00:00:00.000with the july 1st trade deadline less than two weeks away president trump says he'd
00:00:11.040rather not extend the usmca trade deal the u.s and canada are in the midst of negotiations aimed
00:00:17.600at extending the deal but trump says his country is better off without it we do better without
00:00:24.160an agreement. Do you want to just leave it enrolling? I would rather leave it unsigned.
00:00:29.420I'd rather have it terminated. You'd rather have it terminated? Those are different things,
00:00:33.160sir. I just want to become clear. I would rather not have the agreement, but I may sign it. Right.
00:00:37.980But I would rather, we'd do better as a country if we don't have an agreement.
00:00:42.700On July 1st, Canada, the United States, and Mexico must hold a formal review of the agreement.
00:00:49.220They'll decide whether to extend it for another 16 years or not.
00:00:54.880Even liberal commentators are accusing Prime Minister Carney of thumbing his nose at Parliament.
00:01:01.020Not only are they ripping the government over the shutting down of debate on highly controversial bills,
00:01:08.300they're also calling Carney out on his dismal attendance record at question period.
00:01:13.640They say he's prioritizing things like sporting events over question period,
00:01:19.220here he is making a speech in the locker room of the world cup canadian soccer team i'll just say
00:01:26.260it's i couldn't be prouder as a canadian and on behalf of all canadians i just want to thank you
00:01:32.500for everything you put in you get here you represent the nation represent your families
00:01:38.580your friends and teach a lesson now conservatives have mockingly celebrated carney's 100th missed
00:01:46.820question period, saying the PM doesn't want to answer for his failed economic record.
00:01:52.800Carney didn't show up today. He didn't show up yesterday, and he's not showing up tomorrow. In
00:01:57.960fact, of the 136 question periods, Mark Carney has missed 100 of them. He's skipped out on almost
00:02:05.96075% of all the times that parliamentarians came to hold his government to account.
00:02:11.600This is what democracy in Canada is all about, where the government brings its proposals to the House of Commons and members of parliaments of all parties hold those decisions to account.
00:02:23.000But instead, he just doesn't even show up.
00:02:27.240Well, the state-funded CBC, Liberal-friendly panelists were united in slapping down the Prime Minister over his dismissive attitude when it comes to question period.
00:02:36.940The real issue is not that the Prime Minister wanted to cheer the men's soccer team.
00:02:41.200It's not that he's at the G7. It's that when he's in Ottawa, upstairs in his office, sometimes he does not make the effort to go down the stairs and answer the opposition's questions.
00:02:52.820And why it matters, it's because it's called the House of Commons. We are the Commons.
00:02:57.060Those questions, even though sometimes they're kind of stupid, they are asked on our behalf.0.94
00:03:02.360And, you know, Justin Trudeau did not have as great an attendance as Stephen Harper, but he came every Wednesday and answered every single question.0.99
00:03:10.160this Prime Minister does not do that. So I think it is a lack of respect of Parliament and it feeds
00:03:15.280into a narrative that the opposition is certainly trying to create that he's more of a CEO Prime
00:03:19.220Minister than a parliamentary leader. We'll see if the public cares. You cannot be the person who
00:03:24.620is preaching around the world respect for institutions and then treat the institution
00:03:30.060where you are accountable as a place that is of no interest to you. And Mark Carney has the same
00:03:37.540obligations as brian maloney stephen harper uh and whoever came and justin trudeau and they all
00:03:45.380managed to show up our guest today is brian lily columnist at the toronto sun he can also be found
00:03:51.940at substack at brianlily.com welcome brian thanks for having me uh having me mark it's uh it's a
00:04:00.180Beautiful, drink it day, as the Scots would say, here in Toronto.
00:04:04.780It's overcast, threatening to rain, you know, launching the World Cup.
00:04:34.820But I actually want to talk about what happened this week
00:04:37.580because I think it feeds into a possible problem
00:04:40.420that the Liberals need to be attuned to.
00:04:44.020Last week, Michael Savia, speaking at the Eurasia Group,
00:04:47.440this is the clerk of the Privy Council,
00:04:48.840talked about one of the things the Kearney government has
00:04:51.140that's an asset, which is trust from the public.
00:04:54.300What happened this week is that the Liberals decided
00:04:56.660to use their majority to shut down debate and pass legislation that is very controversial.
00:05:03.100Bills that were not studied, in some cases had no witnesses that even testified as to whether this
00:05:10.440was good or bad. We had the lawful access bill that has gotten a bit more attention across the
00:05:16.400country. And the government completely shut down the debate. In some cases, they even backdated
00:05:23.720the ability of opposition members to bring forward amendments so only government members
00:05:28.160could bring forward amendments. We have never seen anything like this.
00:05:33.260Right. Here he is acting, according to some, more like a CEO than a prime minister. What do you
00:05:38.320think, Ryan? So I watched that full clip and all three panelists went on to say they had never
00:05:45.460seen anything like this. So I've been covering Parliament Hill for more than 20 years now.
00:05:50.540I've never seen anything like this. I started during the Paul Martin minority. I'd covered
00:05:55.740Parliament Hill infrequently during the latter part of the Khrushchev years, but as a full-time
00:06:01.960job started in Martin's minority. And of course, we all heard that Stephen Harper was incredibly
00:06:08.720authoritarian and awful, and we just ran through bills. Never like this. Bill C-22,
00:06:18.420you know, I did a whole episode on the Full Comment podcast that I host about this bill
00:06:24.860and spoke to Dick Fadden, who, you know, a man who I have great respect for, you know,
00:06:30.600former Deputy Minister of Defense, former head of CSIS, National Security Advisor to
00:06:36.620Prime Minister Harper, and then Prime Minister Trudeau until Trudeau realized Fadden was hawkish
00:06:42.040on China and got rid of him. And Fadden made the case for why the bill was necessary. But I also
00:06:47.540spoke to people like Natalie Campbell from the Internet Society, who, you know, raised a lot of
00:06:54.820questions. And tech companies have raised a lot of questions around C-22. The Conservatives said,
00:07:00.680look, here's what we're willing to do on C-22, your Lawful Access Act. We will agree to pass
00:07:07.600part one, but part two, we need more study on. Liberals said, no, we're going to push it through.
00:07:13.740There are a whole bunch of companies that have said they will stop offering certain services or just pull out of Canada if this bill takes effect.
00:07:23.080And so it's going to require Apple to do certain things that Apple says they will never do.
00:07:28.760So if you have an iPhone, you have a MacBook, you use any Apple services, some of them may disappear.
00:07:37.540VPN companies that are based in Canada have said they cannot operate under these circumstances.
00:07:42.640You know, and the worst part, though, Mark, is you can say, well, C-22 only does a little bit, but then C-9 does a little bit, and then this bill does a little bit, and then you add them all up, and there is a cumulative effect in terms of how the government regulates the Internet, that how the government regulates free speech that should leave everyone more than a little concerned, and that is the problem here.
00:08:09.440And then how they push them through at the last moment using closure, time allocation, as it's officially called in in Parliament, shutting down debate.
00:08:20.940You know, this is if this were a conservative government, the headlines would be nonstop.
00:08:27.140I'm I will give full credit to CBC. You know, I'm not a fan of theirs. You know, I'm a harsh critic of CBC.
00:08:33.220I'll give them full credit for allowing that dissent to air.
00:08:39.020But why isn't that the lead story for everyone on Parliament Hill?
00:08:43.520Yeah, you even wrote an entire book about your criticisms about the CBC.
00:10:17.960under the darkness of night and just said,
00:10:21.140there you go um this is democracy they would have been screaming bloody murder if the conservatives
00:10:27.600did this and you know so now i'm i'm sitting here in toronto i'm no longer in ottawa i'm sitting here
00:10:34.620in toronto about 500 meters from queen's park and i can tell you that doug ford gets more
00:10:42.780scrutiny over how he runs things than mark carney does and doug ford doesn't shove through bills
00:10:50.720nearly as bad. Look, and I have a lot of criticism of Doug Ford and the PC government
00:10:56.180here in Ontario. I think that the way the legislature works in Ontario compared to how
00:11:02.220it works in Ottawa is subpar in terms of committees and checks and balances. But if Doug
00:11:10.860Ford shoved through the kind of bills that Mark Carney just did, using time allocation to shut
00:11:16.420down debate, you would never hear the end of it. It would actually be a national story that would
00:11:21.160lead CBC's The National. It wouldn't just be a three-minute conversation at the end of the ad
00:11:27.440issue panel. It would be the dominant story on the front page of The Globe, The Star, on Global News,
00:11:34.140on CTV, on CBC. But Mark Carney does it? Well, vibes, man, vibes. Carney's great. Like, didn't
00:11:42.300you just see him in Europe everyone in Europe loves him he went to Ireland did you see that
00:11:47.140he was in Ireland Ireland's great and they love Mark Carney so we all love Mark Carney
00:11:51.640okay guys let's be real crime is up repeat offenders are released on bail police responses
00:11:57.560are slower than ever and in many places law-abiding citizens are expected to just hope nothing bad
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00:13:01.480Well, none of this would have been happening if we didn't have the four crossings.
00:13:05.220So I think that's what makes it a little more galling from my perspective is that you didn't get a majority in the normal way.
00:13:14.580You didn't get it's a manufactured majority.0.97
00:13:18.500Marilyn Gladue. I was just speaking with someone from the conservative party the day about that and and how Marilyn Gladue would chastise everyone else for not being a true conservative.
00:13:31.480And I remember her and her camp coming after me for not interviewing her promptly enough when she wanted to run for the leadership.
00:13:40.780When was that? In 2019, I guess, after Andrew Scheer lost 2019, 2020.
00:13:48.720Oh, why aren't you interviewing her? Well, I mean, she didn't make the cut.
00:13:51.980She couldn't get the signatures or raise the money. And but, you know, she was the true blue candidate.
00:13:57.760Why aren't you interviewing the true blue candidate?
00:14:00.020Is that because you're not a real conservative?0.67
00:19:26.640And that may partially be the fact that the NDP is kind of repatriating some of the votes that went over to the Liberals in the last election.
00:19:38.520Look, for the Conservatives, you've got to hope that that continues.
00:19:42.000We're not at the point yet where the conservatives are threatening the liberal majority, even with the NDP coming back.
00:19:50.840You know, how much can Abby Lewis pound the government run grocery stores idea to pull votes away?
00:19:57.780I'm not sure. We're at the beginning of a trend.0.98
00:20:01.760If you remember the first poll that showed a big gap between the conservatives and the liberals,
00:20:07.740Because even though the Conservatives lost the election in 2025, for several months, Pierre Polyev and his team held it very close with the Liberals.
00:20:16.980And then mid to end of January, a Leger poll for Postmedia, my employer, was the first to show a big gap.
00:20:25.780And I looked at that and I said, OK, this is either an outlier or the beginning of a trend, and we'll know in a couple of weeks.
00:20:32.720And it turned out that was the beginning of a trend.
00:20:35.260unfortunately, I was hoping it was the outlier. Now we're going to have to do the same thing here.
00:20:40.380Is Ivy Lewis bringing people back? Will they hold? And then the liberals have been geniuses
00:20:47.420at this. We saw it in 93, 97, 2000. We've seen it in 2019 and 2021. They know how to scare NDP
00:20:56.960voters into their fold just enough to hold on to power. And so they might be able to do that again.
00:21:02.960Conservatives are in a very tough spot until Donald Trump is gone because the liberals have
00:21:09.300figured out how to turn him into the boogeyman for everything that ails you. And even if he's
00:21:14.720not actually responsible, like we haven't made our economy as robust and competitive as we need to.
00:21:21.400We haven't gotten out of our own way in terms of oil and gas and mining and everything else.
00:21:27.440But whether it's Mark Carney or Doug Ford or Wob Canoe, they're just, oh, Trump.
00:21:52.000But I'm wondering if it'll be a little harder to scare leftists, New Democrats, back into the liberal tent, given his experience now as Barkarney tries to inch over to the center of the political spectrum.
00:22:05.880I don't see him inching over to the center.