Western Standard - Carney, Smith and the people who hold them back

00:00:00.000 good evening western standard viewers and welcome to hanaford a weekly politics show of the western

00:00:21.000 standard it's thursday may the 21st if you're a james bond fan you'll remember the iconic scene

00:00:28.280 where bond looks for scatamanga in the hall of mirrors where there is one target but multiple

00:00:34.600 false images that the man with the golden gun wasn't it that's my guess yaroslav baran from

00:00:42.520 ottawa chipping in with the important information yes it was the man with the golden gun but we're

00:00:49.320 looking today and we're trying to make sense of something that's broadly similar in canadian

00:00:54.200 politics today where wherever you look whatever you look at nothing seems to be simple straightforward

00:01:00.360 or what it was announced as for example what does alberta independence mean for prime minister

00:01:06.760 carney is it a problem or an opportunity mr carney still wants us to drive electric cars it seems

00:01:13.080 they'll be made in china by the look of things not in windsor but is his promised grid expansion

00:01:18.280 big enough to allow the switch anyway he says he wants to build up the armed forces but recruits

00:01:23.400 foreigners while sidelining the traditional talent pool in some box-ticking exercise to get more 0.60

00:01:29.000 women and non-white men. And so it goes on. Government by press release and crossed fingers. 0.97

00:01:36.280 One person we trust to guide us through this particular hall of mirrors is our old friend

00:01:42.840 Yaroslav Baran. Welcome, Yaroslav. Always good to be here, Nigel. Thanks.

00:01:48.680 Well, we appreciate you taking the time. Yaroslav, just to remind people,

00:01:52.760 you were once communications director to Prime Minister Stephen Harper these days as co-founder

00:01:57.560 of Pendulum Group. You're a political consultant in Ottawa. So let me ask you this. In Western

00:02:02.680 Canada, we've become reflexively suspicious of anything that the Prime Minister says.

00:02:08.840 Maybe this isn't a healthy response. Do we just need to get a life? Give him a break?

00:02:14.600 Well, first, Nigel, I'd note that Albertans have more than ample reason to be suspicious of

00:02:20.680 of their relationship with Ottawa or with the federal government.

00:02:25.180 Alberta's got a long history of contributing well above its weight

00:02:29.880 to effectively subsidize other regions of the country.

00:02:33.140 And while enduring slurs and barbs from those same regions

00:02:36.680 for being quote-unquote regressive and for wanting to kill Mother Earth

00:02:40.820 and not getting with the program of any slew of liberal policy agendas.

00:02:46.360 So Alberta has a premier that is clearly signaling that Alberta is not going to take that anymore.

00:02:55.120 I mean, Alberta is a prosperous and successful province.

00:02:59.080 And, you know, you folks in Ottawa have a choice.

00:03:02.600 Either work with us and address the valid historical tensions or the outcomes are not going to be pretty.

00:03:10.200 Nigel, I don't know if you remember this.

00:03:11.560 Preston Manning wrote a widely circulated opinion piece during the federal election campaign

00:03:18.100 a year ago, a warning that the national unity is going to be in jeopardy if the conservatives

00:03:25.640 don't win. He was widely criticized at the time for being alarmist and for legitimizing

00:03:30.820 separatist sentiment. But I think that naming something and endorsing it are two very different

00:03:38.220 things and the last year has shown amply that albertans are indeed very very fed up with giving

00:03:47.340 the federal government um you know or allowing the federal government to to bulldoze uh alberta's

00:03:54.060 prospects for greater prosperity and and they're clearly signaling that that the federal government

00:03:59.340 has one last chance well you know i think i think you've accurately summed up what people feel

00:04:06.140 But I do wonder whether this whole Alberta independence movement

00:04:12.000 is actually, from Mr. Carney's point of view, a great thing.

00:04:15.620 It gives him something to point to when he is addressing Eastern audiences

00:04:20.680 and said, you need me to protect you from the forces of separation.

00:04:25.720 We've seen them in Quebec.

00:04:26.840 Now we're seeing them in Alberta.

00:04:29.060 A strong, centralized federal government is what you need,

00:04:33.220 and I'm your man to give it to you.

00:04:35.420 So maybe Western independence is not something that he wants to see go away.

00:04:44.640 If that's the game he's playing, it's a really, really dangerous game to play because nobody wins ultimately when we gamble on trying to ignite forces of separatism.

00:04:56.760 I don't see his actions as trying to keep separatism alive.

00:05:03.380 If anything, it's really it's it's really putting wind in Daniel Smith's sails.

00:05:07.940 And she has emerged as arguably the strongest premier.

00:05:11.860 She's certainly one of the most capable politicians in Canada right now.

00:05:16.100 And she is standing up to him.

00:05:17.540 And with with quite a bit of success recently, if we look at some of the some of the leverage

00:05:22.340 that she's been able to use in extracting concessions from the federal government,

00:05:26.100 like is is this an opportunity as well as a challenge?

00:05:30.580 well sure the challenge is obvious not inflaming separatist sentiment and trying to keep it at bay

00:05:38.580 and over time trying to diffuse it there is something of an opportunity here for mr carney

00:05:45.500 as well um and that is that if he genuinely uh follows through on the things that he's signaling

00:05:56.100 that are Alberta-friendly, he could have the prospects

00:05:59.820 of, in the medium to longer term, redefining the relationship

00:06:03.920 between his party, the Liberal Party, and the voters of Alberta.

00:06:07.920 Because let's face it, the Liberals have been a pariah in Alberta

00:06:11.360 basically since the national energy program.

00:06:14.460 You see, all it would take, in my view, is a simple statement

00:06:19.800 that, yes, we are going to back a pipeline now.

00:06:23.860 you know not in a month's time we're going to take it forward to see if it can meet certain

00:06:31.340 standards at which point we'll look for a sponsor and maybe we'll get a decision in october right

00:06:38.040 around when uh alberta is having referenda on several issues uh and with the idea that after

00:06:45.040 that it could still and it's still all in the realm of maybe be if you want a result a certain

00:06:51.520 result make a decision and live with it now why doesn't he do that i mean this is not just us

00:06:58.480 this is everything about that has gone through to the uh what do they call it the national projects

00:07:04.160 office where all the really good schemes are going to be fast-tracked well very little has come out

00:07:10.640 of it and what has come out of it was already well advanced before the office was established

00:07:15.440 it seems like we always have this it's like holding the carrot in front of the donkey

00:07:21.040 you know it's always just a little bit ahead but never actually get it

00:07:25.280 yeah well i'm not surprised that most of the projects being transacted by the major projects

00:07:30.160 office are uh projects that were in in the pipeline so to speak um it's terrible because

00:07:38.240 you're not gonna you're not gonna start from a from a standing start with uh bold new projects

00:07:44.640 that are just ideas and and bring them to fruition overnight so yeah understandably they they started

00:07:50.400 with well advanced projects but they're gonna have to show some some some results they're gonna

00:07:55.600 have to show results quickly um public opinion polling is already starting to show that getting

00:08:01.680 results is potentially mr carney's biggest liability as a brand issue he seems to be

00:08:10.400 doing the right things saying the right things and that's generating a fair bit of of uh of of

00:08:18.160 tolerance and patience with the public but that patience is not going to last forever

00:08:22.560 sooner or later you're going to start to hear the tap tap tap okay let's you know where's the beef

00:08:27.360 you're going to have to actually deliver not just promise so there's two things that i'd love to

00:08:34.480 get into with you the first of them is the consensus on global warming that seems to be

00:08:41.920 changing al gore recently said that rather than a warmer climate we should expect an ice age instead

00:08:50.400 uh bill gates famously said that they weren't talking about global warming anymore they're

00:08:56.880 talking about adapting to it so you know these are two of the major prophets of the of doom for

00:09:04.960 that we've had to listen to all these years changing their tune um i realize there's a

00:09:10.880 more nuanced discussion that we have time for today but nevertheless it does seem that most

00:09:16.560 of the important countries in the world have got rid of the idea of chasing a zero carbon emissions

00:09:21.760 target but mr carney presses on is this because he's a true believer or can you imagine some other

00:09:29.200 motive for doing that honestly i think i i think primarily he's he's a businessman and when climate

00:09:39.040 change and climate action were all the rage. He was the one coming forward with market solutions

00:09:45.420 to try to address it and was championing them all over the globe. Now, public sentiment, not just in

00:09:51.340 Canada, but internationally has shifted. There are other priorities of concern, things like cost of

00:09:57.760 living and economic rejuvenation and export diversification and immigration, and the list

00:10:04.160 goes on and on and on and he has pivoted but his challenge is going to be not so much himself 0.81

00:10:12.780 but it's going to be his caucus as you know nigel he has a very razor thin majority in the house of

00:10:22.860 commons and even all else being equal he's going to slip back into minority status this summer

00:10:30.120 There are two MPs that we know of already in his caucus who are going to be resigning their seats for different reasons.

00:10:37.360 One to take a diplomatic appointment, for example, and one to run for a provincial leadership race.

00:10:44.860 So he is going to slip back down.

00:10:46.540 He doesn't like that.

00:10:47.320 That's not a comfortable place to be in.

00:10:49.780 And the dissidents, the climate dissidents in his caucus, whose ring leader is Stephen Guibault, the so-called Green Jesus, former Greenpeace leader and so on,

00:10:58.580 former environment minister under Trudeau, they realize that that gives them leverage,

00:11:04.400 that they've already formed a climate caucus inside the liberal caucus of some two dozen MPs

00:11:10.820 or so. And they realize that they can flex. They can flex their muscles now. And they've

00:11:16.640 given themselves a self-professed agenda of keeping the government in check. In check,

00:11:26.280 for them, of course, means from straying too far away from the Justin Trudeau climate agenda.

00:11:33.080 That's going to be a difficult challenge for Mr. Carney to deal with, and it's all in turn.

00:11:39.300 So would you draw the link between that, like this Green Caucus within the Liberals, and his

00:11:45.140 seeming inability to actually come down and decisively deliver approval for a pipeline

00:11:53.920 of the kind that Premier Smith is looking for?

00:11:57.880 Look, the pipeline is going to have to happen.

00:12:01.680 You know, it seems that the prime minister is enough of a realist

00:12:05.360 that he's come to the conclusion that there will not be any tolerance

00:12:09.120 for stringing Alberta along with some sort of acute,

00:12:12.860 a pipeline if necessary, but not necessarily a pipeline kind of position.

00:12:18.500 I think we'll see a serious push now led by the government of Alberta,

00:12:22.320 led by premier smith to get a credible partnership or coalition together and a business plan before

00:12:30.000 the federal government by canada day and we've got a pretty public commitment already from the

00:12:36.160 federal government uh that it will be handed over to the major projects office by october

00:12:42.000 there's enough momentum and expectation already that this is going to happen that if it doesn't

00:12:46.880 it will further exacerbate, not defuse, the push for some kind of either sovereignty or outright separation in Alberta.

00:13:00.020 Oh, I think you're absolutely right about that.

00:13:02.960 So there's...

00:13:04.200 The PM gets it.

00:13:05.600 Yeah, he sees this threat as real.

00:13:07.660 And I think that's really boxed image.

00:13:09.180 He needs to deliver on a pipeline.

00:13:11.820 Well, there you go.

00:13:12.560 There's my theory about it, that he finds Western alienation a helpful political lever in the East, so maybe not.

00:13:20.700 Okay, now, of greater interest to Eastern Canada are the forthcoming negotiations over free trade between the United States and Canada.

00:13:33.280 Do you think Mr. Carney actually wants a deal out of this?

00:13:40.980 I was tempted with

00:13:43.840 an intriguing argument this morning

00:13:45.900 in the National Post

00:13:47.160 that made the point that maybe he doesn't

00:13:50.200 particularly want to do

00:13:51.700 a deal with the United States

00:13:53.620 he has other ideas about the direction

00:13:56.000 he wants to take

00:13:56.840 so he's looking to be flattened by

00:14:00.040 Mr. Trump and then say well there you are

00:14:01.800 now we have all this left is that we go

00:14:03.780 and open the borders with China

00:14:05.980 or something like that 0.66

00:14:06.900 does he not go in

00:14:09.980 Yeah, failure isn't really an option in these negotiations.

00:14:13.940 Like, yes, he has politically benefited from being Captain Canada and, you know, flexing his arm against Donald Trump.

00:14:21.760 The public was certainly hungry for that kind of a leader and they got it fine.

00:14:26.500 But failure in these negotiations cannot be turned into an ultimate political positive because the economic costs will be far too great.

00:14:37.220 The European Union, Nigel, has been aggressively working on a trade diversification agenda vis-a-vis

00:14:45.460 the United States as well. And the EU only sends 21% of its exports to America. For Canada,

00:14:54.480 that figure is 76%. So intentionally allowing this trade negotiation to fail or even simply

00:15:04.400 being okay with it failing would be economically devastating. And as we've seen, the bulk of

00:15:13.180 Canada's exports to the United States have been tariff exempt because they've been protected

00:15:18.520 by the umbrella of the current North American Free Trade Agreement. Imagine for a second

00:15:24.520 what the economic consequences would be like if that umbrella disappeared. Suddenly,

00:15:32.260 every export sector would be hurting just as much as the steel and aluminum and copper and softwood

00:15:42.620 and auto industries are currently suffering. That would be the case economy-wide. That would be

00:15:48.480 economic disaster, which would instantly translate into political disaster for the person sitting in

00:15:54.780 the chair. So failure in these negotiations is not an option. Do you think he'd give in on supply

00:16:01.160 management to save the rest? There are some creative solutions with regard to supply

00:16:10.180 management that don't necessarily require the whole structure to be torn up. A year ago,

00:16:19.220 Canada signed an agreement with New Zealand. New Zealand has a massive dairy industry. They're a

00:16:24.300 massive dairy exporting country. They've wanted more market access in Canada, and they've taken

00:16:29.780 Canada to court over it through various tribunals and so on. And Canada and New Zealand came to a

00:16:35.860 bilateral compromise that did not require dismantling the supply management architecture,

00:16:43.440 but simply redefining who gets access to the tariff rate quotas. And a little bit of adjustment

00:16:51.900 within the current rules satisfied New Zealand. I suspect we may see something along those lines.

00:16:57.620 Don't dismantle it, but find a way within the system to give Americans more access and give it to the right people.

00:17:05.240 Okay, well, that would certainly be welcome.

00:17:08.360 So we're cheaper cheese.

00:17:10.400 But we've got to remember how politically sensitive supply management is here in Canada.

00:17:15.560 In Quebec, it is a sacred cow.

00:17:20.900 There you go again.

00:17:22.600 It's a sacred cow, yes.

00:17:24.060 And yeah, so touching, really touching that in a meaningful architectural restructuring way would be politically very, very precarious for the government.

00:17:39.120 Do you think that Mr. Carney's goals are really what he says they are?

00:17:44.160 And if so, are they realistic?

00:17:48.080 What's he really trying to accomplish in his ministry?

00:17:51.500 he is a business person who is leading a liberal party and that creates certain inherent tensions

00:18:04.460 from what i see he's genuinely trying to address many of the same issues that a conservative

00:18:11.220 government would be addressing trade diversification rejuvenating our extractive

00:18:16.660 sectors uh getting things done more quickly than we have in the past in terms of permitting and

00:18:22.740 reviews and so on the real question is will his party tolerate it uh steven gibault and the green

00:18:31.540 caucus or the climate caucus they've already signaled that they're going to keep him in check

00:18:37.620 and then they're going to try to slow down his agenda if he had a majority of say 30 40 50 seats

00:18:45.780 that wouldn't be an issue but if he has this the slimmest majority that he currently has

00:18:53.060 those voices could potentially be very powerful the biggest slick maneuvering that's going to

00:18:59.380 be required for mr carney is not going to be necessarily with the united states or with

00:19:05.940 dealing with different economic sectors here in our own country it's going to be internally with

00:19:10.020 his own caucus managing that very broad coalition that he's actively put together and trying to keep

00:19:18.180 everybody happy it's not going to be easy you wonder sometimes if the lesson of the whole thing

00:19:25.700 isn't be careful what you wish for yeah he wanted to be prime minister he is really dealing with

00:19:33.780 the legacy of mr trudeau even to this day is he not yeah absolutely like he is not he is certainly

00:19:39.780 not a carbon copy of of mr trudeau i know that for political expediency some of his political

00:19:45.860 opponents will try to present him as such i frankly don't think that's going to work because

00:19:49.380 that's not who he is but he is to some degree a fish out of water in his own party but yet he has

00:19:57.620 to lead his party and the government branded in his party colors that's going to be his biggest

00:20:02.740 challenge one of the criticisms leveled against him quite is that he advised mr trudeau for some

00:20:09.460 years before mr trudeau finally resigned do you how could how could we be in this situation

00:20:18.420 if his advice had been followed and look i i was surprised that he accepted that that appointment

00:20:24.980 it was what about a year before the election to be the economic advisor at large to the trudeau

00:20:29.700 government i was i was stunned that an obviously sinking ship would uh well i am i surprised that

00:20:37.300 that they tried to wrap themselves in the, you know, in the Cardi mystique? No, not at all.

00:20:42.160 But the fact that he accepted while still having political aspirations of his own,

00:20:45.920 but look, he's trying to chart his own course. There is tension within the Liberal Party over

00:20:51.920 this. Make no mistake, there is. I hear it every day here in Ottawa. Lots of Liberals are not

00:20:58.840 happy. They don't feel comfortable in this new Cardi form or recreation of their party.

00:21:04.860 And, you know, Nigel, and as you know, just as well as I do, in politics, the greatest precursor of solidarity is strong polling.

00:21:19.520 But once you start to dip in the polls, all those people, all those factions that have been biting their tongue suddenly feel, you know, I've got nothing to lose now.

00:21:33.120 We're not doing great under his leadership anymore.

00:21:35.460 And then they will become vocal and they will become public and they will become visible.

00:21:40.100 It happens to many governments.

00:21:42.000 It will happen to this one.

00:21:43.240 It's really just a question of when.

00:21:44.260 Well, a fascinating discussion as always with you, Yaroslav. Thank you for coming on the show.

00:21:52.340 My quick assessment is that we're not going to stop questioning Mr. Carney about what he's doing

00:21:59.620 and why he's doing it, but maybe we should appreciate that it may be not as easy for him

00:22:06.180 as we like to think. Well, it's going to come down to results. He's going to have to show results.

00:22:11.460 where's the beef nigel where's the beef well wherever you find it it's going to be you're 0.97

00:22:16.500 going to be paying a lot more for it than you used to 40 bucks a pound is nothing these days

00:22:21.460 look we won't take it in the grocery direction but thank you for again for coming on the show

00:22:26.980 always great to see you and we'll have you back my pleasure as always bye

00:22:30.820 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford. Good night.

Western Standard - May 22, 2026

Carney, Smith and the people who hold them back

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