00:02:19.560And don't worry, he can be reached by phone.
00:02:21.800It's all nonsense, of course, when you consider that it was the prime minister who ran a campaign
00:02:26.860and won an election campaign on being able to secure a better deal with the United States
00:02:32.180and being the right person to negotiate with Donald Trump.
00:02:35.200So, yeah, sure, he's not in the same position as Canada's trade negotiators.
00:02:39.860But think about the message it sends, Mark, to those that are working in tariff-impacted sectors to see the Prime Minister jet off to Italy with this huge deadline looming overhead.
00:02:51.840It doesn't convey that we're taking this moment particularly seriously.
00:02:55.660And I think that if the news media were being honest with themselves, they would be asking questions about why the Prime Minister chose that week of all weeks to go away, why he required an ethics screen before taking that vacation, where he might have been, who he might have been traveling with.
00:03:12.380Those are questions that they're not answered. Instead, they're focused on beating up on the opposition. And I think that's very telling.
00:03:18.940Yeah, I mean, there are rumors that he might have met with the CEO of Brookfield while he was in Tuscany.
00:03:40.920It seems like, well, he's in Italy, so we've got to leave him alone.
00:03:43.560After all, he's entitled to his vacation.
00:03:46.500Oh, by the way, he has a government jet.
00:03:48.100Yeah, and I mean, I'm not somebody who begrudges leaders from taking some downtime. But that's really not the point in this case. He's been out of Ottawa a lot. He's been traveling a lot. And again, when the situation evolved with the introduction of this new tariff threat over Canada, so too must your travel plans, right?
00:04:15.060Like if now we're hearing the prime minister say today, now that he's back, he can't articulate what a good deal is.
00:04:21.940And he says, sure, he's going to talk to Trump sometime before Wednesday.
00:04:25.740But really, the big news of the week is Churchill Falls.
00:04:29.400And so he's really trying to have his cake and eat it, too, isn't he?
00:04:32.040He's trying to make it seem as though the Canada-U.S. trade dispute is the number one issue that required his leadership when he ran in the last election.
00:04:40.960This is what Canadians should be seized with.
00:04:43.060But now all of a sudden we're on the eve of either a new tariff threat or a new deal for Canada, and he's telling Canadians not to worry about it and that it'll all get sorted out.
00:04:52.060I mean, you can't slice and dice it both ways.
00:04:57.960He's a former, as you know, former agriculture minister.
00:05:01.000He still has some strong ties in with trade officials in the United States and in Canada.
00:05:07.360And according to him, the Canadian delegation has gone out of its way to avoid having any contact with Jamison Greer, who's the lead on the U.S. side, which I found particularly interesting and makes me wonder with, you know, this deadline just days away now, how that could be the case.
00:05:30.840But is it possible that he's expecting failure and trying to, you know, prepare people for the inevitable failure of his side to get a negotiating deal?
00:05:44.820I mean, let's not forget going back to the election campaign.
00:05:50.800We're going to get a deal with the Americans.
00:05:52.520We're going to get a winning deal with Trump.
00:05:55.320And so vote for me because I'm the guy who can stand up to Trump.
00:05:59.080And so up to now, as he's been reminded repeatedly by the leader of the opposition, those efforts have completely failed. And now we're right near the end of the deadline.
00:06:10.580Yeah. And remember, too, Mark, it was I'm going to get a new economic and security partnership. And then it became, well, actually, the one we have is the best deal already. So depending on the day and depending where we're at in the cycle, Mark Carney's position on what a good deal looks like has has changed and evolved.
00:06:30.500And now he's not even saying what it is. And I think that's because he wants to be able to tell Canadians, well, whatever deal we end up getting handed in a couple of days time, well, that's actually the best deal. And that's the one that Canadians need to root for. So, you know, there's a couple of things that are going on here. I think Canada is late to come to the table with substantive changes on a bilateral agreement.
00:06:54.160If we go back to last fall, all of the irritants that we've been talking about to this point on auto and on supply management, steel, aluminum, lumber, those are the exact same issues that Canada was talking about in the fall, and we're talking about them now.
00:07:08.280So what on earth have we been up to for the better part of 10 months?
00:07:12.560When we were last at the table, things were disrupted, and now we're having this same conversation.
00:07:17.820It's been nothing but Canadians and workers in those industries kind of paying the price for not getting there.
00:07:23.720There's also the reality that you're speaking to, Mark, which is, is it actually politically better for the prime minister to walk away from a deal or to retaliate or to dig in and put his elbows up further?
00:07:35.720And it's pretty hard to deny when you think about his voters in the last election, what they might like to see.
00:07:42.140It's hard to deny that there's probably not an attractive political element of dragging this out even further, continuing the drama with Trump on trade, because that is ultimately good for his polling numbers.
00:07:53.720Even though it is, of course, a disaster for the country and the economy to go on and on without some trade certainty with our largest trading partner.
00:08:02.800Yeah, the other question is, and this revolves around the media focused on Pierre Polyev, is it possible that the Liberals are maybe getting a rough ride at the door?
00:08:12.680I mean, we've got three by-elections coming up, including the one I think most people have their eye on, which is out in Vancouver, Wilkinson's old seat.
00:08:23.220I mean, is it, well, what are you hearing by the way?
00:08:26.100I mean, you're plugged in, is something going on with these by-elections that
00:08:54.400So while the government has been successful in, again, extending the life of and getting all the political juice out of this trade dispute with the United States, for which, you know, undoubtedly the current government is assessed, the liberals are assessed to be able to handle that better, even though the proof is not there.
00:09:12.720Eventually, things are going to turn back to domestic issues because life has not changed for a majority of Canadians over the course of the last 18 months.
00:09:20.320And I think that the Liberals and the pundit class and commentators are not keen to have Polyev talking again on some of these issues that he is best suited to prosecute the government towards.
00:09:31.940And I think that's why you're seeing a lot of the knives out and those taking shots at him, because once the pendulum swings back to be a bit more domestically focused, I don't think there's anybody that can hold a candle to Mr. Paglia when it comes to really articulating the pain that a lot of Canadians are feeling on cost of living in these domestic issues.
00:09:50.900Now, you've been invited. I guess you're a regular at CBC, right?
00:09:55.640I'm on again in about an hour and a bit.
00:09:57.640Well, I won't keep you. I do want to run this story past you, however. This is from Blacklock's
00:10:03.560reporter, a site CBC for pro-liberal agenda. Canadians increasingly assume the CBC and other
00:10:10.340mainstream media have some angle or agenda in reporting the news with a particular political
00:10:16.720slant, says federal focus group research. The in-house report found more Canadians go to Reddit
00:10:24.320to see what people are saying than rely on TV networks or newspapers.
00:10:40.740I mean, as you know, Mark, the CBC continues to have me on.
00:10:45.780I provide, I think, certainly not a liberal bias perspective when I'm on the show.
00:10:51.220And so I will say that, you know, at least from my perspective, they've done a good job in terms of elevating other elevating other voices.
00:11:01.080I think with anything, though, you need to have a balanced media diet.
00:11:04.800If you're just consuming CBC or you're just consuming Reddit or X or any other publication, you're not going to get a balanced perspective.
00:11:11.940So I wish that organizations and outlets would frankly wear their bias a little bit more.
00:11:18.280If you're like the Toronto Star does, it's written into their mandate, for instance, so you know exactly where they're coming from.
00:11:24.520What I think a lot of Canadians are tired of is partial journalism styled as impartial journalism.
00:11:33.480And so that's where there needs to be an effort, I think, on the part of Canadians to make sure that they're consuming a good breadth of information, not just items through mainstream media.
00:11:44.320And do you feel like you're going into hostile ground when you're there?
00:11:48.280Honestly, I don't. I feel like we're having a conversation. We're having a debate. Listen, I know I'm a conservative on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I know that not everybody is sitting at home nodding along, agreeing with everything that I have to say. But I find the debates to be pretty cordial. And yeah, I look at my responsibility on these shows to be trying to puncture the Ottawa bubble a little bit and provide some of that conservative perspective.