00:10:25.700But we're both going to lose, as Americans and Canadians, if we get into a trade war.
00:10:31.680So what I would say is, how do we position the decision for him so that he understands that America can only win if it allows open, unbridled free trade with Canada?
00:10:42.300So I would retaliate, and I would target products and services that, A, we don't need, B, we can make ourself,
00:10:48.980and C, that we can buy elsewhere so that we maximize impact on the Americans while minimizing impact on Canadians.
00:10:57.780Secondly, I would pass an emergency bring-it-home tax cut on work, investment, making stuff in Canada, energy, home building,
00:11:08.180so that we can stimulate more economic growth here.
00:11:12.580Three, we need to become more self-sufficient.
00:11:14.960That means knocking down barriers, more interprovincial free trade.
00:11:18.260We have freer trade with the Americans today than we do with ourselves.
00:11:22.300We have to knock down those barriers, build pipelines, LNG liquefaction facilities to sell our stuff to the world without having to go through the Americans.
00:11:31.780If they're going to be an unreliable trade partner, we've got to find ways to sell more to ourselves and more to the rest of the world.
00:11:37.080Do you see it as a dollar-for-dollar retaliation?
00:11:41.860And, again, we have to be very pinpoint and surgical to make sure we're maximizing impact on the American side while minimizing impact on our side.
00:11:53.580Have successive governments in Canada over the decades, of all stripes,
00:11:56.700become too reliant, too comfortable with the notion that U.S. will always be our biggest trade partner, and they're always right there, and we really can put it on autopilot.
00:12:07.740Yes, and we live next door to the biggest military and economic superpower the world has ever seen.
00:12:12.960So a lot of our economics have just been based on enjoying, basking in that glow, but we can't rely on it.
00:12:21.420And so, right now, according to StatsCan, we have about a 7% effective tariff on goods between provinces.
00:13:12.060Brian, why did you put that clip up on the internet on X and elsewhere?
00:13:20.260Why did you think it was important that people hear what Pierre Polyev had to say?
00:13:24.260Well, it started floating around in my feed on Saturday, and it was a nine-minute clip, and, you know, that's long for attention span folks who are just on X for quick news.
00:13:44.020It's only about two to three minutes, but it's the most detailed, articulate plan that I've heard from any leader, federal or provincial, on how we should respond.
00:13:55.480So, you know, we've heard, we'll do dollar-for-dollar tariffs.
00:14:55.340for a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables during the winter.
00:14:58.660Or putting a big tariff on that, what would that do to families trying to feed themselves?
00:15:05.400So it was a far better answer than I've heard anyone give.
00:15:09.200And compare that to the prime minister.
00:15:11.620The two most important things he did this week was show up to speak to reporters with his sweater on backwards.
00:15:18.040And declare that we should stop buying Heinz ketchup because it's American-made when really it's just made down the street from his Montreal constituency office.
00:15:26.380So, you know, Paliyev has not said a ton on this.
00:15:34.880He was on an Atlantic Canada tour this week and we got to hear his plan now.
00:15:39.940And so people said to you it was good and you agreed that it was good.
00:16:04.900But then he also started talking about the need for building infrastructure, pipelines, LNG, liquefaction planes, so that we can export LNG.
00:16:13.700Those are things that you've been saying we need to be doing.
00:16:21.680You know, lots of people have advocated that for that over the years.
00:16:25.760It's the exact opposite of what the current government has been doing.
00:16:30.120And it's also the exact opposite of what Mark Carney has been advocating.
00:16:33.600So, you know, we can't say that we want to be economically independent from the Americans and then just sell our number one product only to them.
00:16:47.260I mean, pointing out that we're still importing oil from Saudi Arabia, the United States.
00:17:31.940But that's the Pierre Polyev that I know, that I keep telling people exist.
00:17:36.620And so if other people can see it, then that's good because he's, you know, as I've mentioned before, he's someone I've known for 20 years.
00:17:45.480He's someone who is thoughtful and articulate and smart.
00:17:53.060But I understand that that's not how everyone sees him and it doesn't always come across.
00:17:57.800So if more people see that, then that's good for him.
00:18:02.080And he's talking to people without disclosing anything.
00:18:05.780I've heard that he's been kind of reaching out to a broader circle in recent weeks, you know, because of all the dramatic changes that have taken place for our country and for the world.
00:19:03.720She's reversing her own policies that she advocated for for years.
00:19:09.360Mark Carney has been trying to say as little as possible.
00:19:13.380He only got asked questions the other day because he was going to an event in Ottawa.
00:19:18.740And Conservative MP Michelle Rempel-Garner held a press conference on Spark Street, an impromptu Q&A with journalists and said, he's having a meeting somewhere along here.
00:19:31.800And I think people should be asking questions because it looks like he's about to become prime minister.
00:19:36.220Mark Carney was asked questions in your old hood of the beaches the other day, or the beach, as you say.
00:19:45.880Reporters tried to ask him, you know, are you going to scrap the carbon tax?
00:20:06.820Mark Carney was part of, he was the leader of an organization called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.
00:20:16.880And then that was tied into other UN groups about net zero.
00:20:21.440And he said time and again that we need to do a different type of banking.
00:20:29.500One that would include not loaning money for oil and gas projects like the pipeline to bring Canadian oil and gas from east to west without going through the United States.
00:20:40.100Like a project to build liquefied natural gas export terminals.
00:20:48.260HSBC, one of the members of Carney's alliance, actually did that.
00:20:53.740Thankfully, a bunch of the Canadian and American banks have backed out of that alliance.
00:20:57.440You can be as green as you want to be, but to think that we can live without oil and gas right now is ridiculous.
00:21:07.060Can we reduce how much we use the intensity?
00:21:10.640But it's going to be a while before we find something to replace this that's reliable and doesn't require setting up huge diesel generators to make the green part work, which we sometimes have done.
00:21:25.820So, you know, I wrote during the week that Carney's exactly the wrong man for this period.
00:21:35.480And because it, you know, the plans you and I are talking about require doing things that he has opposed for years.
00:21:45.800And he's championed the exact opposite.
00:21:49.900We need, you know, if we're going to have a liberal and John Manley was running, I would say, okay, fine, great.
00:21:55.520But Mark Carney is more of the same and he's got Trudeau's whole cabinet lining up behind him.
00:23:06.380And so they're running an anybody but Freeland campaign.
00:23:09.440Now I've had some liberals working with or near the Freeland campaign saying between Carney's arrogance and all these people that are around Trudeau lining up behind Carney, they think the grassroots of the party, such as they are, will turn to Freeland.
00:23:34.260Which is why, and as you always say, voters are fickle and polls change and we're going to put it on a t-shirt.
00:23:42.220But you and I were on a panel with our editor Adrian Batcher this week and you kind of knocked me off my chair when you said, and I hadn't heard you say it before, what you just said a minute ago, which is liberals could win.
00:23:56.600And that's something that I hadn't considered.
00:24:00.380And then I saw a little bit of some tabs from an abacus survey.
00:24:06.600David, our former colleague, David Coletto is in field right now showing if the question he asked was who, which party's best to deal with Trump?
00:24:15.560Which party's the best to deal with Trump?
00:24:18.360And for the first time in a year and a half, the Liberal Party was ahead of the Conservative Party on something.
00:24:45.560My worry is that it would just become a campaign about nationalism, which, again, I'll point out the irony of a party that has decided that we are a horrible, genocidal state built upon white supremacy suddenly embracing nationalism, which, by the way, they also said nationalism was bad, patriotism's bad.
00:25:06.020The whole campaign will be about that.
00:25:07.620And not trying to find a solution to the trade irritants that we have.
00:25:18.900Donald Trump said again on the weekend, I think it was Friday, Canada's been really nasty to us on trade.
00:25:26.220And I saw a bunch of people on X scoffing, oh, how can he say that?
00:25:29.900And I said, okay, well, what are his trade irritants?
00:25:32.480And I looked up, and this is not from Trump, it's from the Congressional Research Office, which is nonpartisan.
00:25:39.100It supplies basic research to Democrat and Republican members of Congress, House and Senate.
00:25:44.400The Tribal Liberals have passed three of the big trade irritants in the last couple of years, the Online Streaming Act, the Online News Act, and the Digital Services Tax.
00:25:56.240And the Biden administration has complained vociferously about all three, and Trump will be doing the same.
00:26:03.260So my worry is that we're a very protectionist country, complaining about Donald Trump trying to bring in protectionism.
00:26:16.480And we need to find leaders that will actually deal with the issues and find a solution rather than just chest thumping.
00:26:25.080And I think we're headed to an election where people plump chests and insult the guy who can put on or take off the tariffs at will, and that we're in for a world of hurt.
00:26:37.320Which brings us back to where we started this segment.
00:26:40.860So I encourage everybody to seek out the full segment of the interview that Paulie outdid with CTV Atlantic, which our friend Brian Lilly has brought to our attention.
00:28:55.420And we're back, we're back with John Mraz and John, you know, well here, I'm going to confess a mistake.
00:29:11.380As I think you may recall, when Trump won the Electoral College with a few hundred thousand more votes than Kamala Harris, I thought that the Americans would turn inward.
00:29:26.380I thought that's what he had a mandate to do, is they become protectionist and focused on themselves and less interested in the world.
00:29:36.680Well, as it's turned out, I was wrong.
00:29:39.080He's quite interested in taking Panama by force, Greenland by force, Canada by economic force.
00:29:47.040Are people right to be anxious about all of this stuff?
00:29:52.600I remember when Putin started building tens of thousands of troops, you know, putting them in Belarus and along the border in the north of Ukraine, that the world wanted to believe that he would never, ever, because there was no common sense in it, invade Ukraine.
00:30:09.840But he did. And it seems to me that America, having fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, those are the big wars since the Second World War, and it was invested in dozens of proxy wars along the way.
00:30:23.840What do they get for it? They get earth manufacturing, some domestic economy, but the resources are always in play after the fact, and the long game never works.
00:30:33.560So maybe what Trump meant when he said that he would pull America away from war is that he would target to build an economic region so large that they were untouchable by anybody.
00:30:46.180He would build a block of countries that couldn't defend themselves.
00:30:49.900And that seems to be what he was saying to an American audience at one of his infernal rallies last night, that, you know, when I get through, folks, the United States is going to be a bigger place.
00:31:07.900It's going to have more territory. It's going to have more geography than ever before.
00:31:13.560You know, I think you and I and others, Brian Nilley, have been observing over the past few weeks, where you had people kind of insisting this is all a joke, and it couldn't possibly be true, like Conrad Black or what have you.
00:31:27.460And now, obviously, we're just days away from 25% tariffs, and he's been talking about taking Canada, making us the 51st state, every single day for weeks.
00:31:40.600What do we as a country need to be doing, let's say, as a people first, to deal with this existential threat?
00:31:54.500We have domestic political voices that are arguing at federal level, at leadership levels, at provincial levels about what we should do to secure ourselves economically so his sanctions don't break us.
00:32:10.600The problem is the simple math of the American economy, being the size it is.
00:32:16.440They can take a punishment that we cannot.
00:32:20.380They have a base in Texas that has more people at arms than our entire armed forces.
00:32:27.480They are completely depending on the fact that China or Russia would never dare try and protect us,
00:32:33.820and the EU, who have already become, in a way, an economic empire, competing with the United States,
00:32:40.540are far too busy dealing with Russia to help Canada or Greenland or Panama.
00:32:45.380And by the way, Panama, I always assume, you take Panama and then you just chunk your way north all the way to the top of the Mexican border.
00:32:59.260The question is, will the military and diplomatic and intelligence columns in the United States obey his order,
00:33:07.500which would be internationally illegal, constitutionally, I think.
00:33:12.960Anyway, point being, we keep on thinking Donald Trump can't get elected, couldn't get away with all the things he has.
00:33:20.640We keep on thinking Russia will not continue to try and expand, or China will not continue to try and fuck with our elections.
00:33:27.600Everybody is doing exactly the worst thing that we imagine they could.
00:33:33.080So, it's become more and more clear to me that there's a very good chance that Donald Trump doesn't give a shit
00:33:38.780who's in charge of the prime minister's office, who wins a leadership campaign.
00:33:43.760He has openly said he doesn't care for Polio.
00:33:46.100He doesn't care for anybody who's here in our political forum.
00:33:51.920And that's what I said on CFRA this morning.
00:33:55.360Basically, what you just said is that we're in that period, which we've seen many times throughout human history,
00:34:01.800where you get people just kind of going, well, this couldn't possibly be happening, and it happens.
00:34:07.060Well, that couldn't happen, and it happens.
00:34:09.400You know, the principal advisor, the President of the United States, making Nazi salutes, making Holocaust jokes,
00:34:17.140and then appearing before a neo-Nazi party and saying we need to forget about the sins of the past on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
00:34:26.840Like, all these things are actually happening in real time, as the elf lords say.
00:34:33.440And so, you know, that's my advice to people.
00:34:37.220It's like, I know, as depressing as it is, you can't deny the reality of it.
00:34:41.300What then do our governments need to do?
00:35:08.860But, like, at the national level, the people we count on to respond to the threat that Trump poses,
00:35:17.340like, what do you think we should be doing there?
00:35:19.560It seems to me that the right politician for Canada right now would be one that builds an economic consortium
00:35:27.000with the EU, Asian entities, an archipelago, if you will, of free, open, quasi-capitalistic states around the world.
00:35:40.520If Trump started to sanction Canada or go for Greenland or try and take Panama would, in concert, be able to sanction the United States so severely that they would stop.
00:35:53.900And that means, unlike the Allies, like, you're going to have to call China up in India and say,
00:36:01.240hey, let's create a block, a BRICS, if you will, a new BRICS as a response to the idea of American manifest destiny in Germany,
00:36:15.040Isn't it amazing that we're talking about that?
00:36:18.280Like, you're not the only person, and I can hear some of my readers saying,
00:36:21.920I can't believe John is talking about, you know, China, but you're not the only one doing it.
00:36:28.980Like, there have been some serious people in the past few days saying,
00:36:32.860we need to re-examine the relationship with China in order to offset the economic pain that's coming our way from the United States.
00:36:40.880And all of that happening in the context of Madam Justice Hogue about to release her report about foreign interference and the liberal leadership.
00:36:49.240Like, it's just, it's, I think conservatives are crazy to think that the Liberal Party would agree to have an election right now.
00:36:57.360Like, I don't understand, maybe you can explain it to me.
00:37:00.260Why do conservatives think that we as a country would be served by being leaderless in the middle of an election campaign in all of this stuff going on?
00:43:12.880So it's tough to even know where to begin here, but it's kind of that we're in Groundhog Day.
00:43:17.960We're having the same kind of conversations over and over again.
00:43:20.300But, you know, Donald Trump appearing with the World Economic Forum this week and, you know, doubling down on the tariff threat again, banting about whether or not Canada should be the 51st state.
00:43:28.900So kind of directly pushing back on the retaliatory tariffs that we've kind of talked about here, at least publicly, both the Premier of Ontario and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:43:38.060But I suppose is this from the perspective of does this change anything, I guess, in how Canada approaches this, Tasha?
00:43:45.640Or is this all just more noise and we kind of stay focused on the goal, which I guess is now February 1st?
00:43:50.640Well, I think the government at least has a plan.
00:43:54.960Whether it's the right one or not remains to be seen.
00:44:06.220And the Gaza Strip should, I don't know, presumably have a Trump Hotel on it when they finish redoing it because everyone should move to Egypt and Jordan and it'll, I guess, be a resort town then after.
00:44:39.040She has to defend her interests and Alberta's interests.
00:44:42.400But at the same time, if we don't hang together, you know, that's the danger is that while the world swirls around and Trump says more things every single day about something else, maybe he'll get distracted and forget about it.
00:45:00.700And, Carl, it's this weird space we find ourselves in, right, where you want to ignore some of the more, you know, for lack of a better word, off the beaten path type stuff.
00:46:03.020And, in fact, it goes contrary to what Donald Trump himself promised during the campaign, which was, you know, reducing the cost of living, reducing the cost of gas, reducing the cost of goods.
00:46:14.260And so the resistance, really, for Donald Trump to change his mind, I mean, Canada will do what it does and other countries will do what they do.
00:46:22.300But the resistance needs to come from the American public and the American officials.
00:46:26.740And it needs to come from the American Republican Party.
00:46:29.780So far, in that party, there's not enough dissenting voice because, you know, he's entered the famous honeymoon phase of his political career, just being elected, just being sworn in.
00:46:43.320And it'll take a few weeks, it'll take a few months, but the tide will turn because these tariffs are not good public policy, not for Canada and not for the United States.
00:46:53.140And, Warren, kind of similarly, you see a lot of similarities in how he's been dealing with Greenland as well with the threat of tariffs and then, you know, the possibility of a takeover here.
00:47:00.820We saw a bizarre phone call this week.
00:47:02.880From your perspective, like I was saying about, how do you take it seriously at the same time as listening to some of this stuff?
00:47:12.640And history has taught us we can't turn away, you know, we can't turn on the TV and just pretend that what's taking place in the world around us isn't happening.
00:47:25.600Like the principal advisor to the most powerful man on earth has this week given a Nazi salute, made jokes about the Holocaust.
00:47:34.620By the way, it's Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow, given a platform on social media for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and then appeared before a neo-Nazi party in Germany saying, forget the lessons of the past.
00:47:49.060Those are the people he's listening to.
00:47:51.280Meanwhile, Trump is giving speeches, as he did yesterday, just yesterday, saying that the United States of America is about to become bigger, with more territory, more territory than ever before.
00:48:04.100Every single day for the past three weeks, he has been talking about his territorial designs, his expansionism on Canada.
00:48:13.380It's real. It's real. The tariffs are real. His expansionism is real.
00:48:21.000And we cannot just, you know, turn on the TV and descend into some other place and pretend it's not happening.
00:48:27.740This stuff is happening. The president of Poland this morning on X, ironically, is talking about what they do in Europe about U.S. troops landing on their soil to go after Denmark and Greenland.
00:48:42.060Like, all of these things are actually happening.
00:48:45.540And it amazes me, the number of people I know, and I know people are scared, they're anxious, are turning away and saying, this can't possibly be happening.
00:48:54.960Well, in history, we've all seen what happens when you take that approach.
00:49:00.380We've all seen what happens when you say that it's not real. It's real.
00:49:05.100I wanted to throw in the point there that Poland and Greenland both, or I guess the Danes, are NATO members as well.
00:49:16.620Tasha, I wanted to mention this because you wrote about this this week, is, you know, we've been facing this, you know, imminent economic threat because of tariffs.
00:49:22.900But you were also writing this week about how the Trump agenda might actually hurt our economy in general away from tariffs.
00:49:37.440You know, the U.S. is our biggest customer.
00:49:40.300They've been buying our oil at a discount, 4 million barrels a day.
00:49:44.660Donald Trump is talking about ramping up production, 3 million barrels a day.
00:49:48.180And if the U.S. is either going to saturate the market, that brings down prices.
00:49:55.340If it's going to become energy self-sufficient, quote, unquote, that will depress prices for us, maybe make our oil less necessary.
00:50:04.060So we're facing less revenue as a country.
00:50:07.740And, you know, Alberta can be all upset that it says that it's not going to be able to send its oil if there's tariffs or if we don't allow the oil, you know, to cross the border.
00:50:19.200Like, I mean, the problem is they may end up not buying it anyway down the road.
00:50:25.400And then Alberta's economy collapses, too.
00:50:27.440So that is one of the big things that we have to worry about.
00:50:30.700And the second is the U.S. is changing a lot of its policies, specifically around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:50:36.320And this has been happening for the past six months, even before Trump takes office.
00:50:40.360Major companies, Walmart, McDonald's, John Deere, I mean, all sectors, they have been junking their DEI policies because they knew when Trump came in, he would basically, by fiat, junk them for the entire government.
00:50:52.320And they don't want to be on the wrong side of that.
00:50:54.280And plus, I think also DEI has been shown a lot of its application does not benefit either the bottom line or morale often within companies.
00:51:02.700It actually divides a lot of people more than it unites.
00:51:05.640So the opposition that has been building for a while, how is that going to affect Canada?
00:51:10.400Because we have a lot of companies here that also follow the DEI line.
00:51:14.380Are they going to have to, you know, change their policies?
00:51:17.060And if they don't, are people who are not on board with it going to go to the states?
00:51:21.340Are we going to see a brain drain of people saying, you know what, I'm just, I'm tired of dealing with some of these issues here.
00:51:56.400And I just wanted to mention that as well, because as you mentioned, not just tariffs, there is some other issues and aspects on this as well.
00:52:02.580And if people wanted to read that, they can read that in the National Post from this week as well.
00:52:05.900Also to mention, just we've been talking about Danielle Smith.
00:52:07.700She is coming up on CTV this morning on Question Period of Fashion Capellos after 11 o'clock.
00:52:11.860So I'm sure she'll have some interesting things to say as well.
00:52:14.500So I guess just one more on this whole point, I guess, Warren, from your perspective, when we're talking about leadership, I've got a lot of texts and complaints.
00:52:21.780And, of course, we're in a very partisan time.
00:52:24.100But, you know, questioning whether or not Justin Trudeau is the leader at this time to be leading us in this very moment with these tariff threats on the way he's going out the door.
00:52:32.740Or is there any issue right now with you see that Justin Trudeau is standing in the way of making progress on this issue, other than just politically for himself?
00:52:47.220So right now we're in a period of auditioning his replacement, who we're going to hire to take over.
00:52:54.120And, you know, all of the liberal leadership candidates have said stuff about the existential threat we're facing from Trump and about, you know, the challenges we face in the country.
00:53:10.680The exposure, and Abacus is just doing some polling right now about this issue, and they released a little bit of it last night.
00:53:19.060If the question is, who's the best person to, or political party, rather, to deal with the Trump threat, the liberal party comes out ahead.
00:53:30.300That's the first time the liberal party's come out ahead on anything in the past year and a half.
00:53:36.240And that is the threat to PolyEv, is we're sitting here, you know, doing a job interview with him.
00:53:42.440Are you the right guy to deal with what we are going to be facing as a nation in the months and years ahead?
00:53:50.780And the problem that PolyEv has got is there's a suspicion that Canadian voters have got that maybe a third of his caucus and certainly a third of his membership support Trump and like Trump and defend Trump.
00:54:09.960If that perception continues to grow and take hold, and believe me, Mark Carney, who's going to be the next liberal leader, is going to hold on to it like his life depends on it, because his life does depend on it.
00:54:24.760Now, I'm not saying he's going to lose the election, but he might lose his majority.
00:54:30.380And at that point, he's dead man walking.
00:54:32.640He knows, and all of us have heard this internally, his people know it's a majority or nothing, because they would have a, you know, life expectancy of just a few, few months if they get a minority.
00:54:44.900The liberals and the NDP will, and the bloc will come together to take them out.
00:54:48.600He has to get a majority, and the big threat, the threat is with him.
00:54:52.920That is the problem he's got, is his own people.
00:54:55.780And Carl, we've been talking about Pierre Polyev, as Warren mentioned here, and we did hear a little bit more from some policy perspective this week on a couple of different issues.
00:55:05.100Finally saying that, you know, he would go dollar for dollar in terms of retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. as well.
00:55:11.400It seems like he is trying to stay away from the spotlight in some ways on this particular issue, but do you think he made any ground this week in at least kind of laying down a little bit more of a policy platform?
00:55:20.460Well, I think if the numbers that Warren is referring to are true, I think Pierre Polyev and his team knows that it is a threat, and therefore they're starting to play defense with this issue.
00:55:33.560Because he's said a few things over the past few weeks about this, but he is not trying to attract the spotlight.
00:55:40.880He's not trying to be the top news item on this issue.
00:55:47.380But, you know, whether he says fighting fire with fire or going dollar for dollar, these are the kind of things that Canadians want to hear from their leader.
00:55:55.560And there's a reason why Doug Ford is about to go to the polls, because he took a lead, and people are rewarding him with support.
00:56:01.580And he's been labeled across the country as Captain Canada, filling the vacuum left by Justin Trudeau.
00:56:07.500So there is an opportunity there, but for that you need to be public, and you need to be pretty forward about what you want to do.
00:56:15.160And so Polyev realized that there's a bit of a vacuum here on the conservative front.
00:56:21.280At the same time, you know, it's unclear when you look at a different conservative position on dealing with Trump that we have.
00:56:29.640I mean, you compare Daniel Smith with Doug Ford and then with Pierre Polyev.
00:56:33.280Like, what is the actual conservative position on this?
00:56:36.380Like, it's all over the place, and I think that's part of the problem for Pierre Polyev is that he doesn't have a fully united party behind him on this issue and how to handle Donald Trump.
00:56:49.860Because, as Warren outlined, there's a bunch of people in this party that actually like Trump, that would vote for Trump, that support Trump.
00:56:56.820In fact, except for Max and Bernie's party, if it ever exists anymore, no other party in this country supports Trump more than the conservative party of Canada.
00:57:08.980You know, all of that being said, does that actually make even more sense that Pierre Polyev would perhaps be, you know, a little bit quieter right now, even as he's, you know, pulling for an election here?
00:57:22.080I watched the interview that Pierre Polyev gave to CTV Atlantic about the tariffs and what he would do, and it was a different Pierre Polyev and not as comfortable, I felt, with the subject matter as when he is attacking traditionally the liberal government.
00:57:37.960Because this is a very different situation.
00:57:39.560He had, it's not about attacking, it's about proposing, it's about saying what you would do as prime minister to deal with an existential threat to your country, not about internal threat, not changing, you know, tax policy on carbon, not changing housing policy because the liberals screwed it up.
00:57:55.320This is, how would I deal with an existential threat to my country and coming up with a better plan than the other guy?
00:58:02.620And his plan is the same as what the liberals are doing.
00:58:04.560He's saying we're going to impose tariffs on selected things that will hurt the Americans but not hurt us.
00:58:08.700That's exactly what we did back in 2018.
00:58:14.220You know, we love orange juice, but you can live without it for a while or pay, you know, drink less because it's more expensive.
00:58:20.280There's things there that we can hit the Americans on that will cause pain.
00:58:24.800And that's exactly what this government, so he's saying the same thing as what the government's going to do, which is, you know, which is not where he wants to be as differentiating himself and saying I'm the guy to take them on.
00:58:35.480And the second thing I thought was, you're right, there are people within the caucus.
00:58:40.780I mean, Jamil Giovanni, one of his MPs, is a friend of J.D. Vance from college.
00:58:45.680There's always been a higher number of conservatives that did support the Republicans under Trump.
00:58:50.600So you are dealing with an internal split, and then there's Alberta.
00:58:55.100And as I've said, you know, Pierre Polyev is the Nixon who could go to Alberta, the Nixon to go to China.
00:59:00.140He'd go to Alberta and say, guys, let's get on board.
00:59:04.380We have to do this because it's in the national interest.
00:59:07.300He's not doing that because he knows that the people within his own party would get very angry with him, and they're the same base as Alberta.
00:59:14.800It's very tricky for the conservatives right now.
00:59:17.880So I think the best may not be that he has an election immediately when we're having this threat going on, but, you know, we'll see.
00:59:27.460But also the longer it goes on, then that could be out for the conservatives, too.
00:59:33.880And just, I guess, last thing on the Polyev interview from this week, I guess, Warren, I'll ask you just on this sense of you guys have been in the Ottawa bubble, obviously,
00:59:40.620and you understand that it does exist in many ways.
00:59:43.320So we heard about public sector cuts, possible public service cuts this week, and, you know, locally that becomes an issue here.
00:59:49.320But I'm wondering, you know, Warren, outside of the Ottawa bubble, is that a net positive for the conservatives?
00:59:53.960We look at the deficit that we're facing right now.
00:59:57.660He's talking about reining in spending.
00:59:59.600Outside of places like Ottawa, does something like that actually resonate with, you know, the average Canadian?
01:00:04.780Yeah, in a way that is not sympathetic.
01:00:09.840And that will be particularly the case.
01:00:12.660If Ford is right and that we're going to lose a half a million jobs in Ontario because of Trump's tariffs,
01:00:22.080well, I can't use the word on air, but the rest of the country is not going to give you know what about public servants losing their jobs in Ottawa.
01:00:31.480That place is, again, like all these events are conspiring against, you know, Polyev, as Tasha just pointed out.
01:00:40.300It's like he's, you know, he's gone to the movies and he's coming out and going, wow, that isn't the movie I was expecting to see.
01:00:48.300Like everything's changing under his feet.
01:00:50.980And this would be an example of that because he represents an Ottawa riding.
01:00:57.200You know, he's got a lot of public servants in his riding.
01:01:03.060I don't think he was expecting something like this either.
01:01:06.440So, like, we live, unfortunately, in interesting times where all of the things we thought we'd be talking about in 2025 aren't the things that we're talking about.
01:01:29.320But I wanted to get time to talk about this election call from Doug Ford because, obviously, this is huge political news this week, I guess.
01:01:35.760Tasha, is this kind of a no-brainer given the position that Doug Ford is in in the polls right now?
01:01:39.560Or is there, you know, a concern that he could pull a David Peterson at some point?
01:01:44.600Well, no, I mean, I think he'll be re-elected.
01:01:47.840I don't think we need – do we need an election right now?
01:01:49.840No, we don't need an election in Ontario.
01:01:51.900Nobody – I mean, this is – it's to consolidate power for the next four years.
01:01:56.700It's absolutely, you know, naked political opportunism.
01:02:00.100He doesn't need another mandate from people.
01:02:15.960The liberals have not made the breakthrough that they would have needed to, I think, to really be a threat.
01:02:21.940So that's why we're having an election.
01:02:24.300And I think he will be handily re-elected because by the time he's also there – this is the thing with, you know, the tariffs may come in on the 1st of February.
01:02:58.720You know, when you have power and you decide to throw it away, to gamble it, and to try to get another majority, you don't know how the voters will react.
01:03:06.920You know, they're gambling that they know that they will vote for him again because he's Captain Canada, as I said earlier.
01:03:12.720But, you know, when Peterson did that, we ended up with the Bob Ray government.
01:03:20.080I'm not saying that we're going to have a married files government, but I'm just saying that you never know what voters will do.
01:03:26.140The truth, though, is that one of the reasons why Doug Ford wants to go, I think, is because of Pierre Poirier.
01:03:33.000I think it's always been on the radar for the progressive conservatives in Ontario that they would rather go to the polls with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in power in Ottawa than Pierre Poirier.
01:03:44.500Because if Poirier comes in and starts cutting public services, well, you know, the backlash could hurt Doug Ford's chances.
01:04:04.880You know, he's not going to change his tune after the election about what he says about Trump, the exact tune that puts him in the position in the polls that, you know, make him feel pretty good about his prospect.