00:09:16.140Change your mind, and all the time, close your eyes to dotted lines, and watch out for optical illusions.
00:09:29.140From Lucy's world of names and brains that keep me confused, remains the same.
00:09:47.260Lucy's world where steel traps rust, the spider webs connecting dust, can change your mind, and all the time, close your eyes to dotted lines, and watch out for optical illusions.
00:10:09.260Change your mind, and all the time, close your eyes to dotted lines, and watch out for optical illusions.
00:12:05.300I was speaking on a panel with some pretty smart folks about the cross-border trade issue and stuff you and I talk about all the time, about what do we have to do to fix it.
00:12:16.000So, yeah, it was an interesting weekend in Quebec City.
00:12:48.840You know, I was surprised to be invited, but they really do try.
00:12:53.320And, you know, I have people across the board.
00:12:58.980And, you know, one gent who said he advocated for me to be there came over and told me that all my writing drives him crazy, but he finds me interesting and said, you're a voice that needed to be heard here.
00:13:11.540You know, very much a former liberal staffer type guy.
00:13:18.840Well, a lot of former liberal staffers and present ones anonymously in a massive piece that Stephen Marr, formerly of the Chronicle Herald and a million other places, he's got in the new Maclean's.
00:13:34.820And, yes, people should read this piece.
00:13:36.880The one thing that I came away with after reading this thing was, man, Mark Carney is more of a thin-skinned egomaniac than I thought he was.
00:13:50.320Like, it's not a flattering portrait, is it?
00:13:54.240What stunned me was that he wears pants without belt loops.
00:13:59.460Mark clearly did a lot of digging in this, as he often does.
00:14:02.680You know, Marr and I have shared an office in the past in the hot room.
00:14:10.540He was on my podcast about his book on Trudeau.
00:14:14.020But he's really good at long form looking at a person in their character.
00:14:20.460And one of the nuggets he brought out was that Carney wears Seville row suits, which are very expensive.
00:14:25.120But he wears the even higher-end ones that are so meticulously tailored to your body that you don't need belts.
00:14:33.380And, therefore, your pants don't need belt loops.
00:14:36.240Even when I was skinny, which I will not pretend to be at the moment, my pants needed belt loops.
00:14:42.620But I've never been as wealthy as Mark Carney.
00:14:44.480But, yeah, you know, there were a couple of points where, you know, he recounted the Rosemary look inside yourself thing, which showed to a lot of people, ooh, doesn't like to be questioned.
00:14:57.040I already knew that because, you know, he was used to dealing with the business press, which is very deferential when you're a bank governor or an executive.
00:15:31.600And one of the parts that jumped out at me was a staffer saying that not only does he think he's the smartest person in the room, which he very well may be.
00:15:46.380But Stephen Harper treats people a bit differently.
00:15:49.800Neither one of them suffer fools gladly.
00:15:52.360But this staffer said he thinks he's the smartest person in the room and doesn't see value in what others around the room would tell him.
00:15:59.080So, you know, he's got to fix that if he wants to stay in politics and be successful.
00:16:04.500Harper, as I said, smartest person in the room, but sought advice from other smart people.
00:16:09.620And you need that in politics because everyone has blind spots.
00:16:14.300And there's a piece, one of the few people who's on the record in the piece is Supriya, who I've known for a long time, you've known for a long time.
00:16:23.440She was a commentator and a pundit and radio person in Toronto.
00:16:27.680And then she went up to work for Trudeau.
00:16:29.780A lot of us felt she drank the Kool-Aid.
00:16:32.600But anyway, she's expelled that from her body and is quite critical of Carney.
00:16:38.380And the point she makes is that when the dam breaks, all the negative stuff is going to have a big impact.
00:16:47.060When people, some of this personality stuff and a lot of the policy stuff has an impact on Carney's popularity.
00:16:57.400Well, you know, her comments are in line with the watch who's asked you to kick on the way up because you may have to kiss it on your way down.
00:17:03.800And eventually you'll need, you will need support from people.
00:17:10.960You know, some interesting conversations with former politicians that I can't get into from the weekend because of the agreement.
00:17:17.220But about how people turn on you and how things happen and how different events have gone down.
00:17:24.120Yeah, you know, even the most successful politician will be there.
00:18:11.680Versus, you know, he was in a meeting with oil and gas executives back in the spring.
00:18:17.200And he listens politely to what they have to say.
00:18:20.500And this is what we hear about is meetings with business people, with stakeholders, with premiers, is that he's listening and he's humble.
00:18:27.620But apparently not with his own staff.
00:18:30.400This is why the others appreciate him.
00:18:33.300But he's in this business meeting with oil execs.
00:18:36.340And they're explaining to him why that he needs to do certain things, like lift the emissions cap or the tanker ban or what they need, you know, regarding pipelines.
00:19:38.660He leaned into it and, you know, put up AI videos of himself dressed as a king and literally had shit falling from the heavens onto their rallies.
00:19:50.320And, you know, planes dropping things on them.
00:19:54.700Like, it was just like, like, even for him, it was it seemed like it was too much.
00:19:59.800But it doesn't seem to be hurting him that much in the United States, is it?
00:23:29.440I just want to throw this in, and it's something that came out of the conversations on the weekend that I hadn't thought about.
00:23:34.920And that is that we don't have a deal with the U.S. to lift the tariffs, although perhaps there's something coming on automotive that was leaked out to Bloomberg the other day, perhaps.
00:23:48.420But we better get something soon, because next year is the midterms.
00:25:16.960The ceasefire now people have been vocal and they've been claiming that Israel is violating the ceasefire all over the place.
00:25:27.280So, look, this is one of the things where I end up liking what Trump says because in response to Hamas' executions, public executions, he posted on social media,
00:25:40.040if Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not part of the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.
00:25:46.680Thank you for your attention in this matter.
00:54:21.920Well, after two years of turmoil inside Canada's largest public sector union over Fred Hahn's virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Israel posts, he has lost his position as the union's vice president.
00:55:08.220If this is part of a rethink among public sector unions who see their situation changing and realize that a retreat from the radical politics they are so focused on is in order at this time.
00:55:24.560And now let's go to Warren Kinsella, a lawyer and journalist and Carrie Silverberg, a Jewish QP member who resigned from the executive of QP Local 1734.
00:56:20.540You know, as you pointed out, they put up with some of his initial anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and arguably anti-Semitic stuff.
00:56:28.960But, you know, I think there were some straws of the book, The Camel's Back.
00:56:32.840The big one, I think, was him basically participating in a rally in support of Iran.
00:56:41.160Iran has got the worst human rights record in the world.
00:56:45.460And back just a few weeks ago in June, he led an effort to defend Iran, saying hands off Iran.
00:56:57.400And I think what I was hearing from people within QP, and there are some good people there, and Carrie is one of them, just said enough is enough.
00:58:21.260There was there wasn't really any competition.
00:58:23.020But having said that, you have to understand there's less than less than three point three percent of the of the members are actually there to vote.
00:58:34.120So, you know, it's hard to actually say he got reelected democratically because people are the people that aren't happy typically just stop going to convention and then they don't have a voice at all.
00:58:46.220And even people that do want to vote like I like me can't go because our our presidents and executive don't let us go.
00:59:28.660I think that CUPE Ontario has to take some responsibility, too.
00:59:33.740Warren, do you see this part of, you know, perhaps a rethink among public sector unions?
00:59:42.620And, you know, I'm I'm looking at a report here that was talking about what happened at the the CUPE National Conference.
00:59:51.880And according to the count here, and this is Juno News, they say that fewer than one in 10 resolutions address the everyday concerns of members like wages, pensions, workload.
01:00:08.380And roughly a third of the agenda was consumed by geopolitics.
01:00:14.040And they're talking about resolutions promoting socialism, condemning capitalism, calling on Canada's withdrawal from NATO and endorsing the BDS movement against Israel.
01:00:27.360So do you see a kind of realization going on that, you know, maybe now is not the time to be seized with this stuff?
01:00:37.000Yeah, I've got some good examples, too.
01:00:39.180You know, back in the summer, CUPE Ontario was railing against the IHRA accepted definition of anti-Semitism, which is accepted by Canada and countries around the world.
01:00:51.980It said it said it was going to fight against bubble zones, you know, which not just protect synagogues, they protect mosques as well and churches.
01:01:02.520And then they said they wanted to advocate in support of anti-Palestinian racism, which superficially sounds great until you find out that APR, as it's called, has been used to basically argue for the proposition that Israel shouldn't exist and actually doesn't exist.
01:01:19.180But to your point, yes, I think the public sector unions, not the private sector ones, the public sector unions are getting in trouble with their own members.
01:01:29.500They're certainly getting in trouble with the public and government.
01:01:33.180And so Cup W, for example, which, full disclosure, I used to be a lawyer for a million years ago when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.
01:01:41.620You know, they would go to Libya, they would go to conferences sponsored by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
01:01:47.760They would advocate in favor of all kinds of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish stuff.
01:02:21.580I'm hopeful that's the way it's going.
01:02:24.280But, you know, as you point out, Fred Hahn is still there.
01:02:27.800Carrie, do people come to you in confidence?
01:02:31.360Do you see less of an appetite for the kind of geopolitical radical activism?
01:02:39.560I think that it's the very loud, small minority that fights for that.
01:02:46.600And they outshout the people who actually want this change and want the union to focus on union business and not all this other stuff that doesn't impact the members at all.
01:02:59.980But it's using up a lot of time and a lot of resources.
01:03:02.840So, yes, I do hear from people and people are constantly asking, what can we do?
01:03:15.240And I think, you know, people need to start hearing that this is not what a public sector labor union in Ontario or Canada is supposed to be doing.
01:03:23.240Do you think that, say, when we look at Cup W, you know, members were turning against this strike and saying, hey, we need some paychecks.
01:03:35.100Do you think that there's a kind of a resentment because, you know, members need their paychecks?
01:03:43.000But no matter what happens, the people running the unions get paid.
01:03:47.400Yeah, well, I know that it happens all the time.
01:03:53.080Like, people are starting to resent the amount of money that the unions are spending on things like their own salaries and their own benefits and their own cars that they drive and, you know, and not focusing on issues that the members need them to focus on.
01:04:06.920And so, yes, I do think people are, the members are starting to realize and hopefully, you know, change takes time.
01:04:12.200But I think it definitely is starting.
01:04:21.020But, you know, as Kerry points out, and as I think we all hope, you know, there are people who within CUPE or Cup W or any of these other unions, Unifor, public sector unions who are saying.
01:04:33.040And, like, CUPE Ontario feels to me like an outlier, like CUPE Nova Scotia.
01:04:39.820Like, if you think back to the revolution in Iran in 1979, the first people that the Ayatollahs killed were union leaders.
01:04:50.020So, CUPE Nova Scotia said, you know, in 2022 that they stood with the people of Iran and not the autocrats around the place.
01:04:59.020And CUPE Vancouver has called for an investigation into Iran when it shot down that Ukrainian International Airlines flight a few years ago.
01:05:07.620So, there are people within the CUPE leadership and the CUPE membership who I think are decent people and are sane.
01:05:15.120But there's something in the water at CUPE Ontario.
01:05:18.840And, you know, Fred Hahn, I think, is like he's hurting the entire union movement.
01:05:24.800And I say that as somebody who used to be a member of a union.
01:05:55.180I mean, the rumors we're all hearing about this budget is it's going to be historic.
01:05:59.340It's going to be like the Martin-Kretchen budget of 94.
01:06:02.840The irony, I mean, I feel sorry for Pierre Paulyev, who lost his seat in Ottawa area's seat because all the public servants who were his constituents thought,
01:06:13.120you know, if he became prime minister, they'd lose their job.
01:06:15.360Well, now it looks like they're going to lose their jobs under Mark Carney as well.
01:06:22.500But, yeah, you know, is there an anti-union sentiment taking place in the country?
01:06:28.640To some extent, sadly, I would say there is.
01:06:31.920And it's because of stuff like Fred Hahn and QP Ontario, who are just wildly out of touch.
01:06:38.240Like, Fred Hahn, God bless him, is a gay man.
01:06:42.420Like, if he traveled to Iran, who he's advocated for, if he traveled to Gaza, who he advocates for all the time, like, Libby, I don't think he'd last 24 hours.
01:07:07.420So, yes, hopefully sanity is creeping back into the picture.
01:07:11.900But we've got a ways to go yet, because the union movement, the public sector union movement in this country, really got off the beaten path for quite some time.