Western Standard - 'Canada will fold...' and they know it, tough talk just for election, Part 2

00:00:00.000 China's killing our canola.

00:00:05.360 $45 billion gone.

00:00:08.480 Western farmers bleed.

00:00:10.980 Mark Carney?

00:00:12.720 Silent.

00:00:14.260 Made millions off Beijing's dime.

00:00:17.300 He won't fight.

00:00:18.840 He's Beijing's banker, not our prime minister.

00:00:30.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show

00:00:49.140 of the Western Standard. It's Thursday, April the 10th, and we are 19 days into a 35-day

00:00:57.760 election campaign. Joining us now is Catherine Swift, president of the Coalition of Concerned

00:01:03.560 Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada. Catherine, we're coming to you for wisdom about what's going

00:01:08.980 on right now. Before your present employment, you were, I think, 27 years, the bodily incarnation

00:01:16.580 of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Twice recognized by the Women's

00:01:21.360 executive network as one of Canada's 100 most influential women. Stephen Harper says you were

00:01:28.320 never afraid to tell anybody what was on your mind, so welcome to the show.

00:01:34.440 Well, thank you, Nigel. Happy to be here.

00:01:36.700 All right. Good to see you. Look, I want to ask you what the latest round in the tariff war

00:01:44.100 means for Canadian manufacturers. You know, yesterday we saw President Trump lift tariffs

00:01:53.840 that he had put on in the previous month, except for China, which he raised. Does that relief that

00:02:02.640 he has passed on to the rest of the world have any good news for Canadian manufacturers and

00:02:07.660 your members in particular? I think you're small and medium businesses, so 500 people and less.

00:02:14.100 never mind ford and general motors how are your people gonna do uh he did leave tariffs

00:02:21.780 on uh some of the key canadian items steel aluminum and certain elements of the auto

00:02:27.460 sector auto sector is very complicated as you probably know because there's no there's no

00:02:32.580 really one vehicle that's made totally in canada or totally in the u.s there you know it's it's a

00:02:37.220 a very integrated process. So there certainly still are implications for, negative implications

00:02:45.340 that is, for Canadian manufacturers. A lot of our manufacturers export to the US and it's their

00:02:53.220 largest export market, not surprisingly. So it is problematic. But the real question now, because

00:03:00.300 Trump keeps changing the game every other day, it seems. So when we were expecting to see

00:03:06.720 quite an onslaught of tariffs on a lot of different countries around the world.

00:03:13.040 He backed off a lot of them. And I believe that, as so it's reported, it was because he saw the

00:03:20.020 impacts on the bond market. He saw long yield bonds skyrocket in terms of their interest rates.

00:03:29.220 And of course, this would be bad news for American borrowers because interest rates would increase

00:03:34.100 and so on. So that seems to have been the thing that made Trump go with this 90-day pause or

00:03:41.200 whatever it is that he did yesterday. So I think the real problem affecting every business in

00:03:51.040 North America and even around the world for that matter right now is the uncertainty this causes.

00:03:56.020 We have no knowledge whatsoever of what might happen tomorrow with this U.S. administration.

00:04:04.100 So, when I talk to our members, they go, yeah, we can probably hang in for a certain period of time.

00:04:14.300 And yes, our export prices will go up to our customers and so on.

00:04:18.220 We also have a lower dollar, mind you.

00:04:19.780 Our dollar has dropped, which makes our manufacturers' exports more competitive.

00:04:25.280 So, it somewhat offsets the tariff impact.

00:04:28.100 But it also means more inflation for average Canadians because we import a lot.

00:04:31.880 Look at all of our food that we import, for example.

00:04:34.660 So we're going to see more inflation as consumers.

00:04:37.140 So, you know, there's so many negatives all contained in this whole tariff escapade that Trump has embarked upon.

00:04:47.000 But the biggest impact is that of uncertainty.

00:04:51.040 And uncertainty is the bane of business because they can't plan for anything.

00:04:55.340 So nobody's going to expand their plant.

00:04:57.320 They're not going to hire more people.

00:04:59.600 And even for consumers.

00:05:01.880 And consumer spending is about two-thirds of our economy. It's a big chunk of the economy. And consumers are probably scaling back their consumption expectations for large purchases, a car, an appliance perhaps, or a house maybe even. And all of these things point to recession.

00:05:19.920 but again i think i think you have to you have to look at duration how long are these things going

00:05:26.880 to be in place and that is a total toss-up we have no idea especially with with trump

00:05:33.600 changing his mind so frequently changing his mind or changing his um narrative it's uh some of us

00:05:42.640 think that there's a method in his madness that's got to do with isolating china and uh and

00:05:49.920 possibly affecting the renegotiation of American debt later this year,

00:05:57.060 although what you said about the bond market would tend to militate against that.

00:06:01.380 But look, does Canada really have any leverage at all with the U.S.?

00:06:06.800 Well, we do, but relatively speaking, because we are, you look at individual states,

00:06:14.160 and we are a number of states' largest trading partner.

00:06:17.720 So when you look at those particular states, you sort of take it down to certain product lines and certain geography, we do have leverage.

00:06:25.640 And there's an awful lot of Americans that are sending messages to Trump, a lot of Republicans that are sending messages to Trump that they're not very entertained by this strategy related to Canada.

00:06:38.380 So there is leverage, but we are always, I mean, just given the relationship between the two countries, one 10 times larger than we are.

00:06:46.900 we are far more dependent on them for our exports and we're a much more of an exporting nation the

00:06:52.860 u.s because of its size and the huge consumer base they they are not anywhere near as much

00:06:58.140 of a trading nation as canada is so we're therefore much more reliant upon that trading

00:07:03.520 relationship so we we have some leverage but in in the big picture it's relatively minimal

00:07:09.620 and i've i've termed it as this the cutting off our nose despite our face strategy what we're

00:07:15.120 doing now. Well, okay, let's talk about that. Your members have a very particular window through

00:07:21.840 which they look at this, and they must be looking at the Team Canada approach with Mr. Carney,

00:07:26.920 Mr. Ford, and some of the other premiers, not all of them. How are they feeling about the way

00:07:34.660 things are being handled? They don't like it. The vast majority of our members

00:07:41.080 not like what's going on. They see these politicians inflicting damage on their

00:07:48.460 businesses. No skin off the politicians knows, right? They're okay. They're spending other

00:07:52.640 people's money after all, and that's great fun from what I can tell. But they see them inflicting

00:07:59.040 negative impacts on their businesses while they could be entering into a more constructive

00:08:05.420 negotiation. Most of our members would actually prefer the Danielle Smith approach, to be honest.

00:08:11.440 I mean, she's worked very hard, I believe, meeting with officials, and she's had some success.

00:08:17.360 I believe she's had some success, and yet she's been vilified by other premiers, and even recently

00:08:23.960 Carney. I thought it was disgraceful what he said about Danielle Smith the other day,

00:08:27.780 trying to make a bad joke about, oh, we won't get Danielle Smith to, you know, go on the media in 1.00

00:08:32.840 the U.S. So our business members do not have much time for this strategy. They'd much prefer a

00:08:40.700 constructive one. I understand people always want to blame somebody, and Trump is the classic

00:08:48.420 culprit here to be blamed. And Canadians in general, the majority of Canadians don't like

00:08:54.580 Trump. So from a political standpoint, it has a certain appeal because they can look like they're

00:09:01.920 the big guys pounding their chest and standing up to the big American bully. But I would love to

00:09:08.520 see the same situation when we weren't in the middle of a federal election period, because

00:09:14.540 I believe damage is going to be inflicted on Canadian businesses and Canadians in general and 1.00

00:09:20.960 the Canadian economy because we're in a federal election. And it seems in a perverse way that

00:09:28.000 people, an awful lot of people, are supporting this chest-thumping approach instead of something

00:09:34.700 that would not harm the country anywhere near as much economically, which would be not to capitulate.

00:09:40.120 I'm not saying capitulate, but we're renegotiating a trade agreement anyway. That's already on the

00:09:45.880 agenda. So why don't we just move that up some, renegotiate terms of it now. We're going to have

00:09:50.760 to do it in less than a year anyway, and find a preferential solution for Canada without the

00:09:57.620 damage in the interim because this has the potential to tip us and we're close to recession

00:10:03.280 now where our economic situation is weak and it's weak because we've had a very bad government

00:10:10.280 federal government policy and some provincial government policies too for the last decade

00:10:14.540 and that has weakened us so that we are not as if we were a stronger economy we would be in much

00:10:19.740 better shape to stand up against the u.s but unfortunately we're not we're weak this of course

00:10:26.240 is the substance of what Mr. Harper said in Edmonton a few years ago. He was introducing

00:10:31.320 Pierre Poilier, who had a large rally there. And I say a large rally, I'm talking about 16,000

00:10:37.980 hand-clapping, foot-stomping, chanting, enthusiastic conservatives who come in to hear what he had to

00:10:45.160 say. It quite diminishes any kind of a gathering that Mr. Carney has ever put together, and that's

00:10:52.060 fairly typical for Mr. Paulyev. So Mr. Harper introduced the whole thing by saying, look,

00:10:58.840 Trump's obviously a problem, but the real problem in Canada today is the past 10 years

00:11:06.420 of poor liberal administration. I think he maybe was a little stronger than that.

00:11:12.380 But at any rate, and now you remind me of this sort of rally around the flag approach that so

00:11:19.040 many people have unwittingly taken, and it seems surprising to me, and I want you to comment on

00:11:23.780 this, after 10 years during which the former Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, did everything he could

00:11:33.320 to diminish the idea of Canada as a country at all. You know, the famous interview with the New

00:11:38.480 York Times, which he said it was a post-national state, had no core identity, and then the various

00:11:45.300 legislation and comments that he's made that just kind of diminished Canadian nationality,

00:11:50.660 and then suddenly we have this come up and everybody wants to be a Canadian patriot.

00:11:54.820 I mean, where do we go wrong as a country?

00:12:01.380 Well, long discussion, but well, if I had to choose one thing, and there's lots I could choose from,

00:12:10.500 I would say it was the way the Trudeau Liberal government treated our energy sector in Canada and our resource sector writ large, so not just energy, but mining and so on.

00:12:23.440 That sector, which is the largest individual single sector in the economy that impacts positively or negatively our gross domestic product, our growth as a country, and of course our standard of living as Canadians, that was so diminished and so just constrained during the Trudeau years that we suffered greatly from that.

00:12:49.340 We've seen the international data that show that Canada grew virtually not at all as an economy in the last decade, whereas other countries were head and shoulders above us.

00:12:58.680 There's no doubt we are in a weakened condition because of the Trudeau government's policies in many different areas.

00:13:05.800 But I'd say the single one most important is what they did to our resource sector in not taking advantage of it.

00:13:12.320 And perversely, they did it supposedly in the name of climate. And yet, as we all know,

00:13:17.560 if we exported our liquid natural gas to countries that currently use coal and dirtier sources of

00:13:23.540 energy, we would improve the climate globally. So this is the perversity of that policy that I think

00:13:29.580 has a lot more to do with the fact that Liberals don't like Alberta very much, actually,

00:13:34.180 as it does with the energy sector itself. So that has to be a big factor.

00:13:39.580 One other thing I find really aggravating about this, the approach that Carney and Doug Ford and, you know, some other premiers have sort of halfheartedly gotten into here is they're saying, oh, we're going to don't don't worry businesses.

00:13:53.700 Don't worry consumers. We're going to spend billions of dollars of your money to shore up your business, to help your business.

00:14:01.900 Ford just announced $11 billion recently to go toward businesses and whatnot that were damaged by Trump's policies.

00:14:08.800 We don't have that money. We're in debt up to our eyeballs in this country. So we're going to not only take a confrontational approach, which is damaging to our businesses and every one of us, but we're also going to spend a pot full of money we don't have. In other words, we're borrowing it to try to mitigate these policies. I mean, it's just stupid in every way.

00:14:31.540 Now, we often think that people who talk a good line get real when they actually have the job. 0.99

00:14:41.000 So Mr. Carney has for the past, let's just sort of assume that it's Mr. Carney for the purposes of this discussion.

00:14:49.940 I still think it's going to be Mr. Poliev, but, you know, Mr. Carney is the one who has the intimate Chinese connections and the history of doing business there and Brookfield and so forth and so on.

00:15:05.480 And all this time, he has been very strong on the green file.

00:15:12.040 He presents himself, and in his book, Values, he goes into some detail about how we're all going to die if we don't reduce carbon levels.

00:15:23.120 On the other hand, as reported in the Western Standard last week, Mr. Carney's company, Brookfield, also recently bought a large pipeline network in the eastern United States, colonial pipelines.

00:15:40.220 So there seems to be some reason to think that he could be realistic about the energy industry when it's his job to do it.

00:15:49.980 Do you see any hope that a man like Mr. Carney, who is as Bank of England governor, was trying to get people not to invest in energy, and the same in Canada, will, when he is prime minister, change his tune and become a supporter of energy, as he promised to do in his speeches in Calvary yesterday?

00:16:15.620 I am from Missouri on this.

00:16:18.340 i i am very doubtful uh carney has devoted i met with carney when he was bank of canada governor

00:16:25.460 on a number of occasions so i i have had um meetings with him back in the day but i i would

00:16:32.980 greatly doubt it he has spent about the last two decades of his career pushing this green agenda

00:16:38.260 the net zero so-called net zero he still is pushing net zero from everything i've seen i

00:16:44.020 I haven't seen him come off it at all, but I find the fact that he's not talking about it.

00:16:49.560 When it was such an obsession of his for so long, he's not talking about it anymore,

00:16:54.240 which I find worrisome because suddenly it's not important to him. I don't believe that for a

00:16:59.200 minute. I think he's just suppressing it so that people don't get alarmed as to what he's going to

00:17:05.680 do. Also, I've noticed in his speeches, he talks a lot about Canada being an energy superpower.

00:17:11.820 He doesn't say pipeline. He doesn't say that magic word pipelines very much. And his company,

00:17:18.220 Brookfield, when he was there, for years invested in pipelines elsewhere while he was publicly

00:17:24.880 opposing pipelines in Canada and advising Trudeau, of course. So I don't, I'm sorry. I mean,

00:17:32.600 I guess I'd be delighted to be proven wrong should he win the election, but I don't believe he will

00:17:37.900 be pushing the oil and gas sector. He's already said he wants it to largely remain in the ground.

00:17:44.780 And I just don't think he's going to abandon what he's become over the last couple of decades. I

00:17:49.340 really don't. I also notice he uses his words carefully. He points to he's going to really

00:17:55.920 develop energy infrastructure. Well, you know what? This could be a whole whack of wind turbines.

00:18:02.280 That could be a whole pile of heat pumps. 0.85

00:18:05.880 He's talked about wanting to subsidize heat pumps.

00:18:08.400 And in other jurisdictions, I think it was the UK, they recently backed off their heat pump push because it was too expensive for people to install in their homes.

00:18:18.440 So, you know, all of these failed technologies that do not replace our fossil fuel sources of heat and electricity and all the essentials that we need for life and certainly for business.

00:18:31.340 I would be greatly surprised.

00:18:33.720 I think it would be good if he did, but I don't think he will.

00:18:37.680 Well, I'm afraid I agree with you, but I wanted to hear you say it.

00:18:41.480 Mr. Polioff has given us every reason for confidence, of course,

00:18:44.440 but the polls are open at the moment.

00:18:49.820 The polling, I should say, indicates that it's pretty much of a toss-up.

00:18:55.320 Do you have any theory on how it is that the conservative leader, Pierre Poirier, can have thousands of people coming to his rallies when Mr. Carney barely gets a corporal's guard, and yet Mr. Carney can be so far elevated in the polls?

00:19:16.560 What's that about?

00:19:18.120 I don't know.

00:19:19.060 I don't know.

00:19:19.660 It's a conundrum.

00:19:20.460 You're absolutely right.

00:19:21.360 It is a conundrum.

00:19:23.840 Yes.

00:19:24.200 And as we know, well, polls, they say polls are for dogs, right?

00:19:30.220 Polls can be all over the place.

00:19:32.520 Very much depends what you ask people, what sample you survey.

00:19:37.280 And I'm not dissing polls.

00:19:38.740 I think they're interesting.

00:19:39.860 And I'm an economist.

00:19:41.200 I've done a lot of mathematical stuff in my days.

00:19:43.420 So I find them very interesting to look at.

00:19:46.820 But on the actual voting day itself, things like voter turnout are huge.

00:19:52.580 And Poiliev seems to have quite a bit of support among the younger age cohorts, which is interesting because that's not usually the case.

00:20:00.520 But these are the people, of course, that are saying, gee, I don't think I'll ever own a house.

00:20:06.300 You know, I think a lot of my life goals are not going to happen.

00:20:09.660 So they're very dissatisfied with the status quo.

00:20:12.760 So, you know, we're seeing some very unusual phenomena in this election.

00:20:16.620 But on the other hand, typically younger groups don't tend to vote in the same proportions.

00:20:25.980 But what if they showed up this year because they were so concerned?

00:20:29.300 Well, that would put a very different complexion on what we're seeing in the polls.

00:20:34.100 So anything can happen, as we know, when we look at the last U.S. election, of course,

00:20:38.060 you know, the polls had Kamala as a slam dunk and we all know what happened there.

00:20:42.640 so uh i think i think it's very i think it's going to be a very interesting election day

00:20:48.280 it'll be a nail-biter for sure yes well we'll just uh may as well take a moment to mention

00:20:54.400 that the western standard will be uh hosting an election panel on the on the night we'll be

00:21:00.660 live streaming and have a number of people who know what they're talking about discussing what

00:21:05.980 they're looking at as the results unfold so we're just about out of time miss swift but um

00:21:12.640 I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that after the election is over, if it is Mr. Carney that leads us, he will fold like a cheap suit on the day after the election, and this terror thing will go away, but it will go away on the terms dictated by the President of the United States.

00:21:39.720 How say you?

00:21:41.120 Yeah, I agree.

00:21:41.880 i think that's very true i think i think that the reason for his current uh you know chest

00:21:49.320 thumping as i like to call it uh against the u.s is purely political and the the more sensible

00:21:55.600 course would be to find a reasonable way that defends canada it's not capitulation but you

00:22:02.100 know trading partner to trade and partner make a decent deal uh i think that will prevail so yeah

00:22:07.860 I think that's all going to go away once it's served its political purpose,

00:22:11.540 but not its purpose in terms of actually helping Canada and Canadians.

00:22:15.540 And what would you expect of Mr. Polier, should he be forming government?

00:22:21.300 Well, I've known Pierre for a long time. I've known him as a back-venture years ago,

00:22:28.100 and he's been pretty consistent. He's been pretty consistent over the years,

00:22:32.580 with with certainly with his economic positions and you know we talk about you know carney he

00:22:38.100 keeps saying he wants to make canada an energy superpower and i think that might mean a winter

00:22:43.860 my superpower uh but um but he still opposes legislation or he still it intends to support

00:22:50.660 legislation like the emissions cap like the no like the tanker ban on the west coast you

00:22:56.580 you know you can't like the industrial carbon tax you can't be supporting those positions

00:23:01.460 and make Canada into an energy superpower that is an impossible combination and yet Pierre has

00:23:07.540 said and I do believe he'll follow through that he will get rid of all of this problematic you

00:23:12.260 know the impact assessment act so-called no more pipelines act and all these other pieces of

00:23:16.420 legislation that we know have held back the energy sector terribly so I tend to believe

00:23:21.620 economically we will be much better off with a Pierre Poiliev government

00:23:26.100 Well, that's certainly the way we're hoping for it.

00:23:31.520 Catherine Swift, the CEO, President of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada.

00:23:41.140 Thank you very much for joining us today.

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00:24:21.300 Ms. Swift, again, on behalf of the Western Standard, thank you very much for joining

00:24:27.060 us.

00:24:28.060 It was a pleasure and your insights are valuable.

00:24:30.620 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

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Western Standard - April 11, 2025

'Canada will fold...' and they know it, tough talk just for election, Part 2

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