The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Carney and Trump -- What's Going On?

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Nothing usually ends well when you get into a relationship with Donald Trump. Just ask Elon Musk.

Are you ready for good talk? And although they're Peter Mansperger along with Rob Russo and Chantelle Bear, it's your Friday good talk. And as always, lots to talk about. You know, I thought, OK, we're obviously going to start with the Carney Trump stuff. But I got to spend a moment on that incredible scene yesterday between Trump and Musk, this kind of blow up that we'd all knew was going to happen at some point. But the sense that we watched yesterday at that blow up between, you know, the guys accused of being a drug addict and

the guy who holds the nuclear codes. The bonding of these two guys over the last whatever, six months has been something to watch but nothing compared with the blow up and the departure between the two of them no matter what happens now and there are all kinds of rumors around. But I got to get your sense of what we witnessed yesterday. Rob, you're a former Washington correspondent. Tell me what you made of that. I don't know what you're talking about, Peter.

I, for one, am shocked. Shocked, I tell you, to find out that two guys with enormously inflated egos, and we're going to probably talk about them. When you think about inflation, you think about the size of their noggin That there's a blow up I'm shocked No one should be shocked anybody who's been watching this

Is there is there a conflict where you hope both sides lose? Yes, there are conflicts like that and this is one of them This is one of those conflicts where everybody hopes both sides lose. I'm sure that there are people already, I think Steve Bannon has already started this effort to try and revoke Musk's immigration status or look at his immigration status. There are all kinds of questions have swirled around how Elon Musk got into the United States. So you know what that's going to lead to? That's going to lead to suggestions that he come to Canada. I would tell anybody who entertains those suggestions to be very, very careful. This morning when I went down to get a fruit bowl after my transatlantic travels

with the last little while to try and re-energize myself, I could have sworn I saw a guy in the lobby of the building next to me. There was Elon Musk. He was all in black. He was wearing a black cap. And I thought, this is great. I got to get him to come up and be a part of the Chantel and Rob show on Good Talk today. But sadly, it wasn't Elon Musk. But good for you two, because you probably never would have got a word in. But Chantel, what is your... No, no, no, sadly, it wasn't because I would have taken the morning off that you just get through an hour with Elon Musk. It was inevitable. I think everyone understood that the issue is not if this would happen, but when it would

happen. Rob talks about, is it possible to have a fight that both lose? I think that is one fight that both will lose in some way. No one will gain from this of the two, neither Trump, nor Elon Musk, whose Tesla stock, by the way, went way down yesterday, never a good sign to shed the millions and billions of dollars like this. And, and the case of Trump, a lot of of the motive for staying in line with him from Republicans who are going to run in the midterms with the notion that if they did not, Elon Musk might finance opposition to them and cause them

their seat in Congress. But beyond that, I have to say that it's an interesting spectacle, but it does have consequences for Canadians. This comes on the day when it was confirmed that Prime Minister Carney is negotiating directly with Donald Trump outside any framework that is known to us outside any intervention in those talks by Mexico, our partner in Kuzma, having chats at night and exchanging text messages and looking at this, you kind of think, so I heard one of one of the rationale for thinking this is a good thing that they got along to get they kind of connected when they met. Well, really, and where does

that lead? And how credible is anything that is being negotiated, president to prime minister, on trade and security supposed to be one, a good deal, and two, a deal that will last beyond the next temper tantrum in the White House? I am not saying prime ministers do not speak with presidents. That happens all the time. But it usually happens take for instance, Brian Mulroney and the negotiation of the first free trade agreement. Yes, there would be hurdles at the negotiating table between professionals and ministers in charge. And then one would call the other to say, I think we've run into this

hurdle, anything we can do to kind of back out of it. And sometimes instructions to negotiating teams would be tweaked. But that is not my understanding of what's going on. My understanding of what's going on is a negotiation conducted by the prime minister with the president for something that will or will not have any legal way considering that Kuzma was negotiated under Donald Trump, that he signed off on it. It's like it doesn't exist ever since he's come back to the White House. So I'm curious, I'm also curious to know what process there will be given that kind of casual negotiation for Parliament and Canadians

to have a say on the outcome of those talks. A lot of questions there. Rob, what are you hearing on the way this is going on between Trump and Carney? From the moment Mr. Carney left the White House last month, there hasn't been a stop in the negotiations. They picked up immediately at a very senior level in terms of trade officials.

And they they accelerated. There has been in effect an air bridge between Ottawa and Washington that has been constant since since then. There now the question is, why would you do this? All you got to do is look at the the trade deficit. In the United States, the trade deficit has been cut in half. So as far as Donald Trump is concerned, this is having, for now, the desired effect.

In Canada, trade is collapsing. Our trade deficit went from 2.3 billion in March to 7.1 billion. That is just the beginning. That is the beginning of the tariffs sinking their teeth in the backs of working Canadians. Unemployment figures are going to come out shortly. They're going to be the beginning of a grim roll as well. So we see a collapsing trade. We have to do something to ease the tariff burden and remove the tariffs as we, in the eyes of Mr. Carney, begin to restructure our economy. But if we don't do that, the dangers to the economy of collapse are real. So what are the dangers of a deal? Well, I think we just talked about Elon Musk.

He showed us the dangers of a deal with Donald Trump. But there is a real imperative into coming up with some kind of agreement with Trump. The Carney people, the people around him and the Prime Minister himself, are probably going to try to frame this according to some of the public servants that they that they've instructed as something that will go beyond Trump something that will go beyond Carney something that will last let's say at least a half a century the prime minister is fond of saying that he was born around the time that the AutoPak was negotiated. That's 60

years old and up until Trump it was valid. He sees what he is doing in the same terms. Something that will last 50 to 100 years in certain segments, critical segments of the economy. They are defense, they are automotive trade, and they are resource development. That's what they're keying in on. And they see all three of them as linked. Linked because they're all tied to national security. And national security in particular,

in the face of what both men see as a threat from China. So that's what they're doing. That's what the danger is. The danger is that they're doing it. They're concluding an agreement with someone who is beyond mercurial. Again, we just have to ask Elon Musk how mercurial that man is. But if he doesn't do something, the woe is going to be plain for working people across the country. Shantel. Usually when you're having conversations with an ally that are going well,

that person doesn't turn around at what is described behind the scenes as a crucial stage in the talks, announcing out of the blue that these doubling tariffs on your steel and your aluminum, that is what actually happened last week. It doesn't speak to a foundation of trust and confidence between the two that this happens. Second, we're talking about half a century for a deal that Canada is saying also behind the scenes that they would like to have wrapped up by the time the G7 starts in what is it, 10 days? Right. Wow. I am admiring of our trade and diplomatic negotiators and of Mark Carney's skills if they can iron out a deal that will last for half a century. Seriously, spend the campaign saying that we needed to reverse course on further integration to the United

States. Is he actually saying that we will tie ourselves to the US on critical minerals, among other things going forward for the next half a century? My last question is question was my last question the last time I spoke. What is the process for Parliament and Canada to accept this?

Because the last time I looked, we do not ratify half a century's worth of treaties on the back of an envelope in the prime minister's office. That's a good question and you know and clearly parliamentarians are going to be asking that as well in the next little while if it gets close to some kind of an arrangement. Can I address that for one second? Sure. The doubling of the tariffs is Donald Trump thinking that that's the way you negotiate deals. You put pressure on him.

Canada was not isolated. Everybody got that. But yes, that's the way he puts pressure on his allies. How does Mark Carney put pressure on Donald Trump? Well, even if the trade deficit in the United States is halved, there is inflationary pressure on Donald Trump. There is international pressure on Donald Trump to show that he can actually do a deal. He keeps talking about hundreds of countries lining up to do a deal. Well, if you want to do a deal, if you want to show the world that you can actually do a deal, then the sense is, President Trump, you're going to be in a position to show the world

that you can do a deal with a country that's been friendly to you for 100 years. And you can do that at the G7 in Cananaskis. Let's see if you can actually do a deal in this in a short period of time. Yes, without a doubt. It's an accelerated thing. And there is a sense that this is kind of a moonshot effort that you set the bar for the future now, like Kennedy did in 61, and say by the end of this period, we're going to do this. I think that's what they're thinking. It is not without peril.

Look, at the same time, we're doing that. We have Scott Moe calling on us to ease our relationship with China so that we can send canola and other products to China because farmers are hurting. And so this is an example of how difficult the country Canada is to govern. No, but not only that, are we saying we're going to tie our trade policy since we talk about China to the US's whim. I get all those examples that Rob is using. They don't work when you're talking about Donald Trump. We never negotiated with someone like Donald Trump nor should we want to in any way, shape or form. So

what happened last night that we heard of this morning, the prime minister started having talks with China, and it's opening the door to a restoring balance in the relationship, in the trade relationship between China and Canada, an easing off of the trade irritants between the two. I believe, and I don't know this, but I believe that this is Mark Carney trying to use this opening and his negotiations with Donald Trump. But the stakes of this are really high. Is it really a good outcome given the lack of leverage that Canada has at this point

to tie Canada to the US under Donald Trump for half a century? I don't see, yeah, moonshot, yeah, well, sometimes you end up lost in space is basically where I feel, since we've had a lot of talk about astronauts this week with the passing of Mark Garnet, you're gonna get a lot of those moonshot, lost in space metaphors. Let me.

Call me very, not very skeptical, but a bit worried also. We're definitely calling you that on this. I think with a… hey, listen, we all are. By the way, I'm glad you mentioned Mark Garno. I'd like to spend a minute or so at the end of today to talk about Mark Garneau. But let me go back to the process really of what's going on because I'm a little confused. Maybe you can set me straight here. So far in the conversation, we've talked about how there are senior bureaucrats working with senior bureaucrats in the United States on trying to work this thing out.

We've got senior cabinet ministers going back and forth between Washington and Ottawa, and then we've got the Prime Minister dealing with the President directly, and it's Chantel just mentioned apparently dealing with the Chinese at the same time. Are all these things working in concert, or are these totally separate lanes that are happening here? Because I don't think any of us doubted that Mark Carney, given his past, was going to get directly involved in the big issues of the day, very directly, and he seems to be doing that. But is there a process here between these three levels of the discussions that are going on? Do we have any idea of that? It's one that is based on the very special personality of the

U.S. president. I think it's clear that this is not the same as any other negotiation in the sense that this is not the prime president who is taking advice from his cabinet or experts. This is someone who wakes up and tells them, this is what I want to accomplish. So the only way to get progress, if you want to call it that, at those various negotiating stages is probably to get Donald Trump to want something. It's kind of the reverse of the way negotiations worked in the past, and that does explain why Mark Kearney is spending evening chatting with Donald Trump. Is it nights? Because this Donald Trump ever sleep is a question. But the problem with that, obviously, is that it's kind of a left to the whims. And the daily would you want to be talking to Donald Trump about Canada today, for instance, when he's looking for a distraction from his fight fight with Alan Musk, maybe not. It's chaotic, I would say, looking at it from the outside. I guess what I'm getting at though is,

is it a separate lane that Carney's working on? I understand in terms of his direct talks with Trump, but what they're actually talking about in deal making, is there a common plan here among the Canadian participants in this negotiation or is it going to come down to what Mark Carney wants and thinks and negotiates? I think back to the last go-round on this stuff, it was, I guess, Christopher Freeland was the main player. You never really heard about Trudeau doing anything in those times. No, but Gerald Butts, who was Trudeau's alter ego, was in Washington for most of that time. So the prime minister's office was totally in the loop.

Okay. Rob? Yeah, I think that he's been thinking about this stuff for at least 15 years. I think he's been thinking about being prime minister for at least that amount of time and what he would do on the job. What he hasn't been thinking about is how he actually gets this through a parliament, gets this through a cabinet. He doesn't think about those kinds of

things, I don't think. I think he thinks, as I've said, kind of moonshot terms, but he doesn't always understand that you can't consult Indigenous people later on. You've got to bring them in the room right at the beginning. And so those are the kinds of things that somebody who is outside of politics needs to learn. At the same time, I think he believes that somebody who is outside of politics has the advantage of saying, I am not going to get bogged down at a time when the Canadian economy

is on the verge of cratering. I have to do something about it now. And I have to do something that acknowledges the gravitational pull of 340 million people in an economy that's accessible to Canadians over truck and rail. And I'll work on the other stuff after I deal with our prosperity that's closest to us, proximate to me, immediately. So he sees this, I believe, as an advantage to be from the outside, advantage to be from the outside. But he does not yet see the disadvantages of not consulting. And he's going to learn that. I think he's going to have to learn that. But for now, he is bringing people along that he needs to bring along. I don't anticipate it's going to last. I was not among those who were singing Love is in the air after the premieres. It reminded me of the other disco song that that unfortunately I might have been caught dancing to and that was celebration by cool in the gang.

It's too early to play that song. It's way too early to play celebration. But those are the people he needs to bring along right now at the executive level in the provinces, and he is bringing them along. Yeah, right. He's bringing those people along, but not everything is short-term in politics. I'll tell you, with the short-term, it works. You bring people along and you don't have to revisit. Stephen Harper's motion on Quebec as a nation, that was a one-day thing. You would never have

to go back to it again. Done, been there, done that. Fine, everyone is happy or anyone who was unhappy can't do anything about it. But this is what is going on with the premiers, is a process that will probably outlast Mike Barcarney's time in office with premiers who were not there at this meeting. Because what does happen to premiers is one day they are there and then an election takes place. Do we need to revisit what happened at Meach? How long did it take for one premier to be replaced? Less than six months. That would be

New Brunswick, Richard Thatfield. Can we talk about how long it took for some premiers to disappear from the great climate bargain that Justin Trudeau had negotiated with the premiers when he arrived in office? And by the way, Premier Ford wasn't there because he could have been singing. Of course, he wasn't of that persuasion. He owes his victory for not being part of the consensus that was struck by Justin Trudeau when he arrived in office. Look at the premiers that you saw assembled. Francois Lagault has an election coming.

There has not been a poll at this point that shows that he has a great shot at being reelected. He's not the only premier who was going to be facing voters. The premier who was in there was David Eby of BC. He was on a trade mission. He was represented. What happened two days after the meeting? David Eby said, sorry, pals, but I'm not playing in this pipeline to Prince Rupert movie that Daniel Smith and apparently Mark Carney like so much.

There is nothing that the premier of BC said about that that was surprising. But it just goes to show, and that also goes with a deal with Trump, even if it's going to last, you cannot just say, we did this today, and then move on to deal with other issues tomorrow. Life is going to be more complicated than that. People will want some kind of due process. And I understand in the business world, that's not how deals are struck, but we are not in that world.

We are in a world where voters did not give a blank check to the government. I heard, I think, someone, maybe a prime minister in the question period this week said a majority of Canadians voted for him. Not true. Maybe a good idea to look at the numbers again. That did not happen. Not in this universe. Nothing bad about that. We do not elect governments federally with 50% plus of the vote, or we haven't for a long, long, long time. 1984. Yeah. I think was the last time, and it was only like 50.1 or something. Can I just come back to the pipeline to Western Canada?

We're professional skeptics. We have to be as reporters. I like to call myself an optimist who is also a skeptic as well. And if you do want a pipeline to Western Canada, I think that there's an open door. And I listen to Nikki Sharma, I listen to Adrian Dix, and I listen to David Eby. They expressed opposition, but they kept saying, right now, this is

not a real deal. There is no proponent for the pipeline, which to me sounds a bit like an open door. You might be able to slip through that door. It's going to be inelegant as you go through that door. But if ever there was an example of how hard Canada is to govern, that's an example. If you want to be Prime Minister of Canada, you have to do some difficult things. And this is going to be one of those difficult things. It might not be a pipeline to Prince Rupert, but there seem to be a crack in the door and there may be a way through that door.

Okay. Let me just say one thing on the pipeline thing. And my personal history makes me somewhat biased on this, but there are kind of two options on the table. There is my personal history makes me somewhat biased on this, but there are kind of two options on the table. There is the Prince Rupert option, but there's also the Churchill option, which is, I appreciate the limited time that Churchill can remain open because of even with warming climate,

that there are still ice issues obviously in Hudson Bay. But there are proponents. Danielle Smith doesn't mind the idea. Scott Moe doesn't seem to mind the idea of a pipeline crossing through Northern Saskatchewan to get to Northern Manitoba. And Wab Kanu doesn't seem to mind the idea because it totally opens up Northern Manitoba, which doesn't even have a road to Churchill, let alone a trustworthy rail line. Anyway, so it's interesting that that's playing out at the same time. There are options here, if you're gonna go the pipeline route,

and if you're gonna try and find the indigenous support that you would need either route on that. Quickly, Chantel, because we gotta get to our- Okay, great. I'm because we got to get to our stress break. Great. I'm glad we're doing this quickly because it's very hypothetical to be discussing all these pipeline options absent a private promoter for any project. And with all the encouragement, you would think someone would have raised his or her hand. I'll just mention about the BC thing. Yeah, well, the problem with bringing oil or gas to Prince Rupert is then the point is to sell it to Asia.

That means getting rid of the tanker ban that was put in place. There's a little place along that route called Haida Gwai. I don't think the IDAS, who have now the title to the territory, are going to say, wouldn't it be great if we could toll all these tankers and get rich? That's not going to happen. It's a very fragile ecosystem. So good luck with that. I can see the front page of international magazines with pictures of Haida Gwaii, if that's the road we go. And then there's the small matter of liberals, starting with the former minister of the environment,

Stephen Gillebou, maybe not ready to sit idly by while everything that was done over the past 10 years is in one way, shape or form dismantled in a way that Pierre Poilier would have if he'd won the election. Yeah, it's all easy stuff, right? It's no problem. It's no accident that there are lots of conservatives who are delighted by what Mark Carney is doing.

Well, not that they don't have enough of their own problems at this point as well. Okay, we're going to take our break and then we'll come back. There are other things we need to talk about and we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk for this Friday. Chantelle Bair, Rob Russo here. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. You're also watching us, if you can, on our YouTube channel, which Good every Friday. Okay, a couple of weeks ago we had a fairly vigorous discussion about the question of a chief of staff in the prime minister's office. Who would fulfill that on a permanent basis? What role would they play? How influential

would they be? And why was it taking so long to fill that role? Well the role is now being filled. So I want to know if there's, from either one of you, the choice that's being made is that somebody who's going to have enormous influence not just on what goes on. He talked about Jerry Butts in the early Trudeau years, but not just what goes on, but on this prime minister who likes to take a very firsthand direct role in the issues of the day. Who wants to tell us about this new chief of staff? I'll take a crack. They know each other, they're not, they're not close. But they are birds of a feather. Mr. Blanchard has a

record in the Liberal government, of course, his former, former ambassador to the UN, but he's been at the case de dépôt for the last little while. So, a huge pension fund in Quebec, which makes strategic investments, investments that are supposed to have a 50 to 100 year horizon as well. So, he comes from that world. And what's a chief of staff supposed to do? I heard from a chief of staff after our last conversation, who was a chief of staff after our last conversation who was a chief staff to a former premier who said our definition was too narrow. His definition was chief operating officer after or the conductor of an orchestra after he's been handed the music by the Beethoven or Mozart

of government and making sure that everybody's in the orchestra and everybody's playing the same song and playing it well. So if I apply that definition, I think that given what Mr. Carney wants to do very quickly, obviously, Blanchard is an interesting choice because he comes from that world of business investment, lots of investment, lots of deals are going to happen under Kearney. He's part of an important quartet from what I'm told. And that quartet is Mr. Carney, Mr. Hodgson, Mr. Lemaître,

and now Mr. Blanchard. The last two know Quebec, something that Carney does not know very well. He does not know the province very well. Those two do know the province. Lemaître is the kind of ideas guy and kind of soulmate of the prime minister. He's the guy who can sit down with his old buddy from Oxford

and beyond and say, boy, this was a tough day. We actually got this done, but we need, Blanchard is the guy that's going to execute the orders, particularly in the investment world that he wants done. Hodgson is also of that kind of order. So I'm told that those are the first four among equals. And Mr. Blanchard's business acumen is what really had the prime minister settle on him. That's great in this quarter. I can't see anyone who has spent any time running a minister's office

or anything that looks like a political office. And David Lemetti is the only one who actually has parliamentary experience. So it should be interesting to see how that is crafted. You talk about trust, I think it's essential because part of the job is also a gatekeeping function in the sense that if the prime minister is doing everything and is very hands-on, at some point he's finishing nothing. It's overwhelming. But to allow someone to have a gatekeeping function, if you're a prime minister, you

need to have absolute trust in the judgment of that person to make sure that what you need to see comes to you and what you need to know comes to you. There are issues that you can't resolve without the Prime Minister waiting in or without the Prime Minister being in the loop. That is not always the case. You also need to coordinate political advice versus civil servant advice before it gets to the Prime Minister so that when the prime minister is briefed on an issue, he's got the full picture. And either half are not the full picture. If you're going to make an informed decision as prime minister, you need the people working for you to make sure that you have

access to everything that you need to know or consider before you come to a decision. So we'll see what happens. I still worry about the lack of parliamentary experience, not that this government has had a week or this quartet that would make it think that it should worry about running parliament. I'm going to run down some of the things that happened this week. I don't think I've seen as docile a house of commons and I don't think I've ever seen this. So tax cuts, those that Mr. Carney promised by July 1st passed with unanimous consent. Trump speech with a minor amendment, I have to say from the opposition, urging the government to bring in a fiscal update or a budget before July 1st,

which won't happen, passed without a vote, passed with dissent, but no one stood up, not even the NDP that proclaimed, we will vote against this strong speech. Well, when the time came and the option was given to MPs to stand up and say, no, no, no, we want a recorded vote before we passed this, no one stood up. And then yesterday, remember supply management and the blocks demand that supply management be kept off the table of future trade negotiations

by law. There was a bill in the past parliament that was passed in the comments, didn't make it in the Senate. Well, yesterday that BLUK bill came back, bill came back, passed, passed all stages with unanimous consent is now off to the Senate. So if I were someone with little parliamentary experience, like Mark Carney, and I saw this, I would think, well, this is this is the easy part of the job. I'm not saying it's going to last, I'm not saying it's going to last, but you have to admit that this week was not a prime example of a vigorous House of Commons debate on policies. You know, I expect by next week Chantel's gonna have a sign on that wall behind her that says, Where's Pierre Polyev when you need him? Actually, he's sitting back there telling his MPs to play along because how, as he put

it, why would he vote against things that the conservatives have always wanted to do? Plus, you give him a honeymoon. I mean, let's face it, the election was what, a month ago, a little more than a month ago. This is a first class honeymoon though. Yeah, but it is it is an example of how the people who would normally torment the Prime Minister are in it. If they're not in disarray, they're going to be occupied trying to straighten themselves out. You know, we can start with the New Democrats.

They have to decide again what their what their role is at the federal level. This is no small discussion. It's just beginning. And there are some people who are among the caucus who are championing it to be more vigorous in taking on the liberals and in taking on Carney in particular. Even that is not a settled argument even that is not a settled argument. It is not a settled discussion yet as to whether or not Pierre Poilier continues to lead the

Conservative Party. I know people believe that it is not. In fact, you hear increasing discussion about that. Yeah. So if your principal tormentors are, and we can talk about the Bloc as well, who has to try to, I guess, figure out what its relationship is with the Parts Québécois as they go into an election year in the province of Quebec with the PQ leading in the polls. The relationship has been very, very uneasy at the leadership level there as well. So the people who would normally be tormenting a prime minister, not now, yes, now usually they get a pass. After they sort of paw at the ground, they snort, and they puff, and they huff.

Those people are kind of just figuring themselves out. And I think that's going to last for at least six months and maybe a year when it comes to the conservatives and the new Democrats as well. Okay, well, we're gonna take another break here in a minute, but there's been a theme, a bit of a theme in our discussion so far over these last 40 minutes or so. And that has been sort of what actually is the role

of parliament here this time around? And whether it's in terms of what the new prime minister thinks he wants to use parliament for, whether the opposition is in disarray and not sure how it wants to use parliament. Is this a serious issue right now as we look forward into this kind of next year? And there's some big, big issues that one would assume at some point have to go before Parliament. But the role of parliament under this government, is there something, are we witnessing something different here or is this just early days?

Chantal? On me, I think it's early days. This is still a minority parliament. that there are MPs in that parliament on all sides, but including the liberal side that may come to feel that they don't have enough of a role or this isn't what they expected if you're on the opposition benches and that are going to say, we're going to go see if we can find new challenges or we discover families. No one is immune from that. The NDP, I agree with Rob, has a very particular problem. The people inside that very small caucus are not necessarily great lifelong friends, and they do not share the same vision of how the party should evolve. And that complicates matters even more for them. But I do believe

that at some point, there is also the matter of having something to chew on if you're the opposition, and we're not there yet. No one was going to go after the government on tax cuts. That was kind of a given. You weren't going to bring down the government on the throne speech. That was also a given. Supply management, that's kind of a belt and suspenders issue in the sense that the prime minister gave his word on supply management repeatedly during the campaign. So no surprise that this bill would be resurrected and it does by, remember the Bloc Québécois has suggested that it would give a reprieve to the Liberals until the situation with the US is more settled. So I'm guessing this passage, swift passage of their bill is kind of an indication that the two

parties do not want to be at war with each other. But the bill that was introduced this week under the guise of border management, but that does include dispositions that have raised eyebrows in all kinds of places, including within conservative circles, because of the chapter on privacy rights and the obvious loosening of them out of the blue. Those discussions will take on lives of their own. The government's not going to fall over this, but it will lead to more vigorous conversation and debate within parliament and outside parliament. And let's see the bill on projects. And I was in Ottawa this week, I was struck by how many indigenous leaders were one in

town, but two very rattled by what had happened at the First Minister's Conference. And the notion that you could somehow put into a bill the duty to consult of the federal government and of governments before you undertake major infrastructure projects with First Nations. So there's lots that stands to happen inside and outside parliament. Look at what's happening in Ontario with Bill 5 and the rift, the increasing rift between First Nations and Premier Ford, that is not good for the federal government's plans. Look at Alberta and the First Nations reaction to Daniel Smith's referendum musings. That is not good for the federal government's plans. So when you look at

all that, it's like when you're making soup, you turn up the heat, it takes a while. At some point though, it reaches a boiling point. And that's true. A quick last word on this subject, Rob. Yeah, you cannot have a Westminster parliamentary system without a strong and vigorous opposition. It's critical. It makes the government better.

It can give the government cover at certain times. Up until now, we haven't had the kind of epochal legislation put before parliament that Mr. Carney is envisaging. And I would expect to see that there would be a challenge and a check on the government's power that is vital in a parliamentary democracy. So I hope we see that. I think it's good for the government and absolutely necessary for our democracy.

And I think the so-called Strong Borders Act is a prime example of that. The sort of digital service handover of our personal data is something that has to be aired and not rushed through Parliament and debated vigorously. As somebody who was in Washington after 9-11 and saw Americans essentially hand over the right to their government to do things that they now regret. That's something that I'm a little uneasy with. All right. We're going to take our final break. We'll come back and we'll talk about Mark Garno.

And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Rob, Chantel, Peter, all in the house today. I first met Mark Garneau in 1984, which was the year that he became the first Canadian in space. We became friends, which lasted all this time since then. Not close friends, but certainly friends enough that we'd talk every once in a while and did adventures together. He was sitting beside me when Roberta Bondar flew into space, the second Canadian space,

first Canadian woman in space. He was a great color commentator. He eventually ventured into politics where he became a cabinet minister. He ran against Justin Trudeau for the leadership of the Liberal Party in whatever year that was, 2013, somewhere around there. Obviously, he was not successful in that run and had a not a great relationship with Justin Trudeau in the years that followed. He died suddenly just a couple of days ago at a form of cancer, rare form.

Battle was short and sadly ended as so many of those battles do. There have been a lot of nice things said about Mark Arnott this week. He truly was a kind of national hero for his space days, but his public service days he was in the Navy as well as in politics. And some of those nice things were said by members of the other side, which is not unusual when on a passing, but there were some pretty nice things said about Mark Garneau. What would you two like to say about Mark Garneau. What would you two like to say about Mark Garneau, Chantal? It was an interesting case because obviously

when the liberals recruited him as a candidate, he was meant to be a star candidate by virtue of his astronaut credentials. And those credentials, while they remain large in the public's mind, with good reason, did not pave an easy path in politics. This is someone who first ran and lost his initial writing, Baudreuil Solange. He failed until he landed in the Westmount, which is one of the safer, safest liberal seats in the country. And then, you know, the run against Justin Trudeau, which he eventually renounced, he

never got a hearing in that battle because that is not what the liberals were looking for. And finally, the way that his political career ended, I think is it's on the prime minister, that the prime minister was happy enough to have Mark Gano run in 2021 as the foreign affairs minister and no sooner were the votes counted that Mark Gano was out of cabinet. And I am convinced that if he'd been given the option of knowing, you know, we'd like you to run again, Mark, but if you do, we probably will no longer need your services in cabinet, he would have possibly moved on to other things rather than run for reelection.

So he wasn't a political animal. And that's not a criticism. It's actually a compliment. I think the person who best illustrated it was not the journalist, but James Moore, who talked about his experience as a new minister and getting actual help from Mount Garnot on the space file that was part of his portfolio, real help, instead of criticism and going for the throat of this new minister who didn't have much of a clue as to what space policy should look like. That does illustrate it, but it also means that in an era where politicians are priced for their capacity to look cruel

in question period and to demean each other. He wasn't the flavor of the month kind of politician. The universal praise heaped on him kind of show you that there's a craving for people like that. But sadly, that is not how the media or other politicians rate who is a star in parliament. And that's too bad. It is. Rob? Well, I first met him at a press gallery dinner in the late 80s. He was fresh off his shuttle flight. He was dashing. He was dashing.

He was dashing, but quintessentially Canadian in that he was humble. And when I go over his list of achievements, a single one of them would have meant a brilliant career. He was a PhD as an electrical engineer, if you can imagine. We now have a, we're in an era where people are against competence. This man was supremely competent in his field.

He was a fighter jock. And what are fighter jocks normally like? Well, they're strident, swaggering kind of guys as well. He flew the shuttle. He was the head of the Canadian Space Agency. He was the shuttle. He was the head of the Canadian Space Agency. He was the Foreign Affairs Minister. He was handsome.

If you give me one of those things, I'm going to get chaplips from kissing my mirror. But he had all of these things, and yet, quintessentially Canadian, not strident, no braggadocio, humble, stepping aside when he realized he couldn't win a leadership, which I think buttresses Chantal's point that he didn't have the, as one conservative friend of mine put it, he didn't have the sociopathic gene of the guys who want to be leader have to be prepared to step over the bleeding corpse of their mother with the rusty shiv dripping blood. He didn't have that, right? And so he really was quintessentially

Canadian, I thought, in a heroic sense. Okay. Gonna have to stop you there. You mentioned that James Moore commentary on James or on Mark Garneau and I'll run that again in the buzz tomorrow if you haven't seen it already because it's special. There's so many of the comments of this week have been about Mark Garneau. All right, we're going to leave it at that for today. We covered a lot of ground, not all the ground we wanted to cover, but pretty much all of it. And we'll be back in next week. We're closing in on the end of the season for a good talk, which will be on June 20th,

will be our last one, although we'll have a couple of specials during the summer. So thank you to Rob Russo. Thank you to Chantelle Baer. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Buzz tomorrow 7 a.m. in your inbox if you've subscribed. No cost. NationalNewsWatch.com. NationalNewsWatch.com.com. You can subscribe there. Take care, have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you next week.