Western Standard - September 27, 2026


HANNAFORD： Carney has until Christmas to deliver the goods

Topics
major projects office bill labor disruption legislation diversifying trade
Hosted by
Nigel Hannaford
Mentioned
Carney Stephen Harper Yaroslav Trump Abby Lewis Jaroslav Kualiev
CORY MORGAN SHOW： The independence movement IS NOT GOING AWAY no matter what Should Alberta taxpayers cover temporary migrants’ health care？

Episode Stats


Length

28 minutes

Words per minute

149.93

Word count

4,296

Sentence count

152

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford.
00:00:19 Parliament returned on Monday, and after a month of announcements before that,
00:00:24 Prime Minister Carney used the occasion in the House of Commons to add more promises
00:00:29 to those he's made over the last 18 months. Since he was elected Prime Minister, it's also worth
00:00:36 our attention that on Mr Carney's watch, Canada's outstanding federal debt has grown by a not
00:00:43 insignificant $106 billion. So a lot of money borrowed, and from what we can see, not much
00:00:52 happening to put people to work and generate wealth no pipelines yet that's for sure we're
00:00:58 very aware of that in alberta and as taxpayers struggling with inflation and with our kids
00:01:03 trying to find meaningful work what are we supposed to make of it with us today is political
00:01:09 advisor yaroslav peran he's principal at pendulum strategies he's advised prime ministers welcome
00:01:16 back to the show, Yaroslav. It's always good to be here, Nigel. That's the stuff. Well, Yaroslav,
00:01:22 what do you make of it in the Prime Minister's Monday announcement? Are they going to make a
00:01:26 difference? Tell us what they were. I mean, the big recent developments have been tiddling of
00:01:32 legislation of very big, fat, omnibus bill. We could call it a big, beautiful bill, Mr. Carney's
00:01:38 point of view, that does a couple of things. It rewrites some of the machinery, some of the
00:01:44 some of the enabling legal infrastructure to grease the skids of the operations of his major
00:01:53 project office. He's been trying to expedite major projects, especially trade enabling
00:02:00 and economic development projects to make them move faster, get them through approvals much
00:02:07 more quickly. So this bill really helps to make that happen. At least that's the intention.
00:02:12 I was going to say, let me just ask you about that before we leave that behind.
00:02:20 This major projects office has actually not created anything that didn't exist before it.
00:02:27 But this bill that you're talking about actually establishes it as a permanent fixture.
00:02:33 It removes the sunset clause.
00:02:35 So something that has yet to prove its worth is now being established as a permanent operating procedure.
00:02:41 Is there anything a little cynical about that?
00:02:44 Well, one of the most amusing things that I think about this is the very concept of the Major Project Office, which has been one of the key pillars of Mr. Carney's governing agenda, was really modeled directly after the late and lamented Major Project Management Office that was created under the Harper government,
00:03:08 uh specifically for resource projects to expedite them get you know get them moving much more
00:03:13 quickly and that's something that the liberals at the time roundly and thoroughly criticized
00:03:18 uh as being anti-environmental and anti-indigenous and far too capitalist friendly but they've now
00:03:27 taken that same model and and and built their uh their new major projects office uh you know
00:03:33 according to the same basic principles so that's a little bit of cute irony i think but you know
00:03:38 hey this is politics uh governments change and political parties need to change circumstances
00:03:45 and right now we need to build they're trying to do that that's what this bill is trying to enable
00:03:49 there's also uh a controversial labor component to this bill as well that gives the labor minister
00:03:57 a stronger ability to impose an order ending a labor disruption, forcing a striking union back
00:04:11 to work, or ending a lockout. So this is something that's going to be facing a lot of criticism
00:04:16 from some of the major unions. I have to wonder even how effective that is. I mean,
00:04:22 when you've got two sides locked in conflict and they both want it to end,
00:04:25 the labor minister can go in and say all right everybody back to work and it's okay you know
00:04:30 and then they grumble about the government being heavy-handed but they're deeply grateful that
00:04:35 they they're able to go back to work and the burden of blame has been lifted from them
00:04:39 what happens when you get labor unions that really don't want to go back to work and they
00:04:45 control the federal government or they control some vital industry and you know the labor unions
00:04:51 can still do a lot through even just taking a work-to-rule posture rather than striking
00:04:57 outright. But this is intended to, on the face of it, and I believe that the government is genuine
00:05:05 in its desires here, they want to stop the ability of labor disruptions completely demobilizing a
00:05:15 port. Think of the Port of Vancouver, for example, Canada's largest port. It's got bigger capacity
00:05:20 than all other Canadian ports put together.
00:05:23 So labor disruption, say, by the longshoremen at the Port of Vancouver
00:05:28 should not be able to shut down most of Canada's exports
00:05:31 through Canada's primary port.
00:05:33 Or, for example, Canada posts a stoppage due to a labor disruption
00:05:39 that can severely impact the operations and viability
00:05:44 of many small businesses that use it as their shipping vehicle
00:05:49 or an Air Canada strike or whatever.
00:05:51 So anything with major economic consequences.
00:05:53 Now, the government has said that it's putting parameters
00:05:58 or guardrails, as their favorite term,
00:06:00 that this would only apply to labor disruptions
00:06:04 with an economic impact.
00:06:06 Well, I've never met a labor disruption
00:06:08 that didn't have an economic impact.
00:06:11 That's the whole point of a strike to create economic pressure.
00:06:15 um but the government has also there's a quite a bit of political spin around this as well the
00:06:21 government has claimed that this legislation will actually curtail their ability to impose
00:06:27 back-to-work legislation by putting strict parameters around it i frankly don't buy that
00:06:32 for a second because for a government that has had to impose um you know back-to-work orders
00:06:41 during economic disruptions,
00:06:45 why on earth would they want to limit their ability to do that?
00:06:50 It just simply doesn't make sense.
00:06:52 They want to create a new set of rules that make it easier to justify.
00:06:56 They certainly do not want to limit their ability to impose back-to-work orders.
00:07:00 I also think that this is a gift for Abby Lewis,
00:07:04 the new leader of the New Democratic Party,
00:07:06 because it gives him a tangible, specific, concrete issue
00:07:11 that he can that he can climb on to really focus on to help to rebuild his brand and build more
00:07:17 support get attention for the ndp which has really been floundering for a number of years all right
00:07:23 well we'll return to the person of mr lewis a little later but right now so we've what we've
00:07:29 got at the moment with mr connie is that we've got the his own version of a big beautiful bill
00:07:35 500 million dollars which mostly seems to come from institutional sources not private industry
00:07:42 it's banks it's it's pension funds and a couple of other things but it's not really like the major
00:07:50 oil company has stepped up and said we were going to invest in Canada and here's our 40 billion
00:07:55 dollars this is institutional money so he's got but he's got that and he's got his plans for the
00:08:03 of the major projects office which hasn't produced anything but he's obviously still committed to
00:08:09 that idea it's also the major investment summit he just held yes well and that's where i think
00:08:17 the 500 billion dollar fund was rolled out so so he has these things and over the past 18 months
00:08:24 we've seen quite a number of memorandums of understanding here in alberta we're hanging
00:08:30 our hat on an MOU that says there'll be a pipeline, brackets, as long as we don't encounter
00:08:36 any resistance from indigenous interests.
00:08:39 So those things that we've already seen, now in the very recent weeks, we've seen him approach
00:08:45 Europe.
00:08:47 And I failed to understand what Europe can do for Canada.
00:08:55 Back in Mr. Harper's time, we established the Comprehensive Trade Agreement with Europe.
00:09:00 It depended upon individual countries ratifying the agreement.
00:09:09 Not all did, but there certainly has been a significant uptick in trade with Europe.
00:09:14 But a significant uptake takes you sort of like from 4% to 10%, and it's not anywhere
00:09:20 close to the trade we have in the United States.
00:09:23 So if that isn't likely to change, what is the point of cozying up to Europe?
00:09:29 They're in worse shape than we are.
00:09:31 Well, some of this is symbolic.
00:09:33 A big part of this is symbolic broadcasting and attitude reset.
00:09:40 The message is really, hey, folks, we can no longer depend on the United States to be a reliable partner
00:09:48 because they're talking about potentially annexing us
00:09:54 or absorbing us into the union, they're imposing tariffs.
00:09:58 These are not the actions of a trusted partner,
00:10:01 so we need to find others.
00:10:03 And hey, we've got a lot in common with Europe.
00:10:07 Canadians like Europe.
00:10:09 Why don't we do more business with Europe?
00:10:11 So it's really a symbolic pivot,
00:10:14 one that can make some difference in terms of our trade statistics. But as you note,
00:10:22 we so overwhelmingly depend on the United States as our current export market that is going to take
00:10:28 a really long time to move those markers meaningfully. Now, they have moved already.
00:10:34 When this trade war started with the United States about a year and a half ago, 76% of
00:10:39 Canada's exports went to the U.S., that figure is down now to about 66% or 67%.
00:10:45 So it's already dropped about 10%.
00:10:48 I'm actually quite surprised that the Canadian economy, that our export industries have been
00:10:55 able to move the markers that significantly in such a short period of time.
00:11:01 But bear in mind, the first move is always going to be the lower hanging fruit.
00:11:04 the next 10% is going to be much harder and going to take much longer than the first 10%
00:11:10 of trade diversification. So that's something to bear in mind. Diversifying from the US is going to
00:11:15 be a long, hard slog. Moreover, it's a lot cheaper and a lot easier to export to the US. So yeah,
00:11:24 great. Let's look at other markets. Let's not put all of our eggs or too many of our eggs into the
00:11:30 same basket but shipping a basket of widgets from uh from canada to france is always going to be
00:11:40 more expensive than dropping it on the train sending it down uh two or three hundred kilometers
00:11:46 across the canada u.s border so we've got to keep that in mind diversified trade is going to be less
00:11:51 less efficient less expensive so it's it's really a necessary evil uh rather than an optimally uh
00:11:58 kind of an ideal scenario. Now, Europe, you asked what a new association agreement can do for
00:12:06 Canada. It's a good question. The best thing that we can do for Canada was already done. It's the
00:12:13 Canada-EU trade agreement that was concluded under the Stephen Harper government. That's the big
00:12:21 opening of the floodgates for greater trade between the two countries. Now, I would note
00:12:25 that there are 10 European countries
00:12:28 that still have not ratified it.
00:12:30 I would say let's focus on getting those countries
00:12:33 to ratify it.
00:12:34 Let's get this thing into full implementation.
00:12:36 That's going to have the biggest impact
00:12:39 on Canada's economy and Canada's exports.
00:12:42 What they're talking about now is unrelated
00:12:44 to allowing that currently signed free trade agreement
00:12:49 to come into effect more fully.
00:12:52 They seem to be talking about things
00:12:55 like student exchanges allowing canadian students to study in europe and vice versa
00:13:02 integrating supply chains better for things like defense procurement a good thing but again the
00:13:09 kind of things that really really get juiced by a fully implemented free trade agreement so i would
00:13:16 say that should probably be the focus so i think this is more of a symbolic move than anything else
00:13:22 because the real heavy lifting was already done by the harper government in concluding
00:13:26 that free trade agreement to begin with now we're uh we're watching our international trade minister
00:13:33 trying to sign assign free trade agreements left right and center good probably makes sense when
00:13:37 you're trying to diversify trade but free trade agreements alone do not diversify trade they
00:13:45 enable trade to be diversified but then you need trade missions you actually need signed contracts
00:13:52 between canadian companies and uh importers abroad to really really move the needle
00:14:00 when you said that canadian companies had been successful in diversifying
00:14:05 and you said that their sales to the us were down by i think it was ten percent yeah around
00:14:11 there are they actually selling their product elsewhere or are they just kind of businesses
00:14:16 down 10% because we've sold less to the US? Oh, actually, that's a more detailed question. I'd
00:14:23 probably have to defer that to the people who really analyze our trade stats more thoroughly,
00:14:29 but on the face of it, about 66% of our exports are now going to the US rather than 76%.
00:14:38 percent so it is it is more to china sorry are we selling more to china um marginally yes because
00:14:46 we were in a pretty in the depths of a deep freeze when the carny government took over
00:14:51 but that's something we want to be really really careful about and i hope that the government is 1.00
00:14:55 is taking uh chinese threats seriously they are certainly not a reliable trading partner
00:15:02 i would argue they are less reliable and and at least as arbitrary as a trump administration has
00:15:11 been they the chinese wake up in a bad mood this morning they declare by fiat that canadian pork
00:15:17 is dangerous no more canadian pork or there are rebels and canadian canola products so no more 0.83
00:15:22 canadian canola they do this all the time on a whim that's no more predictable no more reliable
00:15:29 than the kind of stuff we've been seeing uh from the trump administration where he wakes
00:15:33 up one morning and decides he doesn't like canada so more tariffs on our automobiles
00:15:38 well you see if you knock off if you knock off canadian trade in canola and then you can give
00:15:44 it back but the prices you've got to buy our motor cars or electric cars that's actually
00:15:50 beyond arbitrary that's smart business um but they're in a position to do it and we're not
00:15:56 how much how dependent do you think mr carney is on his relationship with china oh boy um you know
00:16:05 the the the signals that his um primary cabinet ministers involved in this in this relationship
00:16:17 are sending is that our chinese trade is going to be cautious and where necessary and it's going
00:16:22 to be as low value or at least not low value in dollar value but as uh and unstrategic as possible
00:16:31 so things like food commodities you know things like canela or you know things like that rather
00:16:37 than more strategic um trade relationships impacting things like semiconductors critical
00:16:44 minerals etc the kinds of things that if they decide to turn it off are not going to have uh
00:16:50 an impact on Canadian national security. Canadian economy, maybe, but not necessarily
00:16:55 national security. So they're sending the signals that they're taking this strategic approach.
00:17:00 But the fact is, the more you become reliant on any new trading partner, the more exposed
00:17:09 you potentially are. That, by the way, is what theoretically makes the European Union
00:17:15 such an attractive new trade partners because there's a greater expectation by the government
00:17:20 of canada that they will be reliable and predictable and less arbitrary um so if we can
00:17:27 deepen those trade links between canada and and european union states uh the expectation is that
00:17:34 they will be honest fair uh brokers rather than you know the same kinds of uh you know belligerent
00:17:42 maneuverings that we've seen from from both uh beijing and from washington but it really begs
00:17:49 the question what is in this new arrangement or so far there's been very little information about
00:17:55 what an associate membership in the eu uh meets uh mr paulia has certainly uh laid down some
00:18:03 important markers so has is canada u.s um shadow minister shuv majundar they said look um open to
00:18:13 having discussions table something in parliament let's have debates in parliament because canada
00:18:18 is not going to accept eu regulations on canadian products canada is not going to accept eu
00:18:27 immigration and refugee standards and we're certainly not going to accept a taxpayer burden
00:18:33 to help fund the massive EU bureaucracy. Those are red lines that the Conservatives have drawn.
00:18:39 I think they've got their finger on the pulse. I do not think that such measures would fly with
00:18:44 the Canadian public. Whereas if it's more kind of nice to have stuff like allowing students to
00:18:52 travel and uh and study for longer periods of time sure you know what's there to oppose there but
00:18:58 let's have some clarity let's have some transparency and let's have those debates
00:19:03 okay so just uh just to bring this together a little bit because i want to go back to the
00:19:08 status of the ndp before we conclude this conversation but uh so so we have a string
00:19:14 of province promises we have a some apparently new money there's a hundred billion dollars more
00:19:21 in debt than there was 18 months ago. In fact, it's more than that, but let's not split hairs
00:19:26 over $10 billion. We have the possibility of a pleasant trading relationship with Europe,
00:19:37 not so much with China, but at least if we can keep it in a box, so to speak, then that might
00:19:43 have some benefit. So these things that Mr. Carney has going for him, he says, this is the big
00:19:51 picture we have the special projects office but so far after 18 months we don't have anything
00:19:58 how long do you think yaroslav that he has got to actually pull a bunny out of the hat and say
00:20:06 here it is this is the first of many things that our approach to government is going to yield and
00:20:11 it's going to be great for everybody hello oh boy look it probably depends on what uh on which
00:20:18 element we're talking about uh he's talked about attracting a trillion dollars yes one trillion
00:20:25 dollars in foreign direct investment that was the intent behind his big investment summit in toronto
00:20:32 uh the other week um it's it's a positive thing to broadcast to the world to major investors that
00:20:40 were open for business sure that's good but there's still some significant roadblocks
00:20:46 for international investors to see canada as a safe place to invest specifically
00:20:52 we do not have an integrated single market we solve inter-provincial trade barriers here so
00:20:58 there's no such thing right now as investing in the canadian economy because there isn't one
00:21:03 we've got sort of an uh a somewhat inter you know intertwined about the teleco of separate
00:21:09 economy not attractive if if nothing is happening in the new year i mean even canadians of goodwill
00:21:16 i think would be saying well okay you promised a lot yeah show me something well and that's that's
00:21:22 where i'm going with this there are there are barriers for that for that investment to happen
00:21:26 we don't have a single economy we have two separatist movements also toxic for yeah for
00:21:33 attractiveness for investment. And we haven't settled our relationship issues, our economic
00:21:40 relationship issues with our single biggest economic partner. That does not make us look
00:21:45 attractive. So, so far, we're seeing a whole lot of big aspirations, but not much happening behind
00:21:51 it. The biggest test is going to be how quickly and how well the Prime Minister can sign a trade
00:21:59 a deal with the United States. He's going to have to sign one. We're going to have, this has to come
00:22:04 to a conclusion. We will not survive a long-term economic or great war of attrition with the U.S.
00:22:10 We simply can't. And I would say the window, the ideal window is probably between the U.S. midterms
00:22:18 and January 1st. Once January 1st hits, Canada is going to face even fresh new tariffs on already
00:22:28 beleaguered sectors, specifically automobiles, auto parts, and steel. If new tariffs hit those
00:22:35 sectors, those sectors will not survive. So right now, Mr. Carney is Captain Canada, elbows up,
00:22:42 yeah, I'm going to fight for Canadians, and Canadians like that. They're buying it. The
00:22:45 polling shows they're into that. But once this tangibly starts to turn into job losses, mill
00:22:53 closures, auto plant closures, then that public mood is certainly going to sour. So I would say
00:23:03 on the Canada-US front, it's really a double-edged sword. Mr. Carney is benefiting in the immediate
00:23:11 term politically, but that can flip on a dime, particularly in the new year if new tariffs come
00:23:17 into effect. So what would you say? You were in the business of giving strategic advice.
00:23:25 Would you suggest to Mr. Carney that he have a snap election and grab a solid majority while
00:23:29 it's there to be taken? Look, there aren't really any signs that he's planning a snap election.
00:23:38 These things always create ripples out there. If somebody starts to make a phone call to inquire
00:23:44 about um bus wraps you know they always have a logo and a big space of your leader you know
00:23:51 that can those kinds of phone calls create buzz or you start to make inquiries about
00:23:56 releasing phone bank spaces or about uh you know local campaign office you know rentals
00:24:03 it creates waves out there there are no waves out there suggesting that this planning is underway
00:24:09 But I would posit that strategically, it would be negligent of Mr. Carney's advisors not to be having these conversations because their polling is through the roof right now.
00:24:25 Structurally, that probably will not last much, much longer.
00:24:31 Again, January 1st could be a pivot point or a hinge moment in Carney speak.
00:24:35 um so the window is the sort of guaranteed the safe window of buoyant polling is finite it's
00:24:44 short so it would be it would be foolish for them not to be seriously considering a snap election
00:24:50 the the seat projections show that they would definitely pick up seats they would almost
00:24:55 certainly pick up a lot of seats the conservatives would drop seats like we're talking you know 20 or
00:25:01 more so why would they not be thinking about doing this now that's why i asked the question last
00:25:08 question because we're out of time the ndp under mr lewis abby lewis former journalist excellent
00:25:14 ndp leadership credentials inherited from his grandfather are they going to make a difference
00:25:21 anybody going to vote for them the ndp has got deep roots in this country it has not been big
00:25:28 and powerful in the last last decade last two decades at least at the federal level
00:25:36 it's got significant presence in the organizational ability at the provincial level and it's a pretty
00:25:41 fairly provincially federally integrated party so they've got on the ground strength its biggest
00:25:47 handicap i would say with the greatest respect to jagmeet singh who i'm sure is a super swell
00:25:52 and nice guy he was not a strong leader and he was not a very strategic leader so the removal
00:25:58 of mr singh um probably removes their biggest uh their biggest impediment of recent years
00:26:05 ivy lewis so far has kept a pretty low profile and despite that ndp support has already started
00:26:13 to rise if an election were held today most of the seat projections most of the polling suggests
00:26:18 they would uh potentially triple the number of seats that they currently hold and that's basically
00:26:23 doing nothing that's basically just having anybody else at the expense of the liberals wouldn't they
00:26:32 by and large yes uh i i don't think that in any of those seats they'd be uh they'd be taken away
00:26:39 from uh from the conservatives so so just by replacing sorry what is is there anything that
00:26:45 mr polio should be doing in your view that he's not doing that to restore his fortunes because
00:26:50 Because right now, I just don't see it as a particularly good time to have much to say.
00:26:53 Nobody's listening.
00:26:56 Yeah, right now, people are focused on Carney.
00:26:58 They're focused on Carney.
00:26:59 They're focused on Trump.
00:27:00 As long as the Canada-U.S. relationship remains top of mind, that's going to give an advantage,
00:27:06 or it seems to be giving an advantage to Trump.
00:27:08 What Mr. Kualiev should be doing, and frankly is doing, is focusing on his dominant issue,
00:27:15 which is cost of living, which is affordability.
00:27:17 The polling all suggests that when Trump is more in the headlines, when he is more in our faces, that's an advantage to Carney. The Liberals go up relatively at the expense of the Conservatives.
00:27:31 When Trump recedes from the headlines, Liberals start to dip and the Conservatives start to go up because then the dominant issue becomes cost of living.
00:27:40 and the pollsters are saying that Paulyov still leads
00:27:43 and has the most cost on cost of living.
00:27:46 Conservatives who's had a caucus retreat in Penticton,
00:27:49 he made it clear the cost of living, that affordability,
00:27:53 that saving people money is going to be his singular priority.
00:27:58 That's a smart move.
00:28:00 It's the right move, given what the pollsters are saying
00:28:03 are the relative strengths of the Liberals versus their Conservatives.
00:28:07 Jaroslav, we're right bang up against the clock.
00:28:10 Thank you for this.
00:28:11 It's been most helpful.
00:28:13 We'll have you back again soon.
00:28:15 There's so much to talk about.
00:28:16 Great.
00:28:17 Always a pleasure, Nigel.
00:28:18 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.
00:28:37 You