At Issue - Canada caught in Trump tariff uncertainty

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

At Issue this week: How will another week of back-and-forth on tariffs from the U.S. change Canada’s negotiating position? The changing dynamics in the House under a new government. Plus, the prime minister looks to sell his plans to the premiers.  Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

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It's the perfect Canadian getaway. To quote William Shatner, who got his start in Stratford, every Canadian should make the pilgrimage to Stratford. Start your next adventure at StratfordFestival.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, May 29th. This week we're asking, what will this upheaval,

this back and forth on Trump's tariffs mean for Canada? How might it affect negotiations between the two nations? Chantelle Bair, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus, how did the Prime Minister perform in his first appearance in question period? But today, a court ruled those tariffs are staying on, pending more legal arguments,

and the tariffs on steel and aluminum and autos still in place. So what does any of this mean for Canada? How might this affect negotiations between the two countries? I'm Rosemary Barton. I'm going to start with you tonight, Andrew. Whiplash is the headline that I saw the most in relation to this on-again, off-again tariffs. I'm sure that will make it to its way to the Supreme Court in the United States, but what should we make of this? That at least one court found that what Canada's been saying is true, that these are unjustified and don't make any sense.

Well and they're not legally justified. The problem is that the president has other potential powers or acts that he could act under, laws he could act under. The broader problem is you've got the elephantine, Byzantine US legal and political system meets a completely lawless autocrat in the face of Donald Trump. You get very unpredictable results. The courts can only go so far. They've certainly ruled correctly in this case

that this was an abuse of the emergency powers that are available to them. The broader problem is the Congress under previous presidents yielded presidents this particular power, this ability to levy tariffs which are supposed to be ordinarily a congressional power and when the current Congress is not willing to act when the president abuses that

power, that's not a very good combination. At some point, either under this president or under future presidents, the Congress is going to have to reclaim that power, place tighter limits on it so that one person, one autocrat can't simply use these things that is whim. Then you add on top of that President Trump's own on again, off again, I'm raising the tariffs to 50 percent today, I'm lowering them to 20% this afternoon It makes for utterly chaotic situation. It certainly doesn't Make for sensible negotiations with anybody because you really can't have any assurance that if you make any concession to him That he will reciprocating kind sure

Does it give Canada any leverage Althea the fact that the court actually said this, although now, of course, they haven't been paused, but at least another court agreed to it? Now the Court of Appeal has given the president the right to continue for at least a while. Look, I think that it allows us to claim some sort of moral victory, but we could have claimed that moral victory yesterday. And those who were opposed to the President's action in the United States, because there were a few, several lawmakers who do agree with Canada, and who agree that Congress has the power to review this and believes them to be unjustified. So I don't think it really changes anything.

I think if anything, it kind of highlights the volatility of the whole situation and how nothing is really predictable. And perhaps it gives further pause about whether or not we want to deepen that engagement. I mean, the prime minister said during the election campaign when we referred to him as a liberal leader, that the era of close cooperation with the United States was over when it came to economic and defense matters.

And since he has been returned to power with a mandate, The era of close cooperation with the United States was over when it came to economic and defense matters. Since he has been returned to power with a mandate, that language has disappeared. If anything, further integration is what he appears to be looking at. I think that it's upon him to help Canadians understand what he's doing and why he's doing it. He does say cooperation if it makes sense and no cooperation if it doesn't. Right, but I'm not sure that he has explained to a sufficient amount of,

Sure. The extent why we would engage in the Golden Dome, for example, why would we renegotiate Kuzma if the president doesn't seem to be abiding by his word or takes a while for him to recognize that this agreement that he himself signed carries any weight. So I think there's still a lot of question marks in the mind of most Canadians and frankly lawmakers here in Ottawa as well.

Chantal? Well, you can't change geography, so we're not neighbors to China or India tomorrow, which basically means that we will always have a relationship of kinds with the United States. There should be no surprise in the notion that the Court of Appeal has paused the ruling. That is how our own system would have worked. So you're not going to get anything from the initial ruling from the trade tribunal until it gets to the Supreme Court and it does nothing to dismiss uncertainty,

but it does add arguments. It makes the Trump case a bit more fragile until further notice. Does that change anything? I think it does send a signal that maybe the better option is to take one's time to renegotiate rather than to rush into a negotiation. I looked at the impact of yesterday's ruling before it was over, well not before it was passed on the UK-US deal and it seemed to have some impact. So maybe the message is that the US dynamics play out and see if it continues to weaken the Trump administration's case before you rush to negotiate something with them. It did sound anyway, Andrew, as though these were the tariffs that were the ones sort of

on the chopping block first in terms of the negotiation between the two sides. And certainly the Prime Minister told David Cochran earlier this week that they're making some progress in whatever these conversations are that Dominic LeBlanc is leading in Washington. Yeah, although I think Chantel's point is well taken, that each day that passes, he grows weaker in some ways in this regard. That's the great advantage we have in this, is whatever he can do to us always imposes

costs on his own people. And that's not what Republican voters signed up for. So he's doing this. He's burning political capital when he does this, particularly because he does it in such a chaotic fashion. But I also think at the end of the day, whatever emerges from this is gonna be a much more tentative, guarded, hedged type of relationship

than we might have been led to believe before Donald Trump came along. The trend, the direction was through closer and closer integration in previous years. I do agree that's over. I think you can be the strongest free trader you like and the most pro-American you like. But in this situation, not only with Trump,

but with whoever comes after him, I think we've now had to come, you know, face the conclusion that we can't afford to be this exposed, this vulnerable to a trading partner that we cannot rely upon. And that is a fact. Well this exposed this vulnerable or perhaps this dependent. And that sort of seems to be what the Prime Minister is suggesting, Althea. I don't know.

I feel like something has changed, but I'm not sure if that change will continue for years and decades in the future. Because if anything, I feel like when you look back, we've had moments where we have sought to separate ourselves, and instead we've just become closer. And it's like we pull apart and we get closer. We pull apart and we get closer. And there are many in this political family

that believe that actually the key to our success is closer integration with the United States. And I don't think those voices are going to go away. If anything, they're going to be, like now there's more of a cleavage between the sides that I think there's, we're going to start seeing those arguments, maybe not in the short term because now is not the moment. But I think, you know, a year from now, you know, we're going to be talking about closer cooperation militarily. We may be talking about, like, exit controls with the United States. I think that we are still going to be seeking some form of closer integration.

We're still going to hear those voices calling for even closer integration. I think we're going to be fighting a rearguard action to avoid being dominated by the Americans on a whole range of fronts. It's not about annexation, but it is about, in my opinion, I think we're going to see Trump attempting to exert control on us on a number of policy fronts and the agenda for our country is going to be preserving freedom of movement as much as we possibly can, which may be limited, but that will be the agenda. Last 30 seconds to you, Chantal. So our main advantage is we just had an election campaign. No one made Canadians believe that we were going to be going into easy times.

The Americans did not have those warnings. But bottom line, it's easy to say we will be less dependent, but it's a lot harder to change that relationship and make it work economically for Canada. So I think we need to be really careful about the distance between ambition and reality. Okay, we're going to leave this block there. That was a good conversation. The next time it'll be a little lighter.

So how did Mark Carney do in his first time facing off on the opposition and how are the dynamics without Pierre Poilier in there? That's next. Mr. Speaker, may I first thank my constituents from Napea and forgive me the honour. Could you also indulge me to... Relax. Well he didn't take long to pick up old liberal habits of not being able to answer questions. I've never really been a spectator of the house, but I'm going to work hard to earn the opportunity to do it again.

So how did the PM perform in his first appearance in question period? How are the dynamics different? Let's bring everybody back. Chantel, Andrew and Althea. Althea, why don't you start us off there. What did you make of how the Prime Minister did and how it felt and looked different, I guess, on that first day? Yeah, I was in the chamber. He wasn't here today, which I thought was interesting. Second day you don't show up to the House of Commons. What does that say? But the first day, look,

it's hard. The House of Commons is a hard thing to perform at because people are heckling at you. You have time constraints. You might not really know your file. It's kind of a performing art. I will say it did not seem to come naturally to him. I was surprised at the vagueness of his answers and how he kind of like relied on partisan talking points I felt were like fed to him in this question period prep session they do before they talk. One thing that disappointed me was I thought he did a good job during the election campaign responding substantially to the answers from reporters. And when he was asked a question that actually had misinformation in it from the conservatives, he did not seek

to say that what, you know, that Canada was not collecting any tariffs at all, like that that was not true. Instead, he just repeated some vacuous talking points. That I thought was disappointing. I also found it disappointing that he misled the House on this first day by suggesting that this $20 billion tariff estimate was coming from the Conservatives when it came from the Liberals. The Conservatives used the Liberals' numbers. I'm getting into the weeds here, but as everybody knows, I'm a political geek. But it made me reflect on how much does he value parliament.

And when you hear from MPs talk about the way he responds in caucus, he seems to feel like it's a barrier to moving quickly on the things that he wants to do. So I think that's something we need to watch out for. The other thing I felt was noticeable was the lack of an NDP voice. You know, who has voice is really important in terms of the issues that get attention. And we talked a lot about pipelines and natural energy projects yesterday, and there wasn't a lot of talk about healthcare or any of the left-wing issues that the NDP usually puts forward.

So how will the liberals position themselves as Goldilocks when they're only being pressed on one side, basically? Chantal, how did you think Prime Minister Carney did? It didn't look like a deer caught in the headlights. No. Yes, that's your first point. I agree with Althea. Handling question period takes practice, and I don't expect someone to show up and look

like he's a pro at this. So on that basis, it kind of feels like we're commenting on something that most Canadians don't really give a damn about. To be truthful. And I am not saying this as a way to say Parliament doesn't matter, but I do not believe that the serious business of Parliament happens in question period. So I will cast judgment on whether Mark Carney realizes that Parliament matters when I see legislation and the timeline on it versus the reality that we do want every party and

the two houses to have a say in whatever major legislation comes forward. I can imagine what Andrew's going to say, but I'm just going to let him say it. Well, you're ahead of me then. I've got conflicting views on this. First of all, as bad as question period is, and Mark Carney not answering the questions is in the rich tradition of ministers generally, and we saw that including from his fellow ministers. You know, Franco-Philippe Champagne got huge cheers from the liberal caucus by basically

bellowing out talking points that had nothing to do with the questions that had been asked him. So it's hard to fault Carney if he was coached, basically, don't answer the questions that had been asked him. So it's hard to fault Carney if he was coached basically don't answer the questions. It's a little different when you're being questioned by the press. The questions are, I may put myself out in a limb here, but can be presumed to be a little bit more in good faith than they are when they're coming from the opposition benches. That has its upsides and its downsides. The nastiness of question period is usefully humbling to ministers. If Donald Trump had to face not the White House press corps who are egregious in their fawning even when they're supposedly

against an adversary like Donald Trump, but if he had to stand up in a parliament and answer questions and heckles from determined opponents, I think he'd be in a different position than he is. So it's good to see somebody with a high opinion of himself like Mark Carney have to subject him to this. I agree with Elthea. I hope he subjects himself more. I'm not one of those that says, oh he's not having a prime minister's question period where he answers all the questions, therefore that's letting the side down. I'd like to see answers from other ministers if we're going to treat cabinet government as anything

real, but he should certainly be in the House most days and should certainly be ready to answer questions and I hope his performance will improve over time. Okay, any quick words from all three of you on the fact that Pierre Poiliev was not there, that he had to do that little scrum outside and whether that changed anything inside the House materially, Althea? No. That's it. You said quick words.

Yeah, I know, but that was quick even for you. I mean, he did seem to be pained that he wasn't in there because we all know that he likes it. That's his space. Well, that's what he's been doing for 20 years. That's right. That's all he knows. That's right.

So of course he misses it. He misses his friends. he misses the action, he misses the theater, he misses being in the spotlight. I thought it looked good on him, frankly. I think he's had a good few days. He's been more cooperative, more cheerful, and more humble. So he's had a humbling experience of losing that seat and being locked out of the House of Commons.

Sometimes that can improve people's perceptions, particularly if you're viewed as being kind of arrogant and overbearing. This was a nicer Pierre-Paul Yev to listen to. Shut up. I understand that Pierre-Paul Yev expected to come back to this Parliament in the Prime Minister's role, so somewhere or somehow I thought maybe there was a kindness in the prime minister's role. So somewhere or somehow I thought maybe there was a kindness in the losing the seat experience in the sense that, yes, I understand he's been doing this for 20 years. I understand he likes it,

but that was not what he expected to happen. And I think probably it's not a bad thing that he gets to sit out these first few months where you're back in the same job questioning someone who beat you. We're going to take a short break here. When we come back, we'll talk about Mark Carney's nation-building projects and how he's hoping to jumpstart the Canadian economy with the help of the provinces. That's next.

We are in a crisis. We have to get moving. We have to get moving on these major projects. We have to get moving on building one Canadian economy. That is why the First Ministers, the Premiers and myself are meeting next Sunday in Saskatoon. We need to move on these nation building projects. So projects that bring Canada together, projects that diversify our economy, projects that help us export to new markets and really move this economy forward.

So what do these nation-building plans mean for Canada? What can we expect from that First Minister's meeting that starts on Sunday? Chantal, Andrew and Althea. Chantal, what do you make of these plans that the Prime Minister has and the way he wants the provinces and the premiers to sort of present these plans and try and get buy-in to make them happen very, very quickly. I can't wait to see the legislation. To tell you the truth, I believe that is the real start to Parliament, this legislation. I can see loads of issues and I'm curious to see how it works.

How do you deal? You cannot change the division of powers in this country, it's constitutional. I don't believe that some provinces will say yes to anything because they get a yes for their projects. I'm curious about the duty to consult indigenous communities. It will really be the meat that Parliament will get to chew on after the First Minister's conference. And Andrew, your paper reported on some of the details of what will be presented. We also got it later, that same memo. And it does seem as though some of the regulations and conditions are pretty loosey-goosey under this plan. Obviously we wait to see the legislation but it will be fascinating to see how this actually works. Yeah he's

got two different things. One is to speed up the federal approval of projects and he's got more control over that. The other is to try to persuade the provinces to go in on a you you know, one review type of model generally. And that'll be much harder. And it'll be much harder. We can't just wish away the kinds of obstacles, fair and foul, that were preventing projects from being built before. You know, the duty to consult with indigenous groups, the, you know, the political imperative of trying to get provinces onside, if not the constitutional, the opposition from environmentalists, etc., are still going to be there. You know, he'll try to make yards on that.

He's going to face a lot of opposition from the left on this. But the left is a much weakened force right now in Canadian politics. And depending how real this is versus rhetoric, he has a chance to really make yards against the conservatives. You know, at some point they're going to run out, they've made great yardage against the liberals in the past by saying you're against pipelines, you're against this, you're against that. If he can tilt the scales in favor of faster development and if one of those, at least one of those is a pipeline, he's going to take a lot of the air out of the conservative tires on this.

Didn't seem in that interview though that he was coming to the table with a bunch of federal cash either, Althea. The idea is to help things get going but not necessarily to fund them. I don't know if that's true yet because he has spoken differently about that during the election campaign. I can't imagine that we're going to have big national building projects and that there's no federal money on the table, that it's just, oh, regulations will be loosened. I guess I will say two things. One, I think that I haven't read the memo, so I want to be clear with everybody.

I'm just going by what's been reported. But if it's true that you're going to have one minister that's in charge of all of the regulations that deal with a project, I can see a clash not just within all the groups that Andrew listed, but also with cabinet, because you could have all of those powers going to the natural resource minister and then what happens to the environment minister. And then the other part is the only voice really in the House of Commons to speak for the environmentalists, let's say, is the Bloc Québécois. And so you also have this delicate dance where we're going to have a Quebec election.

Do you want to hand a gift to the Sovereign Test on which to bang you over the head with during the election campaign because you're going to be seen as handing everything over and basically running as a progressive conservative slash conservative government. There are other things that I think the Mark Carney PMO needs to be thinking of that I don't know if they're thinking of at the moment. Last word to you, Chantal. Yes, and the fact that Premier Francois Legault sounds more open to pipelines, Chantal. Yes, and the fact that Premier François Legault

sounds more open to pipelines, take a grain of salt to that. He is the most unpopular Premier in the country at this point, and he's running second or third, looking at that election next year. Yeah, okay, well, we'll see, yeah, that's a good point. We'll see what happens at the meeting and whether we get any more details.

Thank you, thank you all very much. Appreciate it. That is at issue for this week. Are you interested in seeing those nation-building projects for the country? What did you think of the Prime Minister's performance and question period? Let us know. Send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. You can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We will be back here in your podcast feeds next week. Thanks so much for listening.