Western Standard - August 17, 2026


THE PIPELINE： Has Carney actually delivered anything？


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

197.57

Word count

1,716

Sentence count

48


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 So we're talking about our fine prime minister a year and a half into his mandate.
00:00:04.720 What's he managed to do so far, Nigel?
00:00:06.480 Well, you know, that's the thing. Not too much, really. What got me started on this train of
00:00:12.400 thought was not so much Mr. Carney I've got kind of used to the idea that he makes announcements
00:00:17.280 and nothing happens. But Pierre Polyev is sinking in the polls. And I cannot wrap my head around how
00:00:27.760 Now, he can be doing so badly in the polls when he's really not done anything wrong,
00:00:35.320 while Mr. Carney has not really done anything right and is yet leading him by, according
00:00:43.440 to some polls, which I don't actually believe, but 19 percentage points.
00:00:48.380 So I thought maybe we need to take a look and see if Mr. Carney has actually done a
00:00:54.680 few things that merit the popularity he's now enjoying but he hasn't must so let's just go over
00:01:01.080 this he was elected in april of last year so he's been in office for about 15 months
00:01:06.760 now you can't turn an oil tanker around on the spot and you can't take a
00:01:13.080 the canadian economy that's been decimated by nearly 10 years of his predecessor
00:01:17.720 and expect everything to turn around in a few weeks or even a few months.
00:01:23.620 But after 15 months, you should see some signs of where the growth,
00:01:28.560 where the new action is going to come from.
00:01:31.520 But, you know, I'm not seeing it.
00:01:35.120 He established the major projects office to make things move fast.
00:01:40.640 There are presently 19 projects in its mall, but only one has been announced,
00:01:46.400 and that was one that was well advanced before Mr. Carney became prime minister, never mind
00:01:51.360 they set up the office. So there's an awful lot of, it's out there, it's in the future,
00:01:56.800 it's coming, but it isn't here yet. So that's, you know, that's with the major industrial
00:02:01.120 development. On defense, he said, right, we're going to meet the 2% NATO standard, 2% of GDP
00:02:08.720 spent on defense. Well, what did he do? He gave everybody a pay raise, incorporated the Coast
00:02:13.520 guard into the military suddenly we're at two percent that's not really the the object of the
00:02:19.720 exercise and then on trade you've gone around the world signing memorandums of understanding
00:02:25.880 the only trade that we've really seen is an agreement with china to import vehicles there's
00:02:34.440 nothing for ontario's auto industry we don't have a comparable thing exporting to china so you know
00:02:41.660 When do we call time on this experiment and say, all right, you've had a chance, now we need to see some performance, and if not, we're going to condemn you.
00:02:52.580 Is 15 months enough? Is it 18 months? Is it two years?
00:02:57.360 How many budget cycles does a man have to go through as prime minister before you actually rate his performance?
00:03:03.440 There's a regional breakdown when we see the polling, Tilo.
00:03:05.820 I mean, Albertans, and still, even Kearney's polling surprisingly strongly in Alberta, apparently, in Edmonton, of course, and some other areas.
00:03:13.500 But Central Canada most particularly has a love affair with the Liberal Party.
00:03:17.740 We do have somebody freshly over from there.
00:03:19.680 I mean, you know, we've brushed most of the smell off.
00:03:21.780 But, I mean, you can offer some perspective, though.
00:03:25.240 You know, perhaps why is the frustration not building up out there as badly as it is out here?
00:03:30.880 Well, I think because if this thing was Kearney presenting, it's politics is a game of optics.
00:03:34.340 And in eastern Canada, and I'd say like central, especially in Quebec and Ontario, Maritimes, of course, always quite lean liberal, but they see the news headlines.
00:03:44.120 They see Kearney signs MOU with X country.
00:03:46.860 Kearney puts this project into the major projects office.
00:03:51.380 So they see the headlines, and they must assume, well, something's going to happen because of it.
00:03:54.920 So the popular, I think, is not so much because we're seeing fruits of the labor, but more because there's talk of things going, like you said.
00:04:01.820 There's not been a lot of substance, but a lot of good things potentially happening in the future.
00:04:07.900 So I think the Eastern perspective is just, well, he talks nice, he dresses good,
00:04:14.200 he makes us look good on the world stage, so he must be good.
00:04:16.000 So I think that's kind of the perspective that why it's winning over so many people across the country.
00:04:21.160 You have to admit it, you look at the polling numbers, even in Alberta, I think he's, what, plus 14 favorability?
00:04:25.780 I think it was something like that.
00:04:27.000 Yeah.
00:04:27.420 No, like you said, it is just optics, because I was talking to Stockwell Day about this recently,
00:04:31.300 and what if people see the average person they don't see what we see because we're always
00:04:34.240 constantly like looking at news cycles they just see announcements and they think great that's
00:04:37.620 getting built well they don't specify when like the pipeline it's not going to be built or an
00:04:40.960 operational the one to the west coast if it gets approved until i think 2035 so people just see
00:04:45.600 the announcement and that's it that's all they know so they just assume yeah that's happening
00:04:49.380 they don't really see boot they don't really think about boots on the ground etc so yeah i think that
00:04:53.900 is probably the main reason behind his numbers really because they just it looks like he does
00:04:57.740 a lot while he's doing nothing he's basically just well all hat no cattle really because you
00:05:01.560 can go around like you said signing memorandums or whatnot in china i think he was in india
00:05:05.440 talking about maybe an energy deal but most of these if they're going to come about aren't going
00:05:09.040 to happen like actually start happening for several years so it's like you know i mean when's the next
00:05:13.680 election coming up really when they could possibly call it so you know his polling is not going to go
00:05:17.820 down anytime soon if this just keeps up really he does like pulling out the checkbook though
00:05:21.760 one of the areas that it seems he has kind of moved towards something though we don't have
00:05:25.340 glacial it is. You mentioned the NATO targets and such, which that was the very initial thing,
00:05:29.780 was just more some number jiggling to make it look like the 2%. But there have been some pretty
00:05:34.340 serious procurement commitments made with a heck of a lot of our dollars that would
00:05:40.480 actually bring hardware into the military. Again, we've seen the announcement in the spending part,
00:05:45.880 so presumably, though, that will happen. Well, the only thing is we started the process of buying
00:05:52.200 the f-35 fighter for example before mr trudeau became prime minister back in 2015 and then they
00:06:00.200 put a hold on it and delayed and then they thought they might need to investigate a different type of
00:06:04.920 aircraft because they weren't happy with the americans um we have a problem in canada buying
00:06:12.280 military equipment you may remember the helicopter fiasco of the 1990s the sea kings we try to get
00:06:19.240 rid of them you know and nobody can make their mind up what they wanted or provide the funding
00:06:23.160 for it and my fear is that uh you know by the time we actually see a lot of this equipment
00:06:29.880 the next war will have come and gone we'll have lost you know that's a it's a very slow process
00:06:36.200 yeah i remember a recent story that was fascinating a year or two ago
00:06:40.120 whereas our service members were still literally carrying sidearms from world war ii yeah that's
00:06:45.080 and they've been talking about changing them for decades and decades you could just go into cabela's
00:06:50.520 and buy better at least back then uh you know firearms uh but the government just paralyzes
00:06:56.120 itself when it comes to to military procurement with these things i mean you know we're gonna
00:07:00.600 be getting biplanes eventually to catch up with whatever we ordered for world war one
00:07:05.080 but i i mean that's one of the areas though that is slow and it takes more reform
00:07:09.880 i mean among other things why isn't he being called up by other provincial leaders it's another
00:07:13.320 thing in the east for example uh premier ford and mr carney have been quite tight uh but ford is
00:07:21.640 and another one is inexplicable with his appeal uh though he's been having troubles uh what's
00:07:26.440 going on with the relationship there i mean why isn't the premier saying hey carney why don't
00:07:29.960 you get something done uh with ford saying to carney yeah i mean i think your average citizen
00:07:36.120 is not doing anything but either is your average premier i think carney would say ford's causing
00:07:39.800 just as much problems as trump is at the minute when it comes to the u.s trade dispute uh he
00:07:43.560 isn't really helping anyone out the minute when it comes to trying to put a good face on canada
00:07:47.240 right now but uh i think that from from again from a provincial point of view if you're ontario
00:07:53.720 right now with the whole u.s thing and they've made it clear is like the liquor uh blockages
00:07:58.200 is one of their main sticking points and four seems hell-bent on sticking to that so i said
00:08:03.960 if anything i'd say not to stick up for carney but if anything ford's the one causing him more
00:08:08.040 problems than Kearney is at the minute for Ford. Well, then to bring it a little closer to home,
00:08:13.500 why hasn't Premier, how long is Premier Smith going to be hand in hand with Kearney? I mean,
00:08:18.160 she's been there for all of the announcements too, and she's not questioning the timeline.
00:08:22.820 She's not putting pressure on. She's not lighting a fire under him. I understand you want to work
00:08:26.880 cooperatively and try and get things done, but at some point she's got to be speaking up for Alberta
00:08:31.160 and saying, look, Prime Minister, you know, just putting these to the office isn't getting us
00:08:36.660 anywhere. When are you going to do something? And she's been reticent to call him out as well.