Front Burner - What’s ahead in Canadian politics

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

It’s 2023, and Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now been in power for more than seven years. This year promises more challenges for a government prone to controversy and scandal: a choking economy, potential fallout from using the Emergencies Act, a widely-criticized gun control bill, and an increasingly complex international stage. Meanwhile, the NDP are trying to leverage their deal that props up the Liberals’ minority government, and new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is determined to put Trudeau at the center of the issues Canadians are struggling with. Today on Front Burner, a conversation with our chief political correspondent, Rosemary Barton, about how these issues could shape Canadian politics in 2023.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now been in power for over seven years. That conservative attack ad where a boardroom looks at his resume, it came out in 2015. People, being prime minister is not an entry-level job. Nice hair though. And as we head into 2023, the issues facing Trudeau's government, well, they're pretty significant.

There's a choking economy, a controversial gun control bill, and an increasingly complex international stage. All the while, the NDP are trying to leverage their deal that props up the Liberals' minority government. And new Conservative leader Pierre Polyev, he's determined to put Trudeau at the center of the issues Canadians are struggling with. It's a lot to go through. So thankfully, Rosemary Barton is with me. She's CBC's chief political correspondent and host of Rosemary Barton Live. And today, we're going to go through what you can expect from Canadian politics in 2023. Rosie, hey, thank you so much for doing this today, for joining me. Thank you for having me.

And let me begin with this caveat. I may be wrong about everything that's going to happen in 2023. I feel like these are such unfair interviews to do with people who are like, why don't you predict the future? That's right. So let's do that. The Liberals minority government was elected in the fall of 2021, and it might normally be nearing the end of its life cycle. But last spring, the liberals made a deal with the NDP for their support on key votes, keeping this government in power until 2025, if it lasts, if it lasts. So going into the year,

how healthy is that deal looking, you think? I think it is relatively healthy. You know, it's important to remember that the NDP struck this deal in part so that they could say politically they are able to get things for Canadians, something that they can't say because they're not in government, obviously. And in return, obviously, they were going to support the government through these key confidence and supply votes. So if you talk to the NDP and the Liberals, both say that they believe the deal is largely working. Now, that hasn't meant that the NDP hasn't had to put a little pressure on the government sometimes to fulfill some of the commitments that were laid out in that agreement. But they saw over the course of the fall, the NDP,

that the Liberals did move forward on some of those key elements. There was a rental benefit bill to help people pay for housing at a critical time. There was the doubling of the GST tax credit, also really targeting vulnerable Canadians. And then the beginning of a national dental program, right now just targeting kids, but eventually expanding broadly. And the NDP saw that, I think, as a sign of good faith. But they have had to sort of put the screws to the government a couple of times. And they're doing that as much to make sure that the agreement remains intact and that things move forward as they are to make it look like they are not just there propping up the government, but actually trying to get things from them. I know in December, Jagmeet Singh was saying he reserves the right to withdraw the deal

specifically over health care. And how big of a fight do you think we might be seeing on that in 2023? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know whether that's a bluff or not, to be honest. The agreement itself is pretty vague when it comes to what the NDP wants to see from the government on health care. It says they want to see additional ongoing investments in the immediate future, that they want to see them work with provinces to work things out post-pandemic. But there's no number, there's no timeline, there's no sort of concrete measures that they're asking for there. Our focus is on fighting. Our focus is on getting action. Our focus is on making this prime minister understand how serious this is and that he needs to show up.

That's our focus. That's our priority. And if it comes to a point where we've exhausted all options and we've exhausted all our attempts to get some action and this government's not acting, we reserve the right to withdraw our support. I think when you hear Jagmeet Singh saying those things, you have to remember the state that the NDP is in. It has no money. When you hear Jagmeet Singh saying those things, you have to remember the state that the NDP is in. It has no money. It has an $18 million bank loan that it secured for the last election that it needs to repay.

And it's got a bunch of its provincial cousins who are going to be heading to the polls in Alberta and in Manitoba. So in terms of political timing, the time is not ripe for the NDP for an election. They wouldn't be able to do it. It would be very hard. So it's not that it's a bluff, but it's not exactly, I think, a real threat either. When it comes to policy action that the NDP is expecting in 2023, what else might we expect from them? So we talked about the dental program. I think that has to start moving forward in a broad way. Just transition legislation. So this is the government's plan to move oil and gas workers into different areas of the economy as they try to green the economy. We saw the beginning of that policy over the fall, but we haven't really seen the details of how that will work. That's

important to the NDP and it's in the agreement. They also want legislation to ban replacement workers during lockouts and strikes, and they want long-term care standards. There hasn't really been any movement on those two things. So I think you have to see at least the beginning of some of that. You know, we'll see what happens with the economy, and I know we're going to talk about that, but in terms of how it affects the agreement

and how much the government can do or how quickly it can do some of these things. Even without an election this year, this does promise probably to be a tough year for Trudeau. Economy aside for a second, healthcare is a good example of how the pressure isn't just coming federally, right? And how can we expect the provinces and the territories to challenge the prime minister and his government?

I think we are in a really difficult space right now for the country and specifically for the prime minister. We have seen in the past year provinces more and more willing to test how far they can go for the country and specifically for the prime minister. We have seen in the past year provinces more and more willing to test how far they can go and sort of flex their muscles in terms of the constitution and the federation, whether it be the use of the notwithstanding clause in Quebec, in Ontario, whether it be these attempts to sort of press for more independence from Alberta and

Saskatchewan. And, you know, I don't think the prime minister wants to get into a fight on any of those things. But I think at some point in the coming year, he may be forced to sort of be the grown up in the room and say, listen, we've got to work together to find some solutions for this country. I bet you in 2023, he's going to have to start signaling that a little bit more and be a little more conscious of a potential fraying of the country. Yeah. And do you think that will, I guess my question is, will it just make some of these fights bigger? I guess it depends on who we're talking about. If we're talking about Alberta,

which again is moving into a spring election, so there's a lot of politics going on there. It's pretty clear that the current Premier Daniel Smith is trying to set up a fight, is trying to antagonize Justin Trudeau and his government and is looking for an opponent to rail against to sort of whip up her base. And then the concerns of Albertans, the real concerns of Albertans about what Ottawa is doing. Alberta and Canada are both worth fighting for. And that fight is with an out-of-control federal government in Ottawa that sees Alberta and all provinces as its subordinate rather than its partner.

Bill 1, the Sovereignty Act in Alberta, is being moved forward as very much a political tool to try and pick a fight with the federal government. And I'm not interested in fighting. So I'm not sure that you're going to see him engage in that way with her. So, right, all of that to say, it's a really fine line, I think, in terms of how he's going to have to handle this. He is going to have to make it clear that he wants to work with the provinces. He's successfully done that in the past. The child care deals are a good example. And he's going to have to not let himself be

poked by provinces and premiers and parties that may be looking for a political fight during a particular moment inside the province. On the policy front, the liberals generated a lot of controversy recently by changing the language on their gun control bill. So how can we expect that debate over guns to continue into this year? Yeah, I mean, it's been a bit of a mess, frankly. And as we ended last year, it's sort of got stalled in committee. Remember, this was a ban on handguns. This was a big part of how the liberals have positioned themselves to win elections. They largely win in cities. And those are issues that matter to people who live in cities. But that legislation

then got expanded and the government decided that it wanted to also try and define what are quote unquote assault style weapons. And when it went to do that, some weapons that would be typically called hunting weapons or hunting rifles got caught up in that definition. And by the end of last year, we ended up with the NDP, the Assembly of First Nations, conservatives, whole swaths of the country upset with the way the federal liberals had approached gun control. The amendment has some serious concerns and concerns that were raised by very reputable groups like the AFN, who said that they're concerned about impacts on the treaty rights of Indigenous communities to hunt. Those are concerns that need to be addressed. And the amendment right now, as it stands, is problematic. But it's not Grandpa Joe's hunting rifle in Cape Breton or in Wainwright that is committing crimes in downtown Toronto. We know that the vast majority of guns used in crime are illegally

smuggled into this country. The prime minister, you know, when I spoke to him at the end of the year, made it clear that when you are standing up for something that you believe fundamentally, a principle you have, that sometimes it'll be difficult. And that's sort of how he characterized where this piece of legislation is that when I asked him if he had screwed it up. We are changing the definition to make sure that guns designed to kill the largest number of people as quickly as possible have no place in this country. Did you screw up the legislation, though? No, we continue to moving or continue. Well, I think everyone. He didn't bite on that, but I think it's fair to say they did.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say they did screw it up and that they have sort of wedged themselves a little bit on this very political issue. I think we are going to see them try and get to a place where they are going to make allowances for some hunting rifles. Some will still get caught up in this assault weapon ban. But they're going to have to find a way to bridge the divide because they have a lot of people from both the left and the right angry with them right now. And it'll be interesting to see how they manage to do that. Okay. So that's one specific policy that we really want to look out for. On the foreign policy front, the war in Ukraine obviously continues. And in November, the liberals introduced their new Indo-Pacific strategy. It calls China increasingly disruptive and plans for developing ties elsewhere in the region, presumably to lessen our dependence on China. And how could we see that new approach put to the test this year, you think?

Yeah, I think we have to start to see some concrete examples of what that looks like. that looks like. This is sort of what other people call decoupling or friendshoring when you're trying to put your investments in your trade and your economy, rely it in countries where the values better match your own. The problem, of course, is that China is huge and it manufactures basically everything. And it's very hard to just sort of flip the switch and say, well, we're not going to do this anymore. And that's not, to be clear, what the government is saying. It is saying to Canadian companies, you can go and invest in China, but do it at your own risk and do it knowing that for us, this is not where we see the future of the economy going.

Listen, I think it is a really complicated situation that the whole world is facing when it comes to China. It does seem now that there seems to be like an agreement about how to approach it. But it is hard to turn your back on a country that is still an economic superpower. And I think in the months ahead, we're going to see that again, sort of delicate dance that the government's going to have to walk between saying that it wants to lessen our dependence on China and actually doing it. Especially, I would imagine, if the economy takes a real turn for the worse, because, of course, people are not going to want to spend more money on goods. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. 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. Let's talk about the economy. So of course, we spent so much of 2022 talking about decades high inflation rates, then about how the Bank of Canada was pumping up interest

rates to get that inflation under control. And we have not obviously fully seen the impact of those rising rates there. So depending on how things unfold in 2022, how good or bad could the state of the economy be for the liberal government? I guess not great to be a government in the middle of a recession. For sure. And I think that that issue around recession is still a bit up in the air as we start this new year. There are some economists that believe there will be a slight slowdown and others who say maybe Canada can avoid it because of other things we've got going for us, including high employment rates. But I think any government that is seven years old or so

and is now faced with an economic crisis of sorts is going to feel a lot of pressure. And that's part of why the opposition, the Conservatives, have been pushing and pushing and pushing this story so hard. They want Canadians to see Justin Trudeau and his government as responsible for what people are experiencing. Of course, it's more complicated than that. But we know that the Bank of Canada is determined to get that inflation rate back to 2%, that the interest rate increases might not

quite be over as we enter the new year, and that those interest rates anyway don't really have an impact on inflation for 12, 18 months. It could take a long time for all of that to cycle through the economy to the point where you and I feel like, you know, we can buy a head of lettuce and bread and not have to wonder why it's so expensive. So I think that that is a challenge. I know that the government is already working on the budget for this year, that they have a number of contingency plans in place based on how bad things might get, that there is a willingness to, again, try and support

Canadians if we get into tough times or tougher times. But the challenge there is how do you support Canadians financially without then inflaming inflation and causing more problems in the economy. So that's another huge challenge, I think, for Canadians and for the government from a policy perspective, but also from a politics perspective. You have to be willing to talk to Canadians about what they're experiencing and show that you're able to help, willing to help, but at the same time, not make the situation worse. Show that you're able to help, willing to help, but at the same time, not make the situation worse. And you mentioned the conservatives have been hitting this really hard. The new leader, Pierre Polyev, spent an enormous amount of time in 2022 blaming the liberals for causing inflation.

And so do you think he's going to be staying on this message? Are we going to see him pivot in any way? I mean, I guess it depends what happens with the economy. But conservatives that I talk to say that he doesn't want to talk about anything else. He doesn't want in caucus meetings or in question period prep to have questions about anything else or almost anything else. How much pain will Canadians have to suffer before this government stops its inflationary policies? But he believes fundamentally that the government at least exacerbated this crisis by an enormous

amount of spending during the pandemic to help Canadians and that we are in a worse place because of some of those decisions. You know, for 25 years, the Bank of Canada had a very simple mandate. 2% inflation brought in by the Mulroney government. Stick to 2%. Interest rates, money supply were all governed to that purpose. And it worked. It worked until this prime minister came along and pushed the bank to print cash to pay for his spending. We're going to have no more of that. He also has been previously the finance critic.

So it's a file that he is comfortable with, that he knows well. And he knows that liberals and liberal governments can tend to look vulnerable when it comes to how responsible they are on economic issues. The average family could pay their housing bill with 32 percent of their paycheck every month. Now that's 50% after seven years of this prime minister in power. So it is natural for him. It's probably a good pressure point for him. And I don't think that we'll see him pull back unless something happens with the economy. And then I think that's a really interesting question about where he would go next. Because remember, a lot of his leadership campaign was about COVID and vaccine mandates. And when all those things sort of faded away, he fortunately

was able to latch on to the economy. What is the next thing that Pierre Poiliev takes on? I think that'll be fascinating to see. Certainly, some of the language he was using at the end of the year was about how Canada was quote unquote broken, trying to show that there were a series of things that weren't working and it was the government's fault. Can he get any, you know, oxygen out of that or keep that moving in terms of his own political momentum? I'm not sure.

If I'm Pierre Polyev, do I want an election this year? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think you want a little more time to chip away at the government. And I think fundamentally you want a little more time to chip away at the government. And I think fundamentally, you want a little more time to introduce yourself to Canadians. He spent a lot of time in the House. He believes that he can use those moments in the House to try and get Canadians to pay attention to him. I'm not sure that that is accurate. I think he probably needs to get out there and talk to more people.

He certainly was doing that during his leadership campaign with a fair amount of success. So I don't know that you'll see a shift in strategy in the new year, but I think it would make sense for him to go out and start talking to more, quote unquote, real Canadians. For the liberals, I know Trudeau hasn't indicated he's giving up leadership, right? But he has been in power since 2015. There's no denying, as we've been talking about, his popularity has been sliding. It's a long time to be in power. And do you think the whole party is behind him to stay in leadership here? I do, actually.

I think that we, over the course of last year, went through a couple of different ups and downs on that front. I think he ended the year strong. That by-election win was important. I think the polls showed him improving by the end of the year, too. I also think that there's something happened sort of middle of last year where there was a decision in his mind that he was still the best person to lead the party and lead the country. And that the people who were questioning, maybe very quietly, whether that was going to happen, were told to cool their jets. And they did. I don't know anyone. I haven't talked to anyone

privately who's said anything otherwise. They do believe that he is the person to lead them into the next election. Now, that could change, right? I mean, if the next election is 2025, all sorts of things could change. But in my year-end interview with him, he certainly believes that he has the energy to do it, and that he is, he didn't like this word when I put it to him, but that he is in some ways the antidote to some of the things that he thinks begun on reconciliation, on climate change, eventually on health care, that those changes happen and are entrenched enough that they can't be easily undone. So I don't think his leadership is in jeopardy when we're talking right now. If you want to call me in six months, like maybe I'll have a different answer. But I would say that's where it's at right now. So we've talked about how the NDP probably doesn't want an election this year,

and the conservatives probably don't want an election this year. But I guess it's worth me asking then, is it possible that the liberals want an election this year? Tom Mulcair, the former leader of the NDP, wrote a column for CTV saying he believes that there will be an election this year. So I know this is like the most unfair question of all the questions I've asked you today. But do the liberals want an election this year? Do you think that we'll get an election this year? Do you think that we'll get an election this year? Yeah, it is the most unfair question. I know, I'm sorry, happy new year. I don't think so. I would be very confident in saying certainly not in the first six months. But I'm less confident about the rest. I think that there is not a window here for the liberals to benefit from. is very plausible. They want to know that they're going to win and that a majority is possible and that Justin Trudeau can have this exit that he wants and believes he deserves, I guess.

So I don't think politically the stars are aligned right now. I also do think that there is a lot of public policy work to be done sort of post-pandemic. Remember, this is a government that's been seized with crisis after crisis after crisis and hasn't actually had an enormous amount of time in the past few years to put big things in place. And they need and want, I think, to do that. Whether you agree with them is a different thing, but I think they want to have a little bit of time to do some of those big things. Healthcare obviously will have to be dealt with at some point in the next six months. So I don't see it myself right now. But again, if the polls change and Justin Trudeau sees an opportunity or Pierre Poully sees an opportunity, they're going to take it. These are people who

are in it to win. If they see there's an opportunity to do that, they're just, they're going to go for it. Okay. Rosie, thank you for this and looking forward to talking to you hopefully a lot more this year. Okay, don't put any of that on me though. No, I promise. I promise.

If we're in an election in March, just I don't know what I was talking about. All right. That is all for today. Very happy new year to everyone. And we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.