The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Can the NDP Make a Comeback?

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

The Agenda's week in review looked at nostalgia for Ontario Place, the NDP's chances in the federal election, the effectiveness of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, and whether Canada can find more reliable trade partners than the U.S.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Renew your 2.0 TVO with more thought-provoking documentaries, insightful current affairs coverage, and fun programs and learning experiences for kids. Regular contributions from people like you help us make a difference in the lives of Ontarians of all ages. Visit tvo.me slash 2025 donate to renew your support or make a first-time donation and continue to discover your 2.0 TVO. Let's start this discussion with two numbers. This is from Shatchy's polling from Angus Reed. At the end of last year, the federal NDP was pulling at 21% support. Fast forward yesterday and they are down to a whopping 7%. Shachi, I'm going to start with you. How should we understand what's happening here?

Well, I mean, basically what we're seeing is the NDP's lunch get eaten by the Liberals. The party's support base is being hollowed out and we have seen a dramatic stampede of NDP supporters abandon the NDP at least for the time being and I'll circle back on that in favor of the Liberals. So what's going on on that front? Well there's a couple of factors. First of all with Pierre Paulier finishing last year with a 20 plus point lead, I think a lot of center left voters have made decisions around trying to create an anybody but conservatives or anybody but Poliev situation and they are choosing to vote strategically and with their feet for a left of center or a centrist candidate that they feel would be best to block Poliev.

There's also just the practicalities of the fact that many current NDP voters are actually not really enamored of the choice that they have in Jameet Singh. When we asked NDPers last December, well before Trump, well before the tariff threats, well before the trade war, where, what they thought about their current leader, did they think that the NDP would be doing better under a different leader? Fully 56% said, yeah, we actually do think the party would be doing better under a different leader. So some of this is leadership. We've seen Singh's own favourability numbers trend down and downward over the last two years. That continues. And some of this is really just the perennial issue of where does the left of centre vote sit in Canada. And we saw same parallels in 2015,

where the NDP vote actually abandoned Tom Mulcair and went over to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals deemed him to be progressive enough for their choice. And, you know, somewhat ironically, the fact that we're seeing NDP voters abandon saying for a central banker who's making a lot of noises about fiscal discipline. Let's see if that holds. What's really important is the centre-left vote is very mutable. It moves around, it changes, and I'm not

entirely sure on the Tuesday after the Sunday election writ drop that those votes are locked in, but that's certainly where they are at the moment. All right. On Sunday, the NDP sent out an email saying, when it comes to selecting candidates, it is entering the race with a record-breaking momentum. How would you characterize the state the NDP are entering this race in? So there's a couple of things that are quite great. We're already in, New Democrats actually go through nomination meetings for their candidates. It's not anointments and appointments like other parties are allowed to do.

You can't just wave a bibbidi-bobbidi-boop magic wand and here's all your candidates. So that does take a little longer. But it was, we started the writ issuance and show it to Steve Hagan, it's never a writ drop. But that we had about 230, 240 candidates that were already getting ready to knock on doors and already had been knocking on doors. So great momentum start. I'll also give people a bit of history that going into the 2011 campaign, Jack Layton

was somewhere in that 10, 11 percent range at the start of that campaign and ended up living in Stornoway come the end of the election. So strange things happen, wonderful things can happen on the campaign trail. It really just depends on how these candidates all show up during the campaign. Do they have momentum? Do they have candidates? Are they able to weather the storm? And what we've seen out of Mr.

Carney and his inability to answer simple questions like what's in your portfolio? How many millions and millions have you made off of buying up real estate and charging outrageous rents to homeowners, including here in Toronto? How do you expect people to believe you're accountable when you won't be accountable on the basic things like how much money do you have and where are you invested and where are your ethics obligations?

Those are problematic things for Mr. Kearney going into this and it's why some of those progressive voters who might have been like, oh, okay, not Trudeau, great, let's check out the new guy, kick the tires and go, oh wait, he's not one of us. He's not part of our team. Where do we go? So then we start to look at, as we saw in the Ontario election, the voter efficiency of new Democrats is extraordinary. Bonnie Cromby was at 30% on election night, didn't have a seat for herself and only had

14 seats and Marit Stiles has 27 MPPs and is the as the leader of the official opposition. 21% to 7 that's a pretty big drop. So it's so what we're seeing and you would have seen and I'm sure people were on this program saying Marit Stiles is going to get no seats and here she is with 27 in official opposition. So there is a voter efficiency that I'm certain that every pollster will tell you doesn't actually get picked up in those big top line numbers.

And I know this because we see it in campaign after campaign. Jagmeet is a seasoned pro. He knows what it's like being on the campaign trail every day and in the scrutiny of media every single day. He's so incredibly focused on who he's in it for, why he's doing this. And he has people who run up to him every day

talking about their experience of getting dental care, a program that the liberals told us said they will absolutely not be able to do in anything less than seven years, and maybe not even then, and we shouldn't hold our breath. And now millions and millions and millions of Canadians are having these programs and access to these services they wouldn't have but for the adult in the room, Jigmeet Singh and the New Democrats.

All right. You mentioned the pollster. We will get to Satchi shortly, but I want to get David into this. How would you characterize the state of the NDP right now? On a wing and a prayer? I mean, it's true. Things can happen. Lots of things can happen.

We've seen the NDP collapse in 1993 to whatever it was, nine seats. We saw them soar to official opposition. Campaigns matter. That point is important. Not long ago, many of us, including myself, were saying, look, the Liberals are cooked. They're done. Pierre Polyev is the next Prime Minister of Canada. Now they're like, well, okay, fine, but events. But let's talk about that event. The thing that's shaken up

Canadian politics and its elections, Donald Trump. You know, if the Liberals are looking back and saying, well, why do we go from nowhere to somewhere? The answer is, well, Justin Trudeau leaves. But Donald Trump starts talking like William McKinley or James Monroe. Someone must have told him who those people were. Someone must have given Donald Trump a President's First President's book, and he learned of these figures. Now we're having to deal with this annexation threat. And that's upended our politics. But now the NDP are caught in this situation where we've got a polarized red blue race and they're kind of nowhere.

And in political science, we talk about Duverger's law. It's very, very nerdy and arcane and no one outside of political science likes it, but it's kind of important. And it says basically that in a first past the post system like ours, you sort of get a two party system you're meant to, except for there's all these exceptions where you don't get that. And in Canada, we're one of those exceptions, we don't really have that polarized two party system like they do in, say, British Columbia, in the

provincial party system, but we don't have that federally. But every so often in elections, we kind of get a simulacrum of it, which is what we're having now. And someone in that situation needs to be pushed out. And right now that's the NDP. So it's going to be difficult for them, though not impossible, to say, no, no, no, we have a value proposition here. We offer something. In fact, we're different. And you know, this might be getting a little slightly ahead of us here, but I'll just note it. If I'm the NDP, I'm fighting like hell to get that across by saying, like, look, there's two Tories running for Prime Minister here. We're the different ones.

The question is, will voters hear that if their question is, who can best deal with Donald Trump? We're going to do an excerpt here because you got a piece in the Globe and Mail recently, the title of which, the United States is putting the United States in danger. And here's what you wrote. It's apparent to almost everyone in the world over that the United States is rapidly descending into authoritarianism. We are observing routine attacks on democratic institutions, the undermining of the rule of law, daily assaults on the press,

politicization of government agencies including intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the encouragement of political violence, the deliberate evisceration of formal checks and balances and outright corruption and self-enrichment. As these practices become normalized in the United States, they will have major consequences for security worldwide, including, ironically, in the United States. Okay. Nothing wrong there. Well, it sounds like there is. That was just a few days ago you had that piece up.

Now you had a recent assignment in Washington, D.C., which takes us to the States. Why don't you tell us about that? Well actually those comments in the Globe and Mail came about because I was asked to brief members and staff of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about this topic that we've been discussing about mercenary spyware. Something I've done numerous times and normally that's a great honor to do something like that. It's an important stakeholder body. If you can explain to them the importance of this and they can take action that's important for us in this area. But I actually did a big pause.

I thought long and hard about whether even to accept this invitation. I'm an officer of the Order of Canada. My father was a World War Two veteran who served overseas to fight fascism and here as this invitation comes in the President of the United States is threatening repeatedly to annex my country. So I decided I would write up these remarks and just deliver them in the same way that they're actually printed in the Globe and Mail. That's a verbatim transcript of what I said.

And my comments to them were, look, everyone in the world can see what's going on. You're really destroying yourself. You're destroying your country. And a committee like that has an important role to play. As we talked about oversight here in Ontario, that's one of their jobs down there. And they need to step up and prevent and check the dissent into this kind of cruel techno-fascism

that we're seeing. Did you hear back? Actually, one of the staff members of a senator said, you should publish those remarks. And that's why I sent them to the Globe and Mail. Back to your quote from the piece, as Trump's chaotic style of governing continues, what impact do you think this is going to have on cybersecurity

around the world? It's a disaster. I mean, in the book I described, there's a bright light in the book at the end where we had great success advocating for the United States to take measures to regulate this industry. And President Biden signed an executive order prohibiting 18 U S federal agencies from procuring spyware from companies like NSO group. I briefed the White House staff.

I played a role in bringing about those regulations. It's kind of like for a political scientist winning the Holy Grail, that President Biden signed the executive order. Now all of that's up in the air, of course. And given the extent to which they're basically steamrolling over the rule of law, over checks and balances, that will be noticed around the world. It will legitimize the same actions abroad.

Despots and authoritarian regimes will say if the United States is doing it, we'll do it too. And I have great fears that those regulations will now be rolled back which will precipitate even greater proliferation of this very powerful technology with all of the harmful consequences that we've documented. What do we do, Ron, about a case though, where 50% of the United States, 50% of its citizens think if Donald Trump thinks it needs to be done, then we're okay with that? You know, that's a tough nut to crack. It's how we ended up in this place, how they ended up in this place is very complex political, sociological phenomenon.

I honestly don't have an easy answer for that other than I think it's important for people in that country to realize just how far they've gone off the deep end. And that's why in part I wrote those comments because you know we're obviously concerned about our security here in Canada. Many other countries around the world are as well. But U.S. citizens should be concerned about their own security because they're really shooting themselves in the foot right now. I want to pull up a study. A 2024 study from Dalhousie University estimated that around 900,000 to 1.4 million Canadians were taking a GLP-1 drug. Now 57.1% said they were taking for type 2 diabetes, 27.2% said they were taking for weight loss, 11.6% said that they were taking for both weight loss

and type 2 diabetes, and then 4.1% said other. Now I'm curious about this 4.1%. I don't know, I'm sure there's a few things here, but Dr. Sacklingham, do we know what else people could be using GLP-1 drugs for? Well I think you alluded to it earlier that I think there are maybe some people who are taking it maybe for weight loss but maybe an off-label for other things and cravings in other realms. There has been a lot of debate

and discussion and emerging research on the use of GLP-1 for cravings and curbing kind of addictions for example. I don't know if that 4.1% is that group. It's still pretty early for that. But I do wonder if, for example, some people may be using it to curb other cravings. There are some animal studies and some early human studies that looked at nicotine use and alcohol use and looking at associations and reductions, but larger trials are currently underway. I would say the other is other people may be using it for these fluctuations in weight that

might not be weight loss, but weight cosmetic weight modification people cycling or tinkering with their dose, with little small doses to help with modulation of weight maintenance. OK, very interesting. All right, Nishtha, that estimate that I gave, 930,000 to 1.4 million, sounds like a large number, but I should have mentioned that study's from 2024.

A lot of time can change. I'm curious, do we think that number could be a lot higher? Do we have a rough idea of how many people are using something like OZEPIC? Well, I can definitely say in the past year and a half, in my practice, in my clinic, the use has skyrocketed. So even if I looked at it as a percentage of patients that I would see in clients that I would serve,

it's definitely quite a large percent of people for the variety of reasons that you're describing. It really isn't the majority of people that I am seeing on this drug are not actually taking it for the management of type 2 diabetes. They may already be taking medications for the management of that and they've started this drug to kind of start the process of trying to manage their weight. So I do actually think the number is probably higher.

I am curious, it sounds like an obvious question. The application of something like Ozembeg or Wigovie, how does it apply? It is an injectable drug and you know it is something that has to be dosed properly so it is something that you would start off with a starting dose and then you work up to a maximum dose with the physician and that does take time and then you also have to attribute and take time for understanding how people will react. The one thing I want to say is of all of the different clients and patients that are using this drug, it's very individualized reactions and very individualized results as well.

So we want to make sure that patients are aware of that. All right. I want to pick up on that with Dr. Drucker. These individualized sort of reactions. I also want to talk about side effects as well. What are some of the side effects people can experience if they are taking this medication. The most common side effects are nausea, diarrhea, constipation, and vomiting. Those occur in about half the people who take them.

They tend to be transient, and we see them when people start the drug or where they increase the dose. About 90, 95% of people after a few months will not have any of those side effects. Then, you, then more rarely gallbladder disease, sometimes dehydration if you really are unable to eat and drink. So we have to counsel people about this. Then there's some more controversial things.

People talk about rare types of eye disease or rare types of kidney disease or pancreatitis and such. Those actually have not been definitively proven, but they are something that we discuss. And the important thing which we've heard about is we can start a low dose and go slowly. So the acronym sort of start low, go slow. We don't have to repeat the rapidity

of which we increase the dose of these medicines that are done in the clinical trials. We should not increase the dose of these medicines that are done in the clinical trials, we should not increase the dose of these medicines in people who have any side effects. We should wait until they become used to the medicines and go much more slowly. It often takes 10, 15, 20 years to gain a lot of weight. We don't have to reverse that in six or nine months. So we have to have an individualized approach to management.

All right. Dr. Succulent, I'm curious. When I'm thinking of a type 2 diabetes medication, I'm thinking of metformin or something like that. Something that, you know, I'm not throwing my mom under the bus when she has to take it. She has to take it every day. I am curious with something like Ozempic,

do people need to take that drug? Do they need to stay on it forever to be able to see it? Or if they get off of it, will they see a reverse? Well, I think it comes back to, as you said earlier, a comment that obesity see a reverse? Well, I think it comes back to Nisha's earlier comment that obesity is a chronic medical condition, right? So with diabetes, it is a condition that we manage for the rest of our life

through various interventions. It doesn't always have to be medications. It's often multi-component. And that applies to obesity as well. And even though we've accepted obesity as a chronic disease in the medical field for some time, in society it's still an uphill struggle with respect to that. So how does this relate to patients?

I do counsel patients on this. It's the first question they ask is how long do I have to stay on this? And I do say it is like any other chronic disease like diabetes. If you had high blood pressure, for example, you're going to stay on the medications to manage that and you're going to do a whole bunch of other things as well in terms of behavioral, lifestyle modification and so on. And then we will reassess over time, but for many patients they do have to stay on these

medications for a longer period of time and I'm committed to working with them on that and that's I, the main thing, is that we reassess together. It really is something we have to educate, because many people see that initial benefit and want to go off the medication, because they're better. Just like antibiotics.

When you carry your infection, you want to go off it. So we do have to counsel patients with respect to that. All right. Nisha, are GLP-1 drugs a sustainable form of weight loss? Well, that's the question of the day And the way that I would look at it is it's like so many other interventions We've had in the past 20 or 30 years to try to attack obesity It is a tool in the toolbox

So it is something that can be absolutely utilized to help with sustainable habits But I think in and of itself It's not a quick fix or the answer to everything because as we've heard today, there are so many factors that influence obesity and the development of it. And it's a chronic disease. So it is something that people will manage over time or over many years or have been. And therefore, I do think it is an important tool. I think it's a useful tool.

The sustainability really does come into play when you look at what are the other pieces that we can help patients and clients get into place because I do think there's multiple factors that need to be activated for this drug to even have its most potent and beneficial effect. So that's the way I kind of look at it, similar to many other interventions over the years that as soon as they are kind of on the market, people are very excited about them and they kind of think, oh, this is the quick ticket. We really don't want to do that with this time.

There's amazing benefits to these drugs, but I do think we want to think of it as one tool in a multi-tool box. Menopause is something that we don't really talk about. And now it seems like we're living through a time when a lot of celebrities are talking about. Trish, what do you think about, what do you make of that moment right now

that's happening right now? Yeah, well, I'm really excited about it because more has happened in the last 12 months on menopause than the last 1200 years, probably. So I'm really excited that we are talking about menopause. And it's so critical because because as Dr. Wolfman said people underestimate, women underestimate, but society underestimates the length of time that this is happening for. Perimenopause can happen two to ten

years before menopause, postmenopause goes on until you die. So we're in a long long period, decades, where women can be suffering from symptoms that are having a huge impact on her health, on her life, on her ability to work, on her ability to care for elders, children, etc. So it's a huge issue that as a society, as a workplace, as a health care system, we must address. And Christina, we know that 100% of women will have some kind of symptoms of perimenopause, menopause. We'll go through this, yet we're only talking about it really now. Can you talk to us a little bit about how it impacts people's daily lives?

Oh, I mean, it's massive. I wrote a story for the Toronto Star about this a couple of months ago. One of the people I spoke with was a gynecologist here in Calgary. She has a two-year wait list for people who want to see her about their menopause symptoms, but she was struggling with brain fog and memory loss and forgetting the word for things that she used in the operating room. And she didn't even recognize those symptoms in herself. And so she went and she saw her doctor to say like, am I going to be able to continue working? And so I think it's that pervasive. It's, you know, forgetting things at work.

It's having the hot flashes when you're sitting there with your friends. It's absolutely not being able to sleep at night. It's all of these things. And it's weird because within my friend circle, anyway, even on social media, a lot of us seem to get up at the same time in the middle of the night, like three o'clock in the morning, you're just up. And when you think about your career, a lot of us during this time, we're doing, you know, we're in senior positions of leadership and it's frightening to see, like when you're dealing with brain fog, how that could impact your career.

Dr. Wolfman, can you help us understand what's happening to our brain during this stage of life? Can I digress a bit? Of course. Because we got as far as the menopause, and I want to be clear that the symptoms that occur due to lack of estrogen are different. And the really important symptoms are hot flashes, which is a sensation of heat or warmth, starting in the chest and moving upward to the head and neck.

Night sweats, which interrupt sleep and therefore may impact cognition. Also you talk about brain fog, which is not a well-defined term. And then also we know about 40% of women have sleep issues, mood changes, especially in women who are vulnerable to changes in mood around hormonal change like puberty, postpartum, and then around menopause. But there can also be new changes in moods such as irritability, anger, even people can have panic attacks around menopause. I want to show a chart that illustrates Canada's significant trade relation with the U.S. This is

the share of Canada's merchandise exports by region in 2023. Now you can see in this doughnut graph a large swath of it 77.1% in red that's the United States. Latin America and Caribbean in teal at 2.9%. The Indo-Pacific 10.8 in purple and in pink Europe and Central Asia and then in blue a little tiny little sliver there the Middle East and Africa at 1.6%. Meredith, I'm going to come to you first. Different Canadian governments have talked about diversifying our trade partners for years, but there never seems to be much progress. What are the reasons Canada leans so heavily on the US when it comes to our exports?

Thanks very much for the opportunity to be here. So I think the reason that Canadian firms rely so heavily despite the fact that, as you say, different governments have sought to open up market access through things like free trade agreements and trade missions and those kinds of things, the reason firms continue to trade with the United States is actually because it makes a lot of sense to do so. The U.S. is the world's largest market. It's right next door to Canada. It has very similar regulatory practices and a similar business environment to Canada. So for our firms, it's actually quite easy and profitable for them to trade with the United States. There's something called the gravity model in economics

that predicts that all of these factors mean the US can and should be Canada's primary trade destination. And so firms are going to only look to other markets if there's a business case to do so. And what they're going to be looking for is things like a stable business environment, opportunities to make profit, but firms are not charities. They're not looking to move to new markets to promote Canadian values or foreign policy. Those might be nice side benefits, but that's not what they're in it for.

They're in it primarily to make money. And, you know, the other thing I think you should be aware of is that, for the most part, Canada's large firms are operating in multiple markets. They trade with the United States, but most, roughly half of them also trade with an additional market beyond the United States. And so when we're now looking to encourage other firms in Canada to explore new markets, we're mostly looking at small and medium business. And they have many reasons that you can imagine that it might be kind of daunting to explore new markets. So, I mean, maybe we can get into it. I think the tariff situation might change that. But there are good reasons that Canadian firms historically have mostly traded with the United States. Very quickly on that, when you talk about that stability, the small and medium businesses, Meredith,

the Canadian Federation of Independent Business just came out with a report that said 47% of small businesses don't consider the U.S. a reliable trade partner. Is the U.S. a reliable trade partner? Looking at it right now where we stand. Right now, today, I don't think it's giving the signals that it is. And actually, signals matter a lot. The signals of how reliable a market is can be as important as the reality of it. And so at the moment, the signals being sent from the United States is that it is not a reliable trade partner. And so small firms, for instance, if a shipment was caught up at the border and that was caught up for a very long period of time, a large firm might be able to weather that and would have resources in place to help them kind of

unstick the problems associated with that shipment being caught at the border. But a small business can necessarily take on that liability. And so these are, they have different considerations when they think about whether or not the U.S. is reliable and whether they have different considerations when they think about Whether or not the US is reliable and whether they have the resources to help them weather those kinds of challenges Alright mark. I feel like I'm gonna need a little history lesson here But is the trend of the US becoming more insular when it comes to international trade new or not? I don't think it's really all that new I think that if you you know when you look back at these things, as I spent my day doing this for the last 40 plus years, I think probably the United States started to move inward probably

in the Clinton administration. You know, we always, it's a bit confusing for us in Canada, I guess, because it started right around the time that NAFTA was, the old free trade agreement was converted to NAFTA and the Clinton got elected really campaigning against NAFTA and then the old free trade agreement was converted to NAFTA and the Clinton got elected really campaigning against NAFTA and then let it go through by adding a labor and environmental hook to it. And then the work that had already been in progress towards a WTO agreement that sort of was already on its way. But by that time you can sort of see Ross Perot, you know, running a famously anti-trade third party candidacy that meant that Clinton didn't win a majority of the popular vote.

And then he'd take it to the Bush administration and their act unilaterally. And then I think that even after the WTO came into existence, early decisions of the WTO, especially after China joined, meant that the Americans pretty immediately were saying, that's not what we negotiated for. And every presidency since then has sort of seen a little bit moving backwards. I think what Trump changes is from the then has sort of seen a little bit moving backwards. I think what Trump changes is from the rhetoric to sort of real threats. I think the world had probably got used to it, especially us in

Canada, just tuning it out. You know, 2% of NATO requirements. What did he say? I didn't hear that. Yeah. You know, what do you want me to do with, you know, digital services tax? Sorry, Mr. Biden, I didn't hear you.

And Trump comes along and it's the ultimate expression. Well, I'm going to say it in a way and do it in a way that you're going to listen to me. And he's not just doing that to Canada, but to the rest of the world. As the old post-war, post-World War II model was a model where the United States was the economic superpower and the military superpower. And it engaged in what maybe the rest of the world wouldn't like to admit, but asymmetric trade liberalization. It opened its large consumer market and said to the rest of the world, come and sell to us,

which we'd been doing for hundreds of years here in Canada and the rest of the world joined. Now, as they have more competitors, first in the 70s and the 80s with Japan and Germany, and then with the rising China in the 90s, the Americans are saying, we want to redo the terms of that bargain. And I think the world has been struggling ever since to figure out how to do that.