The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Carney to China -- Do The Benefits There Outweigh The Problems Here?

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

It's a "Reporter's Notebook" Tuesday with The Economist's Rob Russo and The Toronto Star's Althia Raj joining forces again to give us what they're hearing as the Prime Minister heads to China. Mark Carney is trying to reset the relationship with China.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. The Prime Minister goes to China. What's possible from that trip? That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Big Tuesday today because the Prime Minister is on his way as we speak. The Prime Minister is on his way to China.

This has been a trip that has great expectations. potential promise, but also great risk. So we'll find out from one of the people who's on that trip, Rob Russo, the reporter for correspondent for the Economist magazine. Rob, who is a regular here with Althea Raj, and Althea will join us as well, to talk about the China trip and other things on their reporter's notebooks. They share Tuesdays with the more butts conversations.

They alternate Tuesdays. So Raj and Russo coming up in just a moment's time. Rob, as I said, as we speak, is on the plane heading to China. And Althea is in the Caribbean, as some Canadians like to go during this time of year. But she's been working the phones and working her contact. So we'll get their thoughts. on this coming right up.

But first, the regular Tuesday morning, quick housekeeping, just to remind you of the question for this Thursday's, your turn. It's a little different this week. It's an Ask Me Anything program this week. And ever since I mentioned this yesterday, the questions have been really coming in. In fact, I'm sure we've got enough questions already to do the show

if it was only to use the ones that came in. but that's not how we work here. We have a look at your questions and pick what we think are the are the ones that can provide the most interesting comments. And so we're going through that and we're welcoming more to come. So you send them to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com.

Keep it under 75 words. Have them in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow. make sure you include your name and the location you're writing from. I look forward to getting them. And they can be about anything, right? Just ask me anything you want. It could be about issues of the day. I'll try to answer them if that's possible.

Or it could be about, you know, broadcasting, journalism, my career, you name it. There have been all kinds of different questions already. Lots of them. This will be an interesting. We may do this every once in a while. Not too often, maybe once a month, something like that. So ask me anything this week on the bridge for your turn on Thursday. Hopefully the random ranter.

I know he's still fighting the flu. He was still fighting it yesterday. I was talking to. But he's hoping to be here on Thursday. We'll see how that works out. Okay. Let's get at her, as they say, and see what we can come up with. In this conversation for the reporter's notebook with the economist Rob Russo

and the Toronto Stars, Altheiraj, here we go. Rob, I want to start with you. And, you know, I want to get to the meat and potatoes of this China trip. It's pretty important. But I want to start off on something most of our listeners will never know what it's like. what's it like to travel halfway around the world with the prime minister on his plane? This is not just some commercial flight. This is a big deal.

What's it like on that plane? Well, you get a sense of seeing and doing things that people never see and never do. You get access to places and to people you would never get access to. Whether that's the people you're visiting, you know, I've been in the Oval Office several times. I've been in the Vatican apartments a few times. These are places that the public just doesn't go to. So there's that incredible access to those places, those people.

You get access to ministers. They're trapped on a steel tube with you, hurtling along through the stratosphere at 35,000 feet. And they try, and often they do, escape from your prying, questions and your glances, but it's harder to do up there. And often they're in a better mood, at least on the way there, depending on what we've reported in the back of the plane. You know, it's just you get a sense of how lucky you are. Now, it's not glamorous. I'll tell you what the glamorous part is. You show up at a doughty little, you, you know, you show up at a doughty little,

Canadian forces base, uplands. But, you know, you drop your bags off there, and often you won't see them again until somebody delivers them to your hotel room. So you don't have to kind of deal with carrying your baggage through an airport. You go through a security check, but you're not standing in much of a line.

There are dogs that sniff your luggage and, you know, everybody who's there. Security is tight that way. So there are some real perks, but the real perks are the ones that people would be really interested in is just the access. The things you see, the people you meet, and the places you go, I think is the most extraordinary thing about all of that. I'll see you've been on a few of these in the past. I don't think any with Carney since he became PM, but you've been on some other ones. So what's your lasting memory of getting that kind of access?

I've been with Harper and with Prime Minister Trudeau. What Rob didn't mention that I think is significant is the kind of off-the-record conversations that some pressures choose to have, depending as to whether or not they want to try to help shift the narrative or do like a glorious look at the success I had. I think I remember that from Justin Trudeau State visit with Obama. He was very happy to come by and chat with us. I think he also came and chatted with us on the way back from Molly.

These conversations are often a little bit odd for reporters because they're recorded by the Privy Council Office, so they should be atypical, so they should be on the record. And I've always found that that makes me very unquestionable. comfortable. You know, like if the prime minister says something, it should be, even if it's a casual conversation, if it's newsworthy, it should be reported. And I kind of think that that is the way things have seemed to have gone. But that is one thing that I think is worth noting. That being said, I don't recall ever being on a plane when Stephen Harper, Prime Minister Harper came to chat

with us, although I do remember being called in by Dimitri Soutis and been giving a lecture to on one of the planes coming back from Morocco. The other thing that I think is not that great, there's not a lot of flexibility in the schedule. And so reporters are basically shepherded from an event to another. And then you're like stuck in a pen. So you can't really do a lot of independent journalism or any independent journalism based on the way some trips are designed.

And so the government really does have the upper hand in kind of controlling the message and the information that you receive. Just to clarify one thing, you're saying the conversations, even though they were being recorded, were off the record? Yes, that's the way that they were explained to us. You cannot write from these casual remarks, but there was somebody from the Privy Council office recording the conversation. So then it is an official conversation, right? Like that, if it's not meant to be an official discussion, then nobody should be recording it. it, but you should be recording it because it's the primary.

Yeah, just to let everybody know. Althea is. Use that in the same way that Donald Trump does, for example, right? Whereas it is like a press conference. Okay, hold on. How would you feel about this or that? Hold on a second, Althea, just a sec. You're dipping in and out.

And so I just wanted to warn everybody. You're out of the country yourself, so that communication is a little bit off. Okay. All right. That's nice to hear those stories. Interesting. Neither one of them talked about, you know, food, the lobster cocktails and the, you know, special stakes and all that. I'm told that the, yeah, the plates of cold oysters are no longer, the ones they had. When you, of course, were traveling with the prime minister, are no longer provided to us. But you do, it's a big plane and you get a chance to sleep in in the, the coach section, because there are fewer of us on there, so people do stretch out and snooze.

It's, you don't get a pod. You get a row sometimes of seats and people will snooze there, but a lot of us are working. Believe me. You know, Peter, I give and I give and I give, so I'll be working the entire time. Yeah, of course you will. Let me tell you, it's been a long time since I traveled with the prime minister on the plane as a reporter. It goes back to the Pierre Trudeau days.

I think we're flying at DC1 back then. So there was nothing fancy about it at all. Okay, let's get to the actual content of this trip because going to China at any time is a big story. Right now is really a big story? Because is there going to be a new relationship between Canada and China? It's been testy for the last eight years or so. Trudeau and she did not get along for any,

number of different reasons. It appears that Canada is trying to rework the relationship now. So how much of that is what this trip's all about? And, you know, often on these kind of trips, things are already worked out beforehand. So you have a deal to say you've accomplished something. Is there a sense of anything like that on this one? Rob. Yeah. I think we learned today that the Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is going to be joining the Prime Minister on this trip. As we all know, there are very steep tariffs on canola and other agricultural and aquatic products that China has applied on Canada. The fact that Premier Moe is there is an indication that there will probably be an announcement on that. But let's, you know, let's face facts.

He wouldn't be making the trip if he wasn't going to be coming home with something. And I know we've said that in the past, particularly about Donald Trump, but this is something that has been worked on since last November, when the two met on the sidelines of APEC in South Korea. So there are likely to be deals in the bag already. Premier Mo's presence is an indication of that. But I also think it's true that the very fact that this is happening is significant. when you talk to China watchers,

when you talk to people who are in the apparitions of our government who are dealing with China on a regular basis, they say that this meeting sends a signal to the Chinese government that the relationship with Canada has been reset. It's now, you know, the gates are open. There's no torrent. The floodgates might be open. It's not a torrent yet.

Not a trickle, we'll see. but the gates are open, it also sends a signal, an important signal, to Chinese enterprise, the Chinese business, that it's okay as well to do business with Canada. So that's the important thing. And of course, of course, it all is taking place in the shadow of our biggest trading partner, making it abundantly clear that they want to restrict and hovel trade and to use economic power to try and get us to consider joining the United States as the 51st state. So he's, you know, Prime Minister Carney is going to have to thread that needle.

The needle between that gravitational pull of business in the United States, that's easy to get to, even though the Trump administration is trying to make it harder. And doing business with the regime that, quite frankly, we don't trust that we know is tried to interfere in our elections. And yet at the same time, we need in order to diversify our economy away from the United States that is becoming more and more protectionist. Okay. Let me see whether we can get out to you back in the conversation now.

Because what I find interesting about what Rob is suggesting is that there may be a deal on canola. Well, if there is a deal on canola, it's got to come at some expense the other. way. The Chinese want access to the Canadian auto market in terms of EVs, electronic vehicles or electric vehicles. And yet, Doug Ford sure doesn't want to see that happen. So I'm not sure what kind of a deal could be made on that front. Alcia, have you got any words of wisdom for us on that? I don't know that they even know at this point. when we're recording this, that what will be the full slate of things that they are capable of announcing, because negotiations are still ongoing.

There will be deliverables. In the briefing on Monday, officials spoke about an array of memorandums of understandings that are going to be signed. The prime minister is bringing with him several cabinet ministers, as well as Michael Maugh, the conservative MP who became a liberal floor crosser just before Christmas. Interestingly enough, are they worth noting? Maybe that was a little gift that he got. So I don't know that we're going to have, they are talking and they will admit that they are talking about the EV,

about giving access to the Chinese to either some sort of making electric cars. is in Canada or in partnership with Canada or a lowering of the terrorists, but it seems to be more in terms of investing directly in this country. And they are hopeful that they can make headway on the terrorists. Maybe that's not the complete elimination of the terrorists that have been imposed, but showing some sort of progress. One of the officials suggested that we should not, that they should caution us against expecting them to achieve the moon in a single visit.

But what has happened beyond the radar, like what hasn't been really written that much about, is all the lower level meetings that have happened over the last several months. There's been a lot of engagement on this file. And the way this government is talking about China is very different than the way the Trudeau government was talking about China. It's different than the way that even at the end, the way the Harper government was talking about China.

Like it was very clear in that briefing today. They do not want to talk about Taiwan. They do not want to talk about human rights. They wouldn't even give a commitment, which is something that we have seen, at least in the past, from other PMOs, that the prime minister would raise the issue of human rights in his meeting. They would give no commitment about that.

They also didn't want to talk about Chinese interference, as Rob alluded to. There's a whole bunch of things that they weren't really ready to talk about. And it wasn't clear to me in the context of what has happened in Venezuela, whether they were really suggesting. It kind of seemed like they were downplaying any links between, you know, selling more oil to China, for example, which is, I believe, the primary buyer of the TMX, like the oil, the bitumen coming through the TMX pipeline expansion. Okay. Let me bring it back to Doug Ford, though. I mean, he was pretty explicit in what he said the other day

that any deal with China that would allow EVs into the country was going to be a problem for him. But he did have a provisal. He did say that if they wanted to have a manufacturing or an assembly plant in Ontario, then that that was worth talking about. Was that a door that was tossed open? We'll see.

Is that the kind of door? that Donald Trump would want to see open, or is it the kind of door that he is going to want to slam shut? Let's not forget, Canada imposed this 100% tariff after Joe Biden imposed them when he was president of the United States. It will be interesting. This will be a test of how independent our foreign policy is going to be. Because, again, lots of the people who work with China,

who are in foreign policy in our government, are saying, let me get this straight. Donald Trump just negotiated a deal with China on tariffs. He did some brisk backpedaling to get it. She is thought to have gotten the better of that. And Donald Trump is going to China, by the way, in April probably. And he is going to try and make another deal. So we are going to find out just how aggressive,

the prime minister is going to be in his attempts at diversification and EVs is probably going to be one of those indicators. The other interesting, I'm sorry. I was just going to say Ford may well have on his hands a number of empty auto manufacturing plants. So turning them over into EV producing plants could be one of the outs on this.

But Althea, what were you going to say? similar in the same vein I guess like the context of the discussion has completely changed the reason that we slapped tariffs on the Chinese on EV vehicles is because they're basically manufactured on the cheap because the state subsidized but I was also in the context of Joe Biden and the inflation reduction act and we were all rowing in the same direction and we were going to be building more EV cars in North America and this allowed us to keep access to the North American market. Canada, Mexico agreed to this. And that context has changed. Canadian automakers, which are branch plants of American automakers, do not want to be building EVs. They are pressuring the Carney government to get rid of the EV mandate. It's suspended at the moment. While workers might be ringing the alarm and saying we should be making EVs because that's the future, that does not seem to be where their interests lie at the moment. And so, you know, if if there is a possibility of building more cars in Canada,

that supply a market or a customer that the current automakers do not want to cater to, all to be sacrificed to have access to a market that is definitely not reliable anymore at all. Like that entire context has changed. And so what you're considering as a negotiator is totally different. Yeah. And it's interesting to see that that change is happening in real time.

Latest Statistics Canada report on trade with China and the United States suggests that we are now trading. It used to be about 78% of our exports went to the United States. In the last month that Statistics Canada had numbers for, I believe it was November, were now down significantly. I think it's 62%. Trade with China is up 26%. I was at the briefing today with federal officials, and I asked them whether or not,

I know that much of this meeting is set in advance. It has to be months in the making, but whether or not Venezuela and the events of January 3rd would have an impact on the meetings. And they didn't want to directly comment beyond saying that what happened on January 3rd was a very significant international event and that it's still difficult to calculate exactly what the impact of that will be.

But we know what some of the impact of that will be. China got a lot of its oil from Venezuela. Donald Trump is intent on that not being the case anymore. So China is going to need energy. I believe it only gets about 1% of its petroleum from, Canada right now. It's going up, but we should count on that number going up more significantly. The other thing we should watch for is whether or not Prime Minister Carney is going to allow for Chinese investment in our infrastructure, in the oil sands, in pipelines, and how people react

to that. Nobody's expecting the Chinese to have a majority stake, but most people don't know, for instance, that the Chinese already own 15% of LNG Canada, which has begun to ship liquefied natural gas to Asia, lots of it to China. So the Chinese are already involved. It will there be further involvement? Can I just add something? Because I misspoke and I want to make it clear to the reader when I was talking about the branch plants in Canada. Like actually, most of the cars that are purchased here are from Toyota and Honda. So I don't want to dismiss the huge impact that Toyota and Honda has. in Canada, but these are not the people complaining about the EV mandate.

Yeah. Listen, the Toyota Honda experience is a good one to look at because when they first talked about bringing manufacturing plants to Canada, initially, there was a backlash against that idea. You know, this is where you make North American cars, not Japanese cars, not Korean cars. But that's all different now. Some of the most solid manufacturing plants, especially in Ontario, are Japanese, you know, Toyota, Honda and Korean. So, you know, you. And the parallel there, Peter, it's an important one, is they came here because Canadians were buying those cars.

They thought that they were of superior quality. They forced the big three to get better. But they were considered better cars. And now we're at the point where the CEO of Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, had a Xiaomi, a Chinese EV for seven months and didn't want to give it back because it was so good. So we're at that point now where these cars coming from China are very, very good, if not superior to what's being produced here. And much cheaper.

There's a reason that they're cheaper. But nevertheless, they're cheaper. I mean, if you can knock $10,000 off the sticker price of an EV, that's not nothing. And if you could make sort of like a Canada, China joint venture partnership where those cars are not seen as Kazama compliance or not, you know, sacrificing access to the U.S. market, you know, is there a middle way, a third way there? Like, it seems to me that there is. Okay. I want to move off China. I want to talk about Venezuela Greenland, Canada.

And there's a mouthful in that. But let's take our break. First of all, we'll be right back after this. And welcome back. This is the bridge, Peter Mansprechere, along with Rob Russo and Althea Raj, Rob with the economist and about to get on a plane with Mark Carney, the prime minister, as he heads to China. Althea is in...

Where is she? She's in the Caribbean. So she's been watching all those planes fly overhead the last couple of weeks. Monitoring the situation in Venezuela from her beachfront location. Dear Lord. I'm not even on the beach. At this particular moment. Okay. So, you know, there's a lot of discussion in Canada in the last week about what all this meant for Canada and what it could mean for Canada.

not only Venezuela, but also the situation with the continuing talking it up by Donald Trump about Greenland. What are you both hearing on that front about how seriously it's being taken in Ottawa, not only at the political level, but the operations level, of these kind of events that have happened and the discussions that have followed as it relates to, to government. Greenland and Trump's desire to have it, which would give him basically a stranglehold on the Arctic, this side of the Arctic, between Alaska and Greenland. So what don't we start with Althea? What are you hearing from your listening post there?

Well, I think on the Venezuela thing, honestly, nobody really knows what to make of it. There was initially as kind of a, in some political camps, thought. that this would be, you know, we needed to act really quickly. This would be a big problem. This would make our bitumen much less interesting. But the way the oil flows, I don't know if that's really, I think it's more, the settling down is more like I will wait and see and maybe no need to panic.

There's other things that we need to panic about. I will say, though, that on the political response to Van Nuisuela, the conservative leader is social media post, basically praising Donald Trump's intervention. And initially suggesting like this would be a great move for democracy, which we have seen has not really been the case because the regime hasn't changed. It's not like the democratically elected opposition leader has come forward to lead the country. Has boxed in reaffirmed views that some people felt about peer qualiev. Others feel has shown him to perhaps not have the maturity that they had hoped that he would demonstrate, as in like maybe you don't need to tweet about every single thing

and maybe you just see where the dust settles before having an opinion. In a similar vein, though, I think that Trump's musings and perhaps more than musings about Greenland have kind of reaffirmed and are now boxing in marks. Carney in the version of Mark Carney that was initially presented to Kenyans back February and last March at elbows up prime minister that would defend Canada at all cost. And what was the response to Venezuela or so far the response to Greenland? I think there's more of a, or people feel there's a public response that people are actually really afraid now because they think this is an unhinged fascist movement in the United States.

could do just about anything and that we need to be ready. And what that means for NATO is a huge discussion about what's happening politically between MPs and staff and at even higher levels than that. There's also a real thought that this makes the F-35

no longer a viable purchase, that really the Americans cannot be trusted, any part of the American administration and the American government cannot be trusted. And I think that is perhaps not where we were a month ago. You know, I heard just a couple of days ago that through a number of back channels that the F-35 decision has been made and it's for the F-35, not the Griffin. Maybe a small order, but just let me finish. So that, you know, that would be an interesting move in this moment.

Let me ask, though, and maybe to you first, Rob, has the Prime Minister being pushed on the Greenland comments that Donald Trump has made? No. He hasn't. And I anticipate every time there's a meeting anywhere in the world these days, we get a reminder that it's Donald Trump's world. Somehow he manages to impose himself whether he's at these meetings or not. So I imagine he will be asked about this or other things while he's going to China,

Qatar, and to Davos. I want to say a few things about this. I wrote something for the magazine that's in last week's edition that I think is germane to this. First of all, Marco Rubio, who is the guy who often cleans up behind the elephant, is meeting with NATO people and saying, things like, well, we're not thinking about militarily taking over Greenland. We're talking about acquiring it. So already there's an attempt to try and soften the language.

You know, I do believe it has implications for Canada. But I believe Canada already began to calibrate those implications. And I wrote about this a little bit last week. As soon as Donald Trump was inaugurated, the DND, our, our, our, our, our, our, A Canadian forces change some of its scenario planning to include a scenario nobody believes is actually going to happen, but that they felt they needed to prepare for it in order to be responsible, and that is an invasion of Canada by the United States. Again, nobody believes that's going to happen, but they thought it was prudent that they at

least war game that out. Okay? Number one. Number two, I think there was a request also to prepare for the possibility of civil strife in the United States. They saw a president using the National Guard in states where he has political opponents. They saw him using the Justice Department to go after his political opponents with Governor Powell of the Federal Reserve using the IRS. So there was a sense that Canada must at least prepare for that scenario of civil strife in the United States. And what would happen?

Would there be a rush for the border? Would there be a contagion potential here in Canada where some like-minded people who like what Mr. Trump is doing would try to emulate what is happening in the United States? Again, these are things that nobody would have ever dreamed of, even scenario plans. that the Canadian forces have been compelled to do. The last thing I would say when people raise questions about, well, no, we've got to assert sovereignty. We cannot assert sovereignty. And that brings us back to the F-35.

The Gripman can't operate the way the F-35 does in Canada's far north. The CF-18s are, they couldn't even get out of the garage to shoot down a Chinese weather balloon two or three years ago. We needed NORAD, the United States, to come in with F-35s to shoot down that swive balloon. So right now, we cannot assert sovereignty. And I think that's a lot of the impetus behind what Prime Minister Carney is doing, because if we don't do it, the United States is doing it.

And how do we feel about that? I know we don't like Chinese research ships or Russian submarines, but how do we feel about our sovereignty being asserted by the United States? Because right now it is being asserted by the United States. We have no other choice, but we're trying to have a greater safety. in it. Okay. I interrupted you, Althea.

I apologize for that. So you go ahead. You got free space here now. I was just going to say, well, the F-35 decision basically reflects what the current defense minister, David McGinty, is, wants to side, basically, with the military that wants this aircraft. The Air Force has long wanted the F-35, what, how long have we been talking about this almost two decades?

And while there are strong voices, including the associate or assistant defensemanist, Steve Fuhr, whatever his title is, who does not, vehemently does not want the F-35. I think we talked about this just before Christmas. I do think that the musings about Greenland, the events in Minneapolis, the Trump administration tweeting out literal Nazi slogans. is changing the way people, even people who were like really fearful of Donald Trump last February, the way people are starting to view the administration. Like, can you trust Donald Trump? And the answer is, of course not. And so that affects every other part of the government.

And that is a reality that nobody wanted to really discuss because the tables look really different. whether that was last March or last May, last September. But when you have armed mask men going door to door trying to arrest people, at least in one instance, you know, shooting an American citizen in the face three times, some would say murdering her, you have to ask yourself some serious questions. And I think those questions are, like, that's the landscape that we're entering Parliament with at the end of January. I think has really changed things. And I don't think status quo and this, like, trying to court things both ways is going to work.

Listen, I don't disagree with you. I've been on the hunt on this issue for the last week. at least, and longer actually, but especially so since Venezuela and the Green Line remarks. I think it's past the point of, you know, it's one thing being asked the question, do you trust Donald Trump? Most people will answer that question, no, I don't.

And for good reason. I mean, he lies. He makes stuff up, and he changes his mind all the time, as we've witnessed on trade agreements. But when the question is not, do you trust Donald Trump, but it's do you trust the United States? Boy, you've crossed a big line when you move over into saying,

I don't trust the United States anymore. And that seems to be kind of where we are right now. What does that do in the background to this trip that Carney is taking? As you said, Rob, he's going, you know, not just to China, but to Qatar and to Davos, Switzerland. What does it do? Well, he's going to have to answer questions from people like you about this on this trip.

I mean, he wrote a book called Values. Prime Minister Kearney did. You know, one of my questions would be, have we shifted from values to our interests? And if so, what is in Canada's interest now? That wasn't in Canada's interest a year and a half ago. How is that changed? And I believe that's what we're looking at.

Prime Minister Trudeau was big on a values-based foreign policy. And Canada was, quite frankly, openly mocked and ridiculed as a result and didn't really project a lot of influence. Now we're shifting to our interest because we're compelled to. And what does that shift look like? How are Canadians going to feel about that shift? And what is it? We understand that we've had a certain level of prosperity and security

at what price our prosperity, because that's what we're talking about. We need to maintain our prosperity. And if we're going to do that, we need to diversify. We need to have jobs for our younger people. We need to have investment in our infrastructure so that we can get them more jobs, but at what price? And I think those are some of the questions that are going to be presented to the prime minister while he's in office. And we'll begin to see some of those answers, I think, on this trip. All right.

Althea, you get the last word on this same theme that we've just expressed the last couple of minutes. What's your sense? What do you think? So he's going to have at least two opportunities to sketch. where he thinks the moral choices should lie. He is supposed to have, or they're planning at the moment, I don't know if it will happen, a press conference in Beijing.

They're supposed to give a speech about his vision of Canada on the international stage at the World Economic Forum. So, you know, you'll recall Stephen Harper used that platform. Then he announced that old age security was getting chopped or CPP, some sort of retardate. I forget what the details were. retirement benefits. Help me out, Rob. Somebody must remember that's clear. The fur away asked from 65 to 67. That's what it was. But I don't know up until this point

that except for him saying that it can't be business as usual, that it's a rupture, this is like permanent. He hasn't really said, and I think things have drastically changed in the last few weeks, what is our vision. And, you know, officials cannot articulate even how they, they, we, Canada views China. So there's a lot of filling the blanks. And I know that kind of the world is on fire and things are changing at a moment's notice.

And it takes a long time for bureaucrats to draft, you know, long-winded foreign policy. But you have to have it kind of a vision, like a beacon. What is guiding you? And I think people thought they knew the answer to that for Mark Carney before and during the election. And I think that got less clear in the fall.

It became about economic interests above all else. Even when you talked about, you know, in Monday's presser, they talked about the prime minister's goals were to, you know, gather investment for the benefit of business first and then workers and communities across Canada. That's kind of where you thought his mind was. but has it shifted? Because the way he won the last election,

that electoral coalition that he's kind of losing bit by bit on the environmental front, for example, is one that amalgamated around him because he was Captain Canada. And through the conservative leader's action, it's kind of like we're headed towards a repeat performance almost of the same election campaign in a way it feels like in the last two weeks.

And so I think he needs to give Canadians a clearer answer about what he wants and what his moral choices are. You know, one thing I can tell you. It's very, sorry, more philosophical than we'd normal. Yeah, I don't know. That was very good. The one thing I can tell you about the term Captain Canada. A lot of different people have achieved that mantle.

over the years. And they all kind of lose it somewhere. It doesn't stick too long because the expectations can be so high. So it'll be interesting to see how the prime minister navigates this because he has that mantle. But it's been a challenge this last little while.

And now he's going to be overseas for the next week, basically. And there are going to be a lot of questions raised, not just the ones he's expecting. from the places he's traveling to. So we'll see how he handles it all and see how Canadians react. Okay, listen to you too.

Thank you so much. You enjoy your trip there, Rob. I'm sure you will. It's a fascinating country. I'm very lucky. Really lucky to be going on this. We're all lucky about me. Lots of good stories, too.

Lots of good stories. I remember my first trip to China in 1976, Mao was still alive. That's how long ago it was. You filed with a hammer and chisel and tablets of stone. That's right. It was hard. Some of those are in the sea somewhere and they'll be discovered hundreds of years from now

and they'll say that man was brilliant. Look at what he foresaw. All right. Listen to you two. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you again in two weeks. Cheers. Look forward to it.

Well, there you go. Rob Russo, Althea Raj and the Raj Rousseau, Reporters Notebook for this week. And once again, you know, apologies for some of the technical hiccups in that. It's not easy sometimes trying to connect the world, especially from, you know, rather remote locations with some very basic gear. But we thank Althea for joining us, and by the time she's back with us in two weeks' time, she'll be back in Ottawa. So it should be no problem in that aspect of things. but again, apologize for that

and appreciate the fact that you stuck through it. Okay, that's going to do it for the most part for this program. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I think we'll try an NBit special tomorrow. You seem to like those. And so we'll do a little digging around, see what my friend Mark Bullguts can come up with, and we'll put that stuff on the air in an NBit special,

a Wednesday and bit special tomorrow. Thursday's your turn. You've heard the question the week already. It's announced me anything deal this week. And the random ranter, hopefully Friday, of course, is good talk with Chantelle and Bruce. Have a great day. And we'll talk again in less than 24 hours.