At Issue - Was the Trump Mar-a-Lago meeting the right move?

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

At Issue this week: After his Mar-a-Lago meeting, Trudeau calls for opposition unity on Trump’s tariff threat and provincial premiers take their concerns to American media. Plus, Poilievre pushes the Liberals to to present a fall economic statement. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Jason Markusoff.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

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, December 5th. Talking Trump. The Prime Minister briefed opposition leaders about his dinner with Donald Trump

and called on them to present a united front for Canada. But Pierre Poiliev has continued his attacks. I understand why President Trump wants to take Canadian jobs, but why is this Prime Minister trying to help him do it? When we're threatened, Canadians pull together. We step up, we go across partisan lines, and we defend Canada. It seems increasingly clear that that is not something Pierre Palliev is able to do. This week, we're asking what's to be made of how party leaders are dealing with Donald Trump

and this threat of tariffs and our partisan politics getting in the way of a Team Canada approach. Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne, and in for Althea Rajasweek, Jason Markosoff. Join me to talk about that. Plus, how are the premiers selling Canada to Americans? Chantal, I'm going to start with you. We actually haven't talked since, well, you and I talked on a French show, but we haven't talked as a group since Mar-a-Lago on Friday. And obviously now the Prime minister has brought in the opposition

leaders to share information and try and get everybody on the same page. Do you think that this meeting was a starting point, a success for Trudeau? And what do you make of how people are playing it? Going to Mar-a-Lago, I think, was a good thing. I don't see how anyone who is the prime minister could have refused. I also think from a more partisan perspective that it was a good thing for Justin Trudeau to try to rein in the variety of voices who do have a stake in the issue, because it reminded people that there is only one person in government that can actually speak directly to President-elect Donald Trump, and that is the current Prime Minister. Whether you like him or not, that's a fact of life.

I also think that there was a missed opportunity on the opposition side, on the conservative side, for Pyotr Polyev to feature himself as the prime minister in waiting that the polls suggest that he is, rather than the attack dog opposition leader that he decided to continue to play. And if I were, it's not just that I think many Canadians will frown on that, but it's also that if you're going to become the prime minister in six months, Donald Trump will still be a reality. And many of the things you will have said today to attack Justin Trudeau may come back to haunt you. Yeah, Andrew, you wrote a fairly scathing call about this very issue. Yeah, I mean, I'm of two minds about the Trudeau trip itself. On the one hand, it looks like you're being a supplicant. It feeds into all of Trump's worst impulses, and it doesn't seem like he got a great deal from it. But nevertheless, as Chantal says, I think it looks responsible, it looks reasonable,

it looks statesmanlike, it looks adult. It's what people would expect a prime minister to do, even if there's not much to be gained from it. It is hard to understand Poyever's response this whole week. I think he's looked really off balance, off key. I think he senses the danger in this, that if there's anything at all, and there may be nothing at all that gets Trudeau off the map, but if there's anything at all, this issue has the potential, because this issue has the potential to take over from everything else. The gravity and the enormity of the Trump threat, which goes far beyond the 25% tariff, but everything else that that represents in terms of the refugee crisis, et cetera, et cetera, has a potential just to take over things.

And if the issue becomes, in the next election, who can best handle Trump, that's something in which the prime minister has some cards he can play, whereas on virtually every other issue, he's on his back foot so you'd think that he would nevertheless uh uh probably ever would see opportunity in this to close the deal he's way ahead of the prime minister people there's a great mood in the country for change to get rid of the liberals the one nagging doubt people have is around poy ever and you can see this in some of the polling data and if ever there were a moment for him to say you know what i've got another gear than just a tactic. I've got another tone than just harsh and grating.

I can actually be gracious. I can actually be patriotic. I can actually take the high road and put country before party. It doesn't mean you have to lay off all criticism. It doesn't mean you have to become the prime minister's best friend. But you frame it as we are all in this together. May I gently suggest the Prime Minister, you know, there's another way of doing X or Y. You can still be His Majesty's loyal opposition, but you can do it in a way that looks like, as Chantal says, the Prime Minister in waiting rather than the perpetual attack dog.

Yeah, I mean, when he came out on the Sunday, Jason, at the podium and had a, you know, broken borders or fix the border or whatever the slogan was, which was exactly what, you know, Trump would suggest is happening, it did, it became kind of difficult to see how that would work in terms of what Donald Trump would take from that message. Well, I'm not sure how closely Trump will be listening to the conservative leader. That's not to disrespect Paul Yev. I just think he's just so aware of what only the national level thing is. And one of the advantages or reasons for being there was to be right in his face, that Trump will pay attention to what is right in front of him. So for Trudeau to literally fly down and sit in his club and have steak and mashed potatoes

with him is that opportunity. I mean, this is probably the next best thing, you know, because Trudeau doesn't golf. So he couldn't golf with him. In terms of Polyev, he's, you know, he has this potent, this impulse to keep his foot on the gas, keep his foot on the arrival throat. As Andrew said, when you're 20 points ahead, you don't need to do that. You could stand to look to the long view, look to what's coming ahead. And also, when your premier counterparts, many of them will get to that in the next session, are not saying the same thing. You look more like the branded opposition Mr. Angry in contrast. So Chantal, what is the really odd thing? Go ahead, Andrew. I was just going to say

the really odd thing is his rhetoric has taken a turn from the Trumpian in the last week or so, which I find the timing of that baffling. First of all, on immigration generally, I said on a previous show that I thought he'd been quite statesmanlike in the immigration file. Well, I withdraw that comment as of now. He's sounding quite hysterical on the file. He's using language that has that same kind of gloom and doom Trumpian tone. And he's even started saying, and I don't think I'm wrong in noticing this, he started saying the words Canada first quite repeatedly. I don't recall him saying that formulation before. So for this moment of all times we're doing that, when the suspicion, the knock, mostly unjustified, certainly until now, that the liberals would certainly be trying

to raise is that he's too close to Trump. He's too, some vague echo of Trump. For this moment of all times to be raising that specter, that possibility, it seems to be extremely ill-advised. Chantal. It should also, I think, strike conservative strategists that Mr. Poliev is moving a number of non-confidence motions to bring down the government this week. But in theory, if he had put himself in the window as someone who will do immensely better at a time of crisis, and for many Canadians, this is a time of crisis, you would feel more momentum behind this bid to

bring down the government. And it's become almost a non-story that Pierre Poiliev is, as usual, trying to bring down the government and, as usual, will not succeed. I don't know. I would find that troubling if I were them, because it doesn't sound like the country is saying, having watched the past two weeks, we really need a Poitier government now. Basically, he is extended, I think, his probation period in the eyes of many voters. Well, it made me think, actually, of something you said last week, Chantal, and I'll put it to Jason. And you said that and you've said it a couple of times, actually, that Trudeau needs a mandate to go down and deal with the American president. And it made me think that it was almost as though he was, you know, that Justin Trudeau was doing that,

that that was where the conversation had shifted. Jason, I wonder what you make of that, the fact that this, it's a lot of risk for Justin Trudeau, certainly, to have this relationship and see where it ends up. But at least he has it. Well, it's a risk he has no choice but to maintain and but to maintain a cordial one given the threats that have been made.

And, you know, he's, you know, I mean, neither this nor what the president of Mexico has done with her more terse letters, a public letter and phone call have yielded anything. And I'm not sure we're gonna get anything yielded, you know, anything off the table for quite a while, at least not till inauguration because Donald Trump, as a brash negotiator that he is, isn't gonna wanna take anything off the table for quite a while, at least not till inauguration, because Donald Trump, as a brash negotiator that he is, isn't going to want to take anything off the table to

get his maximum publicity, maximum pain, maximum gain for himself and for his country as long as possible. Last word to you, Andrew. Whoever is the next prime minister needs a mandate to deal with Trump. And it's a legitimate issue to have an election. I mean, it's of such size and magnitude that it's legitimate, I think, for each party and each prime ministerial candidate to say, put forward their chops, their experience, their background, their tactics, their approach. Obviously, you can't show all your cards, but, you know, here's how I would deal with Trump. Here's my bona fides to do it.

That's worth having an election over. At issue provincial push, Canada's premiers take to American airwaves to voice their concerns about tariffs. America is our best friend and trading partner. We know that we benefit from more oil production. Americans benefit from more oil production. It's a great partnership. It's a great friendship that's gone on for many, many generations.

And we want to keep it that way. We're so much stronger when we stick together. Let's be made of how premiers are selling Canada to Americans. Is this part of the Team Canada approach? Let's bring everybody back. Chantel, Andrew and Jason Markosoff.

Jason, I'm going to start with you because you're in Alberta and Daniel Smith was one of the people. Though I was speaking to an American today in an interview and he had seen some of Ontario's ads already running on Fox News because they put a big ad buy behind this. What do you think of what the two premiers are doing here and whether it's smart. If you can get on Fox News or Fox Business, the channel that Ford and Smith were on, that's going to be good because you could potentially get the president-elect's eye. He took his new transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, was a host on that channel. He's taking several pundits and hosts and fill-ins and frequent flyers from Fox News there. What was interesting to listen to them, I mean, Doug Ford has been talking up

and kind of being arm-in-arm with Trudeau in his comments in Canada, while Daniel Smith has been taking a more Pauliev-like approach of constantly dumping on Trudeau. We didn't hear that on Fox Business. There she is taking much more of a Team Canada approach, of course, pumping up her province's own oil economy, which is, of course, Canada's largest export to the U.S., so it is vital to keep that

going. She's also heading down to Las Vegas next week. She's going to bring an entourage of seven, including two comms aides, to a Western Governors Association meeting in Vegas next week. And she was talking about that, like, we need those advocates, those allies. We need to work with, make relationships with the governors. And even David Eby, in a year-ender interview with the Canadian press today, was talking about how there's a strategy that the left-leaning ones,

like him and Wab Kanu, are going to be working on the Democrats. And Doug Ford, Tim Houston, Daniel Smith have more rapport with Republicans, probably. And Trudeau will lead the Trump relationship. And, you know, we learned from 2017 and beyond that working with those governors, helping them persuade Trump and the administration to improve things and go lightly on Kuzma or NAFTA can yield dividends. Yeah, i mean it this is kind of what the prime minister was hoping for i think andrew like you're trying to get everybody to use what they can um even if they're pushing their own you know particular provincial message uh use the the contacts they have and the ways that they can they can talk to americans yeah i'm not normally

a fan of premier sticking their noses into foreign policy. And certainly in the first week or so, the premiers did not distinguish themselves, you know, running off half-cocked and like the proverbial chickens, etc. But in this case, I'll make an exception that I agree with that both Daniel Smith and Doug Ford and Scott Mull, for that matter, have both the right wing credentials, but also more importantly, perhaps the cultural vibe that they will ring true with and be agreeable to the kinds of viewers and the kinds of Americans who would not listen at all to Justin Trudeau. So they can reach out, they can make those connections, they can press their case. And as long as they're doing it as part of, in some way, shape or form, as part of a larger initiative

and sticking to the Team Canada approach and not trying to gain individual personal, political or provincial advantage out of it, but actually doing things for the team, then I think this is a useful deployment of resources. Yeah. Chantal? It also stands in rather stark contrast with that first week where Saskatchewan was saying we could strike our own free trade deal with the United States. And Premier Ford was offering advice on dumping Mexico. I agree with my colleagues. If you're going to send someone that is going to be effective on Fox News to make the case for Canada, your first pick would not be Justin Trudeau, Christopher Freeland or Melanie Jolie, but it would be Premier Ford. He's perfect for the part. And he also kills the cliché of here comes the woke Canadians, etc.

He has the right lines to be doing this, as do some of his fellow conservative premiers. Whether that's going to be effective or not, we'll know over the long term. But we are certainly in a better place looking at how we approach this at the end of this week than we were last week. Well, maybe that's a good way to end this part, whether we've made any progress on this. You know, obviously, the tariffs are still a threat. But do we feel like Canada is better placed this week than it

was a couple of weeks ago? Jason? I think the question will be, what do we start hearing American governors saying? Are they going to be playing the MAGA race, threatening tariffs, or are some of them, especially on the Republican side, going to start echoing some of the warnings from their Canadian counterparts that we need oil, that this could cause inflation, that we don't want our prices on everything to go up because ultimately those will affect our economy as well. Yeah. Andrew? I think every bit helps. I think we certainly look a lot better than we did

in the first days of panic. But I also think we should wrap our minds around the idea that I would say it's more than a 50-50 chance that this tariff actually goes into place. It may not simply be a bargaining tactic. It may not be a bluff. It's something Trump sincerely believes in, in policy terms, and also he just likes sowing chaos and dominating.

So, you know, hopefully, maybe we can get the tariff laid off, but we may not. Or hopefully he will move on and be distracted by some other thing that he wants to chase. We tend to see ourselves as central, with good reason, to everything that happens with Donald Trump. But as we learned over these initial four years, we are just a speck on that radar. He's going to chase many other causes. So

I guess time will tell. But I am not thinking that we have resolved the tariff issue just because we got our act together. But I do think we need to keep our act together going forward and into a federal election, because this is going to go on for four years, not for four weeks. At issue, the fall economic statement. The Liberals have yet to release their update on the economy, while the Conservatives are offering to pause the logjam in the House. Tell us how badly you've lost control of the nation's finances. An offer the finance minister has rejected.

The conservative proposal is utterly absurd. So what's to be made over this? Both the logjam in the House and the battle over the fall economic statement, or FEZ, as all the cool kids call it in Ottawa. Let's bring everybody back. Chantal, Andrew and Jason. Andrew, they're going to present an economic statement. They're not going to do it Monday, as Pierre Poiliev was

sort of teasing them to do. But it is getting late. And I'm not sure what we should read into that and what we should take from it. Yeah, well, I mean, the government's trying to blame the log jam in the house, which is a bit rich. First of mean, the government's trying to blame the logjam in the House, which is a bit rich. First of all, the government is primarily responsible for the logjam in the House because it refuses to release documents that Parliament has demanded and that it is legally bound to hand over. But even if that were not the case, leaving that to one side, it can table the false statement any time. It can certainly table the public accounts anytime. And it has not done either. Why? I think it's because they've got a bad story to tell. When the numbers are in, according to the public, the parliamentary budget officer, the deficit for last year is going to be not 40

billion, but 47 billion. The deficit for this fiscal year is not going to be 40 billion, but 46 billion. And that report came out in October. A lot of stuff has happened since then uh we've got this ridiculous um gst holiday and the 250 checks which is going to add six eight maybe more billion dollars to that you've got the trump tariffs whatever that's going to do to our economy you've got even if we can head that off you've got all the spending that they're going to do on the border measures which they haven't booked yet you've got them spending on NATO, trying to meet our NATO target. You've got billions and billions and billions of dollars. The figure for this year, God knows what it's going to be, but it's going to be well in excess of $40 billion, which they promised they were not going to do. They promised

they're going to keep the debt to GDP ratio on a constant downward trend. I think they've got a bad story to tell. I think they want to put it off as long as they possibly can. Some of that's legitimate. You've got to do some retweaking to try to figure out the implications of some of these things. But I think some of it is just trying to get to the Christmas break. And I don't know, you know, she'll read it out to her staff or something. And just so people know, she doesn't have to do it inside the House of Commons. Jim Flaherty often did it in other places. And they aren't even required to do it at all. But they have said they will do it. And they are tooling with some of the border stuff, as Andrew points out. But you do wonder whether they would like to see that GST holiday started, maybe, which is supposed to be December 14th, before they put out anything that

might be bad news, Chantal. Possibly. but I think what they mostly want is to have as few question periods left by the time they bring it. For the same reason, Mr. Poiliev would have liked to have as many left as possible, because he was looking, I think, to change the channel. He wasn't having a good week, but also he probably is right in suspecting that this will give him a lot of ammunition until Christmas. Also, the fact is, the closer to Christmas and Christmas parties, the less attention will be paid to the fiscal update. And that's why I really don't expect to see it tomorrow or the next day or even early next week. Jason?

Yeah, I mean, there's one Friday left. Friday tends to be a good day to dump news. Friday the 13th, that could be interesting for headlines, I suppose. But they would like this, it seems, to be as close as possible to the good news they can spread. The good news is not going to be in these numbers for all the reasons that Andrew and Jen tallied out. There'll be this positive message they're trying to sell with the GST rebate. That you're not going to, you know, we'll see Justin Trudeau raising pints at bars saying, I'm not paying GST on this and you're not either. And, you know, other

minister MPs going for, you know, ready-made meals or whatever else. Isn't that weird laundry list of GST breaks? You know, so they could layer it in with that. And you can see why Pierre Paglia, the opposition leader, is in full opposition leader mode. We talked earlier about him wanting to be a statesman on other issues. Here, if you're a conservative leader, you don't want to be anywhere near. You want to be opposing, as loudly as possible, a larger deficit, especially when you're trying to portray yourself as the fiscal champion. Yeah, and if the House doesn't come back until January, then that's a whole bunch of time he doesn't have to attack them. Quickly, Andrew, sorry. Yeah, but there's also just an issue of public disclosure. I mean, it's one thing talking about the fall economic statement,

but we should know by long before December 2024 what the deficit was for the fiscal year that ended last March. That's the sort of thing that should be taken away from the discretion of governments. It should be statutory that you've got to release it. I think the parliamentary budget officer has said it should be released every September so that, you know, the citizens of Canada can know what the state of their finances are. It's preposterous that you can hide it, you know, into the next year,

it sounds like they're going to try. Well, instead, everyone's getting GST-free puzzles. So that's what we'll have to be happy with. Thank you all for that this week. I appreciate it. Jason, thanks for stepping in. That's at issue for this week. What do you think about the Team Canada approach to tariffs? And that fall economic statement, is it set to become a winter economic statement? 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.

And we are still preparing for our annual year-end discussion where you get to decide what's at issue. Send your best political questions to thenational at cbc.ca, and I'll make these smart people answer you. I'm Rosemary Barton. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.