Western Standard - HANNAFORD： 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

00:00:21.040 standard it's thursday may the 21st if you're a james bond fan you'll remember the iconic scene

00:00:28.240 where Bond looks for Scaramanga in the Hall of Mirrors where there is one target but multiple

00:00:34.560 false images. The man with the golden gun, wasn't it? That's my guess, Yaroslav Baran from Ottawa,

00:00:43.600 chipping in with the important information. Yes, it was the man with the golden gun.

00:00:48.800 But we're looking today and we're trying to make sense of something that's broadly similar in

00:00:53.520 canadian politics today where wherever you look whatever you look at nothing seems to be simple

00:00:59.360 straightforward or what it was announced as for example what does alberta independence mean

00:01:05.760 for prime minister carney is it a problem or an opportunity mr carney still wants us to drive

00:01:11.760 electric cars it seems they'll be made in china by the look of things not in windsor

00:01:16.240 but is his promised grid expansion big enough to allow the switch anyway he says he wants to build

00:01:21.680 up the armed forces but recruits foreigners while sidelining the traditional talent pool in some

00:01:27.120 box-ticking exercise to get more women and non-white men and so it goes on government by 0.96

00:01:33.920 press release and crossed fingers one person we trust to guide us through this particular hall

00:01:40.960 of mirrors is our old friend yaroslav baran welcome about yaroslav always good to be here

00:01:47.360 Nigel, thanks. Well, we appreciate you taking the time. Jaroslav, just to remind people,

00:01:52.720 you were once communications director to Prime Minister Stephen Harper these days as co-founder

00:01:57.600 of Pendulum Group. You're a political consultant in Ottawa. So let me ask you this. In Western

00:02:02.720 Canada, we've become reflexively suspicious of anything that the Prime Minister says.

00:02:08.800 Maybe this isn't a healthy response. Do we just need to get a life, give him a break?

00:02:14.560 Well, first, Nigel, I'd note that Albertans have more than ample reason to be suspicious

00:02:20.560 of their relationship with Ottawa or with the federal government. Alberta's got a long history

00:02:27.200 of contributing well above its weight to effectively subsidize other regions of the

00:02:32.560 country. And while enduring slurs and barbs from those same regions for being quote unquote

00:02:37.840 regressive and for wanting to kill mother earth and uh and not getting with the program of any

00:02:43.920 slew of of liberal policy agendas so um alberta has a premier that is clearly signaling that

00:02:53.200 alberta is not going to take that anymore i mean alberta is a prosperous and successful province

00:02:58.880 and you know you you know you folks in ottawa have a choice either work with us and address the the

00:03:04.720 valid historical tensions or the outcomes are not going to be pretty. Nigel, I don't know if you

00:03:11.120 remember this. Preston Manning wrote a widely circulated opinion piece during the federal

00:03:16.980 election campaign a year ago, a warning that the national unity is going to be in jeopardy if the

00:03:25.280 conservatives don't win. He was widely criticized at the time for being alarmist and for legitimizing

00:03:30.800 separate a sentiment. But I think that naming something and endorsing it are two very different

00:03:38.200 things. And the last year has shown amply that Albertans are indeed very, very fed up

00:03:45.860 with giving the federal government, you know, or allowing the federal government to bulldoze

00:03:52.880 Alberta's prospects for greater prosperity. And they're clearly signaling that the federal

00:03:59.020 government has one last chance well you know i think i think you've accurately summed up what

00:04:04.620 people feel but i i do wonder whether this whole alberta independence movement is actually from

00:04:13.660 mr carney's point of view a great thing it gives him something to to point to when he is addressing

00:04:19.660 eastern audiences and said you need me to protect you from the you know the forces of separation

00:04:25.500 we've seen them in Quebec, now we're seeing them in Alberta. A strong, centralized federal

00:04:31.740 government is what you need, and I'm your man to give it to you. So maybe Western independence is

00:04:39.100 not something that he wants to see go away. If that's the game he's playing, it's a really,

00:04:48.060 really dangerous game to play because nobody wins ultimately when we gamble on trying to ignite

00:04:55.020 forces of separatism i i don't see his actions as um as trying to keep separatism alive

00:05:03.340 if anything it's really it's it's really putting wind in daniel smith's sails and she has emerged

00:05:09.180 as arguably the strongest premier she's certainly one of the most capable politicians in canada

00:05:15.180 right now and she is standing up to him and with uh with quite a bit of success recently if we

00:05:20.780 look at some of the some of the leverage that she's been able to use in extracting concessions

00:05:24.700 from the federal government like is is this an opportunity as well as a challenge well sure

00:05:31.740 the challenge is obvious not inflaming separatist sentiment and trying to keep it at bay and over

00:05:39.420 time trying to diffuse it there is something of an opportunity here for mr carney as well

00:05:45.980 And that is that if he genuinely follows through on the things that he's signaling that are Alberta friendly, he could have the prospects of, in the medium to longer term, redefining the relationship between his party, the Liberal Party, and the voters of Alberta.

00:06:07.900 Because let's face it, the Liberals have been a pariah in Alberta basically since the national energy program.

00:06:13.320 you see all it would take in my view is a simple statement that yes we are going to back a pipeline

00:06:22.480 now you know not in a month's time we're going to take it forward to see if it can

00:06:30.360 meet certain standards at which point we'll look for a sponsor and maybe we'll get a decision in

00:06:36.680 October, right around when Alberta is having referenda on several issues, and with the idea

00:06:44.540 that after that it could still, and it's still all in the realm of maybe, if you want a result,

00:06:51.060 a certain result, make a decision and live with it. Now, why doesn't he do that? I mean,

00:06:57.500 this is not just us. This is everything that has gone through to the, what do they call it,

00:07:03.180 the National Projects Office, where all the really good schemes

00:07:07.960 are going to be fast-tracked, well, very little has come out of it,

00:07:10.960 and what has come out of it was already well advanced

00:07:13.820 before the office was established.

00:07:15.520 It seems like we always have this, it's like holding the carrot

00:07:19.820 in front of the donkey, you know?

00:07:21.520 It's always just a little bit ahead, but you never actually get it.

00:07:25.000 Yeah, well, I'm not surprised that most of the projects being transacted

00:07:29.440 the major projects office are uh projects that were in in the pipeline so to speak um it's terrible

00:07:37.440 because you're not gonna you're not gonna start from a from a standing start with uh bold new

00:07:44.160 projects that are just ideas and and bring them to fruition overnight so yeah understandably they

00:07:49.840 they started with well advanced projects but they're gonna have to show some some some results

00:07:55.280 they're gonna have to show results quickly um public opinion polling is already starting to

00:08:00.240 show that getting results is potentially mr carney's biggest liability as a brand issue he

00:08:09.200 seems to be doing the right things saying the right things and that's generating a fair bit of

00:08:16.240 of uh of of tolerance and patience with the public but that patience is not going to last forever

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

00:08:27.360 you're gonna 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 to

00:09:45.520 try to address it and was championing them all over the globe now public sentiment not just in

00:09:51.200 canada but internationally has shifted there are other priorities of of concern things like cost

00:09:57.520 of living and economic rejuvenation and export diversification and immigration and the list goes

00:10:04.240 on and on and on and he has pivoted but his challenge is going to be not so much himself 0.69

00:10:12.720 but it's going to be his caucus uh as you know nigel he has a very razor thin majority in the

00:10:22.540 house of commons and even all else being equal he's going to slip back into minority status this

00:10:29.800 summer there are two mps that we know of already in his caucus who are going to be residing their

00:10:35.560 seats for different reasons uh one uh to take a diplomatic appointment for example and one to run

00:10:41.640 for a provincial leadership race.

00:10:44.620 So he is going to slip back down.

00:10:46.520 He doesn't like that.

00:10:47.300 That's not a comfortable place to be in.

00:10:49.740 And the dissidents,

00:10:51.040 the climate dissidents in his caucus,

00:10:53.480 whose ring leader is Stephen Guibault,

00:10:55.680 the so-called Green Jesus,

00:10:57.160 former Greenpeace leader and so on,

00:10:58.920 former environment minister under Trudeau,

00:11:01.180 they realize that that gives them leverage.

00:11:05.120 They've already formed a climate caucus

00:11:07.780 inside the liberal caucus

00:11:09.320 of some two dozen MPs or so.

00:11:11.160 And they realize that they that they can flex. They can flex their muscles now. And they've given themselves, you know, a self-professed agenda of keeping the government in check. In check for them, of course, means from straying too far away from the Justin Trudeau climate agenda. That's going to be a difficult challenge for Mr. Carney to deal with. And it's all in turn.

00:11:39.140 so would you draw the link between that like this green caucus within the liberals and his

00:11:45.860 seeming inability to actually come down and decisively deliver uh approval for a pipeline

00:11:54.500 of the kind that premier smith is looking for look the pipeline is going to have to happen

00:12:00.820 um you know it seems that the prime minister is enough of a real of a realist that he's come to

00:12:05.780 to the conclusion that there will not be any tolerance for stringing Alberta along with some

00:12:12.040 sort of acute, a pipeline if necessary, but not necessarily a pipeline kind of position. I think

00:12:19.020 we'll see a serious push now led by the government of Alberta, led by Premier Smith to get a credible

00:12:24.840 partnership or coalition together and a business plan before the federal government by Canada Day.

00:12:32.140 And we've got a pretty public commitment already from the federal government that it will be handed over to the major projects office by October.

00:12:41.660 There's enough momentum and expectation already that this is going to happen, that if it doesn't, it will further exacerbate, not defuse the push for some kind of either sovereignty or outright separation in Alberta.

00:12:59.860 Oh, I think you're absolutely right about that.

00:13:04.100 The PM gets it. He sees this threat as real. I think that's really boxed image. He needs to

00:13:09.620 deliver on a pipeline. Well, there you go. There's my theory about

00:13:13.700 that he finds Western alienation a helpful political lever in the East, so maybe not.

00:13:22.180 Now, of greater interest to Eastern Canada are the forthcoming negotiations over free trade,

00:13:28.980 between the united states and canada um do you think mr carney actually wants the a deal out of

00:13:40.580 this i was tempted with a an intriguing argument this morning in the national post that made the

00:13:48.180 point that maybe he doesn't particularly want to do a deal with the united states he has other

00:13:54.820 ideas about the direction he wants to take so he's looking to be flattened by mr trump and then say

00:14:01.060 well there you are now we've now we've all this left is that we go and open the borders with china

00:14:05.940 or something like that right does he want to win yeah failure isn't really an option in these

00:14:12.820 negotiations like yes he is politically benefited from being captain canada and you know flexing

00:14:18.580 his arm against uh against donald trump um the public was certainly hungry for for that kind of

00:14:24.740 a leader and they got it fine but failure in these negotiations cannot be turned into an ultimate

00:14:32.980 political positive because the economic costs will be far too great the the european union nigel

00:14:40.100 has been aggressively working on a trade diversification agenda vis-a-vis the united

00:14:45.860 States as well. And the EU only sends 21% of its exports to America. For Canada, that figure is 76%.

00:14:56.900 So intentionally allowing this trade negotiation to fail or even simply being okay with it failing

00:15:06.000 would be economically devastating. And as we've seen, the bulk of Canada's exports to the United

00:15:15.080 States have been tariff exempt because they've been protected by the umbrella of the current

00:15:20.980 North American free trade agreement. Imagine for a second what the economic consequences

00:15:26.880 would be like if that umbrella disappeared. Suddenly, every export sector would be hurting

00:15:34.980 just as much as the steel and aluminum and copper and softwood and auto industries are currently

00:15:44.620 suffering. That would be the case economy-wide. That would be economic disaster, which would

00:15:50.680 instantly translate into political disaster for the person sitting in the chair. So failure in

00:15:56.340 negotiations is not an option. Do you think he'd give in on supply management to save the rest?

00:16:04.720 There are some creative solutions with regard to supply management that don't necessarily

00:16:13.580 require the whole structure

00:16:16.100 to be torn up.

00:16:18.020 A year ago, Canada signed

00:16:20.300 an agreement with New Zealand.

00:16:21.940 New Zealand has a massive dairy

00:16:23.460 industry, their massive dairy

00:16:25.260 exporting country.

00:16:26.500 They've wanted more market access in

00:16:28.140 Canada and they've taken Canada

00:16:30.180 to court over it through various

00:16:31.420 tribunals and so on.

00:16:32.740 And Canada and New Zealand

00:16:35.260 came to a bilateral compromise

00:16:37.660 that did not require

00:16:39.540 dismantling the supply management

00:16:42.620 architecture, but simply redefining who gets access to the tariff rate quotas. And a little

00:16:50.800 bit of adjustment within the current rules satisfied New Zealand. I suspect we may see

00:16:56.360 something along those lines. Don't dismantle it, but find a way within the system to give

00:17:01.520 Americans more access and give it to the right people. Okay. Well, that would certainly be

00:17:07.480 welcome so we're cheaper cheese um but we've got to remember how politically sensitive supply

00:17:13.560 management is here in canada in quebec it is it is a sacred cow um your life but there you go again

00:17:22.440 it's a sacred cow yes uh and yeah so touching really touching that in a meaningful architectural

00:17:31.560 restructuring way would be uh politically very very precarious for the government

00:17:37.480 do you think that mr carney's goals are really what he says they are

00:17:43.480 and if so are they realistic

00:17:46.100 what's he really trying to accomplish in his ministry he is a business person

00:17:54.840 who is leading a liberal party and that creates certain inherent tensions

00:18:04.440 from what i see he's genuinely trying to address many of the same issues that a conservative

00:18:11.200 government would would be addressing trade diversification rejuvenating our extractive

00:18:16.640 sectors uh getting things done more quickly than we have in the past in terms of permitting and

00:18:22.760 reviews and so on the real question is will his party tolerate it uh stephen gibault and the green

00:18:31.520 caucus or the climate caucus, they've already signaled that they're going to keep him in

00:18:37.300 check and then they're going to try to slow down his agenda. If he had a majority of say

00:18:43.380 30, 40, 50 seats, that wouldn't be an issue. But if he has the slimmest majority that he

00:18:51.360 currently has, those voices could potentially be very powerful. The biggest slick maneuvering

00:18:59.140 that's going to be required for Mr. Carney

00:19:00.740 is not going to be necessarily

00:19:03.120 with the United States

00:19:04.880 or with dealing with different economic

00:19:07.180 sectors here in our own country.

00:19:09.080 It's going to be internally with his own caucus.

00:19:11.680 Managing that very

00:19:13.220 broad coalition that he's actively

00:19:15.380 put together and

00:19:17.360 trying to keep everybody happy.

00:19:19.000 It's not going to be easy.

00:19:22.620 You wonder sometimes if the lesson

00:19:24.880 of the whole thing isn't be careful

00:19:26.620 what you wish for.

00:19:27.720 yeah he wanted to be prime minister he is really dealing with the legacy of mr trudeau even to this

00:19:36.560 day is he not yeah absolutely like he is not he is certainly not a carbon copy of of mr trudeau i

00:19:42.720 know that for political expediency some of his political opponents will try to present him as

00:19:47.300 such i frankly don't think that's going to work because that's not who he is but he is to some

00:19:53.560 degree a fish out of water in his own party but yet he has to lead his party and the government

00:19:59.560 branded in his party colors that's going to be his biggest challenge well the criticisms leveled

00:20:06.020 against him quite is that he advised mr trudeau for some years before mr trudeau finally resigned

00:20:12.580 do you how could how could we be in this situation if his advice had been followed

00:20:20.200 and look i i was surprised that he accepted that that appointment it was what about a year before

00:20:26.320 the election to be the economic advisor at large to the shudo government i was i was stunned that

00:20:32.040 an obviously sinking ship would uh well am i surprised that they tried to wrap themselves in

00:20:39.280 the you know the cardi cardi mystique no not at all but the fact that he accepted while still

00:20:44.320 having political aspirations of his own but look he's he's trying to chart his own course

00:20:49.040 there is tension within the liberal party over this there make no mistake there is i i hear it

00:20:55.360 every day here in ottawa lots of liberals are not happy they don't feel comfortable in this new

00:21:01.580 carny form or recreation of their of their party and you know nigel and as you know just as well

00:21:07.920 as I do, in politics, the greatest precursor of solidarity is strong polling. But once you start 0.63

00:21:21.540 to dip in the polls, all those people, all those factions that have been biting their tongue

00:21:28.100 suddenly feel, you know, I've got nothing to lose now. We're not doing great under his leadership

00:21:35.040 anymore and then they will become vocal and they will become public and they will become visible.

00:21:40.320 It happens to many governments. It will happen to this one. It's really just a question of when.

00:21:45.840 Well, a fascinating discussion as always with you, Yaroslav. Thank you for coming on the show.

00:21:52.320 My quick assessment is that we're not going to stop questioning Mr. Carney about what he's doing

00:21:59.600 and why he's doing it but maybe we should appreciate that uh it may be not as easy for him

00:22:06.160 as we like to think well it's going to come down to results he's going to have to show results

00:22:11.440 where's the beef nigel where's the beef well wherever you find it it's going to be you're

00:22:16.480 going to be paying a lot more for it than you used to 40 bucks a pound is nothing these days

00:22:21.520 look we won't take it in the grocery direction but thank you for again for coming on the show

00:22:26.960 always great to see you and we'll have you back my pleasure as always bye

00:22:31.920 for the western standard i'm nigel hanaford good night

Western Standard - May 24, 2026

HANNAFORD： Carney, Smith and the people who hold them back

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