Juno News - Carney coming home from DC empty-handed？ + Freedom Convoy organizers sentenced

00:00:00.000 Welcome to this edition of Straight Up. I'm your host, Mark Petrone. After a trial lasting

00:00:10.360 over two years, convoy leaders Tamara Leach and Chris Barber have been sentenced for their role

00:00:16.620 in organizing the trucker convoy. Now, the Crown was initially asking for seven years prison time

00:00:24.160 for Leach, eight years for Chris Barber. What the two got today fell far short of that. They will

00:00:31.080 serve house arrest for 18 months each. And because Leach had already served weeks behind bars after

00:00:38.100 her arrest, she has now 15 months left to serve in house arrest. Now, the fact that these people

00:00:45.280 will serve no jail time is certainly good news, considering the convoy protest was largely peaceful.

00:00:52.020 But the fact that these two have been subjected to more than two years through the legal ringer

00:00:58.940 is a disgrace. Will it have a chilling effect on Canadians protesting their government in the

00:01:04.680 future? Sadly, it may. And the government may well have succeeded in making an example of these two

00:01:11.080 people. Also, when you consider the protests waged by pro-Hamas demonstrators for weeks, months,

00:01:18.280 the vast majority of whom were not arrested. It certainly feels like we have two-tier justice

00:01:24.740 in Canada right now. Well, let's make a deal, says Donald Trump in his meeting with Prime Minister

00:01:31.940 Mark Carney in the Oval Office. Trump is hosting the PM, and there's plenty at stake here, not only for

00:01:39.180 Canada's economy, which is all but flatlined this year, but also for Prime Minister Carney, who's

00:01:44.860 desperate for a win, having promised voters back in April that he'd get a deal done by July the 21st.

00:01:52.640 Here we are in October, and still no deal. Are Canadians losing their patience? Well,

00:01:58.100 the polling numbers suggest that support for the Liberals is beginning to soften,

00:02:02.460 with Nanos now, the second poll in as many days, suggesting the Liberals and Conservatives

00:02:06.880 are in a virtual tie. This post by Wyatt Claypool, Nanos has been the most Liberal-friendly pollster,

00:02:13.580 Ecos and Spark don't count over the last several months, but even they now show the popular vote

00:02:21.300 so close that Pierre Polyev's Conservatives could win the most seats if there was an election.

00:02:26.400 So Carney needs to come away with more than just a photo op. At one point during a long,

00:02:31.620 rambling news conference today in the Oval Office, Trump jokingly pitched a merger between Canada and the

00:02:37.940 United States. Peace from India, Pakistan, through to Azerbaijan, Armenia, disabling Iran as a force 0.98

00:02:44.660 of terror. And now, and I'm running out of time, but this is, in many respects, the most important.

00:02:50.640 The merger of Canada and the United States. That wasn't where I was going.

00:02:57.160 He couldn't resist, I guess. There's Trump pitching once again some kind of marriage between

00:03:01.820 the United States and Canada. He also said, hey, never say never, Mark Carney. Trump also,

00:03:07.420 interestingly enough, predicted that Canada will walk away very happy following the talks.

00:03:13.360 Could that mean a lowering of tariffs on aluminum and steel? Let's listen.

00:03:18.640 What would it take for you to draw or lower your tariffs on Canadian sectors, including aluminum and steel?

00:03:24.800 Well, we're going to be talking about that with the Prime Minister. We'll be talking about tariffs.

00:03:29.040 We'll be talking about a lot of that, but that's for a little bit later on.

00:03:33.240 Why has Canada and the United States failed to reach an agreement up until now?

00:03:37.720 Well, it's a complicated agreement, more complicated maybe than any other agreement we have on trade,

00:03:43.300 because, you know, we have natural conflict. We also have mutual love. You know, we have great love

00:03:48.720 for each other. I love this. I love Canada and the people of Canada. And Mark feels the same way about

00:03:54.020 here. The problem we have is that they want a car company and I want a car company, meaning the U.S.

00:04:01.040 wants a car company. And they want steel and we want steel. You know, so in other countries,

00:04:08.260 they're very far away. And there's no problem. You can compete and you can do. We don't like to

00:04:14.420 compete because we sort of hurt each other when we compete. And so we have a natural conflict.

00:04:19.640 It's an actual business conflict. Nothing wrong with it. And I think we've come a long way over

00:04:24.740 the last few months, actually, in terms of that relationship.

00:04:29.100 So there you go. It's a complicated relationship between Canada and the United States. We both want

00:04:34.180 the same things. We want to build cars, assemble cars. And there's always the agriculture issue as

00:04:40.780 well. Let's listen to another clip from that news conference.

00:04:43.940 Canada has offered a lot of compromise this summer. Are you willing today to offer some

00:04:49.100 compromise to Canada, maybe on steel and then the United States?

00:04:51.680 Well, we've made compromise and we've made some compromise even on steel. You know, we have the

00:04:57.360 same basic authority and the same basic. This could be also a little bit of a conflict with other

00:05:03.820 countries all over the world on steel because we want to make our own steel. We don't want to bring

00:05:08.360 steel in for the most part, but we will bring it in and we do bring it in. We continue to bring it in

00:05:12.980 from Canada, but there is a tariff to pay. And I think that would be a normal thing to say, but

00:05:19.600 we've come. Well, as you've probably gathered by now, Carney didn't have a whole lot to say.

00:05:24.920 I mean, if you're in the same room as Trump, there's a good chance that he's going to do most

00:05:28.300 of the talking. But in one of the few statements that Carney did make during the news conference,

00:05:32.700 he said that Canada is the second biggest trade partner for the United States, the second biggest,

00:05:37.480 he said, and the biggest foreign investor in the United States, an amount worth half a trillion

00:05:43.740 dollars. He admits that we do compete with the United States as well as Trump admitting that.

00:05:49.580 And that's an area that they're going to have to work on and they're going to have to simply

00:05:53.460 negotiate through. On the thorny issue of why Canadians have lately cut back on their travel to

00:05:59.660 the United States, here's what Trump had to say. Canadians are refusing to go to the U.S.

00:06:04.460 The numbers are down like 23 percent in the first seven months of the year. What do you

00:06:09.120 say to Canadians that don't want to go to the U.S. now because of your 51st state talk,

00:06:13.560 because of the trade war, the tariffs, and the fear of also being to take that to border?

00:06:18.120 Look, I understand that. And Americans don't want to buy cars that are made in Canada.

00:06:21.320 You know, I mean, we have the same conflict. So there isn't, it's something that will get

00:06:27.560 worked out. There's still great love between the two countries. But, you know, American

00:06:34.320 people want product here. They want to make it here. Detroit was emptied out and moved to

00:06:40.380 Canada, moved to Mexico, moved to other places, not just Canada. And now they're all moving

00:06:47.120 back. You know, they're moving back.

00:06:48.700 Well, there you go. What I want to know is, is supply management a deal breaker here? Because

00:06:54.400 we've had Dominic LeBlanc come out, the industry minister and say, no, we're not going to negotiate

00:06:58.740 away those protections for our dairy farmers. Love to have Jocelyn Bamford on the show. She 1.00

00:07:04.020 is founder of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada. She's been keeping

00:07:08.720 a close eye on these negotiations. She's down in Virginia where she has a plant. She's a Canadian

00:07:16.720 and she has a terrific plant in Scarborough. But when it came time to expanding that operation,

00:07:22.960 well, she ended up south of the border in Virginia. Welcome, Jocelyn.

00:07:27.460 Thanks, Mark. Pleasure to be here.

00:07:29.760 Well, you heard some of the clips there of the president speaking. You didn't hear from Mark

00:07:34.060 Carney. But what do you make of all of this right now? I mean, what does Mark Carney really need to

00:07:40.200 do here to walk away with some kind of a trade deal with Trump?

00:07:44.340 Well, I just want to bring up one point that Mark Carney himself brought up. And he's

00:07:48.860 talked about Canada being a huge source of direct foreign investment to the United States.

00:07:55.160 And what you got to ask yourself, is that because Canadian small to medium-sized business are fleeing

00:08:00.100 to the United States instead of growing in Canada? And I would argue that's the case. There are many

00:08:05.960 Canadians that instead of growing in Canada have opted to grow in the United States. And why did they

00:08:13.300 do it? Because it's easier to grow here because of the welcoming environment that you encounter when

00:08:19.440 you come down to the United States. They want jobs here. Canada can't get rid of us fast enough.

00:08:24.640 So while Mark Carney uses that as a badge of honor, he really should be looking at why so many Canadians 1.00

00:08:31.760 are investing in the United States as opposed to Canada.

00:08:34.300 Yeah, you make such a great point. We should be investing at home. And instead, Canadian money

00:08:39.940 is hemorrhaging south of the border. And in fact, Trump even made that point. I think it was yesterday

00:08:45.440 when he was asked. He said, well, a lot of companies from Canada are moving south of the border. And in

00:08:51.000 saying that, he was justifying the fact that these tariffs are doing what they were intended to do.

00:08:55.920 It may be hurting us here in Canada, but, you know, he's representing his country.

00:09:01.540 I wish we had a government in Canada that was as bullish on Canada as Trump is on the United States.

00:09:07.200 Yeah. And one point on that, Mark, you know, let's talk about steel and aluminum. What are the

00:09:12.980 reasons the tariffs were in the first place? And one of the reasons is because we're allowing,

00:09:19.080 Canada is allowing so much steel and aluminum to be dumped in Canada, which is subsidized by the

00:09:26.620 Chinese Communist Party. We did nothing to prevent that at the detriment of our Canadian manufacturers. 0.97

00:09:34.160 When you look at LNG Canada project, that entire terminal and modular module for LNG Canada was made

00:09:44.780 in China by a company owned by the communist Chinese government and then put on a barge and brought to

00:09:52.080 Canada. Canadian fabricators, manufacturers did not participate in the building of that terminal,

00:09:59.380 that LNG terminal. And the second largest LNG terminal manufacturing country is the U.S.

00:10:08.120 And there's nothing that the U.S. has that Canadian fabricators can't. But we continue to have a

00:10:14.800 government that doesn't protect manufacturing and that allows Chinese steel to be dumped in Canada.

00:10:21.040 And we should be addressing that concern. That's as much of a concern as the cars being built in Canada

00:10:27.580 to the United States. And I haven't seen that we've moved the yardsticks on that a lot under Kearney.

00:10:34.000 Do you think supply management will be a deal breaker? Because there's been many occasions when

00:10:39.980 Trump has spoken about U.S. farmers getting ripped off, essentially being unable to sell their milk

00:10:47.900 and cheese products, other dairy products in Canada, because, of course, we protect our dairy farmers

00:10:56.020 up here. They're a very powerful political lobby in Canada. But Trump has raised this. And if we're not

00:11:03.440 prepared to move on supply management, isn't it possible that Trump says, look, if you're not prepared to

00:11:08.700 move on that, then I certainly won't move on cars or steel or anything else.

00:11:13.440 Yeah. And if you look at the roots of the supply management, a lot of it tends to center around

00:11:19.400 the liberals wanting to protect the boats in Quebec. So we need to have as manufacturers,

00:11:25.820 and I can speak for the manufacturers, we need a deal with the United States. They're our largest

00:11:29.400 customers. 76% of our business goes south. And we've been without a deal long enough. And it's time

00:11:35.800 for us to roll up our sleeves and get down to business so we can continue to build North American

00:11:42.320 manufacturing up as much as possible. And we're not each other's enemy. We are each other's biggest

00:11:48.520 friends, our longest ally. And you cannot just replace the United States trade with foreign countries

00:11:56.640 across Europe. That's an ocean to cross. That will take time. And it's not as profitable

00:12:02.440 as having a great North American manufacturing

00:12:07.020 policy where we can trade and work to grow together.

00:12:15.100 It is interesting to see Carney being the diplomat down there, considering how he ran throughout the

00:12:22.960 election heading into April 28th. I mean, it was elbows up, shaking his fist at Trump. Trump's trying

00:12:29.560 to destroy us. He goes down there and showers Trump with praise, calling him a peacemaker for spearheading

00:12:38.840 peace talks in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinians. And you could be cynical pretty easily when you see

00:12:49.320 the way that they carry on. And Trump, too, is saying on multiple occasions, well, we love Canada,

00:12:55.000 you know, we have a great relationship. But it's not what we get from these politicians when they're

00:13:01.640 talking to us, you know, on our on home turf. It's a very different story. Do you get the sense that

00:13:07.720 there's a sincere liking for each other? I mean, the relationship between these two? How do you see that?

00:13:14.280 Yeah, I don't see it. I think they're ideologically opposed on just about every topic from, you know,

00:13:22.840 freedom to economics. Trump has unleashed the power of the entrepreneurs. Mark Carney is. We're going to

00:13:33.480 pick the winners and losers. Very top down, very authoritarian. I can't see that they are ideologically

00:13:41.560 aligned on a whole bunch of things. And I'm not sure that Mark Carney wants a trade deal because I

00:13:47.320 think Mark Carney would rather be running a majority government rather than a minority government. And

00:13:53.960 who did he run the last time against? He didn't run against Pierre Polyev. He ran against Donald Trump.

00:14:00.200 So if there's a trade deal and there's that piece goes away, who's he going to run against in the next

00:14:06.360 election? The only thing I could see is maybe he's looking at the polls and seeing that he needs a

00:14:13.960 win somehow because those poll numbers are starting to slide. We can't keep up with not having a trade

00:14:21.160 deal, especially in manufacturing. And let's remember, manufacturing is still the second largest GDP

00:14:27.000 contributor to our economy. So we need a deal. I think Alberta and the West is growing tired of not

00:14:35.000 getting pipelines through. So there's a whole lot of pain for Canada if we don't get a deal done,

00:14:43.880 but quick. Yeah. National unity shaping up to be a bigger and bigger issue, isn't there? I mean,

00:14:49.960 you've got Quebec now nervous about the future of supply management. And of course, Alberta inching 0.81

00:14:56.840 towards a referendum, I believe it's going to happen sometime next year. And so, you know,

00:15:02.600 could a guy like Mark Carney, who has so far, frankly, been underwhelming, negotiate all of that

00:15:09.160 while trying to get a deal with Trump on trade? Seems like a tall order for a guy like Mark Carney.

00:15:15.720 What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. And let's remember Mark Carney being a big supporter of the

00:15:22.600 Green New Deal. Brookfield certainly has been the beneficiary of a lot of that Green New Deal grants,

00:15:29.400 and he has demonstrated that he's going to continue to move that philosophy forward.

00:15:36.360 The five projects of national importance, there was not one for pipeline, as many of us predicted.

00:15:45.160 You don't suddenly change your ideology overnight. And that's going to spell trouble for the resource

00:15:51.320 sector and the economy in Canada as a whole. Canada could be a powerhouse if we got our resources to

00:15:59.080 market. And it's not just benefiting Alberta. Ontario manufacturing in its heyday under Stephen

00:16:05.880 Harper had as many workers in supporting the oil and gas industry as it did in automotive. You never

00:16:11.640 hear that story. So if we unleashed our resource sector and got our clean, liquefied natural gas to

00:16:18.520 the world, we'd not only help support prosperity in Canada, but we'd also lead to a cleaner planet. So if

00:16:25.400 they really did care about the environment, they would be getting our resources to market very quickly.

00:16:30.520 Put yourself in Mark Carney's position right now. You're sitting down with Trump.

00:16:35.560 What do you say to him in order to get a deal?

00:16:39.480 Well, it all depends if he really wants a deal or doesn't want a deal. So that's the magic question.

00:16:43.880 So let's say he does. If I was the prime minister and I wanted a deal, I would first find out what all

00:16:50.920 his concerns are on the flow of fentanyl. It's not just a produced fentanyl. It's about the components

00:16:57.000 that make fentanyl that are flowing through Canada to the United States. I talk about dumping.

00:17:04.040 I talk about defense, how we can have a North American defense strategy to protect ourselves.

00:17:11.800 Being a supplier to the American resource sector or the American defense sector, sorry,

00:17:18.120 both, I have seen what's on the top mind for most of the folks running the defense industry. And that

00:17:28.440 is that Xi Jinping has indicated that he is going to invade Taiwan at least by 2027. That's the Davidson

00:17:36.200 window. And they are gearing up for that. And Canada and the United States are woefully unprepared

00:17:43.320 for that to happen. We need to get our shipbuilding capacity ramped up. We need to make sure that our

00:17:50.600 manufacturing sector is running on all cylinders. So I would make sure that we could come away with

00:17:56.440 a deal. And I feel like Canada and the United States have been such close partners. It's almost

00:18:02.200 unfathomable that we couldn't have a deal by now. And I believe that's because Mark

00:18:07.560 Kearney really doesn't want a deal. I can't figure out any other rational explanation of why we haven't

00:18:13.720 come to a deal to date and why Mark Kearney hasn't been trying harder to get us a deal.

00:18:21.480 Well, I think he probably tried to do an end run around Trump, figuring he could isolate

00:18:27.080 the Americans by cutting deals with Mexico. And he found out pretty quickly that those countries would

00:18:34.040 rather deal with America because it's a market of 340 million people. You would think that he would

00:18:39.480 know that. But it is interesting, the issue of defense, because I guess we're veering away from the

00:18:46.440 Lockheed Martin F-35s in favor of a fighter jet made someplace else, perhaps. And here's Trump

00:18:53.960 saying, oh, by the way, you want in on the Golden Dome. That's an area that they're going to look at,

00:19:00.120 too. Because for 10 years, for instance, the Conservative Party pushed hard for the F-35s,

00:19:08.440 which is all well and good under Aaron O'Toole's leadership. And now I've seen tweets for him saying,

00:19:14.520 well, we should dump the F-35 in favor of some other aircraft because of Trump. I think, well,

00:19:19.160 if it was a good plane before, why isn't it a good plane now? It's those types of things that

00:19:24.520 are going to put a stick in the spokes of our negotiating with Trump. That's not going to work.

00:19:31.640 So maybe that's an area that they could fix while he's down there. It wouldn't surprise me if Trump

00:19:35.880 raised the issue of the F-35s, because Lord knows they want to sell as many of those things as

00:19:40.600 humanly possible. And the long game is the Iron Dome. We want to be able to participate in the

00:19:47.560 Iron Dome. And I believe if we look elsewhere for our fighter jets, that's not going to be an option

00:19:55.240 for us. And if you look at our participation in that, it's going to be much more profitable for us

00:20:02.920 to be able to participate in the Iron Dome than the fighter jets.

00:20:07.640 Let's talk about Doug Ford, because he's coming out big time, elbows up over Diageo,

00:20:14.600 which he's now threatening to pull bottles of Crown Royal off the shelves as soon as that bottling

00:20:20.360 plant in Amherstburg is closed, and maybe even Smirnoff. So what I suggested during my radio show

00:20:28.120 was that's one way to keep robbers and thieves from the liquor store. You just take all the stuff

00:20:34.520 worth stealing away and you just put whatever else you can up there that nobody wants. What do you make

00:20:41.640 of that?

00:20:41.960 Yeah, I can't believe Ontarians have been so docile on this. We aren't able to drink California wine.

00:20:52.360 We've been forced to have no bourbon and now he's pulling Crown off the shelves. I mean,

00:20:59.480 how much longer are Ontarians going to tolerate this? And he should be asking, why are you leaving,

00:21:07.880 not dumping Crown out? There is another company that just announced that they're closing in Maitland,

00:21:14.840 Ontario, 100 high paid, high skilled workers in Vista, which makes chemicals. I mean, is he now

00:21:23.960 going to dump the chemicals out? I mean, eventually you have to wonder and ask the question, look in

00:21:29.000 the mirror and say, why are so many Ontario manufacturing plants closing up and moving to

00:21:35.480 the States? And I'll tell you why, because of unbelievable taxes, high electricity. We have

00:21:45.000 one of our coalition members that is paying four times the electricity in Ontario that they're paying

00:21:52.120 in Indiana and they have seven outages a year. So you're paying four times as much and he's down on

00:21:58.920 electricity because he has outages. Each outage costs him a million dollars. That's seven million

00:22:04.920 dollars he's lost this year. Eventually you go, what am I doing? Why am I paying so much more to

00:22:11.480 keep a plant open? And it's funny because I've reached out to a number of cabinet ministers

00:22:17.960 to try and get this escalated. And there seems to be an unwillingness, not on the politicians,

00:22:24.280 but on the bureaucrats, the senior bureaucrats that work for them. They could care less. I eventually sent

00:22:29.800 an email saying, is it so difficult for you guys to pick up a phone and try and help

00:22:35.480 a company that brings hundreds of jobs to Ontario. And apparently it's almost impossible for them

00:22:43.000 to assist any of their business owners. But Ford doesn't have a strategy to keep manufacturing. He

00:22:49.240 hasn't addressed high electricity. We've had tons of taxes like the carbon tax and the clean fuel

00:22:56.120 standards. Now Ontario is bringing out new legislation that requires any employer in Ontario

00:23:04.440 to formally address anybody that's applied to them for a job to give them a formal notice of

00:23:12.520 why they didn't get a job. And we were only alerted to that, not by the government, but by our insurance

00:23:17.640 companies who say, you better be prepared. You're going to be taken to the Human Rights Tribunal and to

00:23:22.680 court if somebody applies and they decide that they don't like the reasons you didn't hire them.

00:23:28.840 So Doug Ford, who said he was going to cut red tape, fix healthcare, fix electricity, and fix education,

00:23:35.080 has failed on all of those points. And that's why people are leaving. And the federal government just

00:23:41.320 piles on additional taxes and costs to us. They don't work on any projects that include

00:23:48.840 small to medium size manufacturing. And when you combine those two together, you get a recipe for

00:23:52.920 disaster into the open arms of the United States. Yeah, all they can do is subsidize these EV plants

00:24:00.440 that nobody wants, that'll never make a dime. What do we put into that like $50 billion in terms of

00:24:07.400 taxpayer investment into these plants? Just unbelievable. Jocelyn, thank you so much for

00:24:12.680 coming on the show. We really do appreciate it. My pleasure.

Juno News - October 07, 2025

Carney coming home from DC empty-handed？ + Freedom Convoy organizers sentenced

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