
00:04:35.640 He's letting Christine Frechette, Quebec's premier, use it in the Quebec election, and he's using it to boost his poll numbers.
00:04:43.540 It was a bad deal, had to walk away, but let's pump up these other issues for political gain.
00:04:49.040 Thoughts?
00:04:50.280 Blame Canada.
00:04:52.160 You know, it's the whole South Park.
00:04:54.920 It's all our fault.
00:04:55.780 I think you're not wrong, Brian, but I think the French language stuff, you wouldn't have just invented it out of thin air.
00:05:02.740 it was it i can't see how he would have just made that up i know that the americans say well we
00:05:08.440 don't care how would like they could speak france a quebecois i don't care if they speak french why
00:05:12.940 would america care the point is i think the americans use those things because they wanted
00:05:18.560 to blow up the deal i don't think they wanted a deal they knew the sensitivities they were very
00:05:22.500 well aware of all the political ins and outs of the by-elections and the election they they've
00:05:27.700 been talking about it why are they paying such rapt attention so so the fact can't use it i think
00:05:32.020 Both of them are spinning each other. Both of them are spinning each other.
00:05:35.000 They're clearly paying attention to the electoral calendar up here. They keep raising it.
00:05:38.920 Well, that's the point. So why are they doing that? They've got people eyes on. And the fact
00:05:43.840 that he brought it up means it must have come up somewhere in the conversation with the Americans.
00:05:49.080 Like I said, inventing it out of thin air doesn't sound plausible. So what you end up with is both
00:05:54.840 parties using their spin on each other. And yes, the liberals used it in Quebec for sure. It helped
00:06:01.120 their numbers in that by-election. They won by 51 percent. But I think the Americans also used it
00:06:07.840 as a way, as a poison pill to torpedo the negotiations. And now the blame Canada rhetoric
00:06:12.340 is going to work for Trump. Bizarrely, it's going to work in the midterms because now if things go
00:06:17.600 bad, he just says, oh, it's their fault. It's their fault, not mine, that things are the cost
00:06:22.380 of living and the tariffs. It's all their fault. He can blame us and he won't suffer the consequences.
00:06:27.180 All right. We'll come back to the French language bit in Lutnick's comments because I want to play
00:06:30.560 them later on. But Stuart, your thoughts on how and why the talks broke down and who we can trust.
00:06:41.560 Well, everyone we talk to, the main thing sources are telling us is that it's not our fault. And
00:06:47.460 I think that's the first thing you do once the negotiation breaks down is you get out there and
00:06:52.520 you explain why this wasn't your fault at all. But I think you're probably right is that the
00:06:57.700 Canadian side began to see that this was a deal that was going to be unacceptable for them to
00:07:02.340 sell to Canadians. And I think one of the main ways they saw that it was going to be unacceptable
00:07:06.660 was that Doug Ford thought it was unacceptable. And not only do you need him on your side to sell
00:07:12.040 it, but you need him on your side to put that American liquor back on the shelves, which would
00:07:16.800 have been part of the deal. So all of these people have political reasons to want a deal that reaches
00:07:24.400 a certain level. I think that we have to look at these people as politicians, and they have to have
00:07:30.000 a sense of what Canadians would bear. And, you know, you're looking at an electorate that has
00:07:35.560 no taste for concessions right now, and I think probably is willing to deal with some damage to
00:07:42.660 the Canadian economy in order not to give up stuff to Donald Trump. And I think that Mark Carney was
00:07:48.480 looking at that and saying, you know, this is this deal is going to be really hard to sell.
00:07:53.520 And my image is that the guy who fights Trump could really be hurt. But I think it's worth
00:07:59.260 noting that, you know, the Gordie Howe Bridge situation taught us that, you know, Mark Carney
00:08:05.560 isn't always going to be straight with Canadians. And I think we caught him, you know, call it a
00:08:10.520 lie, call it a deception, call it, you know, a spin of a deal. But it that looked bad. And it
00:08:16.600 look like maybe he's not always straight with Canadians. And I think now Carney has to be
00:08:21.140 careful about, for example, the French language stuff. If that was genuinely not a red line for
00:08:26.760 the Americans and he's telling us it's one, you only get a few bites of the apple with Canadians
00:08:31.700 where you inflate these deals or you spin it in a way that is deceptive before people start
00:08:38.840 doubting you entirely. Well, and on the Mark Carney bridge or the Mark Carney bridge, the
00:08:44.000 Gordie Howe bridge and how Mark Carney was playing that and spinning it is why I asked,
00:08:49.280 who can we trust? Because the prime minister came out and, you know, Trump said, oh, we're getting
00:08:55.460 half the tolls. And Carney said, oh, no, no, we're going to pay off the bridge and the interest and
00:09:01.480 the debt and and then we'll split what's left. And then we find out that, no, the Americans are 0.73
00:09:06.240 going to get the equivalent of 50 percent of the toll revenue. It's just not going to come from
00:09:11.160 the toll revenue it's going to come from the government's general tax revenue um i i'm sorry
00:09:17.420 but you're you know splitting hairs uh you know in bizarre ways they're getting the equivalent of
00:09:23.600 50 of the toll so i want to play howard lutnik on the french issue and then break down my
00:09:30.120 understanding of what that was because everyone's everyone's playing games here is my view canada
00:09:38.020 Canada has the best trade deal in the world before we started.
00:09:41.400 We negotiated and Canada's going to have the best trade deal in the world.
00:09:46.520 And what happened was that Canada walked away, we had a deal, we shook hands, the president
00:09:51.900 announced it, right?
00:09:52.900 Everybody was positive.
00:09:53.900 Canada made the decision for political purposes.
00:09:57.820 They wanted to walk away.
00:09:59.780 This is politics only. 0.98
00:10:01.740 you think i ever said the words french do i care about how the quebecois speak i mean what could
00:10:12.680 matter less to america we don't care so that's howard lutnik now a couple of things some canadians
00:10:19.600 are going to say oh we don't have the best trade deal that's something mark carney actually says
00:10:23.880 when he's not trying to get a better deal he's saying well you know we already have the best
00:10:28.260 deal. So we're in good shape. So they all agree on that. But they don't agree on the French, or
00:10:33.720 they're not speaking the same language, let's say. You know, we've heard Canadians say,
00:10:38.600 we've got to defend French language labeling. We've heard the Americans say, well, we didn't
00:10:42.460 say you can't speak French. Jameson Greer said this was all about Netflix. And that,
00:10:50.440 from my understanding, from speaking to Americans and Canadians about this,
00:10:54.260 is exactly it this was about the online streaming act and the americans big problem with that
00:11:00.440 is that the streamers in the states would have to pay billions to pay for canadian content but they
00:11:06.760 also objected to french language discoverability they also object to general canadian content
00:11:13.480 discoverability as well and that's what they said was not a red line so you know i think that they're
00:11:20.360 both making claims that they can claim are true but they're talking past each other i don't think
00:11:26.860 that french language discoverability would have been a red line but it plays well to say we're
00:11:32.800 standing up for the french language when you couldn't get a deal on autos because people in
00:11:37.840 quebec don't care about autos people in western canada don't care about autos they care about
00:11:42.440 canadian sovereignty which carney's talking about they care about you know being able to pass our
00:11:47.420 own laws. So I think that he is overplaying the importance of French language discoverability in
00:11:55.560 the online streaming act because he couldn't get Doug Ford on side to put the booze back on because
00:12:00.440 the auto part sucked. And all these things are probably true. And the point of this exercise is
00:12:06.300 that it was a bad deal. We all come to the same conclusion. It was a bad deal for whatever reason
00:12:10.780 and he scuppered it, it was a bad deal.
00:12:13.740 I think Lutnik is probably, Lutnik's probably saying the truth.
00:12:17.540 He didn't, you know, he doesn't care if people speak French.
00:12:19.680 It wasn't about the speaking French.
00:12:20.940 It was about Netflix.
00:12:22.160 It was about the money that's given to Canadian producers,
00:12:26.360 particularly in Quebec, to support French language production,
00:12:29.700 which is a very sensitive point there.
00:12:32.620 And if it's about the labeling, what we heard is it costs more to label
00:12:36.400 if you have to do labels that are bilingual for American, you know,
00:12:40.340 producers, which is so absurd. You order anything on Amazon, Brian, it'll come in 14 languages. I
00:12:45.640 mean, is it really that hard? I think that what we saw was both sides picking the issues that
00:12:51.720 mattered most to their constituencies. But the fact that this stuff fell apart is the bigger
00:12:58.440 story. You're right. And I think the auto piece was probably, and my understanding is the first
00:13:04.780 time this collapsed, that was a big piece of it. And Lutnik has said this, and I do believe
00:13:10.320 him on this one. He said, you know, we're going to make cars in the U.S. This was last year because
00:13:15.260 they're not being made in Canada anymore. Get used to it. He literally said this to a business
00:13:19.080 audience. So the view of the Americans is that they want to just kill our auto industry. We can
00:13:24.120 make parts. It's fine. You can buy some of those. OK, but they're all the cars to be assembled in
00:13:28.340 the U.S. because they want to repatriate manufacturing. So if that is their goal and
00:13:31.780 Carney's mentioned it this week, he said that they want to destroy our industry, basically
00:13:35.200 hollow it out completely. How can we sign that? That is impossible. So whether he uses the
00:13:40.200 French puts that in the main window as opposed to the other. At the end of the day, it's the same
00:13:44.880 thing. They gave us a deal that was unacceptable. They poison-pilled it, and we didn't swallow it,
00:13:52.200 and that was it. And now we're here in a very bad place, arguably, but it would have been worse if
00:13:57.300 we had committed something like that. Well, I'm sitting here in Western Canada. I'm in Saskatoon
00:14:01.860 right now, but I was speaking to people here, speaking to people in Calgary, and they said to
00:14:06.880 me, why should we walk away from this deal just because of the auto industry in Ontario? And I
00:14:14.600 say, well, it's our second largest export. It's worth hundreds of thousands of jobs. Oil and gas
00:14:21.260 drilling and extraction is worth about $150 billion a year in Canadian dollars, $150 billion
00:14:30.060 worth of exports the second most valuable export is automobile and light duty motor vehicle
00:14:38.880 manufacturing 48 billion dollars about a third of just a shy of a third of the oil and gas industry
00:14:47.680 so that's why we don't want to walk away from it but is there an argument to say that
00:14:52.100 we should just let it go because that would be very popular in certain parts of the country
00:14:57.400 Australia did it. Well, let's just import Chinese vehicles. Let's import European vehicles, American vehicles. Why do we give up this for a, you know, and screw over the rest of the country?
00:15:11.240 This is actually U.S. strategy, too. I mean, I think Trump sometimes gets a—people underestimate him in terms of his strategic maneuvering. And if you look at University of Calgary economist Trevor Toome did a great chart about the job effects of all these tariffs. They are concentrated in central Canada, and they create regional differences in Canada.
00:15:35.520 So what that means is we have divided premiers and we have a country that's divided, which makes it harder for us to negotiate and be unified. So that alone is just good strategy by the U.S. in terms of getting this deal.
00:15:50.720 And I think the thing to remember, though, is and I find this a genuinely hard question to answer. It's not we're not comparing this deal to what used to be. We're not comparing it to the pre-Trump status quo. We're comparing it to the world without this deal.
00:16:09.140 So tariffs, whatever escalating retaliatory tariffs we have down the road, whatever happens on January 1st with those other new tariffs that Trump has promised, if Mark Carney is rejecting a deal and Doug Ford is saying, don't take this bad deal, and pundits and analysts are saying this was a bad deal, we shouldn't take it, we have to kind of reckon with what might be down the line.
00:16:33.260 And I think it's fair to say we can't accept this because we just can't accept this attack, even if it is worse for us down the road, because you can't just lie down when someone attacks you.
00:16:45.600 But I think politicians have to start getting Canadians braced for what might be coming down the road.
00:16:50.580 Tasha, John Iveson, that guy I made fun of at the beginning, John's a great columnist, great writer, just teasing John, he had a piece out this week citing a source that said the Carney government is willing to let the auto assembly industry die.
00:17:07.460 I find that hard to believe.
00:17:10.460 Now, here's how I think it went down with how we ended up at the impasse on autos.
00:17:17.040 You know, negotiations start out verbally, and it was, well, we want the tariffs lowered from 25% to 15% on autos, and the Americans said yes.
00:17:26.660 And, of course, if they're lowered to 15%, once you get the discounts for American parts inside a Canadian-assembled vehicle, it goes below 7.5%, and they can live with that.
00:17:36.480 the industry can survive um so that starts out verbally and then they get the start drafting the
00:17:44.300 text of the deal and the canadians say wait a minute we set autos and the americans say yeah
00:17:50.080 autos is in there well medium and heavy duty trucks which is the gm plant in oshawa and soon
00:17:56.380 to be all they make at the ford plant in oakville uh those won't be economical they'll have to shut
00:18:02.300 down. And the Americans say, well, no, we're not giving you that. How do you accept a deal where
00:18:07.860 two out of five assembly plants shut down within a year or two? You don't. That's the thing. And
00:18:14.980 this is why. This is why I'm saying it's poison pill, because we asked for those light trucks and
00:18:19.620 medium trucks, the F-150 series, to be... But do you think Mark Carney would sign off on that?
00:18:27.480 to get rid of no i i don't think so i think and i don't think it's just electoral i think that
00:18:33.520 you know from just a practical perspective um you stab the auto industry in the heart that way
00:18:41.780 um and that quickly too because this would be a this would be fast right it'd be like an immediate
00:18:46.360 like no um you're going to have major economic dislocation in ontario major and it will ripple
00:18:51.800 across the country this is not like this is the thing is that the american have a have it's great
00:18:55.540 for the divide and conquer strategy because they know Westerners will be like, well, we have all
00:18:59.260 this. And like, why should we care about Ontario? Like they have to care because everything affects
00:19:03.880 everybody else. If the economy goes south in one part of the country, it affects the rest of the
00:19:10.160 country. So I think Carney looks at this and goes, no, he's playing a waiting game, too. Look,
00:19:17.560 there's two more years of Trump. Who knows what comes after? But you're not going to sign a
00:19:20.860 terrible deal that locks you in for, you know, a decade or whatever, when in two years, maybe you
00:19:26.360 can get a better deal with somebody else. Right. And I think he's thinking that he'll still be in
00:19:30.020 power at that point or, you know, facing an election that could be around the new deal.
00:19:35.540 It can think if you want to think really electorally, he has very little to lose.
00:19:38.820 The country has a lot to lose. And I really don't think that, you know, he would have signed off on
00:19:43.280 a deal that would have killed this industry because it would not make sense either electorally
00:19:47.600 or economically. They've got the most seats in Ontario. It would hurt them trying to get
00:19:54.060 anything along the 401 corridor if they signed off on this. I want to play you another clip
00:19:59.980 because after the talks fell apart, of course, we had Doug Ford saying, kiss my ass. You had 1.00
00:20:05.340 Donald Trump calling Ford a flunky. You had name calling all over the place. And then eventually
00:20:11.040 we ended up at this. We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately
00:20:18.780 to Lake America. That's going to take place right now as I sign the order. I said at the beginning
00:20:26.060 that I think that Mark Carney jumped on, when he couldn't get a deal, jumped on some of the other
00:20:31.880 issues because it would help him politically. We'll dive into that later. You know, where does
00:20:36.800 that end and doug ford did the same because he's you know just had by elections he won two out of
00:20:42.280 three which is what he needed and what he wanted but i think donald trump is also leaning into this
00:20:48.260 with the america thing and we don't want your cars i know there are republicans saying this
00:20:53.480 is hurting us in the midterms but he's leaning into it thinking it might help him in places like
00:20:59.440 ohio and michigan saying i'm standing up for your auto jobs the other guys let them go i'll keep
00:21:05.000 your auto jobs here. I don't know if it's going to work, but I think Trump's leaning into this
00:21:08.680 politically as well. That's always the question with Trump is, is there a legitimate political
00:21:13.980 strategy here or is this just his kind of muscle memory that whenever there's a fight, he just
00:21:19.060 always has to swing back hard? And I do think it is an interesting situation because if you're Mark
00:21:26.320 Carney, you do have this giant reservoir of benefit of the doubt with the Canadian people
00:21:31.220 because of this stuff. So I think on the Friday night, as that deadline approached for the deal
00:21:37.360 and the Canadian team was discussing, what are the ramifications if we pull out of these talks?
00:21:43.320 They do know that it's very likely we're going to have exactly what played out, which is the big
00:21:48.600 war of words, which is statements from Trump that enrage Canadians. And we know from the last year
00:21:54.300 that makes people rally around Mark Carney. So all this stuff, I think if you're the Canadian
00:21:59.480 negotiating team, it just gives you that buffer. You know, you can make a few mistakes and you'll
00:22:04.760 get away with it because Canadians hate Trump so much. And I think Carney is quite happy to play
00:22:10.640 into it. I mean, he does it in his own way, but this week he took a couple of swings at Trump and
00:22:16.180 obviously there's going to be swings back. And I don't think he minds that.
00:22:20.060 All right. Well, pick that up when we come back. How do you end this when there's so many incentives
00:22:24.900 for the politicians to keep fighting? We'll talk about that when we come back. But first, hey,
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00:22:51.360 Recently, our company softball team lost the big game by one run.
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00:23:54.080 This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada Did What?
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00:24:18.180 By the end of the day, we could be facing more terrorists
00:24:22.980 being levied against Canada
00:24:24.480 Because we, unless something happens between when we're talking and when this comes out, we're going to be levying countervailing duties against the Americans, dollar for dollar tariffs, although not on fish like we originally thought.
00:24:36.980 That idea got scrapped.
00:24:39.580 This escalation, as I was saying earlier, Tasha, works politically for everyone involved.
00:24:45.940 It works for Doug Ford.
00:24:46.800 It works for Mark Carney.
00:24:47.800 It works for Donald Trump.
00:24:49.920 So if the incentive is to keep fighting, how do we stop this and get to a deal?
00:24:55.980 Because as much as some Canadians don't want to get to a deal, economically, we kind of need one.
00:25:03.740 Yeah, I wish I had the answer to that question, Brian.
00:25:06.780 That is the issue that we're facing is it just keeps getting worse and worse.
00:25:11.560 I mean, I'm trying to think.
00:25:13.100 I'm thinking back of how, you know, Trump, when Trump Zelensky'd in the Oval Office and he treated him like, you know,
00:25:19.760 complete dirt. And everyone thought, well, you know, how are they ever going to talk again?
00:25:24.660 They ended up talking again. The Ukraine war is still going on, last I heard. But still,
00:25:29.300 there was a path back to some kind of conversation eventually. So if that can happen, I think we can
00:25:35.680 talk with them, too. I think nothing's going to happen before the midterms, though. I think Trump
00:25:40.160 is using this for his own purposes. And you mentioned earlier this he thinks will help him
00:25:43.880 with voters in Ohio. I think what it's doing is it's turning the American electorate against
00:25:50.060 Canada and he's running. His candidates will be really running against us. Like our candidates
00:25:56.120 ran against Trump or his candidates ran against Trump in the by-elections and the election and
00:26:00.800 now in the Quebec election. And I'll explain. Polling I've seen shows that right now 38 percent
00:26:06.940 of Republicans consider Canada either a hostile or enemy country. 38%. Only 8% of Democrats do.
00:26:15.020 All right. So they are convincing their electorate that we are the boogeyman. And it's a lot easier
00:26:19.920 to do that and distract them from all the problems that they have. I go back to the blame Canada. Oh,
00:26:25.120 you know, hostile living is up. Wow. Look at what those tariffs they brought. They won't let our
00:26:28.600 liquor in. Of course, you're unemployed in Kentucky now, like on and on. So Trump is milking this,
00:26:34.180 pardon that supply management pun, for all it's worth, right? It's Canada's fault. And I think 0.72
00:26:39.980 he's going to run this through to the midterms because right now he needs people to be distracted 0.72
00:26:44.260 from the Iran war, cost of living, high gas, everything else at their problem and blame
00:26:48.840 someone else. And we are the punching bag du jour. So I don't think anything will happen before then.
00:26:54.160 You know, Stuart, later in that clip of Howard Lutnick that we played earlier talking about
00:27:00.380 French. He went on to say that this was all manufactured political outrage by Canada.
00:27:07.100 And he said, and he described the elections and he's talked about them in detail. He sometimes
00:27:11.240 gets the name of parties wrong, but he's obviously been briefed. And he said, as soon as they're done
00:27:16.880 with their elections, there's going to be a plane loads of Canadian negotiators coming back down.
00:27:22.180 I agree with Tasha. I think maybe they wait out until the midterms. The Quebec election is October
00:27:28.100 5th. The Alberta referendum is October 19th. And theirs is what, November 3rd or something like
00:27:35.180 that. Do we, you know, are we down there brokering a deal just before voters in Ohio and Kentucky
00:27:43.440 and Michigan? Mike Peters, the Senate candidate in Michigan, seems to be leaning into this. We
00:27:50.780 want our auto jobs back. So, you know, it was Carney's strategy to wait until after the midterms.
00:27:57.140 is it now Trump's? Yeah, I think that totally makes sense. And it makes sense to me that they
00:28:04.160 know when our elections are because every Canadian knows when the midterms are and how it matters to
00:28:09.860 this deal. So I think part of negotiating is knowing the political incentives of the person
00:28:15.600 across the table from you. And I wouldn't be surprised. The thing I wrote about in Friday's
00:28:21.780 political hack actually was polling in Canada and the U.S., where a polling company asked the same
00:28:28.820 question of Canadians and Americans. And it is quite interesting. The main finding that I wrote
00:28:34.260 about was that Americans are a lot more confident that the relationship between the two countries
00:28:39.660 will last or that it's not being irreparably damaged. But the other thing that was in there
00:28:45.340 was that six in 10 Americans say they're struggling financially. And that number is about four in 10,
00:28:51.600 43 percent in Canada. So that, I think, is the thing that's going to be pushing on Trump a little
00:28:58.120 bit. And his current strategy right now is to, as Tasha said, blame Canada, blame all the bad
00:29:04.000 trade deals that they have and say, don't worry, these tariffs are going to fix things. We're going
00:29:08.480 to be building stuff. Things will get better. But I think by the end of the fall, I mean, this is
00:29:14.540 going to be a real screaming issue for the Republicans. So I wouldn't be surprised if the
00:29:18.720 air clears in November? Well, when does economic anxiety start hurting Mark Carney? Or is he
00:29:26.900 always given a get-out-of-jail-free card because of Donald Trump? We just had the job numbers come
00:29:32.300 out in the United States on Friday. The Americans added 162,000 jobs. Their unemployment rate
00:29:40.220 remained unchanged at 4.1. Canada's stayed the same at 6.4%. We had 37,000 people drop out of
00:29:50.660 the labor force, meaning they stopped looking. Those aren't good numbers. Now, in fairness to
00:29:56.560 Canada, if you want to compare apples to apples and you convert our unemployment rate to theirs,
00:30:02.060 it's about 5.4, but that's still a lot higher than 4.1. And our food inflation has been
00:30:09.900 significantly higher. Does any of this ever kick in on Mark Carney because he doesn't get a trade
00:30:16.940 deal with the U.S. and it takes longer to diversify than we expect? Or as I continually see in emails
00:30:25.840 from readers, Mark Carney's doing the best he can against the crazy man in the White House. So 0.95
00:30:30.560 I'm fine with it. Yeah, I think, look, Carney's facing by-elections here. He's not going to a
00:30:38.040 general election anytime soon. You know, he just picked up another seat. So his majority is it's
00:30:42.320 small, but it's there. There's going to be a whole slew of other by-elections. Cathay Wagenthal
00:30:47.860 resigned. You've got three in Quebec coming up. So I think those will I think he'll try and get
00:30:53.680 those done before the American election because of all the reasons we've talked about, because I
00:30:59.100 think at a certain point, patients will wear thin. But while the hostilities are going on,
00:31:05.040 is still elbows up and people will be on side and they'll be like, don't don't give any quarter.
00:31:09.560 I mean, you have candidates in the Quebec election, Bernard Drainville, who went out and said,
00:31:13.880 F you, Trump, literally on air. So his leader asked him to excuse himself. Christine Frechette
00:31:21.040 did. But still, he said what everyone's thinking, right, or what many voters are thinking. So
00:31:25.920 as long as that's alive, Carney will benefit. I think, though, if the Americans start to then
00:31:31.980 suddenly seem more reasonable after the midterms, for example, and we don't, that's when people
00:31:36.740 might say, okay, well, okay, enough's enough. Christmas is coming. I have no money to buy my
00:31:41.040 kids a gift. Like, you know, no money for the turkey. Getting annoyed here. So I think Carney's
00:31:46.440 got to get his politics out of the way so that he can get back to trying to save the furniture here
00:31:52.520 because at a certain point we do need a deal. We can't just keep going on. So interesting that you
00:31:58.980 raised future by-elections. We've been talking about the past ones. Mark Carney won all three
00:32:04.600 last week and I expected him to win all three last week. I never thought that the Conservatives
00:32:11.400 would win Chicoutimi in Quebec, even though they held it since 2018. But the Liberals got over 50%
00:32:18.340 in each of them. And the Conservatives went from holding a riding for eight years to getting 12.5%
00:32:25.880 of the vote and if the conservative candidate had scored just a few hundred votes lower
00:32:32.980 they'd be under 10 and the party wouldn't get its 60 of expenses rebated from elections canada
00:32:40.480 which would have been a complete embarrassment but 12.5 i think is an embarrassment for pier
00:32:47.100 polyev and the conservatives you mentioned kathy wagenthal you did not mention larry brock in
00:32:52.640 brantford brant south six nations he is resigning as of september 18th i just after you mentioned
00:33:01.060 you think mark carney will do these by elections before the midterms tasha i looked he could call
00:33:08.100 it on uh september 20th or just after that and we would be voting um around october 19th or just a
00:33:17.000 little bit later but before the u.s midterms there's a lot of conservatives think that brantford
00:33:22.100 Brant South Six Nations is in play. And if that, if the Liberals take it, I think Pierre Polyev is
00:33:28.820 done. Do you remember Toronto St. Paul's with Justin Trudeau? I mean, by-elections so rarely
00:33:36.400 matter, but when they do matter, they really matter. And, you know, Brantford is not quite
00:33:41.700 Toronto St. Paul's. Like that was, it's one of the biggest shocks, I think, in, you know, recent
00:33:46.680 electoral Canadian history. But in the Shakutami by-election, Pierre Polyev has some baked-in
00:33:54.060 excuses, which is that Richard Martel was a genuine star candidate. Quebec is a little weird
00:33:59.100 sometimes. They do switch ridings in a way that doesn't happen as much in the rest of Canada.
00:34:03.280 That riding has been with every party, including the social credit back in the day. 0.99
00:34:09.180 That riding's a bit of a whore. 0.93
00:34:10.520 oh my god it's a it's a bizarre writing and also um the trump effect was in full swing there i mean 0.97
00:34:19.440 we we were chatting about that by election on the morning of it and i was thinking carney will
00:34:24.420 probably the liberals will probably win this one but 51 is unbelievable and i that larry brock
00:34:31.640 brantford writing is going to be such a litmus test and i i have been a skeptic of the people
00:34:38.900 talking about Pierre Polyev, you know, not being leader anytime soon. But that would be a very hard
00:34:46.760 question for him to answer if they lose that one, because it just shows a kind of terminal decline
00:34:51.640 in seats that they desperately need to win. And it would show a lot of conservative MPs
00:34:58.140 who are in swing ridings or ridings that they didn't even consider to be swing ridings,
00:35:02.480 that their job is in trouble. Because if Larry Brock's riding is in trouble,
00:35:06.120 than some of those guys certainly are.
00:35:08.100 So I think if I was Mark Carney,
00:35:12.940 I would be pulling out all the stops
00:35:14.180 and doing probably the sneakiest possible
00:35:17.260 by-election date that I could on that one.
00:35:19.980 Tasha, look, I don't blame Pierre Paglia for losing,
00:35:23.980 but 12.5%, I asked one experienced campaign manager,
00:35:29.280 did they advertise at all?
00:35:30.560 Did they even have a candidate?
00:35:32.640 That's low.
00:35:33.540 And if you lose Brantford, Brant South, which they've held for 18 years and which the Liberals won back when the conservative movement was divided, but not really since, if they lose that, Stuart's right.
00:35:48.020 You're going to have MPs looking over and saying, OK, do I let you keep my job so that I can lose mine?
00:35:56.260 Because unlike the Liberals, the Conservatives have the Reform Act, which Pierre Polyev and his team used to dispatch Erin O'Toole.
00:36:04.840 So, you know, it will be the Conservative MPs that do them in, I think, if we get to that point.
00:36:10.340 So Polyev has to, you know, have a save the furniture campaign for Brant for Brant South.
00:36:16.520 Yeah, it's a different situation than in Quebec.
00:36:18.620 My understanding in Quebec is they didn't run much of a campaign because they were hoping the Bloc would beat the Liberals, right?
00:36:23.320 And the Conservative vote would have split the Bloc vote.
00:36:26.080 So Conservatives were muted there.
00:36:31.380 But still, 12.5% is really awful.
00:36:33.680 I think they really thought the Bloc had a shot.
00:36:35.400 The Bloc thought they had a shot.
00:36:36.580 They threw everything at that riding.
00:36:38.360 At the end of the day, they were trumped.
00:36:40.500 They lost.
00:36:41.620 Brandt is a different story because there is, yes, it could be in play, but the conservatives are going to throw everything at that one, right?
00:36:51.480 They're going to push that one.
00:36:53.100 They're going to try and keep that one.
00:36:54.900 That's what they want.
00:36:56.820 I think, though, if they lose it, yes, the impact will be greater than what happened in Shakutami for them.
00:37:04.060 And you're going to be then veering into, you know, the Christmas season, if the by-election is when you're thinking.
00:37:10.880 a lot of time for caucus members to go home and start thinking about their future and what does
00:37:17.300 this look like? And maybe a better leader or a new leader will be better in a couple of years when I
00:37:21.700 face the voters or else I'll be out of a job. And there's runway there to get a new leader. But the
00:37:26.620 problem is there's no one waiting in the wings and there's no heir apparent. And Jason Kenney just
00:37:30.320 said, I am not interested. All the other names, you got to wonder why would they want to take on
00:37:35.460 a poison chalice where you've got Mark Carney, everyone says it's guaranteed to be reelected
00:37:40.220 probably this, you know, dramas keeps going. The boomers are with him. You're taking on an
00:37:45.100 impossible challenge. You're saying, I'm going to give up my life, my job, whatever, to be in
00:37:48.440 opposition fighting Mark Carney. It doesn't sound like the most appealing thing, to be honest. So
00:37:54.320 I think even if caucus did him in, I mean, who, Jamil Giovanni? Jamil Giovanni would probably be
00:37:59.100 happy. We'd love to do it. There's people on the further, I'd say, to the right of Polyev who'd be
00:38:03.580 really happy to do it. But I think the centrist, more, you know, perhaps electable candidates
00:38:10.960 will say, no, thanks. I have it on good authority because I read it on the interwebs, Tasha,
00:38:17.280 that Doug Ford is chomping at the bit to leave his position as premier of the biggest province
00:38:23.260 in Canada to become the leader of the opposition for the next several years and leave Etobicoke.
00:38:31.060 We've talked about that before.
00:38:32.260 But Jason Kenney as well.
00:38:33.220 Why would Kenney do this?
00:38:34.880 He's on our board.
00:38:36.320 I'm sure we pay him well for that.
00:38:38.640 But he's on other boards.
00:38:39.780 He's making money.
00:38:40.660 Like, he's making money and he doesn't have the demands on his time.
00:38:44.480 Why would he leave?
00:38:46.100 My point is that there isn't.
00:38:48.040 That's why the big names that have been mentioned and circulated and, you know, there's no crickets out there right now.
00:38:54.560 Yeah.
00:38:55.760 I'll just say, too, that, you know, our minds always go to the electable centrist candidate, but that's not what the conservative base wants right now.
00:39:04.880 And if you look at the main reason I've been a skeptic of Polyev being deposed anytime soon is that if you look, if you dig into the polling, the conservative party is not doing great.
00:39:16.020 It's on there below 30 in some polls nowadays.
00:39:18.320 But if you look at favorability with Pierre Polyev, people who vote conservative still love him.
00:39:23.140 And he got 87 percent in the leadership convention. And so there's two problems there. One is if you're an MP that takes it upon yourself to boot him, you have to explain that to your party members and they may hate you for it.
00:39:36.020 And the second thing is that if Pierre Polyev decides to go full bloody minded, stubborn political leader, he could run to replace himself and probably win. So I don't fully see a way out of this for the conservatives unless they find someone that they can, you know, run as the as the vanguard, the guy who was waiting in the wings like Mark Carney was.
00:39:57.200 I don't see anybody waiting in the wings, and Polyev is very popular with the base.
00:40:04.800 But that Reform Act, as I said, do you let the leader keep his job if you think you're going to lose yours?
00:40:12.980 And I'm hearing about writings that people consider very safe that conservatives are now saying, oh, my God, it's in play.
00:40:22.940 But as far as where the base is at, I want to play you a clip.
00:40:26.600 But it was a bit of a meme war because Mark Carney was asked standing outside of Langevin block.
00:40:31.140 I still call it that because that's its name, where the prime minister's office is.
00:40:35.700 He was standing there and he's being questioned about, well, when do you get back to talks?
00:40:39.600 And he said, well, when the Americans stop with memes and they stop throwing shade, we'll get back.
00:40:45.480 Well, that created a meme war.
00:40:47.840 And some of it's funny and it's, you know, people joking around.
00:40:51.160 And some of it, I think, is going too far. 0.57
00:40:54.440 And it's people, in my view, cheering for Trump and a bunch of this coming from conservative influencers who are incredibly loyal to Polyev.
00:41:05.640 So this is one of them. I'm going to play you the audio. You'll get a sense of what it is.
00:41:10.560 It's the audio that matters, although it does end with an eagle carrying away a carny goose.
00:41:17.120 What's a carny goose? You'll find out here.
00:41:18.880 Here is a marked carny goose in its natural habitat of shitty Canada. 0.94
00:41:24.440 above there is a trump eagle soaring in the sky looking for its next meal 0.98
00:41:32.920 stop making memes about me
00:41:39.520 okay and with that the trump eagle carries the carny goose away to be killed others throw 0.89
00:41:52.160 Carney being thrown into Lake America, dressed up in a Chinese Communist Party dress and falling
00:41:59.220 down the stairs of an airplane. That's a really weird place for part of the conservative base to
00:42:05.680 be at, that they hate Carney and the liberals so much that they revel in the idea of Canada being
00:42:13.540 humiliated or our leader being physically assaulted by another foreign leader. I think
00:42:20.080 that turns off any centrist voters. And the party keeps going down this way. There won't be any
00:42:25.840 centrist for them to appeal to. This is the Trump problem that the conservatives have, because polling
00:42:31.900 consistently showed that there was a much larger percentage of conservatives who liked Donald Trump.
00:42:36.340 And this polling hasn't been done in a while. So I just the last one I saw, it was in the 30s,
00:42:41.240 but they approve of Donald Trump. And that's a problem for the conservatives. It's rearing its
00:42:47.180 head now because exactly this, Brian, you're right. It's like, okay, our hero is the guy over
00:42:53.240 there. We hate the prime minister so much. We're willing to make fun of our own country and feed
00:42:59.440 into this whole American anti-Canada zeitgeist that we are experiencing. I mean, they're actively
00:43:05.860 pushing at us, prodding us, goading us, memeing us on purpose for their own purposes. So they're
00:43:14.120 buying into it. And yes, every centrist voter and a lot of conservative voters, too, are just like
00:43:19.900 turned off. And they're like, this is crazy. I mean, they did it to Trudeau, right? They attacked
00:43:25.420 conservative voters. They attacked. There were memes of Trudeau. I mean, all over the place.
00:43:29.360 But Trump wasn't in office. I don't remember it being physically attacked by Trump, though,
00:43:35.300 making fun of him. Yeah. No, exactly. Because Trump wasn't around. That's my point. They made
00:43:39.000 fun of Trudeau, but it wasn't at the expense of the country. It was different. But those same
00:43:43.180 people are channeling their energies into this. They think it's the same. It's not the same. It's
00:43:46.620 not the same because you're not attacking him. You're attacking him as a symbol of Canada and
00:43:53.420 that the other guy is a better guy than he is, which is just terrible. I think it's terrible.
00:43:57.980 Stuart, what are your thoughts? Do I have a point that this goes down a wrong path? Or
00:44:03.440 as I was told online, am I just a Karen and a liberal loser who needs to get a sense of humor?
00:44:09.180 Well, the real problem here is, if you're a political party, you really have to keep these people at arm's length, because the incentives of the algorithm will sometimes line up with the incentives of the political party, but it's not always going to be the case.
00:44:25.680 And I remember when we started The Hub in 2021 and we started doing stories, and that was at like almost peak PolyEv.
00:44:36.040 Whenever we ran stories about pure PolyEv, they would just blow up in a way that it just seemed like we'd hacked the algorithm.
00:44:43.280 We'd hacked Google.
00:44:44.000 We'd hacked everything.
00:44:45.220 And you start to get carried away with that where you say, well, we just have to write a story about pure PolyEv policy once a week and we'll get a barn burner of a story.
00:44:53.780 But that doesn't last.
00:44:55.260 That is the temporary thing. And everybody who's worked in journalism knows that sometimes the algorithm loves you and then it moves on to something else. So I think the true mistake here was that the conservatives, you know, they invited some of these people into their convention. And now you are tethered to them in a way that, you know, some elements of the media will try to hold you accountable for the things they say, which that's a tough spot for a party to be in.
00:45:20.100 And I think that, you know, the big problem here is that these are American audiences that they're now appealing to. So it's almost like Canadian influencers are looking south and seeing dollar signs just with the massive amount of people there. So there's going to be a conflict.
00:45:35.960 All right. Let's end on a couple of things that are coming up. We've had two resignations. Laura Broughton resigned as the head of Investment Canada. Doug Guzman apparently leaving the defense procurement agency that we've set up because you can't get anything bought. We're still going slowly.
00:45:53.560 I find both of those resignations odd, especially since, you know, Laura Broughton's heading up this big investment summit that's coming up in Toronto.
00:46:03.420 So now we've got two resignations and a Dominic Barton returns.
00:46:08.480 I'm not sure that this is a good idea, having Dominic Barton go in.
00:46:12.400 But have either of you caught any wind of what's going on in Carnyland, that he has two significant resignations from people he appointed?
00:46:21.340 I know, but I also raised my eyebrows at that. I raised my eyebrows at the Dominic Barton piece because of the sensitivities around China. Mr. Barton is extremely linked to China, you know, from his time in private business. And it's a bit odd considering we know that is one of the things the irritants the Americans have with us is our closeness to China and that they're right on that piece. We are, as a country, we have been way too accommodating of China.
00:46:49.580 So this sends an odd message for the Carney government at this time when we're, you know, we're saying no more memes, no more poking the bear, that sort of thing.
00:46:57.620 And yet this is this is a stick in their eye to put him there. So I think I can't make complete sense of it.
00:47:04.220 I don't have the I wish I had some some scoop for you, Brian, but I do not.
00:47:07.920 But I do think it is odd that both of these these figures are leaving at this time after, you know, basically very, very small footprint in what's a very important job for both of them.
00:47:19.580 Stuart? Yeah, well, you know, Mark Carney came in as a guy with a reputation to get things done.
00:47:25.480 And there was always the question of in Mark Carney's experience as a bureaucrat. So the
00:47:32.300 question was, in Ottawa, can he actually do that? And maybe the highest mountain to climb is
00:47:37.580 penetrating that Defense Department bureaucracy. And you give these people money and they literally
00:47:43.680 can't spend it. Like, it's the strangest thing. And I think for Guzman, like, I wouldn't be
00:47:49.880 surprised if it's just frustration, because that has actually been one of the problems with us
00:47:53.680 spending up to, you know, the NATO targets on defense spending is we just can't do it. So maybe
00:48:00.780 that was the true limit to Mark Carney's talents is spending money at D&D.
00:48:05.400 After the investment sum, which I think is a good thing, bringing all these people,
00:48:09.460 try and get them to invest in Canada,
00:48:12.080 although I don't think we've done enough
00:48:13.300 to make ourselves attractive enough.
00:48:15.200 And we need to do more than lipstick.
00:48:17.260 We've got to hit the gym a little bit
00:48:18.520 to make ourselves attractive enough
00:48:20.100 to attract that kind of investment.
00:48:23.220 But after that, Carney is going to Europe
00:48:25.980 and he will address the European Parliament.
00:48:30.100 My only issue with that is he said we're at war
00:48:33.460 and he's going to address a foreign parliament
00:48:36.200 before our own.
00:48:38.140 I think if you're going to declare that we're at war, you should probably recall parliament.
00:48:43.940 Am I being too demanding there, Tasha?
00:48:48.240 I know the conservatives have said recall parliament so we can examine what's in the deal and go over it.
00:48:52.820 I'm not quite sure what that will achieve.
00:48:54.320 And secondly, I do think that when you're negotiating a deal, if there's any hope of it, you know, salvaging it or going forward again and renegotiate, you don't say what was in the original.
00:49:05.120 You don't.
00:49:05.640 Um, so much has been said already and disinformation on both sides.
00:49:09.320 Potentially we all, you don't know, but everyone's got their own version.
00:49:13.420 I don't see what relitigating it in the House of Commons would do.
00:49:16.700 Um, the House of Commons only has to pronounce itself on a deal if it affects existing legislation.
00:49:21.900 The government is free to make trade deals.
00:49:23.400 Otherwise, um, it can do them.
00:49:25.200 So they wouldn't even have to stamp this deal unless it was going to change material things in the law itself.
00:49:31.720 So, um, no, I think, look, Parliament's coming back at the end of the month.
00:49:35.860 And Carney will be there to face the music.
00:49:38.160 At least he better.
00:49:39.020 Because that's one thing.
00:49:39.700 He hasn't been as much in Parliament as he probably should have been.
00:49:42.380 He's been running around the world trying to do deals.
00:49:44.500 Fair.
00:49:44.860 But, you know, at some point you've got to face the music.
00:49:47.940 And he's got to face the opposition.
00:49:50.140 And he'll have a chance to explain himself then if they still have this issue, if they ask for this again.
00:49:55.500 We'll see.
00:49:56.080 But I don't think that going back earlier would really accomplish much.
00:49:59.860 Well, Stuart, I bet the National Post will be keeping attendance on him when Parliament resumes.
00:50:05.640 But should he have called it back quicker?
00:50:10.280 We'll be in Strasbourg, too.
00:50:12.140 So that's a little secret.
00:50:15.120 I won't be there.
00:50:16.640 I'll be editing the copy.
00:50:17.720 I won't be there.
00:50:18.920 But if you ever want to get a travel request approved in journalism these days, just say, I think this might be like a Davos-style speech.
00:50:27.440 And that's like that was the big foreign policy moment that you had to be at. So who knows? I mean, if you're a Canadian, I think by now you have come to realize that Mark Carney likes to swan around. That's a big part of his personality and a big part of how he does this job.
00:50:45.560 One of the first things he did when he became prime minister was he jetted off somewhere else. And I think that that's probably not going to change. It seems like he's made the calculation that however this affects him politically, he's still going to do it. And, you know, these are these are the things that you burn capital on. I think there's nothing more Mark Carney likes more than giving a speech to a foreign parliament.
00:51:09.780 Well, we'll see when we get a speech from him next, and we'll continue to watch to see if Canada gets hit with retaliatory tariffs for our retaliatory tariffs, and when the trade war ends, we'll eventually talk about that again.
00:51:23.340 Thank you both so much, and a reminder to everyone to subscribe to the Political Hack newsletter so that you get their wise insights, even when they're not on full comment.
00:51:32.520 Full Comment is a post-media podcast. My name's Brian Lilly, your host.
00:51:36.640 This episode was produced by Andre Pruth, theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:51:40.220 Kevin Libin is the executive producer. Please remember to hit subscribe, share this on social media, tell your friends about us.
00:51:47.180 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.
00:51:51.640 Here's that clip from Canada Did What? Season 2 that we promised for you.
00:51:56.040 In the wake of any major national tragedy, it's natural to start questioning how it could have been foreseen and prevented.
00:52:03.460 But with the Air India bombing, it's the reverse.
00:52:05.560 It's still hard to parse through the details of the plot and know that it wasn't prevented.
00:52:10.360 I mentioned earlier that intelligence officials knew well ahead of time that Sikh extremists were trying to blow up an airplane. 0.56
00:52:16.440 Well, what if I told you that it was even more specific than that?
00:52:21.120 Air India believed they were the intended target
00:52:23.580 and had even requested extra security for the specific aircraft
00:52:27.740 that ended up blowing apart off the coast of Ireland.
00:52:30.920 Rescuers were still pulling bodies out of the ocean
00:52:33.300 when Canada's then Transport Minister, Don Mazinkowski,
00:52:37.180 had to admit that Air India Flight 182 had taken off from an airport
00:52:40.520 that had extra police on hand for the explicit purpose
00:52:43.780 of stopping any Air India planes from blowing up.
00:52:47.280 Incredibly, luggage had actually been pulled off Air India Flight 182 due to fears it was a security risk.
00:52:53.940 At virtually the exact moment that law enforcement was opening the bags under secure conditions,
00:52:58.900 only to find they'd saved the plane from harmless electronics like clothes, irons and radios,
00:53:03.980 the Emperor Kanishka was being blown up by the suitcase bomb they had missed.
00:53:07.980 They weren't supposed to check your bags in for a flight that you didn't have a confirmed reservation on, right?
00:53:15.800 And that's what happened with two bags on June 22nd, 1985 at Vancouver Airport.
00:53:23.520 So these guys who were checking them in were very persistent and, you know, they got them
00:53:29.700 through, right?
00:53:30.620 They kind of hassled the agent right at the counter.
00:53:34.460 Now, the other big thing was in both cases, the passenger who was listed on the manifest
00:53:42.520 with the connecting flight, which were then Canadian Air, you know, Canadian Pacific Airlines,
00:53:47.540 which people don't even know what it is anymore because it no longer exists. But the both of the
00:53:51.980 bags were checked into CP Air flights that were destined to land and connect with Air India flights.
00:53:57.800 So it was, you know, I can imagine there were people that flew on the CP Air flight from
00:54:01.620 Vancouver to Tokyo and from Vancouver to Toronto who learned afterwards they had a bomb on their
00:54:06.420 plane. Can you imagine what that would do to you? If you want to hear the rest of the story,
00:54:12.100 make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What everywhere you get your podcasts.