At Issue - Does Carney’s India trip put trade over security?

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Prime Minister Mark Carney goes to India to strengthen trade, but concerns about transnational repression follow him. Polievre lays out how he would deal with Trump. And, a meeting with OpenAI leaves federal ministers ‘disappointed.’ Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

Building a better world starts with a better way to build. That's why ADCO is leading with modular building solutions, delivering with innovation, speed, precision, consistency, and a dedication to quality that stands the test of time. We're moving people forward and driving the growth of communities. If you're looking for an advantage and a way to build the Canada of tomorrow, today, think ATCO. This is a CBC podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton, this week on at issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, February 26th.

We are there to elevate the Canada-India relationship and part and parcel of that elevation involves ensuring that we have the dialogue about public safety and security at the highest levels. We are tackling it up front, working together with Canada. That's how mature democracies work. You work together by tackling the problems that are. there between you. So this week we're asking how is Mark Carney balancing trade and security with his trip to India? Plus, Pierre Paulyev finally talks about Donald Trump.

So what's been made of the PM's trip to India? Is this government choosing trade over security concerns? How does it balance both of them? I'm Rosemary Barden here to break it all down tonight. Chantelle Iber, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj. Nice to see all of you. This all comes, of course, after this senior Canadian official said in a in a briefing before reporters left with the Prime Minister that this was, that India wasn't really a threat anymore. I will say I also interviewed Anita Anand today

who did not repeat those comments in any way, shape, or form. But I think it did raise a lot of eyebrows. So Andrew, give me your perspective about whether this is, whether Canadians should be concerned that the Prime Minister is headed over there to do trade deals and there are still people here in this country who feel concerned about their own safety. Yeah, it should raise eyebrows about the quality of the advice the Prime Minister is getting.

It would be news to CISS, for example, which late last year should have report saying that India, along with China, was a major national security threat. It would be news to members of the Sikh community, one of whom just recently was given a police order, a police warning that its life was in danger. It would be news to authorities in the United States where an Indian national, I think, pleaded guilty. I think it was either to murder or attempted murder, allegedly, at the behest of the Indian government. This issue is still a live issue. People, I think, might understand that the demands of real politics, the demands of a very changed international trade and security environment, mean, we've got to make parlay with countries that we might still have serious issues with, but you'd hope that people would go in with clear eyes and a sense of the trade-offs involved,

and not on the basis that India is no longer any kind of threat to national security or to Canadian citizens. I was very confused by this headline and briefing, Althea. And I will say when speaking with the minister, I was less confused because she seems quite aware of what the relationship is and how to look at it. But give me your perspective on what you think this all means. Bad omen for the beginning of the strip to India. kind of makes you think of the Justin Trudeau disastrous trip to India. I'm not talking about the costumes, but I'm talking about his national security advisor giving MP, giving journalists a briefing, and it turned out to be quite the brouhaha about India's interference in Canadian affairs and led to some parliamentary hearings.

This was, of course, Danielle Jean. So you kind of start off with another official making statements, as Andrew talked about, I mean, three times in the course of that briefing, which was mostly led by this person, did they say that they believe the government, if the government believed that India was actively interfering in Canadian democratic processes, they would probably not be taking this trip. A version of this three times was told to reporters. Well, at the same time, saying, we have these robust processes in place to deal with foreign interference, which, by the way, they were all pointing to the stuff that the Trudeau government did. and then saying, but you know, like we've, the foreign affairs minister, Anita and Nan, has sat down with her counterpart,

and we basically both agreed to not engage in each other's domestic affairs. And the government of India has long believed that Canada should be taking a much firmer strand on the activities of the Sikh diaspora, and that they're not doing enough and that they're criminal elements in there and that the government of Canada is turning a blind eye. And so it appears, or at least this is what our security officials have told us, that the government of India has decided to actively engage in Canada. And it is striking because it sounds like the government is not saying we know there are these concerns and we are working to address them. But at the same time, the relationship is bigger and we need to be resetting the relationship

and kind of catching up to where the rest of our allies are. Instead, what they're saying is this problem doesn't exist. and your concerns in diaspora groups, you're making, you know, these are allegations and we're going to investigate them on a case-by-gay-spaced. This is what this person said. So it makes it seem like you have no clue what's actually going on. And what you're telling Canadians doesn't match with law enforcement, intelligence, and the people that had this person's old job before saying, whoa, this would be used to me. If you don't see, if you don't look for anything, then you don't see anything. And that's kind of the message that

happened this week. I will say just so the viewers understand, the senior official is not someone we can name. That was the agreement of the briefing. But it is a public servant, someone who would be advising the Prime Minister on these issues. Chantal. It does sound and fit

the box of willful blindness. You are telling Canadians that we expelled six diplomats 16 months ago. We don't routinely expel one. And now nothing is all good and everything is happening, which sounds like you're trying to say what the government would like you to say,

which doesn't make sense, i.e. we wouldn't be going there if everything wasn't solved. Well, does anybody who know anything about that file believe that all those problems were solved? Now, Mark Carney still has it in this. power to change course or to correct course. The problem is that I'm guessing those people doing the briefing, we're thinking we're not going to sound like there is still a problem because the prime minister wants to make deals and he doesn't want the problem. I don't think the prime minister can afford to just walk in there and say, yeah, this briefing

is what we believe. everything is now great because we had this talk eye to eye and it's all good, which no one in this country should believe. So where does that leave the trip then, Andrew? I mean, obviously the minister was sort of trying to clean up some of this stuff before she heads over to join the Prime Minister in India. But where does it leave the idea that he's going over to make business deals and some people now saying, well, at what cost? I would hope that it would not, I mean, we'll see, but I would hope it would not just be about business. I would hope that this would be the opportunity for some clarification, if we can put it that way. Because you've had examples of both types of errors, if you can put it that way. You've had Indian government calling things that are basically speech issues, calling them an example of terrorism.

At the same time, you've got Canadian politicians playing footsie with very bad actors and defending it in the name of free speech. and, you know, I'm, of course, I dissociate myself from violence, but I'm going to help to glorify some, you know, martyr or other. So we need both sides to sort of have a clear understanding of what is and is not acceptable in that regard. We should also bear in mind it's not just about transnational repression or violence against Canadian citizens. There's also credible evidence that the Indian government was involved in trying to interfere with, I think it was two successive federal conservative leadership races. So that's also, it should be on the agenda, again, what exactly we can come to agreement on,

but I would hope they would be in the midst of all this pressing india on this. Okay, good first conversation. I'm going to leave this part there. When we come back, though, we're going to take a look at another big political moment today. Pierre Paulyev's talking about Donald Trump and rebuking him. What does this tell us about Paulyev's plan to deal with Donald Trump? What does it mean for Pierre Paulyev's leadership in this moment? That's next. What President Trump says about Canada is wrong.

We should not declare a permanent rupture with our biggest customer and closest neighbor. We will work together where we can. We will oppose where we must because loyal opposition is not just our job title. It is our national interest. So what's been made up here, Paul Leav's vision for Canada-U.S. relations? What does it tell us about his strategy for dealing with the U.S.? Let's bring everyone back. Chantal, Andrew Elthia.

Althea, what did you make of the speech? I thought it was a good speech, good speech, good politics. I think this is the type of speech that he can give to his base, that he can give to the boomers that have decided that they don't trust him. I don't know that it's enough, frankly, to make up for the image that people already have in their heads of Pierre Puele of, but that's another issue. perhaps part of the issue, but not on the speech itself. There are basically two markers of differentiations that he is creating.

He is saying that Mark Carney has diagnosed the problem properly, but he's going after the wrong strategy. We cannot move completely beyond the United States, and we need to focus on that relationship. This two will pass. There will be another president, and we are trying to, or Mark Carney is trying to, to change things that are going to take a generational to fix.

And instead, what we should be doing is using our leverage in Canada to have a tariff-free relationship with the United States, a stronger relationship when it comes to defense. And so there are two clear different visions there that I think can speak to a whole swath of Canadians. The other thing he's doing is laying the groundwork to say Mark Carney has failed to live up to the promises. The things that Mark Carney has promised in the last election that he was going to do, get major projects build, get a pipeline build, make us an energy superpower.

He has not delivered on these things. And so he's giving the prime minister, like he's not coming out right away with the criticism, but he's laying the path to build the argument. And that too is smart. So is it enough, Chantal? And is it too little too late, I think is the other fair question? Well, that all depends on what follows this. Because a lot of Canadians have made up their minds about Pierre Paulyev,

and the result is not terribly positive. But I think first, as a country, we should recognize that it's good news that on the notion of not giving away the shock, not bending because Donald Trump's administration asked for this, our political parties are pretty much united. and that speech kind of confirms it. Yes, there will be differences in approaches, which you should be doing. But there were, I was listening to Dominique Leblins in Toronto on one screen

and Pierre Puellev on the other. There were times when they seemed to be saying the same thing as the same time. That's pretty rare in Canadian politics. I agree with him. He's playing the long game. I, first audience, caucus. I'm a serious person. He's going off on trips,

something that he outside the country as leader of the opposition, something he refused to do. So basically he wants to be part of the conversation. But with the thought that when that conversation soured in a year and a half, maybe then Canadians will want to look at someone who says, I could have this conversation on different terms. So it was, I think, a good day. A good day, but Andrew, again, I guess my question, and no one can answer it,

does it really change anything materially? I mean, he had been criticized, you know, a year ago, really, for not talking about Donald Trump, for not talking about it during the election, for not talking about it at the convention. Here he's finally talking about it. Is that the thing that's going to make the difference for him? Well, as my colleagues have said, it depends on what the follow-up is. it's the same thing with the prime minister.

It depends what the follow-off is on his strategy that he's outlined. But look, it was a change in tone. It was statesman-like. We should mention after about a week of fairly disgraceful demagoguery on the immigration and refugee file. But this was a more high-minded Pierre Pallé ever that we saw. There was a nod towards cooperation. There was a shake of the fist at Donald Trump.

All that's well and good. And there was, yes, the beginning of an outlining of a somewhat different strategy than the prime ministers. The Prime Minister is placing more emphasis on the external dimension of diversifying our trade, of diversifying our alliances. Mr. Palliav is placing more emphasis on internal resilience, internal economic strength. Of course, what you want to do is both. Well, the Prime Minister is doing both, too, I will say.

I mean, we'll see whether he follows through. That's right. If there's going to be a pipeline and stuff. Right. But more of the emphasis has been on diversifying away from the United States. Palliever is saying, look, there's very little where we can actually diversify, certainly in the short term. So let's be, he's placing more of the emphasis on getting a successful trade negotiation.

I think he's overestimating the leverage that we have. That word leverage comes up many times in the speech. There were some interesting proposals, but whether those could actually bring to bear somebody like Donald Trump, I think, is another question entirely. But it does allow him to take a lot of his existing policies about internal trade and energy. Energy and address them up as a national security policy. policy. And fair enough, that is part of the mix. Yeah. Chantal, I also think that, you know, his clip played at the end there is an important one that, that yes, he will support the government, but it's also his job to oppose and hold

the government to account. And that is not, in itself, something that threatens this country, that that is actually helps democracy, it strengthens democracy. I tend to agree with that. that the best ideas come when there are people around for kicking tires to see if they're going to take you the distance. The last thing you want is everyone saying the same thing and not testing ideas. So I believe that is the proper role of the official opposition,

not to Verov's topic, which has been kind of the strategy for Pierre Puehliev until now. We need to talk about other things. They're all important, but they are, they have taken the Conservative Party out of a conversation where they need to be. And by the way, I did notice that there was in their support for a more open trade relationship with India. The other thing I think we might want to note is the regional dimension of this. It's no accent where the speech was given and to whom it was given. There is a lot of unease amongst the big business community, particularly in southern Ontario,

about the trade relationship with the United States. They tend to be particularly focused on that. Mr. Pollyarvis' particular proposal of we'll stop Chinese autos from coming into Canada and return for the United States, letting them into the United States. That will certainly play well in southern Ontario. When the inevitable Chinese retaliation comes on some other product that we make in some other part of the country that may not be quite as easily defended. Last 30 seconds to you there, Altheon.

Well, he wasn't pushed. to explain the tradeoffs, right? I think the follow-up questions are like, what would you do about supply management, for example? But there were some good consumer suggestions, like forget about the EV stuff, like let's give people instead of the HST off their new cars. What I wanted to say was on the comment about the challenge function.

Because the conservatives are so scared of an election, they actually are not playing that challenge function in the House of Commons and in committees where they should be doing it. The government is passing through, frankly, flawed legislation that the senators are having to look at completely because the people on the House side are too afraid to stand up to the government. And so this committee, this is how he framed this, this was a multi-partisan committee to talk about Canada-U.S. relations is

really smart because it actually puts the conservatives at the table. It looks like they're being like postpartisan, let's all work together, kumbaya, while also give them access information with which they can criticize the government. So good politics on both sides. Yeah, gets them into the conversation, which has been the biggest problem that they've been having for some time. And gives them levers to criticize the government with,

without any consequences. Althea likes the last word, you guys. We're going to take a short break here, but when we come back, we'll talk about open AI and concerns over how the government is choosing or not choosing to regulate artificial intelligence.

We asked them, get up here and give us an explanation. They came up here on Tuesday. We are looking forward to some concrete proposals. We are disappointed that by the time they came up here, they did not have something more concrete to offer, but we'll see very shortly what they have. In a written response, tonight OpenAI says it would have reported

the Tumblr-Rid shooter under new safety policies that they added to their security protocol in recent months, though they didn't say when. So what's to be made of how Ottawa is responding to AI? Let's bring everyone back, Chantal, Andrew, and Althea. I mean, I think when I consider the story, this is a government that's trying to embrace AI. That's why they have a minister in place. And, you know, this has sort of forced them to come up against the reality of things.

That it is very hard to manage and regulate technology companies and to embrace them. And at the same time, you know, hold them to account over concerns about those things. Chantelle, your thoughts on that? Reality check, change in focus, brought about. by a tragedy. And so we've switched or pivoted this way from AI, good thing,

data centers, whatever, to AI, what are we supposed to do about this? I would argue that at this point the Canadian government is probably I don't want to say clueless, but helpless in figuring out

its place in that conversation as it was for years. over Facebook, Google, etc. It's easy to say, if you don't, we're going to do, but the doing is proven to be complicated and more complicated by our trade relationship with the United States. Yeah, and to be fair, there isn't really anyone who's got a handle on this. The European Union maybe has come closest to trying to get a handle on it.

Andrew? Well, I mean, this particular tragedy is as awful as it is. is only a small piece of the overall concerns and problems with AI. And AI is only one part of the overall picture when it comes to online safety, online issues. So AI, you know, in the last few weeks and months, I think there's been a gathering sense that the rah-rah-rah gee whiz early word on AI was really only conveying a small part of the picture, that you have the presidents and leaders of these companies. on the one hand saying, this could kill us all,

but by the way, we're releasing version 6.0 tomorrow. They have this enormous power in their hands of a being that at some point is going to be smarter than we are, and there is not even the beginning of an attempt to regulate it, to put safeguards or guardrails around. The American government, in fact, is insisting that Anthropic remove its own, internally imposed safeguards.

So there is a whole question for not just the Canadian government, But all of the governments around the world, and that's part of the problem, is getting them to cooperate rather than engage in a destructive race to the bottom. But also with this particular government, they still haven't delivered a credible online harms bill because they keep trying to involve themselves in areas that are far beyond the core issues that are concerned to most people and in which there's the greatest consensus. So instead of focusing on revenge porn and encouraging suicide, they get into things like life sentences for hate propaganda. and allowing the Human Rights Commission to take people to court because of discriminatory speech. So we need a more focused agenda from this government that focuses on the particular harms that these technologies can do. Last minute to you, Althea.

I'm going to say three things. One, I have to say I was actually surprised that OpenAI came to Ottawa, and although they didn't speak so openly to the media, that in their response, at least after the fact, has been quite throughout because that has not always been the case, frankly, with some of the big tech companies in the United States when parliamentarians have tried to call them here. Second, I too, to Andrew's point, immediately thought of the online harms bill and how this probably is the perfect opportunity to bring it forward. And Andrew talked about two parts of the bill.

The first part of the bill had basically unanimous approval. They could have passed it immediately in the House of Commons, but they wanted to tack on this other stuff for political partisan reasons that dragged the whole thing down. and now we're like almost a decade waiting for this piece of legislation. They could easily reintroduce the first part of their old bill and pass it. And then on the question of AI as a whole, and I do think maybe this is kind of like I come to Jesus moments for parliamentarians because the government has signaled,

the prime minister has signaled to others, that he's not interested in regulating AI. And maybe this is the moment where members of parliament pause and think, is that really what we want? Is that what we want to be responsible for? And what do we want to call in our government to do? And so I think those conversations are going to happen. Okay. Thank you all for this thoughtful conversation.

I appreciate it. That's at issue for this week. What do you think of the PM's latest international trade trip? And what did you make of Pierre Poliov's pitch for Canada-U.S. Relations and how to deal with the president. Let us know your thoughts. You can send us an email. Ask at cbc.ca.

Remember, you can catch me on Rosemary Barton live. That's Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We'll be right back here in your podcast feeds next week. Thank you so much for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.