In this episode, author and political economist Brian Crowley joins me to talk about how Canadians should think about who they would like to see become the next president of the United States. He is founder of the McDonnell-Laurier Institute and the Centre for North American Prosperity and Security, a Washington-based think tank.
00:00:00.000Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show
00:00:21.140of the Western Standard. In just 15 days, the U.S. makes its choice between Trump Vance and
00:00:27.460Harris Walsh to lead the republic for the next four years. With me today to talk about how
00:00:33.000Canadians should think about who they prefer as president is author and political economist Brian
00:00:40.020Lee Crowley. Brian is founder of Ottawa's leading think tank the McDonnell Laurier Institute and
00:00:45.800also of the Washington-based Center for North American Prosperity and Security. Good to have
00:00:52.520you back Brian. Nigel it's always great to be with you thank you. Thank you for coming.
00:00:56.980So, Brian, two presidential candidates with very different ideas, two vice presidential candidates with very different skills and I think characters.
00:01:07.220The outcome is hugely important to us, but we have no say in it.
00:01:11.540How do you think Canadians should think about who they prefer as president of the United States?
00:01:18.820Well, I think this is a very important question, Nigel.
00:01:21.840And I have noticed over the years that Canadians have strong preferences often about who they want to see win American elections.
00:01:30.520And yet I don't think the Canadians think very carefully about how they make their choices in the sense that my reading of Canadians is they like to,0.89
00:01:42.480if they had a vote, they think they would like to vote for people who would bring in policies that kind of look like Canada in the United States.
00:01:50.580But, you know, these domestic policy choices are not what is going to affect Canada.
00:01:57.380I always think that the most important thing is to think about how an American administration will affect the relationship with Canada.
00:02:05.220Because we are, you know, our two societies are so deeply intertwined, especially from an economic point of view.
00:02:11.160And so, you know, whether or not Americans have, you know, a health care system like Canada's or a welfare system like Canada's is kind of really irrelevant to Canada.
00:02:21.400And I think Canadians would benefit from thinking, you know, more analytically about how an American president would behave towards Canada rather than how, you know, the administration would affect domestic American politics.
00:02:41.660Well, Brian, given that we can't actually vote, I suppose some people might say, well, what does it matter what we think?
00:02:48.480The Americans will do what the Americans are going to do.0.97
00:02:50.800Yeah. Which leads me to think, well, all right, we're talking about it. So it does matter what can Canadians and obviously we're talking about the government of Canada. How can the government of Canada proceed in a way to that does matter and that will advance Canada's interests in the United States?
00:03:13.720Well, I've been thinking about this quite a lot, Nigel, because as you mentioned, my institute has opened a Washington office, the Center for North American Prosperity and Security.
00:03:24.000And we did so because we think that the Canada-U.S. relationship is far and away the most important relationship Canada has.
00:03:34.280And I did this, I opened this office in part because I think Canada is terribly, badly represented in Washington.
00:03:43.040And I think this because, I think the whole philosophy on which our representation is based,
00:03:48.820and I'm not just talking about the embassy, although the embassy is obviously, you know,
00:03:53.460right at the forefront of representing Canada in Washington.
00:03:57.020I'm thinking about, you know, the business sector and provincial governments.
00:04:02.840Many, many people are represented in Washington.
00:04:06.120But, you know, I think the whole philosophy behind it, in my experience, has been, you know,
00:04:13.040So don't say anything that will upset the Americans. If there are unpleasant truths about our relationship, and I'll get to what some of those are in a minute, if there are unpleasant truths about the relationship, whatever you do, don't talk to the Americans about them.
00:04:27.140Try and pretend they don't exist and always lead with we're your best friends approach, you know, and say somehow because of our historic relationship, you owe us something.
00:04:41.360You, the Americans, owe us Canadians something.
00:06:44.980him? Well, I mean, the first thing to remember is that no matter what job the president gives the
00:06:52.200vice president, the president is the boss and nothing will be done that doesn't get the approval
00:06:59.400of the president. So while the vice president, if given certain kinds of jobs, can obviously
00:07:07.240put their stamp on it, they can only do so within the constraints of what they think is acceptable
00:07:12.180to the president uh we know for example that uh kamala harris was you know the so-called border0.99
00:07:19.060czar she certainly never rejected that title while she was vice president uh under joe biden uh even0.89
00:07:26.180though she wants to distance herself from it now uh uh and i i think one of the reasons she was
00:07:32.740completely ineffective in that role is because joe biden didn't want her to be effective he wanted0.81
00:07:38.180to distance himself from you know a sort of militant stance on the border which people
00:07:44.020associated with with donald trump so all of that said you know jd vance he knows something about
00:07:51.940canada you probably know that his roommate at yale is now a conservative member of parliament
00:07:57.620here in ottawa same names brian jamil giovanni okay and they know each other very well they're
00:08:07.460good friends um uh so uh you know jd vance has a a pipeline uh into canada uh he i i think he's a
00:08:18.820very smart guy uh i think he would uh uh you know be a lot more thoughtful in terms of uh how he
00:08:28.180would perhaps manage the relationship than trump was uh you know i don't think trump is a is a
00:08:34.580terribly thoughtful guy but he is a national conservative which means that JD Vance is
00:08:48.020skeptical about free trade and I think he's also pretty strong on national security issues
00:08:57.140and Canada presents a very weak front to the Americans these days on national security files
00:09:04.580J.D. Vance would be very much on board with Trump's view that, you know, there are free riders in NATO, which Canada is probably the worst example.
00:09:19.780And since NATO involves a commitment by America to defend its allies in NATO, they want those allies to meet the promises that NATO members are supposed to meet.
00:09:35.980And Canada has signally failed in this regard.
00:09:38.900These are all reasons why Canada's stock is extremely low in Washington and why it's going to be terribly important.
00:09:49.120And whoever is in charge of the Canada file in Washington, that we'd be able to show up and say, assuming that there's a Trump administration, that we'd be able to show up and say, look, for the for the past couple of decades under both conservative and liberal governments in Ottawa, we have we have fumbled the ball.
00:10:09.700And we're here to tell you how we're going to fix that.
00:10:13.280And once we've done that, and once we put proof on the table,
00:10:15.900it's not, you know, pretty words aren't going to do it anymore, Nigel.
00:10:19.900Once we've done that, then we can have conversations with Americans
00:10:24.200about things that we might need, like, say, renewal of CUSMA,
00:10:28.820the trade agreement between Canada and the United States and Mexico.
00:10:31.420All right, now let's talk about putative President Harris.
00:10:37.020she has obviously had very little to say about her record as vice president for rather obvious
00:10:44.220reasons um so do we really know anything about her other than that she was born in middle
00:10:53.540into the middle class well we know very little about her and uh i think the campaign has
00:11:03.540struggled very hard to keep us from knowing much about her and for you know all the democrats
00:11:12.500scorn heaped on trump over his alleged anti-democratic tendencies i i think that's a bit
00:11:20.740rich coming from a party that has uh through internal party machinations made kamala harris1.00
00:11:28.660the party's nominee uh when she has not uh in either uh the previous election or this election
00:11:36.820even won a single delegate in a primary vote in any state uh so she i mean part of the the strength
00:11:45.460of the american system i think is their primary system which is uh is designed to force candidates
00:11:52.820to reveal themselves as much as possible to voters because there are so many contests that
00:11:58.260they have to participate in so many occasions in which they have to make themselves available to
00:12:02.900the public uh so many occasions in which they have to be uh you know subjected to grilling
00:12:08.260by the media and so on uh and she has um in this election of course avoided that as much as she1.00
00:12:17.460could and in the previous election when she ran uh uh in some of the primaries before dropping out
00:12:23.780um uh her performance was dismal and attracted no support so uh i i i think that this is
00:12:34.100that this has been a bit of a coup and i don't mean that in a positive sense a a bit of a coup
00:12:39.620by the leadership of the uh of the democrats who saw the the democratic campaign failing because
00:12:46.100joe biden's uh capacities were so obviously diminished uh and they just simply slipped
00:12:54.100kamala harris in to represent the democrats in the election without any of the scrutiny that
00:13:02.260major party candidates would normally have to undergo in in the united states and i i think that
00:13:08.580there's a bit of buyer's remorse right now in the in the democratic party because what is being
00:13:13.940revealed about her character and her abilities is not looking too good which of the debates or
00:13:23.700interviews featuring kamala harris have you have have you seen brian there was one with
00:13:31.380brit bear on fox recently there was another one with colbert and you know and one with
00:13:37.860oprah winfrey that obviously these are very lightweight interviews not the not the fox news
00:13:42.660one but uh well i i i have to admit uh nigel that i i actually find most of these political debates
00:13:50.740to be extremely painful i tend to watch extracts uh uh which uh people who i trust post because
00:14:00.180they feel they're uh illustrative of the nature of the debate uh and so i feel i've i've seen quite
00:14:07.220a lot of the um of the debates but not uh i haven't sat through you know uh the the full
00:14:14.900debate in any case because so is there any one of those clips that you would say when i saw that
00:14:22.260that's when i knew well you know i thought i thought uh in the fox news interview when
00:14:30.900kamala harris was talking about you know donald trump's fitness to be president
00:14:37.220And, you know, she made some, I think, some fair points about his mental acuity and so on.
00:14:47.360And then the interviewer said, well, he basically said, since you've raised this,
00:14:53.400when did you first realize that Joe Biden's faculties were diminished?
00:15:01.700And she was clearly stumped by this question.
00:15:06.400She was like a deer in the headlights.
00:15:08.700And yet, you know, she was there as the vice president for Joe Biden during the four years he was supposed to be governing the United States.
00:15:20.040And she clearly knew, as so many Democrats knew, and eventually the public knew, that Joe Biden wasn't up to being president.
00:15:30.340And she conspired with a lot of people to hide this from the American public.1.00
00:15:35.980And I thought that was a telling moment.
00:15:40.060And one of the things that it prompts you to consider is when Mr. Biden was not making all the decisions and President Harris, Vice President Harris doesn't seem like she was on top of her files either.
00:15:56.300who was actually directing policy and making decisions in the White House
00:16:03.440that were then rubber-stamped as coming from the Oval Office.
00:16:17.620But, you know, I have to say it's based on impressions and extrapolations and deductions rather than direct evidence.
00:16:28.740I have to say that I think that former President Obama was the guy who had the most influence over the people who were essentially running the administration in the mental absence of Joe Biden.
00:16:52.680Well, and if Kamala Harris wins, I suspect there will be a fourth.
00:16:58.740Yes. That's actually a frightening thought, not only because of what it means in practical terms, but that the system itself could be manipulated in that way.
00:17:08.760Brian, it's less than three weeks to the election. We're almost out of time here, but I should ask you this.
00:17:15.980If you were a betting man, in fact, would you even take a bet on the outcome of this election?
00:17:23.680yes i mean it's when i i i am willing to bet and i'm going to tell you in a second what my bet is
00:17:32.380okay but i'm going to say uh first of all that um it's only a balance of probability
00:17:39.760uh there are many many factors that will go into this and it is so close
00:17:44.360that uh you know handfuls of votes in a in a few states will affect the outcome in a in a very
00:17:52.300powerful way. So all that said, if I was a betting man, I would say that Trump has the advantage
00:18:02.320going into the election. If you follow these things, for example, Real Clear Politics, which
00:18:09.180I have a lot of time for, a website in Washington, Real Clear Politics runs a very authoritative
00:18:19.140uh sort of summary of the polls and so on and uh their view is that uh uh trump's going to win by
00:18:26.500about 40 votes in the electoral college roughly speaking uh which is a actually a fairly decisive
00:18:34.180uh margin of victory and that's in spite of the fact by the way that uh harris will almost
00:18:39.060certainly win the popular vote but by a very tiny margin and um because of the way the electoral
00:18:44.900college works uh that will result in a in a trump victory uh perfectly in order in terms of the
00:18:52.980american constitutional order uh uh so if you're asking me to put my 10 bucks down
00:18:59.820it would be on uh it would be on trump to win but uh you know it could very easily go the other way
00:19:08.200well that's the fact that's about as clear as i could have asked for thank you very much brian
00:19:14.120Brian it's always a pleasure to have you on the show