CBC Panel Just Said THIS About Carney
Episode Stats
Summary
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces a new plan for the country s auto sector, and the plan is so bad that even his friends at CBC are having trouble spinning it around. What does it tell us about the PM's approach to the US and climate change? Rosemary Barton and Chantelle Ibert, Andrew Coyne, and Althea Raj break it all down.
Transcript
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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has a new plan for the country's auto sector,
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and the plan is so bad that even his friends at CBC are having trouble spinning it around.
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Carney's been having a rough week, with the CBC exposing the fact that Carney's name came up 69
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times no less in the Epstein files. They also acknowledged that Mark Carney was seen at a
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festival with notorious sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell. This all comes as Pierre Polyev remains
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the leader of the Conservative Party, having won a massive victory with 87% of the vote.
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The Conservatives and the Liberal Party are now neck-to-neck in the polls,
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and the Conservatives could actually win if an election were held today.
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So let's watch CBC give Carney some much-deserved love taps,
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and stick around for some commentary at the end.
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This new auto strategy, what does it tell us about the PM's approach to the US and to climate change?
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I'm Rosemary Barton, here to break it all down tonight, Chantelle Ibert, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj.
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I'm going to start with Althea, because I happened to know she was on the technical briefing earlier
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this morning listening to all the details, and I want your thoughts on the strategy,
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of course, itself, Althea, but also the timing of it.
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Well, that technical briefing call did not go well, and the Prime Minister's office called me after to say,
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no, no, don't worry, we did do modelling, and this is not a suggestion.
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This is what the Prime Minister has signed off on, and this is a plan that's going forward,
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and it's not up for real consultations when it will be gazetted.
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Anyways, that being said, I think the Prime Minister is showing himself to be a pragmatist.
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I think this is good politics, in the sense that everybody likes getting credits,
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and the credits were very popular, and when the credits were pulled back,
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Also, at the same time, as Elon Musk kind of showed himself to be not necessarily who we thought we were,
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and people had bad feelings about Tesla, or some people did.
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So, I'm just not sure which one was more influential, but they coincided around the same time.
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The move itself, I think, says, I actually think the policy itself is pretty good.
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On the climate front, though, it is a huge step back.
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I think it's getting harder and harder for Prime Minister Carney to stand in front and defend his reputation,
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earned mostly before he became Prime Minister as this climate, not only activist,
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but somebody who took climate change incredibly seriously.
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The laws on the book still have the Paris climate targets,
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and even the beefier targets that Justin Trudeau signed onto,
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but there is no way this government is going to meet them,
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especially if they're going to approve a pipeline,
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and it looks like, really, that is the direction in which they're marching.
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But that being said, what they are doing is less worse than what people feared,
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and so that is why you also have some in the climate sector coming out and praising them
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which is what some people feared the EV mandate.
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If they got rid of it and didn't replace it with anything, it would go.
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And they are following an example that Europe also went through in just last December.
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So all in all, I think it's a really good day for the Liberal government.
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So first, if we were trying to continue to walk in step with the US approach at this point,
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we would have gotten rid of EV mandates, and that stops there.
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That is not what happened today, which is interesting in the sense that we are going the European model way.
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Those rebates out here is totally right, will be popular, will move cars.
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Because it's an interesting day when the auto industry, the Premier of Ontario,
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with the leader of the province where it most matters,
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but also a number of people on the green side of the equation say this is not a bad move.
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Stephen Guilbault, who has no seat in Cabinet to protect anymore,
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So yes, it is a step back, but it is not a retreat in the American sense of the word.
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And it does send the message that Canada is willing to look at a different auto industry model,
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away from the big three that we sometimes bail out, by the way, for lack of innovation.
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And that's a gamble on the fact that the future in the auto industry is probably going to be EVs,
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notwithstanding what the US market goes to over the next four or five years.
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Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a gamble, Andrew.
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And it's also interesting to see the Prime Minister say, you know,
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we hope that the tariffs don't remain with the United States on the auto sector.
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But if they do, here are all the things we're going to do to pivot sort of away from them.
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you've got subsidies that apply to some countries' cars,
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but not to others at price points that vary depending on where they're made.
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And then we've got some system of tradable credits,
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where if you make cars here, you get the credits.
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And if you import them, you have to buy the credits.
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The EV mandate is practically unachievable and insanely costly if they tried to achieve it.
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It's much less good policy than just charging a carbon price
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and let people figure out for themselves how they want to reduce their emissions,
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but apparently we're not capable of that in this country.
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The United States president has declared war on our auto industry
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where he doesn't want any cars to be made in Canada.
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He's declared war on his auto industry at the same time
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The calculation, the thing that might make it all halfway sensible is
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If he goes and if the Americans go back to something resembling their senses,
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then there may be a case for policies like this that help the industry ride it out until then.
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But don't look for a lot of economic sense in it beyond that.
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I think what we can look at today's announcement as a short-term band-aid
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what it hoped to do was to change the way the Canadian auto sector in this country functions.
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And that maybe made sense when Joe Biden was the president of the United States
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and both administrations, Canada and the United States,
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Like this is basically a temporary fix that encourage,
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that almost as much as encourages auto manufacturing in this country,
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encourages Canadians to purchase cars from other countries with which we have free trade deals.
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whereas do the investments that they make now actually deliver?
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The other question really to ask is like, what is part of this $3 billion fund?
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We have no idea who it will go for, what projects.
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And I do think there's been a lot of money through this strategic investment fund,
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And I think as the months, maybe the years go by,
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taxpayers really need to know what they've invested in
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The other thing that might make, again, a smidgen of sense is
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if the president is determined to destroy our auto sector
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you might as well shelter the part of the industry that he doesn't want,
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Exactly, for one, two, a lot of details and they are big details are missing in action.
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And I think part of the announcement or part of the Kuzma pre-negotiation stance,
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i.e. these are things that we will be doing if this is where you want to go,
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So, I don't think we have seen the full picture.
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I'm not sure that the government has a handle on the full picture yet,
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but it is a move that does signal that if we're going to keep anything,
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we're not going to keep the fuel-based auto industry
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that the American administration seems to love.
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We're going to try to get the South Korea, Chinese, European-style EVs,
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which is probably where the future is in any event.
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At issue, conservatives suggest they will work with the government when it makes sense.
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Conservatives are here to work with the Prime Minister and with the government
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to get to knock down these unjust tariffs and fight for our workers,
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fight for their jobs, and fight for our economic independence.
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But whether that spirit of collaboration will stick around is unclear.
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This is the group here that have given you the most expensive groceries in the G7.
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So have conservatives changed their approach to parliament?
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It sounded like it at the beginning of that clip.
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How could liberals take advantage of this moment here to break it all down,
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Andrew, you know, part of this started at the Conservative Convention over the weekend.
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This tonal change, certainly, from Pierre Poiliev,
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but also identifying areas where they're willing to actually do things,
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whether it be bail or the GST rebate, for instance.
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What do you make of this in terms of a different posture for a conservative?
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Well, I think, to some extent, the moment and the public demand it.
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People are so spooked, and rightly so, by what's going on south of the border,
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and depending on events, they may continue to be.
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So this may be one of those rare things where it actually does last,
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It's good politics for Poilievre in a number of respects.
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Secondly, you get to talk about the issues that you'd like to talk about.
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You get the media to focus on you, which is hard for opposition leaders to do.
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So he got in there to talk about the cooperation,
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Thirdly, you sort of put the prime minister on the spot
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and that's always good to try to seize the initiative.
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than Jamil Javani going down to, quote-unquote,
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negotiate on behalf of who-knows-who with who-knows-what mandate.
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But I presume he went down with the leader's authorization,
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as being, first of all, the be-all and the end-all,
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rather than something that we have to be able to take or leave.
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And secondly, to blame the government for the absence of one so far.
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If only Jamil Javani and people like him were negotiating it,
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So there's a supposedly bipartisan, helpful move
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that is neither helpful nor particularly bipartisan.
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I frankly do not put a lot of stock on this spirit of cooperation.
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I believe it's driven by polls in the sense that the one thing that is clear
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from everything we've seen and everything we've read
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is that if the liberals can only demonstrate or show a narrative
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that it's being bogged down by parliamentary games
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Mark Carney is totally able to walk to Rideau Hall and say,
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because they're playing games in the House of Commons.
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And if you look at polls and you're a conservative or a new Democrat,
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the last thing you want at this point is an election.
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I then also believe, though, that if Mr. Poitiev wants to revert to style,
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Because this week, a lot of caucus members got different marching orders
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on how parliament should work from Stephen Harper.
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And those marching orders went to unity and cooperation and being constructive.
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And that does mean that in the future, in the next few months,
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if we are going to revert to the usual, let's just ambush the government style,
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there will be caucus members who will use Stephen Harper's words
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to say that's not where we want to be or what we want to do.
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But do I believe there has been a sudden conversion?
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the last thing we need are for opposition members to suddenly freelance
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and say we're going to renegotiate the relationship
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and come home to say Donald Trump told me he likes us.
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a lot of conservatives worried about the possibility of an early election,
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knowing that that wouldn't be an ideal outcome for them.
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So, I mean, Chantal's notion there, I think, is pretty plausible.
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There's not an ounce of me who believes that if the polls showed something different,
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They are convinced that if there was an election now,
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The leader of the official opposition has terrible polling numbers,
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They need time to give Mark Carney a record that they can prosecute.
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And it is remarkable, honestly, the tone shift in the last week.
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Like, Michelle Rempelgarner, who was just, who's a Calgary MP,
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and was calling, and the immigration critic for the party,
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was calling the immigration minister incompetent just a few weeks ago.
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And now she is writing a letter released publicly,
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saying that she is writing this in the spirit of collaboration
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And then at the same time, you watch Question Period,
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the liberals are accusing the conservatives of being obstructionist.
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the threat of them demonstrating to the conservatives
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means that they can get their agenda passed in the Commons
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with a lot less headaches than they had in the fall.
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they really only passed one new piece of legislation.
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whenever the election is, something to campaign on.
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They need some of their agenda to get through here.
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they wouldn't mind going to an election in the spring
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because things are only going to get more turbulent and troublesome for them from now on.
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First of all, Paul Yeager is raising his game, noticeable.
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And so that's going to give them trouble, you know.
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Secondly, the NDP is going to resolve their leadership question for Goderil,
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and they're going to be a bit more of a force to be reckoned with.
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And thirdly, we're heading for all kinds of crazy mayhem from Donald Trump, inevitably.
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if you're a liberal, for getting the election out of the way beforehand.
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They certainly seem to have gotten a lift out of the Davos speech.
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Right after I recall them saying they weren't getting a partisan,
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they were only getting a personal lift for Carney.
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But it does seem now to be translating into support for the party as a whole,
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rather than just him, at least the most recent polls suggest.
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I'm not taking for granted that the NDP leadership will see a boost in the polls for the NDP
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And I believe the liberals would like an election,
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but that they totally understand that there's no patience out there for an election
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that isn't based on some probable cause to have one.
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Regardless of, you know, the parliamentary games,
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I agree with Althea, I watched Question Period.
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And unless someone told you there was a big change, I saw no change.
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At issue, Stephen Harper's message, the former PM is calling for unity to protect Canada.
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In these perilous times, both parties, whatever their other differences,
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come together against external forces that threaten our independence.
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And his advice for a new dynamic with the U.S.?
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The question for Canada is not how we feel about what the U.S. is doing.
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To be clear, these realities mean that we must reduce our dependence on the U.S.
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So once we made a Stephen Harper's message to Canada,
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let's bring everyone back, Chantal, Andrew, and Althea.
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He's celebrating the 20th anniversary of forming government,
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and he got his portrait unveiled and all the rest.
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But he obviously had some things to say, Chantal,
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and things that he thinks the country should be doing in this moment.
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I thought he gave Prime Minister Carney a good week on many levels,
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which was directed that the two parties need to come together.
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But also the last speech, the one to a conservative partisan crowd,
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where he insisted that Canada should go tariffs for tariffs against the U.S.
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That is a more aggressive posture than that of the current government,
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but it's immensely more of an aggressive posture
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than that of the current leader of the Conservative Party
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So I feel he bought Carney a lot of wiggle room,
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and I do believe that he robbed Pierre Poilievre
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of the afterglow of that resounding 87% vote that he got at the convention.
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So I would say there are many Conservatives this week
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Because they didn't feel that their current leader
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as former Prime Ministers than as Prime Ministers.
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We remember that intervention in the spring when morale was shaken
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I would rather put the country into poverty than yield to America
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For a guy whose patriotism used to be questioned,
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remember he was one of the authors of the Firewall Letter.
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I remember a journalist reporter asking him at a press conference once,
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And he's been quite stirring, I think, in some of his appeals.
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As Chantel mentioned, he's certainly making life a little difficult,
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but for some sections of the business community
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who are just all about put all of our eggs in the Kuzma basket,
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well, actually, we need to be thinking seriously
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what a lot of Conservatives want to hear from the current leader.
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And so to hear it from the former guy, the former boss,
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and maybe to people who weren't Conservative either.
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Can I just go back on what Chantel originally said?
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But I actually think that what Prime Minister Harper gave Pia Poiliev
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where he did not want to go before his leadership vote.
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It was remarkable that we had a whole convention
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And I think Stephen Harper has kind of raised the bar
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and told Pia Poiliev, this is what you need to do
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At the same time, I think he also did Mark Carney a favor,
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not just because at the Conservative Shinding on Wednesday,
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which is stop waiting for the situation in the United States
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and saying, basically, we need you to diversify.
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in places where the Liberals even themselves haven't.
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So I don't necessarily see it as a negative thing,
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but I do think it's like pushing the Conservative leader
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we have the leader for the Times at this moment.
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Yeah, the problem is that Conservative strategists,
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totally believe that if they're going to fight this
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on the battlefield of Trump-Canada-U.S. relations, etc.,
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they can't win against Mark Carney with Piapli.
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Even Carney's friends at the CBC are poking holes
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Of course, they're still on the Liberal payroll,