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


Canada and the U.S: A Complicated Relationship


Episode Stats

Length

20 minutes

Words per Minute

189.57845

Word Count

3,962

Sentence Count

251

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Member of Parliament for the Bay of Quinte, Ryan Williams, joins the show to talk about the new U.S. administration coming in in January, trade with the United States, and the need for a Canada First Prime Minister.


Transcript

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
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,
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.