The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Did The G7 Just Get Derailed?

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

The new Carney government is making a lot of commitments and they all add up, but where's the money coming from to pay for it all?

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Ebert and Rob Russo. It's your Friday Good Talk. Glad to have you with us. Lots to talk about, as always. I guess we really should start with congratulating Chantelle for yet another honor she gets this time from the province of Quebec. Yeah, for a non-Quebecker, that's, you know, a bit of a surprise to tell you the truth. Yeah, and it's worth reminding people that while Chantelle lives in Montreal, spent most of her time in Montreal for quite a few years now. She's actually Northern Ontario.

But she is a Quebecer in all senses of the words, Chantal is a Quebecer. Via Ottawa and Toronto, where I was raised, and you never feel as at home anywhere in the world as the place where you were raised because you can see how it changes versus any other place where you land which in my case is Montreal which I totally love. Well it's not hard to love Montreal. Nope, especially now Grand Prix, festival, I mean what's there not to like and nice weather this weekend, we're all good.

We're all good. Okay, I hadn't planned to start on the G7, but I'm gonna start on the G7 because of it, you know, the three of us have covered these things for a long time, these big summits, they're usually in June of each year. Sadly, I go back to the 70s, the first one I covered. But it's remarkable the number of times that the agenda has been kind of derailed

as a result of some big world event happening. And it's not surprising, you know, you've got the leaders of some of the world's top countries, US, UK, France, Germany, etc., etc., and Canada. And then something big happens and everybody wants to talk about that, and not what may have been on the agenda. Well, we know what happened last night. Israel attacked Iran.

There's going to be days of fallout as a result of that, and who knows where this will end up. Does it run the risk? And Rob, why don't you start us? You know, Mark Carney as host has a certain agenda planned for this G7. Does it run the risk of what happened last night derailing things? Yes, of course. It takes months to plan a G7 meeting. There's usually a planning book that has minute by minute events scheduled, including bilaterals, even if they take places on the margins of the meetings with some of the other people who have been invited who are not members of the G7.

But in the age of Trump, volatility is scripted there in big red letters. And without a doubt, he is going to play a role. When I asked a couple of ambassadors that I saw over the last 10 days, two weeks, what the standard for success was for the G7 summit at Kananaskis, they said that the G7 maintains unity. So that gives you a sense that they're one big, unhappy, fractious family right now. And what are they unhappy about? Well, the guy who's supposed to be leading them

is punishing them with hobbling tariffs. And he's calling them pikers who are not paying enough for their own defense and telling them he won't defend them should the Russian lion to the east move westward beyond Ukraine. So, yeah, unpredictability, volatility is scripted there. It's not in the meticulously planned playbook,

but it's there in invisible big red letters. Sean, tell. Well, actually, this G7 summit is a bit different from all others in the sense that usually there is a prepared and pre-negotiated final community. And the measure of success of a G7 meeting is for all seven, obviously, to sign off on whatever is in the community. But in this case, there will not be a final community that's been decided ahead of time, which of course reduces the chances that Donald Trump can derail it by refusing to sign off

on it or actually ask, for instance, with President Zelensky present on the sidelines, that any reference to Ukraine be withdrawn from the community. You can go down the list of those possibilities. So you can derail a meeting that is not being put on any rails. And that is basically how this meeting has been crafted. Yes, a lot of people are coming from all over the globe, some more controversial in this country than others. I mean, talking about India in particular, which has taken it back with good reason, not only to seek community, but Canadians who less than a year ago were told by their

then Prime Minister that India, its government had ordered an assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. And that issue remains unresolved to this day. But it is wisely crafted as a bit of a free for all. And what does that accomplish? Rob's point is well taken about the notion of unity around the G7 table. If this were the more typical G7 meeting,

so maybe you would have guests, one or two guests. There are guests commonly, this isn't a precedent, not that many. But the odds that the dynamics would be six versus one were so high as to defeat the purpose of trying to get these countries. And the point is for those leaders of states and countries to have conversations, to keep channels open, and to feel each other out on various issues. So up to a point, it's not necessarily a bad thing that this Israel-Iran event happens before and not the day after the G7, because there will be enough players there

to get a feel of where everyone is on this. What if any role, any of them, in particular Donald Trump, are willing to play to make sure, and it's getting late to do that, but to make sure that the entire region doesn't go up in flames. By the way, the choice of Kananesk of Cananescas security wise is probably a wise choice. I don't go back to the 70s, but I did cover one in Cananescas. The only memory I have is a hotel room in Calgary watching a TV screen because it was so cumbersome to go on site and you had so little access that I, to this day, I have not visited Kananaskis.

I was on site and I remember the security being tight, but I also remember grizzly bears between Banff and Kananaskis. So they didn't need a lot more security than that. I'll tell you something else that ends a layer of uncertainty to this meeting. Four of the G7 partners, the majority of them, are all newbies. Keir Starmer, this is going to be his first.

Mertz of Germany, his first. Ishiba of Japan, his first. And of course, Mark Carney, who's hosting, his first. And I think that the Prime Minister has decided to expand the guest list the way he has in order to send a very, very strong signal that Canada is determined to diversify away from the United States at great speed.

And I think that's the impetus. Apart from the fact that I think Modi has been at every G7 since 2019, it also is part of the thinking behind the PMO deciding to invite Modi to this one, despite our relationship really being in a freeze. That's only now beginning to thaw. The idea behind this meeting is we are going to negotiate

a deal with the United States because we have to, but we are never going to be in the position we've been in because of Donald Trump again. That's the determination. Okay, I want to explore that a little bit, but first of all, let me just say this. On the issue of how things could go kind of sideways as a result of what happened last night between Israel and Iran and how that will continue to fall out over the next couple

of days, you know, two weeks ago we were discussing whether or not Donald Trump was even going to turn up at this G7, that he didn't necessarily want to be at it for a lot of different reasons. If he's looking still for a way out, this gives him one. He can easily say, I've got to be here, I've got to be, you know, sitting in the hot seat in case this thing gets totally out of hand, you know, I'll send Vance or Rubio or somebody to the G7. He's got that. He's got this kind of phony situation in LA as well that he uses a prop as well. So it'll be interesting to see as things develop over these next kind of 48, 72 hours whether he takes that option.

Let's leave that aside. I want to get to this point that I think Rob's getting at, and Chantelle, you can start. Our old friend Alan Gregg has a good piece today where he's talking about Canada's role in this G7. In effect, it's more than a host. It's as a leader, and that leader and that that Carney seems to be positioning himself to be the kind of the anti-us anti-Trump person in the room and is spending a lot of time dealing with people like karma starmer Macron merits and in Germany is there something going on here more than the than we see on the face of things in terms of Canada's role within this group? Shantel? Well, there's always something going on to be on what we see in those rooms, obviously. Mark Carney is seen to be in that role because he can.

The reason for that is not because he is Prime Minister of Canada, but because of his past credentials. He is someone who... This is not a get acquainted meeting for many of the leaders who are coming who will be with Mark Carney, not just because he met them once, in some cases, Macron, Stammer, since he became prime minister, but also because they know him and they know of him. We have not had a prime minister that has had such a Rolodex of international contacts

at the high level in the way that Mark Carney has in a long, long time. The closest you could come to this might be Brian Mulroney. And that goes back decades. Remember, what was it? Stephen Harper had not left North America when he became Prime Minister. I think that might be true in part or in whole of Pierre Poilier if he'd become prime minister. So there is that. But I don't think the prime minister wants to position himself as the anti-Carney going into his first G7 meeting. And why do I say that? Because he has also spent the past three weeks saying that he's talking one on one with Donald Trump to

negotiate the framework of a deal with the United States on security and trade that would see the tariffs lifted. So you can't be one and the other at the same meeting. He has also said in an interview this week, he did two things in a lengthy French language interview, his first in French since the election. He said two things that he, he, that negotiate talks with the president were progressing, that it was not impossible, that there could be an agreement in principle at the G7 as a result

of his one on one with Donald Trump. that's the basis upon which you're going in that one-on-one, you're certainly not going as the leader of the free world versus the errant presidents of the United States. But the other thing I thought that he said was interesting was that Canada's red line in those conversations is the lifting of all tariffs. The return to what was normal

prior to Trump going into a tariff war. So there is one and the other, but make no mistake, yes, Mark Kerney wants to diversify. Yes, he's host. Yes, he wants Canada, and he can probably lead Canada to a larger role on the world stage. But he is also there as the Prime Minister of Canada and the head of the Liberal Party, trying to secure some kind of peace on the Canada-US front so he can move forward on the rest of his agenda. And he has spent big bucks, well, our money, prospectively

on defense to show up at that one-on-one with credentials that might make Donald Trump say, boy, these guys are serious. They're finally serious on defense. I don't know. So I'm wary of going for the anti-Trump line. Okay. Rob. I think I wouldn't call it the anti-Trump line, but the determination to diversify is what I keep hearing and I'm being told that we're not paying enough attention to the accords that they're working on with the Europeans, which might be fleshed out at the G7 as well. Chantal is absolutely right that the defense spending announcement was time to come before the G7 as a greaser for the talks with the United States. But they are looking for capital outside

But they are looking for capital outside of the United States in terms of the investments that they want made in infrastructure projects. That's another reason why India's Narendra Modi is there as well. They're looking for markets. They are determined to do as much as they can in as quickly as they can on several fronts. I think the way it was described to me was that they know that they've got so much of a funnel, but they're trying to put as much as they can into that funnel as quickly as they can. And they know that they might not get it all done, and they also know they might pay a price for it. But they feel like they have to do it

because they believe that Canada's reliance on the United States has become perilous. On some issues, like ballistic missile defense, Canada has no choice now. I think the words Mr. Carney used earlier this week were that geography is no longer a defense for us. It's no longer the defense we used to be. In other words, this notion of the empty Arctic, which I find kind of offensive, but some military people have called it the empty attic that's protected Canada for a long, long time. Well, it's not going to protect Canada in the same way. And so there was a sense that we have to get involved in at least the early discussions

of ballistic missile defense in order to protect our people. But if you look at the way that that the money was spent the 9.2 billion dollars I believe in terms of getting us to two percent of GDP almost all of its being spent in Canada a lot of that money the majority of it is salaries It's it's ammunition It's work that can be done in Valleyfield Quebec work that can be done in southwestern Ontario to build armored trucks. It's all aimed at getting us to a certain level, but also getting us away from the United States

and spending the money in Canada too. Shanta. Let's be clear on the golden shield, anti-missile defense. It's becoming an urban legend that Canada has always turned down any overtures to have conversations along those lines. That is not what we did in the past. We actually engaged actively in the last episode on this. And we even sent our then ambassador to send messages in Washington that we were on board with a shield. And what happened is in the end, Paul Martin reversed himself in the face of opposition in this country. Yeah, angering George Bush, the younger, right? Yeah. Yes. Well, angering George Bush is something we've done a lot of. I think most Canadians feel that

every time we angered George Bush was good news. Make of that what you wish, but we didn't go to Iran on that basis, to Iraq. And I think in hindsight, there are worse things in life than angering a US president, be it Donald Trump. But what I'm trying to say is, there is no cost or no binding mechanism to Canada for entering in a conversation on this.

And we have in the past, it may also turn out not to happen. But if it were to happen, there will be, because this isn't happening tomorrow, and I always have this comparison between one-offs, things that generate three days of really bad publicity, and then you move on, and long-term things that you need to build consensus for or keep consensus for, because otherwise they unravel over time.

So if Mr. Carney is serious, and if this is going to happen over a very long period, he is going to need to convince Canadians because it is one of the few things that he has done since he was elected that has been faced by serious solid pushback in the polls, in part driven by the fact that Donald Trump is championing this notion and it's called the Golden Dome. So he's going to have to sell this. But to say the thing Canada should do is right away say no because Donald Trump is asking

would not be smart. And it would get in the way of any other conversation that can yield productive results in the short term. But that discussion in Canada is not over. And that Golden Dome, by the way, is not coming over our heads tomorrow or the day after. And yes, the military would push for it as they pushed for the previous one, and as they pushed to go to Iraq with their American friends in Naurau and NATO. Okay. Hold on a second. I just want to move this Golden Dome thing aside for a minute

and get back to what I was trying to get at earlier, which is are we in fact making a significant change here in terms of the overall relationship that Canada is going to have with the rest of the world in the sense that we are not just anti-tariff rhetoric, but we are going to be moving away from the US and closer to what appears to be Western Europe and elsewhere in the world but we we are going to be making at least the desire of the Carney crowd is to move away firmly from the United States compared with the way we have been in the past. I'm not convinced that their desire is so strong but we'll see.

In part, there's political optics on this, but there are moves also, and I'll give you an example that has nothing to do with Mark Karlin himself. Back in the first Trump period when NAFTA was on at risk, we saw Canadians, premiers, people of all political persuasion, basically spending their time in the US,

as we saw in the early days of this trade war with Premier Ford, in particular, Jean Charret, deploying in the US. It was also Francois Legault's strategy to initially to believe that we would swarm Trump as we did last time with people going to him to say this makes no sense. Where is Francois de Gaulle this week? He ended up having to choose a trade mission. He's in Europe. He has come to the decision that there is, it's not that there is no audience for Canada in the US. It's that it's falling on deaf ears

by the time it reaches the president's circle. So let Mark Carney have those conversations and Dominique LeBlanc. And meanwhile, provinces, others are exploring alternatives. And I think that is actually more telling than whatever Mark Carney is saying or not saying, because it tends to vary from one day to the next because he is in a conversation with the US on tariffs,

and he needs to get those tariffs gone. Rob? Yeah, I think job one is to try and take the shackles off the Canadian economy in the short term by getting rid of the tariffs. As we were saying, I think last week, they're already showing real impact. Unemployment is up and our trade deficit has tripled.

That being said, I was advised strongly this week by some of the people who seem to know what the Prime minister is thinking, that they have to begin to try to reverse some of the pull of the United States. And I was surprised at the suggestion that the campaign rhetoric is not just rhetoric, it is reality, and they see it as something that they must do immediately and at great speed. And so, yes, we're always going to have geography and the US market that makes our relationship

with them very, very important. But the sense is that there has been a fundamental sea change that goes beyond Trump and that will always be a threat to Canada, an economic threat. Protectionism is real. Even if there was a deal with President Trump, even if there was a deal with President Trump, the Republican Party as it's constituted now under Trump and may be for some time, does not like trade deals. So they need to move away from the United States and they need to do it with alacrity. Okay. We're going to take our break. We've got, I want to talk about money and where is it coming from? Who is going to pay for all these things? You think we can answer that. Yes, we'd like that concisely and to the point.

Yeah, right. We'll get to that right after this. And welcome back. It's your Friday Good Talk. Chantelle Bair, Rob Russo, Peter Mansbridge here. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us, whatever platform you're joining us on. Okay. The country is allotting all kinds of money, billions of dollars worth to certain things. We saw the defense spending announcement earlier this week of over $9 billion to get us to

2% of GDP. That's an annual 2%, right? Like it's every year. But the 2% figure seems to be climbing on the part of other countries, up to 3.5%, maybe even 5%. So there's a lot of money to come out of that. There are tax cuts, so that reduces the revenue pot. There are reductions in, you know, one assumes there's gotta be a reduction in spending somewhere to kind of make up for all this unless you're gonna really drive deficits and debt.

Where's the money coming from? Where does the government expect to be able to fund these different things that it's doing? And then there are all the energy projects and the national and nation building stuff that is expected to be coming along quickly. Where's the money? Where's the money coming from? Chantelle, you have always had the answers to these.

Oh yeah, right. Thank you. The answer to that is you're going gonna have to wait for that first early government budget, because yes, it is, it is virtually impossible at this point, absent a real budget. And we haven't had one for more than a year now to know exactly what's happening where and what the trade offsoffs are, if any. What we know from campaign promises is that the prime minister campaigned on not touching transfers to the provinces.

That's a huge chunk of money for healthcare, post-secondary education. He's not raising taxes apparently since he just introduced the tax cut. He's not cutting equalization obviously. So what's he really doing and where does he find the money? You always hear about deficiencies when governments say they're looking for money. We're going to make the the civil service more productive, we're going to save money on contracts to outside contractors, consultants, etc. That's all possible. But it's there. Those are pennies against dollars. At the end of the day,

you cannot shrink your machine that is already having delivery issues, think of the passport crisis, or think of the Phoenix disaster, and expect it to at the same time, be productive and ensuring its core missions. So the absence of a budget means everyone is basically going on trust that or not to this will not result in an astronomical deficit that will be presented under its best light. But you know, what's going to happen to that? One thing I heard Mark Carney say this week, also in that interview, was he was asked

if he was going to be funding some of those so-called national projects that he wants to have happen. He seemed to be sending a clear signal that no, his checkbook was not going to be open. We're not apparently going to nationalize every national project that comes to the government's way. That message doesn't seem to have resonated, maybe as clearly to provinces and the private sector as it should, but the incentive for moving with legislation to facilitate these projects is meant for the private sector to get off its hands

and to present projects and not for government to fund projects that industry would not want to engage in. I'm thinking, for instance, of some of the oil and gas proposals that others have in mind because they are not convinced that there will be a sufficient market at completion for whatever they put in pipes. So we'll see how that evolves. It's going to be a really interesting debate, but on where the money is coming from.

At this point, it doesn't seem to bother too many Canadians, I guess, because it hasn't hit them in the pocketbook, but it's hard to cut when unemployment is rising and you're in a tear of war. Well, it always eventually hits the pocketbook so we'll see where that one ends up. I spend most of the week in Alberta and you know whether there's some cautious optimism there on both the political level in Alberta and on the industry level on Alberta but there's still this

question of opening up the checkbooks. Daniel Smith is talking now about, you know, joint operations with the private sector on in terms of pipelines. But at the moment it's just talk. So we'll see where that ends up because obviously governments want to see that kind of money flowing into the system to make some of these projects happen. What are you hearing, Rob? There's a sense in government that there is plenty of private capital out there

for these projects and that it needs to get off the sidelines and that government is moving with haste in order to try and tell those businesses to get off the sidelines. I'm sure we were going to get around to Michael Sabie at one point, but he comes from that world, the pension world. There are plenty of pension funds out there willing to negotiate and invest deals in large infrastructure projects that are probably going to be paying for decades and decades and decades. One of those pension funds bought the toll road in North of Toronto, the 407 for instance. So the money has to be lurched into action and some of the legislation that he's really ramming

through in some instances is trying to send a signal to business, we are serious about this. I'll tell you what Carney said and then what I think are some of the things in between the lines. When he was asked how he was going to pay for it, he said, savings and improving productivity. Well, we all know that you're not, you're not shekels, a few shekels maybe, not through taxes, through growing the economy. Well, growing the economy, I think economists agree that he can get rid of most of the internal trade barriers that will have a material impact on our GDP. It will grow the economy. More money will be coming in as a result.

But I heard him say the word sacrifice a little bit more this week than I've heard him say. And I think he's going to have to probably outline exactly what that means. You guys were referring to it as a shot in the pocketbook, but he's gonna have to flesh that out. He did say that he was gonna protect social programs, including the newer ones, pharmacare and dental care, but he underlined again, we cannot redistribute what we don't have.

So spending cuts are gonna be coming. They are coming. He's that means pain spending cuts is not painless. There will be some pain and he's going to need to tell us where we're going to feel the pain. I'm curious about you know, there is a pot of money sitting there that economists have pointed to in the past for reasons of because governments wanted to reduce their intake, but it's wide open to the opposite. It's called the GST, which is a way to make provinces richer too, because when you increase

the GST, many of them have a percentage of the GST meshed into their provincial sales tax. It wouldn't be popular, but it certainly would bring in money in a way that is based on consumption rather than based on income. And it has to be one possibility that governments have are asked to consider every once in a while, the issue is, do you really want to be the person, the prime minister who has done that?

And who designed the GST? Who helped design it? Anybody remember? Yeah, right. And I'm sure that Mr. Carney was not terribly excited when Stephen Harper went down the road of cutting the GST. It made for a great election promise, but economically, it was probably one of the worst fiscal choice that you could make. And in hindsight, that is still true.

But Rob, as mentioned, Mr. Sabia, who has left Hydro-Québec this week to become the clerk of the privy council. And I want to say this because I heard it on the radio and you guys know this and most of the people who listen to us. But I want to make sure that people understand the clerk of the privy council is not a high level secretary. That person doesn't just take notes. That person has daily contact with the prime minister and is as important to the prime minister as the top

person in the civil service as the chief of staff. And if you look at Mark Carney's entourage, there's going to be Marc-André Blanchard, who is the Chief of Staff, the former US, Canada envoy to the UN, but also someone who has a lot of business experience, and then Michael Sabia. But there is one thing I want to say about Michael Sabia and bigger projects beyond his experience as a Mandarin, beyond his recent experience with the Federal Civil Service. This is not someone who was away for 15 years and doesn't know what shape it is in.

He was Deputy Minister of Finance to Christian Freeland, so he knows the lay of the land. But I want to note that as Hydro-Québec Chair for a very short period in real life, less than two years, he is the engineer of that deal on hydro between Quebec, Newfoundland, and Labrador. It's not a done deal completely, but what he did there and what will remain as what he did to Hydro-Québec was relationships with First Nations. His appointment is one of the most reassuring signals this government has sent to First Nations across the country, that they will not be cast aside in the rush to big so-called national projects.

And one of the things that happened this week when Mr. Sabia was appointed, of course, the reaction in Quebec was, what do you mean you're leaving? Because he had been spearheading a very ambitious hydro plan. But the first voices or almost the first voices heard to say, we're really sorry to see him go. Think of this, a chairman of Hydro-Québec, first nation voices, saying we're sorry to see him go. And I think, you know, all kinds of things will have been said and written about Michael Sabia, but this, I think, is one of the most significant features of what he brings to Mark Carney's Prime Minister's office at the time when First Nations are naturally very suspicious

of the government's rush to put national projects in the works. You know, Indigenous participation was one of the key words of this energy conference I was at this weekend in Alberta. It came up in every single panel and interview I did. And there is a feeling that we've come a long way from the optics of that phrase, but they're still waiting to see it filled out in practice in a lot of areas. Let me underline the point about Michael Sabia, because the other term that's often used by the clerk of the Privy Council is that it's the most powerful unelected position in the country. It has enormous power over a massive in the country. And it has enormous power over a massive public service. And there is a feeling that there are gonna be big changes

in the public service. And Michael Sabia is the guy to make some of those things happen. Let me ask you this about, I think of them as the four horsemen of the, Okay. Of the Carnegie entourage. I won't use the a word here yet. Blanchard, the chief of staff. Sabia, the clerk of the purvey council. I put Hodgson in that group as the kind of outsider. There is Tim Hodgson, the energy minister,

and of course, Carney. The four of them, here's the thing to keep in mind about those four. All men, all roughly the same age, all roughly the same background. You know, CEOs, big in the financial sector, coming in with a mission. What do we make of that group? Am I placing too much importance that this is the core group

behind the Carney government, the new government? the the the Carney government, the new government? No, they are the quartet with the... I would throw in David Lometti into that group as well, another another Quebecer, as the guy who's going to be the conduit to a caucus and the political side that the others don't really have a lot of experience, Blanchard does, but on the political side. I find Sabia a fascinating figure. A lot of people have him tagged as a liberal, for instance. Well, people forget that his mother, a fiery feminist, twice ran for the conservatives, once

in an illustrious by-election battle in Trinity Spadina, where Jim Coot's, Pierre Trudeau's principal secretary was running. And she ran against him. Dan Heap ended up winning that. So there's no political stripe that's discernible to him. Dan Heap ended up winning that. So there's no political stripe that's discernible to him. His forays into politics, when I was talking earlier about who was one of the architects of the GST, well, that was Michael Sabia. He was working for Mulroney at the time when they brought in the GST.

It would be hard. I think Prime Minister Carney has said that he's not going to pay for what's coming through tax increases. It's hard to increase consumption taxes when the economy is not doing particularly well. So I don't think he's going to recommend that. But they are all birds of a feather.

And I think it's another sign that they don't want to waste time trying to teach each other a language that might be foreign to newcomers. That they feel like they don't have a lot of time and that they have to move with purpose. And so they are going to proceed with people who understand the language and understand the issues and can do deals. You know Hodgson is of that world as well. Blanchard is of that world and clearly now Michael Sabia is of that world and we know Carney is of that world. Blanchard and Sabia both were at the

pension funds. They were both at the ques de depot. Carney was running Brookfield. So when I hear that people say there is plenty of capital out there, that government doesn't need to pour necessarily millions of billions of dollars into these projects because there is capital out there, I assume it's because those guys know that there's plenty of capital out there and they know how to bring it together. Chantelle, do you want to make a point on that before we take our final break? I don't disagree that they are the core group, but I'm also fascinated by the fact that we have a prime minister who has the least knowledge of Quebec in a long time, but no one is going to argue that he has not filled his office with people

who actually know everything about Quebec Inc. and Quebec in general. So if he goes for missteps in Quebec, it's going to be because he's not taking their advice. I would also note on the political label of Michael Sabia. The tea was appointed to Idaho Quebec by someone who no one would suspect of being a liberal, Francois Legault, who was really sorry to see him go. They had built a really solid relationship, and he served at the Case de l'Époux under various governments of various stripes. So to say this is a liberal that Mark Carney is

recruited as one heard in some fairly shallow conservative circles, I would argue, is kind of showcasing ignorance of reality. Of course, the current brand of conservatives would probably be tempted in the same breath to say that running against Pierre Trudeau in the case of Michael Xavier's mother, Laura Xavier, was at a time when the conservative party was not really conservative. So go figure. But what it does show when you talk about this lineup though, is that it's really hard to think of a Pierre Poilier victory and a lineup that can compare in expertise and track record to the one that's assembled by Mike Crownlee. Speaking of who's a conservative, a certain person who's on this panel, not named Chantel, suggested to me that I ask Premier Smith this week whether she ever wakes up and wonders did we just elect a conservative as prime minister?

Given some of the things that Mark Carney has done both during the campaign and since the campaign, she laughed but she didn't say no. So I found that interesting. Okay, we're going to take our final break. We'll come back and we'll talk about a conservative right after this. And welcome back. Time for our final segment of Good Talk for this week. Chantel, Rob, Peter, all here for you. So some interesting polling data. I thought after the election, we weren't

going to talk about polls anymore, but they just keep on coming. We have so many polling firms in this country and they just keep churning it out. You never know for sure who's paying for some of this stuff or whether it's an add-on to a thing about laundry detergent or what have you. But nevertheless, there are polls and some of the stuff this week has not been very favorable for the Conservative Party of Canada and especially for Pierre Poliev who was seeking a seat and will run on a by-election and final dates and all that still to come. But it shows Nick Nanos talking at Nanos that there has been a precipitous drop in support for the Conservative Party down and back

into the low 30s with the Liber liberals holding firm in the low to mid 40s. Does this mean anything at this point in time to anyone? Obviously we talk about it at times but should Pierre Polyiev be very worried about his position at the moment? Who wants to take a run at that first? Yes. I'll go ahead. I mean, first of all, let me preface this by saying that outside of rip periods, I believe almost all polling is, as John Deaf Baker said, a fit for incontinent canines.

And so with that caveat, I think Canadians had an election. They want this prime minister to succeed. They voted for him out of fear and anxiety. And so all of those numbers have to be taken for with a small boulder of salt. The conservatives are still mystifying and befuddling to me because something else happened this week in conservative circles that that that left me kind of dizzy in stupefaction. me kind of dizzyed in stupefaction. And there was a ginger group started to go after Doug Ford because they don't believe

that he's a real conservative. And so what are they doing? Some of these people are associated with Pierre Poilier. I don't say that he's behind it. I don't think he is. But at a time when the federal conservatives should be reaching out to provincial premiers where they acknowledge that this was a mistake, they have decided that they're going after the guy who just won his

third successive majority mandate in the province of Ontario. And, and so the the polling numbers, they don't surprise me, it's kind of normal. We're in a honeymoon period, people, they're not swooning, they don't surprise me. It's kind of normal. We're in a honeymoon period. People, they're not swooning. They're worried and want to support Mark Carney. And yet what are conservatives doing? They're turning on Doug Ford.

Go figure. Well, that's kind of par for the course when things are going badly. Why I say he should be worried, a number of reasons, because there is a direct line for one between his personal political personality and those declining numbers. And poll after poll does show that part of the reason why the election turned out not the only reason was when he has a personality and his divisive approach to politics. And what Rob is talking about may not be the product of Poynyev's work, but it certainly

was inspired by his style of politics and this way of... Listen, the senior conservatives this week were going around saying to anyone and a lot of conservatives, Ronald Ambrose, others, welcome Michael Sebiya's appointment, were going around saying, this is treason, this guy is a liberal, you need to go after him. When in the end, it's still the same us versus them. If you're not one of us and the shrinking of the tent is obvious, then you're an enemy.

But the reason why I say you should be worried is I kind of look back. I didn't go back 100 years. I went back to Pierre Trudeau. The only opposition leader, official opposition leader federally, who was given a second chance and who actually became prime minister is Stephen Harper. And the Harper circumstances are a one-off. He had just reunited

two warring factions of the movement. He managed to hold Paul Martin, who had expected to win 200 plus seats to a minority and then went on to win the party. There is absolutely no comparison between that example and the notion that Pierre Poilier gets a second chance. If he does, it's more likely to be a John Turner second chance. We all know what that meant. Years of backstabbing, then a second chance for someone who will become prime minister the day after Mark Carney calls the next election. So on that basis, I don't think that there is a movement behind someone that is obvious yet, but I am sure that it's being talked about. And what Rob describes

only drives those movements to, I mean, I looked at Pia Poliak's news conferences this week. In one case, he was unbriefed on the timing of something that had already happened. In the other, he called for severe cuts to immigration and then walked away rather than try to account for what he meant by severe. He looked, to tell you the truth, like a loser. And that's the point that Fred DeLorey makes, you know, who ran Aaron O'Toole's campaign unsuccessfully in the previous election. But his point is that every time he steps out like this right now, he

looks like a loser and he should just stay away from the cameras and stay away from the moment. It's not their moment. You know, it's the government's moment and they'll do with that moment whatever they do. But meanwhile, he's got rebuilding to do in the background and he's got to get himself reelected. But clearly, Poliev is not listening to that advice because he pops up all the time. And as you said, Chantel, he looks like a loser because he was a loser. When does Pierre Poliev not read the supplementary estimates? He reads everything and he hadn't read the supplementary estimates. They had come out and he didn't know it. Uh, and it was a, it was a bad moment for him. Um, so he does, he,

Chantel says he looks like a loser. I believe he looks like he's lost. He's really lost his way. Okay. We're gonna have to leave it at that for now. We'll see what happens. Next week's our, uh, our final good talk of the season before we, uh, we all sort of head off for the summer. We'll have a couple of shows during the summer as well. But that's it for now. I'm Peter Mansfors. Thanks to Chantelle Bear. Thanks to Rob Russo. We'll see you all again in seven days.