Juno News - October 23, 2025


Carney WARNS of ‘sacrifices’ for Canadians ahead of new budget


Episode Stats

Length

29 minutes

Words per Minute

180.46677

Word Count

5,382

Sentence Count

426

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 While they say the devil is in the details, anyone hoping for specifics about the upcoming
00:00:10.820 federal budget walked away disappointed last night with Mark Carney's speech. His State
00:00:17.320 of the Country address was heavy on platitudes, light on specifics. Carney told an audience of
00:00:22.940 students at the University of Ottawa, there will be sacrifices and challenges ahead.
00:00:27.740 What kind of sacrifices? Carney said, wait for the release of the budget.
00:00:32.040 You just said in your remarks, and you said it last night in your speech as well, that
00:00:35.580 we'll have to do less of some of the things that we want to do. So what are some of those
00:00:40.420 things? Well, look, we'll have a budget and all aspects of the budget will reveal that.
00:00:48.780 We'll have to move more slowly on certain aspects of, well, you know what? I think we
00:00:57.680 should, why don't I not scoop the budget and we'll let it come out through the budget.
00:01:01.920 The point is, we've been clear about maintaining our transfers to individuals. There's certain
00:01:08.620 demands or desires to expand in different areas, and we won't be able to move as quickly as
00:01:16.760 we otherwise would. Right. Franco Terrizano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation posted this
00:01:23.000 on X. Carney was elected to be the guy with a plan. Carney's address had no real plan and
00:01:30.760 no real substance about the upcoming budget. Also in his speech last night, Carney said it'll
00:01:36.180 take time to transform the economy from one that was integrated with that of the United
00:01:40.800 States to one that builds on trade relationships with other countries.
00:01:45.000 We won't transform our economy easily or in a few months. It will take some sacrifices and
00:01:53.880 it will take some time. Our government will work relentlessly to cut waste and drive efficiencies.
00:02:01.860 And when we have to make difficult choices, we will be thoughtful, we'll be transparent,
00:02:07.320 it will be fair.
00:02:08.320 Meantime Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev says young people have had it with sacrifices.
00:02:15.880 But instead of saying, given that things are so bad, we Liberals are going to reverse course
00:02:21.960 on all of the policies of inflation, of blocking home building, of standing in the way of resource
00:02:27.320 projects. Instead of that, he asked young people to make more sacrifices. This was the sacrifice
00:02:34.720 speech to Canadian youth. And he said it's going to take lots of time to reverse all the damage.
00:02:41.920 Mr. Carney, our youth have sacrificed enough. All they have done for the last 10 years is sacrifice.
00:02:49.920 There you go. Now you heard Mark Carney a few minutes ago, a few seconds ago really,
00:02:55.120 say that he wants to double exports to countries not named the United States of America over the next 10
00:03:01.040 years. What are we going to sell those people? Is it going to be oil, gas, the things that they really
00:03:06.640 want or something else? Anyway, he's also adding that our relationship with the Americans will never
00:03:14.400 be the same again.
00:03:15.520 This decades long process of an ever closer economic relationship with the United States
00:03:20.720 is now over. Our relationship with the United States will never again be the same as it was.
00:03:31.040 Our goal for Canada is to double our non-U.S. exports over the course of the next decade,
00:03:38.000 generating more than 300 billion more in trade. And that's new orders for Canadian resources,
00:03:43.600 technologies and expertise.
00:03:46.160 So he's talking about decoupling Canada from the economy of the United States. But just earlier
00:03:51.440 this month, Carney was at the White House in the Oval Office bragging about Canada's half trillion
00:03:57.040 dollar investments in the United States over the last five years and saying that there would be much
00:04:02.080 more in the years ahead. We'll just have to see how it all plays out on November the 4th.
00:04:08.320 Our guest is Associate Professor Ian Lee from Carleton University's Sprott School of Business. Welcome,
00:04:14.640 sir.
00:04:15.680 Good afternoon. Thank you very much for inviting me.
00:04:17.360 You listened to the speech yesterday. What are your thoughts?
00:04:20.720 I did. I listened to it from the beginning to the end. I am impressed with Mr. Carney. You know,
00:04:28.320 he's obviously a very educated man. Nobody can deny that. He's got lots of experience. You know,
00:04:34.800 he was 10 years, I think it was 10 years in Goldman Sachs. That impresses me as a former banker myself. I was
00:04:39.840 with VMO. And of course, he was a deputy minister of finance and then central banker of two banks.
00:04:46.240 So there's no question that he knows what he's talking about. I was
00:04:53.360 expecting more from the speech because it was so unusual what he was doing. I've been studying and
00:04:59.360 watching budgets probably since the late 70s when Pierre Trudeau was in his last term in office when I
00:05:06.960 really started to focus on these things. And I think I've watched every budget speech since.
00:05:11.040 And so having a speech prior to the budget speech is I don't recall that ever being done before.
00:05:16.880 So that suggests it's important when the prime minister asks, you know, schedule something like
00:05:22.480 that in prime time. Didn't do it in the middle of the day like a press conference or 10 in the morning
00:05:27.680 when people are busy at work. He did it in the evening knowing that then, you know, the networks will
00:05:32.000 cover it, which they did. And I thought that he was going to do the bold stroke to use Richard
00:05:39.120 Nixon's famous phrase and do something to show that he really is breaking with the past because
00:05:44.880 he keeps saying we're at this hinge moment, the tipping point that others would say, and we're
00:05:50.480 going to go in a dramatically different direction. And then I thought, well, maybe he's going to announce
00:05:54.880 some very bold but very big picture movement in a new direction. And it didn't happen. He rehashed
00:06:04.000 what has been announced thus far and rehashed arguments that he has given. There's nothing
00:06:09.360 wrong with the arguments as such. But I didn't think it was a bit of a letdown because it didn't,
00:06:17.520 I thought it underwhelmed. Not to say that what he said wasn't accurate, that, you know,
00:06:26.080 there's big changes ahead, there's tough times ahead, etc. But I didn't hear anything new in the
00:06:32.480 speech. And I thought, well, you know, if it's being billed as this very major speech on the upcoming
00:06:39.200 budget, that it must, there must be some real substance and meat in there. And I really didn't
00:06:44.800 think there was. I mean, he re-repeated it and re-emphasized it, but I didn't, I don't think I
00:06:51.040 heard anything new. Well, there was talk of sacrifices and challenges. Okay. So which begs
00:06:58.320 the question, what are you talking about here? Are we looking at cuts? Are we looking at deep cuts
00:07:02.880 in government spending? Yes. And we've had bloated civil service for quite some time in Ottawa,
00:07:10.480 increasing the size of it by 40% under Justin Trudeau. You know, is that going to be reversed?
00:07:15.840 I guess the other thing was the export commitment. You know, the fact that over the next 10 years,
00:07:22.000 we're going to double our export capacity to countries other than the United States. It occurred
00:07:28.000 to me that, you know what, we were probably going to do that anyway. You know, over the course of 10
00:07:32.640 years, you can expect to double the degree of exports that you've got to any country.
00:07:38.240 Yeah. Did anything there sort of interest you?
00:07:44.400 Yeah, it did. I've been arguing in various media interviews I've been doing for several months now,
00:07:52.160 based on the facts that we're facing. These aren't my facts. I didn't elect Donald Trump.
00:07:57.440 He is the president. He has been consistent for at least 10 years that he wants to bring manufacturing
00:08:04.240 back to the United States. This is not a secret. A lot of Canadians seem to be stunned and just amazed,
00:08:09.120 like, where did this come from? Well, anyone who's been following Donald Trump knows he's been saying
00:08:12.720 this since 2015 or before. That's a decade before he became president the first time. I'm not saying I
00:08:20.000 agree with it. In fact, I don't, but it doesn't matter what I think. We knew anyone who follows
00:08:25.840 it that he is going in that direction. And for those who study industries, as I do teaching the
00:08:31.600 Strategy Capstone course for 35 years, I know that one knows that people know that manufacturing is
00:08:38.000 enormously, enormously capital intensive and R&D intensive in the billions and billions and billions of
00:08:43.200 dollars, which means that you need huge production runs, which to achieve economies of scale to break
00:08:50.400 even, which means that's why there's only three really huge regions in the world that dominate
00:08:56.320 manufacturing. One's called China, one's called Europe, and one's called the United States. Small
00:09:00.960 countries like Canada can only survive in manufacturing if they have access to one of those huge gigantic
00:09:08.240 markets. And we know that Trump has said, you're not going to anymore. He said, we want to make all
00:09:13.440 the cars. So given all this information that's out there, and this is not secret information, I assure you,
00:09:19.840 I thought, well, gee, isn't this an opportune moment to do the speech as a warmup, a prelude to the budget
00:09:25.840 saying, look, everybody, I can't give you the details. It'll be coming out on budget night, but I can give you
00:09:31.520 a very broad brush sense of the direction. And we cannot double down and do a made in Canada building
00:09:41.360 ships and building cars and building planes and so forth because we simply don't have the scale. We
00:09:47.440 don't have the size. So we're going to do what Australia did in 2017 when they exited the auto industry
00:09:55.120 and they pivoted and doubled down and tripled down on resource sector. They were already there, but they
00:09:59.440 really went after it much more aggressively. I thought he could have done something like that.
00:10:04.160 In other words, don't throw manufacturing under the bus. Trump's already done it. Trump has done it
00:10:10.160 in public. So has Lutnik. I thought he could have picked up on that and said, look, we don't agree
00:10:15.600 with this. It's most unfortunate. We're going to fight like crazy to try and keep it, but we have to
00:10:21.440 recognize what's happening. And so I want to let everyone know we're not just going to say, oh, well,
00:10:26.400 that's that's the brakes. We have a plan to a plan B, if you will, to go down to pivot to resources
00:10:37.120 writ large. And I don't mean just oil and gas. I mean everything that's a resources. It could be potash.
00:10:42.480 It can be nuclear fuel. It can be timber. It can be cologne, canola, fish, electricity,
00:10:50.160 critical minerals. And I thought he could have gone that way. But in the speech, he didn't. He
00:10:56.640 continued talking about, we're going to reinvest. And he was very clear he meant manufacturing.
00:11:02.880 And I thought, we're just going down the same road we've been doing for 70 years.
00:11:09.200 We threw billions of dollars at Bombardier, said we're going to manage them up to become a world-class
00:11:14.080 competitor of Airbus and Boeing. And what did Airbus and Boeing do? Well, they predictably,
00:11:20.400 and there were people that predicted it. I was one of them 25 years ago. I said, they're going to
00:11:24.240 retaliate and they're going to do everything possible to drive Boeing out of business,
00:11:27.280 which is exactly what they did. And so I thought he had an opportunity, and still does,
00:11:35.120 have an opportunity to have a frank conversation with the people, just like Roosevelt did with his
00:11:40.720 fireside chats during the Great Depression. He didn't sugarcoat it and say, look, people,
00:11:44.080 we're really not in a depression. Everything's fine. You know, just a little hiccup. He never did that.
00:11:49.520 He never, he just went, he went right at them. Look at everybody. This is a really unbelievable
00:11:55.440 crisis. Now I know Carney's saying that, but then he turns around and says, but it's okay. We're just
00:11:59.600 going to throw lots and lots of money at it. And we're going to have our own made in Canada
00:12:03.680 policy to look after all these industries. Well, it's not going to happen because we're only 40 million
00:12:09.920 people, which is smaller than the state of California. Exactly. I mean, at one point he did
00:12:15.760 say when he was talking about doubling our exports to other countries, he did mention a number of
00:12:23.520 sectors, including the resource sector, which got me wondering whether or not that is directly tied
00:12:29.520 into oil and gas. But, you know, if you're going to increase that resource sector allocation for your
00:12:37.520 exports, how do you square that with this ongoing need to lower and reduce your carbon footprint?
00:12:44.480 I mean, I don't hear any suggestion by this government, nor the people in it, that they're
00:12:49.200 going to back away from this green agenda of theirs at all. And so go ahead, Mark, I'll go further.
00:12:55.760 You're right. There were several contradictions in that speech, and I'm not trying to be a pedant and
00:13:01.200 saying, you know, you can't contradict, but I'm talking serious strategic contradictions.
00:13:07.280 He did notice resources. He did notify no resources. And it is a huge opportunity. Yes,
00:13:12.000 we're going to go into resources. And by the way, we're going to double down on the green agenda
00:13:17.040 to make it even cleaner. A contradicts B. There is no way around this.
00:13:24.560 This idea that we can expand resources or manufacturing carbon free is is it's just a it's
00:13:34.640 it's a fraud. We produce the emissions if one studies the emissions sector by sector and I've
00:13:41.760 done it. The government does produce the sector emissions. So does the International Energy Agency
00:13:46.080 for the whole world, by the way. And there's I'm not saying that there aren't more dirty industries
00:13:50.640 and less dirty industries. There are. But anyone who thinks that we can somehow create a an economy
00:13:56.560 or a sector that has zero emissions. And I know we've been told that for the last 10 years.
00:14:01.440 Any serious study by serious people, not ideologues. I'm talking engineers. I'm talking scientists that
00:14:09.440 really understand industry and understand capital costs and investment costs and carbon footprint
00:14:15.280 knows that you cannot have a carbon free world, not for any time in the foreseeable future. And I
00:14:22.640 mean, in the next 50 years or more. And so what I'm trying to say is he's offering, you know, a and
00:14:29.680 the opposite of a we're going to go into resources. And by the way, our world's even going to get cleaner
00:14:34.480 and cleaner. And there are tradeoffs to use the old fashioned word in resources in policy. There are
00:14:41.840 tradeoffs. And he very clearly said we can have it all. And that's not making tough choices. When you
00:14:49.200 say you can have it all, you can have everything. We're going to have a made in Canada policy. We're
00:14:53.280 going to have a completely green policy and go to green zero emissions. And we're going to export
00:14:57.520 resources. We're going to have it all, everybody. That's the opposite of saying, look, everybody,
00:15:02.800 we've got some very hard, tough choices ahead. And that's my fundamental criticism of what what he
00:15:10.640 was doing. I mean, the other contradiction comes around our relationship with the United States,
00:15:16.160 because we all know that our trade negotiations are still under place underway. They are reaching,
00:15:22.720 according to them, a level of intensity that we didn't see before. So we still want this deal.
00:15:27.600 We've got the USMCA CUSMA renewal or review coming up one year from now. We still have 85% of our trade
00:15:35.920 with the United States covered under that. And he bragged about that. He said, well, you know,
00:15:39.840 things may be hard for Canada right now as far as trade goes. But our relationship with the United
00:15:44.160 States, we have the best trade relationship with the United States. And by the way, our relationship with
00:15:49.520 the United States is over in terms of what it is. That was my second major, his second major, not mine.
00:15:57.120 That's my second major critique or criticism of this enormous contradiction where he's saying,
00:16:03.440 on the one hand, it's over. He actually said that our relationship we've relied on for all these many,
00:16:08.960 many years, it's done. It's over. And I'm going to turn around and sign a deal that's going to be the
00:16:13.920 best in the world. Now, wait a minute, A or B. Okay. And I'm not saying he should have said,
00:16:20.480 we're going to walk away from the United States. What he should have said, and I mean this very deeply,
00:16:27.200 profoundly deeply, he should have said, look, everybody, yes, our relationship is changing.
00:16:34.080 It's changing in a very major and significant way. It is not done. It is not over for the simple reason
00:16:43.120 that nobody is going to pick up the continent of the half continent of North America of the United
00:16:48.080 States and move it halfway around the world. And nobody's going to pick up Canada and move it
00:16:52.480 halfway around the world. We are joined at the hip by geography for almost 9,000 kilometers. And that's
00:17:01.680 not ever going to change, not for millions of years. Therefore, therefore, Canadians,
00:17:09.920 we have to go forward with a revised and renewed Kuzma. Well, at the same time, we do want to
00:17:17.920 diversify our trade to become a little bit less dependent on the United States. If he had said
00:17:25.120 that, he would have had me screaming from the rafters with joy, but saying it's over, it's dead,
00:17:30.240 it's finished. And by the way, we're going to have the greatest deal in the world with the United
00:17:33.680 States. You just said it's done. It's over. It's finished. How can you be doing that?
00:17:36.880 You know, and so it reduces his credibility. And again, I'm not saying this to take cheap shots.
00:17:42.160 He's a smart man. I think he's got advisors around him or political spin doctors, because
00:17:48.640 that's what happens in every political party. They have all these spinsters, spin doctors,
00:17:52.640 who are spinning, and they're trying to have their cake and eat it. And I think he would be much better
00:18:00.400 advised to say, don't sugarcoat it. I'm not saying you're going to tell everybody we're all going to
00:18:04.400 die and we're doomed. Of course not. You don't have to say that. You can say tough times are here
00:18:08.800 again. He's saying that. And then don't sugarcoat it about the relationship. Yes, it's changing.
00:18:14.160 It's changing very dramatically, but it's not dead. It's not over. It's going to continue because we're
00:18:19.520 joined at the hip, everybody. So all those people shouting and putting their hair on fire, we got to
00:18:25.120 stop dealing with the United States. We're not going to go to the United States anymore. We're not going to
00:18:28.400 trade with the United States. And there are people saying this. We got to bring them down to earth.
00:18:35.200 And they're in a bubble, in a little bubble, a Trump delusion bubble, because they hate Trump so
00:18:39.760 much. I'm not here to defend Trump. I don't agree with his policies. But there's people suffering
00:18:43.840 from derangement syndrome. And they say really insane, crazy things like, we got to stop dealing
00:18:49.600 with them completely. This is silly. Because the United States is not, Canada is not going to leave
00:18:54.960 geographically from where we are in the world next door to the United States. So we've got to,
00:19:00.800 you know, you got to deal with whatever you're dealt with. And if you've got a neighbor that's
00:19:05.440 not completely reliable, okay, you got to deal with it. You don't say it's dead. It's over. It's
00:19:09.840 finished. I'm never going to talk to them again. I'm going to go and sulk.
00:19:13.440 Yeah, you get the sense that he's trying to cater to two blocks of voters and supporters,
00:19:17.680 right? The people who voted for him, the elbows up crowd that really gave him the,
00:19:23.920 you know, the degree of support that he needed to win that election. And the other side that is
00:19:28.080 kind of waiting for a deal to happen. You know, July 21st, the deadline came and went. We still
00:19:32.960 don't have a deal with the Trump administration. And some of them realize that, no, we do need a deal
00:19:38.640 with the Americans. They're our biggest trade partner. And the fact that that hasn't happened yet
00:19:43.280 is troubling. And, you know, it suggests that a promise was broken here. So he's trying to
00:19:49.520 balance those two sides off. Did you get that sense in a speech yesterday?
00:19:53.040 Yes, he is. But what, yes, yes, he is. And I did get that. But what I'm saying is,
00:19:58.080 I don't think he should pander to the crowd who are really, really angry at Donald Trump
00:20:05.040 and don't want to have anything to do with them, and then throw them some red meat,
00:20:08.720 as he did. All right. Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, a liberal Democrat.
00:20:13.840 Yes. In his biography, autobiography, I don't normally read autobiographies,
00:20:18.400 but he was a very, very momentous president. You know, Vietnam War and Civil Rights Act and
00:20:24.400 Voting Rights Act and a whole bunch of things. He was truly a transformative president.
00:20:27.280 The Great Society.
00:20:28.720 Great Society. Yeah. And he said something along the line. He had this very colorful
00:20:34.400 philosophical phrase. He said, you know, the leader has to look ahead and realize that many
00:20:40.320 people don't have the same perspective because they don't have access to all the information
00:20:44.960 the president has because he's at the very commanding heights at the top. And he says that
00:20:48.880 he is his job as leader to bring people forward to go to the next mountaintop. And it was very eloquent,
00:20:55.840 very beautiful, very afraid. I'm not even doing justice to it. What I'm saying is you can't
00:21:01.600 pander to people who are advocating policies that are just simply not possible because they're not
00:21:08.240 credible. They're not realistic. You know, the idea we're going to stop dealing with the states and we're
00:21:12.480 going to just pivot completely to Europe or China is just, it can't happen. It won't happen because
00:21:18.800 they're too far away. They're too different from us and so forth. So what I'm saying, he could
00:21:23.120 have said, look, I feel your pain. I really understand what you're saying. But the reality is
00:21:28.400 we have a border that's almost nine or eight thousand kilometers long, and we're going to
00:21:33.600 be dealing with them to the end of time. So now what we got to do is make the best of a bad situation.
00:21:39.120 If he talked like that, I think he would have had his credibility would have gone through the roof.
00:21:44.080 You know, people said, holy Moses, he's saying where he's going, but he's also explaining,
00:21:50.640 you know, to those who don't like it. And he's trying to bring them forward. And that's where
00:21:54.880 I don't think, I mean, I'm not a politician. Okay. But I understand that he's got to and he
00:21:59.120 understands we've got to go forward. We have to have a trade agreement with the United States.
00:22:02.880 It is just inconceivable that we're not going to have a trade agreement with the United States,
00:22:06.960 largest economy on the planet Earth, 30 trillion dollars. No one else is close, including the
00:22:12.800 Europeans, by the way. And secondly, we share the same continent. We speak the same language dominantly.
00:22:18.080 Yes, I know there's minority languages. Yes, French and Quebec and Spanish in some pockets.
00:22:22.640 But anyone who thinks that, you know, the U.S. is anything other than an English-speaking
00:22:26.160 country, it just hasn't traveled over the United States as I have. And I've been to 44 of 50 states.
00:22:30.320 And I've lived there twice. And I've been all across Canada. And it's dominant English.
00:22:35.360 That's the language of business. That's the language of commerce. That's the language of politics.
00:22:39.120 That's the language of municipalities. That's the language of interest groups.
00:22:41.840 It's the language of voters. So, you know, you got to go out there and talk and speak truth to power,
00:22:49.120 but at the same time, acknowledging their pain and acknowledging their anger and just say,
00:22:53.520 look, we're going to come up with the best deal possible for Canada, but we're not going to do it
00:22:57.920 out of spite and say we're going to cut off the Americans because we're upset with them and we're
00:23:03.120 really angry with them. And that's where I think he's not. He hasn't gone the extra mile to bring
00:23:11.600 people along to where we have to go. And one more quick point on this, Mark. It's very important.
00:23:19.200 When people talk about, politicians all do it. Well, we're going to double our trade. We're just
00:23:23.760 going to put trade over there and there. I've talked to my students every week about this.
00:23:27.520 This is almost like the delusion of, not Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz. And people think
00:23:35.520 there's a little old man and he's running a big computer in the back of the room, you know,
00:23:39.760 and he's manipulating everything. There's no computer in the back of the room. The idea that
00:23:45.600 the president of the White House or the prime minister is sitting there at a computer saying,
00:23:48.960 okay, company A, you're going to put some more stuff over there to Thailand and you're going to go
00:23:52.720 over there. It don't work like that. Every company is trades on its own because trade is
00:23:58.640 voluntary exchange between two companies. The prime minister does not determine this.
00:24:04.720 He can shout and say, please trade more, but he can't. The parliament doesn't have any authority
00:24:10.000 to go to a company and say, I command you to start selling to that country over there.
00:24:14.560 It doesn't work like that. It's exchange based on, because I make a good product
00:24:19.680 and it's better than the competitor's products. And I'm going to sell it to your company because
00:24:23.200 you think my product's better than my competitors. That's what the market economy is. And yet this
00:24:28.080 delusion, illusion has emerged that somehow the prime minister is going to determine who we're
00:24:34.480 trading with. We're not. Presidents and leaders can influence trade by putting tariffs on or taking
00:24:41.440 tariffs off, but they can't dictate where any one country, a company, excuse me, is going to trade.
00:24:48.960 That's up to each company. And they send out their sales reps to different countries to pound the
00:24:54.640 door and knock on doors to sell product or services. But countries don't make that decision.
00:25:00.800 And yet you would listen. I listen to people all the time. They think that it's up to the prime
00:25:04.880 minister to decide we're going to go from, you know, 10% to 20% with another country or another part
00:25:10.160 of the world. Governments don't make those decisions. They're made by companies on the ground
00:25:16.320 through the sales forces and companies also decide whether they want to operate in your
00:25:21.920 country or not. And if, and if the environment has changed, if the economics has changed,
00:25:27.280 well, they're going to get up and leave. And we saw that illustrated in Ontario and Quebec now,
00:25:32.400 of course, because of course that truck manufacturing plant in St. Torres just announced that they were
00:25:37.200 going to be downsizing, not entirely, but moving back, moving their production. So in a way, Trump's
00:25:43.600 tariffs are being rewarded by the companies that make those decisions. And it's legitimizing
00:25:50.240 the fact that he made this move in the first place. As I said, I don't agree with Trump whatsoever.
00:25:56.560 I have supported every free trade agreement since 1988 with this in Canada. I'm Canadian. I have
00:26:01.840 supported every free trade agreement and trade. Think of trade as the opposite of tariffs. It's the
00:26:08.160 opposite of Trump. Trump wants to put tariffs on. What do trade agreements do? They try to take tariffs
00:26:13.360 off. I mean, anybody who's a free trader wants a tariff-free world. So clearly I'm not on the side
00:26:19.440 of Trump. I want more free trade. I want all tariffs to go. Okay. But I want, I'm not blind to the fact
00:26:28.080 that they can work, especially if you're a very large, powerful country like the United States.
00:26:33.600 Small countries, it's much more difficult because people can go elsewhere. Companies can go elsewhere.
00:26:38.400 But the US is the largest economy on planet Earth. And every country around, most countries around the
00:26:44.640 world, most companies around the world want to do business with the states. So they can do things
00:26:49.920 that others can't, such as putting tariffs on everybody and making them change their behavior.
00:26:54.640 And people say, how did, where does Trump get that from? Well, it's a sheer scale.
00:26:58.720 When you're 30 trillion and 400, 350 million people, you can do it. And is it fair? No, it's not.
00:27:06.640 Is it right? No, it's not. But that's reality. Well, we still have supply management though,
00:27:12.960 don't we? Yeah. We've been doing it for years. I think if you were to say to Trump, all right,
00:27:17.040 that's it. No tariffs on anything. Let's have wide open free trade. I think he'd probably go for it.
00:27:22.080 I said in January several times that if, and I said, I wish the government of Canada would go to
00:27:29.120 Trump and say, look, Trump, okay, we know that there's these industries that drive you crazy
00:27:33.200 because we're protecting them. One of them is supply management. Another is telecom, where we
00:27:37.360 don't allow American telecom into Canada. Another is airlines. Another is banks. We've got our
00:27:41.120 restrictions. Go to him, say, we'll take all those restrictions on those six or seven or eight
00:27:47.360 restricted industries. We'll take them off the table completely wide open access for your companies.
00:27:53.840 If you guarantee us no tariffs whatsoever coming in to the US from our country, I still think Trump
00:28:00.720 would go for the deal. I agree. I think the government of Canada didn't do it because they're
00:28:04.800 worried about the blowback here. It wasn't they're worried about Trump. They knew that people go crazy
00:28:10.640 because they want to support and continue to support supply management. So I think that we,
00:28:17.120 we are sometimes our own worst enemy. And I think that we are one of the reasons why we don't have
00:28:22.960 a trade deal, because we said we, what we were saying was, Trump take off all those tariffs. And
00:28:29.520 by the way, we're not going to take our tariffs off. So, but we want you to take your tariffs off.
00:28:33.600 Now let's do a deal. And of course, you know, go to hell. Yeah. I mean, that's what he said.
00:28:37.920 Absolutely. Yeah. Because we wouldn't take our tariffs off. I still think if we took them all off
00:28:42.720 and then said, well, I'm not saying we will take them off. If you take all your tariffs off,
00:28:47.760 I think we can do a deal with them. Yeah. I don't think we haven't tried it. I don't think
00:28:53.840 I wasn't in behind the room behind the closed doors, but I don't think they did.
00:28:57.280 I saw the Canadian Parliament went past a bill saying, we cannot end supply management,
00:29:04.160 even for negotiations with the Americans. My goodness me. Yeah. And we're supporting a system
00:29:10.800 for 8,000 dairy farmers, mostly in Quebec, that jacks the price up double the market price if we
00:29:16.480 didn't have supply management. So in other words, we're exploiting 40 million Canadians with much
00:29:20.320 higher milk and dairy prices to support 8,000 farmers. Yeah, absolutely. And jeopardizing a
00:29:28.000 jeopardizing deal. Great agreement. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really do appreciate it.
00:29:33.040 Lovely speaking with you, sir. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks very much. Thanks for inviting me. All right.
00:29:37.520 All right. That is Professor Ian Lee from Carleton University. And that is it for this edition of
00:29:43.840 The Mark Petrona Show. Appreciate you tuning in, my friends. Let's do it again soon, shall we?
00:29:48.080 We'll see you next time.