At Issue - Is Canada getting through to Trump on tariffs?

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

At Issue this week: With just two days to go until Trump’s tariff deadline, are Canada’s retaliation threats getting through to the U.S. president? A final report into foreign interference finds no traitors in Parliament. And another candidate drops out of the Liberal leadership race. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

Well, it's safe to say 2025 is off to an interesting start. I'll say. And if you're trying to sort through what's real and what's relevant from a Canadian perspective, we're here for you. Your World Tonight is more than just a recap of daily news. Our team goes deeper on the stories that speak to the moment to give you the full picture. I'm Susan Bonner. I'm Tom Harrington. And I'm Stephanie Scanderas.

Together we bring you the day's news, context and analysis all in about 25 minutes. Your World Tonight from CBC News. Find and follow us 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, January 30th. Preparing for tariffs, Donald Trump says he still plans to bring in a 25% tariff on Canada. Canada and Mexico, 25%.

That's coming on Saturday. That's coming on the 1st, Saturday. While Ottawa says it is ready to retaliate. I also made clear that should tariffs be imposed, we would retaliate and everything was on the table. This week we're asking, is Canada ready for Donald Trump's tariffs? And has Ottawa's message gotten through to Americans? Chantelle Iber, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus, we'll discuss the final report from the public inquiry into foreign interference.

Chantelle de Bére, let's start with you. Where do you think we are at with this? Because it is very hard to get a read on whether this is going to happen on Saturday, whether it's going to be as big as the president says, and sort of how this is going to unfold. and sort of how this is going to unfold. And it's hard to get a read because there you have the president of the United States being asked, will this apply to oil? And he says, I think we're going to discuss that tonight. Does that sound like a coherent, cohesive, structural plan or does it sound like whatever my mood is at nine o'clock at night is what's gonna happen so is Canada ready for that I think that the Canadian government believes that it has made inroads not with Donald Trump but

with people who are around Donald Trump and I get the impression from the people I talked to that there is disagreement within the presidents in our circle as to where to go with what. But will things happen on Saturday? Possibly, probably. Are we ready? Well, it depends. It's really hard. It's like pinning the donkey. You're blindfolded. You try to pin that tail on the donkey. Sometimes you end up pinning it on its ear. Yeah, I mean even just discussing our coverage plans of Saturday, we have 25 different scenarios. Andrew, so I can't imagine being the government

having to come up with the various scenarios to respond to whatever he does or doesn't do. Yeah, so on top of everything else it's important to understand about Trump and the people around him is they don't know what they're doing. They're making it up as they go along, they're not particularly smart people, they don't particularly understand the world very well, that's why they're part of Trump's universe. You can actually tell pretty much from the public record that there's a lot of disagreement. You know, the words coming out of Howard Lutnick's mouth about, oh, this

is all just about fentanyl and immigration are very different from what might come out from Peter Navarro's mouth, who's a trade advisor and sort of a dyed-in-the-wool true believer in tariffs. And Trump is, whoever talked to him last, he certainly seems to be a believer in tariffs in principle, the way he keeps rabbiting on about McKinley and the Golden Age of the 1890s, which was in fact a terrible time for American economy. So yes, among other things, that adds to the difficulty for anybody trying to plan for it. I still think the best guess is that there will be a tariff put on. It will be painful. It will not be the end of the universe. The thing about a tariff is it will have short-term impact in terms of probably, you know, you go through

a short-term recessionary period, and it will have a long-term impact in terms of you get a less efficient allocation of resources that comes out of it. What you don't get is catastrophe. A lot of things change as a result, one of which is you get a lower dollar. It's one of the reasons why Trump can't solve his trade deficit problems because of this.

So I would say the best plan is he's probably going to put on a tariff. It's going to be interesting to see whether he carves out something for the oil sector or not, in which case we'll have some very interesting politics here. Because if the... Alberta's been quite right in saying we don't want to be singled out for punishment. We don't want to be singled out as the only sector or the only province that has to deal with whatever retaliatory actions we put on. But neither it seems to me should Alberta and the oil patch be the only sector that escapes having to deal with the economic pain that this comes in. So we're going to have some

interesting discussions as a country. Yeah, Althea? Well, I mean, I think it's funny that you're asking us for our crystal ball into Donald Trump's mind because we obviously have no clue what's going to happen on Monday. But we can tell you about how prepared the government is. I mean, it has been working on this plan. Well, I would say the plan has been solid for weeks. They've been working on it for more than several months. Some people might say even a year. They have an escalatory plan as in like wave one, wave two, wave three in terms of retaliatory

action. It is not clear when even the president says like he did today that, well, maybe we will do oil depends tonight. It depends what the price is. I took that to mean, and this has been communicated to the Americans, that if you do slap tariffs on Canadian oil, the price will increase per gallon for you. Somebody, a government official told me, well, they thought that that meant that we needed to convince Donald Trump that we're not dumping Canadian oil in the U.S.

Like, no one seems to have a real clue what his problem is. And in fact, probably because he doesn't seem to know what his goal is either. Is he using the terrorists as a negotiating tactic? Is he using the terrorists because he actually wants to impose them in order to raise money? Not clear. I will say that part of the government's plan

and the thinking that's happening at the moment is how to help Canadians and industries who are affected. They are going through all the departmental spending plans to see what amount of money has been lapped, so what funding the government departments have not used to see if they can reallocate it so they don't need to recall parliament, for example. I'm told there is a billion dollar fund, a reserve fund, that they can also access. So there could be financial measures, including things that don't need legislation, like beefing up EI, for example, or business supports, where we don't actually need to recall the House. Okay, so this is all the preparation that's being done, Chantelle,

but I think it's the, what you've all demonstrated here, it's the complete unpredictability and chaos of a government, whether it be this government or a future government, having to be constantly on pins and needles to respond to or figure out the president. And in this case, I take what Andrew's's saying but it could also be an economic disaster you know if the economy can't adapt to this. Okay but at some point we need to go back to basics. The United States negotiated the FDA then they negotiated NAFTA then this president renegotiated NAFTA, then this president renegotiated NAFTA.

Do you really think they did that because they love us and they wanted to be nice to us? So yes, you can probably do the tariff thing the way that the president talks about this, but at the cost of if not killing, wounding the American auto industry at a crucial time in its history as part of the industry in other countries is transitioning to

electric vehicles. So if you want to do that because you cannot replace it, I listen to this, we don't need their cars, we don't need their oil, we don't need their aluminum. Possibly if you get down to it in five or ten years you don't need their aluminum. Oh, possibly if you get down to it in five or 10 years, you don't. But at this point you do. That's just reality. And I'm afraid sometimes that we are falling into what I call the beaten wife syndrome.

I must have said the wrong thing. That's why this is happening to me. We do have cards to play. And yes, times can get hard economically, but that doesn't mean you can't make life hard economically for others who are south of the border. Andrew? We have to be careful how we react. We don't overreact in a couple of directions. On the right you're getting people saying this is all our fault. We should be doing much more on the border

as if there was much we could really do and as if this was really about the border. I think that is defeatist and self-blaming. On the left you're saying, aha, the last thing we should learn from this is the whole free trade treaty was a bad idea and we should be setting up a monumental exercise in diversifying our trade to other countries. Well, okay, good luck with that. We've been trying that for many decades. We should absolutely be as open to trade with other countries as we possibly can, but there's a certain amount of gravity that's going to exert itself no matter what in terms of our two-way trade. What we should absolutely be doing is making

ourselves more resilient in terms of having other reasons and much more competitive economy where there'll be other reasons why somebody would want to invest here even with the tariff, even if the tariff remains. So there's certainly longer term lessons, longer term adjustments we can be making. But the final point I'll just say is it's always a good rule in politics not to underestimate your adversary. It's also a good rule not to overestimate and not to attribute to Trump some kind of grand strategic design. Right.

When what is more likely the explanation is peak and petulance and ego and stupidity. Last 30, 40 seconds to you, Althea. So I think I see it in a little less personal, but I do think the shifting goalposts don't make the outcome of what he wants clear. Like usually when you're negotiating with someone, you know what the other person on the other side of the table wants. You know what their lines are. When he is saying that he wants NATO to now spend 5% of their GDP on defense spending,

when the US doesn't even spend 5%, it's not really clear what are you really asking us for. Same thing with the tariffs. But I do think that Chantal is a really good point, and that's short-term versus long-term. What he is threatening to do will significantly impact, could significantly impact our long-term economic fortunes as well as the Americans. It's a rejigging. In the short term there will be more investment flowing to the United States for sure, but this is a guy who has four years to get stuff done. So clearly he can start things, he can make big announcements, but

there won't be an enormous follow-through. So what can we give him as a short-term win? And I think we need to start thinking in those terms if we're not already thinking in those terms. At issue, foreign interference. A final report finds there's no cause for alarm nor traitors in parliament, but there are concerns around the government response. I found that the government has been overall a poor communicator when it comes to foreign interference. What's been made of the report's findings? What will it mean for our next election? Here to break every break all that down, Chantal, Andrew and Althea. Andrew, I'll let

you start off because you wrote about it today. What do you make of what we learned from from all of this? Well, I think it's important not to measure it against exaggerated expectations or inflated expectations. So because we didn't find that there were people actually selling the secret defense plans to the Russians, that does not mean there weren't a bunch of MPs who've been behaving in extremely questionable ways that Xi herself says are extremely concerning, including taking assistance from foreign powers, etc. That certainly warrants further exploration. Because we did not find out that Justin Trudeau

is secretly a Chinese asset, does not mean that the government doesn't have a lot to answer for in terms of the way, not just how it communicated, but how it listened or did not listen. The number of, you know, nothing much has really changed what we learned here about the number of memos that went missing, warning to high heavens that we have a serious problem with foreign interference that the government either lost or didn't read or read and didn't act upon. All those questions still have to be answered. I mean, for her to sort of, the judge herself says, you know, a document sat on the table of Bill Blair for 54 days asking for a surveillance of a major liberal power broker, I guess we'll never know why. I think there's still questions

that have to be answered there. And finally, because we didn't find out that China or one of these other powers actually affected the election outcome, doesn't mean they weren't trying. Doesn't mean there isn't a serious issue out there of major hostile powers trying to mess with our democracy and trying to intimidate and harass our citizens. So in the end, I'm not sure the report really

answered a lot of questions, but it certainly tells us that those questions are still hanging and still need to be explored. Yeah, I mean, well, that to me seemed like the takeaway, is that there are a lot of things that we need to be paying attention to, and perhaps that's what the best outcome was for this final report, Althea, that we are talking about it more, that we are more aware of these things now. We are certainly talking about foreign interference in a way that we were not talking about it two years ago.

Sure. But I do wonder and fear that a lot of the salacious headlines that emerged in the fall of 2022, I think it was, painted a picture that the facts through this public inquiry and the David Johnston report and the NSI Cop report don't bear out. Like we had exaggerated, and I'm not blaming the journalists, but you know there an impression was left in the minds of many people that doesn't seem to have been true. And I fear what that does to trust, trust in the media, trust in government,

trust in the electoral system. And I don't know how you put the toothpaste back in the tube and I feel like this report is just as kind of trying to do that. And yes, the government deserves a lot of the blame. I mean, she's basically saying like, we had this whole hoopla for two years because you guys cannot communicate and you should have been more transparent with the information that you did have. But

she also, you know, blames CSIS for saying if you've got something to say, well say it clearly and make sure that the people you want to hear your message are hearing it because that wasn't clear either. So it's not just that the political actors didn't do enough, the bureaucracy, the intelligence agencies didn't do enough, and I think the greatest threat that she brings forward that we don't talk enough about and that we are not protected from at all is disinformation, especially on social media and on the internet. And like we have electoral laws that are basically based for a system that

hasn't existed for the past 40 years. And so that absolutely needs to be addressed. Sharta. Whoever introduced the term traitors in this conversation before the commission, probably that the notion of foreign interference and the seriousness of it disservice because it set the bar at such a level that of course the Commission was not going to find traitors. I do not know of MPs who are in possession of a secret defense plans that they can sell to anyone. They don't even know even when they're part of cabinet, sometimes

what their government is going to do from one day to the next. And here we are saying the House of Commons is full of people who have secrets that are worth buying. And if there are buyers, they're not buying very much. But influence and foreign influence is not buying secrets. It's trying to get people who will do your bidding inside institutions and that point was missed in the conversation before that. Now I'm going to say something that is really not terribly politically correct. I do believe that having a public inquiry was useful, that it raised awareness, but when I compare the conclusions of the

H.U.G. report to what David Johnston, much vilified for his work, produced in his first report and would likely have produced if he'd gone on, I'm not sure that we got a very different outcome than we would have in those circumstances. I still believe that public awareness was raised by the Commission and that that is useful. Yeah especially if we're concerned about trust in institutions, Andrew. Well first of all it was a problem Arthur O'Goring in its research than David Johnson's report and was not tainted by close association personal and professional between the Prime Minister and the person conducting the inquiry. So that is important, that did matter. I don't buy

this idea that somehow there was a terrible miscommunication or misreporting of the thing. Which things were not reported correctly? The only thing I can think of is the specific allegation against Han Dong in terms of the two Michaels. Everything else, was there a smear campaign against Aaron O'Toole and Kenny Chiu? Yes, there was. Was there a network of it?

I didn't talk. I never talked about the reporting. No, no, I'm not... This isn't... I talked about people who introduced the notion of traitors in that conversation, which was not in the reporting. This isn't directed against any particular colleagues. I'm just saying, the notion that the lesson we should learn from this is it was all a false alarm, it was all just a bad dream.

No, no, no. That's not actually... That's not what we're saying. Okay, well, That's not actually... That's not what we're saying. Okay, well let's just be... But that is not what I am saying. I'm not saying you're saying that. Let's let Andrew finish. Let's let Andrew finish.

Let's be very clear that virtually everything that was reported has turned out to be true. That the things that were reported would not have come out if it hadn't been for the leaks, the much vilified leaks. That the issue is just about as serious as it was reported. The biggest errors were from NSICOP. NSICOP appears to have reported intelligence wrongly and reported wrong intelligence. Yes.

That's true enough. That's interesting to learn. The rest of it, this is a serious problem before, and it's a serious problem after this report. OK, quickly, Chantal, then Althea, the amount of time. So I'm guessing we don't take comfort from the notion that the MP you left that that committee is now the Public Safety Minister? Yeah well that's a good point. Althea last word to you. Yeah I mean he's been trying to argue that well

if you put all the three NSI GOOP reports on this topic together that they gave a full picture and that Justice Hugg had more resources. But it does make you question the rest of NSICOP's reports and whether or not the conservatives who've actually never liked this committee will decide to continue it or not, which I think would be a disservice to parliamentarians. But they're the ones who are on the committee, so they get to hold the blame.

I think on the David Johnson stuff that Andrew just talked about, the biggest problem with David Johnson's appointment was that all the other parties didn't agree to it. And the thing that helps, just as Ugg's findings, is that they agreed to have her lead the inquiry. And if the government had listened early on to those concerns, we would not have turned into such a huge hot potato for them. I think we would have learned more and there would have been more trust in the system. At issue, liberal race.

The party confirms two leadership debates will happen after February 17th. Mark Carney has secured the majority of support within cabinet and caucus, with Krista Freeland and Karina Gould fighting for the rest. I'm here to break down the latest from the Liberal leadership race, Chantel, Andrea, and Althea. I just would do this every week. Where do you think we are now?

And what do you think is happening? So I'll start with you, Althea. Where do you think we are now? I will say that also Jaime Batiste has dropped out of the race and is endorsing Mark Carney. But give me your sense of where you think we are. Well, Mark Carney has pulled ahead of the pact. I'm not sure if, you know, that we didn't really have great polling when he announced, but it seems the public opinion polls suggest that he has pulled ahead. I would say Mark Carney thinks that he has also pulled ahead.

I do think that a lot of things can happen. Caucus endorsements don't mean everything, but they are useful if a lot of those caucus members are really good organizers, and not only can deliver their writings, but can help deliver their region. And so Mark Carney does have some really good organizers around him, like Mélanie Génie in Quebec, for example. Some parts where you could have thought blind spots. I'm told Christy or Phelan is really good organizers at West. But it feels like, despite her very charming performance

on Toulmont-Napal on Sunday, that the air is kind of like going out of the Frieland balloon. Doesn't mean that things cannot change. It is short, it is fluid. Hardly any policy has been put on the table. Mark Kearney is coming out with his first policy plan tomorrow, Friday, which is on the environment.

I think we've already talked about it. But it is going to be a big one, you know, getting rid of the consumer price on carbon. So we're putting the environment front and center. I'm not sure that's really on brand when we're going to possibly have tariffs the next day. But anyways, they clearly know what they're doing more than I do. Well, I don't know about that. But Chantel, there are lots of there's lots of room here for things to happen There are the debates there's one-on-one interviews where we've seen some people You know have Christy Clark comes to mind don't always come out of those interviews very well

So where do you think we're at right now? I Don't think there's a lot of time for many things to happen Seriously debates take place after February 17, and the new leader will be elected on March 9. That doesn't leave a lot of time. From where I sit, it looks to me like we've gone from the two-way race to a campaign that is Mark Carney's to lose. And yet, there was not a lot of polling, but there was a leisure poll this week that was fairly devastating for other candidates. It asked the liberal inclined respondents to the poll which of Christian Freeland, Carina Gould and Mark Carney they believed should be the liberal leader. 7% of self-identified liberals picked Carney, and 17% that's a 40-point drop picked Christia Freeland, 4% Karina Gould. So for me the shape of this race is no longer a

huge two-way race and there is very little time for Ms. Freeland to change that perception among liberal voters. I'm not talking about the general election. Yeah, yeah. That's a very good point. There's not a lot of time to make mistakes, but not a lot of time to get better either. Andrew?

Yeah, well, there's 37 days to go, and that's not nothing. It's an election campaign, essentially. Mr. Carney is certainly way ahead. He's also very untested, untried, and we shall see. You know, presumably because he's so far in the polls, he's going to play things very safe. Ms. Freeland, to her credit, is taking some chances and putting out some pretty bold policy proposals, particularly for liberal voters who are wondering how the hell did we get

ourselves in this fix? Well, they got themselves in this fix because they couldn't get rid of the leader, even when they were at 15 percent of the polls. So she's been talking about measures to make it easier for the party to remove a leader who's fallen out of favor. Secondly, and I think most interestingly, she's talking about cutting the size of the cabinet in half. One of the reasons that liberals are in the fix and the country's in this fix is we've corralled all power centralized in the office of the prime minister. Cabinet government is basically a fiction in this country.

It's a fiction because we have the world's largest cabinet by a country mile, which means individual cabinet ministers diminish in importance and it means that the cabinet as a body becomes essentially useless as a deliberative body. The best single thing you could do to restore cabinet government would be to cut it in half and I'm going to be very interested to hear her say more about that. Chantel, last word to you. Yes, except I believe that most liberals are looking for the person they want to pit against Piapoliev and are looking at the ballot box question that involves handling Donald Trump

and not the size of cabinet or the way to get rid of a leader. So I'm not convinced that that conversation that Chrystia Freeland is leading on these points is going to score very high in a at large political vote. I'm not saying that. I'm saying she's performing a useful function as the underdog candidate in putting board policy proposals. I don't think that's enough.

That's also what the party needs. The party needs to do a rethink as well as picking a new leader. Yeah, and have a real conversation. I think we all agree on that. They don't want to just repeat this again. Yeah, that's right. The conservatives did that.

They just repeated it again and again until they figured it out. Okay, thank you all. That is at issue for this week. Are you expecting tariffs to be brought in? Would they have an impact on you? Let us know. You can send us an email. You can reach us at ask at cbc.ca.

Remember, you can also catch me on Rosemary Barton Live, Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We will be right back here though in your feeds next week. Thanks so much for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.