In this episode, we talk to Bruce Pardee, a professor of law at Queen's University, about what Canada needs in order to be a truly free market economy. We also talk about the Trump tariffs and why they are bad for Canada.
00:03:25.520And so you have to keep on going down the path that you're on.
00:03:29.480And the path that you're on is, well, we're going to retaliate with our own tariffs, which are silly because that's going to hurt your own people, first and foremost.
00:03:39.780It's not going to make nearly as big an impact on the Americans as the American tariffs do on us.
00:03:44.500So it is political gamemanship as far as I'm concerned.
00:03:50.980Well, but it's not even just supply management.
00:03:52.880Like, you know, we hear a lot of grumblings.
00:03:54.900Actually, Maxime Bernier, in some ways, the People's Party was founded on this idea because when he was running for conservative leader,
00:04:00.060he wanted to do away with the milk dairy quotas that exist.
00:04:03.280And Andrew Scheer sort of famously courted those dairy farmers and was able to win in Quebec,
00:04:07.220which is why he became leader of the Conservative Party on, like, the 17th ballot by half a percentage point.
00:05:22.860So people were really excited when it was coming to Canada.
00:05:24.740And then it came to Canada, it was terrible.
00:05:26.600It was a total flop and the shelves were half empty and all the great things about Target that you loved when you, you know, go do it down in the States.
00:05:35.340And, you know, talking to someone who was involved in the deal, I basically said, you know,
00:05:39.040we were told that Canada, that we were entering into this 40 million person market and it was a huge opportunity for us.
00:05:45.860But then we got there, we realized that really what it was, was like a 13 million person market Ontario and then a whole bunch of other markets we didn't really understand.
00:05:54.000And that basically exactly what you were describing, that the interprofessional trade barriers make it so that we're not one market, we're divided up into many markets.
00:06:03.840And so all this is to say that it seems like without this weird, you know, cask-esque system that we've created with regards to so many rules in our economy, like without restrictions, I know, again, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apparently said to Donald Trump,
00:06:19.900if we didn't have all these subsidies, we wouldn't exist as a country, like Canada would be finished.
00:07:47.940When we have property, in a sense, but our property is not as much of a liability as an asset because of the way our, our governments regard it as a thing to be taxed and regulated and controlled and directed.
00:08:43.760President Trump announced earlier this week really kind of a devastating move for the Canadian film industry.
00:08:48.540He said the movie industry in America is dying a very fast death.
00:08:51.340Other countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States.
00:08:56.220Hollywood and many other areas within the U.S. are being devastated.
00:08:59.500And so he goes on and he basically just announces an immediate 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in foreign lands.
00:09:26.760And oftentimes the government will be spending more money on these subsidies than the jobs would even create, right?
00:09:32.760And so this is something that's been propped up for, I don't know, 20 years.
00:09:35.600And oftentimes, again, like companies will take advantage of it.
00:09:39.080It's like we get the tax credit for three years and the idea is that they stick around and then the tax credit ends and the company just up and moves.
00:09:45.160And so Trump is just saying, like, you can't do this.
00:09:49.200So it was Canada subsidizing in the first place, Trump hitting back with the counter tariff in response.
00:09:55.340And then our response again is, okay, then we're going to do something else.
00:09:58.160And even, you know, someone who used to, I consider, used to be a friend of at least conservatives and free market ideas, premier, former premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney.
00:10:07.280And he kind of, like, down on this idea, he wrote on X, proud of the work at his premier massively to expand Alberta's film and television industries.
00:10:15.280And so, like, the idea was that he was proud of, what, subsidizing companies to come up to Canada?
00:10:21.340Like, that's, like, why is that the role of a conservative premier?
00:11:29.140If our industries, like the film industry that you're referring to, cannot exist without government subsidies, then it cannot exist because it's not competing well.
00:11:42.940If you really want to succeed, you compete on a level playing field and you beat the competitor who's also not getting subsidies.
00:11:50.440And if you can't do that, then you fail.
00:12:13.300This is like a minor pet peeve of mine.
00:12:15.340I have little kids and they watch some TV.
00:12:17.500And one of the shows that they love is a show called Bluey and it's about an Australian dog and it has some film credits from Australia.
00:12:23.820But the show is like basically like a walking ad for Australia.
00:12:27.980Like it showcases Australia culture and it gets you excited about the idea of, you know, and now they have all kinds of tours.
00:12:34.260Australia can go and do like Bluey stuff.
00:12:36.200And so at least you could argue that there's some value to the country for having this like hugely popular children's television show.
00:12:41.740And you compare that to Paw Patrol, which is a Canadian show, and it gets all the same kind of film credits and all kinds of, even though it's like a massively astronomically popular, successful show that's been around for like a decade.
00:12:53.360And yet when you watch that show, you'd have no idea it was Canadian because they don't even mention Canada.
00:12:57.340They don't even pretend to have a Canadian identity at all.
00:13:00.580If we're going to put money into something, you might as well actually like you get something for it and have some kind of a Canadian identity.
00:13:08.480But it just it's like, yeah, why does the government have to be involved in every industry?
00:13:14.660And this is a second pet peeve of my views.
00:13:16.740And I don't want to draw you down into this media well.
00:13:19.540But if you if you look at YouTube after Carney and Trump had their bilateral, the reviews were pretty devastating for Mark Carney.
00:13:27.580Everyone was pointing out not just YouTube, but X, anywhere on social media, people were pointing out how uncomfortable Carney looked, how Donald Trump played him, how it was like a game of, you know,
00:13:36.700if anyone who's read The Art of the Deal, how Trump just really outplayed him.
00:14:24.520Carney tells Trump Canada is not for sale.
00:14:26.640President praises PM as a very good person.
00:14:29.540And then I'll just show a quick clip here.
00:14:33.820So this is a CBC analyst, Catherine Cullen, celebrating Mark Carney's use of humor to diffuse tension at the meeting, praising his facial expressions as he sat awkwardly with the president.