Full Comment - The reason Trump plans to crush Canada that our politicians just don’t get

00:00:00.000 Bank more encores when you switch to a Scotiabank banking package.

00:00:07.160 Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages. Conditions apply.

00:00:12.680 Scotiabank. You're richer than you think.

00:00:19.640 We've been talking about tariffs coming from the United States to Canada and attacking our economy for a couple of months now.

00:00:26.980 Trump's tariffs will be devastating. We all know that.

00:00:30.000 But Trump's threat to the Canadian economy is much larger than tariffs.

00:00:34.200 Hello, welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:00:37.640 And today we want to explore what Donald Trump is trying to do with the world economy, with the American economy.

00:00:44.900 He gave a bit of a hint when he was speaking, out of all places, the world economic form.

00:00:50.220 My message to every business in the world is very simple.

00:00:53.680 Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth.

00:01:00.360 We're bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts.

00:01:05.420 But if you don't make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff.

00:01:13.740 Not a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt.

00:01:23.800 But under the Trump administration, there will be no better place on earth to create jobs, build factories or grow a company than right here in the good old USA.

00:01:33.560 Trump is looking to lower taxes, bring in tariffs, expand oil and gas production, expand LNG, exportation.

00:01:40.620 He's looking to unleash the economy.

00:01:42.500 That is as big a threat to Canada as the tariffs will be, especially if we don't get our own act together.

00:01:51.040 Today, we're joined by two economists on full comment.

00:01:54.460 Ian Lee is a professor of economics at Carleton University and Carlo Dade works for the Canada West Foundation as a trade specialist and spends an awful lot of time in Washington.

00:02:05.040 Gentlemen, thanks for joining me.

00:02:06.380 Look, as I said, tariffs are a major threat to the Canadian economy, but I think that too many people in Canada, politicians or commentators, are missing the fact that Trump's looking at doing much more than just bringing in tariffs.

00:02:23.500 He's looking at fundamental changes to the American economy and how global trade operates.

00:02:28.480 And I think that is as big a threat as the tariffs.

00:02:32.820 Ian, I'll start with you.

00:02:33.940 What are your thoughts?

00:02:36.380 First off, I agree with what you said.

00:02:38.780 About five days ago, I tripped across or fell across the paper by Stephen Marin, PhD economics, Harvard University with Hudson Bay Capital Group for many years.

00:02:51.860 And now on Trump's Council of Economic Advisors.

00:02:55.880 And now the chief economist to the White House, essentially.

00:02:58.400 That's what the Council of Economic Advisors was, the agency set up by Richard Nixon many years ago.

00:03:03.740 He was in the Trump.

00:03:04.900 I did check it out.

00:03:05.780 He was in the Trump's first administration and the Treasury, but it doesn't really matter.

00:03:11.040 This 41-page paper, when I read it, I mean, it just hit me right away.

00:03:15.740 I didn't have to get to the end of the paper.

00:03:17.240 By probably the end of the first page, I realized, oh, my God, this is stunning.

00:03:25.180 Whether it is successful, I'm not getting into that.

00:03:27.780 What they are proposing, what they are proposing, and it's crystal clear.

00:03:31.480 This isn't my interpretation or my opinion.

00:03:33.520 It is very clear that they see the entire 1945 to present post-World War II architecture that includes UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO, trading organization, as an error that they want to fix.

00:03:55.520 They're very clear on that.

00:03:57.140 And we could summarize that as the Bretton Woods system, or sometimes it's called simply, one word, multilateralism.

00:04:05.540 All countries are equal, we all share the same views, and every country is treated equally, even if it's a big country like the U.S. or a small country like Canada, it doesn't matter.

00:04:13.920 We all are subject to the same rules and are on a level playing field.

00:04:17.560 It is absolutely clear, with absolutely zero ambiguity, that President Trump and his people around him see this as a failed system that has caused great damage or harm to the United States over many, many years.

00:04:35.180 So they're proposing a huge reform, and the tariffs are merely one tool in a whole quiver or arsenal of tools designed to completely redesign the international economic trading currency regime system.

00:04:55.900 Carlo, do you share Ian's thoughts on what they're trying to do, or the viewpoint they're coming from, is a bigger shift than we might have expected before?

00:05:08.320 Certainly.

00:05:09.320 I agree with both of the analysis here.

00:05:13.280 And we've written about this at Canada West Foundation, I think starting a couple years ago.

00:05:18.820 So we've been doing a deep dive on the America First Movement think tank component, the economic thinkers, former government officials who have left going to the think tank world, academics, etc.

00:05:33.860 And think tanks are massive in Washington.

00:05:37.260 We have them, like Canada West Foundation here, but they play a much larger role in public policy in the United States.

00:05:45.620 We do not have think tanks like the Americans have think tanks.

00:05:48.820 We have, you know, half a dozen people at Canada West.

00:05:53.500 CG is probably, the Center for International Governance Innovation is probably on a scale with American think tanks, but we just don't play in the same league.

00:06:03.560 We don't have think tanks with 50, 60 fellows and staffers and multi-billion, a million-dollar budget.

00:06:13.360 And if you've walked their offices, they're gorgeous.

00:06:16.240 Some of them.

00:06:16.980 Some of them are shabby like us.

00:06:19.840 But you've been tracking this for a bit then.

00:06:21.840 Yeah.

00:06:22.400 So, and just to your last point, take Project 2025.

00:06:26.580 It's described in Canada quickly and unfortunately incorrectly as a Heritage Foundation project.

00:06:32.800 This is a project Heritage Foundation has undertaken before, but it's not just Heritage.

00:06:39.240 It's 50 think tanks and public policy organizations coming together.

00:06:46.380 And just imagine the reach in terms of the intellectual power.

00:06:52.300 I know some people will scoff at that statement, but a non-normative statement is there is intellectual power there.

00:06:58.820 And the number of people that create a pool from which to staff an administration.

00:07:04.680 So, we've been following this very closely.

00:07:07.220 And yes, your statement of what the Trump administration is up to is clear in plain text readings.

00:07:13.360 But it's also not the first time the Americans have done this.

00:07:16.260 Or the second time.

00:07:17.320 You mentioned Nixon's tariff movement in your piece recently in the Financial Post.

00:07:24.300 Yeah.

00:07:25.160 1971.

00:07:26.180 So, this is completely unlike the steel and aluminum tariffs, which are what we're accustomed to in Canada.

00:07:32.540 And this is part of the complacency.

00:07:34.140 When the Americans say they're meant to declare tariffs, our response is, okay, what are those jabronis complaining about today? 0.98

00:07:42.140 Steel, softwood, aluminum, beef.

00:07:48.100 What is their complaint today?

00:07:50.460 And that was what happened with steel and aluminum.

00:07:52.300 But in 1971, we woke up on a Monday morning in August to discover that Sunday night, the Nixon administration had imposed a 10% surcharge or tariff on all goods coming into the U.S.

00:08:06.200 The language they used to explain why they were doing this is an almost exact replica of what we hear in today.

00:08:15.420 The U.S. is getting ripped off.

00:08:17.540 Foreigners are taking advantage of us. 1.00

00:08:19.380 We're losing jobs that should be here in America. 1.00

00:08:22.860 Everyone's ganging up on us.

00:08:24.420 The rules are unfair.

00:08:25.800 We didn't sign up for this.

00:08:28.340 And we need to go back and fix.

00:08:31.060 And we need to go back and fix this.

00:08:33.820 So, as both of you looking at it as economists, do the Americans have a point yet?

00:08:40.740 I mean, has the system tilted away from favoring them?

00:08:47.260 I agree with what you just said, but I want to disagree.

00:08:53.380 Well, let me explain.

00:08:54.640 I agree that Nixon said that.

00:08:56.660 And, yes, it was about the jobs and the negative impact on the United States and so forth.

00:09:00.440 I think the argument being made this time is more sophisticated.

00:09:04.420 In the paper, I keep referring to this paper because it's the most coherent and rational and lucid and analytical and scholarly exegesis.

00:09:11.260 Trump is, of course, a typical politician and he's disjointed and, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that.

00:09:17.160 They're not supposed to be writing academic papers.

00:09:19.840 So, that isn't a put down to Trump.

00:09:21.580 I'm simply saying I referenced the paper by Marin because it's much more structured and logical and coherent and systemic.

00:09:27.380 In the paper, he actually uses the word geonomics and he said what has changed is that we now have a more, a larger understanding of trade and prosperity.

00:09:38.260 It is not just near balance sheet balancing up, you know, do you have a balance of trade deficit or a surplus.

00:09:44.820 He explicitly went on for pages about how the Americans have spent literally trillions since 1945.

00:09:53.800 They spend a trillion right now a year.

00:09:55.420 I looked it up for DOD.

00:09:56.900 But over the last 75 years, they've spent trillions providing the umbrella of security to all the Western nations and friendly countries.

00:10:07.180 Pax Americana.

00:10:07.860 Pax Americana and these countries, Canada is not the only one by any means of the Europeans, Japan, South Korea, have all profited immensely from the rule of law as the United States, as the referee, my words, of the international economic system.

00:10:25.200 And they're saying that when you factor this into the calculus and not just a mere adding up, you know, did you, you know, your balance of payments, they argue that it's decisively negative for the Americans because now I'm going to be colloquial again in my words, because all of these other countries have been free riding like crazy on America.

00:10:47.540 And they are expressly, and they are expressly in this paper, he says, we must, this is part of the new revised deal we want.

00:10:55.020 It will expressly require a rebalancing of and an analysis of the commitment of every country to ensure that they're at least at 2% defense spending and GDP.

00:11:08.340 And they're saying this is part and parcel of the new international trade architecture.

00:11:13.120 This hasn't been said before, to my knowledge, in such a formal, express way.

00:11:17.540 So, yes, two things can be true at the same time.

00:11:20.380 In essence, the core of their argument is the same.

00:11:23.820 They have updated it and added some new things.

00:11:27.020 But the core of the argument is the same.

00:11:29.660 And the language that we hear, that most of your readers will hear, is this core language about unfairness, needing to rebalance.

00:11:37.140 But Ian's on to something.

00:11:39.200 There is one of the major additions within the America First movement, and there is no one doctrine.

00:11:45.960 There is no one catchism that everyone repeats within the movement.

00:11:50.900 So you're going to have different aspects or different sectors of the America First movement saying different things.

00:11:56.480 But an important addition is the economic populist argument, I think, to which Ian is referring, that growth is not the be-all and end-all.

00:12:05.360 We will take economic losses to have good middle-class jobs.

00:12:11.700 Quality of work, quality of life in communities, human dignity is tied to work.

00:12:17.800 And we want to bring jobs back.

00:12:20.000 And this is what Canadians miss.

00:12:21.820 We understand there'll be costs.

00:12:23.540 We understand the tariffs will then fill it with pain.

00:12:26.260 Our entire strategy is based on telling them something they already know, that pain's coming.

00:12:31.220 But that is an important addition.

00:12:33.940 It's not the only version of what's being said within the America First movement.

00:12:40.040 And there's obvious pushback from the new Treasury and Commerce Secretary, Elon Musk, and others.

00:12:46.260 But that is a very strong part coming from Warren Cass and American Compass.

00:12:51.320 So you have these different Warren factions, but you're absolutely right.

00:12:54.280 That articulation of the dignity of jobs and saving American communities that have been hollowed out is an important addition.

00:13:03.780 I was reading Robert Lighthizer's book, No Trade is Free.

00:13:07.780 And he spent a good little section of it talking about growing up in Ohio, in a middle-class town, on the shores of Lake Erie,

00:13:16.700 where the inputs for the Pittsburgh steel mills would come in and how these places are being hollowed out.

00:13:22.020 And if you look at J.D. Vance's story of his upbringing, you've got a lot of people around there who have similar stories.

00:13:33.080 And they are, in my view, looking to put a wall up around America and bring back those middle-class jobs, 0.99

00:13:39.880 those manufacturing jobs that, at one point, everyone just assumed, well, we can outsource that to China.

00:13:47.240 Yeah.

00:13:47.480 I agree.

00:13:48.620 Very much, I agree.

00:13:49.880 Over the last 40-odd years of my life, I've driven hundreds of times on road trips across the United States.

00:13:56.740 I've been in 46 of 50 states on road trips, not airports flying in and out.

00:14:01.020 And I mention that because I drove into Cleveland, Ohio, one week before Donald Trump was nominated in 2016.

00:14:07.660 I went there not to see Donald Trump.

00:14:09.040 I went there to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was on my list for a long time.

00:14:12.880 And as I was driving in from across I-81, across the top of New York State, and then Pennsylvania, and then on into Ohio, I was struck by two things.

00:14:23.700 Number one, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Trump signs everywhere, and I don't think I saw more than three Hillary Clinton signs.

00:14:30.480 So this would have been July of 2016, and I, in my naivete at the time, even though I've been driving through rural America in just about every state for many years, I said, no, well, Clinton's going to win.

00:14:41.780 So there must be a mistake here because there's no Clinton signs.

00:14:44.720 The second thing I noticed, if you drive, and this is my criticism of Paul Krugman, he's a brilliant man.

00:14:50.480 You know, but he's sort of, you know, that argues, I don't understand how anybody can be, say it's not doing well in America, because in Manhattan, we're all doing very, very well.

00:14:59.020 And it's my same complaint about the Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal elites.

00:15:02.440 Get the hell out of Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, and drive into rural eastern Ontario, or rural northern Ontario, if you want to find out, well, Canadians really live, or into rural Saskatchewan, where I've driven, or rural Alberta.

00:15:14.480 And so my point being that the Republicans were onto this way before, the Democrats were clueless right up until this election, about the elites in the coastal cities of San Francisco and New York, and the big prospects, they've been doing very well.

00:15:29.860 They continue to do very, very well.

00:15:32.780 I would put it crudely and simplistically, the top two quintiles are doing very well.

00:15:36.920 You want to know what's going on in the states?

00:15:38.760 Look at the bottom three quintiles in these, in middle America, flyover America, as some Democrats call it.

00:15:44.480 That's where you're going to find out what's really going on.

00:15:46.860 And yes, they have been hollowed out.

00:15:50.380 Brian, I grew up, I didn't just drive through, I grew up in Philadelphia.

00:15:55.760 Yeah, you're the resident Yankee on the podcast today.

00:16:00.840 We're forming Yankee, trying desperately to lose that part of my upbringing.

00:16:05.520 Yeah, you've been in Canada, you know, a year or two, a long time.

00:16:08.880 But where did you grow up again? I forget.

00:16:10.820 So I grew up in Philadelphia.

00:16:12.020 I didn't grow up in the suburbs.

00:16:13.840 I grew up in a nice neighborhood in the city, but I went to school downtown.

00:16:18.040 My mom put me on the train when I was in fourth grade, and I went downtown, and I walked through downtown.

00:16:24.140 And I went to high school in the city.

00:16:26.240 I saw Philadelphia on its knees when the city was utterly devastated.

00:16:31.940 And, you know, the jokes about the Eagles fans, you know, stoning Santa Claus.

00:16:38.460 It was a time of desperation in the city.

00:16:42.020 And the elites out in the suburbs are doing well, but the city, by and large, is on its knees.

00:16:46.820 So I've lived a little bit of this firsthand.

00:16:49.500 But let me caution, with the America First movement, there are those, Orrin Cass, I keep referring to him, and others who are really committed to this vision of trying to restore dignity to lives without dignity.

00:17:03.620 But then there are other parts of the movement that are business as usual.

00:17:08.100 Elon Musk, Zuckerberg.

00:17:10.260 You look at the corporate tax cuts.

00:17:13.340 Two different things can be true at the same time, but they don't have to be reconcilable.

00:17:18.400 And you've got these, I think, irreconcilable differences with America First.

00:17:22.980 So we have to be careful not to attribute one manifestation of the movement, one manifestation of Trump's administration, to the entire administration.

00:17:35.620 What Trump laid out the other day in the speech to the World Economic Forum, you said he wanted the price of oil to go down.

00:17:43.140 He warned Saudi Arabia that it better go down. 0.64

00:17:45.680 I think that was a strong hint.

00:17:47.300 And so he wants oil to go down.

00:17:50.600 He wants interest rates to fall.

00:17:51.900 He wants to tariff everyone that isn't manufacturing in America.

00:17:56.800 What does that spell for Canada?

00:18:00.560 I mean, you know, you deal a lot with the oil sector, you know, in your job, Carlo, you know how important it is to the Alberta economy, never mind the Canadian economy.

00:18:13.900 But oil drops and Trump tariffs it.

00:18:17.520 They're not going to feel the pinch that we're all hoping they will to say, oh, please take the tariffs off.

00:18:23.160 The price of gas will be the same.

00:18:24.820 The inputs will be the same.

00:18:25.980 Now, so part of the strategy this time, again, as maybe a lesson from the Nixon shocks or maybe a new calculation, is that the Americans realize that there'll be economic pain.

00:18:39.320 They think that they can survive short-term economic pain.

00:18:43.520 Remember, Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the example everyone quotes, lasted five years.

00:18:49.620 Steel and aluminum, which is completely, we shouldn't even use it when having this discussion, but that lasted a year.

00:18:56.640 But the Nixon shocks, global tariff, all countries, rebalanced trade, those lasted four and a half months.

00:19:06.760 The Americans were able to bring Japan, Europe, Canada to our knees in four and a half months. 0.95

00:19:13.580 So the Americans are calculating that they can take a short-term pain and others will cave and make concessions to them.

00:19:21.460 They're targeting Canada first because, as I've used this analogy before, it sends a signal to the rest of the world.

00:19:28.500 They're negotiating through us to the rest of the world as much as they're negotiating with us.

00:19:33.980 So there's this great Chinese proverb, you're being hassled by monkeys as a farmer, and you can't chase down every single monkey.

00:19:41.860 So what do you do?

00:19:43.080 You grab a chicken, you go out into the courtyard where the monkeys are gathered in the trees,

00:19:48.320 and you gratuitously murder the chicken, you slaughter the chicken.

00:19:54.140 The monkeys watching get the message.

00:19:57.440 So by taking Canada and Mexico, two countries where the U.S. will be harmed the most,

00:20:03.120 and making us examples up front, if they can get a quick win with us,

00:20:07.340 then Ian's point, your point about restructuring the global economy becomes a little bit easier.

00:20:13.220 Everyone realizes, holy bleep, not only does Trump have tariff power, but he just used it on Canada and Mexico.

00:20:20.780 We better hustle to the negotiating table with, as the Chinese would say, a correct understanding of the situation.

00:20:28.180 Ian, do you think that our political leaders get the severity of the total threat, both the tariffs and these structural changes Trump wants to make?

00:20:38.300 I don't think so.

00:20:40.460 I've been watching, reading just about every word, at least that's reported publicly, because I'm not inside any of these circles.

00:20:47.700 I've been reading the comments by Mr. Trudeau and by Christy Freeland, and by, I don't want to turn this into a pure partisan thing against the liberals in Ottawa,

00:20:57.600 I've been reading the comments by the Premier of Ontario, Premier Ford.

00:21:01.500 And I have seen comments daily saying that, to the effect, Trump's a bozo, the people around him are bozos,

00:21:09.520 they don't even understand tariffs, they don't understand the impact, they don't even understand why they're doing it.

00:21:14.900 In fact, Premier Ford said that, and I'm paraphrasing only slightly.

00:21:19.480 Carlo had a great line about that in his piece in the Financial Post.

00:21:23.300 He described it as, we're elite-splaining to the Americans instead of listening to what they're saying.

00:21:29.660 And why I was so upset about that isn't because I'm here to defend Donald Trump.

00:21:35.400 That's not my point at all.

00:21:36.940 It just drives me mad.

00:21:38.480 I mean, just absolutely bonkers.

00:21:40.360 When our leaders, we give them great privilege, you know, great authority, controlling the bully pulpit,

00:21:48.040 well, the quid pro quo, it's just like giving a CEO a large salary, which I don't object to,

00:21:52.860 but the quid pro quo is you've got to deliver the bacon, you've got to deliver the results,

00:21:56.760 you've got to win the Super Bowl if you're going to get paid $50 million a year as a quarterback.

00:22:01.160 You're not getting paid that to be cute.

00:22:02.760 You're being paid that to win.

00:22:04.220 And we have leaders that don't even understand what's going on in the United States.

00:22:08.060 They haven't even read this paper.

00:22:10.180 They're oblivious to the arguments that are being developed that we've been discussing for the past 10, 15 minutes.

00:22:15.660 There is no indication in anything that Premier Ford has said or that Mr. Trudeau has said or Christopher Freeland has said

00:22:22.700 that gives any flicker of recognition of what they are even trying to do.

00:22:29.380 In fact, Ford said that Trump just likes tariffs.

00:22:34.480 He says to him because he likes tariffs.

00:22:36.460 They have no understanding he's trying to reform the international system

00:22:39.360 and that they have a very clear vision, whether it's going to fructify in reality.

00:22:45.780 I don't know.

00:22:46.360 But they're not even aware that this is going on.

00:22:48.980 And so they're willing and risking and threatening a trade war with the world hegemon that is over $25 trillion.

00:22:57.360 And we are about $2.5 trillion, which I just think is madness on steroids because we will lose.

00:23:04.040 All right.

00:23:04.420 We'll take a quick break here.

00:23:05.500 And when we come back, I want to get thoughts from both of you on what we could do, how we prepare.

00:23:11.240 Do we need to make fundamental changes to how our economy works?

00:23:15.000 More in moments.

00:23:19.460 Did you lock the front door?

00:23:20.800 Check.

00:23:21.340 Closed the garage door?

00:23:22.520 Yep.

00:23:23.000 Installed window sensors, smoke sensors, and HD cameras with night vision?

00:23:26.500 No.

00:23:27.340 And you set up credit card transaction alerts, a secure VPN for a private connection,

00:23:30.720 and continuous monitoring for our personal info on the dark web?

00:23:34.040 Uh, I'm looking into it.

00:23:36.360 Stress less about security.

00:23:38.100 Choose security solutions from Telus for peace of mind at home and online.

00:23:42.260 Visit telus.com slash total security to learn more.

00:23:45.480 Conditions apply.

00:23:47.800 Wait.

00:23:48.820 I didn't get charged for my donut.

00:23:51.180 It was free with this Tim's Rewards points.

00:23:53.140 I think I just stole it.

00:23:54.720 I'm a donut stealer!

00:23:56.620 Oof.

00:23:57.280 Earn points so fast, it'll seem too good to be true.

00:23:59.800 Plus, join Tim's Rewards today and get enough points for a free donut, drink, or Timbits.

00:24:05.120 With 800 points after registration, activation, and first purchase of a dollar or more.

00:24:08.940 See the Tim's app for details at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time.

00:24:12.080 Ontario, the wait is over.

00:24:17.120 The gold standard of online casinos has arrived.

00:24:20.280 Golden Nugget Online Casino is live, bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience right to your fingertips.

00:24:27.880 Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and simple.

00:24:32.120 And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots and top-tier table games.

00:24:38.620 Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots that can turn any mundane moment into a golden opportunity at Golden Nugget Online Casino.

00:24:48.060 Take a spin on the slots, challenge yourself at the tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the thrill of real-time action.

00:24:54.540 All from the comfort of your own devices.

00:24:56.760 Why settle for less when you can go for the gold at Golden Nugget Online Casino?

00:25:01.120 Gambling problem? Call ConnexOntario, 1-866-531-2600.

00:25:07.260 19 and over. Physically present in Ontario.

00:25:09.540 Eligibility restrictions apply.

00:25:11.160 See GoldenNuggetCasino.com for details.

00:25:13.640 Please play responsibly.

00:25:15.220 You've heard all the politicians talk about dollar-for-dollar tariff retribution.

00:25:19.220 You've heard people say we have to retaliate in some way.

00:25:21.900 Of course, Alberta Premier Daniel Smith and Scott Moe disagree with that, on some level at least.

00:25:27.580 Interesting column in the Globe and Mail the other day, though.

00:25:30.320 So, Rob Carrick saying that we have to develop a Buy America personal plan.

00:25:35.740 B-Y-E America. 1.00

00:25:37.420 He wants all Canadians to stop buying any American goods, don't travel to America, divest of any investments in the United States.

00:25:45.880 Gents, I'll put it to you this way.

00:25:47.700 I don't think that's a plausible program.

00:25:51.660 And we are so intertwined with the United States.

00:25:54.760 Nobody will have heard this, but before we started recording the podcast, we were all talking about the fact that Carla's wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jersey and cheering for them this weekend.

00:26:06.140 And, Ian, you're cheering for Patrick Mahomes.

00:26:08.540 You know, I'm going out to watch the Bills game with my buddies.

00:26:12.100 You know, we consume American culture.

00:26:14.280 We consume a huge amount of their products.

00:26:16.200 We couldn't do this.

00:26:17.500 But what is the right solution?

00:26:19.100 What should be a response?

00:26:21.420 Carla?

00:26:21.600 So, the answer to that lies in Ian's previous comment.

00:26:28.460 Have we engaged the new administration, meaning all the people that are becoming part of it, the work that was done to prepare for it?

00:26:36.840 I agree with Ian.

00:26:38.100 I have seen scant evidence of a more than cursory reading of Lighthizer's No Trade is Free Trade, a cursory glance at the work produced by American Compass or the American First Policy Institute.

00:26:55.080 We did a deep dive at Canada West the same way I do a deep dive on the relevant parts of China's five-year plan.

00:27:03.380 I don't have to agree with it.

00:27:04.900 I don't have to agree with the administration that puts it out.

00:27:07.360 But if it's going to impact Western Canadian interest, then I want to do a more than cursory examination of this.

00:27:16.020 I don't think that we've done this.

00:27:17.580 I hope to be proven wrong.

00:27:19.100 I would love someone from Foreign Affairs to come on and to demonstrate, to provide evidence.

00:27:25.180 But like Ian, I haven't seen that.

00:27:27.660 So, if we don't understand this, how do we formulate proper policies to protect Canadians?

00:27:34.440 So, they need to listen to this podcast, is what you're saying, and they need to read what you guys have been writing about this.

00:27:40.980 Well, I'm not going to say that because I don't want anyone from Foreign Affairs to lose their lunch.

00:27:45.880 But, no, you have to do that basic work.

00:27:50.240 And when I was in Washington for the inauguration with Gary Maher, we went to the embassy and we saw a bunch of Canadians talking to a bunch of Canadians and Americans that work with Canada.

00:28:02.780 But we were also at a reception that was celebrating the Trump victory, a very, very right-of-center crowd, MAGA folks in the room.

00:28:15.860 We weren't there to celebrate or to clean champagne glasses with them.

00:28:20.840 We were there because these are the people we're going to have to deal with.

00:28:23.620 So, time and time again, I just – and no one from the embassy was at this major reception.

00:28:31.600 It's why I give full credit to Premier Danielle Smith. 0.97

00:28:34.960 Absolutely.

00:28:35.360 Going down and meeting after meeting after meeting.

00:28:39.400 Even a Mar-a-Lago, I heard it described in horrible terms.

00:28:43.580 But, well, guess what?

00:28:44.780 She actually had FaceTime with Trump more than once.

00:28:47.080 She had FaceTime with Burgum and I believe it was Lutnik as well.

00:28:53.240 I mean, these are important members of the administration that now have an eye-to-eye contact.

00:28:59.140 And if you haven't done business in Washington with governments or think tanks or the media, I don't think Canadians get – like, networking is so much more important to Americans.

00:29:11.140 And that personal contact is hugely important.

00:29:14.740 And once you get it, they're willing to, oh, yeah, I remember meeting you.

00:29:19.180 Let's do a deal.

00:29:20.620 And that's why we spend so much time in the states at the provincial and federal level.

00:29:25.240 But the other point with Danielle Smith is she's, to my mind, following the playbook written by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

00:29:34.680 Now, during the first Trump administration, I was appalled at what Abe did.

00:29:40.100 I wrote about how terrible it was.

00:29:42.560 And then I spent three years eating crow.

00:29:46.480 Tell me about the golf clubs.

00:29:48.660 Yes.

00:29:49.240 It wasn't just the golf clubs.

00:29:51.000 I couldn't believe – I didn't understand how the Japanese could look at themselves in the mirror. 1.00

00:29:55.760 But, again, like I said, I spent three years eating crow.

00:29:58.680 And I see –

00:29:59.360 Because it worked for me.

00:30:01.020 Following the example.

00:30:03.040 Well, like you said, we may not like it.

00:30:05.840 But the job of a premier or political leader is not to do what you like.

00:30:10.400 It's to do what's necessary to defend and advance the interest of your jurisdiction within obvious moral and other parameters.

00:30:19.000 But in terms of the response, very quickly, we wrote over the summer that we needed to begin to prepare for the terrorists.

00:30:26.520 Survey businesses.

00:30:27.760 Where are they most exposed?

00:30:29.660 What are businesses thinking?

00:30:31.120 What mechanisms do we have in terms of provincial or federal capacity to be able to mitigate some of the damages?

00:30:39.520 We know that the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $28 billion U.S. in checks to U.S. farmers to compensate for damages in the trade war with China from Chinese retaliation.

00:30:52.860 What are we going to do for Canadian producers and Canadian exporters?

00:30:58.060 What could we learn from other jurisdictions?

00:31:01.220 What's worked in Canada where we've had natural disasters or economic shocks?

00:31:05.820 This work needed to be done as soon as we knew that Trump clinched, but we didn't.

00:31:13.020 We did spend a lot of time in the States, which was necessary, but we didn't do the other half of the job, which is why you see people scrambling now.

00:31:22.060 All these crazy ideas are coming out.

00:31:24.520 We've waited until it's already occurred, and we're suddenly desperate and scrambling for our options as opposed to having prepared, and we had plenty of warning.

00:31:37.320 If I could see this, I'm not the smartest guy out there.

00:31:40.940 If I could see this, some of those geniuses at foreign affairs certainly should have seen it coming.

00:31:46.440 Ian, what levers, what actions?

00:31:49.740 I mean, beyond, as you've both said, actually understanding what they're doing and why, what do we do?

00:31:56.520 How do we respond?

00:31:59.200 I actually think the roadmap is very, very clear because the data on the public record is.

00:32:05.040 I've been reading the U.S. trade report, which is tabled in Congress every year, since the Clinton years.

00:32:11.680 That's a third of a century ago.

00:32:13.080 And they list all the countries of the world alphabetically, and then they list the trade irritants with each country.

00:32:18.540 And the list for Canada.

00:32:19.720 So I'm just going to talk about Canada.

00:32:21.220 That list has been very, very consistent from then until now under successive American presidents.

00:32:27.120 They are really opposed to supply management.

00:32:29.660 They're completely opposed to the Broadcast Act, excuse me, the Telecom Act that prohibits American companies from coming in, like Verizon and ATT.

00:32:37.100 They don't like the protectionisms in the Bank Act.

00:32:39.520 I won't go through the whole list.

00:32:40.760 The list is there.

00:32:43.080 Every president has raised it.

00:32:45.220 Obama came to parliament and he said, he actually talked about this list.

00:32:48.940 And he said, but we like you, you're good people, you're our best friend, so we're not going to pursue it.

00:32:54.180 Trump came along and said, I'm not going to accept that.

00:32:57.520 So we know the shopping list that Mr. Trump wants us to change.

00:33:02.600 So what we should be doing, I'm answering your question.

00:33:05.200 To me, it's just, we should be pounding the table instead of threatening a trade war that we will get squashed like a bug on a windshield in the summertime.

00:33:14.000 We should be pounding the table saying, we want to renegotiate the KUSMA agreement and we want to start Monday morning.

00:33:21.320 And we will put all of our sacred cows on the table, the six or seven protected industries.

00:33:27.340 And we want you to drop and give us guarantees you'll drop all of these tariffs.

00:33:33.160 And I, if the paper written by Stephen Maron certainly suggests that.

00:33:38.960 He doesn't put it quite as baldly as I just did, but he said there's things that the Canada is protecting and other countries are protecting their countries from American firms coming in.

00:33:48.700 And he says, that's got to end or we will put tariffs on them and raise them if they retaliate.

00:33:53.160 So to me, it's as clear as can be in that document, the Mirren paper.

00:33:58.720 And what we have to do is immediately move to, and Trump offered it just the other day, yesterday, start negotiating a new KUSMA and put all those sacred cows, all five or six or seven of them, on the table and get rid of them.

00:34:14.100 It's funny that you're saying that to fight back against American protectionism, we have to get rid of our own protectionism.

00:34:20.900 Look, all countries are hypocrites on trade.

00:34:24.280 It's why Lighthizer's book is called No Trade is Free.

00:34:27.500 We have managed trade.

00:34:28.860 But yeah, you know, Izzy Asper, when he was still alive and owned Global, he also owned stations in the United States, in Australia.

00:34:39.440 You know, we go around the world and we buy up industries in other countries that nobody's allowed to come and buy here.

00:34:46.500 Carla, I saw you shaking your head as Ian was talking.

00:34:50.020 Do you agree with him or disagree?

00:34:51.960 Yeah, it's my turn to disagree with Ian.

00:34:54.660 And let me give you the example of the first shot Trump fired, fentanyl and immigration. 0.59

00:35:04.420 And I think it was a mistake to respond the way we did.

00:35:07.780 I'll explain in a second.

00:35:09.200 But to my mind, there was only one response to what Trump said.

00:35:14.180 And three parts.

00:35:15.240 First, we hear you.

00:35:17.540 We understand.

00:35:19.560 Second, we're here with our sleeves rolled up and our checkbook out.

00:35:24.260 We're not just talking and blowing smoke.

00:35:26.220 Sleeves rolled up.

00:35:27.080 Checkbook's here.

00:35:28.040 We got a pen in hand.

00:35:29.180 Now, tell us exactly what more you want us to do that we're not already doing.

00:35:38.140 Instead, what we did was suddenly start throwing things on the table.

00:35:42.040 Mr. Trump, do you want this?

00:35:43.540 Mr. Trump, how about more trips to the border?

00:35:45.760 Mr. Trump will send sheriffs to the border.

00:35:47.820 Mr. Trump will buy helicopters.

00:35:50.000 We don't know what of what we've just thrown on the table is going to move him.

00:35:55.060 There's been a lot written by a lot of people in America First about what's wrong and what's needed.

00:36:01.700 But with Donald Trump, I want to hear from him exactly what he wants so we can negotiate,

00:36:11.200 knowing that we will at least meet what he has just told us he wants.

00:36:17.460 Not a tweet he dropped two weeks ago or something someone in the administration wrote six months ago.

00:36:22.740 Well, now I'm worried with Trump.

00:36:25.800 Brian, I always want to get my point across because my point is now being misrepresented.

00:36:29.520 I never said let's throw all these up at him before we even start to negotiate.

00:36:32.920 Of course not.

00:36:34.000 Anybody who knows anything about negotiations, and I'm on the union, believe it or not, of my faculty where I'm unionized.

00:36:39.980 We just did that with the response to the threat on fentanyl and immigration.

00:36:45.260 We just did that.

00:36:46.080 Okay, yeah, that's not my position.

00:36:48.240 I'm saying we've got to start negotiations and say we've got to talk to them like Danielle Smith is doing.

00:36:55.140 We want to talk to the people around Trump, and we've got to start negotiations,

00:36:58.900 not offering anything up at the beginning, saying what is it you want from us?

00:37:04.180 Is it 2% of defense spending?

00:37:06.240 That's my point, yes.

00:37:07.300 Is it protective industries?

00:37:09.060 Then we start wheeling and dealing and negotiating.

00:37:12.620 I'll give you this if you give me that.

00:37:14.880 I'm not suggesting ever that you offer up all kinds of concessions before the negotiations start.

00:37:20.880 That is not negotiations, at least as I understand.

00:37:23.760 No, no, that is capitulation.

00:37:25.640 But that is what we've done, and that's the response in Canada to some degree.

00:37:30.260 Let's just meet with confidence, and we don't really understand exactly what it wants.

00:37:33.740 And he'll change his mind.

00:37:34.960 He'll change his mind three times in a day.

00:37:37.100 So this isn't a normal negotiation.

00:37:41.540 We're dealing with someone who will renege on what he said, openly contradict himself in public.

00:37:49.260 This is a very, very difficult task, and I don't think we can make it seem simple that we just sit down at the table and negotiate.

00:37:58.240 We don't.

00:37:59.360 This isn't a typical negotiation with a typical partner.

00:38:02.440 Let me cut in again.

00:38:03.900 First off, Trump expressly delegated responsibility to the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, who is now the Secretary of Commerce.

00:38:14.020 And he expressly gave him responsibility for negotiations and for tariffs.

00:38:20.160 So I don't think that Mr. Trump is going to be at the negotiating table.

00:38:23.160 He's rather busy as the president.

00:38:24.440 He's going to have a bunch of bureaucrat professional negotiators as well as the cabinet secretary, and they're going to come back with some kind of a package at an up-down, you know, do you approve this, Mr. Trump, or not?

00:38:37.600 I don't think he's going to be micromanaging the negotiations.

00:38:40.400 He's going to be way too busy dealing with all the other things that are on the desk of the president of the United States.

00:38:45.020 So he's got that.

00:38:46.300 He cares too much about this.

00:38:48.380 On things where Trump doesn't care, he delegates more.

00:38:51.640 On things that are personally important to him, he meddles a lot more.

00:38:55.340 With the first administration, he started out with Wilbur Wright running trade policy.

00:39:00.480 That lasted until Robert Lighthizer took over.

00:39:03.580 So this can change within the administration too.

00:39:06.580 It's just a lot more fraught, I think, than what we're used to in dealing with Americans, where there's a lot more consistency, rigor in the process.

00:39:16.400 Now, for some areas where Trump doesn't care, agricultural policy, sure, he'll just dictate that out, and chances of his issuing a tweet midway through are slim.

00:39:26.420 But with areas we really care, security, going after the intelligence establishment, and trade, there's a higher degree of probability.

00:39:35.020 I'm not saying it's absolutely certain.

00:39:36.600 Everything is probabilistic.

00:39:38.180 And your probability of Trump interfering with trade is higher.

00:39:42.280 It's not 100%, but it's higher than, say, with agriculture, where the probability of interfering is probably a lot lower.

00:39:50.500 One of the things that disturbs me is, and this speaks to the fact that our administration, our governments collectively, aren't engaged with the Americans, aren't listening to what they're saying, don't understand, is when Trump said, you've got to stop the migrants coming across the border and the fentanyl, the immediate reaction is, we're not the problem.

00:40:13.960 What are you talking about, what are you talking about, and Justin Trudeau is still going around and saying, less than 1% come from Canada of the people crossing illegally into the United States.

00:40:25.880 The Americans publish this data, and they're far more open with their government data than we are, and it's readily available.

00:40:34.020 And you can go on to the Customs and Border Patrol website, look up how many come across total.

00:40:40.200 It's over about 2 million.

00:40:42.940 How many at Mexico?

00:40:45.700 How many at Canada?

00:40:47.080 Last year, we were about 7% of the problem.

00:40:50.520 We were not less than 1%.

00:40:52.480 And we're growing.

00:40:54.440 When I spoke to Premier Smith in December, I asked her about fentanyl, because everyone says, well, only 43 pounds seized.

00:41:02.300 And she said, fentanyl is a growing problem, especially in Alberta and British Columbia, being shipped down to the U.S.

00:41:09.000 So she's the only politician I've spoken to or heard from that actually wanted to acknowledge that there was a problem.

00:41:16.180 So, you know, if we're not engaging with them on that, not hearing what they're saying, there's no way that we're going to be doing that on trade.

00:41:23.300 But the larger issue I want to get across, and maybe there's a disagreement here, I don't, look, you are much more plugged into the Americans than I am.

00:41:33.440 But I just don't think the president is going to be able to, there's an awful lot of things that are on the job of any president every day of the week.

00:41:40.700 You know, events, dear man, events in that famous quote of the British Prime Minister.

00:41:44.920 I think what Trump is doing is, and it's in the art of the deal, which I did read, he is softening us up, using his tweets and his public comments.

00:41:53.140 But once they sit down to negotiations, he's going to have, he's already delegated it to the Commerce Secretary, who's a very, very competent, extraordinarily accomplished CEO,

00:42:03.600 who turned around and saved Cantor Fitzgerald after it was wiped out by 9-11 when they lost 85 or 90 percent of their employees.

00:42:10.120 And he's a very bright guy, and he's going to have his team of negotiators.

00:42:14.280 And then they're going to get into all of the intricacies of this, and then there's going to be a package deal that they bring back.

00:42:20.960 And in the paper I keep quoting, Marin said very clearly, explicitly, they want to use the tariffs to get countries to open up those protected industries.

00:42:31.720 That's what he said.

00:42:32.800 I'm not saying it.

00:42:34.120 That's what he said.

00:42:35.100 And he said, if they do, we will drop the tariffs.

00:42:38.120 So I'm just quoting you what the chief economist to President Trump said.

00:42:41.800 Fair point.

00:42:43.620 I'll end on this.

00:42:44.600 I want to be respectful of both of your time.

00:42:46.360 But I want to ask you about the setup of Canada's economy.

00:42:51.020 We don't have a functional government right now.

00:42:54.360 We've got one guy that said he's resigning, who has no respect from Trump.

00:42:58.040 We've got Mark Carney, who resigned as the UN climate change special rapporteur and the head of the financial asset manager's net zero program.

00:43:12.520 We've got Chrystia Freeland. 0.97

00:43:14.000 They're all wedded to an ideology that is slowing down our economy.

00:43:17.880 Do we have the right team in place?

00:43:19.920 Are we headed towards the right team?

00:43:21.780 To me, it looks like the liberals are sleepwalking into putting Mark Carney in as leader, which makes him our prime minister.

00:43:28.520 And folks might think that's great.

00:43:29.960 He's an economist, so he knows better.

00:43:32.180 I know too many economists to think that that automatically makes you a genius.

00:43:37.760 We're headed.

00:43:38.940 We're still on a policy of emissions caps on oil and gas.

00:43:43.600 We're still on a policy of Bill C-69.

00:43:45.620 We're still on a policy of taxing people who build businesses with the capital gains tax changes.

00:43:53.380 We seem to be going in the exact opposite direction.

00:43:56.320 Donald Trump wants to unleash his economy.

00:43:59.520 And we're still with Justin Trudeau trying to shackle us down.

00:44:02.860 You know, what's the old saying?

00:44:04.380 If it moves, tax it.

00:44:07.140 If it keeps moving.

00:44:08.240 You know, all of that.

00:44:09.460 We're still in that mentality.

00:44:11.060 Your thoughts on what we need to do.

00:44:12.700 Carlo?

00:44:12.900 So, yeah, you know, we're in the worst possible position imaginable.

00:44:19.240 We've lost trust in the federation.

00:44:22.640 And with Justin Trudeau and the list of grievances that we have, especially here out west, there could be no trust.

00:44:30.140 It's broken and that put us in a bad negotiating position.

00:44:36.120 You know, when the government launched their Team Canada approach, they did it in Montreal at a liberal meeting.

00:44:43.980 They announced a Quebec MP and an Ontario MP to lead this.

00:44:50.240 They had a speaker, Flavio Volpe, from Ontario, and the head of Casta Depot in Quebec.

00:44:57.140 I mean, you started out by giving the middle finger to Western Canada with your announcement of a Team Canada approach.

00:45:05.180 And it's gone downhill from there.

00:45:07.260 We've got a leader who's forgotten but not yet gone running the country.

00:45:13.780 You can thank Gary Marr for that quote.

00:45:16.300 So, we're just in the worst possible position.

00:45:20.620 I also don't see the opposition being prepared for this.

00:45:23.760 Now, we've commented a lot about government not doing things, no evidence of the government contacting the America First movement or knowing things.

00:45:33.600 That's public evidence.

00:45:35.600 That's the fault.

00:45:36.800 If the government has done something, it's the fault of Foreign Affairs and the government for not having me public or communicate it to people.

00:45:45.560 And it's not just me that hasn't seen it.

00:45:47.220 I'm part of an expert's working group on North America, former ambassadors, Perrin Beattie and others, and they haven't seen it either.

00:45:56.500 So, it also applies for the conservatives, though.

00:45:59.860 I have yet to see evidence in public that the conservatives are prepared to take over the North America file.

00:46:07.480 We've had a couple of statements by Pierre Paliyev.

00:46:10.140 If he's done well, but I haven't seen real substance behind that from the conservatives.

00:46:16.860 So, I'm not sure that they're ready to axe the tax, cut the, build the homes, what else is it?

00:46:25.640 Yeah.

00:46:25.880 They're still on the old slogans, and they need something new.

00:46:28.940 I haven't seen any evidence.

00:46:30.240 I hope to God I'm wrong in that it's there, but they've done a piss-poor job of communicating.

00:46:35.140 So, I don't have confidence that things are going to get better.

00:46:39.520 Ian, you live in the Ottawa bubble.

00:46:41.000 That place seems to be in love with Mark Carney at the moment.

00:46:46.180 He's an economist.

00:46:47.220 Look, I've met him.

00:46:49.260 I've covered him.

00:46:49.760 He's a very nice man.

00:46:51.260 But is he the right guy?

00:46:53.120 Are these the policies that will save us, or do you agree with me that they're exactly the wrong policies?

00:47:00.120 I not only think they're the wrong policies.

00:47:02.380 I'll go further than you.

00:47:03.440 So, I'm much more cynical, maybe because I've lived in Ottawa all my life.

00:47:07.660 I deeply believe that the liberals see this as an opportunity, a Hail Mary, to stay in power.

00:47:15.880 They're going to run against Donald Trump.

00:47:18.360 They're going to use the tariffs as the excuse to do what liberals like to do, which is tax and spend and subsidize and protect. 1.00

00:47:25.520 So, they are already working on plans to save all kinds of industries.

00:47:29.620 From who?

00:47:30.220 From the tariffs on Donald Trump.

00:47:31.780 And so, I'm much more cynical than you are.

00:47:35.240 I think they're going to—that's why they're not talking about negotiating a new KUSMA agreement.

00:47:39.980 The last thing they want is a KUSMA agreement that's going to take the tariffs off the table and then take away their one possible driver, driving force, that will allow them to be re-elected.

00:47:50.520 I think that they have a plan, but Carney is—the elites are in the Liberal Party, from everything I'm hearing in Ottawa, are coming together behind Carney.

00:47:58.680 He's going to be their great saviour.

00:48:00.740 And they're going to run on an anti-Trump.

00:48:02.960 He's going to save the Liberal Party.

00:48:04.320 He's going to paint this as saving Canada from the Americans and from Donald Trump.

00:48:08.800 And they're going to try and paint Paul Yev and the Conservatives in that—with that paint.

00:48:15.340 In other words, they're going to give up on—you know, they're going to bring back abortion and the other social Conservative issues.

00:48:21.060 They now have their new hot issue to label the Conservatives as sellouts and vendus who are going to be on the side of the Trumpian Americans.

00:48:32.460 And they're going to try and use that to—they're going to do a Captain Canada.

00:48:36.120 We're going to save Canada from not only Donald Trump and the big, bad Americans.

00:48:39.720 We're going to save them, the Canadians, from the Conservatives.

00:48:42.760 And that's why we haven't heard very much.

00:48:44.340 I am absolutely certain that Paul Yev and his people are working night and day trying to figure out feverishly how can they come up with a policy that is not what the Liberals are doing.

00:48:55.280 At the same time, they won't be seen or perceived as being in the pocket of Donald Trump.

00:49:00.500 And that's why I think we've heard so little from the Conservatives right now.

00:49:04.120 But I do believe they will come up with something.

00:49:06.060 And I still think it has to be something along the line of a Kuzma agreement. 0.97

00:49:09.940 It's hard for the Liberals to walk away from a Kuzma agreement when they negotiated the last one with Donald Trump.

00:49:15.440 So I think that's going to be the opening if there is an opening.

00:49:18.200 But the Liberals are going to run against Trump.

00:49:21.160 They don't—I don't think they want the tariffs to come to an end.

00:49:23.860 I'm that cynical about the Liberals.

00:49:25.940 Their goal is the re-election of the Liberal Party not to save Canada from Donald Trump.

00:49:32.380 Man, I thought I was dark.

00:49:34.780 Wow.

00:49:35.880 Well, yeah, I've got to say they're telling them your direction.

00:49:38.400 I just don't see it from the Conservatives.

00:49:41.480 You know, the plans are there.

00:49:43.260 We've done significant work on trade infrastructure.

00:49:46.520 And, Brian, you and I have talked about the trade infrastructure file.

00:49:49.440 There are plans.

00:49:50.520 Everyone knows what needs to be done.

00:49:53.340 I hope to God you're right, Ian.

00:49:55.280 I hope to God that they are doing this.

00:49:57.660 But they've got to demonstrate more than hope.

00:50:01.860 Or, well, of course they're doing it.

00:50:03.600 They've got to go beyond acts of the tax and other things and show us that they're actually—

00:50:08.960 They don't have to give us specific plans.

00:50:11.400 Just give us something that shows that you're working on this.

00:50:17.740 Something other than a slogan to show us that you're working on this.

00:50:20.880 Please.

00:50:21.720 Don't be specific.

00:50:23.140 Don't hang yourself in public.

00:50:24.520 Just, for God's sake, give us something.

00:50:27.420 To show that Ian is likely right, let me just point out that the liberals are already trying

00:50:35.540 to tie Pierre Polyev to Donald Trump by pointing out that Elon Musk has liked some of Polyev's

00:50:44.900 statements.

00:50:45.160 I mean, the fact that they're doing it on X, the platform owned by Elon Musk, and saying

00:50:50.640 how evil Elon Musk is, why are you with him?

00:50:53.280 It's a little bit silly, but that's the state of Canadian politics.

00:50:56.840 Gentlemen, it's been a great discussion, and you've both raised some things that I'm

00:51:01.400 going to be looking up, papers to read, and things to think about, but thank you for your

00:51:05.560 time today.

00:51:06.740 Thank you.

00:51:07.140 Thank you, Brian.

00:51:08.220 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:51:10.640 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

00:51:12.280 This episode was produced by Andre Pru, theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:51:15.820 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:51:18.200 Remember to hit that subscribe button for Full Comment, whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts,

00:51:22.940 Spotify, Amazon, wherever.

00:51:25.320 Hit subscribe and help us out.

00:51:27.300 Leave a rating, give us a review, tell your friends about us.

00:51:30.660 Thanks for listening.

00:51:31.540 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

Full Comment - January 27, 2025

The reason Trump plans to crush Canada that our politicians just don’t get

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript