Juno News - Carney puts Emergencies Act INSIDER in charge of U.S. trade talks

00:00:00.000 A liberal insider and podcaster has apologized for saying conservative Jamil Giovanni is

00:00:11.440 too unattractive to succeed in politics. David Hurley admits he made his original

00:00:17.060 comments in a clumsy and awkward way. I've got something I want to say.

00:00:22.540 There's been a strong and negative reaction to some comments I made last week about the impact

00:00:29.120 that Jamil Giovanni's appearance would have on his ambitions for political leadership.

00:00:35.360 I want to say a couple things about it. The first thing is that I think many people that saw those

00:00:39.580 comments are not familiar with this podcast and what it is. Curse to politics is not a civics lesson.

00:00:45.640 If you're looking for that, go over to the Hurley-Burley. This is a brutally frank conversation

00:00:50.560 among senior political strategists about what those kind of people talk about in the backest

00:00:55.020 of backrooms. And appearance is one of those things, and we've talked about it on this show

00:01:00.780 many, many times before. Having said that, I think I made my remarks in a particularly

00:01:07.140 clumsy and awkward way. I've been flip and glib my whole life, and this isn't the first time that's

00:01:13.080 landed me in some hot water. Many people interpreted my remarks as a comment on Mr. Giovanni as a cancer

00:01:20.100 survivor, and that was certainly not on my mind at the time that I made those remarks. And in any

00:01:25.980 event, I could have made my point much more gracefully and appropriately. And Mr. Giovanni,

00:01:30.860 I apologize. Giovanni was asked about the personal attacks directed against him since his diplomatic

00:01:37.720 mission to Washington. Here's what he told the Toronto Sun's Brian Lilly.

00:01:41.400 I am trying to get something very serious done for our country. And I think it's unfortunate that some

00:01:51.060 of the responses have been trying to kind of drag this down in the mud. I mean, the reality is we have

00:01:58.760 a July 1st deadline to complete the review of Kuzma, a trade agreement that governs three quarters

00:02:08.680 of our exports. And like, I think that's pretty important. And I think it's entirely reasonable

00:02:16.820 for every one of the 343 members of parliament that serve this country to do whatever they can

00:02:23.900 to try to help avoid further economic issues in Canada. And I think I also conducted myself in a

00:02:33.800 really respectful way. I mean, you can look and see, I've not been pointing fingers at the prime

00:02:39.180 minister. I've not been criticizing him. In fact, I've been offering to work with him.

00:02:44.600 Giovanni also spoke about the poor state of relations between Canada and the United States and the need to

00:02:50.180 cut down on attacks on our biggest trade partner. Let's listen.

00:02:55.400 We are shooting ourselves in the foot if we continue this anti-America, you know, hissy fit. And this is

00:03:02.580 the kind of reason I'm trying to talk into our government and some of the liberals who have

00:03:07.100 just gone way off the reservation on this. And, you know, the ball is in Prime Minister Mark Carney's

00:03:11.620 court. Like, I've offered to help him. I think it'd be awesome if we went down there together. I think

00:03:16.260 we'd get a lot done working together. But he's got to decide whether that's something he wants to do

00:03:20.820 or not. Prime Minister Carney has appointed career bureaucrat Janice Charette to the role of Canada's

00:03:26.960 chief trade negotiator to the United States. Now, during her time as head of the public

00:03:31.480 service, Janice Charette urged government to take an iron fist approach in dealing with the Freedom

00:03:37.680 Convoy back in 2022. She advised the Trudeau government at the time to crush the trucker

00:03:43.600 protest by any means necessary. Blacklock's reporter quotes Charette in a secret memo from the time,

00:03:50.080 saying, all hands on deck. No idea. Too crazy. Let's look at absolutely everything, said Charette.

00:03:57.600 Let's look at every law we have. Ultimately, the government opted to accept Charette's advice

00:04:03.920 and impose the Emergencies Act, later found to be illegal by the federal court. Now, critics of her

00:04:10.480 appointment say Charette is a bureaucrat with little experience in trade or negotiations. This post by

00:04:17.680 George Ann Burke. She's the polar opposite of the person to cut a trade deal with the Trump 0.99

00:04:24.160 administration. But then, I don't believe that's Carney's goal. He wants to be king of the middle

00:04:29.760 powers. He's running around the world, organizing them against the United States. That will not end

00:04:36.080 well. And George Ann Burke joins us from Florida. Welcome, George Ann. Thank you, Mark. Good to see you.

00:04:42.960 George Ann, of course, a communications expert and political strategist. And I know she's got some

00:04:48.800 thoughts on this latest appointment by the Carney government, a lady who I think is a rather

00:04:56.160 controversial choice. Given her lack of negotiating experience, I don't see anything or much in her 0.94

00:05:04.080 resume that says she'd be good at that particular job. What do you think, George Ann?

00:05:07.760 So I'm watching the comments coming from, in fact, conservatives who are all like,

00:05:16.080 oh, she's so wonderful. She's this, she's that, because she did work for Harper at one point in his

00:05:21.760 PCO, his pretty council office. She's a, she is classic Mandarin, you know, that term applied to civil 0.92

00:05:29.440 servants, bureaucrats who've been around forever. That is who she is. She's the top, top of the top of the 0.93

00:05:36.080 bureaucratic chain. She left the bureaucracy, she actually retired, I think a couple years ago,

00:05:42.000 and he's pulling her back in to do this. I don't think he actually cares about the negotiations with

00:05:48.400 the US. He has not made any effort in a serious way to negotiate with Trump. He's going to show the

00:05:55.600 world that he is going to be, as I said publicly, just not very long ago, and minutes ago, he wants to

00:06:03.920 be the king of the middle powers. He is going around the world talking to Japan and the European

00:06:09.680 countries and all of those places that are not, you know, the top of the top and, and convincing them 0.91

00:06:18.080 to band together against the big evil, bad, bad man, orange, and the ugly Americans, and to create their 1.00

00:06:26.960 own, um, supply chain and trade chain and all that. Now, in theory, um, should have been done 20 years 0.87

00:06:35.040 ago. Those relationships should have been built. Harper was trying hard to do it. Um, he did make

00:06:39.920 some progress, but, uh, Trudeau in his 10 years just destroyed all of that and, uh, let all of it go.

00:06:45.760 Um, but the fact is that, uh, this will not end well for Canada or for those middle countries. Uh, the

00:06:52.640 pressure that will be brought to bear, um, I think will be a very interesting thing. And I don't know

00:06:57.120 if it'll be out in public, although with Trump, pretty much everything gets out in public, um,

00:07:01.840 his feelings about things. And, uh, I suspect he will respond in kind if he sees this going the way

00:07:07.680 I think it's going. She, um, for me is controversial for another reason. She was the actual, uh, force 0.98

00:07:16.640 behind enacting the emergencies act during COVID. And, um, we have already had a court decision that

00:07:23.600 says it was illegal. Government probably is going to go back and try to take that to the Supreme

00:07:28.880 Court. Um, it was a federal court that said it was illegal, that it was unnecessary and, uh, she 0.79

00:07:36.560 pushed it. So that tells me all I really need to know about her. Yeah. I mean, the appeals court already

00:07:41.200 backed up the federal court decision. So that's over. I mean, that battle is on the other matter

00:07:47.520 as well. I mean, it's interesting, uh, you know, Carney, if he thinks he's going to get middle powers

00:07:52.240 on side, like Japan, you mentioned, I mean, Japan needs the United States a lot more than they need

00:07:57.440 Canada. They need America's military might in that part of the world with, with China, of course, 0.79

00:08:05.600 yeah. Close by you've got other countries like Mexico, maybe another, you know, middle power,

00:08:11.680 so to speak. They want access to the American market. So, I mean, Carney can talk to these

00:08:17.760 countries as much as he wants at the end of the day, they're not stupid. They know where their 0.93

00:08:21.200 interests lie and it is with, you know, fostering as positive a relationship with this, with the

00:08:28.560 world's number one power economic and military as possible. So I can't just, I can't disagree.

00:08:35.120 I don't know what he's thinking. And especially, you know, I think about, uh, Mexico, Trump is

00:08:40.320 already negotiating a separate deal with Mexico. So sure. Canada can negotiate a deal with Mexico

00:08:46.320 if they want to, nobody's stopping them. He isn't even stopping them. He said, go ahead and do what

00:08:49.520 you want, you know? But, um, the problem here is that Canada is going to end up isolating itself

00:08:55.760 and the other countries are going to look around and they're going to say, well, let me see 40 million

00:09:00.000 Canadians or almost 400 million Americans. Hmm. Let's see the comparable market. Where is the

00:09:07.200 economy growing at 4% and where is it growing at 0.4%. Hmm. Let me think about that for about a

00:09:14.400 second. I think that he is over, you know, he's over his skis, as they say, or shooting over the mark

00:09:21.520 or jumping the shark or whatever the phrases you want to use. He's going to, I think, fail miserably at this.

00:09:29.280 I've been warning people for a year that I don't think that he actually, ever since he's been

00:09:33.600 prime minister close to a year, that he doesn't really want a deal with the US. Um, and that's

00:09:38.880 obvious by his behavior. So, okay, fine. You know, like that Canadians want to ditch the closest 1.00

00:09:46.400 relationship from the closest physical country to them. That is that relationship, which has existed

00:09:51.760 for decades and decades and decades and has been successful in many ways, more successful in fact,

00:09:57.120 for Canada than probably the US. Um, go ahead, do it. See how well you do.

00:10:03.120 Yeah. Which also ties in nicely with our discussion around Jamil Javani, who by all

00:10:09.920 rights, I mean, it seems to have had a successful visit to Washington, having

00:10:14.160 high level meetings with Trump himself, uh, Marco Rubio, JD Vance, his close friend and others,

00:10:21.600 including of course, the trade rep. Um, and so he took attacks. I mean, that's,

00:10:29.680 liberals seem to have attacked him because of that success that they had. They were,

00:10:33.200 they seem to have gotten triggered by the fact that he was able to get these meetings

00:10:37.440 and have these high level talks. And of course, then we saw the, uh, the Hurley Burley podcast

00:10:43.200 comments, David Hurley, uh, now admitting that his comments were clumsy and awkward.

00:10:48.800 You know, he doesn't really apologize for the substance of what he said, though, if you've

00:10:52.720 listened. No, he says, sorry, not sorry. That's what he said. I listened very carefully to what he said,

00:10:58.080 waiting for him to say, I was completely wrong to criticize someone's physical appearance and equate

00:11:03.440 that to their capability of doing anything that was incorrect of me. That would have been the right

00:11:07.600 thing to say, but that's not what he said. So I'm sorry. He was the, um, I'm sorry if she perceived

00:11:12.320 it that way, you know, that all liberals seem to have. Um, and, uh, you know, he didn't, he didn't

00:11:18.240 mean to say something that, that would be perceived as being anti-cancer patient. What? I mean, like, come on.

00:11:27.200 So, uh, you know, and of course then the sad part of it is then you see people now getting on with

00:11:33.520 the horrible pictures of Janice Charette, um, you know, mocking her appearance. And honestly,

00:11:40.080 I don't care what somebody looks like. I actually care what they can do. Uh, Jamil went down there.

00:11:46.400 Of course, now they're trying to create a division in the conservative ranks by implying that

00:11:51.200 he went down on his own. He didn't have the support of the leader of the party. I am pretty sure

00:11:56.400 he wouldn't have done this without the leader of the party saying, yeah, go ahead and do it if you

00:11:59.840 want to. Um, he didn't see any harm in it. Um, it was successful in the sense that he did get to

00:12:05.360 speak to very high level people. He got a chance to feel out where they were, um, what they were

00:12:10.160 thinking. And I'm hopeful, hopeful that he brought back good intel to share with the conservative, uh,

00:12:16.880 leadership and, um, and, and the conservative, you know, staff that work on these issues, um,

00:12:23.520 to help guide them and how they're going to handle what's coming up in the next few months.

00:12:28.000 Um, so, uh, then to attack him on his personal appearance is just beyond the pale and utterly 0.91

00:12:35.440 ridiculous. What I am seeing, however, today is, um, Amanda Galbraith, who is no friend of conservatives, 0.51

00:12:43.440 um, Clint, you know, trying to imply that he's running for the leadership. Um, she said, well,

00:12:49.200 he'd only be successful if he was running for the leadership of the PPC. And it's like,

00:12:53.680 what are you even talking about? Where do you get these stupid things that you people say? 1.00

00:12:59.200 Um, he's not running for any leadership. He could be positioning himself. And I, I mean, 1.00

00:13:04.640 I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to have some, um, role in dealing with these issues coming up.

00:13:11.440 I mean, he does have that personal relationship and he has talked to the top people. So Pierre would

00:13:16.320 be wise to utilize whatever he can. Jamil is not a stupid person. He's a highly intelligent, 1.00

00:13:22.560 well-educated, uh, guy who's a self-made man. People should not forget that he came from

00:13:28.720 very poor circumstances, single parent family. Um, he went through a lot of personal tragedy in

00:13:34.800 his own life with being ill and conquering cancer. Um, he's got a family. He's, he, you know,

00:13:41.520 that's who he is. Let's, let's look at the positives here. And he went out the first time,

00:13:46.160 got himself elected. Okay. That's not always done by people who try to get elected. There

00:13:51.120 are some really great members of parliament that had to try two or three times before they got

00:13:55.120 elected. He did it on the first try. Um, so this is a guy who's very focused and determined to get

00:14:01.680 done what he needs to do. And instead they're picking on the way it looks like seriously, you guys,

00:14:06.640 you need to get a life. And the other thing, of course I said was maybe David Hurley should look

00:14:10.880 in the mirror in the morning before he goes criticizing anybody else's looks, honestly,

00:14:16.240 seriously, when you, when you're drop dead handsome, like, um, I don't know, somebody else,

00:14:21.680 anybody else, uh, you can say something maybe, but even then you shouldn't. So.

00:14:25.680 Yeah. I mean, and his long preamble to the quote unquote apology, there was talk about,

00:14:31.040 well, you know, this podcast is sort of about political strategy and, you know,

00:14:37.280 we lay it on the line. I mean, you're a political strategist. Is that the way people of your

00:14:44.400 background speak to each other? He's too ugly to run, you know, that kind of thing. 0.99

00:14:50.560 So I'll be very honest with you. What might be said behind a closed door, like jokingly 0.95

00:14:57.760 and inappropriately, somebody could say that I personally don't talk like that about people.

00:15:03.680 I really don't. Okay. But there are people that do, however, they would never say that

00:15:08.160 on the public airways. Like, what would you think of someone who said that even, and it's always done

00:15:13.760 like, I'm sure, I'm sure that he thought he was funny. I'm sure that he thought it was amusing.

00:15:19.600 I'm sure he thought it was edgy, but what it was, was obnoxious, nasty, and inappropriate for

00:15:25.920 public airways. You want to talk behind closed doors. I don't care what you say. Like, you can

00:15:29.680 say whatever you want. I can't do anything about that. But you get on the airways and you talk about

00:15:34.000 that, like someone, about that, talk like that about someone like Jamil, who is a very accomplished

00:15:38.880 guy. Like I just said, shame on you. That's all you got to say. Then obviously he's scaring you

00:15:45.600 if you're talking like that. Now, Giovanni did speak about the poor state of relations between

00:15:51.280 America and Canada right now. He did, yes. Canada basically toned down its, quote, hissy fit

00:15:58.800 as far as the Americans go. To me, that speaks straight at Doug Ford among the biggest people who

00:16:09.200 have had a, quote, unquote, hissy fit. What did you make of that? I think it said something about

00:16:16.800 the contact that he had with the United States and the discussions he had with, you know, Trump

00:16:23.360 and J.D. Vance, that he came back and said, you know what, maybe we should tone it down.

00:16:28.560 So it's interesting because I want to, I'm trying to think which of Trump's advisors,

00:16:35.520 one of his top advisors, said a few weeks ago that Canada's behavior is just inexplicable. He

00:16:42.560 doesn't understand why they're carrying on like maniacs all the time. He didn't use that exact

00:16:46.800 terminology, but basically was saying the same thing. Why are they having these hissy fits? This

00:16:51.360 is not how you want to carry on relationships between two countries. And, you know, of course,

00:16:57.440 the response of the elbows up crowd is, well, Trump this and Trump that. Okay. So you're going to tell

00:17:04.960 me that you go to the lowest common denominator. What you see is objectionable behavior and you do the

00:17:09.440 same thing. So I'm not sure what that says about you versus what it says about Trump. We know that

00:17:16.080 Trump is a bit of a troll and he likes to pick at scabs that he sees and gets people all wound up. 0.74

00:17:22.960 But the best solution to dealing with him, and I mean, like, I don't know, 0.97

00:17:26.560 maybe this comes from being a mother of six and also being a politician and cat herder of political 1.00

00:17:33.280 people. You don't poke the bear. You don't go around saying things that are going to give them

00:17:39.040 the opportunity to troll you or pick at the scab that you create was created or to do the things to

00:17:45.840 you that you don't like. Why would you do that? What's the point? How does this raise the level of

00:17:50.240 discussion? And the truth is that if they ignore most of the provocations that he has, like all of them,

00:17:57.040 he would just stop. If he doesn't get anything out of it, he doesn't do it, okay? People can't get past

00:18:04.560 it. I still see conservative politicians, long-time conservative politicians who I won't name here,

00:18:13.200 but there are two of them today that really annoyed me, people that I had regard for in the past who

00:18:19.120 are so deranged over Trump. They say crazy stuff that is, A, not helpful, B, supportive. These are

00:18:27.920 conservative politicians, supportive of the other party. I don't, and they're couching it as if it's

00:18:33.760 good for Canada, and it's neither good for Canada, nor should they be supporting the other party and

00:18:39.280 what they're doing right now, which is going to be bad for Canada in the long run. And I'm saying that,

00:18:44.240 you know, people accuse me of being a traitor because I moved back to the United States, and

00:18:49.280 you're never really a Canadian. I'll put my credentials up against anybody's for what I did

00:18:55.120 for Canada in the 38 years I lived there. And I have a love for the country and the people.

00:19:00.880 I miss my friends. I miss, I don't miss the weather, I can tell you that, but I do miss a lot of other

00:19:06.240 things about Canada. But I'm also looking at it and saying, it's heading down a very dangerous path,

00:19:11.920 and I'm very worried about it. I don't want our party to fall into the same rut that the

00:19:16.960 Liberals are in. I want them to find a different path, a different message, and a different policy

00:19:22.400 path to take to make the country strong, secure, sovereign, rich, safe, healthy. That's what I want

00:19:30.960 to see. That's what Canada was when I came there. That's what I would like it to be now.

00:19:35.680 Well, we're heading possibly to an election in the spring, maybe late spring. Yeah.

00:19:42.000 So we'll have to see what comes out of that. That'll be a very critical election as to the

00:19:47.040 future of this country. Certainly will. Yeah, it absolutely will. And I hope that

00:19:52.800 Canadians give their heads a shake and see what's happened over the last close to a year and say,

00:19:58.000 is this really where we want our country to be? Is this really how we want to be behaving?

00:20:02.000 Or should we be thinking about doing things differently?

00:20:06.400 Yeah, absolutely. Georgianne, thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate that.

00:20:10.560 My pleasure. Great to speak to you.

00:20:11.920 Georgianne Burke, Pathway Group. If you enjoyed this show, consider supporting

00:20:16.640 great independent journalism where breaking news stories are told by going to junonews.com

00:20:22.720 backslash straight up. That's the name of this show, junonews.com backslash straight up. Helps

00:20:29.520 us a great deal. Thank you so much. See you next time.

Juno News - February 17, 2026

Carney puts Emergencies Act INSIDER in charge of U.S. trade talks

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