Andrew Coyne, Chantel Ibert, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj are joined by Rosemary Barton and Rosemarie Barton to discuss the latest on the Trudeau government and the upcoming fall economic update.
00:00:00.000Mark Carney has been doing such a terrible job as Prime Minister that even the CBC, yes the CBC, is turning on him.
00:00:07.960Let's watch this brutal takedown together.
00:00:10.400I'm Rosemary Barton, here to break it down tonight, Chantal Ibert, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj.
00:00:15.420Andrew, let's start with you. We've got a date now, perhaps a little bit later for the budget than we anticipated on Monday, pushing into November.
00:00:23.000But all those things that I mentioned there are factors that are making it difficult to come up with, I guess, that's what the government says, a budget for right now.
00:00:32.640What do you make of where they have landed on the date?
00:00:35.760Well, it may also be because they're struggling to make the numbers add up.
00:01:15.260The news for Carney gets worse as the video goes along.
00:01:17.940So we've had that message, that letter from the finance minister to his colleagues saying you've got to cut spending by 15% over three years.
00:01:24.940But then we find out that doesn't apply to about two-thirds of federal spending.
00:01:28.880When the C.D. Howe Institute looked at the numbers, they said that adds up to about a $22 billion cut over three years from a budget of over $500 billion.
00:01:36.920With a deficit of $100 billion, with all the defense spending coming down the road in years to come, I don't think we're close to coming to grips with the fiscal situation.
00:01:47.360The prime minister said the other day that they're still going to just achieve cuts in the federal payroll from attrition.
00:04:27.240Rather than half this situation, especially since last June, no opposition party, including the conservatives, would have felt like bringing down the government.
00:04:37.860But the more the weeks go on and the situation deteriorates, the more that temptation will be there.
00:04:45.740I'm not predicting an election on that basis, but still it becomes more complicated.
00:04:52.340Then the other question the liberals have to ask themselves is, if it's going to get worse, do we want to survive the budget and delay it until we're weaker in an election?
00:05:06.380Those are all questions to which I don't have answers, but they're all facing the government at this point.
00:05:12.880And I mean, the other question they could be asking themselves, Althea, is, is there any promise or thing we should be scaling back here because we're in such dire straits?
00:05:22.160And it doesn't seem that that is a consideration at this point.
00:05:24.920But you have to wonder why that's not also on the table.
00:05:27.940Well, it seems like climate change has definitely taken a back seat, I would say.
00:05:32.980It's interesting that Jean-Tadde mentions, like, maybe the liberals would want to have an election right now, because that is certainly the sentiment among the opposition, i.e., nobody wants to vote for this budget because everybody fears the sticker shock on the size of the deficit.
00:05:49.720And there seems to be poison pills for every opposition party in this budget, either too much spending or too many cuts or cuts that are, that we're told will happen later, to Andrew's point.
00:06:02.840Right. So I find that very interesting.
00:06:06.440The other point I think that's worth mentioning, I agree with everything my colleagues have said so far, but that the prescriptions that Mark Carney has outlined for this moment in time are prescriptions that he talks about in his book, Values, which is from 2021.
00:06:21.580And a lot of these prescriptions sound pretty similar to Canadians if they paid attention to what Justin Trudeau was saying, especially in the early part of his mandate.
00:06:28.960It's just that the price tags are a lot bigger now.
00:06:31.760So I think at some point the government is going to have to explain why it thinks it can succeed with similar policies, at least similar philosophically endued policies.
00:06:43.740I'm thinking of, like, the housing spend, for example, where Justin Trudeau failed.
00:06:48.540That, I think, is a reason why perhaps not just the opposition, but the liberals might start thinking about going now rather than going in the spring on the spring budget.
00:06:57.840Andrew, how long, you know, how long will people, do you think, give the prime minister to try and turn things around?
00:07:06.180Now, I honestly can't believe what I'm hearing right now.
00:07:08.920Althea Raj, far left Althea Raj, is calling out Mark Carney on CBC, admitting that Trudeau is a failure and Mark Carney is even worse.
00:07:39.780And, you know, you would at least get a budget to sort of see, I think Canadians would give him a budget to sort of see where are things at?
00:07:46.440Can he make some improvements here with his economic vision?
00:07:49.880I mean, I don't know how many months or years people will give him.
00:07:52.560I think, as you say, they've given him the benefit of the doubt until now, probably rightly so.
00:07:56.840The budget will certainly be a reckoning point.
00:07:58.960I think with these things, there has to be a sense that you're getting your arms around the problem, that you're making progress against it, that you know what you're doing.
00:08:06.620If you look like events are getting away from you, that you're running on the spot to catch up, then people can smell that.
00:08:14.400They can smell when a government is losing confidence and competence in the face of large problems.
00:08:20.080So that's the absolute lowest bar they have to get over in this budget is look like they've actually grasped the size of the problem and have a plan to get forward towards it.
00:08:30.680As I say, I doubt whether they're going to execute the whole of the plan at this point because the spending cuts at this point, to me, look like they're going to have to be a lot deeper than what they're talking about.
00:08:38.840We are going to have to, for example, to start talking about a reform of cuts to transfers to the provinces and transfers to individuals.
00:08:46.080You cannot wall off such enormous parts of the budget from any cuts when you're engaged in this kind of exercise.
00:08:52.560The other thing they have to be thinking about is how do we start grappling with the growth problem in this country?
00:08:58.220You know, it really is true in the long run that if you want to get out of your fiscal hole, you have to get faster growth.
00:09:03.960It doesn't solve things in the short run, but in the long run, that's absolutely key to restoring fiscal health to this country.
00:09:16.980The next part of the video talks about the chaos within the Liberal Party.
00:09:20.800Althea, your thoughts on maybe you want to start with Chrystia Freeland or some of the other moves that we have seen or are expecting.
00:09:28.200I think the general theme is that Mark Carney is managing disappointment.
00:09:33.600Ms. Freeland, I'm told, has barely met with any of her stakeholders at Transport, so she obviously had her foot out the door for a while now.
00:09:41.940So David Lometty was offered a job that was held by somebody who didn't leave the job.
00:09:48.960So that was an interesting HR issue to resolve.
00:09:53.740And David Lometty is a close friend of Mark Carney's.
00:09:56.520Bill Blair, Jonathan Wilkinson is another name that's kind of been rumored to be headed towards the exit.
00:10:04.320These are two former cabinet ministers who assumed that they would have a place at Mark Carney's cabinet table and there was no room for them.
00:10:13.600So they, again, I guess, getting a nice little reward.
00:10:18.220Now, there are others who expected to be appointed to cabinet and warrant.
00:10:24.760Are they going to take their own leave?
00:10:26.700There may be people leaving for policy issues as well in the months to come.
00:10:32.260And there may be people who leave for the Ontario Liberal leadership.
00:10:34.580I think what it shows, though, and to your point, there were talks in the lead up to the March, April election that there were people Mark Carney wanted to bring in, but they just didn't have time.
00:10:48.400They had private sector jobs and they couldn't get out of it.
00:10:50.760So there are some nice safe seats in Toronto that have opened up.
00:10:54.160But I think part of it is not this grand strategy.
00:10:56.860I'm not Justin Trudeau, although this government is kind of obsessed with that theme.
00:11:00.120I think it's really like you have all these people who don't want to be here and could make my life miserable.
00:11:08.780I also think the circumstances that brought Mark Carney, one, to the Liberal leadership and then to that quick election, did not allow him to build a team.
00:11:19.260So we are seeing another thing that is unprecedented.
00:11:23.440You do not usually see the parliament return for the first time under a so-called new government and see a leading figure of the government resign from cabinet and be replaced by nobody.
00:11:49.800And that kind of tells you that they are keeping those seats open, not for people who are currently in caucus, but because they hope it's going to have, I suspect, a bunch of by-elections to bring in the people that Mark Carney would have if he'd had months to prepare for an election rather than a couple of weeks.
00:12:10.240Whoa, Mark Carney is getting ripped to shreds by his favorite propagandists, just ripping, ripping, ripping him apart.
00:13:39.300But Ms. Freeland leaving right after it's revealed that she may have misled Parliament, inadvertently or otherwise, in the matter of the B.C. Ferries contract,
00:13:47.400where she told the House that the federal government had no involvement in it, even as liberal officials were meeting behind closed doors,
00:13:54.280discussing how they could spend a $1 billion loan for the purchase from the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
00:13:58.880So, maybe that's coincidental, but it's awfully interesting.
00:14:02.280We've got committees clamoring for her to appear and explain herself on this.
00:14:05.520So, maybe a good time to get out of Dodge.