Wyatt Clunock talks about the Prime Minister's lack of contact with Donald Trump, and why it's not a big deal. He also talks about why Canada should actually be trying to negotiate a trade deal with the United States.
00:03:03.300Now, I never take the position that Canada should grovel for a trade deal.
00:03:07.760I don't think that we act like we don't want it either.
00:03:10.420Really, Canada should always be engaging in negotiations to encourage the Americans that, guess what?
00:03:15.120We can actually come to a win-win with each other, and maybe Canada and the U.S. need to be closer trade allies with each other in order to box out countries like China on the international stage.
00:03:28.820Maybe you would give concessions, but you would be triangulating towards getting to that win-win that Donald Trump wants.
00:03:33.920Because if you know anything about Donald Trump, you're not going to get a trade deal sign basically popping into the room saying, oh, do you got something on your tie there?
00:03:41.020And, like, I'll flick him in the nose.
00:03:42.100Hey, hey, well, you're going to give us exactly what you want, and you're going to go back home looking like a loser.
00:03:47.140And that's been, like, the liberal strategy here.
00:03:50.540We're going to show up and tell him what for, and he's going to give it to us.
00:03:53.980Or we're just going to basically meekly sit there, ask for what we want.
00:03:57.320And when he doesn't give it to us, you know, we, like, just, you know, kick the dirt and we, like, walk home, you eventually actually have to negotiate, which involves concessions, demands, threats, all those sorts of things.
00:04:08.740You know, a world-building narrative about how Canada and the United States need to be together to form an international trade coalition against, you know, China, Russia, and Iran.
00:04:18.260You could do that, but we've just not done it.
00:04:20.460We've not been willing to actually negotiate.
00:04:22.280And so, of course, Carney has no burning desire to talk to Trump every time he does it, he embarrasses himself.
00:04:27.520I'm going to answer a potential question here, and then I'll pass back, which is, for example, with respect to Ukraine and the 28-point plan.
00:04:38.000We are a member, core member of the Coalition of the Willing.
00:04:41.700You would have seen a demonstration of that yesterday with the meeting of European leaders, a core group of European leaders, the Prime Minister of Japan, ourselves.
00:04:53.380And that common position is communicated, our national security advisors are meeting today in Geneva, including Canada's, and the common position communicated to do the additional work that's required on the peace plan there.
00:05:10.580You might be wondering, what does this have to do with anything?
00:05:14.360And the answer is, it has nothing to do with anything.
00:05:17.520He is answering a hypothetical question he pitched to himself to get off the issue of trade, because he wants to champion the idea that, oh, he's made us a key part of the Coalition of the Willing.
00:05:27.820Well, we have no real military, and we have no real ability to support Ukraine, so no, we're really not.
00:05:34.580This is pretty much an American venture with some NATO allies close to the situation also helping.
00:05:41.060Canada is a complete footnote in all this.
00:05:43.780Frankly, Japan is a complete footnote in all this.
00:05:45.980But this is just the dodge on the trade issue.
00:05:49.080We are just now talking about Ukraine, because it's an issue where Mark Carney feels, you know, noble and robust when he speaks about it.
00:05:56.640Each of us do not need to call President Trump and communicate that position.
00:06:05.400He's proving that he does not need to speak to Donald Trump, because on this completely ancillary issue where Canada is really not a player, well, we don't need to call Trump to have a position on Ukraine.
00:06:29.100But apparently that makes sense, that because we don't call Trump about our position about Ukraine, we don't need to talk to him about a trade deal between Canada and the United States.
00:06:56.180It had to do with the fact that he said something really stupid at the start of that question, saying, oh, well, you know, I'll talk to Trump when I want to talk to him, or when there's something to be done, or whatever.
00:07:06.560It's like, ooh, well, we should probably attempt to talk to him sooner than later, considering, one, it was a campaign promise to get a deal signed, and two, you know, it kind of has to do with the economic health of the country.
00:07:20.320You don't even have to sacrifice the entire supply management system.
00:07:23.480Just put something on the table so that Trump can go to the Midwestern states and say, hey, look, I made it so that you can trade at least some of your dairy and poultry products into Canada.
00:07:34.520You can probably do that a little bit.
00:07:37.040Just to get into zero tariffs, it'd be great.
00:07:39.680And I think that you actually could get to zero tariffs.
00:07:41.740You just need to basically stage manage it enough that Trump can get that theatrical win, that Canada and the U.S., Carney and Trump walk it onto a stage and sign a peace agreement on trade, basically saying that we are in economic war with China and that we are linking arms with America in a new anti-communist coalition for the 21st century.
00:08:03.340That would actually probably do pretty good.
00:08:33.340upper state New York and New England voters in order to actually help him in his midterm.
00:08:40.840Appeal to his needs in his elections, not just your own needs.
00:08:44.220That's kind of how a negotiation works.
00:08:46.580But anyways, now let's move on to something else I wanted to talk about, and that is the polling out from abacus data on the top issues for Canadians.
00:08:55.820I do really like the way they do these, and I will have to prep you a little bit.
00:09:00.000So the way that abacus data does this stuff is that they take people's top three issues.
00:09:05.080You are given the survey, and you can pick up the three issues that you consider the most important to you if a Canadian election was held.
00:09:11.940And so that means naturally the more obvious issues are at the very top, that being the cost of living.
00:09:19.440The rise in the cost of living has 66% of Canadians who mark it as one of their three top issues.
00:09:24.820The economy, which is sort of related, comes second with 39% of people.
00:09:31.040And Donald Trump and his administration is at 34% now.
00:09:36.060Now, that's still much higher than I think it really should be for rational people to assume that a big Canadian election issue is Donald Trump these days.
00:09:44.000But still, that's way down from election time.
00:09:47.240Last April, that would have been in a close gun battle with affordability for the top issue.
00:09:55.420And this is after the election, before the election was even worse, like 47%, 49% of people would say that Donald Trump and his administration was one of their top three issues.
00:10:04.840And for the people who put it in their top three, no doubt many of them really made it their number one or number two issue.
00:10:12.040But being down at 34% right now is not very good because it's probably going to keep falling from there.
00:10:19.060And when you look at all these other issues, they are not liberal-leaning issues.
00:10:22.900Now, the abacus data hasn't released their top-line national numbers yet.
00:10:27.460And usually, once they do that, they will show which party does better on each of the issues.
00:10:32.200But typically speaking, in past polls that they've shown that, cost of living, economy, and even healthcare go towards the conservatives.
00:10:40.340The liberals win the Donald Trump issue.
00:10:42.360But when you go to housing affordability, immigration, crime, job security, those ones are either closely won conservative issues or widely won conservative issues.
00:10:51.960Like crime and immigration are those issues where 70%, 65% of Canadians overall, no matter what the party is, say that the conservatives would be the most trustworthy on it.
00:11:03.380And I always want to go down in the analysis that David Coletto did on his own poll here because I found this quite interesting.
00:11:10.320David Coletto speaking here says, quote,
00:11:12.760The climate change thing is mentioned here because the overall narrative that David Coletto was sort of highlighting is that climate change has been a lot of people.
00:11:42.740People have been falling down the polling metrics consistently over the last several polls they've done because of the state of the economy.
00:11:49.160People do not have the money or the free time to care about what is effectively a luxury issue.
00:11:55.160Caring about climate and climate justice and the environment is very much an issue you can care about when you are basically you've met all your needs.
00:12:05.220You have housing, you have food, you have a good paying job, all this stuff, your health is good, then you can care about climate justice.
00:12:13.460And so these days it only polls when you even ask people their top three issues, it only polls around 12% of people even put in their top three.
00:12:23.920So what you'll notice is that the last poll they did in the 2025 federal election in April, they only let you pick two of your top issues.
00:12:31.880And that's pretty massive when you can only choose two issues and 30% of people make Donald Trump and his administration one of their top two issues.
00:12:41.360Now remember, this poll up here is top three issues.
00:12:45.380Top three issues, Donald Trump appears with 34% of people picking him and his administration as one of their top issues.
00:12:53.760I guarantee these days, because back during the election, if you asked people to pick their top three issues, Trump would almost be 50% of people putting top three.
00:13:05.660And if you did top two, I would be shocked if it broke 23%, 22%.
00:13:11.020It's probably down to less than a quarter of Canadians actually considering that one of the big pressing issues.
00:13:17.360So this is basically just my very long-winded way of saying that the liberals need a replacement issue.
00:13:23.400And so that's why you're going to see them basically announcing projects and new trade deals left and right, many of which are complete nonsense.
00:13:31.040They're projects that were already approved, that were almost done in some cases.
00:13:34.400And they're trade deals with countries that don't do anything.
00:13:37.580We're going to go to Indonesia and say, we should trade more.
00:13:39.760And then we sign an agreement saying we should trade more.
00:14:11.060It's a memorandum of understanding, which is the most Mark Carney thing I've ever heard in my life.
00:14:15.940And it doesn't actually mean we're going to get a pipeline.
00:14:17.760Because the other little snag here is that he set up the standard that he'll say yes to a pipeline if it's privately funded, the provinces are on board, and the indigenous are on board.
00:14:56.420I told him I wouldn't force a pipeline on him.
00:14:58.800Now, maybe Carney does cut through all that.
00:15:00.720Maybe politically for him it'd actually be smart to approve literally any pipeline just to say that I'm a pro-pipeline guy.
00:15:06.920But I don't really see it being a sure thing that he would ever say yes and actually get a pipeline in the ground.
00:15:13.620Because he can just pretend that he's in favor of a pipeline and then just keep outsourcing the blame to other people for not getting it done,
00:15:20.440even though they have no authority to actually stop the project.
00:15:23.100It is a federal government authority in order to bypass the provinces for interprovincial issues.
00:15:31.000If you want to build a pipeline from Alberta to Ontario or to Quebec, technically none of those governments can say no
00:15:36.760because they have no right to stop another province from trading outside of their own borders.
00:15:41.200That's the Canadian government's authority to give you permission to build something like that.
00:15:45.420But again, Carney and the Liberals and previously Trudeau and the Liberals love to pretend that all these were insurmountable barriers that they couldn't get around.
00:15:53.680Anyways, that should be it for me today, guys.