Front Burner - Politics! Carney's report card, Poilievre's return

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned on big promises and bold action to save a country in crisis. It's now been more than 100 days since his cabinet was sworn in, but details and tangible results are still thin on the ground. How much of a runway does he have to start delivering on his promises on things like national infrastructure, housing, and a trade deal with the United States?Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre has regained his seat in the House of Commons in a summer byelection. Will we see a new approach from Poilievre and the Conservatives, or will they stick with the strategy that brought them within striking distance of forming government in the spring?CBC senior parliamentary reporter Aaron Wherry is here with a report card on the Carney cabinet’s first 100 days, and a look at the political opposition he'll be facing from Poilievre when parliament resumes next month. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Hey, everyone. I'm Jamie Puezzo, and I am here today with senior parliamentary reporter Aaron Wary. Aaron, it is great to be back with you. How are you? How is your summer? It's a great summer. I went to St. John's Newfoundland, looked at the harbor, thought about the value of national. infrastructure. Hmm, that sounds lovely. I also spent some time by the water in Prince Edward County, but I didn't necessarily think about the value of national infrastructure.

We are actually going to talk about the Kearney government slow summer and how things could pick up through the fall and crucially, what happens if they don't. Also, Pierre Pahliav will be back in Parliament when it resumes next month. What might we see from him? What opportunities might he have and what and who does he have to look out for? All right. Let's get started. Erin, Mark Kearney has been on a European mini tour this past week.

He gave a speech in Ukraine, showing support for Ukraine at this perilous moment for the country. He also made stops in a number of other European countries where his focus has really been on strengthening economic and military relationships. Have we seen anything concrete, specific come out of this trip? I think you're seeing a bit more of the discussion about, you know, diversifying trade, making strong connections with Europe. You know, in Germany today, there was a lot of talk about, you know, working with the German government on things like critical minerals. And Mark Carney talked about, you know, we're in this moment of sort of instability and insecurity.

The vulnerability and instability is, I think the norm in the global economy, global geopolitics, but countries like Germany, Canada, partnership with the European Union, can provide stability and prosperity for our citizens. And one way to sort of respond to that is to build things, build connections like this. You know, this is not the first time he's been to Europe. He went there very quickly after he became prime minister. And I think, you know, you're never going to, you know,

solve the issue of diversifying trade in one trip or even two or three trips. But I think it sort of builds on that idea of where he sees Canada needing to move in the future. So speaking of stuff that's complicated and hard to do, it has been just over 100 days since Carney's cabinet was sworn in. And things, they were moving pretty fast in the spring. we saw Bill C-5 passed, the bill that would see big national projects, fast-track, but also internal trade barriers dismantled announcements for huge amounts of military spending orders to go find big cuts in the government. Lots of talk about how things were progressing with U.S. negotiations. But to me, it feels like maybe putting aside some news trickling out this week, things have really slowed down over the summer. Would you agree with that?

I think it's at least fair to say it's been quieter than June. I don't know that things haven't been happening because I think the government would argue lots of things are happening behind the scenes. You know, on the spending review, on standing up a major project's office on getting built Canada homes, a new Crown Corporation set up. But I think this summer has been largely about sort of trying to, you know, advance some of the things that Carney and the government launched. in June. You're right. There was a lot of activity in June. Parliament was sitting for a short period of time. There was a need to get a lot of, or at least the government argued, there was a need to get a lot of things through and done. But I think, you know, that was sort of setting up the fall as the moment when a lot of these things were going to have to start landing.

Let's parse through some of what we could expect in the coming weeks and months, right? Let's start with some news that actually did come out today. Kearney suggested that a new port facility in Churchill, Manitoba and a port expansion in Montreal is going to be backed by Ottawa. And are these looking like the first national projects? The government has been talking about the projects that Bill C5 was passed for. And if so, why these specific projects? Yeah, it certainly sounds like those ports might be amongst the list of first projects they're going to kind of be championed under this legislation. Our government is in the process of unleashing half a trillion dollars of investment in energy infrastructure,

port infrastructure, and some of the examples in the public domain will include from reinforcing and building on the port of Montreal, a new port effectively in Churchill, Manitoba, which would open up enormous LNG plus other opportunities and other East Coast ports for those critical metals, minerals. So C5 was always sort of advertised as kind of enabling legislation, right? And this would set the parameters. And then they would have to set up a major projects office within the government. And then the government would have to look at, you know, submissions and judge which projects to designate as, you know, projects of national significance. And I think, you know, if you go back, Carney, a lot of the discussion had focused on pipelines. And that had always

kind of been the most politically contentious idea in the sort of conversation about infrastructure. I think, you know, moving forward with something like ports, I mean, politically, it would be, you know, probably a lot less contentious. I think practically it also fits into this discussion of, you know, if we can't rely on the, you know, old relationship with the United States, then we need to find ways to get more of our products to different markets and building out port infrastructure, you know, maybe not the most exciting thing in the world, maybe not, you know, as controversial as pipelines, but it is something that, you know, could have a big significant impact in that respect.

Are you hearing any inklings of or rumors about what the other projects could be coming down the line? Like, is it possible that a pipeline announcement is also coming? You know, I think there's lots of speculation, but it's still mostly speculation. There was lots of talk about, you know, maybe there's room to build a pipeline here, but there wasn't a proponent coming forward and saying, let's build a pipeline. And there was some suggestion that, oh, once this legislation gets passed, you'll see proponents come forward. And, you know, you haven't really seen that happen publicly. And so I think there remains a lot that's unclear about exactly which projects are going to move forward. And, you know, we may see, it wouldn't

surprise me if the first set of projects were sort of uncontroversial, but I, I, I, the longer term of question of, you know, are we going to get a pipeline? Is there going to be another pipeline? I think that is going to continue to kind of linger out there. Let's do military spending and government cuts. Have we seen anything so far to suggest where they're headed exactly with these big promises? Like, what are you expecting and watching out for in the coming week? So we've seen a couple things.

One is, you know, on the defense spending part, Carney has come out and said they're going to raise the salaries for members of the Canadian forces that is in keeping with a commitment they had made and is one way to kind of, of all the ways to move forward on defense spending is probably sort of the easiest to do in one step. The ramp up of defense spending that they are looking at, I think that still needs to be fleshed out at exactly what that looks like. And really whether you can actually spend money that fast when you're trying to procure, you know, major defense equipment. But the other piece of that is, you know, this spending review, which, you know, is in part because if you're going to spend more on defense, you have to find the money somewhere. And Carney has talked a lot about balancing the government's operational budget well and, you know, making more spending room for capital spending on, you know, infrastructure and building things. And, you know, when we talk about the summer being quiet, I don't think it's been quiet inside government departments because I think they have been given a relatively short amount of time to come up with these spending plans to cut significant sums out of their operating budgets. And, you know, we think that that's going to kind of land pretty soon, that these spending review plans have to be in even this week. And then they'll probably have to be reviewed by cabinet and by Treasury Board.

And probably you start to see that kind of come out, I suspect, in September. and moving into October when we're supposed to get a budget is when I think you'll actually start to see what that looks like. Right, because of course we would expect that they would include a lot of this in the budget. Yeah, you know, there was some controversy in June about whether this government was going to present a budget or not. You know, usually there would be a quote-unquote fall economic update. I think it's more likely going to be an actual budget. And I think that's where with all of the things they launched in June

and all of the kind of ideas that they're throwing. growing around. I think October and that budget is going to be the first chance to see really how all the pieces fit together. Okay. Abacus data put out a new poll the other day that was interesting. It suggested that public support has actually swung back very slightly in favor of the conservatives. It shows the government's approval starting to drop off a bit. And it shows that the cost of living is really starting to dominate, again, as the top issue for most Canadians, Trump kind of falling off the radar, but you cannot talk about cost of living without talking about the cost of housing. And I know that we're all waiting for more details on build Canada

homes, which is the agency that would be responsible for, as Carney puts it, getting Canada back in the business of building affordable homes. But how important do you think it is for Canadians to see some movement on this file and the cost of living issue more broadly? I think it's hugely important for them. You know, not only in the sort of short term, whether they can sort of, you know, maintain their polling numbers, but going into the next election, whether it's, you know, a year or two years, four years from now, it's unlikely the housing crisis is solved, but they need to at least show that they're acting and that the action is having some effect. And for all of the action that you saw from the government in June, on big stuff, housing was kind of the missing piece. There wasn't, you know, you saw the infrastructure push, you saw the defense spending push, you saw the launch of the spending review, there wasn't a lot of noticeable sort of action on housing. We're now told, you know, this Crown Corporation is going to be set up or ready to start rolling in the fall.

For the deeply affordable homes that we finance and build, Bill Canada homes will catalyze bulk orders of offsite construction of prefabricated and modular homes, specifying the use of Canadian technology. and resources. This combination will create enormous sustained demand for Canadian lumber products. So maybe we'll start to see something more on that. But I think that is, you know, we can talk about Trump and we can talk about all the changes in the world and we can talk about all of the things that need to be, Canada needs to be doing to deal with that. But, you know, the housing crisis hasn't gone away.

And both politically and practically, that is. is still sort of the biggest, I guess, domestic issue Canada's facing. Yeah, and, you know, just optically thinking about a government that's talking a lot about military spending and a lot about cuts to government programs and not about this issue that's very immediate for a lot of people. Like, that's obviously a big problem for them. Guess who just bundled their home and auto with Desjardin insurance?

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You know, shopping for a car should be exciting, not exhausting. And that's where Car Gurus comes in. They have advanced search tools, unbiased deal ratings, and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one. It's no wonder Car Gurus is the number one rated car shopping app in Canada on the Apple app and Google Play, according to App Follow. Buy your next car today with Car Gurus, and make sure your big deal is the best deal at car gurus.ca. That's c-ar-g-U-R-U-S.ca.cair-Gurus.cai. I know a lot of people were hoping that we would have some sort of framework agreed to over the summer with the elusive U.S. agreement.

You came onto the show and talked about this a couple weeks ago, and I know you mentioned that Kearney doesn't seem, at least from the outside, to be in this great rush to get a deal, that he doesn't want to rush maybe into a deal. that Canadians could think we capitulated too much on. But there has been some movement recently. What do we know about where negotiations are right now? Yeah, so last week, Mark Carney decided to make one move, which was to take off some of the retaliatory tariffs

that we still had applied to American products. His argument at the time was that that sort of lined up with essentially what the U.S. was doing because, you know, some of their tariffs at least, you know, don't apply to Canadian products if they're compliant with the existing free trade deal. And there was also, I think, a sense that negotiations with the United States were effectively stuck and weren't moving. And so this was a way to potentially get things jump started and get things moving again. And there is a time in a game when you go hard in the corners, he elbows up. The time in a game, we dropped the gloves in the first period and just send a message.

And we've done that pretty uniquely in the world. We haven't to have the best deal with the Americans right now. But there's also a time in a game where you want the puck, you want a stick handle, you want to pass, you want to put the puck in the net. And we're moving later into the game. And we're at that time in the game. We know from my colleague Ashley Burke that Dominic LeBlanc, the cabinet minister who is responsible for the Kennedy U.S. file was in the United States today.

speaking with Howard Lutnik. They met for 90 minutes. It was, as usual, described as a productive meeting, although we do know, you know. They love to call these meetings constructive, often lengthy. Always constructive and productive. But, you know, if you're trying to read tea leaves, it is a meeting. And, you know, there was, in addition to Dominique Leblanc, we know that Mark Andre Blanchard, Mark Carney's chief of staff, and Michael Sabia, the clerk of the Privy Council were also in the room. So, you know, that suggests that there was a, at least, you know, some serious people in the room.

We don't know exactly where things are going or what the United States is asking for or, you know, what the sticking points are at this point. And that makes it, I think, hard to really know where we're at this point. I think, though, you know, at least politically, at least from the outside, I think, you know, you could look at what Mark Carney's done so far, making a couple kind of. of concessions, dropping the digital services tax, dropping these retaliatory tariffs. And you know, you can argue that they were reasonable or understandable or, you know, maybe necessary sacrifices. But I think it does up the pressure on him to land in a place that Canadians are going to find acceptable that he's going to be able to say to people, this is the best deal we could have

gotten. Right, because then otherwise, what were they for? Yeah, exactly. What were these concessions for? Yeah. And if so, you know, I think Canadians probably understand to a certain degree that these are not easy negotiations, but I don't know that they have unlimited patients for whatever comes out of it. Yeah. And this idea that there's not necessarily unlimited patients here, you know, it certainly has struck me that Canadians have given this government a lot of leeway here on the U.S. and other things since they've been elected. there has been a lot of goodwill directed towards them.

But like when exactly does that runway start to taper off? What day? I can't give you an exact date. Thursday, September. I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm still looking at calendars. I think, you know, I'm really interested in this because I think it comes down to what Canadians expected from Mark Carney and why, at least a plurality of them voted liberal.

And was it because they thought he's going to be, you know, to use the cliche, elbows up and he's going to be really tough with the Americans and he's going to stick it to them. Or did they pick him because they thought he seemed reasonable and serious and that he would get to the best possible arrangement and he would make, you know, the right decisions, you know, not only in the negotiations, but in kind of the long-term economic situation. And, you know, I think he's benefiting from a lot of goodwill at this point. I think it's possible that he's like a lot of leaders in a crisis situation, Canadians, the public is kind of willing to put their support behind him, put their faith in him. I don't know that it's unlimited. And I don't know when or how it might kind of come to an end. I think it really does come back to like what are Canadians looking for in this situation.

What were they thinking when they picked him? and what do they, you know, what do they want from a leader at this moment? Yeah. And I imagine it will also depend on movement in other areas, too. Or lack of movement. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, he can talk about the old relationship being over. And Canadians might intuitively understand that or even agree with it. But you kind of have to then show what that means.

You have to show that you're actually responding to that new world that you see. Let's pivot a bit here and talk about the opposition. Of course, Pierre Pahliav recently won his by-election in southern Alberta, so he is back in Parliament, and he will be there. When Parliament resumes on September 15th, that will, of course, change the dynamic in Parliament. it'll be easier for him to get his message out, to challenge the prime minister directly. What have we been hearing from him lately, specifically since he won, his by-election? I think we have heard basically the same Pierre Pahliav we heard before the election and for the previous two years going into the election. Over the last 10 years, liberal policies have sent crime, immigration, housing,

inflation spiraling out of control. Now they promised recently that things would be different. But under Mr. Carney and his 157 days in office they've only gotten worse. That's why us conservatives have our work cut out for us. This does not look or sound like a man who has decided he needs to change everything. He is he's combative. He's sort of pushing on some of the culture war fronts. We don't want to keep criminals in our streets. We don't want to invite criminals to our country. Every single criminal who visits our country and is a non-Canadian should be quickly deported from our country. The liberals under Mark Carney have lost track of 600 convicted criminals who are wandering...

You know, there's been lots of speculation about whether he was going to change tact. There have been lots of voices saying he needs to change tact. I think there are sort of two ways to read the conservative election result earlier this spring. And I think depending on which way you look at it, you may or may not think he has to change. One is to say, you know, he missed the moment. The moment has changed. And now the conservative party or Pierre Polyev needs to change with this sort of new world we're facing. The other way to look at it is to say the conservatives are, you know, this close to forming government. And if not for a remarkable confluence of events this spring, Pierre Polyeve would probably be a prime minister. And I think based on what we've seen of

Pierre Polyev, at this point, I think it's pretty clear that they are taking the latter view. I mean, certainly his campaign manager, Jenny Byrne, is taking that tack as well. She recently gave this interview on the podcast, Beyond a Ballot. And like you're saying, the general vibe was that they did run the right campaign and they did this incredible job creating this coalition of voters that was made up of a lot of young people who made their way over to the conservatives because like, you know, they're just sick of living in their parents' basements and that these criticisms that they didn't kind of move with the times and talk enough about Trump aren't valid. I would point out we had a very good campaign message, affordability, cost of living, housing.

they appealed very much to the new younger voter that's there. It's not that they weren't cognizant about what's going on with Donald Trump, but it wasn't affecting their lives. They didn't have the luxury to vote on Donald Trump. They wanted to get married. They wanted to have kids, and you can't do that living in your parents' basement. I found it interesting that there wasn't a lot of reflection on the role that the conservatives may have played in sending all those NDP voters to the liberals. Jenny talked about how she thinks NDP voters were scared into voting liberal, and the implication was that the liberals scared them with the Trump stuff.

But, like, I would be curious to hear how she might respond to a question about whether she feels the conservative campaign and their leader scared them into voting liberal as well. Yeah, I think it's the collapse of the NDP vote is not some kind of organic phenomenon that happened in a way no one could possibly control. You know, the conservative spent a lot of time attacking Drug Meetsing and attacking the NDP and courting NDP votes. You know, it would appear based on the results that at least some of the NDP vote went to the conservatives. And I think the other thing is what you're referring to, which is, did people vote liberal purely because they loved Mark Carney and they were afraid of Donald Trump? Or did they do it because in some

of them, at least were afraid or turned off by Pierre Pollyev? Since we're on the topic of runways, what do you think about Pollyev's runway here? Is his own job in jeopardy? So I think the first hurdle is he has a leadership review in January. The Conservative Party, you know, members of the Conservative Party will vote on whether to keep him as leader. And, you know, that number, it's sort of like Battle River Crowfoot. Winning, you know, with 50% of the vote isn't going to be enough. He needs to get, you know, 80 or 90 support to show that he has a secure hold on.

on the party. And I think, you know, it's possible that part of the reason he's talking and acting like he is now is that he's thinking about the party base and he's thinking about getting a good number in January. So I think that's sort of the first hurdle. I think the larger risk to him is that, you know, our friend David Cletto's poll notwithstanding, some of the other polls show the conservative support significantly softening since the election. And Mark Carney enjoying a big advantage on leadership. And I think, you know, if those numbers start to tip through the fall or, you know, even into the spring, I would wonder whether where things go from there within the conservative party. Because, you know, again, Pierre Polyiv can say, look, we're this close to winning.

But if that argument starts to look a bit harder to make because maybe the poll numbers aren't moving the way they should be, do conservative start to wonder about whether they need to make a bigger change? Erin, this is great, great catching up with you. Good to chat. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.