Western Standard - 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.

00:00:21.800 It is Thursday, September the 4th.

00:00:23.860 In less than two weeks, Parliament resumes after a recess of three months,

00:00:29.120 But Canada has not been without a government for all that time.

00:00:33.380 It has just been without a supervised government and, importantly, without a budget.

00:00:39.140 What has been going on? Should we be worried?

00:00:42.040 With me tonight to talk about these things is Ginny Roth.

00:00:45.540 She's a partner at Crestview Strategies, a former communications director for the Conservative Party of Canada and a long-time poly-ev surrogate.

00:00:54.960 Good evening, Ginny.

00:00:56.500 Good evening, Nigel. Nice to be here.

00:00:58.240 Good to see you again. Thanks for coming back. Jenny, what's the top of mind for Pierre Poirier when 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, but on the issues, this issue of Donald Trump and the Canada-U.S. trade relationship is starting to fall. It's just not as salient as it was during our general election campaign.

00:01:30.900 Cost of living is still a huge driver of concern and anxiety for people.

00:01:37.100 Immigration is part of that.

00:01:39.180 Crime remains a challenging issue for people.

00:01:41.440 And housing, continued shortage of housing, which also is tied to the immigration issue.

00:01:47.180 So I think part of the reason you saw Paliyev talking about temporary foreign workers today is he wants to point out that while the Kearney government has curtailed immigration on some fronts in some ways,

00:01:58.560 they continue to pursue programs that bring thousands of newcomers into the country at a

00:02:05.080 time when we have a shortage of supply of things. We have a shortage of supply of jobs. We have a

00:02:10.600 shortage of supply of housing. We have a shortage of supply of health care. And I think a lot of

00:02:15.640 Canadians now think that's because we have just brought in too many people for the amount of

00:02:19.000 things that we have. You see youth unemployment really quite high, concerningly high. And so he's

00:02:25.120 he's talking about temporary foreign workers to sort of say,

00:02:28.000 I've got real solutions to these problems, and Prime Minister Carney doesn't.

00:02:32.200 Now, Ginny, obviously you have better insights into what Mr. Pollyer thinks

00:02:37.000 than what Mr. Carney thinks by the nature of your past positions.

00:02:40.320 Nevertheless, can you make any sense of what the Prime Minister has done

00:02:45.000 when he's promised to cut back on immigration,

00:02:47.500 and apparently it proceeds apace and may even be increasing?

00:02:50.480 So to give the government some credit, the levels that they've set are quite a bit lower than the levels of the previous government for new permanent residents, for all sorts of categories across the immigration plan.

00:03:06.580 But the only reason that they're lower is because they were so, so, so high.

00:03:10.920 They were generationally high.

00:03:13.460 The challenge is, one, actually sticking to those levels is a challenge.

00:03:18.460 So they're already tracking to be above the levels that they've set for this year, which is concerning.

00:03:24.100 And the people that were brought in at the peak of the deluge are still here.

00:03:30.760 The people who have overstayed their visas are generally not being deported.

00:03:35.580 We don't. It's very difficult to do that.

00:03:37.800 So there's a bit of you can't get the toothpaste back into the tube, which I think is why you see Polly have calling for a flat population for a number of years until we can get the supply and demand dynamic.

00:03:48.460 right again. And even though Carney sort of pulled back a bit from Trudeau-era immigration,

00:03:54.860 you can tell he doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to take further measures.

00:03:58.680 And I think that's because he's so close to corporate Canada and so many big employers

00:04:02.920 just like having this constant influx of labor available to them. And I don't think Carney

00:04:08.380 wants to be offside of that. I think he's close to corporate Canada. I think he's sympathetic

00:04:11.700 to their wants and their needs. And he thinks an economy needs lots of new labor. That puts

00:04:17.440 him against public opinion. Public opinion is saying too much, too far, you have to pull it

00:04:23.640 way back. And while he may think that Carney's pulled it back a little bit, they don't think

00:04:27.380 he's pulled it back enough. Well, that's certainly the opinion of most people by the sounds of the

00:04:32.520 polls and by the sounds of the news stories. The effect of all this immigration has been to

00:04:37.320 depress wages and actually to make it very difficult for people who've been here for years

00:04:42.100 to get work but you have to give mr carney i think the benefit of the doubt for about another

00:04:48.620 two weeks which is when parliament comes back uh although he was an advisor to mr trudeau

00:04:55.280 i get the sense that when he finally got into government it was a little bit like parents

00:05:01.080 coming home and finding that the teenagers had a party while they were away for the weekend

00:05:06.280 a total mess. What do you think? Should we give Mr. Carney a break for just taking over from

00:05:15.180 Mr. Trudeau? I think you're right that part of what Mark Carney has done successfully

00:05:21.120 is he's taken some middle-of-the-road common-sense positions that Justin Trudeau refused to take,

00:05:26.440 whether it was canceling the carbon tax or suggesting that we should continue to

00:05:32.280 to develop oil and gas in this country,

00:05:37.260 like just some basic things that Trudeau was offside on,

00:05:40.820 he's taken those up and said, yes, I'm on side with that.

00:05:44.060 And that has made people think that he is reasonable, moderate, etc.

00:05:49.740 But I don't think that he's gone far enough.

00:05:52.580 And the challenge is he's banking on the fact that expectations were so low

00:05:56.660 after Trudeau that even the slightest improvement,

00:05:59.420 You know, putting your shoes on the right feet looks looks like the height of competence.

00:06:04.820 And I think Canadians for a while have been happy to see that.

00:06:08.880 But I think that will wear thin quickly.

00:06:10.800 You know, the Canada U.S. issue is dropping in salience, but it is still important for a lot of people.

00:06:16.040 And for those people, they believe that Mark Carney promised them that he would solve it.

00:06:20.240 And that really is what he ran the election on.

00:06:21.940 He said he was the guy to deal with Trump.

00:06:23.920 Well, we have no deal.

00:06:25.960 Canada remains heavily tariffed.

00:06:28.280 We're about to enter the renegotiation of Kusma, our most important trade agreement.

00:06:33.840 And terms with the Americans do not seem like they're good.

00:06:37.220 Things do not seem to be going well.

00:06:38.960 And so while Carney, I think, has a bit of a honeymoon because his demeanor, the sort

00:06:44.620 of vibe he gives off, gives people a feeling of competence and calm.

00:06:49.820 I think that's starting to wear thin.

00:06:51.460 And you're right that when Parliament comes screaming back in a couple of weeks, I think

00:06:57.060 Polyev is going to spend a lot of his time trying to lay that bare for Canadians and make it clear

00:07:01.040 to them that progress has not been made. Well, I see that he's laying down a narrative now that

00:07:06.400 this will be an austerity budget. Obviously, he is still committed to delivering a budget

00:07:12.620 in the fall, but it's going to be a tough one. So how tough do you think it could be?

00:07:21.860 I mean, I think that's sort of hilarious because it's not going to be an austerity budget. He's

00:07:25.840 taken all these areas off the table. So he's done this trick where he's going to separate

00:07:30.800 operating and programmatic spending from capital spending, as he calls it. But he's considering

00:07:36.260 capital to be anything that's deemed to be an investment into the future. So any kind of

00:07:41.400 infrastructure, I think he's going to include sort of social infrastructure in that. He's also said

00:07:46.300 he's not going to mess with transfers to the provinces or social programs. So dental, child

00:07:52.300 care, all these huge new multi-billion dollar programs are, I don't think, being touched.

00:07:58.120 So that really only leaves him with sort of like narrow ministerial program spending.

00:08:02.980 And yes, he's talked a big game about cutting back there. But I think ultimately that's because

00:08:07.200 he'll settle for less. And I think what he knows is that the public right now is not terribly

00:08:12.320 sensitive to big deficits. They will become sensitive to those big deficits as they add

00:08:17.340 to the debt. And eventually we have bond rating agencies expressing great concern with the size

00:08:25.500 of our debt and the cost of servicing it. But for now, because we have decent fundamentals,

00:08:31.800 he can sort of take advantage of that. He could just push off that cost of that to future

00:08:36.280 generations. And I think that's what we'll see. I think you'll see historically high deficit

00:08:40.580 with tons of new spending, some of it on defense, but a lot of it in social programs,

00:08:46.860 a lot of it in infrastructure. And he will say, this is what we need. This is what people wanted.

00:08:51.660 They wanted more defense spending. They wanted more infrastructure spending. Because people did,

00:08:56.380 I think, want more major projects built. People in Western Canada want to be able to get

00:09:01.080 the product that they sit on to market. I just think that they wanted the private sector to

00:09:07.360 do that. They wanted government to get out of the way. Curry's interpretation seems to be that

00:09:12.040 government's going to go to the table with taxpayer money to get this done. And that's a

00:09:16.160 different that's a different take and it's going to lead to massive massive deficits

00:09:20.480 we can't keep running deficits forever

00:09:25.340 true true it's just the road when does this actually hit the wall um so i mean we saw this

00:09:34.680 we saw we saw the room that um ultimately um john croutier and paul martin had in the 1990s and

00:09:41.160 then the premiers in the years following had to, the political room, they had to cut back on

00:09:47.160 spending. That was because things got so bad that the public understood it was necessary and that

00:09:52.860 this sort of tough medicine was actually what they wanted from elected officials. I just don't think

00:09:56.880 we're there yet, sadly. I wish we were because it would be easier to deal with it now than it will

00:10:00.860 be whenever this time comes. I think a lot of it comes down to debt to GDP ratio and other

00:10:07.220 markers of the extent to which our economy can handle that level of debt servicing.

00:10:12.520 There is some concern, like you see some initial concern, for instance, in B.C.,

00:10:17.020 the credit rating agencies are starting to express real concern with the size of their debt and

00:10:21.780 deficit. That will happen eventually at the federal level. It's just that I think Mark

00:10:26.780 Carney's view is it's not happening to me this year, so I'll get away with what I can get away

00:10:30.760 with i worry that the chaos that he has inherited gives him an excuse for just about anything that

00:10:39.600 he wants to do does the conservative party leadership have anxieties that things will

00:10:47.920 just be taken to a different level of uh well chaos and and irresponsibility that frankly we

00:10:56.260 could never recover from. I think that what happened in the election that helped get Kearney

00:11:01.820 elected was they were sort of, I don't want to oversimplify, but they were sort of two types of

00:11:05.800 people. There were people who are in a precarious state due to the challenges related to cost of

00:11:11.660 living. They either couldn't afford to buy a home, or if they did have a home, their mortgage

00:11:15.640 was taking up a huge percentage of their take-home pay. In some cases, people were struggling to get

00:11:20.820 food, to fill their car with gas, et cetera. They were living a life where Canada was just not

00:11:25.880 delivering for them, where they felt like their children would be worse off than they were,

00:11:30.380 that they were worse off than their parents were. And those people voted for Pierre Paliyev and

00:11:34.200 the Conservatives. And there were a lot of them, don't forget. I mean, Paliyev did quite well by

00:11:38.800 historical standards in terms of the size of his voting coalition. There were also a number of

00:11:43.480 people, mostly older, mostly in homes that were bought and paid for, with stocks that fared well

00:11:51.480 in an inflationary environment who were worried about one thing and one thing only, and that was

00:11:56.940 their distaste for Donald Trump. And those people spent a lot of time watching CNN,

00:12:02.780 watching this man they didn't like at all, and wanting a prime minister who was going to

00:12:07.220 share their distaste for Donald Trump. And those voters voted for Mark Carney.

00:12:14.080 I think many of those voters cared about Donald Trump, and they also wanted someone they felt

00:12:18.200 was like serious and competent, could do geopolitics. So if those issues remain pressing

00:12:25.040 and the world seems chaotic from that perspective, that will help Carney because he is perceived to

00:12:30.540 be branded as someone who can deal with that. If, however, the microeconomic issues of domestic

00:12:37.380 economic policy become problematic, cost of living gets worse, inflation maybe goes up in

00:12:43.840 some key categories. Or worst of all, I think for a government, unemployment starts to really climb

00:12:49.000 because the economy softens. I think Carney will try to blame that on Trump, because that allows

00:12:53.980 him to then talk about Trump again. But I don't know that Canadians are going to totally buy it.

00:12:58.620 At a certain point, they're going to say, okay, but what's your plan to fix the economy?

00:13:02.640 You seem to be doing a lot of what the last guy did. And I think Pierre Polyev's chance is really

00:13:07.360 to say, I would treat our economy differently. I would get government out of the way. I would

00:13:12.500 deregulate i would reduce costs i would lower taxes um and say to canadians like that's how

00:13:19.740 we fix this problem we're in and so it depends what kind of chaos you're talking about i guess

00:13:24.800 um and and that i think will determine uh who can be successful all right well let's move on let's

00:13:30.760 talk about mr polia he's run one his uh election handily he's uh he must be in good spirits as he

00:13:37.900 heads back to Ottawa.

00:13:41.620 What do you think, what's it going to be like?

00:13:44.440 Should we all be tuning into Question Period

00:13:46.780 on the second day of the new Parliament?

00:13:51.720 I mean, I think Parliament is an area of strength

00:13:53.680 for Mr. Paliyev.

00:13:54.660 He likes to debate.

00:13:56.320 He likes the cut and thrust of debate.

00:13:58.540 He likes to put polls and arguments

00:14:00.480 show where his opponents are weak.

00:14:03.820 And Question Period is the forum for that.

00:14:06.700 And it's important.

00:14:07.900 So Canadians, you know, see clips of Question Period. It trickles through into the news that they consume. But it's not everything. I think Polly needs to keep that in mind. A lot of why he was successful over the last couple of years as he built his popularity and tour of the country was meeting Canadians where they were.

00:14:28.660 He would host rallies. He would hold roundtables. He would go into communities and meet with people. And he wouldn't just talk to them. He would also listen. And that gave him this incredible ability to see where problems were arising for people in the moment.

00:14:43.540 All of this was happening at the same time as Justin Trudeau was very stuck in his Ottawa bubble. He just seemed more and more out of touch with regular people. You know, Chrystia Freeland was telling people that they should cancel their Disney Plus subscription if they were suffering from inflation.

00:14:58.140 I think Kearney risks suffering from the same problem.

00:15:04.460 I don't think Mark Kearney likes meeting with regular Canadians all that much.

00:15:07.580 I think he'd rather be touring European capitals or chairing cabinet.

00:15:13.400 And I think that's a huge advantage for Polyev.

00:15:16.160 If he can, yes, handle question period, but also get out there and keep meeting with Canadians,

00:15:22.040 he will get the forefront of where they're suffering.

00:15:24.740 and he can then bring their problems to Parliament Hill

00:15:27.420 and show where the government is totally falling short.

00:15:30.900 Well, certainly he has.

00:15:32.240 He's demonstrated the talent for doing that.

00:15:34.760 Mr. Carney seems to have, as you say,

00:15:36.900 he's developed a great talent for charming foreign leaders.

00:15:40.280 Is that actually very helpful for him?

00:15:42.160 Does that play well with Canadians?

00:15:44.420 I think it has over the last six to eight months.

00:15:49.000 Donald Trump, I think, really made Canadians care

00:15:51.860 about geopolitics again in a way that they hadn't for a long time because of the urgency of inflation

00:15:58.020 and the challenges of their economy. That might remain important to people, or it might not.

00:16:04.820 If they're losing their jobs or cost of living is getting worse, I think, you know, whether

00:16:09.940 Mark Carney gets along with Emmanuel Macron is just not going to be as important to them.

00:16:16.300 I think not. I mean, factually, you could make the case that when leaders get too popular overseas,

00:16:21.860 Often it doesn't play so well at home.

00:16:28.300 Indeed, and especially when things are bad at home.

00:16:31.760 You know, when Justin Trudeau was first elected and he was on the cover of Vogue, he was beloved by world leaders, he was kind of a global celebrity.

00:16:41.060 Canada was doing really well at that point.

00:16:43.140 People were excited to legalize marijuana and see Canada have a handsome prime minister.

00:16:50.520 when inflation's up or unemployment's up.

00:16:53.760 I just think those are lower priorities.

00:16:56.460 Yes.

00:16:57.020 Well, that's kind of the way.

00:16:58.920 That's what I thought you would probably say,

00:17:00.600 but it does bear on who do you want to be popular with,

00:17:03.960 and that comes up to the leadership review,

00:17:06.220 which is what, in January of next year?

00:17:09.020 It is, yeah, late January in Calgary.

00:17:13.140 You know, now that Mr. Polly grew up in Alberta and Calgary,

00:17:17.420 and now that he's an MP from the greater region

00:17:20.420 I think it makes sense for them to host the convention there.

00:17:23.460 And I think the leadership is something that the party and the leader need to focus on, make sure that they're prepared for, make sure that he's talking to party members a lot over the coming weeks.

00:17:34.600 But I also think it's fairly safe territory for him.

00:17:38.380 Don't forget how much he won the leadership race by and won it very handily.

00:17:43.620 It was not a close race, really, at all.

00:17:46.360 And that's because I think the party membership really likes him.

00:17:48.520 He's just, he's sort of inherently popular with a party membership.

00:17:52.320 He can't take it for granted, but if he is sort of himself and follows his instincts

00:17:56.640 and pursues, granted, the same principles that have been driving him since he was 18

00:18:01.360 years old, I think he will fail well in that review.

00:18:05.760 Well, let's just push that a little further, Ginny.

00:18:07.860 I mean, it's not that I don't understand what you're saying, but the narrative that's

00:18:13.760 been pushed out by the other side is that well you know people don't really like mr polyarvia

00:18:20.260 there were some young men who were impressed when he took apart a reporter or two and maybe those

00:18:25.840 reporters deserve to come up but he did it too much and he seemed to enjoy it too much and he's

00:18:31.600 really not a very nice guy so uh i'm going to vote for that nice mr carney who seemed so quietly

00:18:37.900 reassuring and of course that's what it in fact did happen there was a demographic that just

00:18:42.640 Outright rejected Mr. Poliarev, even as there was a whole unexpected one of young blue-collar working-class guys who said, hey, this is the guy.

00:18:53.640 So, look, what about it?

00:18:57.140 Is his likability something that he has to deal with, or do we just carry on?

00:19:03.500 um i think if you focus on likability personality looks too much you risk losing what uh what what

00:19:15.740 made you appeal to people in the first place the reason voters vote for polyab is because of the

00:19:20.740 issues and because he seems like the kind of fighter who will fix those issues for them and

00:19:26.880 i think that's a great true north for him he should stick to the issues that um speak to

00:19:32.220 people because they're hurting and to show and show them that they that he's sort of the fighter

00:19:36.440 for them now could he do that in a way that shows that he is both a fighter who can you know tear

00:19:42.600 apart a journalist with silly questions um and also that he is a good guy uh i think he can i

00:19:50.220 mean it's interesting but people think he's not not likable um there are a couple uh subject

00:19:56.420 matters that he really can't even talk about without without crying without breaking out in

00:20:01.320 getting emotional and I think because he's so sort of laser focused on getting his message out

00:20:08.680 I don't know that he likes that when that happens you know it happened during the English language

00:20:13.580 debate it happened on a podcast episode he recorded during the campaign personally I think

00:20:18.340 it's great when it happens because Canadians get a little small glimpse into the sort of soft side

00:20:24.320 to him. The part of him that is a dad and a husband and who really is doing this for the

00:20:33.060 right reasons. He's doing it because he cares. And because when he travels the country, he needs

00:20:37.140 people who are suffering and he wants to try to find a way to help them. And I think that that

00:20:41.740 piece, the sort of what motive, the why, why are you doing this? Not just what are you going to do

00:20:45.560 for me, but why are you doing it at all? That connects with people in a different way and with

00:20:50.740 different voters who, and I think there are voters who need to see that side of him, so that when

00:20:54.580 they're making a decision, they say maybe they like him on the issues, but Mark Carney gives

00:20:59.620 them some comfort on the personality traits front. I think there's a way for Polyev to give people

00:21:05.620 that comfort on the personality traits front that is authentic to who he is, and that sticks to the

00:21:11.220 core issues that work for him, like immigration, crime, cost of living. And I hope to see more of

00:21:16.480 And I think we will.

00:21:18.320 I'm going to last question is going to be an agree, disagree one.

00:21:22.860 I'm going to put words in your mouth.

00:21:24.640 I'm going to say that the worst thing, the worst that things get for Canadians as a consequence of the the economy that the liberals have produced over 10 years and Mr. Carney's inability to do anything substantive about it.

00:21:38.960 The worst things get for Canadians, the better they get for Mr. Polioff.

00:21:43.560 Agree or disagree?

00:21:45.260 Sadly, I think I agree with that.

00:21:47.180 It's unfortunate, but it's the life of an opposition leader.

00:21:50.880 It's a pity it couldn't be won on the grounds of philosophy

00:21:54.400 and that we all have to suffer so much.

00:21:56.720 All right, Jenny, it's always a pleasure to talk to you,

00:21:58.840 and I do thank you for coming on the show at very short notice.

00:22:02.640 Perhaps we'll talk to you again after Parliament resumes.

00:22:07.240 Thank you.

00:22:07.760 Thank you.

00:22:08.340 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

00:22:14.260 Thank you.

Western Standard - September 05, 2025

Immigration, inflation and Canada's fading Carney romance

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