Front Burner - Trudeau troubles: embattled at home, mocked abroad

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

The fallout from Chrystia Freeland’s resignation is far from over. As more people demand Justin Trudeau’s resignation he appears to be in no hurry to heed the calls.Meanwhile, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump pokes fun at Canada’s ongoing chaos, reprising his jokes about the country becoming the 51st state. What does the drama in Ottawa mean for Canada’s position as it prepares for a potential trade war with Washington?We're joined by J.P. Tasker from CBC's parliamentary bureau and Alex Panetta, a Washington-based CBC News correspondent.  For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Happy Holidays! I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. I'd like you to set a goal to drive key learning for your people in 2025. I want you to connect with Humber CPL to design a custom training solution that accelerates your team's performance and engagement. Humber works with you to hone industry-specific upskilling, enhance your leadership, and drive results. Flexible learning delivery formats are tailored to your unique needs. Adapt, evolve, and excel. To learn more, go to humber.ca slash cpl. This is a CBC podcast. It has been an eventful couple of days. It hasn't been easy, and that's why I'm so happy to see you guys. Hey everybody, Jamie here.

So, oh wow, what a week in Canadian politics, and it actually isn't even finished. Lots of people are now waiting to see if the Prime Minister will listen to the calls of a growing number of people inside and outside his government to resign. My colleague from the Ottawa Bureau, JP Tasker, is here to talk about the latest, including what we now know about that fateful Zoom call where Trudeau fired his finance minister. Alex Panetta from the CBC's Washington Bureau is also here, and we are going to discuss how all this chaos at home is playing in the U.S. and how it could be impeding the Canadian response on the eve of a potential trade war with Donald Trump. All right, let's get into it. Gentlemen, hi. Thanks so much for coming on. Hey, Jamie. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

It's great to have you both. What a week. What a week. JP, let me start with you. What is going on in the Trudeau government? We are talking at 3 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. There has been reporting that after Freeland's really bombshell resignation Monday and all the fallout, the prime minister is now taking time to reflect on his position, on his future. And what's the latest, if anything, on that? Well, the prime minister is in a very, very difficult position. Frankly, it really doesn't get much worse than this. It's an increasingly tenuous position. Chrystia Freeland's abrupt resignation was an embarrassment. You know, he botched the attempt to shuffle her out of finance to bring in Mark Carney instead.

And that has prompted tremendous unease, anger, frustration inside the Liberal caucus. Many MPs are saying now he can't carry on like this. You know, one MP told me today he's delusional if he thinks he can carry on after all that went down on Monday. So the prime minister is weighing his future. He's taking some time to think about it. He may be taking a walk in the snow, you know, as his father did, but he is taking that time to think about what he does next. It's not necessarily over for him. You know, he might decide to press on, as he has in the past when he's faced challenges like this. Despite the dreadful situation he's in now, he may want to stay on.

But, yeah, it's not great for him. He knows it. He's taking time to think about it. And as he takes that time, more and more MPs are coming forward to say, listen, you got to go. I saw that he canceled all of his year-ender interviews, one with our colleague Rosie Barton, which is a pretty wild move, very unprecedented. What does that say to you? It says he doesn't want to speak publicly right now. I mean, he has been silent all week for the most part.

He has not talked to the press. He gave some brief remarks at some Christmas parties over the last couple of days with staffers and top donors, but he does not want to talk. And I think he doesn't want to talk while he's mulling over what he should do about his future. I just want to say that if he does resign, then it is very plausible that his final interview as prime minister will be the one that he did on Hot Ones Quebec, which is that show where you eat chicken wings. I don't know, Alex, you're from Quebec. Did you even know that they had a Hot Ones Quebec?

This is new information to me just a couple of days ago. I know everything there is to know about Hot Ones and Quebec. You did? You knew that? Okay. All right. That Christmas party that you just mentioned, JP, Trudeau got up. He made a speech. He talked about how... Like most families,

sometimes we have fights around the holidays. But of course, like most families, we find our way through it. Do you have a sense of how fellow liberals reacted to that? Well, it was awkward. It was an awkward phrasing, I think. I mean, I had one MP tell me today, like, truth be told, most liberals just want him gone. You know, MP Chad Collins said the same thing publicly. I think if there was a secret ballot tomorrow, David, and I know that's something that we've pushed for as a group, I think, you know, those numbers are quite high, including a number of people who are in cabinet. I mean, Wayne's.

So his kind of playful banter at these Christmas parties hasn't gone over well. One MP said to me, is he serious? Is he just brushing this off as family infighting? The government's future is on the line here, right? It's a deeply serious development. And to kind of boil it down to that, I don't know, one's, you know, as some people are saying, it was a cringy moment. New Brunswick Liberal MP Wayne Long wrote quite the open letter to his Liberal colleagues today. He said Freeland's resignation wasn't just embarrassing, but was a, quote, indictment of the chaos and insularity within the prime minister's inner circle. And he called on his colleagues to act now or be remembered as the generation that let it slip away. And just can you tell me more about what may or may not be happening? Like, sure, maybe a secret ballot would result in them wanting the prime minister gone. But are they doing anything else here? Yeah, I mean, Wayne Long has been calling for months for Justin Trudeau to resign. And I think that he's getting frustrated now. I think he's like, OK, guys, let's get

organized. Let's do what we can to push him out. And this letter is the latest example of that. He's been very vocal all week saying the prime minister is living in a false reality. He's delusional if he thinks we can continue like this. And honestly, there are a number of people that are now joining Wayne Long. We're up to 15 MPs as of last count saying publicly that Justin Trudeau has to go. He has to hang it up.

He can't go on like this. I'm asking the prime minister to announce that he'll be stepping down. I've always been loyal to Mr. Trudeau. I think loyalty, though, is not a one-way street. I think he should reflect on his future. The prime minister should resign, and somebody new should take the party and the country forward.

And let's just, you know, step back and acknowledge what a big deal that is. You know, politics is all about loyalty. Loyalty to the party, loyalty to the leader. These people ran with Trudeau and won with him. So it's a significant development for many of them to, you know, now come out and say, we need a new leader. That is big in politics. And, you know, 15 or so have said it publicly, but I'm told there are many more who feel like this. It could be as many as 40, 50 MPs who are itching to get Trudeau out. So I think this letter is Wayne Long's latest attempt to try and corral people, get them riled up and

get them pushing Trudeau, put the public pressure on Trudeau because that's what they feel like will work best. Public pressure. That's what will get him out. Yeah. Also coincides with polling the latest from Abacus data. I think it's like 11% of Canadians think that they deserve to be reelected, the Trudeau liberals. It's a rough number. Yeah, terrible. One thing I wanted to ask you, JP, is before everything blew up this week, we were expecting a cabinet shuffle. There's like eight ministers who said that they're

going and they do need to be replaced. Is there a world in which that still happens? Yes, it's actually possible. Sources are split on this, but it's possible that something could happen this week still. Because like you say, there is huge gaps in the cabinet. There are eight cabinet ministers that have either retired or is huge gaps in the cabinet. There are eight cabinet ministers that have either retired or resigned over the last few weeks. There are huge, huge holes in Justin Trudeau's cabinet. I mean, Dominic LeBlanc. He's running like half the government. Literally. He is the finance minister. He has public safety and he's intergovernmental affairs, which are by far the most important cabinet portfolios right now, right? He is dealing with the border. He is

dealing with Trump and he is dealing with the finances. Like it doesn't get much more important than that. That's an enormous workload for one person, but it's not just him. We have Anita Anand. You know, she's the president of the treasury board and the transport minister. Jeanette Pettypot-Taylor is what? Employment, official languages, ventures affairs. So like there's all these ministers that have multiple roles, and you can't really run a government like that. You can't go on like that at length. So I think at some point, he's going to have to shuffle whether he is staying or going because he's got to run the country still. Happy holidays.

I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. And I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation, micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Continuous Professional Learning and ignite your career journey this new year. Our experts deliver accelerated learning from resilience-based leadership to electric vehicle fundamentals and learning options that work with your ambitious lifestyle. Adapt, evolve, and excel.

Go to humber.ca slash CPL to get started. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income?

That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Speaking of a cabinet shuffle, I think it's pretty fair to say that one person will not be coming aboard if that does go ahead this week. And that is Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor. And so we know more now, JP, about what actually happened in this now fateful Zoom call where Trudeau told Freeland she would no longer be finance minister. And would you like to do the honor of filling in the blanks there? Yeah. So according to one liberal source who spoke to

Radio-Canada, our French colleagues, Freeland was told by the prime minister in a Zoom call on Friday that she would be replaced as finance minister by Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor, on Tuesday. So the day after she was set to deliver the fall economic statement, she was going to be fired, shuffled to another portfolio, and Mark Carney was going to step in. shuffled to another portfolio, and Mark Carney was going to step in. But the problem for the prime minister is Carney had not actually agreed to that move when the prime minister raised it with Freeland. So he was maybe a little too early in approaching Freeland about this move because he did not have Mark Carney's signature on the dotted line to actually take over as finance after the fall economic statement. So it definitely blew up in his face.

He lost Freeland. And now Mark Carney doesn't want to move in after that and take on that portfolio because he has bigger aspirations, right? He potentially wants to run for the leadership when Justin Trudeau quits. It hasn't been decided yet. But you don't want to be known as the guy that kind of stomped on Freeland on her way out, right? That's not a good look. No, he was like the great feminist villain of 2024. No, no. Yeah, bad look. So it went poorly, to say the least. It could not have gone any worse,

really, because now he's left with none of them. Well, I want to talk about the possibility of an election. So we know that the prime minister, as we've talked about, could resign. He could call a leadership race. He could prorogue parliament to give the liberals some time to find a new leader. He could also just call an election if he wanted, really, I think at any point, right, and just run. But there is another option here, which is that the opposition parties bring down the government and force an election. And just explain to me how, and actually, importantly, how soon that could happen. So this will not happen if it does happen until February at this point, because MPs are done for the year. They left Ottawa yesterday. They've gone back to their ridings. Parliament does not return

from its six-week Christmas break until the end of January. So it's possible, though unlikely, that a non-confidence motion could be introduced right there and then, but that would require the government kind of acquiescing to scheduling it then. But yeah, I mean, it's possible that the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the Conservatives band together and try and bring down this government in early February. Because Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, has said Justin Trudeau has to resign. Peter Julian, the NDP House leader, has said they will vote non-confidence if the prime minister is still there when they get back after this Christmas break. If we're coming up to a straight up non-confidence motion the end of February, early March, that's one of the tools that we have. So there's no doubt about that.

I mean, Jagmeet Singh was very, very clear. So that's what Justin Trudeau is facing right now. If he does not resign, he will have to go into an election very early in the new year at the top of this party facing those abysmal polling numbers and a caucus that is turning on him. All right, Alex, let's bring you in here and let's turn a bit to the U.S. The news is actually not any better, frankly. I want to play you a clip from Fox News the other day. So this is Jesse Waters, conservative talk show host. He's on this political panel show and they're talking about all the chaos in the Canadian government. Do you think President Trump meant to

beat the straw that broke the camel's back on Trudeau's government? He might not want to get rid of Trudeau because you get a conservative in there that could be tougher on trade. But this is a great opportunity, as you were saying in the break, to all of these countries now kind of struggling to stay afloat. And Trump can really drive a hard bargain on trade in the first year or two. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that is really not how you want to be talked about going into a potential trade war. Hey? No, it's the most basic human instinct to want to avoid ridicule, not just prime ministers of G7 countries. You know, the readout from Mar-a-Lago, from the Canadian side, from the Trump-Trudeau meeting,

was that they got along extremely well. Trump walked Trudeau off the property himself. They had a long, friendly chat. And then you get this leak to Fox News about a joke about Canada being a 51st state. And at the time, when we first heard about this, I said to myself, okay, if this thing was something that, you know, Trump mentioned in passing to someone and it got to Fox News, that's one thing. But if this was the intentional readout from the United States government or the incoming administration from the meeting with Trudeau, I said, okay, we are in for a world of maybe trouble or hurt or certainly of embarrassment and and it's become clear over the last couple weeks that this is intentional that they actually want to drag trudeau through this this period of ridicule well he's trump is going super hard on this 51st date thing hey like at three o'clock in the morning Wednesday, he tweets on True Social,

no one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over 100 million a year. Makes no sense! Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state. They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st state, multiple exclamation marks. This isn't the first time he's done the 51st state thing. Why is he going so hard on this?

The reaction has been fantastic from his perspective on Fox News. He's getting this amen choir. Let's run with this gag for days and days now. We'll never probably lose another Winter Olympics. We'll have all of their skaters and skiers. I mean, good luck, Sweden. It's just a no brainer. Now, I don't know if Canada is going to go along with it, but there's ways to maybe change their opinion. So he's getting this feedback. He's the same guy who improvises in giving public speeches, you know, dropping parts of his speech or adding them based on whether the crowd is cheering.

So, you know, clearly his fans are cheering this. One of our colleagues, Katie Simpson, asked Republicans on the Hill about this today, and one of them, Andy Biggs, a congressman who's pro-Trump, you know, very close to Trump said, oh, lighten up. Humor is dead. And so, you know, I'm assuming it's a joke. Does it come with a desire to hurt or to settle an old score? Possibly. But I'm not in his head and I can't really guess entirely. Let me read you another one of his online posts.

So he's actually responding to freelance resignation here. So he's actually responding to freelance resignation here. The great state of Canada is stunned as the finance minister resigns or was fired from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic and not at all conducive to making deals, which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. Sorry, it's not funny. It's not funny, but it is. She will not be missed, multiple exclamation marks. There's a lot going on in there. But what do you make of what he said about her?

Okay, so, you know, the last couple of days have forced me to go back to my sources, people I talked to about the renegotiation of NAFTA. So it's basically a trip down memory lane six years later. And, you know, it was clear to me, I had conversations with people I didn't necessarily have access to back then on the U S side, you know, who didn't want to talk to Canadian reporters. And so I'm getting a sort of a conflicting portrait of Chrystia Freeland. On the one hand, she drove the Americans crazy, right? For months on end, because she wasn't making concessions. And so they think she had basically two objectives during that negotiation. The first was to run out the clock, to basically put pressure on the United States to come up with a deal as it was getting close to some sort of congressional deadline. And I'll spare you the sort of boring details about trade promotion authority and also

the 2018 midterms. But basically she figured we buy time, we get a better deal. And the second thing they perceive is that she didn't want to be seen as conceding anything to the United States. So what she would do is sit there during negotiating sessions and not really concede anything. You know, anything that they said, you know, would be, we'll take it under advisement. We'll take it outside the room.

I'll talk to my officials. So basically, you know, she drove a hard bargain, drove nuts, ultimately got along relatively well with her interlocutors. But Trump clearly carries a bit of a grudge over that, you know that extended period of uncertainty. And also the fact that Chrystia Freeland gave speeches in Canada and the United States, essentially rebuking Trump and his version of nationalism.

So yeah, so that's it. He still carries a grudge. I'm not sure Freeland's negotiating interlocutors like Lighthizer do as well. Let's talk about the Canadian response, the strategy of Team Canada to tackle this. And Alex, I know that you talk to people on both sides of the border. And is there a sense that there is a clear strategy, a clear plan here to help fight against this threat of tariffs to try to convince the administration in the U.S. not to do it through sticks or carrots or just facts and common sense? sticks or carrots or just facts and common sense? Yeah. So, you know, the United States, I mean, you're starting to see Premier Doug Ford on television, on CNN in the United States. It's not easy for a Canadian premier to get airtime in the U.S., but when that premier threatens to cut the United States off of its energy supply, it will get some attention here. I'd love to sit down with the president, businessman to businessman, and have a conversation with

them because we are so much stronger together. You know, I've had mixed feelings about how that's gone down in Canada from the premiers. On the one hand, I thought it was kind of helpful at first for Doug Ford to send up that flair early on saying, hey, if Mexico doesn't clean up its act with Chinese cars, we're willing to cut a deal without them. I think it was useful for him to sort of send a message to Washington and Mexico City. But as that's gone on, I'm less convinced. No, there are pros and cons to disunity at home. The con is if you're starting to negotiate in public and you're getting Alberta making one concession and Ontario making another

concession in a trade negotiation and Quebec saying something else, it's very easy for the United States to say, okay, fine, I'll take what Quebec is saying. I'll take what Ontario is saying and I'll take what Alberta is saying. On the other hand, it can sometimes be useful. You know, there's something called two-level negotiation, a term popularized by the economist Robert Putnam. And usually the United States benefits from disunity at home in a trade negotiation because it goes to the bargaining table and it looks at Canada or at Mexico or whoever it's negotiating with and says, look, you need to give me this thing because I'm getting hell at home. I've got like the Congress is never

going to pass this trade deal if you don't do this thing for Michigan, right? So, you know, done intelligently, all right, conflicting messages on the home front can be useful, but it's only useful if you're hearing conflicting messages that put pressure on the United States. It's less useful if you're putting pressure on your own government. I would imagine there would still have to be some kind of strategy behind that, right? And certainly after Ford made all of those rounds on U.S. TV shows like CNN, I saw people comment that he's basically like filling a hole that the federal government is not filling right now because their house is burning down. JP, I wonder if you want to come in here. Is that the view that you're hearing from Ottawa? Well, yeah, because they're not

really in a position to be a political force right now. Right. I mean, so Doug Ford is trying to pick up the slack and present himself as Captain Canada. You know, I'm the one that will take the fight to Trump. I'm going to stand up for the country, whether it will work or not. I think a lot of people feel good about having someone speak for us because we haven't really heard anything from the federal government to this point, right? Like they did the Mar-a-Lago trip yesterday, announced this border deal, but that's about it. They haven't really engaged very effectively on this issue to this point, at least in public. And Alex, what are you hearing? What is it that people want our government to be doing,

you know, that they're not doing right now? Well, I think the government of Canada has done a lot the last couple of days, as JP mentioned. I mean, this suite of border announcements. Our new border plan, backed by an investment of $1.3 billion, will secure our border against the flow of illegal drugs and irregular migration, while ensuring the free flow of people and goods that are at the core of North America's prosperity. It's composed of five pillars. prosperity. It's composed of five pillars. And it's not just, you know, putting up a couple of drones and helicopters at the border, you know, to stop what you call the backpackers. They're also doing stuff to stop the bankers involved in the illicit fentanyl trade. You know, Canada's talking about new money laundering rules. It's talking about changing or cracking down on certain types of migration and freedom of mobility for people who aren't Canadian citizens

to basically enter Canada and go to the United States. They're talking about changing some of the rules there. This is a significant set of developments. And I would submit to you that possibly the most substantive thing that happened on Wednesday related to this was not the joke on Truth Social about Canada becoming a 51st state. Yes, Trump has been roasting Canada like a maple glazed ham in recent days. But, you know, amid all that sizzle and all these punchlines, I mean, there's been some meatier stuff that's been said. And,

you know, if you look at statements from his transition team, from his press secretary, from Capitol Hill Republicans. There's potentially hopeful news for Canada there. They're basically doing a victory dance, saying Trump's gotten the job done. He's gotten Canada to move. And this is exactly what the Canadians I talked to after the Mar-a-Lago meeting said they understood from the Trump side, from what Trump wanted to do. He wanted to be able to take office on January 20th and say, I've already saved American lives. I've gotten other countries to act even before I was president. And the message from his transition team and from other Republicans appears to be mission accomplished. But how do we know if that's enough, if this is going to be enough to stop the tariffs from actually going through.

We don't know Trump's bottom line. Like any half-decent negotiator, he hasn't told you, if you do this, then I'll do that. He's trying to drive a hard bargain and get as much as he can. So we don't know if this is going to satisfy him ultimately. But I actually think the chances of a resolution and the removal of these potentially devastating tariffs has taken a big step forward over the last couple of days, you know, despite all the noise, despite all the controversy. And there's a reason for that. I think if Trump puts tariffs on Canada now, he risks running into three cross currents. The first is, you know, he risks the cooperation

that Canada has already put up that he said he wanted, right? Canada's doing all these things he asked for. Canada's doing it. And if you put tariffs now, you risk that. Second thing is we now have two public opinion polls in the United States asking about tariffs on Canada. They are unpopular. Now, they're not like 80% unpopular. They're like 51% unpopular.

And only roughly 32%, 33% of Americans say they support the idea. But a lot of independents hate it. It's very unpopular with independents. You know, so you're running into that. Why start your presidency with that? And the third cross current he risks running into is that it threatens his signature campaign promise to keep prices low. So I think by Canada moving on all those border announcements, they like it reduced the chances that these devastating tariffs are going to happen. Now, could they still happen? Yeah. Could he still ask for more? these devastating tariffs are going to happen now. Could they still happen? Yeah.

Could he still ask for more? Yeah. Is he going to shift the goalposts? Like, you know, he's not talking about the trade deficit. I don't think we've seen the last of the tariff threats from Donald Trump, but there is some glimmer of hope that in the midst of all this chaos, uh, we might've found, uh, at least a temporary piece, uh, this week, but who knows? Well, we'll, we'll, we'll? We'll know hopefully closer to January 20th.

All right. Well, that was a surprisingly optimistic note that we ended this podcast on. Guys, thank you as always. Thanks, Jamie. Thanks, Jamie. Thanks for having us. 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.