Western Standard - HANNAFORD： Immigration, inflation and Canada's fading Carney romance

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.

00:00:21.600 It is Thursday, September the 4th. In less than two weeks, Parliament resumes after a recess of

00:00:27.600 three months. But Canada has not been without a government for all that time. It has just been

00:00:34.080 without a supervised government, and importantly, without a budget. What has been going on? Should

00:00:40.560 we be worried? With me tonight, to talk about these things is Ginny Roth. She's a partner at

00:00:46.640 Crestview Strategies, a former communications director for the Conservative Party of Canada,

00:00:52.400 and a long-time Polyerve surrogate. Good evening, Ginny. Good evening, Nigel. Nice to be here.

00:00:58.800 Good to see you again. Thanks for coming back. Ginny, what's the top of mind for Pierre Polyerve when

00:01:04.080 the House resumes on September the 15th? Would it be temporary foreign workers?

00:01:08.800 I think that's up there. If you look at the latest polling, not on popularity of the leaders,

00:01:17.200 but on the issues. This issue of Donald Trump and the Canada-US trade relationship

00:01:23.600 is starting to fall. It's just not as salient as it was during our general election campaign.

00:01:31.040 Cost of living is still a huge driver of concern and anxiety for people. Immigration is part of that. 1.00

00:01:39.040 Crime remains a challenging issue for people. And housing, continued shortage of housing, which also

00:01:45.040 is tied to the immigration issue. So I think part of the reason you saw Polyev talking about temporary

00:01:49.760 foreign workers today is he wants to point out that while the Kearney government has curtailed

00:01:55.680 immigration on some fronts in some ways, they continue to pursue programs that bring thousands

00:02:02.640 of newcomers into the country at a time when we have a shortage of supply of things. We have a shortage 1.00

00:02:08.800 of supply of jobs. We have a shortage of supply of housing. We have a shortage of supply of healthcare.

00:02:14.800 And I think a lot of Canadians now think that's because we have just brought in too many people

00:02:18.240 for the amount of things that we have. You see youth unemployment really quite high, concerningly high.

00:02:24.240 And so he's talking about temporary foreign workers to sort of say, I've got real solutions 0.99

00:02:28.800 to these problems. And Prime Minister Carney doesn't.

00:02:31.360 Now, Jenny, obviously, you have better insights into what Mr. Polyev thinks than what Mr. Carney

00:02:38.000 thinks by the nature of your past positions. Nevertheless, can you make any sense of what

00:02:43.520 the Prime Minister has done when he's promised to cut back on immigration? And apparently,

00:02:48.080 it proceeds apace and may even be increasing.

00:02:50.080 So to give the government some credit, the levels that they've set are quite a bit lower than the

00:02:58.000 levels of the previous government for new permanent residents, for all sorts of categories across the

00:03:04.080 immigration plan. But the only reason that they're lower is because they were so, so, so high.

00:03:10.720 They were generationally high. The challenge is, one, actually sticking to those levels is a challenge.

00:03:18.400 So they're already tracking to be above the levels that they've set for this year, which is concerning.

00:03:24.160 And the people that were brought in at the peak of the deluge are still here.

00:03:30.960 The people who have overstayed their visas are generally not being deported.

00:03:35.360 We don't, it's very difficult to do that.

00:03:38.000 So there's a bit of, you can't get the toothpaste back into the tube,

00:03:41.360 which I think is why you see Polyev calling for the flat population for a number of years

00:03:46.320 until we can get the supply and demand dynamics right again.

00:03:50.000 And even though Carney sort of pulled back a bit from Trudeau era immigration,

00:03:54.800 you can tell he doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to take further measures.

00:03:58.480 And I think that's because he's so close to corporate Canada

00:04:01.440 and so many big employers just like having this constant influx of labor available to them.

00:04:07.360 And I don't think Carney wants to be offside of that. I think he's close to corporate Canada.

00:04:10.800 I think he's sympathetic to their wants and their needs.

00:04:13.360 And he thinks an economy needs lots of new labor. That puts him against public opinion.

00:04:18.560 Public opinion is saying too much, too far. You have to pull it way back.

00:04:24.400 And while he may think that Carney's pulled it back a little bit,

00:04:26.720 they don't think he's pulled it back enough.

00:04:29.440 Well, that's certainly the opinion of most people by the sounds of the polls

00:04:32.800 and by the sounds of the news stories. The fact of all this immigration has been to depress wages 0.93

00:04:38.560 and actually to make it very difficult for people who've been here for years to get work.

00:04:43.760 But you have to give Mr. Carney, I think, the benefit of the doubt for about another two weeks,

00:04:49.200 which is when Parliament comes back. Although he was an advisor to Mr. Trudeau,

00:04:55.440 I get the sense that when he finally got into government, it was a little bit like parents

00:05:01.040 coming home and finding that the teenagers had a party while they were away for the weekend.

00:05:06.800 A total mess. What do you think? Should we give Mr. Carney a break for just taking over from Mr. Trudeau?

00:05:17.040 I think you're right that part of what Mark Carney has done successfully is he's taken some middle-of-the-road

00:05:23.200 common sense positions that Justin Trudeau refused to take, whether it was canceling the carbon tax or

00:05:28.960 suggesting that we should continue to develop oil and gas in this country. Just some basic things that

00:05:38.960 Trudeau was offside on. He's taken those up and said, yes, I'm onside with that. And that has made

00:05:44.880 people think that he is reasonable, moderate, etc. But I don't think that he's gone far enough. And the

00:05:52.800 challenge is he's banking on the fact that expectations were so low after Trudeau that even

00:05:58.160 the slightest improvement, you know, putting your shoes on the right feet looks like the height of

00:06:03.520 competence. And I think Canadians for a while have been happy to see that. But I think that will wear

00:06:09.680 thin quickly. You know, the Canada-US issue is dropping in salience, but it is still important for a lot of

00:06:14.880 people. And for those people, they believe that Mark Carney promised them that he would solve it. And that really is

00:06:20.320 what he ran the election on. He said he was the guy to deal with Trump. Well, we have no deal. Canada remains

00:06:27.200 heavily tariffed. We're about to enter the renegotiation of KUSMA, our most important trade agreement and

00:06:34.480 terms of the Americans do not seem like they're good. Things do not seem to be going well. And so while Carney, I

00:06:40.000 think has a bit of a honeymoon, because his demeanor, the sort of vibe he gives off, gives people a feeling of

00:06:47.280 competence and calm. I think that's starting to wear thin. And you're right that when Parliament comes

00:06:54.640 screaming back in a couple of weeks, I think Paliyev is going to spend a lot of his time trying

00:06:59.280 to lay that bare for Canadians and make it clear to them that progress has not been made.

00:07:02.880 Well, I see that he's laying down a narrative now that this will be an austerity budget.

00:07:08.320 Obviously, he is still committed to delivering a budget in the fall, but it's going to be a tough

00:07:16.880 one. So how tough do you think it could be? I mean, I think that's sort of hilarious because

00:07:23.920 it's not going to be an austerity budget. He's taken all these areas off the table. So

00:07:28.560 he's done this trick where he's going to separate operating and programmatic spending from capital

00:07:33.920 spending, as he calls it. But he's considering capital to be anything that's deemed to be an

00:07:38.960 investment into the future. So any kind of infrastructure, I think he's going to include

00:07:43.040 sort of social infrastructure in that. He's also said he's not going to mess with transfers to the

00:07:47.840 provinces or social programs. So dental, childcare, all these huge new multi-billion dollar programs are,

00:07:55.440 I don't think, being touched. So that really only leaves him with sort of like narrow ministerial

00:08:01.120 program spending. And yes, he's talked a big game about cutting back there, but I think ultimately

00:08:06.640 that's because he'll settle for less. And I think what he knows is that the public right now is not

00:08:11.840 terribly sensitive to big deficits. They will become sensitive to those big deficits as they add to the

00:08:17.520 debt. And eventually we have bond rating agencies expressing great concern with the size of our debt

00:08:26.160 and the cost of servicing it. But for now, because we have decent fundamentals, he can sort of take

00:08:32.480 advantage of that. He could just push off the cost of that to future generations. And I think that's what

00:08:37.360 we'll see. I think you'll see historically high deficit with tons of new spending, some of it on defense,

00:08:45.120 but a lot of it in social programs, a lot of it in infrastructure. And he will say, this is what we need,

00:08:50.640 this is what people wanted. They wanted more defense spending. They wanted more infrastructure spending

00:08:54.720 because people did, I think, want more major projects built. People in Western Canada want to

00:09:00.320 be able to get the product that they sit on to market. I just think that they wanted the private

00:09:06.560 sector to do that. They wanted government to get out of the way. Curry's interpretation seems to be that

00:09:11.920 government's going to go to the table with taxpayer money to get this done. And that's a different

00:09:16.480 that's a different take. And it's going to lead to massive, massive deficits.

00:09:22.800 We can't keep running deficits forever.

00:09:26.080 True. True.

00:09:27.440 True. When does this actually hit the wall?

00:09:33.600 I mean, we saw this. We saw the room that, ultimately, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin had

00:09:40.160 in the 1990s. And then the premiers, in the years following, had to, the political room,

00:09:45.520 they had to cut back on spending. That was because things got so bad that the public understood it was

00:09:51.840 necessary and that this sort of tough medicine was actually what they wanted from elected officials. 0.98

00:09:56.160 I just don't think we're there yet, sadly. I wish we were because it would be easier to

00:09:59.760 deal with it now than it will be whenever this time comes. I think a lot of it comes down to

00:10:05.120 debt to GDP ratio and other markers of the extent to which our economy can handle that level of debt

00:10:11.200 servicing. There is some concern, like you see some initial concern, for instance, in BC, the credit

00:10:17.280 rating agencies are starting to express real concern with the size of their debt and deficit.

00:10:22.400 That will happen eventually at the federal level. It's just that I think Mark Carney's view is,

00:10:27.440 it's not happening to me this year, so I'll get away with what I can get away with.

00:10:32.400 I worry that the chaos that he has inherited gives him an excuse for just about anything that he wants

00:10:40.080 to do. Does the Conservative Party leadership have anxieties that things will just be taken to a

00:10:49.440 different level of chaos and irresponsibility that, frankly, we can never recover from?

00:10:57.840 I think that what happened in the election that helped get Carney elected was there were sort of,

00:11:03.360 I don't want to oversimplify, but there were sort of two types of people. There were people who are in

00:11:07.680 a precarious state due to the challenges related to cost of living. They either couldn't afford to buy

00:11:13.680 a home or if they did have a home, their mortgage was taking up a huge percentage of their take-home pay.

00:11:18.880 In some cases, people were struggling to get food, to fill their car with gas, etc. They were living

00:11:24.000 a life where Canada was just not delivering for them, where they felt like their children would be

00:11:28.800 worse off than they were, that they were worse off than their parents were. And those people voted for

00:11:33.280 Pierre Paliyev and the Conservatives. And there were a lot of them, don't forget. I mean, Paliyev did

00:11:38.160 quite well by historical standards in terms of the size of his voting coalition. There were also a number

00:11:43.200 of people, mostly older, mostly in homes that were bought and paid for, with stocks that fared well in

00:11:51.520 an inflationary environment, who were worried about one thing and one thing only, and that was their

00:11:57.360 distaste for Donald Trump. And those people spent a lot of time watching CNN, watching this man they

00:12:03.680 didn't like at all, and wanting a prime minister who was going to share their distaste for Donald Trump.

00:12:10.480 And those voters voted for Mark Carney. I think those, many of those voters cared about Donald Trump and

00:12:16.880 they also wanted someone they felt was like serious and competent, could do geopolitics. So if those issues remain

00:12:24.560 pressing, and the world seems chaotic from that perspective, that will help Carney, because he is

00:12:29.920 perceived to be branded as someone who can deal with that. If, however, the the microeconomic issues

00:12:36.480 of domestic economic policy become problematic, cost of living gets worse, inflation maybe goes up in

00:12:43.760 some key categories, or worst of all, I think for a government, unemployment starts to really climb,

00:12:49.200 because the economy softens. I think Carney will try to blame that on Trump, because that allows him to

00:12:54.080 then talk about Trump again. But I don't know that Canadians are going to totally buy it. At a certain

00:12:58.960 point, they're going to say, Okay, but what's your plan to fix the economy? You seem to be doing a lot

00:13:03.680 of what the last guy did. And, and I think Pierre Polyev's chance is really to say, I would treat our

00:13:08.320 economy differently. I would get government out of the way, I would deregulate, I would reduce costs,

00:13:16.000 I would lower taxes, and say to Canadians, like, that's how we fix this problem we're in. And so it depends

00:13:22.880 what kind of chaos you're talking about, I guess. And that I think will determine who can be successful.

00:13:28.000 All right. Well, let's move on. Let's talk about Mr. Polyev. He's won his election handily. He's,

00:13:36.320 he must be in good spirits as he heads back to, to Ottawa. What do you think, say,

00:13:43.280 what's it going to be like? Should we all be tuning into question period on the, on the second day of the

00:13:49.920 new parliament? I mean, I think parliament is an area of strength for Mr. Polyev. He likes to debate.

00:13:56.240 He likes the cut and thrust of debate. He likes to put polls and arguments show where his opponents

00:14:02.800 are weak. And question period is the forum for that. And it's important. Canadians, you know,

00:14:09.200 see clips of question period, it, it trickles through into the news that they consume. But it's not

00:14:15.200 everything. I think Polyev needs to keep that in mind. A lot of why he was successful over the last

00:14:21.200 couple of years as he built his popularity, popularity and toward the country was meeting

00:14:27.520 Canadians where they were. He would host rallies, he would hold round tables, he would go into

00:14:32.240 communities and meet with people. And he wouldn't just talk to them, he would also listen. And that

00:14:37.280 gave him this incredible ability to see where problems were arising for people in the moment. All of this

00:14:44.240 was happening at the same time as Justin Trudeau was very stuck in his Ottawa bubble. He just seemed

00:14:49.200 more and more out of touch with regular people. You know, Chrystia Freeland was telling people that

00:14:53.440 they should cancel their Disney Plus subscription if they were suffering from inflation. I think Kearney

00:15:02.400 risks suffering from the same problem. I don't think Mark Kearney likes meeting with regular

00:15:06.480 Canadians all that much. I think he'd rather be touring European capitals or chairing cabinet. And

00:15:14.000 I think that's a huge advantage for Polyev. If he can, yes, handle question period,

00:15:18.960 but also get out there and keep meeting with Canadians, he will get the forefront of where

00:15:24.080 they're suffering. And he can then bring their problems to Parliament Hill and show where the

00:15:28.320 government is totally falling short.

00:15:30.400 Well, certainly he has. He's demonstrated the talent for doing that. Mr. Kearney seems to have,

00:15:36.080 as you say, he's developed a great talent for charming foreign leaders. Is that actually very helpful for

00:15:41.600 him? Does that play well with Canadians?

00:15:42.960 I think it has over the last six to eight months. Donald Trump, I think, really made Canadians care

00:15:52.240 about geopolitics again in a way that they hadn't for a long time because of the urgency of inflation

00:15:58.800 and the challenges of their economy. That might remain important to people or it might not.

00:16:04.880 If they're losing their jobs or cost of living is getting worse, I think, you know, whether

00:16:10.560 Mark Kearney gets along with Emmanuel Macron is just not going to be as important to them.

00:16:15.440 I think not. I mean, factually, you could make the case that when leaders get too popular overseas,

00:16:21.680 then often there's a, it doesn't play so well at home.

00:16:26.000 Uh, there are.

00:16:28.240 Indeed. And, and especially when things are bad at home, you know, when Justin Trudeau

00:16:32.880 was first elected and he was on the cover of Vogue, he was beloved by world leaders. He was kind

00:16:38.960 of a global celebrity. Canada was doing really well at that point. People were excited to legalize

00:16:45.760 marijuana and see Canada have a handsome prime minister. When inflation's up or unemployment's

00:16:53.520 up, I just think those are lower priorities. Yes. Well, that's, that's kind of the way,

00:16:58.960 that's what I thought you would probably say, but it does bear on the, who do you want to be popular

00:17:03.120 with? And that comes up to the leadership review, which is what in January of next year?

00:17:09.200 It is. Yeah. Late January in Calgary. Um, you know, now that, uh, Mr. Polly, I grew up in,

00:17:15.760 Alberta and Calgary. And now that he's an MP from the greater region, I think it makes sense for them

00:17:21.440 to host the convention there. And I think the leadership is something that the party and the

00:17:26.640 leader need to focus on, make sure that they're prepared for, make sure that he's talking to party

00:17:31.680 members a lot over the coming weeks. But I also think it's fairly safe territory for him. Um, don't

00:17:38.720 forget how much he won the leadership race by, uh, and when it very handily was not a close race,

00:17:44.720 really at all. And that's because I think the party membership really likes him. He just,

00:17:49.120 he's in sort of inherently popular with the party membership. He can't take it for granted, but if

00:17:54.240 he is sort of himself and follows his instincts and pursues, granted the same principles that have

00:17:59.840 been driving him since he was 18 years old, I think he will fail well in that review.

00:18:04.560 Well, let's just push that a little further, Junie. I mean, I, I, it's not that I don't understand what

00:18:10.880 you're saying, but the narrative that's been pushed out by the other side is that, well, you know,

00:18:18.080 people don't really like Mr. Poliarvia. There were some young men who were impressed when he

00:18:22.960 took apart a reporter or two, and maybe those reporters deserve to come up. But he did it too

00:18:28.720 much and he seemed to enjoy it too much. And he's really not a very nice guy. So, uh, I'm going to vote

00:18:35.440 for that nice Mr. Carney who seemed so quietly reassuring. And of course, that's what in fact

00:18:39.920 did happen. There was a demographic that just outright, um, rejected, uh, uh, Mr. Poliarvia,

00:18:46.720 even as there was a whole unexpected, one of young blue collar, uh, working class guys who said,

00:18:51.760 Hey, this is the guy. So look, what about it? Is his likability something that he has to

00:19:00.640 deal with? Or, uh, do we just carry on? Um, I think if you focus on likability, personality looks

00:19:10.960 too much, you risk losing what, uh, what, what made you appeal to people in the first place.

00:19:18.240 The reason voters vote for Poliarvia is because of the issues and because he seems like the kind of

00:19:23.280 fighter who will fix those issues for them. And I think that's a great true north for him. He should

00:19:29.200 stick to the issues that, um, speak to people because they're hurting and to show and show them

00:19:34.960 that they, that he's sort of the fighter for them. Now, could he do that in a way that shows that he

00:19:40.320 is both a fighter who can, you know, tear apart a journalist with silly questions, um, and also that

00:19:46.720 he is a good guy? Uh, I think he can. I mean, it's interesting, but people think he's not, not likable.

00:19:54.240 Um, there are a couple, uh, subject matters that he really can't even talk about without,

00:19:58.960 without crying, without breaking out in, um, getting emotional. And I think because he's so

00:20:05.840 sort of laser focused on getting his message out, I don't know that he likes that when that happens.

00:20:11.360 Um, you know, it happened during the English language debate. It happened on a podcast episode

00:20:15.760 he recorded during the campaign. Personally, I think it's great when it happens because Canadians 1.00

00:20:20.960 get a little small glimpse into the sort of soft side of him. The, the part of him that is a dad

00:20:27.040 and a husband and, uh, who really is doing this for the right reasons. He's doing it because he

00:20:34.480 cares. And because when he travels the country, he needs people who are suffering and he wants to try

00:20:39.040 to find a way to help them. And I think that, that piece, the sort of what motives, the why,

00:20:43.600 why are you doing this? Not just what are you going to do for me, but why are you doing it at all?

00:20:47.440 That connects with people in a different way. Uh, and with different voters who, and I think there are

00:20:52.080 voters who need to see that side of him so that when they're making a decision, they say maybe

00:20:56.640 they like him on the issues, but, but Mark Carney gives him, gives them some comfort, um, on the

00:21:02.000 personality traits front. I think there's a way for Polyev to give people that comfort on the

00:21:06.400 personality traits from front that is authentic to who he is. And that sticks to the core issues that

00:21:11.680 work for him, like immigration, crime, cost of living. Um, and I, I hope to see more of it. I think we will. 0.98

00:21:16.960 I'm going to last question is going to be in a degree disagree one. I'm going to put words in

00:21:24.080 your mouth. I'm going to say that the worst thing, the worst that things get for Canadians as a

00:21:29.920 consequence of the, the economy that the liberals have produced over 10 years and Mr. Carney's inability

00:21:36.240 to do anything substantive about it, the worst things get for Canadians, the better they get for

00:21:42.480 Mr. Polyev. Agree or disagree? Sadly, I think I agree with that.

00:21:47.040 Um, it's unfortunate, but it's the life of an opposition leader.

00:21:49.520 Mark Carney It's a pity it couldn't be won on the grounds of philosophy and that we all have to

00:21:55.200 suffer so much. All right, Jenny, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And I do thank you for

00:21:59.520 coming on the show at very short notice. Perhaps we'll talk to you again after the, after Parliament

00:22:05.680 resumes. Thank you. For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

00:22:16.640 Thank you.

00:22:17.520 Thank you.

Western Standard - September 10, 2025

HANNAFORD： Immigration, inflation and Canada's fading Carney romance

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