Juno News - Canada gets NOTHING from G7 talks

00:00:00.000 And welcome to Straight Up.

00:00:07.480 I am your host, Mark Petroni.

00:00:08.960 Thank you for tuning in.

00:00:10.440 While you talk about avoiding the elephant in the room,

00:00:13.440 Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand failed to raise the issue of either trade

00:00:17.800 or the strained relations with the United States

00:00:20.600 when she had the chance in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

00:00:26.200 Canada hosted the G7 Foreign Affairs meeting this week.

00:00:30.000 In Niagara-on-the-Lake.

00:00:31.800 And she says the critical subject just never came up.

00:00:35.260 One-on-one face-to-face opportunity with an American counterpart.

00:00:39.320 And you didn't take that chance to try to have a conversation

00:00:41.720 about resuming trade talks when so much of the Canadian economy is relying on it.

00:00:46.400 I can confirm that I'm representing Canada's interests as the Foreign Minister.

00:00:52.420 And I maintained Canadian interests and the Canadian position on a number of very serious issues

00:01:02.800 that represent the interests of Canadians.

00:01:06.420 But none of those issues involve trade or our strained relations with the United States.

00:01:11.020 The issue did come up on CBC's Power and Politics.

00:01:14.440 Marco Rubio was in Niagara-on-the-Lake today.

00:01:17.280 Nobody's talking about the fact that we didn't push him on why we can't get back to the table

00:01:22.080 on negotiating a deal with the United States.

00:01:24.480 Minister Anand was asked about it and she said,

00:01:26.460 I didn't bring it up because it's somebody else's file.

00:01:28.740 We should be talking about that.

00:01:29.900 That's an important opportunity for us to try to get back to the table.

00:01:33.140 And yet we're talking about Pierre Polyev and we're talking about announcements of lists

00:01:37.400 of stuff that won't get nailed for 15 years.

00:01:39.880 Okay, but on that, I mean, should the Foreign Affairs Minister be talking to the Secretary

00:01:43.160 of State on Trade when Ambassador Hillman is talking to Jameson Greer,

00:01:47.240 Howard Lutnick and Don LeBlanc, Donald Trump and Mark Carney are talking like,

00:01:50.820 she'd get in trouble with this Prime Minister, wouldn't she?

00:01:53.800 You know, and Rubio might too.

00:01:55.700 I would say if we take a Team Canada approach and if we encourage people to talk across the

00:02:00.820 border to anybody they possibly can about the importance of the relationship,

00:02:04.600 then you take every opportunity you possibly can to talk about the importance of the relationship.

00:02:08.940 You don't say, I didn't bring it up at all.

00:02:11.440 One question remains, at least from my vantage point, did the Prime Minister order

00:02:15.500 his Foreign Affairs Minister to steer clear of the trade talk with Rubio or was it simply

00:02:20.860 her idea to avoid that sensitive topic?

00:02:23.960 Jocelyn Bamford will be joining us a little later on to talk about that.

00:02:27.540 Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev is mocking the legacy media's silence on the issue

00:02:33.440 of internal squabbling over the federal budget in the Liberal Caucus.

00:02:38.360 As we reported on this show, a Liberal backbencher, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith,

00:02:43.060 has publicly attacked his own government's budget as falling short when it comes to climate investments.

00:02:49.340 Stalled climate action, cutting tree planting, moving away from an emissions gap, winding down

00:02:54.740 greener homes, no new money for climate action. On housing, it falls short of these specific

00:03:00.220 promises in our platform, and it unfortunately falls well short, well short of the wartime effort

00:03:05.660 that many of us thought we'd deliver. The budget adds $140 billion in new spending over five years,

00:03:11.240 $90 billion net after savings, and only 36% of the net new spending is capital.

00:03:16.040 My kids shouldn't pay for today's military or for me to save $400 of income taxes.

00:03:21.320 The media has largely ignored that controversy, preferring to focus their attention

00:03:26.100 on Pierre Polyev's leadership style and the recent floor-crossing involving Chris D'Entremont.

00:03:32.660 Here is Polyev sarcastically addressing the media's lack of coverage on the grumbling in Kearney's own

00:03:38.300 caucus.

00:03:38.700 When you have a Liberal MP attacking the costly credit card budget that Mr. Kearney has put forward,

00:03:45.980 then we see turmoil in the Liberals. And I know that there will be wall-to-wall coverage on CTV

00:03:51.420 of this turmoil, of a Liberal MP criticizing his own budget days before the vote. I know you'll be,

00:03:57.500 you're camped outside his office right now, waiting to get comment from him. I know you've been chasing

00:04:02.460 Mark Kearney down hallways to find out what he has to say. I mean, it's just been the relentless

00:04:08.140 coverage that you will have of this dissent within the Liberal Party.

00:04:12.060 Yeah, there was none of that. Polyev also pointed out the harsh criticism leveled against the Liberals

00:04:17.980 by none other than Chris D'Entremont, who joined Kearney's team a mere six months after the election.

00:04:24.300 Well, public support for immigration may be falling in Canada, but one Liberal MP says,

00:04:29.820 it's time to grant federal aid and permanent residency to foreign students and migrant workers.

00:04:36.300 As reported by Black Locks reporter MP Anandeep Sodhi, Brampton Centre has sponsored a House of

00:04:43.180 Commons petition calling on Canada to consider granting permanent residency to more than 3 million

00:04:50.140 foreigners in Canada on valid or expired temporary permits. It states, Canada is home to hundreds of

00:04:58.700 thousands of temporary residents, including international students, foreign workers, and people awaiting

00:05:05.340 residency who have made real and economic contributions, real social and economic contributions, but now

00:05:13.260 face deep uncertainty, declining mental health, and limited options to secure their status.

00:05:21.020 A poll done by Nanos Research for the Globe and Mail found three out of four Canadians want cuts to

00:05:27.340 immigration and a steep decline in the numbers who used to support immigration in Canada.

00:05:35.100 And we are joined by Jocelyn Bamford, founder of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and

00:05:40.140 Businesses of Canada and a good friend of my radio show. Had her on many times and happy to chat with her

00:05:46.700 once again. Welcome, Jocelyn. Thanks for having me, Mark. Always a fun time.

00:05:52.220 So imagine, put yourself in the shoes of Anita Anand, our Foreign Affairs Minister. You're in the room

00:05:57.820 with Marco Rubio. You've got all these outstanding issues that you can raise with him, but you don't.

00:06:03.180 You talk about other stuff, other countries, other issues. What do you suppose she was thinking here

00:06:08.140 when she just decided to avoid the elephant in the room? Well, I'm thinking what I always thought. I don't

00:06:14.140 think the Canadians want to deal with the United States and they've demonstrated that with every

00:06:19.980 activity and interaction that they do. And they don't try to find common ground, which is typically

00:06:26.460 what you do when you're negotiating or interacting with a different country. And they're so politically

00:06:33.100 wed to their ideologies that they can't even see their way forward to try and find some common ground.

00:06:41.180 So we negotiate a deal. I mean, clearly a financial deal with the U.S. is not top of mind to them,

00:06:49.260 although it's top of mind for probably every Canadian manufacturer that you encounter here in Canada.

00:06:56.860 And it's inexplicable. So the only rationale I could possibly think of is they don't want to trade deal

00:07:05.020 with the United States because if they do, who are they going to run against? And they've already

00:07:10.300 signaled that they want closer ties to communist China. And I think they're doing everything to 0.70

00:07:17.100 support that that's the way that they're going. Yeah. And you believe, if I'm correct,

00:07:23.500 that they're sabotaging their own trade talks because they're looking for any pretext,

00:07:27.820 any excuse they can to cozy up to communist China. Is that right? Well, what other conclusion could we

00:07:34.540 possibly come to? It's, again, inexplicable that they haven't got a deal with our largest customer,

00:07:43.020 our closest ally and neighbor. So I can't imagine that that wouldn't be top priority to them. Again,

00:07:51.100 if you were a business person and you had one customer that had 76% of your business and that

00:07:57.980 customer wasn't too pleased with you, what would be the first thing you would do? You would sit down with

00:08:03.180 that customer and try and figure out how you make them happy and come up with a deal. But we're not

00:08:08.860 seeing any movement to that. And I think a deal also takes off the table. If there is an election

00:08:18.220 coming up from the results of the budget, not passing again, they're going to want to use the

00:08:23.740 same strategy, which is running against Trump. So if they have a trade deal, that's not going to be

00:08:29.100 a vehicle that's available to them. So, you know, I can't figure out any other rationale for this.

00:08:37.260 It just makes literally no sense to me. Like we are literally nowhere right now

00:08:42.060 in terms of trade talks. They're not going on. I mean, you would think that if you have a guy like

00:08:48.860 Rubio in the room with you that, you know, he put the bug in his ear, you know, we'd really like to get

00:08:53.260 back to discussions. Marco Rubio was very much involved in the trade talks. So it's not like

00:09:01.980 he was, you know, that's not his file. And yet somehow in her mind, well, I can't raise this

00:09:07.260 issue with him. It doesn't make any sense. You have access to this guy, you know, take advantage of it

00:09:12.140 for crying out loud. I don't think he would hold it against you, to be honest with you. I think,

00:09:16.380 you know, he would talk to you about it. What do you think?

00:09:18.460 Yeah, I think we are unarmed going down to deal with the United States. I don't think we have the

00:09:25.660 right people in the right positions that can negotiate a deal. I think you take a business

00:09:30.220 person and you take somebody that's ideologically aligned with the United States negotiating team.

00:09:38.780 And that's how you get a deal. And that's what, again, you know, we've talked about this in the past,

00:09:43.740 the former Prime Minister Harper tapped Gary Dewar, who was an NDP former premier, to go and negotiate

00:09:55.180 a deal with the United States. And that's how we got an exemption for Canada. It was a brilliant

00:10:01.020 strategy. And we should be utilizing the same strategy to get a deal with the United States.

00:10:07.580 Where are you on the budget? I mean, I know you're not a big fan of this budget. I don't know too many

00:10:13.100 people who are, but politically speaking, we spoke about it a little bit earlier.

00:10:19.420 Do you think it's possible that it won't pass? In fact, this would be a confidence motion that

00:10:26.540 fails and we end up back in another election?

00:10:30.300 Yeah, I'm not thinking that that's a huge possibility. I mean, you never know what's going to happen,

00:10:36.780 but I don't think that the Conservative Party is particularly well-organized enough to go into

00:10:43.980 another election. There's still the leadership review that has to happen. And I think that the

00:10:50.060 polls are too close for the Liberals to want to go to another election. But who knows? You never know

00:10:58.700 what's going to happen in the 13th hour. And it's always a possibility. But certainly my concern is

00:11:08.540 the number of the Liberals focus, instead of coming to some joint policy agreement, their strategy is

00:11:19.180 just to try and get enough people and the Conservative Party to cross the floor so that they don't have to

00:11:24.540 go to an election or go to the Canadian public to ask them their opinion. So it seems to me that there's

00:11:32.380 a lot of underhanded tactics going on as they continue, I'm sure, to try and recruit people

00:11:40.700 to cross the floor so they get their majority one way or the other.

00:11:45.260 Yeah. Meantime, you have the media beating the drum that everybody hates Pierre Polyev and that the

00:11:50.860 Tory caucus is a cesspool of rage and grumbling. And that's why it was kind of amusing to hear Pierre

00:12:00.700 Polyev kind of throw it back in the face of the media and mock them over their silence on the fact 0.60

00:12:07.900 that Nate Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP, has come out publicly and blasted the budget on a number of

00:12:13.980 different fronts. And yet, is that story being covered? Do you think that would be even more important

00:12:19.980 because it's the government caucus that is apparently fractured over the lack of money,

00:12:26.540 you know, going into these green initiatives with other people like Stephen Gilbo allegedly not happy

00:12:31.260 and Wilkinson not happy? You know, what did you make of that when Pierre Polyev talked to the media

00:12:39.660 about that issue? Yeah, it is just astonishing the way that the media has lost their way. And I'm

00:12:48.140 talking about the mainstream media. Thank goodness for independent media who provides another viewpoint

00:12:55.180 on issues that are coming forward. But it seems absolutely insane the way that the mainstream media

00:13:04.140 just becomes the PR arm of the Liberal Party. And, you know, in talking to a CBC reporter before the last

00:13:13.260 election, he wanted to do a story on the impact on small to medium size of business in this country.

00:13:20.460 And I had said to him, I didn't think his political overlords would ever let the story see the light

00:13:28.620 of day. And of course, they didn't. And I said to him, when you were in journalism school at Carleton,

00:13:34.620 did you ever think, did you think you were going to be telling the big stories that Canadian and people

00:13:40.220 needed to know and exposing corruption and fraud? Or did you think you were just going to be a public

00:13:46.940 affairs arm of the Liberal government? And, you know, we need to call them out. We need to call

00:13:53.580 them out because they clearly have no shame. But that's what happens when you fund organizations,

00:14:02.620 you fund organizations and they become beholden to you. And that is why many business associations in

00:14:08.780 Canada have lost the voice of business and have just become the cheerleaders for the Liberal Party,

00:14:16.700 because the Liberal Party writes a bunch of checks to a bunch of different business associations. And

00:14:21.980 in exchange for that, they get support. So if you're belonging to a business association and you're

00:14:29.180 paying your hard earned money, you should be asking, one, do they take money from government?

00:14:36.300 And two, how much of the money that you write them a check goes to their bureaucracy,

00:14:44.060 as opposed to getting the issues out in front of politicians that need to be exposed so that we can

00:14:53.180 grow business prosperity and jobs in Canada? That's a question that you should ask every business

00:14:59.420 association. And if they're taking money from government, I'm going to tell you that probably

00:15:05.100 siding more with the government than they are with issues that are important to your business.

00:15:11.020 Yeah. And consider Paul Yev's election campaign and promises, you know, vowing to cut 10 billion from

00:15:17.660 the amount of money that the government spends on consultants. I think we're up to $25 billion,

00:15:23.020 just an astonishing amount of money going out to consultants, especially when you hired, you know,

00:15:29.100 so many civil servants, you know, to blow up the ranks of the public service in Canada,

00:15:36.860 people that we probably didn't need. And so, you know, you have to ask yourself,

00:15:42.540 you know, if the media has to choose, it's an easy choice for them to make if they're looking for

00:15:47.420 self-interest, right? Because you've got Paul Yev saying he's going to cut media subsidies, you know,

00:15:52.460 cut all this money, going out to the consultants, you know, defund the CBC and counter that with the

00:15:58.940 government side, with the liberals saying, oh, we're going to give you more money, you know? So,

00:16:03.980 you know, these reporters, they're looking at the two sides and going, well, I know which way,

00:16:08.700 I know where my butter is, my bread is buttered.

00:16:11.180 It's the same with the NGOs, non-government organizations that take tens of thousands

00:16:18.780 of taxpayers' dollars, millions of taxpayers' dollars. And what do Canadians get in exchange

00:16:26.140 for that? And we've seen situations where NGOs fund charities and they turn around and fund other

00:16:32.940 charities. I mean, you could find this all out in about 10 minutes on Google by finding all of the

00:16:40.220 charities that donate to other charities. And why would a charity need to donate to another charity?

00:16:45.900 They should be focused on their purpose and not become, you know, pseudo money laundering

00:16:52.620 organizations and doing it with our tax dollars. If a charity is worthy, people will write checks from

00:17:04.540 their own pockets and the amount of voice fraud and abuse happening throughout these organizations.

00:17:12.140 And the fact that, again, you would think someone in the media would want to investigate all of this,

00:17:17.500 but they don't. They're not interested in it. So what we see is our taxpayers' dollars time and time

00:17:24.220 again wasted and funneled into areas that weren't originally intended to. And we have to take a look

00:17:32.620 at that because that is just absolutely unacceptable when Canadians are struggling to pay for gas and

00:17:44.140 groceries and take care of their families.

00:17:46.700 Yeah. Let's get back to Erskine Smith for a minute. He's expressed reservations. He's attacked

00:17:52.940 Kearney from the left, which I think benefits Kearney because he can try to look like the reasonable one,

00:17:57.820 you know, and pretend like, oh, well, don't worry. You know, I'm not, I'm not like those crazies. I can

00:18:03.020 keep a, you know, a, a leash. I could put a leash on some of these radical left, you know, environmental

00:18:11.820 nutjobs and caucus, you know, the Stephen Gilbos of the world and the Erskine Smiths of the world.

00:18:17.020 You know, he, he can then position himself as appearing to be the moderate. So in that respect,

00:18:22.300 you know, maybe all this is smoke and mirrors. What do you think?

00:18:25.340 Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, I don't think the current liberal government's forthright in

00:18:34.140 and what their plans are. Why do you have to have these special programs that get special approval?

00:18:46.860 Why won't you, wouldn't you just unleash a free enterprise and manufacturing and businesses to go

00:18:54.380 create by having across the board and, and easier regular red tape and regulations to get projects

00:19:02.300 moving? If you really wanted to ignite the economy in Canada, you would cut the red tape on everybody,

00:19:09.660 not just on the few handpicked projects that you've decided are a national interest.

00:19:16.940 There's so much that the liberal government has in their toolkit right now to unleash prosperity

00:19:24.540 and manufacturing. They could eliminate industrial carbon tax. They could get pipeline

00:19:31.180 projects through. They could reduce the red tape at the time it takes to get a project through. They

00:19:38.140 could benchmark what they have in the United States in terms of all of these metrics. And they don't

00:19:46.540 bother to do that. I mean, I could loan them an analysis from Queens University when we were looking at

00:19:54.940 either growing in Ontario or growing in the United States. Queens told us to grow in the United States.

00:20:01.500 So I, and they, they went through all the metrics from all the way from safety and security, crime

00:20:12.140 statistics, healthcare, education, uh, the cost of energy, uh, red tape. They went through entire metrics

00:20:21.660 and, you know, sitting right here and on my bookshelf in my plant channel, I'm happy to share that with

00:20:27.740 them, but they don't seem to want to, um, read through or understand that. And so there's a lot they could

00:20:33.820 do on their own, um, tariffs set aside to ignite the economy of Canada, but they don't seem very much

00:20:42.460 interested in doing that. They just want to pick their friends, their handpicked winners and their

00:20:49.340 losers, um, on their own because they believe that they're best to have the knowledge on what, how to

00:20:56.700 direct the economy, how to direct Canadians on how to live, what to think, um, where they get their 0.97

00:21:03.500 education. They want to control everything. And it's time Canadians recognize that and ask themselves

00:21:10.780 if they want to have their own liberty, or if they want to have a politician in Ottawa, some are not very

00:21:17.340 qualified to tell us how to live our lives. Yeah. When they pick winners, everybody else is the loser.

00:21:24.140 I think that's how that works out. You know, when they, they, they go with, uh, corporate welfare,

00:21:29.660 you know, throwing massive amounts of money at subsidizing companies that don't even need it,

00:21:36.460 you know, giant corporations. And then when the money, you know, fritters away or, or things change,

00:21:42.380 they're the first ones out the door. It's just, uh, sad. And we see it time and time again,

00:21:46.940 and these guys never learn. They never learn. You, you've seen it. Last word to you.

00:21:52.060 Absolutely. Yeah. We, we need to make sure that, um, we are in charge of the economy. Um, we can drive

00:22:03.020 prosperity better, especially people that have been doing it for years. If you took a group of business

00:22:11.180 owners in the manufacturing space and said, Hey, what do we need to do to ignite the economy? You would

00:22:18.220 have 10 things that they could do immediately that would have measurable outputs, but they don't want

00:22:24.220 to do that. Well, I don't know the last time they consulted with a small to medium size industry.

00:22:30.140 And remember 92% of all Canadians work for companies, a hundred people below. So, uh, you know,

00:22:37.740 our door is always open. We're happy to give advice, uh, to, for, uh, to ensure that the Canadian economy

00:22:45.180 grows, but they never reach out, um, to talk to us. And by the way, we would do that for free. We're

00:22:50.700 not going to charge them a big, huge consulting fee. If they want to find out how to ignite the economy,

00:22:57.340 we'll, we'll give them our ideas. Um, and we'll work with them, but, uh, we never get the chance.

00:23:02.940 No, they don't want to know what you have to say because they probably know that it'll run

00:23:08.940 counter and anything that they want to do. Thank you so much for coming on the show,

00:23:12.220 Jocelyn. My pleasure, Mark.

00:23:15.100 Jocelyn Bamford. And that is it for this edition of Straight Up. Appreciate you tuning in,

00:23:19.580 my friends. Let's do it again soon, shall we? We'll see you next time.

Juno News - November 13, 2025

Canada gets NOTHING from G7 talks

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