At Issue - Is the U.S. tariff delay a win for Trudeau?

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

At Issue this week: U.S. President Donald Trump gives Canada a 30-day break from punishing tariffs in exchange for more border security and a ‘fentanyl czar.’ Pierre Poilievre shifts parts of his pitch to Canadians. And the opposition pushes to recall Parliament. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz comes an unprecedented exhibition about one of history's darkest moments. Auschwitz, not long ago, not far away, features more than 500 original objects, first-hand accounts and survivor testimonies that tell the powerful story of the Auschwitz concentration camp, its history and legacy, and the underlying conditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen. On now exclusively at Rom. Tickets at Rom.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, February 6th.

So this is positive, and it is progress. But at the same time, our work does not take proposed tariffs completely off the table. We will be engaging closely with the US administration to underscore why tariffs hurt us all. This week we're asking what will this tariff pause mean for Canada and how should Ottawa be preparing for their possible return? Chantelle Bair, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus, how is Pierre Poilier changing his messaging to address the president? I'm Rosemary Barton here to break it all down tonight.

Chantelle Bair, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj. I've been wanting to talk to you guys since Saturday and then again on Monday and here we are finally. There's a lot happening. I'm going to start to you guys since Saturday and then again on Monday and here we are finally. There's a lot happening. I'm going to start with you tonight, Althea. What do you think of where we are now as we wait for what might come and what the government needs to be doing during this time? Well, I don't actually think that much has changed from Saturday.

The question really is what what are the goalposts? What can Canada offer Donald Trump in terms of an exit ramp? The purported reasons for the tariffs, which was the Fentanyl crisis, that's what was written in the White House executive order, is where they managed to give Donald Trump a win on Monday. But what the standard for success is, I think remains unclear. The premiers were told on that call on Saturday that Howard Lubnick, the incoming Commerce

Secretary, had told Dominic LeBlanc, the finance minister now, that if American deaths dropped, then the tariffs would drop. But what is the rate of success to avoid more tariffs in 30 days? That is still unclear. And the things that the government has pledged to do are things that actually take normally 30 days to set up even longer, like all these working groups between government agencies and departments and the provinces and the territories.

It's not even clear what this fentanyl czar is going to do. We're supposed to find that out tomorrow. So there's a lot of unknowns. The government actually thinks that this is not about the fentanyl crisis, that it is really about exhorting financial means, attracting investment, more jobs in the United States, and a money grab tool. And so their strategy hasn't changed, which is just trying to make the case that the Americans will feel a lot more pain

if they pursue the strategy going forward. So given that they don't believe that, I'm not sure anyone believes it's really about fentanyl, but and that there's this moving target, Chantal, how on earth do you as a government prepare for or try to prevent a terror from going into place a month from now? You do what you can. I think it's clear it's not about fentanyl.

Me, I'm looking at the April 1st deadline for reports on trade, and the government fully expects this to become a boat trade. But you cannot negotiate in the absence of a counterparty that tells you what the end game is. I'm also not noticing because it's become a pattern that things happen on one day and then they get corrected or changed for a few days. That exit ramp for Donald Trump was always there, the border and Fentanyl, and it got used. But it got used because the reality of what tariffs mean to a number of industries suddenly did not go down well in the U.S. The same thing happened with the Gaza, let's build hotels and make it a nice place to go for tourism.

So you can do what you are doing, but you cannot really map out a real strategy except to work on things that Canadians can improve among themselves. And there are pluses here. I have never seen people go in grocery stores and be as mindful of what they're buying. Something happened in Canada this week. It's not going to go away. It doesn't solve the tariff issue. But it certainly sends a really strong message that Canadians are paying attention.

Andrew? Well, to echo this point about the chaos in Washington, you know, we've heard five different rationales for this. You hear different things from different people around in Trump's circle. Trump himself, you know, is the epitome of mercurial, to say the least. And that would make it very difficult for anybody. It's hard to know what's on his mind, if anything's on his mind, except the will to power, the desire to dominate, which I think is more than policy is really what drives Trump on a lot of fronts. I wouldn't

say that about anybody else in political leadership, but it's pretty clearly that's a very important thing for him. So that bedevils things. I will say, if you want to know who's had a good week politically, I'm usually the person who focuses on the politics of these things, but I think Justin Trudeau had a pretty good week. He gave a speech that was very well received on the night of the event. He brought in appropriately tough measures with the promise of more to come if they didn't get satisfaction. In the end, he got a deal with Trump to postpone it in exchange for basically six magic beans. So, and if you look at the polls, suddenly we're in a horse race. We've

got a raft of polls now showing basically the Tories dropping at about two points a day. The latest poll has a gap of 13 points. It was 26 points, set all the polls three weeks ago. So that adds interesting dynamics to all of this. The prime minister looked prime ministerial for once. And we'll talk about the conservatives after the break to see how they're adjusting their strategy or how that might be changing the landscape. Chantel?

I think the liberals have lucked into, and I'm not predicting an election outcome, but the kind of perfect trifecta. The prime minister is leaving and no one is saying, despite that he's had a good week, that he should reconsider and stay. But the leadership campaign features candidates, the leading candidates, Mark Carney and Christian Freeland, who fit the bill of what voters are looking for. People who are offering themselves to manage the Canada-U.S. relationship.

At the same time, and that's why I'm saying they really lucked in, most cabinet ministers that were in important portfolio have stayed on. So you don't get this impression of improvisation because they're all running for the leadership. The two main characters are not in cabinet. So and I will give credit to both Mark Carney and Christian Freeland. Neither of them is going around saying if I were Justin Trudeau today I would second guess him and do this and that. And that really helps, I mean, at this point they are putting their best show forward.

It will be a challenge for opposition parties. The polls are showing that. Yeah. Christianne Frillin was doing that up until this actually happened on Sunday. She was right behind the government approach. And that is sort of, you know, Althea speaking to what Chantel also said about the way Canadians are rallying, kind of the best tool that everyone has, right? Just try and stay united in terms of how this is going to unfold.

Okay, there's so many things here. First of all, there were some people who saw the Saturday night speech and thought, see, Justin Trudeau is really good in a moment of crisis. And those were some of the liberal backbenchers who supported him, who told their colleagues, hey, maybe we should stay with this guy after all. But to Shatthaz' point, I don't think anybody in the actual country is thinking that. In the real world. Okay. Putting that aside, what happened over the weekend, and this is a thing that is to Justin Trudeau's strength, is the rallying everyone together just like he did in the early days

of COVID. This plays to his strength. And we saw that not only does it play to his strength, but it countered the conservative message that we have been hearing for the last two years, which is that Canada is broken. When you have everybody united against a common enemy, which is Donald Trump down south, who is actually saying and musing aloud about economically pressuring Canada to become the 51st US state, you have the sense across the political spectrum that actually Canada is not broken.

Canada is a beautiful country that we should all work together to save. And yes, we have problems, but we can make them better. And we're all united into this common project. And that is why, and I know we're gonna talk about the conservatives, but that has been, I think, the key challenge and why we've seen the conservative leader try to pivot.

We've seen two versions of a different message. Don't say too much now, because you'll have to say it after. Yeah, sorry, but it has been a monumental land shift that we've seen in the last week. Last quick word to you, Andrew. Just two things. First, Althea said it plays to a strength. I might say it compensates for a weakness. It tends to be over dramatic most times. This was actually a dramatic moment. It was, yes.

The tone actually, I met the occasion. The other thing is we have a short term and a long term thing. The short term thing is, okay, what kind of tariffs do we put on? How much do we try to mollify Trump? But the longer term objective and the issue is going to be if the tariffs are here to stay, what kind of adjustments do we have to make? If we're now confronted with a very different neighbor to our South than we ever anticipated we'd face, we have much larger issues to confront than just that. At issue, Conservative strategy. With the threat of tariffs taking centre stage, Pierre Poilieff is changing parts of his pitch to Canadians.

We will have a Prime minister that seals the border, protects our people, and puts Canada first. Most of all, we are going to put our country first, electing a common sense Conservative government that will put Canada first. Here to break down some of Poiliev's messaging and the shift there, Chantal, Andrew and Althea. Chantal, why don't you start us off?

Obviously, a pivot is needed. I know that there is a conversation inside the Conservative Party about how big a pivot. And we started to see that from Pierre Poiliev on Sunday and then again around the issue of fentanyl and mandatory minimums. What does this tell you about what concerns they might have about where things are headed?

But that there is still struggling. If it's a pivot, it's not really totally well done and I can understand why. For one, it doesn't really work to accept Donald Trump's terms, fentanyl and the border to say if only because nobody, as we said previously, actually believes that these are real reasons. For two, there are scores of industries that are really worried in this country, the auto industry, and I could name five or six more about what's going to happen to

them. And none of the speech about we're going to prosecute Fentanyl pushers forever is addressing these concerns. So Mr. Poiliev is still trying to fit himself into the frame of this discussion. And why he's struggling, I believe, is that it is impossible to do that while blaming the people who are fighting on the front line, including Justin Trudeau, because you will look, if you're shooting at what the government of Canada is doing at this point, you will look like you're shooting in the back of your own soldiers. But there are not 60,000 things that Pierre Plaliev can put forward that will be very different from what the premiers and the prime minister cobbled together. So it is a tough spot.

And the only way to do this would be to look prime ministerial, forget about shooting at everyone and saying, you know, I'm seizing the moment. I'm not sure that by this time this is going to happen. Andrew. It's a difficult time, I think, for any opposition leader in the middle of a national crisis like this where you want to be critical, but you don't want to look disloyal or unsupportive. I think he's got an additional issue that a lot of his base does think that the issue is fentanyl and does think the issue is immigration and thinks Donald Trump's got a point or thinks

that we're being too critical of him and we should cut a deal. So he's in a difficult spot that way. The second batch of issues is all the things he was going to run on, the carbon tax, Justin Trudeau have disappeared and now he's suddenly in the middle of something which he hadn't planned for, hadn't gamed out, and that would be disorienting. Thirdly, his natural demeanor and tone is a tack dog. It's not prime ministerial. This is a moment when, as Chantel said, it would be probably ripe to try to look a little

more prime ministerial. Some of us have been suggesting that for some time, but particularly now. And the last point I'll make is summing all that together, he hasn't looked good. Talking about suddenly saying we should send troops to the border or suddenly come out and saying we should have life penalties for anybody who's peddling fentanyl. It's looked jittery. It's looked over the top. It has not looked calm, cool and collected. Yeah.

Althea. I agree with most of what Andrew said, actually. I do think we did see a pivot this week, though. On Sunday, the Conservative leader had a press conference, and I had to listen to it again because he actually said, I agree with him. I agree with the prime minister when he came out in support for retaliatory tariffs. And you saw on social media this backlash from conservatives angry at Donald Trump. They can almost taste the victories.

It's just right there. They were weeks away from claiming the top prize, and then Donald Trump just threw all their plans in disarray. And what is happening, and Andrew touched on it, is that there is disagreement within, like, the big C, small C conservative tent. You have folks like Doug Ford in Ontario who believe you need to talk tough and make the case and fight Donald Trump and take the fight to him. And then you have other people like Daniel Smith who believe, well, the president has

a point and we should fix the drug crisis in the country and we should peg this on Justin Trudeau. And you have seen him pivot to the version that he is more comfortable with, which is everything is Justin Trudeau's fault, or now it's Mark Carney's fault, because apparently Mark Carney has been here for the last nine years, and is responsible for all the ills plaguing us, too. So that has been very interesting. What it tells me, though, is that they're worried about their own members,

because this is not a growth strategy. And so we'll see what... we've seen a lot of rolling polls and see if the decline is even further in the days and weeks to come. I know you want to, Chantal, but I did want to just say, the issue of patriotism in the country, I think has, really does change a lot of the landscape for the Bloc Québécois too, and we can talk about that more another time, but it really does make it very difficult to go after the government on anything.

Well, you see a poll on Bloomberg today that shows that the majority of Albertans believe, despite opposition from Daniel Smith, the Premier, that yes, we should, if it comes to that, use energy as a tool in a trade war. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but it tells you a lot about how people feel. You see it in Quebec where it's really amazing to watch people. You don't need to criticize Mark Carney's French. They're already defending it. And you have a poll today that shows that Mark Carney's French, they're already defending it. And you have a poll today that shows that Mark Carney, well, one, the liberals are up in Quebec

and doing better than they have in months. But if you put Mark Carney's name in there, then the liberals are, what, 14, 16 points ahead of the black Québécois. Yeah, I mean, that's incredible. I'm not saying that's gonna hold. No, no. I'm just saying. Exactly.

This is where we're at. And when you talk about Doug Ford's approach versus Danielle Smith, the last time I looked, it's easy for the Conservatives to win or keep Alberta, but they can't form government without winning Ontario. That's right. Yeah, Andrew, yeah. You would think, though, that patriotism would be a conservative card they could play, especially against this prime minister, who has, you know, the perception certainly has been, has

spent the last nine years running down the country, refusing to fly the flag, etc. Maybe some of those criticisms are unfair, but I think that's definitely a reputation he's attracted. And so at a moment like this, you'd think a conservative leader would be able to stand up, if only by example, and pluck up the heartstrings of the country. 20 seconds, Althea.

I think another challenge for the conservative leader is if the tariffs are imposed, what response will Canadians want? Because his platform, Pierre Pauli's platform for the last two years has been this pledge that for every one dollar of spending, there would be one dollar of cut. If you're going into a scenario

where you want to send people direct payments that the country needs a caregiver in chief, can Pierre Pauly have fit that role? I think that's another challenge that's possibly on the horizon for them. At issue, bringing back Parliament. Opposition leaders say new legislation is needed immediately to deal with Trump's threats. We must recall Parliament now and put Liberal Party power struggles aside.

Here to discuss whether the House should be come back and is needed to respond to Donald Trump. Chantel, Andrew and Althea. Should we just give the whole five minutes to Andrew? We could do that. We will let Andrew start anyway. Okay, brief. Okay, Andrew go ahead. I'm more down for the evening.

Andrew, do you think that this is actually needed right now? And if the, okay, but would it be fair for the government to say, you want to bring back parliament? Great, there's a whole bunch of things we can do, but you have to commit to not forcing an election for X amount of time. No. Okay, go ahead. You don't own the job of prime minister. You don't have a bargaining chip to play of, I'm only going to meet parliament, I'm only

going to submit myself to the people's Elect representatives if you give me some guarantee that I get to hold on to power. You only have that power because Parliament gives it to you because you have the confidence of the House. If you don't think you have the confidence of the House, all the more reason you should be meeting it rather than clinging to power and refusing to meet it. So it is not up to him to be able to strike those sorts of bargains. It seems to be not if we take Parliament seriously. There's a long-term, as I talked earlier, there's a long-term problem and a short-term problem. In the short term, do we need Parliament to pass legislation? Not immediately, no. But we do have a national crisis in our hands. And this is not the moment

when we get together as a community, when our elected representatives get together to voice our fears, to thrash through what we should be doing, to reassure people, to ask questions of those who lead us. If that's not, if parliament's not for that kind of moment, then when is it for? And so the notion that it should, in the middle of this absolute existential crisis, that the parliament is shuttered, I think is appalling. Though Chantel, the Prime Minister has the right to parochial. That is also part of his toolkit, if you will.

And when he did it, did it for reasons, yes, that were partisan, but also perhaps necessary because remember, Parliament was deadlocked when we left. Chantal? I don't think that he parochogued because parliament was deadlocked. I think that he prorogued because it would give his part of the time to pick a new leader. I also, I'm not going to go into should or shouldn't because I don't like to be someone who's saying should and or shouldn't, but I will say it's unlikely that parliament will be recalled because Donald Trump gave the Liberals an

out from the pressure of bringing back Parliament. It's one thing to say we need legislation now, but with this 30 days, what is it now, 26, we don't know what we need legislation for. So up to a point, the person who will decide whether Parliament comes back before an election is not going to be this Prime Minister. It's going to be a successor. Now, you can agree on principle on all of the reasons why Parliament should come back, but I think a lot of Canadians also want to have a real choice in the next election, not a leaderless liberal party campaigning against Pierre Poiliev. So up to a point I'm not convinced that the

issue of bring Parliament now will take off anytime soon. No, yeah. Althea. Sadly most Canadians do not care about whether or not Parliament is sitting. We ran the 2011 election on whether or not democratic norms were being respected, and nobody seemed to care at all. So we can talk about it, and I don't disagree with Andrew's points, and I don't disagree with Chantel's points. I will say, though, that I think a lot of liberals

are looking at what has happened in the last few weeks and thinking like, wow, we're starving Pierre-Paul Yavin the conservatives of a platform on which to post new social media videos on which to galvanize more fundraising. Maybe we should have done this months ago. And there's obviously reasons. Fair enough. It's not a parliament at all, then.

No, I'm not saying that at all. Just forget parliament. I'm just saying like everybody's position on this issue is really hard to distinguish between what's principal and what's in their partisan advantage because they're all arguing for what's in their partisan advantage and sometimes that principal sides with what's in their interest and sometimes it doesn't and it doesn't really matter. That's all I'm gonna say about that. That's at issue for this week. What do you think of Trump's tariff pause? Do we need to bring Parliament back to respond? Let us know. You can send us an email. Ask at cbc.ca and remember you can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live. That's

Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We will be back here though next week. Thanks so much for listening.