At Issue - Trump throws a tariff grenade into the election campaign

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

At Issue this week: Federal campaigns are forced to pivot as U.S. President Donald Trump drops new tariff threats. Party leaders defend their political vulnerabilities. And a number of Liberals change their minds about not running again. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

So Canada, we've got to choose a new prime minister and it's a pretty crucial time. Even people who don't normally follow politics are trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I'm Catherine Cullen, host of The House, and I started a new weekly election show with two friends and fellow political nerds. Hello, I'm Daniel Thibault bringing you the Quebec Point de Vu. I'm Jason Microsoft and Calvary bringing the takes and stakes from the West. Together, we are House Party, a weekly elections podcast for everyone.

We tackle one big burning question every Wednesday. Find us in the House's feed 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, March 27th. We also have to make it very clear that as a nation, as a country, we're going to take care of our workers. We will never be the 51st state, but we can once again be friends with the United States

if the president reverses course on these disastrous tariff threats. We will fight the U.S. tariffs with retaliatory trade actions of our own that will have maximum impact in the United States. This week we're asking how are political parties dealing with the Trump factor in this campaign? Chantelle Bair, Andrew Coyne, now Thea Raj join me to talk about that. Plus how are parties addressing their political vulnerabilities? So how are Trump's latest tariffs affecting Canada's election? How are parties responding?

I'm Rosemary Barton, here to break it down. Chantilly-Barre, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj. We all knew this was going to happen at some point, and now it has. And it is interesting to see how people are responding or not to all of this Andrew let's start with Mark Carney who has of course the benefit of being the prime minister in this moment But what do you make of how he? Responded today. Well, yeah, he gets to you know convened emergency meetings and make a show of taking time off from the campaign It looks what does it look it looks prime ministerial. So it's one of the advantages of incumbency.

But look, this is going to happen again and again. We know it's going to happen on April 2nd in some form. It might happen more times after that. Mr. Trump has the capacity to just continue to sort of throw little stink bombs or worse into the middle of this campaign. But it's always been hanging over this. This is just essentially bringing us back to where we were a few days before this, that Trump is going to be the decisive issue of this campaign. I'm usually loathe to say what the ballot box issue is, because everybody's got their

own ballot box issue. But I think it's pretty clear, looking at the polling data and looking at the response and things, that this is the dominant issue. And how fast and how well you respond to it is going to decide your fate. And the reason Carney is doing well in the polls right now is he both has the biography and the appearance and the message that sounds like he's thought this through, is taking it seriously, and knows what to do in response as far as anybody does. Whereas Pierre Poiev, it always looks like he's playing catch-up.

He's giving a much better message now on this than he was two, three, four weeks ago, but it's a day late and a dollar short. Well, and because Mark Carney is prime minister, he has to do something. He does have to take action as prime minister, but that feeds into, obviously, the election campaign and his political campaign. Chantel? Yes. It brings the election battle back on the battleground where the liberals have the edge.

And they have the edge because of Mark Cardney, not just because he's Prime Minister. And we've seen this week that he's clearly more comfortable in the prime ministerial suit than in the liberal leader on the campaign trail suit. And that's putting it mildly. But on a day like today, look at what we're talking about. We are not talking about the various announcements of each party. The NDP and the Bloc Québécois have been forced not to mute,

but almost. They're just a distant sound when this conversation takes place. Mr. Poilieff re-becomes the leader of the opposition. He has been trying all week to pretend that this is a normal campaign. There were some speeches I listened to this week from Mr. Poilier that sounded like Donald Trump had not happened. They were the speeches he would have been giving if we'd had a fall election. I don't think that works for him and I do think that there are limits to what he can do about it. One, because he cannot be shooting at One, because he cannot be shooting at Mark Carney, Prime Minister, as he engages with Donald Trump. And two, because when Mark Carney meets the premiers, he is doing so from a position of

relative strength in the polls, which makes them say, we need to get along with this guy because he might be around in a month, as opposed to if he were way behind in the polls and everyone knew that this was just a temporary job. So the dynamics give the liberals the edge and they will continue to do so because the the trumping is going to last for more than 24 hours. It was pretty stark today to see you know the prime minister's podium and flags behind him and then Pierre Poilieff out in BC trying to campaign as usual by promising this top-up to the tax-free savings account.

You know, he talked about Trump, but it wasn't about Trump. And it's perplexing to me, Althea. What did you make of it? I don't know why you went with that funding announcement. Like, people are worried that they're going to lose their job. The announcement is if you have extra money I'm going to help you save more of it. That seemed to be a mismatch tone. But I think that speaks to the word that was probably missing in Andrew's laundry list, which is tone. I think one of the reasons

that the liberals have surged in the polls and we've seen that the switchers have mostly moved over to the liberal camp because of Donald Trump is because of tone, because Mr. Carney has this calm demeanor, like a big sweater, like, don't worry, it's going to be fine, I gotcha. Maybe I might sound condescending and maybe I'll talk to you like you don't understand the economy, but it's okay, leave it with me. I'll take care of it." And I think for a lot of people, that's comforting. And so, yes, to Shantaz's point, Mark Carney is probably thrilled that he is not out on the campaign trail because he has had difficulty all week.

He has been barraged with questions about his assets, about his time as chair of Brookfield's asset management. And we'll talk more about some of those vulnerabilities. About the TvI debate, like all of these things, because there hasn't been a ton to chew on except for Trump. It's almost like the liberals were waiting for Donald Trump to weigh in so that they could galvanize this moment. And the conservatives, I think this is where Shantai was going, like they lost first mover

advantage. Because Mr. Poliev did not recognize how huge Donald Trump was going to be, they're trying. You can see their message is shifting, a little bit more aggressive one day, a little bit more on a worker's focus the next day. It's not landing. It's like they're not actually sure and they're not committed and you can see that, they aren't. Like the rallies are an hour of the same,

Canada's broken speech but without those words every night. And I think they think that they can still win, well, that's being too generous. I think that they believe that the key is still to mobilize their group of voters, to keep them engaged, to keep those new voters that got in during the conservative leadership race and voted for Pierre engaged,

and that they will be able to surprise people when it comes to the ground game. Okay, Chantal and then Andrew. You do realize that one of the major conservative problems is not so much that their own support is falling to pieces. It's not. Their biggest problem is that the support for the NDP is vanishing. And it's hard for Pierre Poilier, I guess, to accept that Jokhmeet Singh needs to do well for the conservatives to have a path to government.

But this is where we are. All the liberals need to do to win this election is hold the seats that they have and win half of the NDP seats. And every poll suggests that this is a polarized election between the two main leaders. So yes, there is an element of denial. But I also believe Mr. Poilier, for instance, missed an opportunity on Daniel Smith's comments to Alberta Premier, who said he's more in sync with Trump's

ideas, so you should lay off Canada until he's elected. He should have been more decisive about how she's not speaking for him. And he didn't want to go there. And that's a problem. The Americans call that a sister-soldier moment, after Bill Clinton, who adroitly distanced himself from a radical black activist, and made the point that he was a centrist Democrat, not a far-left Democrat. Well, Paul Yever could have turned both Trump and Daniel Smith into opportunities had he seen them coming.

Certainly Daniel Smith, by now he should absolutely have been able to say, look, Daniel Smith does not speak for me. I want nothing to do with Donald Trump. I want everything to do with Canada. He could have put huge distance. We take it as almost like a given that, of course, the Conservatives are floundering in this. It didn't have to be the case.

You could have had a situation where the Trump crisis emerged, and under some theoretical conservative leader, people might have said, I can't wait to change governments so we can get this leader in to deal with Trump, because I trust him to go up against Trump. That they didn't do so with Paul Yevres, partly due to Paul Yevres' own persona that he's carefully cultivated over the years, which for a lot of Canadians is just way too Trumpy. And secondly, because he didn't see the opportunity or threat of, in this situation I've got to go to extraordinary lengths to advertise how opposed to Trump I am. He had more of an obligation to do because he had that perception that he was too cozy

with him. He should have seen, I have the obligation to my troops to get out in front and say, I am the anti-Trump, I want nothing to do with Trump, and he didn't do that. He was paralyzed and indecisive. Quick, quickly, Althea, quickly. But that's, I think, misunderstanding who this conservative party sees as their base.

I understand. Now it feels like they're almost, they realize that this is where like the punditry like us believe that they need to go where some of the electorate, a large swath of the electorate think they should go. And now they're like doubling down on like message purity. And like that is the battle that seems to be happening within the conservative tent at the moment.

Yeah. Okay, we're gonna leave it there. When we come back, we're gonna take a look at how leaders are addressing, well, we've talked about it a little bit, but other political vulnerabilities. Let's be honest. I want the leadership fair and square. That the flow through of the funds go to the, go to Canadian entities who then pay the taxes appropriately.

So how are parties seizing on their opponents weaknesses, mistakes and trying to defend their own? Let's bring everybody back, Chantel, Andrew and Althea. We alluded to a little bit of it there, Althea, you talked about some of the questions around Mark Carney's time at Brookfield as the chair of that asset fund. There were also some mistakes he made around Quebec and Pierre Poiliev has had issues of his own, whether it be his security clearance thing again. Tell me where you think these vulnerabilities are and if anything is sticking in there Althea. Well I think the French thing is an issue. So earlier in the week

is an issue. So earlier in the week, Mark Carney mispronounced the last name of a star candidate, Nathalie Prevot, who was a survivor of the polytechnic shooting. But more important than mispronouncing her name was that he talked about her being a survivor of the Concordia shooting. And I think for so many of us, especially people who were in Quebec at the time, like how can you get that wrong? I think that is like a little bit of a disconnect. I say that, but it looks like the polls in Quebec do not care one bit about any of those language controversies, the fact that like he starts answering a question in French and then gives up halfway and starts answering it in English.

On the TVA debate, which frankly I agree with the liberals on, I think it's nuts that a journalistic outlet would be asking participants to pay money to have a platform. But in any case, the liberals that know to this TVA debate, which it's the weird thing, Quebec gets, French Canada gets two debates. TVA has 1.3 million people watched it last time, so it's significant, and that's why. But, so there are instances where I think that there are obvious stumbles. You know, there is no messaging one day.

On the Brookfield stuff, he gives very vague answers. That's why it keeps fueling more and more questions from reporters, but it doesn't seem to matter. Chantal, is there anything either for Mr. Carney or Mr. Poilieff or anyone else that is turning into a bit of an obstacle for them? Well, on the TBO debate, the fury, if you can call it, that lasted all of 24 hours. Why?

Because there will be a French debate and an English debate, so it's kind of 50-50. And the many journalists in Quebec kind of have the same reservations as Althea has explained. What is this asking parties to pay to go on an election debate platform? Mr. Carney lucked in with the polytechnic

and the shooting and the mistake while at first he didn't say nothing happened. There was a shooting at Concordia, so it made it easier to say it was a mistake. But it also went away because he apologized really quickly. And the candidate he was speaking about gave him a pass, which she should. So I think the security clearance issue for Pierre Poilier is more serious as a liability. Why do I say that?

Not only because it's increasingly awkward that he would not get the security clearance, but I think the conservatives have to worry that there will be more leaks of the kind that we saw this week that actually mostly told people not that there was an attempt by the Indian government to interfere with the leadership campaign of the conservatives, but that it was in support of Pierre Poilieff. That's the part that was added this week. But he's got to wonder, since he won't read the material,

whether some of the people who are running for him, for instance, are under the eye of CSIS. And he doesn't know that, and I think that's a big vulnerability. Andrew? It's a big potential vulnerability. I think at this point, I mean, you know, partisans on all sides are heavily invested in making these things seem like the biggest thing ever and unfortunately we in the media uh... sometimes fall into the same trap because we're in the significance business we want to chew over everything uh... in the in the full context of this political race will

any of these things really make a whole lot of difference i don't think so i mean unless pending future revelations again this is not a normal race. It's so dominated by this one sort of existential issue I would suspect the voters are going to look past these things. It doesn't mean there's not real substance to them. I would prefer that the leader of the opposition was getting briefings on you know behind the scenes on these important security matters. I would prefer, certainly conservatives, liberals would prefer that Mark Carney was not doing what every executive does, which is trying to minimize his tax liability.

It doesn't look great for the party on that. But is that actually going to be deciding anybody's vote when they're coming, when their people have been scared out of their wits by this issue? We're talking about how NDP voters are fleeing to the liberals. Talking about an enthusiasm versus a fear campaign, fear is a real motivating factor. That'll bring a lot of people out to vote. Yeah, but what's so interesting though, and sorry to interrupt you there, is it's not fear that is being presented by another party, is usually how election campaigns go right it is fear from from the

outside that that is that is causing people to move around this is fundamentally different from the 1988 election to which it's often compared yeah in 1988 there was a huge disagreement about how big is the threat will free trade mean the end of Canada or will mean you know the blossoming of Canada now we all agree it's a big threat the question is what do we do about it yeah so it has a very different dynamic that way. There was in 1988 there were two parties that said let's not do this and one that argued for it. No one here is arguing that we should go along with Donald Trump, become the 51st

state or some vassal state. That's not happening, which is why it's so difficult to move past CVs of the leaders and the natural advantage that the background that he has gives Mark Carney. Well, yeah, it's fascinating. We're only in week one. So thank you all very much for that. We're gonna continue this conversation and talk about something Althea wrote about this week.

Liberal MPs who have changed their mind and decided to run again. One, it's a time of crisis and people recognizing that in their own way they want to step up and help our country and I salute them for it. And secondly, because the Liberal Party uniquely sees that we're all in this together. So what's been made of the move by some Liberal MPs and former ministers? What does it say about the current atmosphere in the party? Here to break it down, Chantal, Andrew and

Althea. Althea, you start us off because you wrote about it. I mean, listen, I give credit to anyone that puts their hat in the ring for, to do this work. It's very hard, but I remain skeptical about their explanations for doing it. What do you make of it? I think like a lot of things in life, it's a little column A and a little column B. You put a picture of Sean Fraser. So he's a Nova Scotia MP, central Nova,

writing that probably most people will know as beating Peter McKay's old writing. And it's kind of a tough-ish battle. And without him, there was an Ottawa lawyer whose family grew up in the writing, but hasn't been there in a while. And so, you know, it was a writing that the liberals were hoping to win and Mark Carney got on the phone and convinced Sean Fraser, despite him having a press conference on December 16th. And I will say back then that is he had a press conference the morning that Christia

Freeland announced that she was like no longer going to be the finance minister and chaos erupted. So maybe it got lost in the news cycle that day, but he said he wanted to be home, spend more time with his wife and his children. And you know, you have to look at it and think, well, at the time, the Concertos were 25 points ahead in public opinion, and you're probably going to lose your riding. So it makes sense that you want to go home and be, or at least it was going to be a much tougher battle, let's say.

And the same thing happened with Anita Anon, who's in a Bellwether riding in Oakville. She announced on January 11th if I remember correctly that she was not going to run again and then you know Mark Carney calls them and suddenly they think like maybe I'll be a cabinet minister again my country needs me. So I think it makes us cynical about politics and I've heard from a number of liberals this week this makes them feel very uncomfortable like people should be in it whether or not you're gonna win it but it also I think fits in Mark Carney's theme of like well I convinced them to step up and make

sacrifices because of this enormous situation that is hanging over all of our heads so yeah just to get both things can be right. Yeah, just an example about Sean Fraser, though. He was part of our election call special on Sunday because he was no longer running again. So he was our sort of liberal. And then Monday, he gets a phone call and suddenly he's running again. I mean, that's how quickly that all unfolded.

Anyway, Chantel, your take. Yeah, I'm of two minds too about this. For sure it is the responsibility of every party leader, especially party leaders who have a shot at forming a government to put together the strongest team possible. And there is no doubt in both cases that the liberal team is stronger for their reversal than the alternative. And I'm sure the people who stepped up to replace them were good people. But they didn't have the experience,

they hadn't been tested in battle. So it is awkward. I also believe that each of them decided to leave having convinced themselves that Justin Trudeau was sticking around for the next campaign and having decided that they were not going to stick around for what they saw as a terrible defeat. And now with Mark Carney coming in, different style, new PMO and possibly a much easier battle in both cases. They want back in but if you were Mark Carney you probably would have wanted to try to get both Anita Annan and Sean Fraser back.

Yeah, last word to you Andrew. Well you know it's easy to mock so let's start. Look I don't feel inclined to judge them for not wanting to run in a no-win situation. Most people in most jobs don't feel obliged to take on a dead-end, no-hope job that's not going to advance their career, not going to do anything for their families. The difference is you've got to own it. Even the business of saying, I'm retiring to spend more time with their family, if they wanted to spend more time with their family, they wouldn't have gone into politics in the first place.

It's widely mocked as a convenient excuse that nobody actually means. And this is one of those moments where you find out how little it actually means. So fine, if you want to don't run or run, do so for your own best interest, but don't give us this pious thing of my country needs me. If your country needs you, your country needed you a month ago too. Only you couldn't be bothered at that point. So just spare us the piety. For people who are listening to this on the podcast when Andrew said that I almost fell off my chair, that is at issue for this week. We're getting ready for a busy

election. It's happening already and we want to hear from you. If you're an undecided voter, a first-time voter, or you're not sure you're going to vote at all, let us know. You can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. Remember, you can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We'll be back in your podcast feeds next week. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.