Juno News - THEY BLEW IT — Canada’s trade deal FALLS APART

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Fighter with Chris Sims here on Juneau News. My name is Chris Sims. I'm the

00:00:11.040 Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And this show is all about fighting

00:00:15.960 for you, for the taxpayer, for the everyday working man and woman in Canada. And that is why

00:00:22.700 we have got a hot show for you today. Something kind of happened at the end of last week and over

00:00:28.240 the weekend. Basically, trade negotiations between Canada and the United States, two huge

00:00:34.840 trading partners, have ground to a halt. We've got Prime Minister Mark Carney saying, hey, we were

00:00:40.540 making some progress and then something happened. And we have President of the United States, Donald

00:00:45.340 Trump. He is hopping mad about an ad that included the voice of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. We showed

00:00:53.500 it to you here on this show a couple of weeks ago. So this all blew up. So for folks who are trying to

00:01:00.120 follow along at home, basically, we were in current negotiations. Ottawa and Washington, D.C., were in

00:01:06.660 current negotiations to hammer out things, trade deals on things like energy, aluminum, auto

00:01:12.480 manufacturing, all that jazz. Sounded like there was some progress being made. Sounded like there was

00:01:18.920 some relationship warming. The reason why this is super important to you as the everyday working

00:01:24.140 person is because tariffs are always hanging over our heads, okay, as punishment. Tariffs are just trade

00:01:32.760 taxes. They cost you more to buy stuff here in Canada when we have tariffs. It also costs our businesses

00:01:41.880 more to ship their stuff to the United States and try to sell it there because they have tariffs.

00:01:48.500 So tariffs are just trade taxes. So tariffs are just trade taxes. And it's super important we keep

00:01:52.800 them low or non-existent. And the trade relationship that we have with Canada and the United States

00:02:00.360 is not about personalities. It's about money. We actually have some numbers here that show you

00:02:06.980 the daily two-way trade between Canada and the United States is about $3 billion. Okay, take a look at that.

00:02:16.120 $3.6 billion a day. You know how much money we waste on the CBC every year? Imagine two of those a day.

00:02:26.020 But it's valuable. This is trade. This is back and forth. Yearly, more than $1.3 trillion.

00:02:35.020 Okay, this is the kind of money we're talking about here. This is what's on the line. Not necessarily

00:02:40.920 personality conflicts. But here's the problem. Personality conflicts matter because we're not

00:02:47.600 dealing with data spreadsheets here talking to each other like robots. We're dealing with human

00:02:52.300 beings, okay, who have emotions, feelings, opinions, hang-ups, and they can react to each other.

00:02:59.700 So what happened is U.S. President Donald Trump decided he did not like the ad that was running

00:03:06.380 that was produced by the Ford government, leading Ontario, that included comments from the late

00:03:12.220 U.S. President Ronald Reagan talking about tariffs. This all blew up, okay? Trump got angry

00:03:20.360 and said, this is totally offside. I didn't accept this. The Reagan Foundation also said,

00:03:26.300 you folks didn't consult us, etc., etc. And personalities got in the way. And now, unfortunately,

00:03:32.280 normal people, everybody watching this show, everybody who's an American, whose livelihood

00:03:38.040 depends on Canadian two-way trade and good business practices, they're all going to be hurting because

00:03:43.760 of this kind of stuff, which is why we need to put an end to it and we need a new trade deal,

00:03:49.180 which leads us to what's happening right now with our national leaders. Okay, so this is what's going

00:03:55.020 on. We've got both Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump. They're both over in Asia

00:04:01.980 right now. Listen to what Prime Minister Mark Carney said about the current trade relationship before

00:04:09.500 all of this hit the fan. Listen to this. We stand ready to sit down with the United States,

00:04:16.860 myself with the President, my colleagues with their colleagues, when the U.S. is ready to sit down.

00:04:22.380 We had made considerable progress on a supplement to the trading relationship that we had,

00:04:33.220 considerable progress in the areas of steel, aluminum, and energy-associated areas as well.

00:04:40.600 And as I just said, we're ready to sit down when they're ready to do that.

00:04:45.300 Okay, so that was Carney. So I would say good tone. You know, fatherly, the adult in the room,

00:04:53.100 we were making progress. We're ready to sit back down. I would say that's a pretty good tone when

00:04:57.900 you're trying to deal with somebody with whom you have a difficult relationship. But here's what U.S.

00:05:02.760 President Donald Trump said. Now, we don't have video. It's just audio. And it sounds noisy. That's

00:05:07.620 because he's literally on Air Force One. And he's kind of like leaning over and he's talking to the

00:05:12.960 reporters. And they ask him about what's going on with Canada. Listen to this.

00:05:17.760 As much as I love Canada itself and the people of Canada, they've just had a lot of bad

00:05:23.020 representatives. They did a fake ad yesterday. They were caught. The Ronald Reagan Foundation

00:05:28.140 was the one that caught them. And they've apologized. And they said, we're going to take

00:05:32.420 the ad down. Well, they did it, but they did it very late. They let it play for another two nights.

00:05:37.480 And now they took that ad down. Prime Minister knew what the ad was before it was.

00:05:41.460 Will you see him in APEC? Do you want to meet with him?

00:05:44.320 I don't want to meet with him. No, I'm not going to be meeting with him for a while.

00:05:47.660 I'm very happy with the deal we have right now with Canada.

00:05:50.220 So that is what Mark Carney is walking into. Where do we go from here? We're going to find

00:05:55.560 out in a moment. But first, let's listen to our sponsor.

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00:06:34.700 unsmoke.ca. Okay, so this is the situation we're in right now. Prime Minister Mark Carney

00:06:41.220 and US President Donald Trump, they're both going to be in the same room. We know that

00:06:45.740 for a fact because at least they all need to stand together for that awkward group photo

00:06:49.540 at APEC. So how is Carney going to get in front of Trump? How is he going to try to say,

00:06:56.700 listen, we've apologized. We've taken the ad down. We both want a deal. Let's make a deal.

00:07:01.880 Well, do we need somebody who can talk to US President Donald Trump the way that he talks

00:07:09.120 to other people? Do we need somebody who's bilingual and MAGA? Let's find out. Let's find

00:07:15.340 out from a guy who actually talks to people in the United States about serious issues like taxes,

00:07:22.040 jobs and trade and politics and media all the time. Let's hear from Brian Lilly. Joining me now is

00:07:27.820 Brian Lilly. He is the senior columnist with the Toronto Sun and he is also the host of the full

00:07:34.060 comment podcast. I strongly recommend that you listen to Brian's podcast. If you're scrolling

00:07:39.860 through your iTunes or however you listen to it, look for kind of the orange icon. I often refer to

00:07:45.820 Brian as my conduit between what is the independent media that we're doing here at Juno News and the

00:07:52.280 mainstream media. Brian and I have worked together for a long time, decades, in fact, off and on. So

00:07:58.240 Brian, I know, right? People will think we're old. Ixnay on the knowing who Reagan was, eh? Okay. So

00:08:04.720 we got a lot to talk about. Number one, what's the latest you're hearing? Like, I know that we see

00:08:11.380 mainstream media headlines like, are you in secret negotiations to fix this with Ben Shapiro or Steve

00:08:17.240 Bannon? Like, please tell me. I wish there was a way to fix it. The Americans have had a meltdown

00:08:24.900 and even people that I thought were reasonable are having a meltdown over this ad. And look,

00:08:29.980 you can have a debate on was it a good use of money? Was it a good strategy? But people that

00:08:36.940 should know better are still freaking out. They lied to us. They made Reagan say bad things about

00:08:42.680 terrorists. I think there's whole books on that. So I don't know who you reach out to. But

00:08:47.700 the main thing coming out of this is something that Kevin Hassett said, Trump's National Economic

00:08:57.160 Council director, and he's speaking with reporters the other day. And he contradicted what Mark Carney,

00:09:03.840 our prime minister, said in Malaysia. Carney says they were getting close to a deal.

00:09:09.560 Well, Hassett said, you know, it's not really about the ad, not one ad wouldn't set everything off.

00:09:15.480 This is part of growing frustration over months with the Canadians. And so, you know, are we again

00:09:23.800 getting in our own way? And I think we are. It's tough to tell, you know, PMO was leaking to the Globe

00:09:29.960 and Mail last week that a deal was imminent. I was hearing the opposite. Carney says that we're very

00:09:35.040 close. Hassett, who's in the negotiations, and some of them says we're not. But we do know that

00:09:41.440 Donald Trump decided to end all talks over this ad. Now, I think the ad is an excuse, whether it's an

00:09:48.800 excuse because, well, the trade talks just weren't going well, or as Ben Mulroney has put forward,

00:09:56.860 that perhaps this is Trump laying the groundwork to be able to blame Canada if he loses the Supreme

00:10:03.280 Court case. Those are both possibilities. I don't think they will lose the Supreme Court case, by the

00:10:08.080 way. One, it's the Supreme Court stacked with Republicans. Two, I've read the pertinent sections

00:10:13.960 of the 1962 Expanding Trade Act, which is where this is from. And the act gives the president broad

00:10:22.040 powers. But maybe he is concerned about losing. They lost in a lower court. Maybe, you know, John

00:10:26.400 Roberts flips in sides with the Democrats once again. You never know. And so we are just in the

00:10:35.060 middle of a great amount of pain over the whims of Donald Trump and the actions of Doug Ford,

00:10:44.320 kind of feeling sorry for Mark Carney because he's stuck between them, having a cleanup on aisle seven.

00:10:49.520 And no, I don't think there is a big coordination between Ford and Carney to be good cop, bad cop on

00:10:58.000 this. Do I think that Ford and his team alerted Carney? Yeah, they knew about the ad ahead of time.

00:11:03.880 But this isn't some kind of strategy. And Mark Carney is seriously sitting there going,

00:11:10.740 oh, crap, what do I do now?

00:11:12.600 Yeah, I think he's at the oh, crap stage. From what we could tell from headlines, it sounded like there

00:11:18.140 was some progress being made. But then to your point, I watched that same clip where that American

00:11:23.120 trade negotiator was saying, yeah, well, the wheels were all kind of falling off anyway, because

00:11:28.500 I wanted to get your thoughts on this, Brian. I'm paraphrasing him. But he said some of the antics

00:11:33.720 of the Trudeau administration are carrying over to now. What do you think he means by that? My

00:11:40.280 take on that tone was that the Canadians were being too rigid, maybe not offering up things

00:11:48.140 like supply managed areas of trade? Or were they were they actually just showing up late to meetings

00:11:53.160 and being disrespectful? Like what was your take on that? That would be the Trudeau way showing up late

00:11:58.060 to meeting. Yeah, that's what I mean. So I don't think it's that. Look, in the last round of trade

00:12:05.120 talks, the Americans negotiated greater access to our dairy market, particularly, you know, supply managed

00:12:11.980 cheese and milk. And no, we're not going to be drinking bovine growth hormone milk. You can barely

00:12:18.740 find that in the States, you'd have to go looking for it. I don't know why you bring that up talking

00:12:22.480 to me, Brian, really, I have no idea. But I will, I always get that in emails. Well, we don't want

00:12:27.400 bovine growth hormone milk. It's hard to find in the States, you know, the public doesn't want it there

00:12:33.780 either. So it's gone away. But they negotiated a certain amount of access. And then what we did was

00:12:39.560 we said, yes, but we'll allot that quota to Agropour and Saputo and Armstrong cheese. And guess

00:12:47.360 what? They were not importing it. And the Americans said, well, wait a minute, you're, you're playing

00:12:51.020 foul here. And we've been fighting over it ever since. Well, since then, we're not even willing to

00:12:57.140 give an inch. So the Americans don't want rid of supply management, but they do want some access.

00:13:01.020 And we've just passed a law saying you can't ever negotiate on this. So that's a real problem.

00:13:07.100 And the way it's been described to me, and this was from a Canadian, is that Canadian who's been

00:13:12.380 part of this process over the years said, we always take the same approach. We go into the room and we

00:13:17.640 demand everything and offer nothing. And we think that's a good negotiating tactic. And the Americans

00:13:22.760 are apparently fed up with us. You know, you look at things like the de minimis, you know,

00:13:29.620 going to get nerdy here, but there've been a bunch of stories recently about how, well,

00:13:34.700 the Americans got rid of their de minimis, which is how much you can ship into the U.S. before

00:13:39.440 you pay duties or taxes. And they would allow us to ship in $800. And we start charging taxes

00:13:46.640 at $40. We start charging duty at, or tariffs at $150. And they would just say, why don't you

00:13:55.260 match us? Match us so that our businesses are treated equally. And we just said no. We said,

00:14:02.260 absolutely not. Look at how we handled the digital service attacks. We were apparently close to a

00:14:07.000 deal in June. The Americans said, will you please just pause the implementation of your digital

00:14:13.480 service attacks on July 1st while these negotiations are going on? And we said, absolutely not.

00:14:20.140 And then what happened? We got rid of the whole tax two hours before it was supposed to come into

00:14:25.920 effect because Trump called off all trade talks back then. We are often our own worst enemies.

00:14:32.040 That might be the case with the ad, but there might be something else going on in the background that we

00:14:36.120 don't know. This is striking me as Bush League, frankly, from our side of things, unfortunately.

00:14:41.320 And it's going to hurt. My point here is that it hurts all of us. It hurts normal working people.

00:14:45.080 It isn't about the personalities involved. Sorry, go ahead, Brian.

00:14:47.300 Well, we've got some smart people in there who are supposed to be handling this, but obviously

00:14:53.280 things aren't going well. And on the American side, by the way, it's not like everything's with

00:14:57.980 Trump and he's irrational and so you can't ever deal with him. No, you got guys like Jameson Greer

00:15:02.060 and Kevin Hassett. And these are smart folks that have these conversations with every other country in

00:15:08.440 the world. And they're about to have a deal with China and still not us. They've got to deal with

00:15:12.420 every G7 country in the world except us. It's at a certain point, we become the problem.

00:15:20.560 And, you know, as I said, whether it's the ad or something else, I don't know. But let me say this

00:15:27.320 about the ad. A lot of people complaining about the $75 million. If the ad had worked and helped

00:15:33.720 get the tariffs lifted, that would have been a bargain considering how much this is hurting our

00:15:38.040 economy. The amount of trade, $75 million, is a pittance compared to how this is hitting

00:15:43.660 industries straight across the country.

00:15:46.740 So just quickly on the ad, I know that some folks disagree with me here. A few weeks ago,

00:15:51.920 that's what I said as well. That $75 million, that sounds like a lot of money. But if this actually

00:15:56.540 lands us an actual trade deal with our biggest trading partner, that's worth it. What I didn't know,

00:16:02.560 and I know some folks consider this a red herring, but I don't because I think that there's some

00:16:06.620 emotional chess going on here between Trump, the American people, the Reagan Foundation, etc.

00:16:12.300 I was born in the 70s, raised in the 80s, loved Ronald Reagan. I know for a fact that the Reagan

00:16:18.140 Foundation is very protective of the voice, the image, all of their stuff that involves U.S.

00:16:24.760 President Ronald Reagan. Now, I thought two weeks ago when I heard the ad that the Ford team had

00:16:31.840 gotten permission from the Reagan Foundation. If they'd had their blessing in writing,

00:16:37.760 I would argue Trump wouldn't be able to use this as defending Reagan's legacy. Look, they've wronged

00:16:43.900 him. Look, there's maybe a legal reason. There isn't. It's public domain. But it was the perception

00:16:49.500 that he had been wronged and that the language had been changed or cut. And that gave Trump the

00:16:55.940 excuse. That doesn't need to. We don't need to accept the excuse. He still used it, though,

00:17:01.540 to great effect.

00:17:03.200 The only class that I paid attention to in journalism school was media law because I didn't

00:17:07.480 want to get sued. And so far, touch wood, I've been successful. American copyright law is clear.

00:17:13.800 Any creative work produced by a federal public servant in the context of their work duties is

00:17:19.500 public domain. And so this is public domain. There's no need to ask for permission. This clip has

00:17:25.360 been like I knew of this clip long before the ad came up because people have been posting it since

00:17:31.360 Trump started talking about imposing tariffs again. So they get to be the wounded party here. They get

00:17:38.180 to act as a wounded party. This is part of the thing. I think Trump saw the ad. On Tuesday, he was

00:17:44.840 fine with the ad. Talked about it at the Rose Garden. By Thursday, it had annoyed him. Someone at the

00:17:49.940 White House called the Reagan Foundation, leaned on it. That's right. They bent over backwards to distort

00:17:55.180 reality. And that allowed Trump to to go off. Here we are. It's you know, and what how do we get out of

00:18:05.140 this? I don't know. But in the meantime, you've got people losing their jobs or losing hours or yes,

00:18:11.900 you know, this this is important. Very. And every once in a while, I start hearing from folks that say

00:18:19.760 we don't need any deal with the Americans. The only way you can say that is if you're part of the

00:18:23.840 laptop class or you're retired with a really comfy government pension. Amen. Let's pull up the numbers

00:18:29.520 here because this is not about some schoolyard. I don't like him anymore. And he doesn't sit at my

00:18:33.680 cafeteria table, which is nonsense. Let's point out the numbers here. We have a couple of graphic

00:18:38.180 boards to show you. And it's showing the daily trade numbers. OK, so you look so daily. OK,

00:18:44.440 between Canada and the United States, these are the latest figures for our two way trade.

00:18:49.420 Three point six billion dollars. OK, per day. That's what that's two CBCs, Brian, every day.

00:18:58.740 Yearly, yearly. This is mind blowing. The two way trade between Canada, the United States,

00:19:04.560 one point three trillion. Folks, to understand how big a trillion is, if you started counting up

00:19:13.120 loonies like Scrooge McDuck, it would take you 30,000 years to count to one trillion.

00:19:20.880 I'll tell you why this is more important for us to be concerned about this than the Americans,

00:19:26.980 though, Chris, is that and this will really speak to the folks that want to retaliate with moves to

00:19:35.640 hurt the American economy by putting tariffs on their goods or striking them back somehow.

00:19:44.080 The impact of trade with the U.S. on our economy is just shy of 20 percent. It's like high 18,

00:19:50.580 low 19 percent of our total GDP. Correct. It's less than 2 percent of theirs. It is 10 times more

00:19:58.000 important to our economy than trade with us is to them. They could actually lose all trade with Canada

00:20:05.120 and the overall American economy would not take that big of a hit. So we need to keep that in

00:20:11.940 perspective. Now, do we have what is needed to go down there and make a compelling case that

00:20:18.920 they should strike a deal with us? Yes. Whether it is oil, whether it is natural gas, critical minerals,

00:20:27.160 manufacturing capacity, you know, all this talk of moving the auto jobs. I've spoken to American

00:20:31.840 senators who agree with Trump on a lot of things. They're in his party. And they'll just tell you,

00:20:37.120 we don't have the labor force to fill all these jobs. You can move the car plant to Ohio or Michigan

00:20:42.420 tomorrow. We're not going to be able to fill all those jobs. So we've got the manufacturing capacity.

00:20:46.900 We've got the oil. We've got the LNG. We've got the critical minerals. We've got the agricultural

00:20:50.620 goods. We've got the lumber. We need to package that together along with saying, we'll give you

00:20:57.340 special access to the critical minerals, whether it's in Nova Scotia, which has critical minerals

00:21:02.560 that nobody else has, or the Ring of Fire in Ontario or in Northern Alberta. These are sprinkled

00:21:07.560 throughout the country. We will work with you on ensuring that you not only have access to them,

00:21:14.700 but we will put in the processing capacity. We will increase our defense in the Arctic, in the North,

00:21:20.360 where you're worried about it. Make it a full package deal. The Americans wanted that at one

00:21:24.880 point. Interesting thing that Prime Minister Carney said in Malaysia this morning was that the Americans

00:21:30.000 walked away from that and went to focusing on sectoral tariffs back in July. We need to find a

00:21:35.860 way to put it all back together. Trump's just signed deals for critical minerals with Australia,

00:21:40.860 with Malaysia. We need to get in there and do a sales pitch. Yes. Not a protectionist pitch,

00:21:48.780 but a sales pitch of, here's why you need us. Here's why we're good friends. Here's how we can

00:21:53.760 do better business together. Let's make a deal. I hear he likes making deals, right? So why don't

00:21:59.700 we talk his language? A couple more questions for you here, Brian. On your point there, I noticed that

00:22:05.600 Trump's ears kind of perked up and he seemed more interested a little while ago when the issue of the

00:22:10.820 Keystone pipeline came back up. Because last we heard, we've got it built right to the Canadian-US

00:22:16.740 border. Biden killed it. You know, Trudeau got knocked over with a feather and didn't put up

00:22:20.600 any protest. But we know Trump is in favor of oil pipelines. So he seemed kind of perked up on that.

00:22:27.220 So is the answer, what Professor Ian Lee often points out very smartly, is that to your point,

00:22:33.860 we got all these critical minerals and resources and stuff. Why don't we present a deal to him?

00:22:39.060 The question I have for you is, is Carney the right guy to be presenting a deal to him?

00:22:44.700 Or does he need a better tag team partner than Ford? Because Ford is just dumping gasoline on

00:22:50.640 this dumpster fire. He should stop talking about this. Does he need to tag in someone like a Brad

00:22:55.500 Wall or a Daniel Smith to kind of be his foil down there? I don't know if you've seen Brad Wall on

00:23:02.240 social media lately. I wouldn't let him near anybody. Brad should stay out on the ranch with the cattle.

00:23:08.040 He's angry. Good God bless him. I love him. But yeah. And, you know, six months ago, I would have

00:23:14.720 said, you know, send in Doug Ford. They can speak the same language. I wouldn't let Ford near any of

00:23:20.620 this right now either for the same reason. Who would it be? I don't know. I think Carney could

00:23:26.700 pitch a good deal. I think Dominic LeBlanc is a good salesperson. The bookish Michael Sabia,

00:23:33.980 who's the clerk of the Privy Council and Carney's chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard. I'm not sure

00:23:40.260 that they are, you know, the people to sell to Trump, but they can talk to the other top bureaucrats.

00:23:46.520 But yeah, we got to pitch that all in. And look, the Americans have been looking for us to do things

00:23:51.300 fast for a while. Before all of this started, I was with an American diplomat who had come up under

00:24:00.320 Biden. And he was complaining to us, why have you guys not moved on the Grays Bay port yet?

00:24:06.180 We just need you to do stuff. So for the folks that don't know, that's a Nunavut,

00:24:10.040 that we need a road up to Grays Bay. We need a deep water port in the Arctic. They said, we just

00:24:14.600 want you to do stuff and not sit on all of these things that we think are necessary. So Grays

00:24:21.000 Bay port could be both defense and commercial capabilities in the deep water Arctic. We have

00:24:28.460 not moved on any of this stuff. And the Americans under all administrations have been frustrated,

00:24:34.340 especially over the last 10 years. Okay. Why is this continuing though? Like what I can see

00:24:40.240 if you've got a personal relationship difficulty with someone being obstinate of like, no, I'm not

00:24:46.560 answering your calls. I'm leaving you on red, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's childish. We're dealing with

00:24:50.980 like we just pointed out a trillion dollars, more than a trillion dollars a year. That sounds like

00:24:55.660 a simple thing. It'd cost a lot of money, but it's just straight infrastructure. So why aren't

00:25:00.720 they moving on things like this? I like to point out as evidence, you know, if Trump had been burning

00:25:06.160 bridges with absolutely every other trading partner and not signing any deals with any other

00:25:09.980 country, then we could say, okay, we can see, you know, the problem is in the chair, but he's not,

00:25:15.320 he's signing other deals with other countries, which is why I'm looking at some of these bureaucrats

00:25:21.860 who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year per year to be smarty pants experts on this

00:25:27.640 stuff. And diplomats, same thing in order to smooth over ruffled feathers and to get deals.

00:25:33.540 What's the problem here with Canada? Is it just that we've allowed this sort of narrative to build

00:25:38.520 in our heads of like, oh, we don't like him, so we're not going to play ball?

00:25:43.500 I think that's part of it. I mean, we took a trade war position when other countries took a

00:25:47.560 negotiations position. And we did that from the start. And there was a provincial election here

00:25:52.720 in Ontario, one on let's fight the big, bad, mean guy in Washington. Then Mark Carney ran a federal

00:25:59.580 campaign on the same thing. And so there's a mindset for a lot of Canadians. Look at all the Canadians

00:26:05.320 that have decided they're not going to Florida or to Arizona or to Palm Springs because of Donald

00:26:11.600 Trump. They're giving up on their vacation, you know, and often in places that aren't voting for

00:26:17.380 Trump or where Canadians are well liked and loved. So there's that mindset. Then I think we've had the

00:26:23.380 wrong team in place. Months ago, Prime Minister Carney announced Kristen Hillman would be our lead

00:26:31.620 negotiator. That was an awful mistake in my view. Kristen Hillman is a smart woman. She is

00:26:37.700 a well-regarded trade negotiator. She's not a diplomat. And she does not speak MAGA. She does

00:26:45.340 not speak Trump. She's been Canada's ambassador for several years now. She did not even reach out to

00:26:52.020 make contacts with Republicans knowing that they could have won. She was convinced it was going to

00:26:57.480 be Biden. And she could just continue, you know, being nice with Democrats. We don't have good

00:27:02.860 relations with people in the Trump White House. And we haven't for some time. You know, I think

00:27:09.040 LeBlanc has done the best job he can doing that sort of thing. But we've had the wrong team in there.

00:27:15.140 And so, you know, not only was Hillman not making contacts, she's just not the type of diplomat we

00:27:23.940 need in that position. In my view, London, Washington, all of the big diplomatic posts should be held by

00:27:31.620 political people, not career diplomats. There's just a difference in how the relationship works

00:27:37.880 and importance to those posts that they need to be political people. And so, yeah, we I think it's

00:27:45.800 been a question of putting in the wrong team, asking the wrong questions, offering the wrong

00:27:51.180 things. As you say, everyone else is getting deals. We could. But we also have to change our mindset that

00:27:57.700 we do have everything they want. We need to put it in a sales brochure and we need to go down and sell

00:28:04.700 it to them. In their language, you said you need to find somebody who speaks MAGA. So they better find

00:28:10.640 an interpreter like real quick. Brian, anything else you want people to keep an eye on coming up next?

00:28:16.340 I find with when you're trying to deal with somebody with whom you have a difficult relationship, I find

00:28:21.820 it's important to acknowledge that there's a problem. Find common ground. Find something, anything of like, yeah,

00:28:28.300 you and I agree on this and then agree on your next meeting, your next joint thing. Where do you see the

00:28:34.340 next joint thing happening between Ottawa and Washington? Carney and Trump are both going to

00:28:40.340 APEC. They were at ASEAN together in Malaysia, did not see each other. They were not at the same

00:28:46.400 events. Both countries are members of APEC. They're going to be there. Carney and Trump clearly have a

00:28:52.460 decent personal rapport. And what Trump's angry about right now is the guy sitting two floors below me

00:28:57.500 here at Queen's Park, Doug Ford. Carney's got to figure out how to get in front of Trump. And we saw

00:29:07.120 the the joking camaraderie when Carney flew to Egypt for the peace deal signing ceremony. They're, you

00:29:13.500 know, hey, thanks for upgrading me to president. Oh, at least I didn't call you governor. You know,

00:29:17.420 so there's clearly there's a connection there. And I'm told that Trump respects them, but doesn't

00:29:23.060 trust him yet because they don't know each other well enough. Get in his face, talk to him, smooth

00:29:28.360 things over, and then use that rapport that they clearly have to try and move forward a deal. And,

00:29:36.580 you know, it's in the best interest of the country. So for any of your viewers saying, no, I don't want

00:29:41.460 Carney to succeed. If he doesn't, we're all going to be eating gruel soon. So, you know, do what needs

00:29:48.900 to be done. Get in front of him. Get, you know, show that friendly side and and try and move the

00:29:56.660 ball forward. Brian, absolutely right. Thank you so much for your insights. Have fun today at Queen's

00:30:02.520 Park and on the phone. I always picture you like Batman trying to sort things out behind the scenes

00:30:07.120 with DC. So thank you for that. Once again, that is Brian Lilly, senior columnist with the Toronto Sun

00:30:12.800 newspaper chain. Be sure, of course, to listen to his podcast. Full comment. You can check it out.

00:30:17.980 It's usually the orange icon there on any podcast provider. Thanks so much, my friend.

00:30:22.720 Thank you, folks. This is super important because as we've explained at the Canadian

00:30:27.300 Taxpayers Federation, tariffs are just trade taxes. And unfortunately, they can be used as a form of

00:30:34.880 punishment. OK, the problem is the people who are bearing the brunt of that punishment

00:30:39.720 aren't those career bureaucrats that Brian was talking about there who make hundreds of thousands

00:30:45.300 of dollars a year out of your paychecks because they're all paid by taxpayers. No. The people

00:30:50.800 bearing the brunt of these punishments that stem from and are triggered by and exacerbated by

00:30:57.660 personal conflicts. You. Everyday working people. Small business owners. OK. People who work in the

00:31:05.540 resource industry. People who work in the auto industry. It's normal everyday working people who are

00:31:11.000 wounded on both sides of the border. And like we showed you with those numbers, it's more than

00:31:16.640 three billion dollars a day in two way trade. It's more than a trillion dollars a year in two way

00:31:23.360 trade between Canada and the United States. And frankly, this is what we pay bureaucrats, diplomats and

00:31:30.540 politicians the big bucks for. To be the adult in the room. To put on their big girl boys and big

00:31:37.000 big boys and girls pants and go into the trade negotiation room. OK, swallow your pride in some

00:31:42.380 cases and actually hammer out a deal. Other countries have hammered out deals with the United

00:31:48.100 States and they're not getting punished with their taxpayers levels of tariffs anymore. Why are we still

00:31:54.680 in this punishment position? Why are everyday hardworking Canadians, taxpayers paying the brunt of

00:32:01.240 these tariffs? We need these folks to hammer out a deal, regardless of what you think about the

00:32:07.920 personalities involved. So thank you so much to Brian Lilly. I know he's usually talking to a lot of

00:32:13.300 contacts on both sides of the border. He's got a lot of contacts in the labor industry in Ontario, auto

00:32:18.520 industry and in Washington, D.C. So hopefully some cooler heads will prevail and we work out a smart deal

00:32:25.420 here and calm things down. I just wanted to end with a quick note of appreciation. We've been getting a

00:32:31.220 lot of feedback from our interview that we did with that brave school teacher in Edmonton, Alberta.

00:32:38.260 She's got a couple of decades of experience and she had had enough. She spoke out, she reached out to

00:32:43.220 Juneau News and she said, listen, we should have accepted that deal that came from the Alberta

00:32:47.540 government. It was generous. We should have moved forward. I've been hearing from a lot of teachers

00:32:54.660 privately who feel the same way, but they're too scared to speak up. And I understand why. Okay.

00:33:01.460 They don't have as much experience as that teacher lady has. Okay. And they're worried about retribution

00:33:08.500 from their colleagues and their union, which would be a terrible place to be, especially considering the

00:33:15.300 fact that they've gone three weeks now with no paycheck. So this is what we're expecting here

00:33:20.420 in Alberta as a quick update on the teacher strike. We're expecting back to work legislation to be

00:33:25.300 tabled today, Monday. Last I heard, kids could be back in class Wednesday morning. So for the parents

00:33:32.980 in Alberta who are trying to get school lunches ready, be ready for Wednesday morning. Thank you so much

00:33:38.500 as always for watching this show and be sure to like this video and share it with your friends who need to

Juno News - October 27, 2025

THEY BLEW IT — Canada’s trade deal FALLS APART

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