The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Canada and the U.S： A Complicated Relationship

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:07.860 host, Jamie Schmell, Member of Parliament for Halliburton. Co-war the likes Brock with new

00:00:11.380 content for you every single Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Don't forget to like, comment,

00:00:16.460 subscribe and share this program because on today's show we are talking about a new U.S.

00:00:22.140 administration coming in in January, complete with it, potentially increased new tariffs.

00:00:27.600 To talk about this and much, much more, we have the Member of Parliament for Bay of Quinty,

00:00:31.960 also the critic for international trade, Ryan Williams. Thanks for coming on the show.

00:00:35.260 Nice to be back. Yeah, it's been a while. That's right. Before his competition. Yes. And now trade.

00:00:40.240 And I retained competition and then added trade. So all the competition, all the trade.

00:00:44.800 Well, they are interlinked. Yes, they are. I think there's a lot of similarities and you're right,

00:00:48.700 the guy to lead that because you did point out how, in previous shows, how uncompetitive Canada

00:00:53.300 is as a whole and it's not really getting any better. No, not better at all. And even

00:00:57.540 we look at the history of Canada. Canada has been a trading nation as long as we've been around.

00:01:01.820 And before we were around, the first nations here in Canada, they were trading. They traded

00:01:06.620 between nations. And we had then the first monopoly that was born in 1670, which was the Hudson Bay

00:01:12.660 Trading Company, the original monopoly in Canada. So trade, competition go hand in hand, but certainly

00:01:19.100 we want to fix both of them and increase trade and increase competition here in Canada.

00:01:23.400 And how do we do that now that we have a new U.S. administration coming in to be sworn in

00:01:29.500 in January? We have threats of terrorists, some as high as 25 percent, which would just cripple

00:01:35.640 our economy. How do we maintain anything going forward when we as a nation, based on previous

00:01:44.520 conversations about being competitive, are so uncompetitive?

00:01:48.320 Well, we have a Canada first prime minister. We need a prime minister with a backbone who's

00:01:53.320 strong, who can stand up for Canada, stand up for Canadians. And that's what we're missing

00:01:58.080 right now. And that's what's on the horizon, hopefully, for Canada in the future. And the

00:02:03.220 stakes couldn't be higher. Stakes couldn't be higher at all. We, in the last nine years,

00:02:08.100 have signed a deal with the Americans where we lost half a trillion dollars of investment

00:02:12.720 south. In the last four years, the average American worker now makes $32,000 more than

00:02:18.040 the average Canadian worker. And we've seen an issue like softwood lumber, which is now

00:02:23.420 over 1,300 days, actually 3,000 days, 3,114 days that we haven't had that solved. Last prime

00:02:30.940 minister, Stephen Harper, solved that in under 90 days. So we have a prime minister now who

00:02:36.720 is okay with the status quo, who has put taxes, as we've talked before in this podcast, on carbon

00:02:44.400 tax and capital gains taxes onto Canadians and the businesses. And what that does to an incoming

00:02:50.220 president like Donald Trump, well, he loves that. He wants Justin Trudeau to be prime minister. And

00:02:55.240 why wouldn't he? He's winning. Every time we put a tax onto a business in Canada, every time we block

00:03:01.740 a natural resource development like this government wants to do by blocking and capping emissions to

00:03:07.420 oil and gas in Alberta and Saskatchewan, those investments go south. The investors flee Canada

00:03:13.200 and they end up south. We end up seeing entrepreneurs leave us and go south. The Americans win. And you 0.98

00:03:19.240 can see what they've won by. The economy for the Americans has gone up. The GDP per capita has skyrocketed

00:03:26.920 in the US. And if you look at it in Canada, it's dipped. It's going down. For two economies who have

00:03:32.560 always mirrored each other, the fact that we've had a weak prime minister, a prime minister who

00:03:37.080 doesn't stand up for Canada, has meant a really big travesty for Canada, for its economy and for its

00:03:44.480 people. And a Canada first prime minister, Pierre Polyev, is what we need to ensure he looks after

00:03:50.060 Canadians' paychecks, their jobs. We do good trade deals with the Americans and other nations across the

00:03:56.080 world. We stand up for Canada, for Canadians, and for their paychecks and their pocketbooks.

00:04:01.340 Even Carbon Tax Carney took his company down south to New York for the better environment to make

00:04:07.340 money. But, you know, taxes are one thing, yes, and I'll swing back to that in a second. But also,

00:04:12.960 when we're talking about endless rules, regulations, red tape, bureaucratic forms, creating a kind of a

00:04:20.260 muddy water situation when it comes to certainty for industry, it's hard to really go back, if you're

00:04:25.900 representing a company trying to figure out where the next great opportunity is, to stand before the

00:04:30.600 board or whoever the structure is, to pitch something in Canada when the questions are, well,

00:04:35.900 can we get a permit? Can this happen? What are the rules, the regulations? Is there certainty? And all

00:04:41.540 those are, I don't know, maybe. It's not great when you then get a pitch from another jurisdiction that

00:04:48.180 said, yeah, we can have a permit in X amount of time, you can have an answer, and if the answer is yes,

00:04:52.360 you get a permit in that sort of time, it has that certainty. So Canada keeps losing out. So you talked

00:04:57.600 about the money that is left. What about the opportunities we haven't seen that haven't even come our

00:05:01.880 way?

00:05:02.540 No, and you're right. And so we talk about Canada, we should be the richest nation on the

00:05:07.560 planet. We have more natural resources per capita than every other nation on the planet. I say, you know, in

00:05:13.720 Canada, we're at third base, and we act like we hit a triple. We've got oil and gas, we've got critical

00:05:18.520 minerals. We've got great institutions with great minds who want to create great companies and great,

00:05:23.960 great things. And what we do is it takes us right now an average of 15 years to develop a mine. C69

00:05:30.520 doesn't allow any natural resource extraction. When we look at our oil and gas, there's been a war

00:05:36.980 on that industry. Even though it's our top export, 70 plus percent of our oil goes south to the Americans,

00:05:44.180 and yet we're trying to tax it and trying to stop the production of that. In the name of what's been

00:05:50.500 climate, when we look at the results of that has been we're not reducing emissions. Our carbon tax

00:05:55.620 has not reduced any of the natural disasters that are happening to Canada and otherwise. And we're

00:06:02.420 looking at the fact that when we put more red tape and we put more taxes and more burden onto those

00:06:10.340 Canadian businesses, well, it doesn't stop the consumption of those. It just changes the

00:06:14.420 jurisdiction they're coming from. So those resources are coming from dirty dictatorships or they're

00:06:19.140 coming from areas of the world where they're not doing any clean extraction. You know, we have that here.

00:06:24.340 We have some of the best industries in Canada. We know we have the best oil and gas on the planet in terms

00:06:29.540 of the workers, but also the way that we pull it out of the ground and we extract it. We just have to get better

00:06:35.460 in Canada, not only of getting the stuff out of the ground, but also then manufacturing this the

00:06:40.740 secondary product here, making sure that we create better jobs when we pull the mine material like

00:06:45.860 nickel out of the ground that we then produce the we have the factories that produce the end product

00:06:51.620 from that to refine it and that that ensure that we're selling that as well because that's better jobs

00:06:56.180 and better change checks. But we're stopping even the extraction. We're stopping any of the beginning

00:07:01.060 input for that, as we say, the economic input for Canada so that we're then losing the economic

00:07:09.060 output for Canada. We're not able to get it out of our borders, across the oceans, to the Americans

00:07:16.100 to get good deals and at the end is a loss of that worker wage compared to the Americans, but it's a loss

00:07:22.340 of the economy. To what we might say and Stephen Pelosi said this week, we may actually be in a recession

00:07:27.860 right now. That's right. Absolutely. And I don't think the Prime Minister really grasps this. If he

00:07:31.780 does, maybe it's just ideology that's stopping this. So every time the government imposes a new rule,

00:07:38.820 a regulation, a piece of paper that a company has to fill out, it adds to the cost of the product.

00:07:44.420 On top of that, you have taxes, the carbon tax and many others. In Ontario, it's the cost of electricity,

00:07:49.700 thanks to Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGinty, the highest rates pretty much in North America.

00:07:55.380 Each one of those layers adds to the final price of the product. And if the company is not able to

00:08:00.980 sell the product that they are manufacturing at a rate the market is willing to pay, as you said

00:08:06.260 earlier, they leave that jurisdiction. And that's pretty much as basic as you can get it. I oversimplified

00:08:13.620 on purpose, but for the Prime Minister not to actually realize this is mind-boggling. And so now we have

00:08:22.180 a threat of 25% tariffs coming into effect when the President is sworn in in January,

00:08:28.980 and it could be a negotiation tactic. I think many people think it is.

00:08:33.220 That will have disastrous effects on pretty much all sectors, including our, we're from Ontario,

00:08:40.820 our automobile sector.

00:08:41.860 We do more trade with the Americans than all other countries combined. 40% of our economy depends on

00:08:49.860 that US trade relationship. It's a $1.2 trillion responsibility. That's how big it is. And the fact

00:08:57.940 that we didn't handle it well the first time under a Trump presidency, and we're heading into a second

00:09:03.460 one, it doesn't look good for what will actually be the outcome of that with Justin Trudeau as the

00:09:09.700 Prime Minister. And just to give you a little context what happened the first time, the same

00:09:14.580 rhetoric we hear now in the House of Commons, this Team Canada, we're going to approach this as we're

00:09:19.140 all in this together, was the same rhetoric we heard back in 2016. And when it came close to 2018,

00:09:26.500 we were three months prior to Kuzma being signed. So it went from NAFTA to Kuzma. A funny thing actually

00:09:32.580 happened. Because of Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland and the way that we were approaching

00:09:36.820 Donald Trump and the Americans, it was a G7 summit in Quebec. Justin Trudeau went around the Americans

00:09:42.020 and said there was a trade deal done, or that just needed to be signed. Robert Lighthizer was the US

00:09:47.460 trade representative who had to do a press relief to say, there is no trade deal close, we are nowhere near

00:09:53.220 close. Really peed off the Americans in that trading party with this bizarre negotiating tactic that I think

00:10:01.940 Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland thought they were being cute and really peed off the president. He left

00:10:07.620 Canada with, and remember that Trudeau was in a press conference insulting the American president, which

00:10:13.460 he likes to do. The American president was tweet storming him because he was over to see Kim Jong-un. What

00:10:19.140 happened after that was Canada then was kicked out of, or left out of Kuzma negotiations for three months. That was June 8th.

00:10:25.940 They didn't get back into touch with the US until the end of August. In the meantime, Mexico did a deal

00:10:32.420 with the Americans, and they did a couple different deals on labor and some other provisions, but they

00:10:36.660 sat in negotiating rooms for three months where Canada was left out. Canada found itself back with

00:10:41.620 a deal to say, sign this or you're done. They only had three weeks to decide, and they only made minuscule

00:10:47.780 changes to that. But the result was, here's the biggest result from that. After three months of being

00:10:52.740 kicked out of Kuzma because of this bad negotiating tactic, because we have a weak prime minister,

00:10:58.180 two parts happened. One was that Mexico overcame Canada's US number one trading partner. Actually,

00:11:03.780 we're now number third when it comes to goods. It's Mexico, then China, then Canada. So we lost that.

00:11:09.860 At half a trillion dollars, we lost as well. And the second thing was, we are now nine years into having

00:11:15.220 a softwood lumber dispute that has resulted in 90,000 direct softwood lumber jobs in Canada being lost.

00:11:22.500 90,000 of those jobs, over 150,000 indirect jobs, 40,000 in British Columbia, 40,000 Ontario,

00:11:29.940 and tens of thousands in other places, including Quebec and other where. So the problem with that

00:11:37.380 is that because of a weak prime minister, because the fact that this government has failed on those

00:11:41.940 negotiations, Trump now is doubling down to say, I've got them where I want them. I know that we've

00:11:47.540 already reaped all the benefits from a bad deal. We want to do it again. And what Pierre Polyev is

00:11:52.340 saying, no, he will stand up for Canada, for Canadians and stand up against the US to say,

00:11:59.940 look, we're going to create a trade deal that's good for us, good for our workers and good for

00:12:04.500 Canada. And I believe him. Pierre Polyev is going to do that. Well, let's get a clip of

00:12:08.100 Pierre Polyev saying that and a few more things. Let's play cut one.

00:12:12.340 The possibility of a 10% tariff. I never would have agreed to that. I can't believe he signed

00:12:17.700 on to a trade deal that keeps the softwood lumber tariffs in place. Harper got those lifted in 90

00:12:24.180 days as prime minister. Trudeau's had nine years and three presidents. And not only are the tariffs

00:12:28.580 back in place, they've been doubled, killing forestry jobs right across British Columbia.

00:12:34.580 So I'll be fighting for an end to the softwood tariffs, an exemption to buy America, 0.98

00:12:38.580 like Harper has secured for us. But more importantly, I'll fight fire with fire.

00:12:44.500 The Americans have taken a net half trillion dollars of our investment in the last nine years.

00:12:53.220 And yet, you know, as you said earlier, the former Bank of Canada governor saying we're pretty much in

00:12:59.060 the recession. We hear job numbers that you just mentioned in the tens of thousands in the

00:13:03.620 lumber industry and others. We haven't even got to oil and gas and the missed opportunities and mining.

00:13:09.940 The media just yawns at this thing, which is unbelievable when you think of the damage that

00:13:14.500 has been done across this country. People are just struggling. You see it at the food bank.

00:13:18.180 You see it everywhere. People are hurting because of these decisions.

00:13:22.100 The economy is incredibly important. And Canadians have to understand that it does come down to their

00:13:28.180 bottom line. We talk often about what the government's trying to do in terms of increasing

00:13:34.260 taxes. And the carbon tax is going to go up another 19% on April 1st. But the economy is important

00:13:39.460 because it's what provides paychecks. It's what provides revenue to the government. And without the

00:13:44.820 revenue to the government, it runs massive deficits. And we all know what happened in the

00:13:48.900 last eight, nine years when this government ran massive deficits and we saw an increase of inflation.

00:13:53.940 And then we look at the housing and the fact that this housing crisis is out of control under this

00:13:58.100 prime minister. And what's happened from that is even when employers want to attract talent to their

00:14:03.060 cities, the cities in the U.S., Pierre was talking yesterday, that Seattle housing is almost half what

00:14:08.260 Vancouver is, just across the border. Across the whole of the U.S., you can get a house in near Austin,

00:14:14.660 Texas for $1.2 million with 40 acres on a ranch, right? And that's pretty much sometimes a condo in

00:14:22.180 Toronto. So, you know, when we look at the whole economy as a whole, it is absolutely crucial that

00:14:29.140 we have a prime minister who will get the economy right, first and foremost. Because if we don't do

00:14:34.100 that, then we see what's happened with socialism in the past with many other countries, including

00:14:38.580 Venezuela and others. We're going to see massive increase to food bank use. We're going to see

00:14:44.420 incredible homelessness, more than the 1,400 encampments that we see now. We're going to see

00:14:50.980 people have their paychecks erode even further so that the government feels that they're helping

00:14:56.020 people by giving them a $250 check. And that's going to help. I mean, it is absolutely crucial,

00:15:04.020 crucial that we find ourselves sooner than later in a carbon tax election so that we can then have

00:15:09.540 the people decide who is best for them, their paychecks, their livelihoods, and ultimately

00:15:14.100 their families. Absolutely. So the prime minister says, if you criticize team Canada, let's queue up

00:15:19.940 cut two. If you criticize team Canada and, and he didn't say, sorry, if you criticize him, you were

00:15:26.420 criticizing, of course, Canada, right? So all of a sudden, this guy wants to wrap himself in the flag.

00:15:30.980 So let's see your cut two. Good call with Donald Trump last night again. We obviously talked about

00:15:38.420 laying out the facts, talking about how, how the intense and effective connections between our two

00:15:44.900 countries flow back and forth. We talked about some of the challenges that we can work on together.

00:15:49.700 It was a good call. It's, it's, this is something that we can do, laying out the facts, moving forward

00:15:59.780 in constructive ways. This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and

00:16:05.540 that's what we'll do. Definitely a different tone than we've seen from him in the past, where he,

00:16:12.580 he kind of, as you said earlier, struts his stuff and makes fun of the Americans. That is not that same

00:16:17.940 tone we see now. No, this is not a prime minister who has, is coming from a position of strength

00:16:23.780 when it comes to, from trade. And when it comes to any deal, and I'm in business, and a lot of

00:16:28.740 people are in business, you have to come at deals with a position of strength. You have to find your

00:16:33.540 leverage. This prime minister is not coming at this with leverage. He's going to increase carbon tax by 19

00:16:40.420 on April 1st. He's increased capital gains taxes on businesses. We have businesses already that if

00:16:47.460 Donald Trump phoned them up and said, you know, we're going to, we're going to lower our income

00:16:51.220 tax and we're going to put tariffs on your businesses, they'd, they'd want to find themselves.

00:16:54.980 So this prime minister is out of his league when it comes to doing any kind of business deal, much

00:17:00.660 less a trade deal, especially when it comes to a $1.2 trillion trade deal. So the other thing we hear

00:17:07.700 often, and he's been audacious in the house talking about how, you know, and, and parts of his MPs

00:17:14.180 calling us when they, when they don't like us, Maple Megas, you know, that we are, and even

00:17:18.500 Chrystia Freeland uses that term in the House of Commons, that derogatory tone against the opposition.

00:17:24.020 But then when they need all of us together, they say, well, we're Team Canada. Well, it doesn't

00:17:28.180 quite work right now. And, and the big part about why Team Canada doesn't work is Team Canada doesn't

00:17:33.220 work when we're going to massively increase taxes to our businesses. Our Team Canada did not include

00:17:38.740 massive tax increases. Our Team Canada says we're going to axe the carbon tax. Our Team Canada

00:17:44.100 works when we're not going to cap oil and gas emissions, which is our number one export. Our

00:17:48.980 Team Canada doesn't work when we're looking to see more capital gains possibly down the road,

00:17:54.100 or to increase our deficits to make sure our budget is, is unwieldy. And our Team Canada

00:17:59.620 doesn't include 16 years before we meet a 2% NATO, 2% target. And that's where we come to the table to

00:18:07.140 say, look, these are the things that we're demanding. And if, if you do want to Team Canada,

00:18:12.020 and you want to work together, axe the tax, scrap the cap on oil and gas emissions, and make sure

00:18:17.140 we hit our 2% targets for NATO to ensure we, we can sit at the table with the Americans and that we're,

00:18:23.620 we're coming forth with a powerful position and a good trade deal. Those things have to happen.

00:18:27.700 Then there's software lumber, then there's Buy America provisions. All those can be dealt with if

00:18:32.180 we're, if we're coming to the table with a sense of strength. If we sit with a weak backbone,

00:18:36.500 prime minister, who is coming at it with a, with a sense of weakness, complete weakness coming to

00:18:41.380 the table, Canada loses. There's no Team Canada there. That is a team of liberal, liberal team

00:18:48.180 that is failing. We need a strong team going forth in order to stand up for Canada's workforce and put

00:18:53.700 Canada first, Canada first prime minister. As they try to avoid any criticism, thus making the

00:18:58.820 prime minister look even better, even though he's completely failing. Uh, Ryan, we're pretty much out of

00:19:03.220 time. But of course, as you know, the guests get the last word. So the floor is yours.

00:19:06.980 Well, look, we, we, uh, this is imperative that we, we, we get an election coming sooner than later,

00:19:12.500 that, that Canadians understand the scope of what we're dealing with when it comes to a new US

00:19:18.180 administration, but it wouldn't have mattered. It happened before. And even when Trump was out,

00:19:22.900 Biden continued the same trading relationship. When Biden came in, there was no more deal in

00:19:27.460 Southwood lumber. We didn't see any exemptions to buy America. We need a new prime minister who

00:19:32.660 will put Canada first, who will put Canada first for their paychecks, their jobs, who will solve

00:19:38.420 Southwood lumber, who will stand up against buy American provisions, stand up against tariffs,

00:19:42.580 and understands the value of Canada. Canada is a, is a incredibly rich nation in terms of having the,

00:19:49.460 the resources, the talent, and, and having the products in the future of what we can

00:19:54.260 do with our nation in, in terms of trading, and not only with the Americans, but the rest of the world.

00:19:58.580 We need a prime minister who knows Canada's value, who knows how we're going to build an economy.

00:20:03.060 We're going to slash taxes, stop the ridiculous attack on our industries, and make sure that we

00:20:08.340 grow a great nation that will trade well. And look, we said it, we have the most resources per capita

00:20:13.220 of any other nation in the world. Canada will become better with a new prime minister. Let's bring it home.

00:20:18.260 Holy smokes. I can't even do better than that. Ryan Williams, Bay of Quinty,

00:20:22.420 that's your writing, the trade critic for the official opposition. Thanks very much for your

00:20:26.500 time. Thank you for having me. Thank you for yours. If you want to help make Canadians,

00:20:31.140 and Canadians prosper and put Canada first, please like, comment, subscribe, and share this program.

00:20:36.260 Tell your friends you can download it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play,

00:20:39.780 and Spotify. New content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern time. Until then,

00:20:45.220 remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the Blue Book.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - December 12, 2024

Canada and the U.S： A Complicated Relationship

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