At Issue - Trudeau and the premiers confront Trump’s tariff threat

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

At Issue this week: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers hold an emergency meeting to figure out how to respond to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threat. The Liberals push through a GST break but stumble on the $250 cheques. And, is Pierre Poilievre undermining Canada’s unified approach to the tariff tensions? Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

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about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, November 28th. At Issue tonight, the Prime Minister and the Premier agree to confront Donald Trump's tariff threat together. Positive conversation. We look forward to tightening up the border. All the Premiers

agree. The Prime Minister agrees. And that's exactly what we're going to do. The way we meet this challenge successfully is by presenting a united front. So this week we're asking what's to be made of how the federal government and provinces are responding to Donald Trump's demands, how united is that Team Canada approach. Chantal Hebert, Andrew Coyne and Althea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus, what do you make of this GST holiday? And are you interested in a rebate check? Chantal, I'm going to start with you. What did you make of sort of how this week unfolded,

the tweet or the social media post from the president-elect? And then, you know, kind of a, I don't want to say chaotic response, but a kind of panicked response from governments across the country. I don't think it was a week that would have made Canadians who were watching the premiers and some of the opposition leaders reassured that four years of Donald Trump would not cause havoc in this country. Why? Not so much because of the threat, but because there's an expression in French. It goes like to run around like hands whose head has been cut off. Yes.

And that is basically what the premiers look like for most of the week. Suddenly, you know, the premier of Ontario deciding that he's going to give up on a deal with Mexico as a reaction. The premier of Saskatchewan, no less, wants to negotiate his own trade deal with the United States. The premier of Alberta, based on no evidence, wants to send the police to her border because she thinks that Alberta, the federal government, is doing a poor job. Seriously, there was a shift between what they said coming out of the meeting with the

prime minister and what they have been saying today. And I believe it's based on possibly people telling them, what in the world is the spectacle that you are offering to Canadians, because it looked like nothing that should come from serious, mature political leaders. It looked like a lot of internal politics, whether it's Doug Ford getting ready for an election, Danielle Smith positioning herself. But what did you make, Andrew, of how that then looks to a president-elect who's looking for leverage and looking to get something out of us? It's looking delightful, I'm sure. He's hugging himself. Look, this country is, not to put too fine a point on it, under attack by the president-elect.

And this will not be by any means the only such volley he's going to launch against us. But rather than standing together or standing tall, a number of people in this country have taken the opportunity at this particular moment in history to fall to pieces. Whether it's prostrating themselves in front of Donald Trump saying, yes, sir, no, sir, we've been bad boys and girls, sir. We've done a terrible job with the border, which is a completely made up charge. It doesn't apply to Canada at all. It doesn't even apply to Mexico anymore.

They've been tightening up quite an enormous amount. So on the one hand, either doing that or taking the opportunity more cynically to put the boot in to their political enemies. In this particular case, the prime minister, who God knows it's fun to do, but there are moments when it's better or worse to do that, and this is not the particular moment on this particular issue that you want to be siding with Donald Trump. So for the premiers to be running around, as Chantal said, inventing new powers for themselves is certainly on brand for a lot of them, but it's not particularly, I wouldn't describe that as putting country first. I would say that's putting personal and political interests first at a moment when we can least afford it.

Althea? We are basically seeing the consequences of personal attacks and the dehumanizing of your opponents. If you spend a year, two years, three years telling people that Justin Trudeau is a threat to the country, that he is the spawn of the devil and is responsible for every ill play in the country, how do you, in all good conscience,

tell the people that you have been telling that you cannot trust this person, I'm going to put aside my own personal feelings about him, and I'm going to help him win. Because what you've been saying is, he can't get the job done. And that is a situation that some premiers find themselves in, that the leader of the official opposition finds himself in. And so that, I think, is going to be a really big challenge. I think I was a little encouraged, frankly, to see a very positive, let's all come together message from some of the premiers, even premiers that have had very visible disagreement with the prime minister. I'm thinking of Quebec premier, for example, Francois Legault. Even Doug Ford's

message in the span of just a few days has changed quite a bit. There's a little bit of public posturing, but behind closed doors, we're told he's being quite constructive. And I do wonder if maybe, depending on the threat that we face, and Andrew's completely right, we have no idea what the next four years are going to be like, but let's brace for it. If maybe Mr. Ford is rethinking his plans for a spring election. It's really hard to go to the polls when, you know, one out of every five jobs in Ontario is based on trade with the U.S. That will look a little opportunistic. May I just also say that it was interesting to contrast Mexico's president's response with the Canadian government's response and the prime minister's and the premier's. We are in full panic mode, whereas they were very strong and bold

and direct in their response to the president. There is still no tweet from Justin Trudeau in response to Donald Trump publicly. No, but he did get on the phone with them right away. He got him on the phone right away. He did, but part of it is public messaging too. And she was telling Mexicans, there is no caravan coming to the U.S. border.

This is not a problem. The fentanyl issue is a U.S.-made issue. They have a drug problem and they have a gun problem. Their guns are coming into our country. There was no similar response in our country. Okay, Chantal. But what I find most troubling, because we are only at the beginning of four years of this, is how so many political figures in this country spent this week accepting the terms of the conversation that were set by Donald Trump. So if Donald Trump wants to make you believe that the border is broken, to borrow the words from the leader of the official opposition, when there are no numbers that actually show that in any way, shape or form.

And by the way, the last time one checked, it is the responsibility of the United States to guard its borders. Yes, it is. And our responsibility to guard ours. When hundreds of people who maybe want to leave Trumpland start trying to come into Canada, that's our responsibility. But to accept premises, how many pounds of fentanyl was it? Somewhere between 40 and 50.

I dare Pierre Poiliev to show Donald Trump over the next few years, if he becomes prime minister, how many ounces of fentanyl still come from Canada to the U.S. over a year? And we're going to talk more about Pierre Poiliev, I should say. But Andrew, last point. And the numbers of unauthorized crossings from Canada to the United States last year was 20,000. That's 50 a day into a country of 330 million. So let's get serious.

But the real fall in this isn't that the facts don't back up Donald Trump's claims. It's not that we shouldn't be appeasing a bully. It's that we shouldn't be taking it face value that this has anything to do with either fentanyl or immigration. It's the thing he chose today to talk about because he wanted to have the center of attention shift to him for that day because it felt good to have his enemies running around. It felt good to have people scared of him. It feels good to see people groveling in front of him.

I think we need to analyze this through a lens of Donald Trump's very disturbed psyche. And if we're trying to figure out how to deal with this guy, we should not fall into the trap of thinking he's a quote unquote transactional president. That's an almost glamorizing view of him. He's a psychopath. And if we're trying to figure out, the good thing about psychopaths, the bad thing is they're dangerous and unpredictable. The good thing is they make really dumb mistakes. You can provoke them. You can get them to do things that are really against their own interests. And that's the kind of thing that if people were keeping their heads about, they'd be thinking about, how do we figure out a way to get inside this guy's head and make him

make mistakes, not how can we appease him today so we can get through the next news cycle. He is, though, the person who was elected, right, by a whole lot of Americans. 49.9% of American voters. At issue, the Liberals are expected to get their GST holiday with no help from the Conservatives. Common sense Conservatives will vote against this irresponsible, inflationist, tax, temporary two-month tax trick. But those promised $250 checks are on hold for now. We're demanding that the Liberal government put in place a separated GST holiday first, and then fix the checks to include seniors, people living with disabilities before we support that. So what will the government need to do to get the rebate checks passed?

Here to break down the GST holiday and the government's play here, Chantal, Andrew and Althea. Althea, why don't you start us off here. So the government had to separate the GST break, the two-month break, from the rebate checks. And we expect that GST portion to pass with the help of the NDP tonight. What do you think this tells us about sort of the state of play of this minority government and whether they'll get those rebate checks through? Well, it tells us that the NDP and frankly, the Bloc Québécois want to give the government a win, a yes, but they absolutely want something in return. They're both kind of stuck in this rock and a hard place where Pierre Poiliev

is portraying them as being one and the same, obviously in different markets, but tied with the liberals. The NDP have desperately for the past few months tried to uncouple themselves from the governing liberals, but they also deeply do not want an election. And they're very fearful of Pierre Poiliev. They do not want a conservative majority. It would reduce all of their leverage, and it might even be catastrophic for them. And until they're way ahead of the liberals in the polls, I think they will try to get to a yes. And so in this case, the Liberals have agreed to the NDP's, partly the NDP's plan. So they're giving the NDP a win. But the NDP and the Bloc Québécois will continue to drive a bargain because they need to get something for their support.

And that is why the $200 checks, $250 checks, they want them to go to seniors and to people with disabilities. And probably if the government wants to pass its budget or its fiscal update and they want to stick that in they will it's a cheap price compared to some of the other things that either of those parties have asked for chantal you weren't here last week so we didn't hear you on even the measures but where do you make about where this is at now you didn't hear me about the measures because i landed as you were doing the panel and at first I thought that I was reading fake news. That's how I sounded. Or that we changed the finance minister for someone very different from the person who spent all fall talking about rigor when

it comes to budget making. A couple of things. First, there's not a real penalty for the Bloc to be associated with the Liberals in Quebec. It would probably cost them more to be associated with Pierre Poilievre. But a poll this week showed that the largest group that votes for the Bloc Québécois is the older group of voters. So you can understand the drive to have more money for seniors, which has been the Bloc's mantra since the House returned. But that being said, what mostly struck me this week is it has cost the government more than one and a half billion dollars, that's the cost of the GST holiday, to buy about 12 hours of normal

time in the House of Commons. So how much is it going to cost it to buy more time by getting the NDP or the Bloc to support it to stop or suspend the privileged debate that has been basically taking everything off the agenda so that it can present a fiscal update? It seems to me they're going to either have to expand those $250 checks to more people, which will bring the price up from, what, $5 billion to who knows, and or find a carrot or two pricey ones to offer to the NDP. But all that, just to buy a window to be able to do the job that the government is supposed to do in the House of Commons seems to me to suggest that this parliament is going to have a really hard time coming up with anything constructive.

Does it not also, though, Andrew, sort of put the Conservatives in the place of, as we expect them to do tonight, voting against things that help Canadians? Or is it too late? It doesn't even matter at this point. I think the Conservatives look good to a lot of Canadians by standing up against this. I was amused to hear Althea talk about, you know, a negotiation here when they're negotiating each side with other people's money. You know, I'll see your $250 of other people's money and I'll raise you a GST rebate out of other people's money. And it's not even today's taxpayers, it's tomorrow's taxpayers. All of this money, and it's increasing with each of these games being played with,

as they each try to expand out this spraying of goodies, it's going to be north of $8 billion before they're done. And every dollar of that is borrowed. So let's not kill ourselves about who's playing with whose money here. This is all of them basically getting in bed together, all three of those parties on the side who are in favor of this stuff, and ganging up against the taxpayer. So are the Conservatives going to pay a price for being the only party that stands up against this? I do not think so. I think they're going to look extremely good, at least to people who were obviously to people who are already supporting

them. But I think a lot of centrist voters are going to be looking at this with their stomachs turning. And if they weren't inclined to see the Conservatives as the most responsible group in the bunch before, they would after this. I mean, I will say just from my email box, the most emails I've had are from seniors who are wondering why they're not getting it too. Oh, yeah. And you're also going to get people saying, why is there a bigger tax rebate for provinces that are harmonized with the GST than provinces that aren't? So eventually someone's going to get around to saying,

well, you're going to have to compensate the provinces for their tax cut, and the cost is going to go up even higher. And do you realize that this is the exact same dynamics as last year's great decision to exempt home-eating oil from the carbon tax? What happened? The people with home-eating oil were not terribly grateful, but everybody else who was at a different heating system said, why am I not getting this?

That's right. And this is the same dynamics. The liberals are giving a gift that has managed to make angry the cohort that tends to be the most religious about showing up to vote. Great. Yeah. Except the goal, Althea, was obviously to make it as broad as possible. Especially with the rebate check, the 150 and under was to target the people that don't get anything. People without kids, for instance, who aren't targeted generally by governments and is the part of the electorate that the Liberals have been after since the summer.

You mean the 150,000 income threshold? Yeah. Yes. Can I just go back to Shanta's earlier point about buying them 12 hours of peace? It wasn't about ending the filibuster, I don't think, because if so, then they don't understand how even procedure in the House of Commons work. I think this was about changing the channel, getting us, frankly, and the public to talk about something that wasn't like how they had bungled immigration or how the House of Commons had ground to a halt and there's nothing happening. And it kind of has worked. I mean, we may be criticizing it.

We may be saying that some seniors want it to apply to them, that Canadians with disabilities should get more money, that this is not fair and doesn't align with many of the constituencies that the Liberals have tried to say that they're most concerned about. But we are talking about the thing that they want us to talk about, and we are talking about the fact that Pierre Polyev does not want to give Canadians a tax cut. And so in that sense, they have succeeded. I can't wait to see the polls document that. I don't think it will make a difference, but I'm just saying it's not necessarily a bad week for them. Very quickly, Andrew.

There's an old line, there's no such thing as bad publicity. I'm not sure I agree. I think this is bad publicity. I think the fact that we're talking about it and talking about what a mess it is, whether from the standpoint of you've gotten everybody riled up because they didn't get their share of the trough, or from the standpoint that in a country with declining standards of income, with declining productivity, where instead of trying to address that, we're giving people temporary giveaways out of borrowed funds, I'm not sure that really looks good on the government front.

We've been giving people money from borrowed funds for the past nine years, and there are 17 to 20 percent in the polls. I mean, how much worse can it get? At issue, Pierre Poiliev has used Donald Trump's tariff threat to increase his attacks on Justin Trudeau. The reality is we have a weakened economy, a weakened border, a weakened military, and a severely weakened prime minister. He's desperate. He's lost control, but he's trying to hold on to power. So is Pierre Poiliev capitalizing on the threat? Trying to? Does this undermine the Team Canada approach? Here to talk more, Chantal, Andrew, and Althea.

Let's put aside some of the things that were not factual in what Pierre Poiliev said, exaggeration of situations or not factual at all, and talk about the fact that he is trying to use this moment, I think, to further depict the prime minister as a weak leader, a leader whose time is up, and in this particular instance, won't be able to stand up to the president-elect. What did you make of some of that language this week, Chantal? So you've stripped away almost everything that Pierre Poiliev has been saying all week, but setting that aside, it is a fact that the prime minister has a much weaker hand to bring to this challenge than he did the last time, because he is at the end of his term, because he is 20 points behind in the polls, and because it's easy to wait him out.

Whether you are Donald Trump or a premier, you can wait him out at very little cost. And that is a problem. And that basically means, and that is not to say it means that Pierre Poitier should replace Justin Trudeau and everything would be fine. But it does mean that it would help if our prime minister had a mandate, a fresh mandate. Put any name you want on that mandate, but someone who has some time ahead of himself to take on these challenges. And that will not happen until we have a federal election. Yeah, and I mean, that may be. But to the points that we were sort of making earlier, Andrew,

if we are trying to have an approach to Donald Trump, there's obviously nothing that Pierre Poiliev would say to support Justin Trudeau. But how does that all sort of factor into how this unfolds over the next number of months? Because we don't have an election happening right away. Well, I don't think it was a great start for Pierre Poiliev on this file. Now, I think he's worried that this issue can at some point be to the prime minister's benefit if he can portray himself as being the more experienced hand and dealing with them, etc., etc. So maybe his strategy is I want to sort of take that down before it gets started. But I think he'd be better advised in a moment like this to look strong and

steady and calm and statesmanlike. That's, I think, what people are really looking for in this moment, not an attack dog. And if anything, it makes his other critiques of the prime minister more compelling and more credible if he's able to put them aside for the moment and say, look, in this particular file, in this particular moment, I stand with the prime minister, I stand against the bullying of this country, etc. You can use that opportunity to get your oar in about how you think things should proceed. You can try and shape the issue to your advantage. I thought he was a little bit better in his first foray when he started talking about making the economy more resilient. There's something sane in there. But do that. And then when you want to talk about all the other things that you think

the prime minister mishandled, and he's mishandled a lot of other files, people are going to be able to listen to you with a fresh set of ears saying, okay, he's just not always on attack dog mode. He's able to, on occasion, to put politics aside and be a bit more statesmanlike. Yeah, or even also just to say, here's how I would do things better if I were in the role of Prime Minister Althea. Sure, and ask Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to take his suggestions and run with them. I do agree with Andrew that there is a risk that Mr. Poliev looks like he's defending his own interest as opposed to the country's interest. And so he needs to guard against that. I do, however, think that the government itself has fallen into the frame that Donald Trump has laid out for them. You know, the public safety minister did a

scrum this week where he said that, yeah, there was more that Canada could do to protect the border. Well, that begs the question, then why haven't you been doing it? So there's an acknowledgement that some of the criticism that Mr. Trump is saying is valid, so you would obviously expect the leader of the official opposition to continue on that front. A quick last word, Chantal. No, but I also don't think it serves Pierre Poilier to try to advance his domestic agenda, axe the carbon tax, et cetera, to tie it into this. It just looks like partisan rhetoric rather than someone who wants to leave the country out of a very difficult period.

Yeah, and when you're so far ahead in the polls, why take that risk? Why take the risk of doing that? We know that Pierre-Paul Yeager can be a very effective opposition critic. What I think people want to see is, can he be a prime minister? Can he be a statesman? And this is a moment, above all moments, when it seems to me he ought to be displaying that.

But the government should do that too, right? There's nothing that stops the prime minister from having a meeting with all of the opposition leaders in the House. There should be a strategy that includes everybody so that they can sing from the same songbook. That's that issue for this week. Is the federal government responding appropriately to that threat of tariffs? Do you believe that Donald Trump is making a real threat? Let us know.

And don't forget, you can catch The National on YouTube and CBC Gem. You can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. And we are preparing for our annual year-end conversation where you get to decide what's at issue. So please send us your political questions to thenationalatcbc.ca, thenationalatcbc.ca. Your best questions, we'll choose them. I'm Rosemary Barton.

Thanks for listening.