Mark Slapinski - October 29, 2025


CBC Admits Poilievre Was Right, Carney Was Wrong


Episode Stats

Length

24 minutes

Words per Minute

200.80035

Word Count

4,884

Sentence Count

3

Misogynist Sentences

4


Summary

In the wake of the anti-tariff ad that has ground Canada's trade negotiations to a halt, PM Mark Carney is looking for someone to blame for his broken promises, and he's blaming an ad that he approved. Meanwhile, some premiers say it's all just Donald Trump being Donald Trump.


Transcript

00:00:00.160 something really weird just happened the cbc actually admitted that mark carney and doug
00:00:04.880 ford were wrong and polyev he was right all along well there was a whole lot of finger
00:00:10.320 pointing today over the anti-tariff ad that has ground canada u.s trade negotiations to a halt
00:00:15.520 while u.s president donald trump is blaming the ad for ending those talks conservative
00:00:19.920 leader pierre polyev is blaming who else prime minister mark carney the reality is that premiers
00:00:25.840 are stepping up to fill the void left behind by mark carney's broken promise he said he would
00:00:31.920 negotiate a win he said he would have a deal by july 21st still no deal now he mark carney is
00:00:38.880 looking for someone to blame for his broken promises and he's blaming an ad that he approved
00:00:46.880 meanwhile some premiers say they think this is all just donald trump being donald trump in terms of
00:00:54.000 the ups and downs of what we've been living through this year i would say this is pretty
00:00:57.760 par for the course of what we've come to expect from the president and we need to keep pushing
00:01:04.880 i can tell you one thing if it wasn't this he'd pick something else that he wasn't happy with and
00:01:10.000 you know negotiations been going on month after month after month
00:01:13.920 uh this need to we need to sit down and start focusing on it in my opinion uh i take a no deal
00:01:20.640 instead of a bad deal so all of this and in exactly one week the carney government will deliver its
00:01:28.080 first budget so how will all of this uncertainty shape canada's financial future well the power
00:01:32.320 panel luckily is here to talk about all of that michelle cadario was deputy chief of staff to former
00:01:36.400 prime minister paul martin lisa rate is a former conservative cabinet minister cheryl oates was
00:01:41.840 director of communications for former alberta ndp premier rachel notley and shachi curl is the
00:01:47.040 president of the angus reid institute good to see you all michelle having worked for former finance
00:01:53.360 minister and prime minister paul martin have you ever had to do a budget under these kinds of
00:01:57.840 circumstances i mean when you look at the economic headwinds hitting canada i mean how do you even
00:02:03.200 begin to plot a fiscal path forward well actually we did it was a different set of circumstances but
00:02:10.240 you know in the 90s when we were saddled with a huge deficit and growing debt and we had the bond
00:02:16.800 markets kind of at our at our heels um wanting to essentially declare us bankrupt as a country
00:02:23.040 there was enormous pressure on the on the uh on the government at the time and uh you know i think
00:02:28.320 that uh mr kretchen and mr martin when they came in uh they hardly came in on a deficit fighting kind
00:02:33.760 of agenda or what they want that wasn't necessarily what they wanted to do but it's what they had to do
00:02:39.200 and uh you know good governments make uh difficult decisions in tough times and so you know i think that uh
00:02:46.400 you know the prime minister carney is setting himself up to uh make some big bold decisions if
00:02:51.200 what we're hearing is uh uh is correct and uh he's been talking about you know a generational spend and
00:02:58.400 you know in these wins that we're facing and such uncertainty on our trading relationships
00:03:03.360 um that uh i think that he's trying to bet on on canada and uh it's a long-term bet it's not going to
00:03:09.520 change overnight and i think that he's hoping that canadians are going to stick with him
00:03:14.320 uh as he goes through it so but he's got some communicating to do that's all what i would say
00:03:18.560 well that that may be that's a recurring theme in a lot of the conversations in this town
00:03:23.200 uh lisa i'm wondering what you make of what we're seeing in terms of the blame game like um
00:03:27.520 i don't know if mark carney had to approve doug ford's ad i know he saw it in the meeting with
00:03:31.520 with premier ford is what senior ontario people are are telling us didn't object to it but neither did
00:03:37.200 donald trump first of all i mean this political finger pointing in the face of it i mean donald trump is
00:03:42.480 ultimately the actor here what do you make of the dynamic that we're seeing well donald trump may
00:03:48.480 be the actor here but the victim is canadian business and i'm not appreciative of all the
00:03:55.200 noise around who did what when the reality of the situation as i see it david is that
00:04:01.600 real live decisions are being made by real businesses in this country about whether or
00:04:07.040 not they are going to move their operation to some state in the united states family offices
00:04:12.960 are looking at it small and medium-sized businesses are because the signal they're not getting
00:04:17.760 from federal and provincial government is that they actually have an idea of how to proceed
00:04:22.080 through this dilemma in a in a careful way that's going to end up being okay at the end there's so
00:04:27.360 much uncertainty right now in the business sector especially in small and medium-sized businesses
00:04:33.120 i don't think i've ever seen anything like this before it is really jarring to hear
00:04:38.080 ordinary canadian business people say i think i really got to think about closing up shop here and
00:04:43.280 and moving to the states because i don't know where this is all going to end yeah and cheryl like
00:04:48.320 michelle's right the size of the challenge they faced in the 90s but it was a known set of facts
00:04:53.280 right a debt the gdp burden and a debt that you had to attack and trade with the us was about to lift
00:04:59.360 off uh we don't know where trade with the us is going and and i wonder to lisa's point do you think
00:05:04.800 what what we're seeing politically is is is a good thing for for the economic health of the country
00:05:09.520 if people have to make these decisions well i don't think it's a good strategy to get us to our
00:05:15.120 end goal which ultimately is a good deal for canadians and a good deal for canadian businesses
00:05:20.160 as you said right now a whole bunch of finger pointing and and whose fault was it that donald
00:05:26.080 trump did this and whose fault was it on this day that donald trump did that and what we need is a
00:05:30.320 strategic reset away from the grandstanding loop everybody right now whether you're a union leader
00:05:36.080 a trade association a premier the prime minister everybody wants to take their political points
00:05:41.440 from who stood up to donald trump best and who made the most progress and who stood up for their
00:05:45.760 members or their constituents and that has cost us in this case our negotiating position and so rather
00:05:51.840 than talk about whose fault it was in any given scenario it's time for us to stop to start talking
00:05:56.320 about how we move forward and what we're going to do differently and in some cases that might be a
00:06:00.960 little bit more information sharing like it could be the case that if the prime minister were to read
00:06:05.440 some of the premiers in a little bit they might be less inclined to take matters into their own hands
00:06:10.160 but we do need a little bit of a look at what's not worked so far and what we can do better if we're
00:06:14.560 working towards a strategic goal goal and not just political points so actually it does remember
00:06:19.680 remind me of sort of the dynamic we saw at the beginning of the year when justin trudeau was still
00:06:24.160 prime minister and kind of there's a scattershot approach of different premiers doing different
00:06:28.720 things and you know in the run-up to an election you're going to see a lot of politics but
00:06:32.480 it wasn't coordinated right it was five fingers instead of a fist and i wonder if that's where
00:06:38.080 we're maybe headed back well i think there's a couple of things that we're being asked to react to
00:06:45.680 without having the full picture of first of all where americans are how many americans actually
00:06:50.880 watched that ad did it change any minds did it did it uh you know rile up enough american viewers
00:06:59.200 to say look i'm gonna i'm gonna call my local politician i'm gonna call my congressman or my
00:07:03.680 state official and and and uh you know really pressure them we don't know that we're in the
00:07:08.640 process of finding that out but we don't know that yet as to you know what's happened with with the 10
00:07:16.400 look i am not somebody who's going to leap to the defense of doug ford when you look up an antonym for
00:07:23.360 you know as lisa pointed out sort of careful progress or careful thoughtful process you know doug
00:07:28.320 ford is not the poster child for that did you hear that a cbc panelist admitted on live television
00:07:34.800 that doug ford is not a long-term thinker and he made a huge mistake by getting involved with this
00:07:39.840 whole trade war situation running that ad was a big mistake and they're gently pointing at that
00:07:46.560 now i want to point out that lady she didn't use those exact words however that's what she meant to
00:07:51.680 say now by pointing this out they're basically admitting that pauliev was right and of course he was
00:07:55.840 right he's rightfully calling out both ford and carney for this whole trade war mess before we go
00:08:01.760 any further i noticed my videos aren't getting as much traction as they normally do if you see this
00:08:05.920 part don't forget to like make sure you're still subscribed and let me know if you saw this part in
00:08:10.720 the comment section i'm doing a test thank you now let's watch the cbc give both ford and carney
00:08:16.720 some much deserved love taps don't forget to stick around all the way until the end for some more
00:08:21.440 analysis we know that about him but we also know that he plays a role uh whether it's in ontario or
00:08:30.240 whether it's even at the national level of being sort of the elbow in the elbows up and at this stage
00:08:37.040 if you talk about the politics of it that is not going to hurt him because as much as we know that
00:08:43.360 certain sectors are really really hurting and let me be clear one household affected by this situation is
00:08:49.120 one household too many but when we ask canadians you know have you suffered job loss have you
00:08:54.480 suffered reduced work hours are you worried about that the vast majority at this stage of people in
00:09:01.600 this country say the answer is no where you see the highest level is only is in ontario and at that
00:09:07.040 level it's it's about five percent that's not nothing that means a tremendous amount to those families
00:09:12.320 who are losing work or out of work as a result of what's happening but it's not so many that people
00:09:18.800 have shifted from that elbows up mindset mentality and beyond that uh you know i think they are they
00:09:26.800 are at a point where um they the antipathy towards donald trump the hostility in canada among the canadian
00:09:33.920 rank and fell towards donald trump is such that they're not likely to blame canadian politicians for this
00:09:40.080 they're much more likely to blame trump for this yeah well yes because he started it
00:09:48.080 oh okay all right well shachi has has lost the ability uh to hear me uh uh control i'm just
00:09:52.640 letting you know that um all right michelle i i mean you know shachi makes a good point that people
00:09:57.600 uh broadly are not feeling it as acutely as some of the key sectors probably because of the
00:10:02.480 the the preservation of the kuzma exemption right which which allows uh a lot of trade to keep going
00:10:08.160 but you know you talk to people and the future order books are getting a lot worse right and now
00:10:12.960 you're seeing the anxiety and the frustration there so michelle if you're the prime minister
00:10:16.480 and we've heard people talking about information sharing what do you think the next move needs to
00:10:20.480 be when mark herney gets back from asia well you know i i gotta say that i think that the end of uh
00:10:26.560 shachi's sentence was yet um and uh you know that's what really worries me um and i think that uh you
00:10:33.680 know the government is kind of trying to not take for granted that where we are today but trying to
00:10:39.680 look to where we might be tomorrow and you know kuzma i think we should all recognize is probably
00:10:44.720 very much in jeopardy and that's not something that we can kind of count on to be renegotiated
00:10:50.080 and certainly not at the at the current kind of level of uh enjoyment that we have right now
00:10:55.040 so you know i think that this budget is going to um you know it's a defining feature for mark carney
00:11:00.560 as a politician as a as a prime minister there are such high expectations on it from so many
00:11:07.280 different sectors um and uh and you know i think that the pressure to actually get it passed which
00:11:14.720 you know i'm not sure there's a 100 guarantee of that they've worked through um but also to meet the
00:11:20.880 demand that he's kind of set out there is going to be enormous and so um i hope that they've dug in
00:11:27.280 and done their homework and are ready to really go out and sell this budget because if canadians
00:11:31.840 accept the budget and canadians accept the path then i think that it will pass in the house without
00:11:36.640 a problem yeah we're going to talk to don davies uh the interim leader of the ndp about this because
00:11:41.440 they're getting some pressure from a lot of groups on what to do but you know lisa i think we got a
00:11:46.640 sense like not a lot of granular specifics but in the speech the prime minister gave last week
00:11:51.760 um sort of explaining the size of the challenge i mean it's something you've heard before i've heard
00:11:55.920 before but he's trying to bundle it together i guess before he went to asia about this is the
00:12:00.480 size of the challenge so this is why we're going to have a massive eye-popping deficit is sort of what
00:12:05.760 what i took away from it um do you think the country is ready for that uh kind of the need to go deeper
00:12:12.720 and deeper into the red though not at a covet level but not far off yeah what i hope the country is ready
00:12:20.000 for is to understand exactly the gravity of the situation is vis-a-vis our trading partner to the
00:12:25.600 south the united states of america and what it means for domestic policies here and it's not just
00:12:30.720 focused on the deficit it's not about a spend budget what mr carney is hearing from the asian
00:12:36.800 investors that he's meeting with overseas is that it's not a problem with money there is money in this
00:12:42.240 world to invest in canada the problem with canada is that we have too much regulatory red tape and
00:12:48.560 uncertainty with respect to whether or not projects get built in this country that they don't want to
00:12:55.120 put any money into even developing a project because they're just flushing a billion dollars
00:12:59.760 down the toilet that is something the government can actually do at very little cost and that's
00:13:05.760 what i'm going to be looking for well cheryl that it does seem like this will be a whole new chapter
00:13:10.160 uh for the early days of the prime minister and his government because you know as shachi points out i
00:13:15.520 don't know if canadians are going to blame him for things that trump does because i think the
00:13:18.320 world realizes trump is an maybe an unsolvable problem right but the things he can control
00:13:24.160 which is the other part of his pitch to canadians we'll start to see the plan for that on november
00:13:28.880 4th in the budget and that's where we start to see the domestic agenda at scale potentially
00:13:35.840 yeah i think it presents a really big challenge and a really big opportunity the challenge of course
00:13:41.840 that is that there is so much unknown and when we talk about economic impact and what our bottom
00:13:46.560 line should brace for and what the our ongoing negotiation means with the united states you've
00:13:51.520 seen this in provincial budgets across the country that everybody is trying to anticipate this
00:13:55.760 differently you can try to bake in numbers you can try to put in padding but truthfully this is all
00:14:01.280 unknown and it would be unknown even if we thought we were moving towards reaching a deal the big
00:14:06.320 opportunity is of course faced with this kind of unprecedented moment in our in our relationship the
00:14:12.720 united states mark carney has political cover to do giant things to steer the ship in a whole
00:14:19.120 different direction in a way that you typically don't even if you are a government with a new
00:14:23.920 mandate not i mean not that he's not but he is a continued liberal government uh he has this
00:14:29.440 political cover to change big things to make big spends to do things that this government hasn't done
00:14:33.920 before and not to say that the government the public will blindly accept that but they might be more
00:14:38.880 willing to consider it given the situation that canada is currently in shachi is that what you're
00:14:43.520 seeing as you do your work that he does have political cover to use cheryl's phrase uh to do
00:14:48.400 giant things do you think that's where the public sentiment is right now well certainly on on lisa's
00:14:53.440 points around building big things on doing resource development it's it's unprecedented levels of
00:14:59.280 support uh when you go back relative to the last 10 15 years we're seeing people who in the past would
00:15:05.920 have been very reticent resistant unsure of whether that's a direction in which canada should be going
00:15:13.200 who are now saying just get it done already in some ways that the hardest and the easiest thing
00:15:18.480 for mark carney to do will be to actually dare the conservative caucus to say hey i've put together
00:15:25.280 all of these things i'm going to say yes on these projects uh and and i dare you to vote against me
00:15:31.600 uh from a parliamentary perspective you know he's he will have the votes but from a po a political
00:15:37.040 perspective and the gamesmanship perspective uh i think that is a harder conversation and and
00:15:42.720 particularly vis-a-vis quebec and the bq where we still see the highest levels of resistance to some
00:15:49.280 of these major project ideas but even they're approaching 50 percent of people in the province
00:15:55.120 saying yeah like get it done it's interesting though michelle as you navigate these things i mean
00:16:00.480 you know the bloc and the conservatives obviously have to stake out hard positions on this but
00:16:04.960 you know melissa lance was here last week repeating the leaders demand that the deficit
00:16:08.320 needs to be down to about 40 billion dollars for them to support uh this budget and to be happy with
00:16:14.000 this budget there's no path to that with the needs and with the plans and with the economic
00:16:18.960 certainty unless you shut down whole chunks of the government well and you know there is the
00:16:24.880 whole kind of of splitting up the budget of the capital versus operating and so you know is
00:16:29.360 there some wiggle room in there because you know the operating budget and they and the path that
00:16:34.400 they want to set out upon to actually balance that within three years uh you know it's kind
00:16:39.360 of like your mortgage and your credit card you uh you want to pay off your credit card so you're not
00:16:43.200 paying ridiculous fees but you can invest in an asset into your in a mortgage um and that's the
00:16:49.680 long-term capital budget that the uh that the prime minister is going to set out so i wonder if
00:16:54.160 there's some room in there um you know i uh i don't think that canadians and you know shots you
00:17:00.480 would probably know this better but i don't think canadians would take it well if we're hurled back
00:17:04.160 into an election campaign that is not on the calendar for for most people nor do i think that
00:17:09.360 they would believe that that is going to have a satisfactory or different result yeah i i wouldn't
00:17:13.840 take it well i'm still not recovered from the last one uh but but you know lisa on the budget the
00:17:18.720 deficit the size of it you know the capital operating split however you want to go with that i talked to
00:17:23.120 francis donald last week who always has a lot of smart things to say on this she says a lot of the
00:17:27.360 people are going to be looking at it it's not so much the size of the deficit is what are you buying
00:17:30.800 with that debt are you buying productivity are you buying the economic transformation i know you talked
00:17:36.480 about regulatory burden and they seem to be alive to that what do you think you need to see in the
00:17:41.760 spending a week from today they let you know they're actually buying a productivity boost so what the
00:17:48.160 rating agencies are going to be looking for picking up on what francis donald said is they're going to be
00:17:52.080 making sure that the government has a plan to not have these continuous large deficits that
00:17:57.680 as she said these kinds of investments are going to actually give you revenues that are going to be
00:18:02.400 able to in the future allow you to pay down the debt and hopefully get to a deficit position but i
00:18:08.240 always start with the very fact that i don't accept the fact that the current government budget as it
00:18:15.120 stands right now is all good money that is all good spend i think there's an opportunity to take
00:18:22.240 a look internally and see exactly what are we spending it on and instead of thinking about how
00:18:27.120 much more we're piling on to it let's think about what is it in this deficit right now that we truly
00:18:33.760 don't need i mean we want to be we want it we may want it sorry but do we actually need it because
00:18:40.640 we are we're entering into a world where scarcity is real and we're going to be able to make sure
00:18:46.320 that we're putting our money in places that make sense for the future i heard a speech yesterday by
00:18:51.440 my outgoing ceo victor dodig and he said if you think that the last 10 years was a lost decade if
00:18:57.760 we continue and have another 10 years of loss of opportunity then we're actually undermining an
00:19:04.000 entire generation and that's what's at stake yeah and cheryl like there is there is the process
00:19:11.280 underway for some sort of budget rationalization but whether it's at the size and scale that will
00:19:15.520 satisfy you know bond reasons i don't know uh but with all of the challenges and with the spend and
00:19:21.680 with the need to do some sort of rationalization it's got to be packaged with this narrative of
00:19:27.200 it will all be worth it in the end and here's why right and and that's that's a hard thing to see
00:19:32.880 right now with the industries uh key industries under assault yeah and i mean this this budget has
00:19:39.760 so many promises we've promised austerity we've promised growth we've promised diversification
00:19:45.280 we've promised we've been promised efficiencies um the government has a lot to live up to and when it
00:19:51.280 comes to efficiencies like i've been a part of a government that is trying to find efficiencies
00:19:55.840 much easier said than done when you ask ministers to go scrape through their ministries and find
00:20:00.560 things that they don't need to be spending money on there's it is hard to come up with substantial
00:20:05.600 meaningful amounts of money that you are willing to take out of your budget that you're willing to
00:20:09.360 sacrifice and so that is a difficult exercise and then i think when it comes to demonstrating
00:20:14.400 that the spend or the deficit is worth it yeah again a really big task to take on how do you
00:20:20.160 demonstrate to canadians that under threat from what was our closest trading partner that we're
00:20:25.040 doing what it takes for canada to eventually become more resilient or more more economically
00:20:30.560 secure and how do you tell them how that will impact their lives today if the budget is passed that
00:20:36.240 is a really tall order and it's it's what it will take to get other parties to support it but you know
00:20:40.640 shachi on that on the the reduction side of things i remember in the mid 2000s when i was still a
00:20:46.480 provincial political reporter back in st john's they were going through a cost-cutting exercise
00:20:51.280 in the first danny williams budget when they had won and you're sitting around a cabinet table
00:20:55.440 talking about and you really feel at a provincial level cutting programs that give low-income seniors
00:21:00.080 eyeglasses you know that's the kind of choices you have to make and i wonder with the trump effect
00:21:05.200 and with all of the economic uncertainty whether there's a political climate where you can make those
00:21:09.760 kind of cuts in in a federal budget if if you start having people losing out as a result of it
00:21:17.680 it's an interesting question i think the rear view lens on this uh gives uh this government a little
00:21:23.600 bit of cover in that it's not so many years ago that we went through the pandemic where money rightly
00:21:31.120 slow uh flowed quickly in great quantity and freely out the door in order to help backstop people who
00:21:38.400 were being plunged into crisis uh at the household level with job loss and an economy that was
00:21:43.760 basically you know stopped all stopped all at once but looking back then a lot of folks realizing you
00:21:50.560 know i what was it the the the covid checks that were going to kids living in their parents basements
00:21:55.600 and that kind of thing and and so people will have some recollection of ways that money when it needs
00:22:02.720 to be spent quickly is perhaps not always spent best and i think that that's something that they can
00:22:07.440 sort of refer back on uh and beyond that crisis has a way of bringing people together and being in a
00:22:16.320 more uh amenable mood to follow a crisis leader so if the prime minister if the finance minister can
00:22:23.360 turn this into their hell or high water moment and say look we're going to do this you need to come
00:22:29.600 with us because everything is at stake i do think you will find a significant around amount of goodwill
00:22:35.680 around that the politics are always going to be the politics around the edges yeah but but the
00:22:39.920 responsibility is to number one leverage that moment but number two not screw it up by doing the
00:22:46.880 unnecessary or the stupid spending now it really seems like cbc is playing this weird game and let
00:22:51.280 me explain on one hand they're trying to criticize polyev as much as they can and they're doing it rather
00:22:57.200 unfairly on the other hand they're gently admitting gently alluding to the fact that polyev was right all
00:23:04.880 along and canadians made a huge mistake by electing carney that's what i'm getting and what i think is
00:23:10.400 happening is that these clowns they know that carney's days are numbered it's only a matter of
00:23:15.120 time before polyev gets into office so on one hand they want to slow that process down but on the other
00:23:20.960 hand they want to make sure that polyev doesn't go too hard on them however once polyev does get into
00:23:26.720 office he should go hard on them and punish them he should immediately end all the media bailouts do that on
00:23:32.880 day one defund the cbc abolish the cbc and then use all their abandoned buildings to help the homeless
00:23:40.880 it's brilliant and then he should go a step further he should file big strong powerful lawsuits against
00:23:47.120 the media companies that are still around and hold them accountable for defamation these media
00:23:52.480 companies have been defaming conservatives for years and they need to be held accountable and then
00:23:57.920 he can take the money he gets from those successful defamation lawsuits and use it to offset the
00:24:03.600 deficit do you think that's a good idea let me know either way polyev will be in office soon enough
00:24:09.440 if it's not before christmas it'll be shortly after have a great night talk to you tomorrow patriots