Western Standard - August 02, 2026


HANNAFORD： Worse off now, than under Trudeau？


Episode Stats


Length

25 minutes

Words per minute

146.68

Word count

3,705

Sentence count

137

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show
00:00:20.780 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, July the 30th, and for news, it's the dog days of summer.
00:00:27.820 Luckily, to explain things and pick out what matters from the mess and what doesn't,
00:00:32.620 we have with us our old friend Yaroslav Baran, co-founder of the Pendulum Group,
00:00:38.140 a strategic advisor based in Ottawa. He was also a former advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
00:00:46.940 Well, that was years ago. Yaroslav, it's good to see you again.
00:00:50.700 Always good to be here, Nigel. Thanks for the invitation to come back.
00:00:53.980 well i described the mess and you say actually there are some serious issues so what is what is
00:01:02.940 on your mind today well the big the big story around uh ottawa these days around federal
00:01:09.580 politics is canada u.s trade it's been a dominant theme for a year but as you know nigel uh july
00:01:16.860 1st was the deadline for Canada, the United States, and Mexico to extend the North American
00:01:24.960 free trade agreement. July 1st came and went, and the deal was not extended. It's not just that it's
00:01:30.740 not extended yet, but it was a one-day window to extend the deal, and the deal was not extended.
00:01:37.020 So that means that we are technically now on a sunset track for the North American free trade
00:01:45.640 agreement to expire in 10 years now it still could be extended a year from now or two years
00:01:52.140 from now there will be one day windows popping up for each of those 10 years but right now we are
00:01:57.980 officially now on a sunset track for the north american free trade agreement to uh to expire
00:02:04.640 now before we get too excited about that you say it expires in 10 years
00:02:11.100 Mr. Trump has got another two and a half years and a different president may see things very
00:02:17.560 differently. Should we be lighting our hair on fire yet? Well, look, there is a real possibility
00:02:26.020 still that this trilateral trade agreement could be salvaged. But if you're working in some
00:02:33.960 specific sectors, notably things like steel or aluminum or automobiles or lumber, you're already
00:02:40.660 laying your hair on fire because those commodities were not protected by the North American Free
00:02:47.900 Trade Agreement and are currently under significant, significant tariffs.
00:02:52.700 And Prime Minister Carney was elected as the great dealmaker. Arguably, probably everybody
00:02:59.420 would agree that the reason he did win the election last year was that he was seen as the guy
00:03:04.580 who could get a deal with Donald Trump.
00:03:08.060 Right now, we're in a position where the window to cut that deal has come and gone,
00:03:13.820 and there is no deal.
00:03:15.180 What's more is that right now, today,
00:03:19.080 the trade situation is even worse than it was a month ago
00:03:24.420 because we have two new rounds of tariffs that have also been levied.
00:03:28.940 There's a new, a brand new 50% reciprocal equivalent tariff batch that's going to come
00:03:36.380 into effect in about 20 days or so with a whole schedule of Canadian commodities that
00:03:43.940 are going to be whacked with a major tariff.
00:03:48.020 And those tariffs are not going to be sheltered by CUSMA, by the free trade agreement.
00:03:54.340 In addition to that, there's a fresh wave of 10% tariffs for alleged use of forced labor goods in the supply chain.
00:04:07.320 Now, we can quibble about whether or not there's fact behind those allegations from the U.S., but the reality is that we've got two new rounds of tariffs, 10% tariffs and 50% tariffs that didn't exist a month ago.
00:04:20.980 Well, let's just quickly dispose of the matter of the slave labor tariff. First of all,
00:04:27.780 if it is slave labor, 10 percent is not enough. But more to the point, what Canadian exports to
00:04:35.140 the United States might have something in them that was generated under a forced labor regime?
00:04:44.100 Well, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, I would imagine that it would be things like
00:04:49.620 potentially textiles value-added products that are made in canada but using components that have come
00:04:56.020 from other from other countries uh most notably uh east asia and southeast asia
00:05:02.580 um yeah and and and in fairness the 10 uh forced labor tariff did not single out canada it was a
00:05:13.460 it was a a handful of countries that were that were collectively singled out canada uh the
00:05:19.060 government of canada has introduced legislation to strengthen our controls uh to ensure that the
00:05:26.260 forced labor products are not in our supply chain there's been a consultation launched by
00:05:32.420 by foreign affairs uh on on this question as well but you know with with tariffs especially with
00:05:38.580 donald trump the the accusation is made the tariff is levied and then you know you're scrambling to
00:05:45.540 try to demonstrate that the allegations are not in fact correct so that's the 10 tariff the other
00:05:52.260 one the other one is bigger that's the 50 tariff that's the reciprocal equivalent tariffs basically
00:05:58.580 it's it's alleging that canada's discriminating against the us on dairy on vehicles and on
00:06:04.100 alcoholic beverages now again we can quibble about whether those allegations are are are factual or
00:06:10.580 not, but a whole bunch of commodities as of August 19th are now going to face a new 50%,
00:06:18.680 5-0% tariff that will not be sheltered by the Canada-US-Mexico free trade agreement.
00:06:26.060 So that's going to be a really big hit.
00:06:28.180 So is that Mr. Trump laying down an arbitrary barrier so that he's got something to squeeze
00:06:37.820 us with?
00:06:38.320 Yeah, I mean, this appears to be his flexing of muscles against his own Supreme Court and against his own detractors domestically.
00:06:49.180 There have been a number of instances where he's imposed tariffs.
00:06:52.580 Courts have reversed those tariffs, saying that they're unlawful or unconstitutional.
00:06:57.980 And so he tries again through a different mechanism, through a different trade law, using a different section.
00:07:04.420 So he's always one step ahead of the game, ensuring that a tariff wall continues to be erected because he sees that as, I mean, for Canadian governments, historically, free trade or cutting new trade deals is something that you'd wear on your sleeve in going to face the voters.
00:07:28.320 The MAGA movement seems to believe that tariff walls are political capital that will help them into the midterm elections this fall
00:07:39.320 Now, the car industry is starting to look like it's beyond salvage
00:07:46.020 How say you?
00:07:48.820 Well, that's going to be a really difficult one
00:07:51.000 I mean, automobiles are a little bit complicated in that the tariffs applied to Canadian cars only pertain to the non-American components.
00:08:00.820 I mean, you've heard the statistics.
00:08:02.980 A typical car goes back and forth across the border about seven or eight times before it hits the dealership.
00:08:11.220 So every car, basically every car in North America has some Canadian parts, some American parts, some assembly in Canada, some assembly in the States.
00:08:19.480 That's a function of how integrated the supply chain and the manufacturing system is.
00:08:26.480 So there are complicated formulas to determine how much of each vehicle is actually Canadian-made versus American-made.
00:08:34.480 But one way or another, if these tariffs hold, the current tariffs, let alone anything new that might be coming our way,
00:08:43.480 our way if these are are not negotiated away or negotiated down it'd be very difficult to imagine
00:08:50.360 a domestic canadian automobile industry surviving this in the longer term do you have any idea how
00:08:56.840 much canadian auto production has already shrunk since the president started on the war path back
00:09:04.600 in january of last year yeah and i'm not sure that we've got uh credible statistics just yet but we
00:09:11.160 have seen a number of announcements by major auto manufacturers putting a pause on previously
00:09:21.240 announced investments into expanding their Canadian manufacturing operations. So that's
00:09:26.700 usually the first sign that trouble is around the corner. It starts with saying, oh, that big
00:09:33.140 plant, those billions we were planning to invest over the next decade, we're just going to put
00:09:37.760 that on hold for a second. We'll see what the future brings. If that, again, if that doesn't
00:09:42.600 get reversed, then it definitely signals long-term pain and possibly the end of a domestic car
00:09:49.520 manufacturing industry. So let's turn to the Gordie Howe Bridge, Yaroslav. That should have
00:09:57.120 been a very good news story, but it seems to be not so. The best they can do with it from the
00:10:04.380 domestic media point of view, is take note that the Howe family, you know, the descendants of the
00:10:09.680 great Gordie Howe, were the first people to cross it, which was nice. But nobody really wants to
00:10:16.220 talk about the deal Mr. Carney made to get it open. What is that about? Yeah, I mean, the history
00:10:22.640 here, the Windsor-Detroit border crossing is the single busiest border crossing in North America,
00:10:29.320 And I've heard it referred to as the single biggest international trade crossing anywhere
00:10:35.580 in the world.
00:10:36.700 And until now, there's been one bridge that was opened up about 100 years ago in the hands
00:10:43.140 of a private family.
00:10:45.180 This family with this precious asset that generates millions upon millions upon millions
00:10:52.020 of dollars for that family, they've been guarding it.
00:10:55.600 They've been very protectionist over that bridge.
00:10:57.440 they tried to oppose the building of a new bridge under the harper government back in 2012
00:11:03.280 uh a deal was made between canada and the us to build a new bridge we've been discussed for a
00:11:08.800 long time the final deal was that canada would finance the bridge on its own and eventually
00:11:14.560 there would be some uh some some toll sharing between the two countries now just as the bridge
00:11:20.960 was finalized donald trump announced about a bit over a month ago that no he's not going to permit
00:11:27.200 the bridge to be opened. Why? Because that wealthy American family owning the competition
00:11:32.700 had donated a million dollars to a super PAC that backed Donald Trump. In the end, a last minute
00:11:39.940 deal was reached. Mr. Carney announced this while he was actually in your hometown in Calgary at
00:11:46.120 the Stampede. He announced the deal had been reached, a win-win for everybody. The problem is
00:11:51.840 that the devil was in the details, and when the actual text of the deal was publicized,
00:11:58.540 it contradicted what Prime Minister Carney said about the deal. He had said that there'd be very
00:12:05.040 little sharing of tolls because first the tolls would pay for operations of the bridge and
00:12:13.020 financing the debt that went into building the bridge in the first place, but that last part
00:12:18.720 was not correct. It was not factual. I'm not going to impugn motive. I'm not going to suggest that it
00:12:24.400 was a deliberate attempt at deception, but it was a total game changer in terms of the dollars and
00:12:30.800 cents. So the new deal actually starts to share tolls right away without the debt financing of
00:12:40.300 the bridge, the cost of building the bridge being deducted right away. Big difference.
00:12:48.380 And frankly, objectively speaking, the prime minister has had egg on his face. He's been
00:12:52.500 hounded by journalists over this issue for the last couple of weeks saying, why did you deceive?
00:12:57.680 Why were you not truthful about this deal when you first announced it? So in politics, that's
00:13:03.260 the kind of thing we refer to as an unforced error. It was a communications blunder that was
00:13:08.020 completely avoidable. And as recently as today, Nigel, there was a special meeting of the House
00:13:15.700 of Government Operation Committee with opposition MPs calling for an investigation of this deal
00:13:22.080 and the communications around this deal. But the liberals on that committee used their newfound
00:13:27.240 majority to block uh the the proposed investigation well okay um let's be charitable to mr carney
00:13:40.120 and say given what he is up against could anybody have done any better or any different does mr
00:13:50.920 trump have a peculiar dislike for canada's liberal party and the people that elects to lead would
00:13:59.320 it have been different under a conservative government basically when the president says
00:14:05.240 we're going to do things this way that tends to be the way they get done do we have as a country
00:14:12.600 no leverage is there nothing that we have that they want this this is an interesting set of
00:14:19.720 questions and you know i'll try to answer it as dispassionately and as objectively
00:14:24.760 uh as i can from my from my perspective um canada does have leverage and we have used leverage for
00:14:31.400 example we had the digital services tax we had things like requirements for uh for for tech
00:14:39.240 giant streaming companies in the states to pay into uh into a canadian culture fund we have things
00:14:45.480 like the uh f-35 the fighter jet contract that we're still waiting for a final decision from
00:14:53.160 the government of canada on whether it's going to do the full order of the american jets or do maybe
00:14:58.680 a mixed fleet of some american jets and a bunch of swedish jets so there are points of leverage we
00:15:05.880 we also canada dominates internationally on commodities like potash or aluminum for example
00:15:14.200 half more than half the aluminum that the u.s economy uses is imported from canada there's
00:15:20.120 a whole bunch of energy exports from canada to the united states so yes we do have leverage
00:15:26.760 that said there appears to be a particular disdain by donald trump against canada
00:15:35.480 and many analysts are saying that that is because canada is one of the few countries
00:15:41.560 that retaliated when u.s tariffs were were announced and that has tried to use leverage
00:15:48.440 rather than just sort of capitulating and trying to cut cut the best deal we can
00:15:52.760 so as a canadian um as a canadian patriot i'm you know on on the one hand i i have to acknowledge
00:16:01.400 that it's good to see our country um putting the elbows up and retaliating when we ought to
00:16:08.040 retaliate when we're faced with unfair tariffs but objectively other countries that were also
00:16:15.320 facing us tariffs had a much easier road to negotiating uh a less painful deal because
00:16:24.360 they did not take that kind of elbows up approach and they did not retaliate they did not counter
00:16:30.120 with their own tariffs against the united states and they did not try to jam americans by using
00:16:35.480 using the leverage that they had so where does that leave us who knows could somebody else have
00:16:40.440 cut a better deal we can't know what we can't know but there definitely appears to be a particular
00:16:47.480 disdain for canada in the way it's been negotiating with the united states the north american trade
00:16:53.960 agreement as you know has three partners one of them is mexico and the u.s mexico negotiations
00:16:59.560 are going far more smoothly than the u.s canada negotiations because mexico has taken a different
00:17:06.200 approach so the mexicans are more or less so what do you need give it to you yeah they're on their
00:17:12.040 way let's let's i don't think it's fair to say that they're capitulating but they're but they're
00:17:17.480 definitely taking a far less retaliatory approach now mind you you know canada is far more exposed
00:17:26.280 to us tariffs at any other country 76 of our exports go to the united states no other country
00:17:33.880 is that trade exposed to one trading partner at least not to my knowledge at least not to that
00:17:38.200 degree so the stakes are higher for canada than for other countries but um you know we'll see
00:17:46.120 we'll see if the failure to get a deal and for the frankly currently worsening trade situation
00:17:52.360 is going to eventually, in the longer term, translate into a political liability for Mr. Carney,
00:17:59.020 who was elected as the great dealmaker. And, you know, Nigel, just the other day, Angus Reid
00:18:05.820 came out with a poll showing that Canadians' confidence in Prime Minister Carney to secure
00:18:13.360 a good deal for Canada has dropped significantly compared to a few months ago. So Canadians are
00:18:20.060 starting to lose faith that this government can secure a good deal for Canada.
00:18:25.380 Well, you can see why. Now, some of the commodities that you mentioned that we supply,
00:18:31.800 we supply oil, we supply aluminium, we supply potash. Are these sufficiently,
00:18:40.040 is the American demand for that only met by Canada? They could buy elsewhere, perhaps.
00:18:46.840 question then is there something that they want and i'm thinking perhaps of strategic minerals
00:18:53.160 that they can only get from us yeah i mean there is a critical critical mineral race going on right
00:19:00.360 now currently china is the world's biggest exporter of critical minerals um there are
00:19:08.600 uh components that are required for for the future for the contemporary high-tech industry
00:19:13.860 for semiconductors, for microchips that only come from a select number of countries.
00:19:20.020 China is producing and exporting them in spades.
00:19:23.740 Canada is sitting on a mountain of critical minerals.
00:19:26.800 We need to get to them.
00:19:28.260 They're more expensive to extract.
00:19:30.460 They're more expensive to refine.
00:19:32.320 But we've got a lot of them.
00:19:34.080 So there has been a lot of talk over the last decade about a North American integrated critical
00:19:40.140 minerals market.
00:19:40.940 I think that's a good narrative for Canada to bring into trade discussions.
00:19:46.800 It's a good sort of tantalizing theme to try to get the Americans on side because the Americans do continue to see China as the number one geopolitical adversary.
00:19:56.400 So they should be interested in partnerships on critical minerals.
00:20:00.220 You know, that said, it is leverage that right now is a little bit more theoretical than real, because we are not extracting very much volume of critical minerals right now. It's more of a something we can do, rather than something we're doing a lot of right now. And then, you know, other things like aluminum, or actually potash is a great example.
00:20:23.860 The other countries that produce a lot of potash other than Canada are Russia and Belarus. So if we were to try to use potash as leverage, say maybe a boycott of potash exports to the United States to try to flex our muscles, well, all that we would be doing would be facilitating a greater relationship between the US and our geopolitical adversaries.
00:20:53.140 russia and its vassal state belarus because at the end of the day american agricultural producers
00:21:00.760 are going to need fertilizer they're going to get it one way or another so it's it's a little bit
00:21:05.660 precarious to try to use uh leverage even when you do have it okay we're very rapidly running
00:21:11.420 out of time yaroslav which is a shame because i wanted to ask you about so many things
00:21:15.960 However, advice to Mr. Carney.
00:21:18.460 You're in the business of strategic advice.
00:21:21.900 If he would listen to you, what would you tell him?
00:21:26.540 I would probably tell him, okay, first of all, the Gordie Howe thing,
00:21:30.020 totally avoidable.
00:21:32.400 Do not shoot from the hip when you're announcing a new agreement
00:21:36.240 between two countries.
00:21:37.240 Make sure you get it right.
00:21:38.180 Make sure you get it factual.
00:21:41.160 And if you don't get it right the first time, get it right the second time.
00:21:45.820 Don't wait until the sixth or seventh attempt to explain it and then still be caught up by reporters for having not been accurate.
00:21:54.060 So that's one thing.
00:21:55.800 But on the trade side of it, my advice would just be, however possible, try to keep the temperature down.
00:22:03.140 Try to not be pokey in the tone of any kind of a discourse about the U.S. or about the Canada-U.S. negotiation process while still holding as many cards close to your chest as you can.
00:22:22.620 I mean, the fighter jet procurement decision is one of the best levers that we have.
00:22:27.400 I'm not sure I'd be broadcasting it as prime minister.
00:22:29.960 Oh, you better give us a good trade deal
00:22:31.600 or we're going to take our multi-multi-billion dollar 0.92
00:22:35.060 fighter jet deal somewhere else.
00:22:36.800 But don't play that card until you have to
00:22:41.520 because there's been, I think, some fair criticism so far
00:22:45.180 that on a number of issues where we did have leverage,
00:22:48.160 we gave it away just to keep the negotiations going
00:22:52.680 and didn't get anything in return.
00:22:54.620 And that's ultimately not a very good look.
00:22:56.420 It does not come across as you being, you know, the dealmaker negotiator that everybody thought you would be.
00:23:04.020 I noticed you didn't tell them to drop supply management.
00:23:08.260 Well, that would be a really thorny issue that could explode the detente that we have right now between our provincial premiers.
00:23:19.280 We've got significant forces in Canada calling for an end to supply management and dairy and others saying over my dead body.
00:23:26.420 we probably don't need those kinds of internal battles right now when we're trying to afford
00:23:31.060 solidaries so that's a sticky one it really is sticky you're probably right but cheaper cheese
00:23:36.020 would be good but you know what guys if you can give me 10 more seconds there are things we can
00:23:42.660 do on supply management or on access to dairy to the dairy market without tearing up the whole
00:23:49.460 system canada recently uh cut a deal with with new zealand which also had beefs without beefs
00:23:56.500 which also had complaints uh about about supply management and through some creative re-evaluation
00:24:03.780 of who is entitled to uh to quota uh we were able to satisfy new zealand without having to completely
00:24:12.500 re-engineer or re-orchestrate or tear up our supply management system so there is some
00:24:17.620 maneuverability in negotiating while still keeping supply management in place that does
00:24:24.040 allow our trade partners to feel that they're getting a better, fairer access to the Canadian
00:24:30.080 market. Okay. Well, let's hope they use that. Ladies and gentlemen, Yaroslav Baran, strategic
00:24:37.600 advisor to prime ministers and aspiring prime ministers as well, talking to us from Ottawa
00:24:43.540 about the trade mess.
00:24:45.060 Thank you, Yaroslav.
00:24:46.400 It is such a pleasure to have your perspective.
00:24:49.480 Always a pleasure, Nigel.
00:24:50.680 Looking forward to coming back soon.
00:24:52.940 And you will.
00:24:54.580 Ladies and gentlemen, for the Western Standard,
00:24:56.700 I'm Nigel Hannaford.
00:25:13.540 You