00:00:00.000Well, let's talk about interprovincial trade barriers. Let's talk about, well, first, actually, let's talk about the premiers and all of the huffing and puffing that we saw in the last 72 hours. It's all kind of falling apart. So, you know, we have an election here in Ontario. Doug Ford is trying to get another majority mandate. And he was kind of out being the loudest with retaliatory measures against the trade bearers, you know, cancelling Starlink, saying that the LCBO, the liquor store in Ontario is no longer going to carry American whiskey or wine.
00:00:29.700And then, of course, he had to undo all of that after things changed yesterday afternoon. Chris, what did you think of all of the premiers? You know, on the one hand, we're saying that tariffs are bad, that we don't want to have a trade war. And then on the other hand, we had premiers from just about every province except for Alberta, jumping up and down, saying like no to the Americans.
00:00:49.780You know, it kind of reminded me of like the 2003 moment where Americans stopped selling French fries and it became freedom fries. Right.
00:00:57.840And at the time, I just remember thinking it was so cheesy and so silly. It was all because France refused to join the coalition to go and take part in the invasion of Iraq, which turned out to be a disaster.
00:01:09.580But at the time it was freedom fries, freedom fries. And I think Canadians used to kind of like laugh and mock that idea that the Americans were so, you know, down this rabbit hole of patriotism that they would, you know, take products off the shelf.
00:01:21.000And yet, yeah, I saw Canada's premiers doing that over the last couple of days. So what did you, what did you make of all that?
00:01:28.000So just at a human level, I understand where somebody comes along and they punch you in the nose. You don't want to turtle, right? You don't want to like, you know, skate off the ice. You want to throw the gloves down too, man.
00:01:40.900Like that's a normal, I think human response, especially if you feel like you're defending your people, but to Franco's point all the time, it gets back down to the facts and the data here.
00:01:53.240And that if we start throwing punches too, we're going to get tied up in each other's sweaters and we're going to wind up punching ourselves, right?
00:02:01.700So you don't want to wind up with constant tit for tat retaliatory tariffs because all they are, are trade taxes and it is going to make our pain even worse.
00:02:10.920But on a human level, I understand, especially if you have to be seen as doing something. I do think that Premier Smith's approach was much more an effective way of doing something and that is going right into the lion's den.
00:02:27.100I think she, I think she has her own microphone now at Fox News Network. Like she was on there all the time. She was meeting them where they are. She was speaking their language. She was talking about deals. She was talking about money, talking about energy, talking about security, right? This idea of kind of fortress America. Hey, don't you want to have this great two-way street when it comes to energy?
00:02:47.100I will point out, you know what it's like sometimes where you have visitors come into your town and you're showing them around and you start noticing things yourself for the first time or it's that much more stark? Hearing it repeated over and over again on a major news network that Canada does not have a big east-west pipeline for our own energy from like the Pacific to the Atlantic was crazy when you think about it.
00:03:15.460It was almost like one of those things where somebody overhears you saying it. You're like, wait, that is kind of strange. So I think, I think Smith's approach was very effective. She withstood a lot of criticism coming from the east. And again, it's in order to save us all huge economic pain because the idea of having a retaliatory 25% tariff on, on our energy would have been disastrous for Albertans. Like I can't even picture it. It would have been horrific.
00:03:45.460And so it was really important for premiers to stand up and do stuff, but that stuff had to actually be effective. I haven't checked online yet this morning, but I was kind of laughing to myself wondering if Premier Ford had a ceremonial big roll of tape where he was taping his Starlink contract back together.
00:04:03.960Yeah. I don't know if that was real or not, but probably not. But yeah, so, so, you know, Doug Ford had promised to rip up Ontario's nearly a hundred million dollar contract with Elon Musk's Starlink.
00:04:21.960Elon Musk, who's hilarious, just quoted it and said, oh, well, because, you know, when you're worth hundreds of billions of dollars, a measly contract like that doesn't help.
00:04:34.180And actually, you know, Starlink is, is probably a better service for Ontarians in rural areas to get internet much cheaper than the alternative.
00:04:42.020So again, like, you know, these reactionary things are not usually that helpful.
00:04:47.460Well, that, that was sort of the, what I saw as like the negative response in terms of all of this, you know, particularly when it came to alcohol.
00:04:56.400Franker, you mentioned that Canadians pay ridiculous taxes already when it comes to alcohol.
00:05:01.940We had Manitoba, Yukon, Nunavut, all, all in variations, pulling American alcohol from their shelves only to, you know, go and restock it again yesterday afternoon.
00:05:14.760I know out in British Columbia, Premier Ebby said that they were going to ban alcohol from red states.
00:05:19.900So, you know, don't, don't punish California for the ills of Donald Trump, I guess.
00:05:27.560Well, my take is that I really am worried that the response to these potential tariffs might do even more damage to Canadians.
00:05:36.360And like, just ask yourself, do you think that Trudeau's response or maybe one of the other premiers, right, if they retaliate, do you think that's going to make things better?
00:05:47.420Or do you think that's going to make things worse?
00:05:50.120What do you think the governments or governments in the United States are going to do in response?
00:05:54.880Right? Like, ask yourself that question.
00:05:58.300Now, we've mentioned many different times, I'm seeing it in the chat, that people understand that tariffs are just taxes,
00:06:03.760and they especially harm the poorest and middle class Canadians by making things more expensive.
00:06:10.380So, I think the question is, and to Chris's point, like, I understand that when somebody takes action against you, you want to fight back.
00:06:18.580But again, the best way for Canada to actually fight back is to make Canada's economy the most competitive ever.
00:06:28.000Now, I read Daniel Smith's post in the National Post that I think was published on Sunday or Monday,
00:06:33.680and she mentioned that, like, hey, folks, if we want to actually push back, then we should make Canada's economy more competitive.
00:06:41.860And all that starts with doing away with the massive regulatory burden that makes it nearly impossible to build anything in Canada, right?
00:06:50.660Since 2015, folks, $670 billion of natural resource projects have been stalled or cancelled.
00:07:00.220We know about the carbon tax, the second carbon tax buried in fuel regulations that will also harm our economy to the tune of billions of dollars.
00:07:08.620The rejection of the Northern Gateway Pipeline, moving the regulatory goalposts on the Energy East Pipeline, right?
00:07:16.880The unconstitutional Bill C-69, the No More Pipelines Act, the discriminatory tanker ban on Canada's West Coast.
00:07:46.380There's, like, layer and layer and layer of irony upon the situation because Justin Trudeau got us into this mess in so many different meanings of the word, right?
00:07:56.480I mean, he legalized drugs and, like, paid fentanyl dens, essentially drug dens, to give Canadians deadly drugs.
00:08:03.840He, you know, opened up the border, never took seriously the holes in the border, places like Roxham Road, basically said to the world's migrants and refugees, come to Canada, we'll welcome you.
00:08:18.600His adversarial relationship with Donald Trump and just, like, painting himself in the public mind as, like, the anti-Trump and taking every opportunity, him and his cabinet, to undermine and slap Trump around.
00:08:32.480But then even when it came to the idea that we might not be able to trade with the United States in the same way that we used to, and to your point, Chris, we don't even have a pipeline, thanks to Justin Trudeau's anti-development and anti-energy policy.
00:08:45.840So one of the good things that Pierre Polyev did was put out the call for interprovincial trade.
00:08:51.400He put out a very snazzy mini-documentary yesterday.
00:08:54.720Polyev's team does video so, so well, so effective.
00:09:51.360Well, it's almost interesting because when it came to the tariffs, there was a weird consensus where everybody, even reluctantly Danielle Smith at the end, said we have to go with the retaliatory tariffs.
00:10:01.820And then now when it comes to the idea of opening up interprovincial trade, there also seems to be a bit of a consensus.
00:10:07.820We had Anita Anand also advocating for removing interprovincial barriers, saying it's fundamentally important.
00:10:17.240The issue relating to internal trade, reducing barriers inside our own country to trade and commerce is fundamentally important, especially at this time.
00:10:29.560And the prime minister has charged me with that responsibility as minister of internal trade.
00:10:59.020Perrin Beattie, okay, who worked with the Mulroney government, has been talking about this literally for decades.
00:11:06.600The idea that now at like 11.59, 30 seconds before we're supposed to get a trade tariff over our heads, that now all of a sudden we should fix this.
00:11:18.340Yeah, you guys all across governments, all parties, pox on all their houses, they should have done this decades ago.