At Issue - Are Canada-U.S. tariff meetings getting anywhere?

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

At Issue this week: With U.S. President Donald Trump refusing to bend on tariffs, is there any point in Canadian politicians travelling to Washington for further talks? As Mark Carney gets ready to take over as Prime Minister, who will fill his cabinet? Plus, can 24 Sussex Drive be saved? Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg. I'm from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, March 13th. We've been ripped off for years and we're not going to be ripped off anymore.

No, I'm not going to bend at all aluminum or steel. What does Canada do? They put a tariff on sports equipment. I mean really, this is just, it's tone deaf. So this week we're asking what will a meeting between Canadian and US officials mean for the trade war? Chantal Lebert, Andrew Coyne, and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus, Mark Carney is preparing to become Canada's 24th Prime Minister. What will the team around him look like? So what does this meeting mean for trade tensions between the US and Canada? Can cooler heads prevail? I'm Rosemary Barton here to break it down again tonight. Chantal LeBair, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj. Good to see everyone. I mean we are talking tariffs pretty much every week,

Chantelle Hebert, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj, good to see everyone. I mean, we are talking tariffs pretty much every week, but it's because they're on, they're off, they're back on. What I think was interesting this week, beyond that, was the way Howard Lutnick reached out to Doug Ford, asked for a meeting, Doug Ford not going ahead with the tariffs on energy. There's some interesting moves there, and I'm not sure what, if anything, they tell us. Chantel? I'm not sure that they mean a lot. I think what we've seen over the past month, month and a half, is that it doesn't really matter what any secretary of state in this cabinet says because in the end the mood that Donald Trump has has depending on the

time of the day or the night is going to dictate for at least a few hours what policy will be in place so whatever it may have been a productive meeting I don't know we weren't in the room but whether that is a step forward, I very much doubt. Why? Because I'm not convinced that it has any impact on where Donald Trump is going to take this. I believe the only thing that can have impact on this president and this administration is pressure

from American voters and American business, not meeting with whoever, and as well-meaning and effective as they may be Canadian politicians. But surely that proves the point a little bit Andrew, that the tariff on energy that Doug Ford was threatening, 25% tariff, got their attention and to the point that Howard Lutnick had to call him and then the president rolled back the additional tariffs on steel and aluminum he was threatening 50 percent. I mean, does that not show that some part of our strategy is working? Some part is.

I'm not sure this part is. I think these meetings are, if anything, worse than useless. The premise of them is there's some set of demands, some reasonable demands that the United States has that we can at least go part way to meeting, and if we do that, we'll somehow resolve this conflict and put it to bed. I don't see any evidence that there's any such demands. I think Canadian negotiators, Canadian government officials have tried in vain to find out what exactly might be those sort of demands, and I'll repeat what the Prime Minister said, that the most likely scenario,

the most likely explanation of whatever is going through Donald Trump's head is that this is purely punitive, this is purely designed to harm the Canadian economy with a long-run ambition of making it so painful and so difficult to carry on as a country that people will be suing for peace, suing for annexation. Whether or not that's the case, it doesn't seem to me to be anything achieved by this except to make this normalized, to make them look reasonable, like they're involved in some kind of actual negotiation. As Chantal said, our best weapon in this is American public opinion.

And every time the president slaps on tariffs on Canadian exports, imports into the United States, he's hurting his own consumers and losing part of his base. So the best thing that we can do, it seems to me, is to keep the pressure on. Every time we apply tariffs, we may not be hurting them much directly with our tariffs, but we goad them into overreacting the way the president is given to doing and disqualifying himself and making himself look as what he is, extreme and irrational. Althea?

I think two things happened this week. One is actually Doug Ford was more successful perhaps than he intended to be in the sense that his message on American TV networks is going through. You know, the questions are being asked in the White House briefing, in the White House briefings about the tariffs. Fox News is talking about tariffs. Real people are Googling what are tariffs and how does it impact me.

It has creeped into everyday life of Americans and they're worried about price going up. And his threat of cutting off the power got everybody scared. And the impact was that the White House panicked and decided to charge its own citizens for more. And then the kind of off-ramp that Howard Lutnick negotiated with Canada got Canada to ease. But it didn't help...

You know, it saved American pain. It didn't help Canadians. But the background of that is actually, it feels like Doug Ford was freelancing on his own and in that call with the Council of the Federation, he was told, like, you can't just do this because you're escalating a trade war that will affect the rest of us. So if we want to escalate, I think the message from this week was we need to be united and sing from the same songbook and We can't make big moves without everybody being on board

Yeah, and that's probably why Doug Ford today was saying things like I'm speaking for myself I'm not speaking for anybody else because other premieres sure didn't like that Chantel. Yes, but Doug Ford is the leading premier in this battle. Why? Not just because he's comfortable with a four year majority government that he's leading, but also because he leads the country's biggest economic engine. If a smaller province tried to do what he did,

it would hardly get any attention in Washington. So he is part and parcel of the federal government's strategy. I'm assuming that the time that Mark Carney spent with Premier Ford, more time than he has spent to date, as far as I can tell, with any Premier. And the fact that that relationship with Finance Minister Dominique LeBlanc and the Ontario Premier is so strong also means that the federal government is not being blindsided every step of the way by Ontario. No, I would suggest that Doug Ford is a convenient bad cop in these negotiations. Andrew, last word to you then I'm going to take a break.

I'm generally in favor of premier singing from the same hymn book, ideally the federal hymn book and these things, and on the assumption that this is coordinated, and you can't always assume that with Doug Ford, but yeah, having this kind of loose cannon, if you will, you know, and the fed saying, look, we're not doing this, this is the premier of Ontario doing this, and you know what a loose cannon he is, it does have some effectiveness. Okay, we're going to leave it there, but you've set us all up nicely for the next part of this. We are going to talk about Mark Carney as he prepares to become Prime Minister tomorrow. Mark Carney will be sworn in tomorrow as our new Prime Minister,

and it will be his prerogative to tell us who will be a part of his next cabinet. What will the Carney cabinet tell us about his approach and who will stay to take on Trump? Let's bring everyone back. Chantel, Andrew and Althea. Althea, we are all sort of doing what we do in Ottawa, which is trying to figure out who's going, who's staying. We don't always know, but we have a couple of things that we do know in terms of who's

staying. Melanie Jolie, for instance, staying in the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs. What are you going to be watching for tomorrow? Well, basically how much change is Mark Carney bringing? So we already know that the cabinet will be much smaller, how small we don't yet know. I've tried to count. I can't get below 21, so I'm guessing it's around that. There already have been signals of huge changes.

Some caucus members are calling it a purge. Mark Miller at immigration, Mark Holland at health. In some cases, I think these were surprises. Mr. Holland announced that he is not running again. Dan Le Boutteillier, fisheries minister out in Gaspé, is gone. So is the Quebec lieutenant of Justin Trudeau and the Quebec City Area Minister, Jean-Yves Suclos. In terms of the new people, well, I don't know about you, Rosie, but I've called a bunch of people today who are not answering their phones, who normally respond.

So they're being good soldiers and not calling back and probably on their way to Ottawa tomorrow. So there's a lot of new faces, some promotions, I suspect. I should say that. And then I think it's, you know, how Mr. Carney positions himself in terms of what the message he wants to send. Mr. Trudeau did that with renaming ministries. Environment and climate change, for example, he had changed. The indigenous services portfolio he changed. Is he going to create new ministries that we don't have names yet to refocus our attention?

It was interesting. I will note that they shuffled Stephen Guibert out of the environment and climate change portfolio. Apparently, he's still in cabinet. But he is a lightning rod out west on the carbon tax issue, on the pipeline issue, and so removing him I think sends a strong signal. The fact that he remains in cabinet though is an olive branch of interest. There's going to be a lot of, from what we understand, consolidating of ministries in order to get down to those numbers that Althea is talking about. Only way you can do it.

So you're going to, like this is kind of the first test for Mr. Kearney on a bunch of fronts, Chantal, because you're going to upset some people. The way that they seem to be selling it is to say, well, this is just the cabinet for now to get us into the election and through the election so we can deal with other things going forward. But tell me what you're watching for on that front in terms of how he manages people and their expectation. Well, for one, if you're going to cut the Cabinet down to about 20, everybody is going

to have a real job. I don't think you need to invent new portfolios. You have to consolidate what's around the table. Second, I think the most important thing to watch for is whether those frontline ministers who are dealing with the Canada-U.S. file on a daily basis are staying in place, starting with Finance Minister Dominique LeBlanc, because what you do not need is, at the beginning of an election campaign, people who are kind of on a learning curve in these portfolios. We've seen it this week.

Stuff will happen that will require responses, government responses, between now and whenever the campaign ends in six or seven weeks. So you need ministers who actually know what they're doing, who have staff in place. Finally, yes, Steven Gilbo, as far as I can tell, I'm told is getting larger responsibilities, and he would be. If you're staying, you're getting more work,

because there is less bodies around the table. So it's not a demotion. And actually the places where you send people who are demoted, as in, you know, the shelf watching ministry, those won't exist in this smaller cabinet. The impression they're trying to send is not that they're saving money. It's that this is a war cabinet, like a unity cabinet if the referendum had resulted in a defeat for federalism. A smaller team to be more focused on what they will describe for the entire campaign as an existential crisis. Andrew, I know you went back in there. I leave to my colleagues the speculation on who will occupy which post, but to me the

absolute revolution in this is the numbers. If they come in with a cabinet of less than 20, that will be the smallest cabinet since the 1950s. It's not coincidental that the decline of cabinet as a decision-making body and of cabinet ministers as having any real responsibilities coincided with the rapid expansion to these ridiculous numbers where we've had close to 40 cabinet ministers. The larger the cabinet, the smaller the minister. When you have 12 ministers or 15 or 20 ministers around the table, they're all basically players.

When you have 40, they basically turn into ants. And to get to those numbers, you have this proliferation of meaningless titles, overlapping responsibilities where it's not clear who's really responsible for what. They're basically handed out as tokens and as baubles to coveted interest groups or demographics or regions of the country, and we get further and further away from the actual business of cabinet, which is governing the country. If you cut it down to less than 20 or even close to 20, you are sending a signal that cabinet government is back. You are sending a signal that we are

in serious times and we need a serious governing model. You are certainly sending a signal that you have made a major break with the way in which this country has been governed, not just under Justin Trudeau, but under a number of previous prime ministers. Yeah, so it would send that message of change that he's hoping to be able to send here while he still has to keep some of those key figures inside in some way. Althea, then Shantel. A few things. On the unity thing, one of the big things to watch tomorrow, is there an actual surprise?

Is he reaching out across the aisle and putting people from different partisans, right, in his actual cabinet? What happens to Karina Gould and Christia Freeland? Miss Freeland seems to suggest that she's in there. We haven't heard peep squat from Karina Gould. If she is not in there, I know she represents the left side of the flank that Mr. Carney is not necessarily a fan of, but there will be some management of caucus that will need to be done on that. On the question of such a small cabinet, it means that representation somewhere will suffer. Either it's regional representation or it's gender or it's ethnicity or it's religion

and those stakeholders will also take some management because they are not going to be happy. And last I would say on the whole, you know, the original team behind the Canada-U.S. response, I think we had spoken about that last week. I don't expect a lot of changes, but I do think that Dominic LeBlanc could easily move over to a portfolio, a Canada-US portfolio in my imaginary cabinet, Canada-US intergovernmental affairs portfolio, because he doesn't need to have the finance behind him.

And frankly, a budget is about to be delivered in about two and a half months, and it might be good to have somebody who actually is more focused on the finances of the country than Dominic LeBlanc skills, which are frankly people skills, that are attuned to the Canada-US intergovernmental. And we see that with Doug Ford in this meeting with London,

for example. I have also heard that theory that there's a way to move him around so that he's doing the things that he's best at and let someone deal with, to your your point the budget and the other things. But the last time we talked about the lead minister on Canada US who wasn't finance or foreign affairs was a minister who didn't have a ministry and I it's all nice to say intergovernmental affairs, but you're kind of not putting the way behind the title

that you should be, and that rightly, Christian Freeland declined on that basis. So we'll see tomorrow on that particular thing. Yes, representation will be diminished. I'm wondering, looking at all the names of people who aren't in cabinet, whether there will be more than one minister east of Montreal, and what does that mean for the battle against the Bloc Québécois in most of Quebec's territory.

But this is basically Mr. Carney's way of saying, one, I'm a changed prime minister, and two, I have one file that I want to focus to be on. A final word on Karina Gould. She's from Burlington. Sometimes you feel like deja vu. I watched Paul Martin become prime minister and then find a way to send out of cabinet and caucus Sheila Copps, who was from the same area. And I'm thinking is

history really really going to repeat itself and by the way that sent a really bad signal to a large section of the Liberal Party and to many many female voters. He paid the price for that one for sure. Quick ten seconds to you Andrew. Just two quick things one is it'll be interesting there's been some talk that he might appoint a conservative, small or large seat to the cabinet. That will be interesting to see in terms of national unity. And the other thing, and Sean tells me at this point many times, is what's going to

be the response in terms of the cabinet making of Pierre Pauillet? He's been the front runner for so long, he certainly had the opportunity to be able to attract people to run for him with the promise of cabinet posts. Can he put up a cabinet that is of equal stature or comparable stature to the one that Carney's gonna unveil? Very good Mike, thank you all for that. We're gonna keep talking.

We'll talk about Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's calls at the end of his prime ministership to fix the PM's residence at 24 Sussex. You can catch that on YouTube or the At Issue podcast. We're gonna take a short break here, but when we come back, we'll look at Justin Trudeau's calls to address issues with the PM's official residence. That's next.

Is this solution viable? Will the famous address ever get fixed? Let's bring everybody back. Chantal, Andrew and Althea. I know you've talked about this for many, many, many years, but I will tell you that it is one of those stories and issues that Canadians do care about. I don't know whether this has any weight at all. The Prime Minister's, Prime Minister Trudeau is doing it on his way out the door, but he's at least trying to come up with a solution that removes the politics from this.

Althea. Well, he could have come up with the solution nine years ago. I'm sorry. Like I'm going to appoint, please minister a point that actually now no longer has a job, but please minister with two days left, appoint a nonpartisan advisory committee filled with former parliamentarians of different stripes to tell me what to do with this property. I mean, come on. That's not, I don't even know why they bothered doing that, other than we would have written, oh,

he left 24 Sussex and disrepair for nine years. So, no, I don't think that that's a real solution. I'm not saying that the suggestion is not necessarily a good one, but it could have come a lot earlier. And the CBC was reporting that the cost of fixing 24 Sussex is just continuing to balloon. It's not just that it could be upwards of $100 million. It's that the NCC, even 15 years ago, had on its plans some very grandiose plans, which included building basically the White House down on Sussex at a cost of $400 million.

The costs of fixing this property are going to be insane. And I think the Canadians just need to accept that it's going to cost more than we think because the security has to cost a lot more than we think. The building is so close to the road and unless they move the road, they have to fence in the building with some sort of steel. So there's no truck bombs. I'm probably saying things that shouldn't be saying out loud, but it is a big problem. And so if that building remains in that corner, it will continue to be a security risk that

needs to be addressed with a lot of money. I mean, I take your point, but I do think that Justin Trudeau cares about the residents because of his personal connection to it. So that's, yeah. Well, then why didn't he act earlier? I don't know. I'm not going to make excuses for him. Chantel.

I don't think he cared about it enough to want to live in it or force his children to live in it. Actually, I predicted early on that he would never live in it, and the best way to avoid that was to do nothing about it. That being said, I do find merit to the proposal because it's kind of becoming a stupid argument. Whoever becomes prime minister doesn't want to act because etc. So yes, maybe giving all these people who have apparently so much to contribute and who are former prime ministers something to do by putting them around the same table so that they can talk about the future and make a recommendation.

Maybe that would take the next prime minister or the one after that out of the impasse of making a decision. I mean, the last time I was there, because sometimes journalists got invited there, was with Stephen Harper, and he lived there. So you would think that maybe he has some sort of interest in this issue, I don't know. He's raised his children there, you know, for a large part of interest in this issue. I don't know.

He's raised his children there, you know, for a large part of their life too. So I don't know. Andrew. We've all been talking about how we need more grownups in government. We also need to grow up as a country on this issue. The prime minister has to have an official residence, then it has to be functional and it has to be secure. It doesn't have to be palatial or impressive or grand.

In fact, I like the idea of its appearance being modest. But even just a functional, secure building, the logic of these things, the inevitable of these things is gonna cost a lot of money. We need to bite the bullet and get it done for God's sakes. See, you all had things to say, even though you have talked about it five million times in your lives.

Thank you very much for that. I'm gonna see some of you on Friday to talk about the cabinet shuffle. I'll see the rest of in your lives. Thank you very much for that. I'm gonna see some of you on Friday to talk about the cabinet shuffle. I'll see the rest of you next week. Thank you. That's that issue for this week. What do you think about Mark Carney's smaller cabinet? Should Ottawa repair 24 Sussex?

Let us know. You can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. You can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live, Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. Back here on your podcast feeds on Friday actually, after the cabinet shuffle. Thanks for listening For more CBC podcasts go to cbc.ca slash podcasts