00:00:00.000He's open to the idea of negotiating a potash deal with the nation of Belarus if it comes to
00:00:12.320fruition. Could it supplant Canadian exports to the United States? Well, this post from Trump,
00:00:18.360the United States is working on a massive deal with respect to the purchase of potash from
00:00:23.600Belarus. The pricing would be substantially less than we currently are paying to Canada.
00:00:30.280Very good news for our farmers and ranchers. The online reaction from people like Premier
00:00:36.420Scott Moll of Saskatchewan was immediate. He wrote, more than 40 countries, Canada and its
00:00:43.180allies have sanctions against Belarus for supporting war criminal Putin's invasion
00:00:48.240of Ukraine. Buying blood potash from Belarus is supporting Russian aggression. Our guest today
00:00:56.140is former agriculture minister in the Harper government, Jerry Ritz, coming to us from St.
00:01:01.500Wahlberg, Saskatchewan. Welcome, Jerry. Always a pleasure, Mark. Should we be concerned about talk
00:01:07.040of a potash deal between the Trump administration and the country of Belarus? We've heard the
00:01:13.060leadership of Belarus come out and say, well, we don't have the potash to deliver to the United
00:01:17.860States anyway, but just the same, the fact that he is trying to find an alternative source of potash,
00:01:24.860should we be concerned? Well, I think it's just Trump being Trump. He's probably looking for an
00:01:29.640associate membership, much like Carney did in Europe, and it won't go anywhere either. Belarus
00:01:34.740is already saying they don't have the capacity to supply that. It would take them seven to 10 years
00:01:39.320to develop more mining and so on to be able to handle that American demand. At the same time,
00:01:45.600anybody that I've talked to in the fertilizer industry in the U.S. is saying they're quite
00:01:49.960happy with Canadian content. The price is down right now. They've got access to it. It's just
00:01:55.260a rail car away. So I don't think anything's going to come of that. Well, let me post one
00:02:02.520of my posts on Axe. Canadians shouldn't be surprised by Trump's move to make a potash
00:02:09.400deal with Belarus, Premier Doug Ford, called potash one of the most powerful tools, and
00:02:16.980U.S. agriculture would be dead overnight if supplies were restricted.
00:02:22.240Trump apparently heard the threat, or may have heard it.
00:02:25.240I mean, is this the kind of thing that's going to push Trump to do an end run around Canadian
00:02:31.860exports in order to basically take away the possible threat that we will cut these commodities
00:02:38.900off from the united states well ford's always busy cutting somebody else's commodity off i mean he's0.87
00:02:44.020gotta he's gotta realize the dumbest thing he's doing is bringing a knife to a trump gunfight um0.98
00:02:49.620he's completely outclassed and outmaneuvered before he even finishes you know yapping off0.99
00:02:55.000about something it's all about oil and and potash and energy and so on uh nothing that
00:03:00.940that ontario is going to put on the line so you know he just gotta sit back and be quiet
00:03:06.340what he's doing and saying is not helpful at this point?
00:03:10.180Yeah, and he's, I mean, Trump has also made a deal with Venezuela for oil. And Chevron has
00:03:16.580jumped in and began investing in that country after years of basically being shut out of
00:03:23.780this huge supplier of oil, potentially. And Venezuela, as you know, has the same type of
00:03:30.260heavy oil that Alberta supplies and Saskatchewan supplies, I believe, through its oil sands.
00:03:36.340I mean, you would think that our premiers and our prime minister would understand how this guy in the United States thinks.
00:03:46.220And, you know, for every move we make, as far as elbows up goes, we get smashed in the mouth.
00:03:53.200You know, and yet they keep trying the same failed strategy over and over again.
00:03:59.000Does any of this make sense to you?0.99
00:04:00.940Well, when you got your elbows in the air, you're not covering your own ass.0.98
00:04:03.360so trump is just great at taking a kick at it and and he's very good at it i remember all of0.98
00:04:10.180the fuss when he talked about greenland and what needed to be done there he just signed a deal
00:04:13.800with denmark and greenland and so on so he gets what he wants uh either roundabout or as a
00:04:19.700bulldozer either way he'll he'll operate either way but at the end of the day i mean what love
00:04:24.260him or hate him at the end of the day he's still the strongest economy in the world uh he's going
00:04:28.200sit down with with china in the next little while i understand and what he will do with china will
00:04:33.720make us look like we're a colony of china at this point we carney has signed on to us um you know
00:04:39.800he did go after steel and aluminum that was sneaking through canada from china on his way0.55
00:04:44.840into the us he has outlawed any chinese evs from going south you know he's he's doing what he can0.73
00:04:50.760to protect his own economy he's brought back a lot of industry to the states and had taiwanese0.97
00:04:56.760computer chips being built in the states now instead of in taiwan simply because of the the
00:05:01.900economic roadblocks i'll call them that he's that he's tossed up in place um tariffs seem to be
00:05:07.420serving him well he's uh you know his economy is growing ours is stagnant at best if not it's it's
00:05:13.260negative so you know we can take some lessons i i wouldn't want to mimic what he's doing but
00:05:18.880certainly we can take some lessons and and not fall into the pit traps that he's laying in front
00:05:23.360of us. I don't think we can mimic what he's doing because you can only do what Trump does when you've
00:05:29.880got a massive consumer market the size of America's, which everybody wants. And people have
00:05:36.540pointed that out as we make a deal for, you know, associate member status of the EU, exactly what
00:05:44.960that means. Nobody seems to know, including the people at the EU. I guess that all has to be
00:05:49.660negotiated but it didn't fly you know there's a lot of states came forward just said right away
00:05:55.480there's no such thing and we're not about to not about to entertain that I mean if that was the
00:06:00.140case that would have been great Britain's out when they kept their own monetary policy and joined in
00:06:04.160they'd have been an associate member so you know I mean he's got all these grandiose schemes all
00:06:09.800of it comes back to this new world order that he talks these middle powers yes the most part have
00:06:15.920already made an economic deal with Trump directly. So I think, you know, he's got a crowd of one
00:06:23.480that agrees with what he's doing. Yeah, I mean, the fact that this has now kind of turned into
00:06:29.420a bit of a nothing burger, as far as the EU goes, I mean, will that have an impact on Carney's
00:06:36.360ability to push his agenda forward? He's got a majority government now. And we can all call that,
00:06:44.280a majority that wasn't really voted on by the people of this country. It was a manufactured
00:06:51.600majority. But to what degree is his ability to push forward this globalist agenda, for lack of
00:06:59.140a better word, is he going to be able to continue doing that in light of the pushback on a number
00:07:05.120of these files, whether it's the bridge or whether it's the EU stuff, the condo bailout?
00:07:12.480A lot of these things have not really panned out, but apparently we are told he still maintains a great deal of support from the Canadian people.
00:08:06.220Nobody gave a damn. So I think his 15 minutes of fame are over. This whole idea that he's a global banker that understands politics has fallen flat. You know, he'd best stay home and start to look at Canada's GDP instead of trying to prop up, you know, a lot of other things.
00:08:25.380I mean, we just signed a backstop for Ukraine for the next hundred years.
00:09:24.520to our military and that's not a bad thing in and of itself but it all seems to be centered around0.59
00:09:29.080ukraine um all the drones all of the training that we're doing and so on we've got a nato
00:09:33.960training site that's training ukrainian pilots they're not nato so he's already pushing the
00:09:38.840envelope in in such a way that is going to bring you know future problems on canada uh as you were
00:09:46.280just saying you know we've signed on to backstop all of these loans that are going to come to that
00:09:51.640that, you know, Zelensky's not going to sell any of his homes or his airplanes to pay these things
00:09:56.580off. He's just going to rely on us to do it. And that's going to put my grandkids even more at risk
00:10:01.520with what they're going to have to pony up to keep this country afloat.
00:10:05.520Yeah, it's amazing. And we're maybe going to get a glimpse of that when there's a fiscal update
00:10:10.340this fall, but it's not going to be pretty. What other issues are you looking at? Because I know
00:10:15.020you've got a keen eye on events in this country.
00:10:18.280Well, there's a number of issues. You know, the great big investment summit that was just held in Toronto, again, to much unfair. Not one deal came out of that. It takes time, but these were signed on the dotted line ready deals. I know Saskatchewan took their fair share down. They did talk about Bell expanding the AI footprint near Regina, but that was done before this function. They used it as a stage to launch it.
00:10:44.320But, you know, I mean, there's mines, there's all kinds of things ready to go, and not one deal was signed. The part I found most telling was of the 60 or so potential investors that were there, over half were U.S. At the same time, the only announcement that came out of it was we're going to somehow privatize our airports, and somehow that'll be better.
00:11:05.100It won't save anybody any money, but somehow it'll be better.
00:11:08.820So, you know, whether you agree with the 1992 model, certainly it needs some updating.
00:11:12.960But at the end of the day, all this talk about drawing all this money into Canada, it's not happening.
00:11:19.540Insolvencies are at record highs, never seen before.
00:11:23.420And we haven't even hit the mortgage housing crisis that's coming here very quickly.
00:11:27.700you know there's a lot of mortgages coming due into the early quarters of next year that are
00:11:32.980going to see probably mortgage rates at five and six percent that will push most of these people
00:11:37.880right out of that house you know they all they all bought in with no money down and as they were
00:11:42.240told to do over the over the years leading up to it and there's no way to hang on to that house
00:11:46.760one thing i do want to ask you about because uh stephen harper of course made a speech at that
00:11:53.320very economic summit that you were referring to. And some were very quick to suggest that he was
00:12:01.660now Carney's wingman, that he was on Team Carney. And that didn't sit well with some conservatives
00:12:09.140who thought, what's he doing? Is this a business decision on the part of the former prime minister?
00:12:14.880It just seemed that he was a little too cozy with a liberal prime minister. Do you want to weigh in
00:12:22.700on that? Well, if you looked at his whole speech and didn't look at it through the lens that he's
00:12:28.780Carney's buddy, he said some very good things and pointed out some of the transgressions of the
00:12:36.600Carney investment strategy in that speech. But of course, the media just cherry-picked at certain
00:12:41.460things that made it look like he was going to abolish Carney's apple. I don't think he did
00:12:46.400that at all. I think he pointed out the reality of the situation and a lot of the pitfalls that
00:12:51.720that we're looking at if we don't do this right.
00:13:19.800But at the end of the day, it's not good for the country and Canadians.
00:13:23.860I'm just looking at the benefit of the Conservative Party of Canada, which, of course, is not on Team Carney, at least if you look at Pierre Polyev, very much doing his job as opposition leader.
00:13:34.820And then to have a former conservative elder statesman like Harper, inadvertently or not, being pushed in or showcased as, you know, Carney's wingman, as has been described in the Toronto Star.
00:13:53.940I mean, you know, Harper, you know, is there something that maybe he thought was unfair in the way that was portrayed?
00:14:00.940Or maybe you you want to weigh in a little further on that?
00:14:03.940Well, I think it was unfair. I can't speak to what Stephen's thoughts were. I mean, there's every political strike known to man there representing the provinces. So this was not a political event. So for them to say he's Carney's wingman politically is a gross misstatement, gross, gross overreach.
00:14:22.400i think they're they're doing their best to show that you know everybody's falling in line under
00:14:28.320carney because he's such a an economical wizard i remember cabinet we all laughed at him um i mean
00:14:34.960everything he brought in the years that he was the central banker was print and spend print and spend
00:14:41.120that's all he was a one-trick pony that's all he ever came forward with and when we did spend it
00:14:46.640it was on infrastructure. It was on hard infrastructure that was going to help us
00:14:50.480out of the 2008 trials. And that proved that we were right in that we didn't bottom like
00:14:56.900everybody else. We were in later and out first. So that was Harper and Jim Flaherty. That was not
00:15:03.620Mark Carney. You look at the state that he left Great Britain in, a lot of problems over there.
00:15:11.080And it was all to do with his middle powers and his G fans.
00:15:14.880And, you know, all the all the bankers that he had lined up then have all walked away.
00:15:19.180There's nobody left. Nobody's funding his wet dream.
00:15:23.340So in your view, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the idea put put forward by the star and some other media that Stephen Harper has joined Team Kearney's pure delusion and attempt to bolster this idea that Kearney is doing the right thing.
00:15:41.080thing absolutely i think it's willful delusion okay you know him as well as anybody yeah i would
00:15:51.720love to have stephen harper come out and maybe even deal with that but i i guess you know you
00:15:57.120can't shut down every media story you know uh that comes out he'd be he'd be right back in the public
00:16:05.880arena wouldn't he harper's operated i'm gonna say outside above the media for years uh i mean if we
00:16:13.640allowed the media to run our government as they do with carney uh using carney's talking points
00:16:19.000um he wouldn't he wouldn't have stood for it i mean you know uh i mean he he didn't like a a bad
00:16:25.720story as as much as as i did but at the end of the day he wasn't about to step out of his his
00:16:30.680comfort zone and go after them he just said we gotta do a better job jerry ritz thank you so
00:16:36.840much for coming on the show we appreciate it always a pleasure mark coming to us from st
00:16:40.840walver saskatchewan if you enjoyed the show and appreciate great independent journalism
00:16:45.320please consider becoming a premier member of juno news by going to junonews.com backslash straight up
00:16:51.960it helps us do what we do here thank you so much for tuning in we'll see you next time