Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Idiocy Backfires Spectacularly in Canada (w/ Justin Ling)

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

Andrew Egger speaks with Canadian journalist Justin Ling on Mark Carney victory in yesterday's elections and the influence hatred for President Trump had on the results.

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Total reversal in fortunes for Canada's Liberal Party. They had their elections, parliamentary elections this morning. And Mark Carney is the new prime minister of Canada as of a month or so ago. He and his liberal party triumph over the conservatives who had been just mashing them in the polls prior to all of this trade war nonsense. Mark Carney gives his triumphant victory speech, talks again, reiterates again his point about how basically the old era of mutual collaboration and cooperation with the United States in an increasingly close way. That's all over. We're going into a kind of a brave new world. Nobody's quite sure exactly what's going to happen. Fortunately, Justin Ling, excellent, basically become our roving Canada politics correspondent at this point. Back to back to talk with me about it.

Thanks for coming on, Justin. Thanks for having me. OK, so let's just do let's just go from the top. I mean, people had stuck a fork in the the liberals. Basically, weren't they like kind of tied for third in the in the kind of Canada parliamentary power rankings like what two months ago? How long? How quickly has all of this fallen apart for for the conservatives? And how quickly has this resurgence happened for the liberals here? Yeah. So prior to the new year, right, Justin Trudeau was still our prime minister. He was extraordinarily unpopular. I mean, you're talking about like, you know, some polls had the 15, 20 percent in total rankings. And it could have led to basically a total drubbing of them in the election.

Trump comes in. The first tariff gets announced. The 51st state rhetoric happens. Right around then is when Trudeau decides to take a walk in the snow, decides he's not going to run again. Very lightning fast leadership race. Mark Carney gets selected. And his numbers just rebound immediately. I mean, like, it's one of the most immediate and severe sort of changes of political fortune I think we've ever seen in this country. And it mostly maintained to last night, I think you'll probably see a little analysis of this election suggesting that the Mark Carney's liberals didn't do as well as they

anticipated. And that's partly true. But their actual popular vote, just put aside the seat count, the actual popular vote is extraordinary, both for both parties, but for the Liberal Party, you know, you'd have to go back about 45 years to find an example of his party doing this well, on the national level. It's basically unheard of in Canada for one party to get, you know, nearly 45% of the popular vote. But that's where we're at. So it was a pretty big resounding win on kind of the top line. It's going to leave a minority parliament on the bottom, which is going to be maybe difficult. At least we think so. They're still counting some votes. But yeah, I mean, it was reversal of fortunes. Exactly right. I mean,

he he it would have been difficult to do better, I think, for him for him last night. Yeah. So my my kind of lay understanding of the way all of this went down is basically had this kind of broad sense in Canada under Trudeau after about a decade of Trudeau, where where where the liberals were just kind of like a party without a lot of like vision of where to go from here. It's kind of this sense of like exhaustion. And that was part of why the conservatives seemed to be cruising toward victory. Obviously, Trump comes in with this insane trade war and galvanizes a lot of opposition. Now, of course, you know, the elections happened, the sprint to the elections over and, you know, the liberals need to figure out how to like govern. Obviously, part of that is continuing to channel this sort of nationalistic reaction against the Trump trade war. What is that going to look like in policy? And then I guess beyond that, like, what else is driving kind of this coalition as they try to make a new government? Yeah. So really, there was two ballot box questions happening in the election last night. And depending on what question you were voting on,

you were voted either liberal or conservative. That's generally how this this race shook out, right? If you cared about Trump, if you were anxious about the trade war, if you had genuine anxieties about the prospect of becoming the 51st state under the threat of economic or military force, you voted for Mark Carney. That is generally what all the polls suggest. It's generally based on conversations I've had, the deciding factor in voting liberal. On the flip side, if you were worried about cost of living, if you're worried about worsening government services, healthcare, whatever, you almost certainly voted for Pierre Poliev. So let's put aside the Trump stuff just for a minute, because I think this is really interesting. And this will be one of the pressures on Mark Carney going forward for the next months or years depending on kind of what happens because I mean

over the last decade things in Canada have generally gotten worse you know we're not a failed state like you occasionally hear the Conservative Party talk about we're not a third world country but but things went from being really good heading the right direction to getting worse right our immigration system was was wildly mismanaged, led to a lot of kind of weird externalities, complete inability from governments to permit new housing construction. You know, there was a real decline in the quality of government services. Our healthcare system is constantly in crisis.

You know, I basically made the case in a column a few months ago that, you know, this has been the hollow core of Justin Trudeau's liberalism. It's been this ambitious sort of, you know, vaunted, you know, progressivism that ultimately didn't do all the things it promised to do. We did not become a world leader. We did not deliver better services. We did not fight poverty in a grand sense. We did not, you know, expand economic opportunity. So people were pissed off about this, right? And that's why people not only are voting for Pierre Poglia, but are flying fuck Carney flags, you know, who are joining the Freedom Convoy, who are, you know, just generally angry at the state of things. For them, there really is no space to be anxious about Donald

Trump because you're anxious about your own economic security and your children's place in the world and everything else. So one of the big pressures on Mark Carney is going to be regulating that stuff, right? And he's already talked about this. People don't believe him. And I think there's some good reason for that. But he's already talked about addressing these things, right? Unleashing housing construction, you know, ramping up energy production, you know, incentivizing more business creation, a whole bunch of other stuff, improving government services. So we'll see how that works. Frankly, if it doesn't work, I think he's going to face rising polarization that is going to severely curtail his ability to fight that trade war. OK, so that that is a big sort of caveat to all this stuff. On the other side of things, people are so genuinely freaked out about Donald Trump, that many of them are sort of willing to go along with kind of whatever it

takes to respond. I mean, we are talking about an extraordinary decoupling from our biggest trading partner, with whom we share about 80% of our domestic trade, you're talking about, you know, erecting trade barriers, and cultural barriers and economic barriers with a country that we kind of always thought of as a bigger brother to some degree. And to do that is going to be painful. It's going to be difficult. It's going to take a long, long time. And it's going to put us in some really uncharted waters. And Mark Carney thus far has the mandate to do so. But when he actually kind of puts that

to the test, and when we start facing what is the prospect of a really bruising trade war, it will be interesting to see if he can kind of manage the pressures that come with that. Yeah. And it seems like those two pressures are really going to push in opposite directions for him, at least in the medium term, right? I mean, if you have this large coalition that's like, all right, you know, we've been grinning and bearing this kind of pain before we think that, that, you know, you're, you're, you're going to try to, to fix things in the housing supply. I mean, like some of these are things you can, you can nibble with nibble away at irrespective of the trade war stuff like housing supply is probably a pretty good

example. Um, but, but, but on the one, I mean, fundamentally you basically have one big group that's like, we are hurting economically and how are we, fundamentally, you basically have one big group that's like we are hurting economically. And how are we going to fix that? And another big group that's like we really need to push back against this trade war. But obviously that that includes a whole bunch of at least short term economic pain. So, I mean, like is how do you see him basically triaging? I mean, like, is it is it I won? So we're we're focusing on that side of things in the in the short term, the trade war side of things in the short term. But is I mean, is there a danger that that as the trade war grinds on and that kind of pain becomes more and more manifest, more and more concrete, that that he ends up losing some of that kind of like broad fervor for this course that that has motivated his win today?

Yeah, let me let me be the really wonky answer. That'll'll give you the fun answer so like vegetables and then we'll have dessert um the really wonky answer well there we go you know it's all great for you um the really wonky answer is that um canada has always sort of been an extractor of natural resources there's a line um i think it's the life of the bible but that we all often use to describe our economy is that we often see ourselves as jars of water and hewers of wood. We are often just extracting natural resources and then shipping them previously to the UK and then increasingly over the last century to the US for finishing and for marketing, right? So we have a massive softwood lumber industry, largely goes to the states for processing. We extract a massive

amount of oil and gas in Alberta, largely goes to the states to be refined. Both Mark Carney and Pierre Polyev have talked extensively about the need to onshore more of that processing. And this actually makes a tremendous amount of sense. So Mark Carney, for example, tried to tie the housing crisis to the trade war by saying, we're not going to ship so much softwood lumber south anymore. We're going to process it here and build homes with it here, right? To avoid not only the tariffs on softwood lumber that we're likely to see, I don't think we're currently in effect,

but also to just keep more of that light manufacturing here at home and to reduce the cost of housing. That's actually a really smart thing. Both leaders have talked about refining more oil here at home and also shipping more of it west, likely to Japan, maybe China, South Korea and others. Those sort of things will be both positive economic drivers here at home while also contributing to our decoupling from the U.S. So that is kind of how you're threading the needle there. Now, the question is, is that going to be enough? Because we're not just talking about some natural resources. We're talking about a

service economy, an information economy, a technological economy that is going to make this a little more difficult. And there is going to be this force acting upon Mark Carney. He's already kind of hinted at this a little bit. That's going to want us to be protectionist in response to American protectionism. And the problem with protectionism is that not every country should be doing everything right. Canada can't make fighter jets. We've tried. I'll get I know get angry comments from Canadians about this, but we shouldn't go back to that. We used to be rather good at making nuclear reactors. Maybe that's something we could do again. We are really good at making warships. That is probably something we should double down on. But it will not make sense for us to try and stand up our own Amazon. It will not make sense for us to try and

become a, you know, a fighter jet, you know, country. So do we risk building a bunch of white elephants in the name of this economic nationalism? Yes, that's a serious risk. Trying to manage all this is gonna be really difficult. I think a lot of people look at Mark Carney, a guy who, you know, spent his whole life in economics and banking and think to themselves, if anyone's going to be able to manage this, it's going to be him. Now, here's the fun bit. The degree to which there is a genuine Canadian patriotism, the likes of which I have not seen. I was talking about this on the Bulwark last week, but I've not seen this level of patriotism in this country in a very long time, probably ever. That is not just going to dissipate. And I think it does suggest that Canadians are willing to accept a level of pain if it means long term gain.

And you've even heard our leaders start to talk a little bit about this. And the cultural aspect of this, I think, will be really important. The fact that you're going to have Mike Myers on TV going like elbows up, right? Like the fact that you're going to have a kind of a national identity built around resilience in the face of, you know, this increasingly kind of autocratic leader down south. I think that is going to be a really powerful thing that pushes people to accept a little bit of decline in the name of a fundamentally remade country that is standing for something principled. Yeah, yeah. And you talk a lot, I mean, you talked just now about- I talk a lot. More and more. Let's have you on more and more.

The more talking, the better. No, I mean, when you talk about kind of fundamentally remaking the way that Canada is approaching its economy, obviously Mark Carney talks about this a lot himself. I mentioned his victory speech earlier today. He reiterated that point that really this era of kind of no amount of cooperation with America

being too much being over. And I just wanted to ask, I mean, do you think that's basically bedrock for how Canada and the US are going to approach one another in the near term? I mean, is there any on-ramp that either of these leaders could take back toward a greater amount of cooperation and coupling?

Or is this gonna be like, even if this moment passes, even if Donald Trump tears up his fentanyl tariffs tomorrow, and throws the border back open, that there's just going to be this, this, this new reorganization that we're kind of just gonna have to deal with from now on? Yeah, there's a line that Mark Carney says often, which is basically, we're never going back to the way things were. And Pierre Poliev has echoed that in a different sense. And I think that's right. The fundamental reality is for decades, for generations, there have been Canadians saying that our over-reliance on America, both the refining capacity, also their cultural institutions,

also their technology, also the defensive industry, and their security apparatus is just wrong. It is a strategic mistake to be this integrated, even if they're your closest neighbor, even if they're your closest sort of, you know, societal cousin. It just does not make sense. It is a strategic mistake, and it's a risk. And we're now seeing how true that is. This conversation began in 2016, but really, it didn't go anywhere. We all, I think Canadians all thought, well, that was so chaotic and terrible. There's no way the Americans would ever elect this guy again.

Again, strategic mistake. And again, Carney has this line about saying, you know, we have to think of the worst case scenario. And thinking of the worst case scenario has never dominated Canadian kind of political thought. And it's starting to get introduced. And I really hope it never leaves because it is really important to sort of beat to death this innate Canadian optimism that is really, I think, adorable, but is fundamentally dangerous. Sorry for the final metaphor there, but I cannot underscore enough how important that is. But here's the caveat to this. Going back, declining that share of economic cooperation, security cooperation, everything else does not mean it goes to zero.

Where does that end up on the spectrum? We don't really know. It's going to depend a lot on America. It's going to depend a lot on Trump. It's going to depend a lot on who succeeds him, if someone ever does. It's going to depend on what Europe and what Japan and South Korea, everyone else does, right? If it becomes practical and feasible for us to integrate into the European security apparatus, if we consider joining the EU, which is a thing we're now seriously putting on the table, if we start shipping more goods westward to Japan, or we to turn the Northwest Passage into a year-long shipping route, all those things will start bringing that level of cooperation and trade and economic opportunity and collaboration with the U.S. down, down, down.

It still probably won't go to zero, but it will decrease if Trump continues pushing tariffs. If he continues trying to use economic coercion, potentially security coercion to make us the 51st state, I think that that drives it down aggressively. I cannot imagine anybody replacing Trump and managing to get that relationship back up to 80% or whatever the figure may be. But, you know, I think you're going to have to watch kind of issue by issue,

the things that drive it down and the things that push it up. There will have to be a point, I think, where Trump does abandon or scale down this trade war and declare, you know, a sort of a Pyrrhic victory, so that he can stop punishing American consumers and citizens and voters. But I don't know where or when that is. And so the reality is the decoupling is happening. The extent to which we're going to decouple is going to depend a lot on Trump. And it's going to depend a lot on how much our allies are interested in joining us. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's all very fresh elections just this morning. And we'll keep covering it as it all rolls out. I think we can leave it there for now. Justin, thanks for coming on and

talking to us about all this stuff. I'm sure we'll it there for now. Justin, thanks for coming on and talking to us about all this stuff. I'm sure we'll have you back soon. Thanks for having me. And thanks to you all for watching, for liking, for subscribing, for doing all the things that good YouTube patrons of our content do. You can head over to the bulwark dot com to read upon a lot of this stuff as well in our morning shots newsletter and elsewhere. Thanks to everyone for watching and we'll see you next time.