Full Comment - Trudeau’s taking you all down with him

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00:01:58.720 What can you say about the last week in Canadian politics other than, oh my God, what happened?

00:02:08.000 Hello, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:02:09.680 Welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:02:13.540 I'm laughing because I don't know what else to do.

00:02:16.020 If you ask me to write a script for an incredibly botched attempt at changing up your government at a time of a national crisis,

00:02:24.680 I don't think I could have come up with what happened this week.

00:02:28.600 And if I did, editors and, you know, studio executives in Hollywood would say that's way too far-fetched.

00:02:35.820 That would never happen. 1.00

00:02:37.440 That's far too stupid. 1.00

00:02:38.460 But this is where we are with the Trudeau government and where we're at. 1.00

00:02:43.460 Joining me to talk about all of this are two esteemed columnists from Post Media.

00:02:48.180 We've got Chris Selle from the National Post, Lauren Gunter with the Edmonton Sun, and gents, who wants to take a first kick at the can at Justin Trudeau firing his finance minister three days before she's supposed to deliver the fall economic statement,

00:03:03.740 so that he can replace her with someone who didn't say yes to the job or apparently backed out after, and then getting torpedoed by him all at a time when we're facing a national crisis of 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods into the United States.

00:03:18.620 And Donald Trump is just lapping this up.

00:03:21.340 Lauren, you're smiling.

00:03:22.180 Do you want to go?

00:03:22.680 Yeah, sure.

00:03:24.100 This is, of course, what we call in this business low-hanging fruit.

00:03:29.140 You know, you don't have to go looking for column topics now for several days because this is just self-fulfilling.

00:03:40.020 I got a great kick out of this.

00:03:43.660 Chris said something in a column earlier this week that I thought was absolutely bang on.

00:03:48.840 And he said, Trudeau and his entourage think that celebrity and communications are 90% of governing, that you don't really have to do anything.

00:03:58.700 And even Chrystia Freeland, in her parting shot at Trudeau, said, no, we have to do things.

00:04:06.440 And you don't seem capable of doing it, so I'm leaving.

00:04:10.200 I went back and looked in our archives for columns that I had written after Trudeau had become the leader in 2013, but before he'd become the prime minister in 2015.

00:04:22.120 And on three occasions, I called him an intellectual lightweight.

00:04:25.260 I think we're seeing the proof of that.

00:04:28.380 I mean, the man is not capable of running a government. 0.92

00:04:31.940 I mean, he's a narcissist, he's an egotist, he is self-absorbed, and he's not very bright.

00:04:39.300 And that's not a real good combination.

00:04:43.400 Chris, you want to take a run at this?

00:04:46.840 I mean, I think it's, I mean, two things stand out to me, first of all.

00:04:51.000 One is how alone he seems to be.

00:04:55.160 I mean, does he actually have no one in his inner circle, or even some other, somewhat outer circle, who are telling him that he has to go?

00:05:05.740 And if he doesn't, how is that even possible?

00:05:08.560 I mean, how has he lasted this long with no one, with an ounce of common sense, talking in his ear?

00:05:16.200 And the second thing is, just to go back to what you said, like, he told Christopher Freeland that he was going to replace her as finance minister with someone who had not agreed to become the finance minister.

00:05:31.720 Like, that's almost sort of degenerate gambler behavior, right?

00:05:34.360 Like, you owe the one bookie $500, so you bet $1,000 on the Steelers or something to try and cover that off.

00:05:43.940 The next, I mean, I just don't understand how, you know, everything that we've seen to me in the last week is kind of in keeping with Justin Trudeau's character that we know of him, but like, but like multiplied by two, like taken to the maximum extent.

00:06:03.360 And I just can't imagine what he thinks he's doing, hanging on.

00:06:08.180 Where does he think, you know, it's like he's hanging on to a rising balloon.

00:06:11.160 And at some point, he's going to have to let go.

00:06:14.820 Well, hanging on to a leaking balloon.

00:06:16.320 Or a sinking balloon.

00:06:17.680 Yeah, it's a terrible metaphor now that I think about it.

00:06:20.020 You know what used to happen in cases like this is that the power brokers in the party who were largely big fundraisers, but not necessarily, they would all be senior people.

00:06:31.600 And they would get together at the time when the leader's shelf life had run out.

00:06:37.740 And they would say, hey, you've done a great job.

00:06:41.380 We'll find you something very cushy to fall into.

00:06:45.080 But it's time for you to go.

00:06:46.720 But since we've had the change in how parties are funded in Canada, and no one can give more than a few thousand dollars a year, there aren't those big fundraisers anymore.

00:06:58.060 And there isn't sort of a Senate for the party.

00:07:02.360 There isn't this brains trust up at the top who can say, yeah, we're not going to win an election with you again.

00:07:09.780 And for the good of the party, the good of the country, let's step out.

00:07:14.860 And he was very smart.

00:07:17.060 Trudeau was very smart when he took over as leader in that he put all key loyalists in every function in the party and in the caucus.

00:07:26.940 And he changed the rules.

00:07:29.280 He changed the rules on how leaders get moved in and out.

00:07:32.440 That's right.

00:07:32.780 And so there isn't someone who can easily move him in or out.

00:07:36.720 Well, I would argue that caucus has all the power they need to move in or out.

00:07:41.040 They've just been so they're just so used to being lapdogs at this point.

00:07:45.580 They can't envisage anything about their jobs that isn't working for Justin Trudeau. 0.80

00:07:50.340 And as you say, for all of the people that he's installed within the party, I mean, if they just if they just refuse to do anything the PMO says, then he's screwed.

00:08:00.780 They have leverage.

00:08:02.080 They just don't know how to use it anymore.

00:08:03.460 You've got guys like Mark Gerritsen who are convinced they're going to get into cabinet.

00:08:07.300 And this is his last great shot.

00:08:08.860 That's right.

00:08:09.800 We should note that we're discussing this.

00:08:13.000 We're recording at 1230 on Thursday before Trudeau's Friday cabinet shuffle.

00:08:19.120 So we know that it's happening.

00:08:20.600 1130, Rideau Hall on Friday.

00:08:23.500 But we don't know what the result will be.

00:08:25.320 But you've got greasy pole climbers like Mark Gerritsen, who is most likely to lose his seat.

00:08:30.860 Kingston and the islands, you know, that survived when when Stephen Harper had his sweep in 2011.

00:08:38.960 That was, I think, pretty much the only liberal seat between basically the GTA and Ottawa was Kingston in the islands, likely going to turn blue in the next election.

00:08:50.540 But he's hanging on for hope beyond hope that he's going to get in cabinet for the final days of Trudeau's regime.

00:08:59.400 It's something to put on a resume.

00:09:00.560 Well, as we've all been hearing, I'm sure, there are backbenchers who have turned down the prime minister's invitation to join the cabinet.

00:09:09.500 In all of my time, I mean, you hear one or two people over time, hey, Mr. Prime Minister, I have some skeletons in my closet.

00:09:18.120 You really don't want to go there.

00:09:20.000 In this era where the prime minister's office can check your background to the infinite detail easily.

00:09:27.900 But some of their past appointments prove they don't really do that.

00:09:31.320 Yeah.

00:09:31.700 They don't have to Google.

00:09:33.380 No.

00:09:33.780 They can Google, but they don't always.

00:09:35.760 That's right.

00:09:36.180 But now we're hearing like four and five and maybe more backbenchers who've been offered cabinet posts have said no.

00:09:45.940 And for Francois Philippe Champagne, Frankie Bubbles, as I call him, a guy that I've touted many times as a potential successor for Trudeau, apparently said, yeah, I don't want a promotion.

00:09:56.800 I don't want to be finance minister.

00:09:58.660 Don't move me.

00:09:59.700 Just leave me alone.

00:10:01.100 Yeah.

00:10:01.940 Well, apparently he had Marc Carnie all lined up.

00:10:04.460 Why would he need Francois Philippe Champagne, right?

00:10:06.440 I mean, wait.

00:10:08.000 You know, if only Scott Bryson hadn't resigned.

00:10:10.680 Oh, wait.

00:10:11.120 That's another scandal going back a little bit longer.

00:10:14.380 Let's remind people of something that's a little embarrassing for Lauren's past and get his take on it, that you used to work for a liberal MP years ago.

00:10:22.880 I used to work for a liberal senator.

00:10:24.560 A liberal senator.

00:10:25.180 I mean, I'm sorry for bringing up your big red liberal past, Lauren, but I mean, you spent time around the hill.

00:10:34.040 Have you ever seen anything like this?

00:10:36.240 I, you know, on Monday, when it initially happened, I said, well, I can kind of put like a small comparison to when Paul Martin was fired from Gretchen's cabinet.

00:10:48.100 But that happened over a weekend, and everyone knew there was tension between them, and they'd, you know, Martin had been trying to overtake the party.

00:10:56.100 But it wasn't really a real comparison.

00:10:58.740 I said, that's as close as I can think.

00:11:00.520 I haven't seen anything like this ever.

00:11:02.320 And it comes at a time when we're dealing with this very real threat of Trump tariffing everything coming out of Canada, and he's lapping it up.

00:11:11.780 He's up there on True Social making fun of Trudeau the whole time.

00:11:15.100 Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:16.460 And no, I've never seen anything like this.

00:11:18.220 I mean, the rivalry between Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien was a rivalry.

00:11:23.520 The two of them both wanted to be leader of the same party, so they had to have this saw on.

00:11:28.780 There is no competing power base against Trudeau.

00:11:34.860 He's avoided the creation by anyone else of a power base within the party that could challenge him.

00:11:43.960 He's unrivaled, he's unchallenged, and he is still self-destructive.

00:11:50.660 Well, and I'm amazed, you know, this offer to Christopher Freeland, I mean, boy, what a plum job, dealing with the Trump administration 24-7.

00:12:01.320 But remind people, I mean, we'll give kudos to the Globe and Mail for this reporting.

00:12:06.540 Stephanie Levitz, great reporter over at the Globe.

00:12:09.240 What was the full offer, Chris?

00:12:12.080 Well, so the offer, as Stephanie reported it, was that instead of being finance minister, she would be in charge of sort of the Canada-US relations file.

00:12:22.660 But without a ministry to run, this would just be her, you know, I mean, what an offer.

00:12:28.560 So no staff, no money, no authority.

00:12:31.820 Well, yeah, I don't know, but what struck me, first of all—

00:12:35.560 They were going to clean out a storage room over at Global Affairs, and she could go in there to this windowless room and have a phone or something.

00:12:41.600 Yeah, there's no cell signal.

00:12:42.660 I mean, what struck me, first of all, was if that plan had been in place for more than, like, 72 hours before he came up with it, wouldn't he have taken Christopher Freeland down to Florida to meet with Donald Trump for that dinner?

00:12:58.420 I mean, wouldn't that have been a logical thing to do if he was planning to put her in charge of Canada-US relations?

00:13:03.320 And then Trump comes out with this tweet, or I don't know if it was on Twitter or on—

00:13:07.960 It was on True Social.

00:13:08.980 On True Social.

00:13:10.100 Which I've had to join just so I can know what the president-elect is saying about Canada.

00:13:16.080 Where he basically implies, and I mean, I don't know, but he basically called her totally toxic, which basically undermined Trudeau further and just made the whole plan, if that's the right word for it, that he had, look even more crazy.

00:13:33.320 So, look, we're laughing heartily at this, and I'm having a bit of schadenfreude with Trudeau's problems, but at the same time, this is incredibly serious for her country.

00:13:50.220 I'm not exaggerating when I call this a national crisis.

00:13:53.540 If those 25% tariffs come in, we are going to shave several points off of our GDP within a couple of months.

00:14:02.700 There will be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Canadians who lose their jobs.

00:14:07.600 I read people like Dan Gardner, who used to write for the Ottawa Citizen, then he went to the Trudeau PMO, then he wrote a pointy-headed book that people love that says a lot about nothing.

00:14:18.420 And he's out there saying, well, we should just block all of our exports to the United States.

00:14:23.840 We should refuse to sell them oil or anything else.

00:14:27.980 And I think the only reason this fool can say that is that he is a member of the laptop class that does not rely on any job that involves manufacturing or resource extraction or agriculture or any of the things that put food on the table for millions of Canadians. 0.72

00:14:46.620 He is of the class that surrounded Kamala Harris during the U.S. presidential election. 0.95

00:14:54.600 And that is why the Democrats lost, because they are completely out of touch with where ordinary people are.

00:15:01.060 They don't have the same worries and concerns.

00:15:04.580 They don't have the same risks that ordinary people do.

00:15:07.600 Ordinary people know that for the last five or six years, either the COVID or the economy has put them at risk of losing their family income.

00:15:15.580 And they're not prepared to then go with some airy-fairy progressive ideas that sound really good to Justin Trudeau and the liberal elite.

00:15:30.040 So this is exactly the kind of thinking that, A, leads to the freedom convoy, and B, leads to the liberals being wiped out in the next election.

00:15:41.260 I mean, there's always been this theory in Canadian politics that the floor for the conservatives is much lower than the floor for the liberals.

00:15:49.500 The liberals can't fall below where Ignatieff took them in the low 30s.

00:15:54.220 I keep looking at polls from all sorts of different regions around the country, as both of you have.

00:16:01.000 I can see the liberals going down to five seats, 10 seats, 15 seats, like being all but wiped out.

00:16:08.820 The latest Ipsos poll has them at 15% in British Columbia.

00:16:16.480 And I hear from grumpy people out your way, Lauren, that always blame everything on Ontario and Quebec for voting in the liberals.

00:16:24.380 But if you look at Justin Trudeau's success, it has included a strong showing in British Columbia.

00:16:29.540 And now he's in third place, like far back third place.

00:16:35.320 Chris, this is, this is, he has the real risk of going below Iggy level.

00:16:42.380 Ignatieff actually pulled in 19% of the popular vote.

00:16:45.220 I mean, I'm looking at it right now, which is astonishing to me when I look at that.

00:16:51.240 Um, that was still 34 seats, but, um, yeah, like it's, it's, it's, there's no telling how low it can go.

00:17:01.320 And, and to that, to that idea, the tariff thing, I mean, Canadian politicians always do this.

00:17:07.680 They always say, well, we'll have to retaliate.

00:17:09.560 But to me, it all, it completely undermines the message.

00:17:11.840 They're saying, well, if you, if you impose 25% tariffs on us, that's going to hurt American workers, right?

00:17:18.340 It's going to hurt, uh, it's going to make things more expensive for Americans at the till. 0.85

00:17:22.660 But then we say, well, we're going to retaliate.

00:17:24.240 So what, oh, well, so we'll make more things more expensive for Canadians at the till from, from American goods.

00:17:30.600 Like it's just a no-win situation.

00:17:32.360 What you need is leadership and people with smart arguments and, and, and, and with Trump negotiating skills and an understanding of how his brain works. 1.00

00:17:42.680 He's a blowhard and a bully. 0.54

00:17:44.040 And we're letting it get under our skin that he talks about Canada as the 51st state off for crying out loud and deal with what his main issues were drug and illegal immigrant flooding into the United States. 0.97

00:18:00.780 Let's jump on that in a minute, but let's, let, let's just stay with the fact for a moment that, um, all of this is happening with the liberal party at this point.

00:18:09.620 And Justin Trudeau is nowhere to be found.

00:18:12.500 He is effectively AWOL.

00:18:14.600 He's hiding.

00:18:15.760 He has no public events today.

00:18:17.220 He's spoken to, um, uh, uh, Christmas party for liberal donors of the Laurier club.

00:18:23.380 Then he spoke the next night, made fun of the whole situation at a, uh, Christmas party for liberal staffers.

00:18:31.360 Um, this is happening at a time of, of great national crisis and, and, and Trudeau, you know, as much as we may enjoy all of this, um, this is going to hurt us in a very big way.

00:18:48.920 Well, I mean, he canceled all his year end media interviews.

00:18:52.100 I've never seen that, which is, which is just like sending up a balloon that says, you know, help, like we're screwed.

00:19:01.120 I mean, why would you, if you're going to hang on, you do the interviews.

00:19:05.520 I mean, that's just bananas to me.

00:19:09.460 I mean, all he does is all he, all he knows how to do is talk.

00:19:13.400 Look, look deep into people's eyes and talk.

00:19:16.460 Uh, if he's not even going to talk, what is he in this for?

00:19:20.760 Do you think he's going to stick around?

00:19:23.100 Um, I, I would take the fact that he's doing the cabinet shuffle as, you know, a proof point that he, he doesn't plan on resigning anytime soon.

00:19:31.100 What about you, Chris?

00:19:32.060 Yeah.

00:19:32.540 A cabinet shuffle.

00:19:33.420 I mean, that, that doesn't say resigning to me.

00:19:37.300 It says, Hey, look, I can still get, you know, 20 odd people to back me.

00:19:42.820 And so away I go.

00:19:45.200 Lauren, Lauren, what do you think about Trudeau's future?

00:19:47.340 Is he going to stay or go?

00:19:48.160 All the people who whisper in his ears say, you can survive this.

00:19:52.660 This is a communications problem.

00:19:54.100 They've been saying that to each other now for two or three years.

00:19:57.620 The big cabinet shuffle in July of 2023 was all about changing the communications, not changing the policies, not changing the strategies, just changing the ministers who would go out and take the message to the people because they were firmly convinced.

00:20:11.000 And I think they're firmly convinced today that their policies are the very best policies for Canada.

00:20:17.220 And all that's getting in the way is their own communications failures.

00:20:23.080 But more than that, well, there's disinformation on the Internet.

00:20:26.400 That's why we have to regulate what's on the Internet, because nobody's listening to what we're doing.

00:20:29.880 That's so wonderful for this country.

00:20:31.340 It's utter rubbish, but I think he is caught up in all of that and really does believe that he is the best leader for the time and that if he can just weather this, eventually people will see that Polyev is a bad man and Singh isn't as good as he is.

00:20:49.840 And, you know, in Quebec, then the BQ don't have the same to offer that they do. 0.90

00:20:55.980 And I would give him more than a 50-50 betting chance of sticking around.

00:21:01.500 It would require, as I said before, it would require the caucus to sack up and refuse to do his bidding.

00:21:09.440 And there's no sign of that.

00:21:10.680 The last three Tory leaders in the UK, all of whom were prime ministers at the time, were all pushed out by their caucus.

00:21:21.440 They have a very different system there.

00:21:23.660 They don't have a particularly different system.

00:21:26.340 They have a different culture.

00:21:27.800 They have a different convention.

00:21:29.080 They're more used to doing it than we are.

00:21:31.360 But Chris is absolutely right.

00:21:32.580 There is nothing in the parliamentary rules.

00:21:34.680 There's nothing in Canadian law that says the caucus has to cooperate with PMO.

00:21:38.780 They could tell them all to have sawed off and that they're not going to cooperate.

00:21:43.820 Some of them clearly are.

00:21:45.360 I mean, who, all of them, the fellow in Toronto, Don Valley West, who sent out the message this morning to his constituents,

00:21:56.600 please come to an emergency meeting and tell me what you think I should do about the leader.

00:22:01.560 That's not, that's not very courageous.

00:22:05.020 I think he knows where he needs to go on this.

00:22:07.960 He just wants to make sure that he's not going to upset everyone in his nice little suburban riding by ditching Trudeau.

00:22:16.480 But they've all got to do this.

00:22:18.500 I've never seen this kind of tumult in a caucus that didn't lead to somebody going.

00:22:28.080 Yeah, I'll say this about the Martin guys who pushed Trudgen out.

00:22:33.900 They at least put their faces and their names out there.

00:22:36.520 And they went in front of cameras and microphones and spoke to reporters.

00:22:40.180 And they said, well, this is why the guy should go.

00:22:42.180 And then you were talking earlier, Lauren, about how there's nobody there that can say, hey, boss, time's up, time to go.

00:22:50.280 I've spoken to Stephen LeDrew about this extensively.

00:22:53.940 LeDrew was the party president for the Liberals at that time.

00:22:57.560 And he's told me about driving up to Ottawa to go tell Trudgen, it's time to go.

00:23:03.640 And he said it was very nerve wracking for him to do that.

00:23:07.320 And Trudgen said, yeah, but you look at the polls, I'm going to win.

00:23:09.960 Well, he said, yes, but I'm required to hold a leadership review vote by the party constitution.

00:23:16.000 And the Martin guys have completely taken over the party and they're going to beat you.

00:23:20.300 That's that's the way that Kretchen ended up leaving, albeit with an 18 month runway.

00:23:25.840 Trudeau, I like so he's got a few MPs saying you got to go.

00:23:30.740 But not I mean, when when they push Kretchen out, he was at 40 percent in the polls.

00:23:37.360 Trudeau's at 20 percent and they can't even get half a caucus to say, get lost, buddy.

00:23:42.440 Yeah, I was struck by Anthony House's father, who's a relatively independent minded Montreal MP, who sort of said he had this comment over the sometime in the last, I don't know, 72 hours.

00:23:54.920 I mean, time has lost all meaning over the last week.

00:23:58.100 But he said he said Justin Trudeau's best day as prime minister will be better than Pierre Polyev's.

00:24:05.740 Sorry, Justin Trudeau's worst day as prime minister will be better than Pierre Polyev's best day as prime minister.

00:24:11.520 But I think it would be better if we had a new liberal leader.

00:24:15.480 And it's like, how many options do you think are on the table here?

00:24:19.700 Interesting hearing that.

00:24:20.920 You need to do something or nothing will happen.

00:24:23.120 But the libs also have a big enthusiasm problem, right?

00:24:27.120 You look at the by-election in Langley, Cloverdale in B.C. on Monday night.

00:24:33.140 Yes, it's an overwhelming conservative victory, 66% to 16%.

00:24:38.600 16% turnout, too.

00:24:40.780 Yeah, but it was a 16% turnout.

00:24:42.520 So the Tories came out.

00:24:44.580 Their numbers were about half of what they had been in the last or less than half of what they'd been in the last election.

00:24:50.300 But at least they came out.

00:24:52.080 The liberals didn't poll at 16%.

00:24:54.880 They didn't poll at 16%.

00:24:56.960 The Tories didn't poll at 66%.

00:24:59.500 But the liberals just didn't go to the ballot boxes.

00:25:02.280 And I think that that's what you're going to see.

00:25:03.660 If this chaos continues and an election is called without a clear leader for a new clear leader for the liberals, you're going to see that.

00:25:13.160 There are a lot of people who say, well, I won't vote for Polyev.

00:25:15.880 But they won't go to the polls either.

00:25:18.900 And a lot of liberals are going to lose in three-way races because none of their supporters come up.

00:25:25.060 Well, we need to take a quick break.

00:25:26.940 But I will tell you all that ever since Chris said near the beginning of the podcast that, you know, how alone is Trudeau?

00:25:34.280 I've been picturing him wandering around Rideau Cottage singing Celine Dion's rendition of All By Myself.

00:25:40.460 So there's a visual for you.

00:25:42.900 We'll talk more about this.

00:25:44.360 And the Trump threats and who is stepping up in Trudeau's absence when we come back.

00:25:48.580 More in moments.

00:25:52.480 Bank more encores when you switch to a Scotiabank banking package.

00:25:57.000 Learn more at scotiabank.com slash banking packages.

00:26:00.700 Conditions apply.

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00:26:16.140 Are those from Winners?

00:26:17.640 Ooh, are those beautiful gold earrings?

00:26:20.100 Did she pay full price?

00:26:21.460 Or that leather tote?

00:26:22.460 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:26:23.660 Or those knee-high boots?

00:26:25.100 That dress?

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00:26:34.760 So Trudeau since Monday has pretty much been absent, AWOL, we've said.

00:26:39.960 And maybe that's not such a bad thing because the week before he had come out twice in public and, well, angered the Americans in the middle of this, you know, crisis that we're seeing.

00:26:50.700 And on the Monday in Halifax, he had spoken about how Americans had voted for change for the sake of change.

00:26:59.460 And Canadians shouldn't do that because we need to be smarter and make good choices in implying Americans didn't.

00:27:05.220 And then the next day he gives a speech to equal voice and says how awful it is that Americans chose yet again not to elect a woman as president.

00:27:15.800 Rich coming from the guy that beat four women to become liberal leader.

00:27:18.920 Maybe he should have bowed out when he saw there was a woman on the ballot. 1.00

00:27:22.020 But anyways, he laments Kamala Harris losing to Donald Trump.

00:27:26.500 And that makes all kinds of headlines in the United States.

00:27:30.140 So maybe it's good that Trudeau is shutting up.

00:27:33.220 But the fact is we need leadership at this point.

00:27:35.700 Did either of you have Doug Ford as Captain Canada in this situation and, you know, with a strong supporting second role by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith?

00:27:47.860 Because Ontario's Premier and Alberta's Premier, two folks who are not exactly allies of Justin Trudeau, are effectively doing his job at this point.

00:27:57.020 I mean, you know, provincial premiers are more known for sloughing off their problems on Ottawa than adopting them as their own.

00:28:10.320 I wouldn't have seen it coming.

00:28:12.040 But once I heard Doug Ford talking that way, I sort of thought, oh, this is actually right in his wheelhouse.

00:28:16.860 Like this makes a lot of sense because he can get along with all kinds of different people.

00:28:24.960 But he can also which I think helps him be able to kind of wave his fist sometimes as well.

00:28:30.420 Now, I don't think he has any personal relationship with Donald Trump.

00:28:32.880 No, he doesn't.

00:28:34.880 In fact, he did a radio interview in New York City with one of Trump's good friends, by the way.

00:28:40.500 I mean, this is what Trudeau's government should be doing.

00:28:43.960 He talks to this guy named John Katsamides, who owns WABC in New York, the radio station.

00:28:49.800 And Katsamides asked him, have you ever met President Trump?

00:28:53.740 And he said once when he came to Toronto for the unveiling of the Trump Tower, my brother was mayor.

00:28:58.600 I met him briefly.

00:28:59.480 So that's the only relationship they have.

00:29:01.180 Yeah, but I can see how Trump might, you know, respect Ford a little bit.

00:29:12.100 So I but, you know, look, I mean, you see these things with with in Alberta with with Danielle Smith essentially kind of adopting border control as one of her own issues. 0.99

00:29:25.100 I mean, that's not the way the country is supposed to work.

00:29:27.900 But but but this is this is what happens when you have a complete leadership vacuum.

00:29:31.660 But yeah, that really surprised me that the provincial government out here decided to spend almost 30 million dollars hiring 51 border security sheriffs, fix fix them up with all weather drones and dispatchers and vehicles.

00:29:51.100 Like, it's a genuine border security force for a 298 kilometer long.

00:29:58.440 We don't have a huge long border with the United States because the skinny part of Alberta is down there at the bottom.

00:30:04.160 But but but this basically was her saying, look, the Americans are threatening us with tariffs because we're letting in too many illegal immigrants and and too many drug dealers.

00:30:16.980 So let's do something about that.

00:30:19.200 That's what all that's what the federal government should have done.

00:30:22.120 So Danielle Smith let me in on a little secret this week.

00:30:24.940 I had a sit down with her when she was in Toronto.

00:30:28.300 She came out for the premier's meeting that Ford called.

00:30:31.440 And then you saw the photo of Ford looking like he's holding the last supper with all the reporters around him asking him questions.

00:30:36.920 Yes. But the premiers all got along for the most part and and and said they're united on this.

00:30:43.400 There's some differences.

00:30:44.820 But anyways, I had a chance to do a sit down interview with Danielle Smith that people can find on on the Sun's YouTube page.

00:30:51.180 But she she told me straight up, you know, I was giving her kudos for this.

00:30:55.860 And she said they actually started this about a year and a half ago before Trump's border threats because of all the fentanyl going back and forth across the border.

00:31:04.940 And so that was the genesis of this plan.

00:31:08.180 And she said we had a running head start by the time Trump showed up and said this.

00:31:12.740 So, I mean, good.

00:31:14.820 Take advantage of that.

00:31:16.540 But while everyone's saying fentanyl is not a problem, she told me it is.

00:31:21.160 And she said that in Alberta and B.C.

00:31:23.240 You're getting these super labs set up and that it is increasingly becoming a problem.

00:31:28.940 She said the migrant issue is a big issue in eastern Canada and especially Quebec, right near where Tom Homan, the Ontario and Quebec border area where Tom Homan, Trump's new borders are is from in western New York.

00:31:42.820 That's the big migrant issue. 0.77

00:31:44.260 And she said, but out west in B.C. and Alberta, it's drugs. 0.90

00:31:48.160 The Trudeau government saying there's no problem with drugs.

00:31:51.640 It only comes from Mexico and we're one percent of the problem. 1.00

00:31:55.660 I'm watching clips of Homan doing an interview with Tucker Carlson talking about how it is increased.

00:32:02.600 The illegal migrants have increased in some areas by six to eight hundred percent over the past couple of years.

00:32:10.080 And I've looked at the numbers.

00:32:11.840 He's right because these are Biden administration numbers.

00:32:15.640 And Chris, if you listen to Dominic LeBlanc or anyone in the Trudeau government, they're saying this isn't an issue.

00:32:21.820 That's not how you win in a negotiation by telling the person you're negotiating with, oh, you're completely wrong.

00:32:27.620 And the issue you just raised doesn't even really exist.

00:32:31.420 Yeah, that's right.

00:32:31.980 I mean, even if the most fentanyl currently coming into the United States doesn't come from Canada, that doesn't mean that it couldn't increase in the future because we know that there's more domestic capacity coming online.

00:32:45.300 So to speak, in these in these in these super labs, I mean, the border is is one of those problems that we've just always ignored.

00:32:55.500 And I think to me, it's always seemed ridiculous that we don't have some kind of common perimeter, some kind of harmonized visa rules or refugee rules or or whatever.

00:33:07.700 Quite apart from anything else is because it's such a long border and neither country does a particularly good job.

00:33:13.320 You know, it's it's it's it's hardly sealed on either side and it would require enormous resources to make secure.

00:33:24.960 And with Trump, if you know, if Trump goes ahead with his his deportations and stuff, I mean, that's just going to that that's going to send people scrambling north, south, east, west.

00:33:36.220 And we don't have any real capacity to do anything about it.

00:33:41.280 And I noticed this week, one of the things was was the the Trudeau government said, well, we're we're we're going to they're proposing a was it a joint joint strike force or something?

00:33:54.040 We'll work with Washington to do this.

00:33:55.940 And it's like, no, that's that's not what he's asking for.

00:33:58.160 He's asking for you to step up.

00:34:00.340 Right. And whether he's right or not, he's the elephant and we're the mouse.

00:34:04.360 So what's your plan?

00:34:06.180 So as I'm watching all this unfold, I was reminded of a news conference that I was at in Washington at the White House years ago.

00:34:14.420 I went down to cover Stephen Harper going down to meet with Barack Obama.

00:34:18.060 It's 2011, Lauren, February 2011.

00:34:21.620 And there's two things on the agenda.

00:34:24.620 One is the deterioration of governments in the Middle East.

00:34:29.960 And we're seeing that with Syria right now.

00:34:31.940 And the whole Arab Spring was on the discussion.

00:34:34.360 But the real reason for the meeting and the news conference was Harper trying to work with Obama to harmonize things, just what Chris was talking about.

00:34:43.180 And he wanted a fortress North America to secure the border so that Canadians weren't stopped.

00:34:47.820 We stopped everybody on the outside.

00:34:49.500 And so that's Harper 2011.

00:34:52.460 Now you've got the Americans saying, wait a minute, you let in or we've had 198,000 encounters, an 82 percent increase over the last couple of years.

00:35:02.760 43,000 of them are Indian nationals that you let into your country on work visas or student visas who then came down to declare asylum in the U.S.

00:35:11.020 We've got a problem.

00:35:12.360 And our government doesn't say, yeah, let's work together to fix that.

00:35:15.580 They say there is no problem.

00:35:17.000 In fact, they're still putting out the line that there were only 24,000 people that went across the border illegally last year.

00:35:24.640 Andrew Coyne of The Globe and Mail is parroting them.

00:35:27.340 No, it's 198,000 people, almost 199,000.

00:35:31.200 And they won't even acknowledge it.

00:35:33.620 No, because they're progressives.

00:35:36.840 And they have to, in their own mind, show how progressive they are by basically having open borders.

00:35:44.240 They are talking now, of course.

00:35:46.760 You've heard Mark Miller, the immigration minister, over the last few months talk about how much they're cutting back on immigration.

00:35:52.460 They're really reigning in.

00:35:53.640 They're not.

00:35:54.860 They will maybe cut back the numbers by about 18 percent.

00:36:00.140 After doubling them.

00:36:02.920 After, well, after doubling permanent residency.

00:36:06.400 But the other stuff, it went up, what, six, eight times?

00:36:08.960 Yeah, exactly.

00:36:09.660 And we have, as they will admit themselves, there are 4.9 million people in Canada whose visas will expire between now and the end of next year.

00:36:20.080 And they have no plan.

00:36:22.220 They have no idea where those people are, much less any plan to make sure that they leave.

00:36:27.000 And their response every time you bring this up is, oh, no, we have every confidence that those people will leave on their honor.

00:36:34.380 The budget will balance itself.

00:36:37.300 Yeah, I mean, you'll sometimes hear people say, oh, like, well, we don't have exit controls, as if that's like, as if that sort of negates the complaint or negates the worry.

00:36:48.620 Like, well, we don't have any way to know when these people leave.

00:36:51.160 We'll just assume that they are.

00:36:52.300 Like, I mean, it's, I mean, yeah, the number of people that need to leave, and I mean, look, it's true that they're not cutting immigration except relative to their own heights.

00:37:05.500 But, I mean, they are projecting a smaller number, like a smaller population of Canadians by a little bit in the next couple of years, which is extraordinary for a liberal government.

00:37:18.080 I mean, how badly has this government screwed up immigration that it's now out there saying, well, we need a smaller Canada?

00:37:29.320 I mean, it's just mind-boggling.

00:37:33.060 And, I mean, 4.9 million people, I mean, I remember looking at this a while back, like, that's a significant portion of the international flights that go in and out of Canada in a year.

00:37:44.680 I mean, that would drive up airfares just trying to, all those people trying to go home.

00:37:49.860 This is, it's a disaster.

00:37:52.440 And I'm so sick, sorry to kind of go off here, but, like, I'm so sick of hearing about this immigration backlash that we're supposedly seeing in Canada.

00:38:03.700 Oh, people are turning against immigrants.

00:38:05.500 They're blaming immigrants for, you know, housing.

00:38:07.660 They're not.

00:38:10.840 It's a backlash against immigration policy.

00:38:13.880 The idea of immigration was never that the ideal number was infinity.

00:38:19.340 That's why we had limits.

00:38:20.500 And they bollocks it up.

00:38:22.920 And Trudeau won't leave.

00:38:26.100 You know, we're building enough new homes in Canada every year for under 300,000 people.

00:38:33.700 And the federal government is letting in 1.3 million.

00:38:37.800 What's that going to do with the housing price?

00:38:39.800 It's insane what they're doing.

00:38:42.220 And I'm not anti-immigrant, but I am pro-math.

00:38:46.120 And, you know, if you look at this, it just makes no sense.

00:38:51.680 I looked at the numbers yesterday when StatsCan came out with housing starts across the country.

00:38:59.540 Alberta has the second highest number of housing starts, although we have the fourth highest population.

00:39:05.640 And Quebec is below us. 0.59

00:39:09.620 BC is below us. 1.00

00:39:10.860 Ontario is only marginally above us.

00:39:13.140 I mean, we have 45,000 housing starts.

00:39:15.960 Ontario is going to have 81,000 this year.

00:39:17.920 And Ontario has four times Alberta's population.

00:39:20.880 And the numbers in Ontario are cratering.

00:39:23.500 Yeah.

00:39:24.000 Yeah.

00:39:24.260 It's brutal.

00:39:25.200 Yeah.

00:39:25.660 Yeah.

00:39:25.960 It's awful.

00:39:26.740 And this is – so that's not just immigrants.

00:39:29.520 Of course, I mean, if it was just immigrants overwhelming the system, the system would still be producing a lot more houses. 1.00

00:39:35.620 But if you take a look, for instance, at the suburbs around Toronto, the cost that developers have to pay to municipalities just for the permission to build a house is somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000 per house.

00:39:52.000 So you've got to know that you're going to have a huge demand if you're going to risk that kind of money.

00:39:57.980 And so there's lots wrong with the housing market, but the liberals took this flawed housing market and poured gasoline on it with all of the numbers that they've been in.

00:40:09.980 It's interesting you said you're not anti-immigrant but pro-math.

00:40:13.120 I was interviewing Pierre Polyev back at the beginning of September, and that's what he said.

00:40:17.840 And he said it in scrums with the media as well.

00:40:20.180 Well, somebody asked him about his – he said, well, I'm going to come up with a formula that looks at how many houses we're building, how many doctors we have, the capacity in our health system.

00:40:31.900 We'll come up with a way, you know, to set a proper immigration target.

00:40:36.500 And there's some comment about him being anti-immigrant.

00:40:39.440 He said, no, this is pro-math.

00:40:41.240 Like, you just – you can't do it.

00:40:43.600 Well, this is the whole idea.

00:40:44.500 This is why we had targets.

00:40:45.960 I mean, it's not like target – the immigration targets or quotas were some kind of conservative perversion.

00:40:54.500 I mean, this is what immigration policy is.

00:40:57.680 They just completely lost control of it.

00:40:59.980 And we were supposed to believe that Sean Fraser resigning on Sunday was some kind of crippling loss to the liberals.

00:41:08.660 I mean, I don't want to blame – I'm not going to blame Sean Fraser for the entire immigration debacle. 0.99

00:41:13.060 But for heaven's sake, I mean, he'll wear that for the rest of his career, or he should.

00:41:19.180 You know, we used to have a prime minister that would lower immigration levels when the unemployment rate went up. 0.76

00:41:25.640 It must have been a horrible racist. 0.88

00:41:27.180 His name was Pierre Trudeau. 0.97

00:41:28.580 Exactly.

00:41:29.500 Exactly.

00:41:29.860 You know, and if you have – speaking of Sean Fraser, if you have a minor league third-line winger who suddenly decides to retire from the game, I'm not quite sure whether your favorite NHL hockey team cares.

00:41:49.080 Yeah.

00:41:49.260 Well, I mean, the first thing – what is the first thing that people always say about Sean Fraser?

00:41:54.640 It's that he's a good communicator, and that's, to me, just – that's everything about the liberals.

00:42:02.020 You know, there were – supposedly the liberals were upset with Christian Freeland for not being able to communicate the economic policies well enough.

00:42:08.960 I mean, they do not learn – I mean, she's not a good communicator. 0.99

00:42:13.300 Oh, she's horrible.

00:42:14.420 But neither is Justin Trudeau.

00:42:16.140 He's just – he's just gotten away with – he's just bamboozled people.

00:42:22.680 He's now started to wear on people's nerves.

00:42:24.860 Oh, yeah, just a little bit, yeah.

00:42:26.580 For exactly who he was in 2015.

00:42:29.700 Exactly who I always saw him to be, yeah.

00:42:31.940 Yeah, exactly.

00:42:32.840 Exactly.

00:42:34.080 It's funny.

00:42:34.940 I was posting some stuff online about – oh, it was our front page at The Sun the other day.

00:42:40.480 The headline was, It's Trudeauver, and I had people saying to me, wow, it's finally good of the mainstream media to notice that Trudeau's a problem.

00:42:51.280 And I thought, I take it you've never read any of our publications.

00:42:56.600 Let's talk about Pierre Polyev, because polls would say he's going to win.

00:43:01.640 I don't see how that changes.

00:43:03.440 He's going to win handily.

00:43:05.340 We just don't know when the election's going to be.

00:43:07.340 Do you see him as having the strength and ability to turn around so much of what is wrong?

00:43:14.700 And I'll start with your thoughts on can he handle Trump and the tariff threats?

00:43:20.640 And we know that if we do fix the border, there will be something else that Trump demands.

00:43:25.740 And it may be crazy, or it might be just something that we should be doing and have promised to do like NATO.

00:43:31.340 But we know there will be something else.

00:43:33.400 Can Pierre Polyev handle Donald Trump, Lauren?

00:43:37.340 Yeah, better than Trudeau.

00:43:40.600 I mean, is he going to be the world's whiz-bang at dealing with Donald Trump?

00:43:45.140 I don't know that, but he's going to be better at doing it than Justin Trudeau is, because he's a pragmatist.

00:43:53.820 He's more realistic than, yes, he's got lots of strong ideological ideas, but he is more of a pragmatist than Trudeau ever was.

00:44:03.860 Trudeau is an airy-fairy, pie-in-the-sky, artsy type of guy, and that's never changed.

00:44:11.760 That's why their wokeism with the liberals has done them in, because they don't know how to do anything practical.

00:44:18.840 And my hope is that Polyev at least listens to people.

00:44:22.980 For instance, we've been hearing in our business that for about two years, people at Immigration Canada were telling the liberals, you can't do this.

00:44:34.580 You simply cannot let this many people in.

00:44:37.680 And they have ignored them.

00:44:41.480 Well, those same people may be telling Polyev that, too, and at least I think he would listen to them.

00:44:48.320 So do I think he's going to do better than Trudeau?

00:44:51.620 Yes.

00:44:52.980 Is he going to be the answer to everything?

00:44:54.840 I don't know.

00:44:56.300 Put not your trust in princes is my view.

00:44:58.640 But it was back in April that Justin Trudeau himself said, beginning of April, he said, we're bringing in people faster than we can absorb.

00:45:08.680 And I thought, wow, if only you knew someone that could do something about it.

00:45:12.600 And it took him until, what, November to announce that he was doing something about it.

00:45:17.860 And those announcements won't take effect for quite some time.

00:45:21.320 Your thoughts, Chris, on Polyev and the job ahead of him and whether he's up to it.

00:45:28.940 I think my impression of Trump with respect to Canada is that he actually understands how important the relationship is trade-wise.

00:45:41.560 I mean, if you look at – like, Trudeau is someone who, if he was an American politician, I feel like Trump would have given a nickname and just –

00:45:52.340 Like governor of Canada?

00:45:54.480 Well, okay.

00:45:55.900 But see, to me, that seemed really all pretty much in good fun.

00:46:00.820 That was my impression.

00:46:02.460 Like, that whole thing about the 51st state comment at the dinner, I mean, I think that was clearly a joke.

00:46:09.100 Only Canadians would have, you know, clutched their pearls and said, oh, my God, he actually wants to annex us. 0.61

00:46:15.580 You know, I don't think that's what it is.

00:46:17.740 But now he's just continuing to have fun with it by mocking him on social media.

00:46:21.100 He's beginning to have fun with it.

00:46:21.640 But when he wants to be mean-spirited and brutal, he's mean-spirited and brutal.

00:46:26.700 I don't get that from, you know, as much as I don't think him and Trudeau have anything in common.

00:46:35.260 I don't get any – I don't get real antipathy from Trump towards Trudeau.

00:46:41.860 And I suspect that that will transfer over to Polyev.

00:46:44.680 Like, I – you know, I think personal relationships are definitely very important for Trump.

00:46:50.040 Like, you need to kiss the ring, so to speak.

00:46:54.160 Like, hopefully as – not as unhumiliatingly as possible.

00:47:00.200 But I don't see any reason why Polyev can't at least be as good, be a wash. 0.96

00:47:08.400 And I could see lots of reasons why it would be better because, as Lawrence says, he's willing to take on – he's willing to actually – well, he believes that the problems that Trump sees actually exist, whereas Trudeau clearly just thinks they're fantasies that he has to deal with with a communication strategy.

00:47:25.860 I'll give you one practical example of the liberals' inability to deal with real issues.

00:47:29.980 In the fall fiscal update on Monday, they said they were going to spend $1.3 billion on border security.

00:47:37.280 That would be a drop in the bucket.

00:47:39.400 But –

00:47:40.140 Over six years.

00:47:41.880 But, yes.

00:47:42.480 But then it turns out it's over six years and it's all backloaded.

00:47:46.320 It's not this year and next year.

00:47:48.260 It starts off in 2026 and goes up from there.

00:47:51.160 Well, they don't plan to do that.

00:47:52.900 Suddenly they're worried about the budget.

00:47:54.080 Yeah, exactly.

00:47:55.580 But at the same time, in the same fiscal update, they said this year and next, they're going to spend $600 million confiscating long guns from law-abiding Canadian gun owners.

00:48:10.780 So they still haven't broken out of their woke, progressive mentality and looked at the real world.

00:48:19.460 If you don't do something that satisfies the American administration, that we're doing the best we can to prevent illegal immigrants from going to the states, they're going to put tariffs on that, as you said early on in this, Brian, shave several points off of our GDP. 0.96

00:48:39.920 If you don't confiscate law-abiding gun owners' guns, what are the Americans going to do?

00:48:45.240 They're going to laugh at you.

00:48:46.460 But other than that, it's not going to cost anything.

00:48:48.320 But that's a higher priority for these guys than dealing with the border issue.

00:48:53.800 Well, I mean, Canadians have a border issue, too, not least with guns.

00:48:58.020 You know, the vast majority of guns used in crime in Canada come across the border from the United States.

00:49:04.100 And, you know, it feels like twice a year we get an announcement from the federal government saying we're going to crack down on this, and nothing ever happens.

00:49:14.620 Maybe that's a better place to spend $600 million.

00:49:16.900 Yeah, I was going to say, that'd be a better spot for that $600 million.

00:49:20.580 But, Lauren, I don't know why you think we would have any fiscal room to spend any money on the border.

00:49:26.400 Do you know how tight this budget is?

00:49:28.060 I mean, sure, we're increasing spending up from $513 to $539 million, or billion.

00:49:37.700 So we're only increasing spending by $36 billion.

00:49:41.060 Where do you think we're going to find money for border security or anything else?

00:49:49.100 That's a question.

00:49:49.940 I thought that was a statement.

00:49:52.780 I agree.

00:49:53.600 So even when they know they're in trouble, they cannot do the smart, practical, grown-up thing.

00:50:03.640 They simply can't.

00:50:04.720 It's not in their DNA to act like a government.

00:50:09.060 You know, you think it's a problem with the civil servants working from home still.

00:50:12.400 Well, I think a lot of these ministers are just phoning it in, too.

00:50:17.080 There really isn't a practical grasp on what the major issues are and how.

00:50:23.080 So even if you're going to deal with them like progressives do, and I'm going to disagree with a lot of that,

00:50:30.400 you're at least going to do something that is practical.

00:50:33.860 You can see the effects of it.

00:50:35.340 These guys have increased federal spending from $281 billion when they came in in 2015 to $539 billion.

00:50:43.460 It's a 92% increase in nominal spending.

00:50:47.800 But our services are 92% better.

00:50:51.200 Yeah, that's my point.

00:50:52.500 You know, what do you see for that extra 92%? 0.96

00:50:57.460 It's bizarre.

00:50:59.280 Well, this week has proven the adage that all political columnists like to pull out at some point,

00:51:05.580 and that is the quote attributed to Harold McMillan,

00:51:08.700 events, dear boys, events.

00:51:11.260 This was definitely an eventful week, and we're probably going to see more in the days and weeks to come.

00:51:17.580 Lauren Gunter, Chris Selle, thanks so much for the time today.

00:51:21.000 You bet.

00:51:21.780 Thanks, Brian.

00:51:22.940 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:51:25.220 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:51:26.960 This episode was produced by Andre Pru.

00:51:28.860 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:51:30.560 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

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00:51:45.380 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

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00:51:55.480 I'll see you next time.

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Full Comment - December 23, 2024

Trudeau’s taking you all down with him

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