At Issue - Did the Liberal debates change anything for the contenders?

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Liberal leadership contenders square off in two debates, and questions emerge about Carney’s conflicts of interest. Canada braces as the U.S. tariff deadline comes back around. And, Jagmeet Singh wants Donald Trump banned from the G7 meeting in Alberta. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

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But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, February 27th.

It was an opportunity to show Canadians the diversity and the breadth of talent that we have in our party. It's a really good thing that we are agreed about very many things. The decision, the formal decision of the board happened after I ceased to be on the board. So this week we're asking what what did we hear from the Liberal leadership candidates? Chantelle Iber, Andrew Coyne, and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus Donald Trump says tariffs are still coming for Canada.

So where did the Liberal leadership debates leave us and should Mark Carney have to say more about his past work and dealings? I'm Rosemary Barton here to break it all down tonight. Chantelle Iber, Andrew Coyne, and Althea Raj. Good to see everyone. Chantelle, let's start Coyne and Althea Raj. Good to see everyone. Chantelle, let's start with you. Do you think that the debates changed anything?

Did it cement Mark Carney as the front runner? Did it give anyone an opportunity to come up the middle? I don't think it changed the outcome of this leadership vote. And I've tested it with people who have voted. I didn't ask them who they voted for. But I asked them, did it change your mind? The answer was always no. But I do think the Liberal Party came out looking better for those candidates. They they they did well for

themselves, for the most part. But beyond that, I don't think this inch, the outcome of this leadership campaign inched on those debates. Andrew? I agree that it didn't change anything, you know, on the outcome of this particular race. It's pretty clear who's got a lock on it, Mark Carney. I think, however, at the cost of storing up some trouble

for him in the future in the general election, at least exposing some of his weaknesses. Now, maybe that will turn out to be a good thing as well, in that you better find out now rather than finding out later. But in terms of his general communications abilities, in terms of his French speaking in particular, and in terms of some of his corporate entanglements, there are some worry signs, let's say. Put it that way. Okay. and we can talk more about that. But Althea, your impressions of whether it changed anything?

Not, no. It was pretty dull, if we're really honest. Mark Carney's French was worse than I expected it was going to be. I think he was quite nervous. Karina Gould and Frank Baylis, I don't know if Mr. Baylis plans to run again, if he doesn't win the leadership, but if he does, I think he's cemented himself a position in cabinet. I think they did themselves lots of favors by their,

they did very well on Monday and Tuesday, especially on Monday. I do think that it showed that Mr. Kearney is not a politician, that politics is kind of a craft and it takes a long time to master and he does not have a long time to master it and the learning curve is going to be steep and the way that he speaks, he speaks like a technocrat. You know, my first point, my second point, my third point.

You don't have time to really do that in a debate and in this media environment, you don't really have time to do it either. But maybe people are looking for a technocrat. Yeah, yeah, I wondered whether the seriousness of him was appealing to some people, in spite of the fact that I also think it was difficult to connect for real people to sometimes to what he was saying,

because he also doesn't really talk about real people, he talks about issues and responses. Chantal. Processes. Yeah, exactly. I think that the only reason Mark Carney has a real shot, not only at becoming liberal leader, that seems like the easy part,

but at becoming prime minister for longer than a few months, is because of context. Because of what comes from Donald Trump on a daily basis, which basically leads people to look for something different. If we were not in this context, I think people would say, as French isn't up to it, which, by the way, is more said on the English side of Canada than on the French side of Canada. It's amazing all these people who've gone to school and did high school Frenching and

have discovered that they're experts. Hey, I'm a francophone. To be clear, it's my first language. No, no, not you. We're not talking about you. We're not talking about you. No, no. There have not been 60,000 columns in this province to say that his French isn't up to it.

Basically because he's running against, for prime minister, someone who is not someone whose first language is French. But the context changes the rules of the game. And that is why we have a hard time assessing where these poll numbers and where Mr. Carney will go from here. But on the basis of no political experience and it showed, yes, I totally agree. What about this issue of the potential conflicts, right? I mean, he hasn't gone through the ethics procedures yet, but there was this question about his former company,

Brookfield, and the decision to move it to New York that he was involved with and then he said he wasn't. And I don't know whether that is, you know, something that sticks to him in any way, Andrew. It potentially is not. I don't think the fact that he was the chairman of the board or that they moved the one aspect of the company, I don't think that can stick.

But the fact that he doesn't appear to have told the truth about it, I think, is more serious. And it comes back to this context question that Chantel has mentioned. The reason why he has shot up in the polls, the reason why people seem to be looking towards him in this particular moment is they're looking for a grownup, they're looking for a serious person,

they're looking for a person who is, quote unquote, not a politician, who's not playing games with them, because in serious times people want people to level with them. And he has a very sterling reputation coming in here as a technocrat, as a manager, as somebody who's good in a crisis, as somebody who's cool under fire. And it's damaged when he does things like that, when he behaves like a politician. It's damaged when his platform is so watery and vague and front runner and standard politician speak. His strength that his handlers seem determined to keep him from exploiting is,

I'll level with you, I'll go straight to the heart of the matter, I'll deal with this thing as an adult, what is a serious person in serious times. And I think whether it's him or his handlers, they're damaging that. Althea? I agree with part of what Andrew's saying. Like, to me, what struck me,

and this happened in the press conference after the debate, was how he stood there with his arms folded, and he seemed, like his body language expressed, that he was annoyed. And then this question came up. And I, I mean, as a Canadian and also as a journalist, I find it really troubling that his first instinct

is to couch the truth and to say something that may be factually accurate but leaves an impression that is not completely accurate. And we have people lying to us all the time in Ottawa. And so to Andrew's point, if his brand is that he's authentic and he will give Canadians the street goods and he will tell us what he knows and what he doesn't know, the fact that his instinct was to couch the truth, I think is quite troublesome. Yeah.

Yeah. But maybe that's the one thing they actually told him to do. I don't know. The other thing that really troubled me, frankly, was his non-answer on Bill 21, that his campaign team has also declined to answer. So I feel like there's a lot of vagueness that is emerging out of the Carney camp that should be a warning sign,

also including how he doesn't know how much groceries cost. So these are all like great little learning curves. None of them really seems to know how much groceries cost. Well, the women actually, Korea Gould and Kristi Everland were, at least they ventured a guess and they weren't, you know, they weren't off.

I pay a lot more than they do. I'll just say that so I don't know whether maybe they're better at coupons. Chantal, over to you. Last word to you. So my fear watching all this over the past week is being that they are turning Mark Carney into Michael Ignatieff. I always thought Michael Ignatieff was better at first than he was eventually when handlers told him

what he should do. And what I saw this week was kind of the Michael Ignatieffing of Mark Carney. And he can't win on being that person. I also believe that if you're going to have a business past, transparency is your best ally. Yeah. Because when you're not hiding something, when it's in plain sight, it doesn't get

you in trouble. Yeah. And the opposite happened. Yeah. And I don't think anyone suggested to Mr. Carney to say what he said post-debate. I think he decided it was just too complicated. So he's going to go with his version of the truth, and part of it is truth. But it opens him up to what we saw, and it does build the trust deficit that he can't afford.

Okay, you're right. We're a long way from the Mark Carney who was on the Jon Stewart show, on the Daily Show, right? Okay, we're going to leave that part there. When we come back, we'll take a look at the latest tariff threats from Donald Trump. I'm not stopping the tariffs, no. Millions of people have died because of the fentanyl that comes over the border. If on Tuesday there are unjustified tariffs brought in on Canada, we will have an immediate

and extremely strong response. What's to be made of the second coming of Trump's tariffs? Does this undermine the work Canada has done or does it at least lead us to question whether it's any use at all? Let's bring everybody back. Chantel, Andrew, Anathia. Andrew, you start us off on this one. There was a pause. There's been a lot of work done. I mean, David McGinty and the Fentanyl czar and the head of the RCMP never went down in Washington again today and yet he still seems determined to bring these tariffs into place.

What does that tell us, if anything? Well, it's a really mixed bag. I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, you look at something like the deal that Vladimir Zelensky negotiated with him, where he basically gave up next to nothing, got nothing, but basically got a deal that they could wave around and seem to satisfy them in terms of symbolic things,

at least for now, then maybe you say well, maybe there's some case for some sort of similar toing and froing on this. The other hand is this is this is only the start of a long process where if we're not careful we get whipsawed into into just constantly having to go back down to Washington to negotiate the next tariff threat about the next issue that they choose to raise. back down to Washington to negotiate the next tariff threat about the next issue that they choose to raise. We do not want to set the precedent that this is basically the way that you crack the whip on Canada and force us to do your bidding.

So looking in the context of not just this issue but everything to do with the relationship, I think there's a case to be made for not negotiating and striking a much harder line and just saying, proving that we're not going to be pushed around. Yeah, I mean, watching Keir Starmer, the British PM, there next to the president today, offering up this state visit, another state visit with the king, trying to get a trade deal out of him, it was kind of uncomfortable to see another world leader, try to placate the president in that way, Althea.

And I wondered whether there was kind of a lesson for this country too, in terms of what Andrew is saying. I was deeply saddened, disturbed to see the British Prime Minister basically throw Canada under the bus, so I'm not going to comment on that. I thought Emmanuel Macron, the French president, did a really good job, actually, earlier in the week, in kind of, you know, being true to what France believes and also kind of his way of handling Donald Trump. I think at the end of the day, to answer your original question, it was never about fentanyl. And the president is not a good negotiator, because if it is about fentanyl, then he would keep dangling the tariffs to get Canada to do more. And

he's not. So it's only about the tariffs. He thinks this is a money grab. He doesn't seem to understand, or at least is not publicly acknowledging, that tariffs will impact American consumers. Today, again, he was talking about it like it's the countries, like us, that would pay the tariffs. So I don't know. Like I don't think it's a bad thing that we are responding as in like Canadian officials and business people. I think we have no choice.

But at the end of the day, the president will decide to do whatever he wants and it will be based on the advice that he gets, what he thinks, what the stock market is telling him. And I don't really think that there is anything we can put in the window because it's not really clear what his end goal is other than he wants to make more money. Chantel?

I'm going to go back to Stephen Harper's words on his latest open letter. There is no point in trying to figure out what the end game of this president is. This is the same president who today was asked about calling President Zelensky a dictator and said, did I say that? And that kind of tells you everything you need to know. A good luck to the UK negotiating a free trade deal with Donald Trump because we did. And was it yesterday that he said some idiot must have signed it?

The idiot was him. So having this conversation about what we can do, whether it's going to happen or not, is kind of a loss of analysis because we're working our brains to work on a brainless proposition. So what are we doing then? What should we be doing? Well, one thing I think you want to say we should not be doing is going back into renegotiating NAFTA, for example. The president's signature is not worth the papers written on.

He cannot be, he is not bound to the agreements he signed. He does not live up to them. He does not obey the law in his own country. So I think the focus has got to shift, as it should be shifting for all these countries, from bilateral to multilateral. We should not be taking on the president and the government one-on-one.

We should be banding together. We should be developing post-US organizations and agreements. When you look at what's the case, the status of NATO right now, it's hard to see any future for NATO. The Europeans are understanding that and are starting to band together. I hope and think there's a place for Canada in that arrangement, but it should be working together to basically contain and deal with the United States as an adversary rather than as an ally, because it's not an ally anymore. Yeesh, it's bleak, Althea.

I mean, it is. And if the world is being completely reorganized, as Andrew's suggesting here, that is a difficult place for Canada, for everyone. Althea. Yeah, but I think this government and most of our leaders have come to that conclusion a few weeks ago, frankly, and so that realignment is starting to happen.

And there is more of a Team Canada approach in terms of getting rid of internal trade barriers and working with an eye not just on what Donald Trump will mean for the next four years, but what this means for Canada in the medium to longer term. I do think that those conversations are happening. On the Kuzma renegotiating the new NAFTA, we will have a better idea in April what it is that they actually want. All the tariffs are basically illegal under the free trade deal that we had agreed to with Donald Trump.

I think there is a way for us to negotiate. I mean, this way, this today, he's talked about eggs, like, oh, he wants to get eggs from Canada because of bird flu affecting egg prices in the United States. So there is, there will be things where we accidentally have leverage that we may not realize that we should use as a, as leverage. But we cannot, you we cannot sacrifice hundreds of thousands of jobs because we're upset with the Americans and we don't want to deal with them because we don't know what the president is doing.

We still do need to negotiate. Last word to you, Chantal, you've got a minute. But the bottom line issue on how you reverse all this isn't whether we're willing to bend over backwards to not sacrifice jobs. It is when American consumers and American industries start saying that they're feeling the pain. We're not going to have impact on this, but it is going to happen internally because people didn't sign up for more inflation, higher prices, cars that cost more, a not-to-wind industry that is going down the drain.

And we cannot stop Donald Trump from killing his own economy. Yeah, okay, that good conversation. Thank you all, appreciate it. We have to take a short break here when we return. We'll look at Jagmeet Singh's call to ban Trump from attending the G7 in Canada. That's next. when we return. We'll look at Jagmeet Singh's calls to ban Trump from attending the G7 in Canada. That's next. Honestly, genuinely, can we invite someone who has directly threatened our sovereignty,

our very existence as a country? I think it's easy for politicians these days to toss out easy and shocking things to say. So what's been made of Singh's pitch on banning Trump? Let's bring everybody back. Chantal, Andrew and Althea. Althea, why don't you start us off? I mean, to me, this seemed like an attempt to get into the conversation about Donald Trump.

I don't know whether the idea is plausible. It's certainly not Prime Minister Trudeau who will decide, but what did you make of the notion? I think you're absolutely right. I think in fact both leaders that were just clipped did exactly what they needed to do or felt they needed to do. Mr. Singh has been struggling. You look at the NDP's numbers in public opinion polls.

I've seen one poll having the NDP at 10%, 14%. These are disastrous numbers for the NDP, and progressive voters seem to be flocking to the liberals to stop Pierre Poilier and to stop Donald Trump from attacking Canada. And so he needed to inject himself in that conversation, and I think that that suggestion is a suggestion that has come to the minds of a few people. And it's probably not something that the government of the day

would consider doing. It's not necessarily a responsible thing to do as if you probably do want to engage with people that you disagree with. That's the whole point of diplomacy. But it allowed him to have the headlines that he wanted. It allowed him to capture some of the media attention and gain a little bit more of the spotlight, which frankly has not been on Jagmeet Singh for the past six weeks. Yeah. Chantal? Just because you host the G7 doesn't mean you get to call the shots in the G7. I don't really see, mean you get to call the shots in the G7. So I don't really see, unless Justin Trudeau can convince the five other

non-American members of the G7 that the G7 will meet with the US, I don't really see that that is a valid proposition. And I suspect having watched the UK Prime Minister today kind of say that he had nothing to say about the threat to Canada becoming the 51st state, I kind of suspect that the other G7 members are not willing to give Canada a platform to say it's not happy with Donald Trump. Yeah, it seems like a provocation, but I'm not sure you read it the same way, Andrew. Well the provocation was the threat to annex the country. Fair. So I understand, I take the point that this is not our rodeo to organize on our own, but

I'm not at all appalled by the idea of, in principle, of telling Donald Trump we're not welcome here. This is not business as usual. This is not a disagreement about tariffs. This is an existential threat. When Charles de Gaulle came to Canada and shouted, Vive le Québec libre, he was sent home the next day. And rightly so, that you've crossed a line that you just simply do not cross in international

relations. And Donald Trump has done the same thing. So whether the G7, in fact, should be meeting is another question, because everybody, it's again people pretending that everything is fine, don't mention the war, business as usual, and it's not fine. This is aberrant behavior. It's aberrant behavior when they talk about abandoning the NATO partners if Russia were to attack. It's aberrant behavior to be claiming that abandoning the NATO partners if Russia were to attack.

It's a barren behavior to be claiming that Ukraine started the war. And for people like Kirsten Armer to be going to cap in hand and truckling to the president like that sends all the wrong signals. OK, but OK, but OK, a couple of things. We do not even know who the prime minister will end up hosting the G7 will be. It could be whoever wins the liberal leadership, it could be whoever wins the election. Those people might not be the same person. They won't be Justin Trudeau, for one. And then we do not have a clue as to what the context will be come late. Maybe

France and other countries will also not want the G7 meeting to take place or they will want to host it differently. Me, I'd invite people like Zelensky to that meeting just to make it harder for Donald Trump to come, rather than say, you're not coming, which I don't think is a realistic position. 20 seconds to you, Althea. The US is more than just Donald Trump. What we saw this week from France and the UK is that they do not want to isolate the US. They don't want to push the US into the axis of evil and closer towards Russia,

and that they want to engage. And so I think the whole point of having the US at the G7 is to continue that engagement, even if you disagree with what the president is doing. Well, even if the president is trying to isolate himself. And that's, you know, the other part of it. That's at issue for this week. Should Canada think about banning Donald Trump from the G7 meeting? Let us know what you think. You can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. Remember you can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We will be back right here in your podcast feeds next week. Thank you

so much for listening. For more CBC podcasts go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.