The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Does The Building of The New Canada Start This Weekend?

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

The royal visit, the throne speech & the 1st question period are over. Now the real work of building the so-called "new Canada" begins. 

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Bear and Rob Russo. Welcome to your Friday Good Talk. And as always, watch to talk about. And, you know, there's this sense that's, you know, since the election campaign and certainly in terms of what many liberals have been saying, including the Prime Minister, that they're on the verge of kind of, you know, remaking the country on all kinds of different levels. It's going to be a new Canada that comes out of all this.

So expectations are high. Delivery now will be the the order of the day and To me it starts in some ways with this weekend when the first ministers gather In Saskatoon, which is an interesting place for them to gather to try and talk about the future When it's really the present that is occupying the minds of people in northern Saskatchewan with terrible wildfires going on there thousands of people Have had to leave their homes same Same in northern Manitoba as well. This is once again the story of Canada in the late spring summer wildfires and it's a big deal. So we'll see whether that takes over the conference. But in terms of the First Minister's Conference itself, how much expectation is there that this is really the beginning of something?

Is there a sense on the part of the participants that you've heard of or you've talked to that would suggest that they really are ready to start making deals about the future? Chantal, why don't you start us this week? Okay, so undoubtedly there is momentum behind the idea of provinces and the federal government getting together to move forward on what are called projects of national significance, a definition yet to come. And undoubtedly a lot of that momentum has come from what has been happening in the Canada-US relationship. I don't want to jinx this with this parallel, but I still will. The last time I saw momentum behind getting something done was Meach Lake. And I remember that time. I remember David Peterson's comment as he went into Mead's Lake and Escar.

He was Premier of Ontario at that point, saying this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to resolve the issue of Quebec not being on side with the Constitution. And it did work. They did come out not only with a deal, but a deal that they perfected successfully a couple of weeks later at the Lange Veyblok. My fear is that the easy part is coming to some kind of a consensus. The hard part comes next, and that is where Meech failed, and it was called execution. And I will, to the end of my journalistic days, argue that part of the reason Mead failed is that execution was sloppy, that first ministers walked out of there. And you remember that. We have a deal and it's going to happen. And when anyone pointed out there's a three-year window, there is an election coming in New Brunswick, this will become an election issue. And possibly if there's a government change,

that government will not have signed off on this deal. Is there no provision for this happening more quickly? We all know the rest of the story and what happened over those three years. There is nothing that the premiers can agree on on Monday that will get executed absent provincial elections, absent a debate. And any attempt to circumvent that debate by saying time is of the essence, will almost certainly backfire. I totally understand that there is momentum in the House of Commons in the eye of the Prime Minister, because he believes that on this issue, projects of national interest, which means we now call that conventional energy, it's oil and gas that is what is meant by that fossil fuel based projects. I totally understand that the prime minister believes probably rightly that he can get

conservative support for this in both houses of parliament, not that it matters as much in the Senate anymore. I believe there are less than a dozen conservatives left officially conservative in the Senate. But that does not make it easier to sell in places like BC and Quebec to say, we got this done in parliament because we got together with Pia Paulyev's conservatives on an issue that touches on energy versus climate change. So I'm curious to see the execution. And I am hoping based on what I've just said that the premiers walk into this with their

eyes wide open. I am not totally optimistic because I'm watching what's happening in Ontario where Premier Ford is trying to strike the iron while it is hot and is running or creating an indigenous backlash that eventually will end up in the courts. So this is me looking at this meeting thinking maybe the premiers and Mark Carney are wiser than their predecessors of a bygone era. But I've seen this movie and the end does not get written next week in Saskatchewan. You know, it's funny that you bring up 1990 and Meach Lake and everything because they misjudged the fact that there were elections to come in that three-year period. They misjudged that there was a guy named Elijah Harper standing there with a feather in his hand and there could be Elijah Harper's at this point

as well. And I do remember, you know, you remember the David Peterson quote, I remember another one that he had in the midst of all that process. He said, there's a light at the end of the tunnel on this. I just can't see it yet. And as it turned out, they never did. So we'll see where this one goes. Rob, your sense, and it should mention that Rob just come back from a week in Alberta where he was researching a piece for his magazine, The Economist.

What's your sense of what to expect as a result of this meeting? I'm going to try to be the modest optimist in all of this. I do believe that Mark Carney is going to find out how difficult it is from going to promises and words, which he has been delivering with real resolve, I think, over the last few days, to actually getting things done. This is going to be the first time when he's going to be judged on what he's actually got done.

In terms of the first ministers meeting, there is some cause for some optimism, I believe, because some of it is already being driven by the provinces themselves. And in that case, I'm talking about internal trade barriers. I look at what Nova Scotia started, Tim Houston, by essentially unilaterally declaring an open border where he said, if a province agrees to drop, we're gonna come to an agreement with that province right away. So, we got a deal done very quickly

between Nova Scotia and Ontario. And just that alone is worth $4.1 billion in terms of an increase to the GDP. A similar deal between Alberta and British Columbia, if it could ever be done, would be worth $26 billion. Ontario and Quebec would be worth 32 billion. That doesn't mean it's going to happen. But when these things are driven

by the provinces themselves, there is some cause in this part of federal-provincial relations for some optimism. The Western premiers met last week while I was in Alberta. And I spoke to Danielle Smith afterwards. She made some demands that a lot of people thought were just never going to be made. And I think Premier Eby kind of threw up

some obstacles to the notion of what she was proposing. She came away with some optimism based on the discussion that I had with her afterwards. And I think when Mark Carney, the Prime Minister, talks about what he's going to pitch at this meeting, which is give me a list of your projects that are ready to go now and that we can get an indigenous agreement with very, very quickly. That's the other difference between now and 1990

is they don't consult indigenous people afterwards, they're consulting them ahead of time, and they're making them partners. And in many instances, the federal government is paying for their stake. That's what the plan is. So they have learned some lessons from the Meach Lake process.

What does paying for their stake mean? It means they will become owners and the federal government will fund their ownership stake. And that's part of the notion of reconciliation is what that means. It's a recognition of the fact that indigenous people have been left behind because of the way they've been treated by governments over the last millennium. And it's time for them to catch up. And they're prepared. They are prepared to play this role. And I'm not sure if we're going to get to the idea of Alberta secession, which is what really got me out to Alberta. But I can tell you that First Nations leaders there know their treaty rights, and they are prepared to exercise those treaty rights should Alberta ever get into a serious secession discussion. So hideously complicated.

Even on this issue of internal trade barriers, there's a recognition that they're not going to get all the way there. There's no way they're going to get all the way there by July 1, which is what the prime minister's goal is. I think he is going to get a sobering lessons in the reality of a federal state like ours, where you do have competing interests, where a province like Nova Scotia

wants to keep fish processing in Newfoundland. they're not going to give that up because it's a vital employment source. But you can do more than nibble around the edges, and it's being driven by the provinces. And I think that that should give us some cause for some optimism. And the potential benefits to our GDP are significant enough that I think other premieres will take note. So in case people are confused, there are two major issues on the table, and they are different issues. Internal provincial trade is one, and those so-called projects of national interest are another. And they are two different files. There has been some backing away from the

tight calendar that Mark Carney seemed to have in mind during the election campaign on inter-provincial trade barriers and those that the federal government have in place that stand in the way. This week it was clear that they are no longer saying, we will get this done by July 1st. They were saying we will be introducing legislation on it by July 1st. And that's the easy part, to tell you the truth. The other part is even more complex and requires some fairly deft handling,

including inside Mr. Carney's caucus and cabinet. The environmental wing of the liberal caucus and the Liberal Party did not campaign for Mark Carney, so that he would be Pierre Poilier on climate. And and whatever Mark Carney does, it will have to satisfy inside the government or give something he can live with to Stephen Gilbo. He may not be the environment minister anymore. That does not make him a yes ma'am to anything that goes on in the government that pertains to the environment. And from the outside the likes of Catherine McKenna was the initial environment minister. So there are those who say, oh, isn't it terrible that this probably won't get done by July 1?

I am of the other school. You need to give Canadians a chance to understand what is going on. You do need to hear the stakeholders from various communities, including Indigenous and parliamentarians do need a proper amount of time. I'm not talking two years here, but between now and July 1st, to kick the tires of a piece of legislation that could easily go off the rail if you do not see those obstacles coming and you do

not address them to the public. I go back to Meech. Remember that news conference about a weekend of there were people who were close to indigenous groups. There were people who were close to Pierre Turlough, the former prime minister. And what was the conventional wisdom thinking? Well, it doesn't matter. They don't matter because we have a deal. Everybody signed off on it. What happened is the field of

public opinion of the proponents of that project was left to its opponents. And if you railroad the opposition to get a quick passage of legislation on this, you will be leaving the field of public opinion where you need to be to explain what you're doing while public opinion is on your side. You will be leaving it to those who do not want it for all kinds of reasons. So me, I'm a big apostle of we have a parliament and we should give it time to consider what is a major piece of legislation and not sit there and say, well, we have a clock. It looks too much like you're trying to use what's going on south of the border to slip in a quick one. And so we'll see what the next few weeks bring.

But again, I remind you, there are about eight debate days left for issues other than opposition days or the Trump speech debate. There's not a lot of days. Now, and it feels so weird to be talking about the clock running out when there was just an election. And they're just getting down to business. Can I take a quick sidebar here?

And it's on the issue of the environmental stuff, because what I'm trying to find out is, or understand is Mark Carney abandoned all his environmental principles. I mean, let's face it for the last five years, he's made a name on the international scene, not because of his England Bank of Canada status, but because of his status on climate change among other environmental issues. Now suddenly now he's looking fairly or unfairly as a guy who's abandoned all that. I mean, has he? No, I don't think he has although he is prepared to put water on his wine but he makes a point of saying over and

over again when he talks about infrastructure for energy that it would be for clean and conventional energy. The Pathways Alliance in Alberta is working up a very big carbon capture and storage proposal as well. So he talks about that. When there is discussion of pipelines, I think everybody agrees that the one that makes the most sense is another liquid, a local five natural gas pipeline to the Pacific. And I think the environmental argument for that is probably going to be if Canada is displacing the use of coal in India, in China, in Malaysia, in places like that where coal is still the primary source

of fuel in many instances, that is a net contribution to the reduction of emissions in countries that produce the largest emissions on the planet. So I think that that's going to be the argument that's going to be made. I think it's a legitimate argument. You can make an argument that Canada can actually help others and contribute more to reducing emissions if we send cleaner energy like LNG abroad via pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific. Yeah, and I'm not going to quarrel with that. It's an interesting argument and it's part

of the debate as it should be. But every time I hear arguments like that, I see a cart that is running away from horses. When Justin Trudeau came to government and over the past few years, we were discussing Keystone XL, Northern Gateway, Energy East, I'm gonna stop there. So please name me the projects we are talking about, because I'm not thinking that Mark Kearney's government seriously thinks he is gonna build those infrastructures projects we are talking about, because I'm not thinking that Mark Carney's government seriously

thinks he's going to build those infrastructures on my dime. At this point, I have not seen industry, conventional energy industry step forward with projects. I'm also curious, and that is on me, probably, and my ignorance of that field, but I did hear Donald Trump say drill, baby drill. And so where is Keystone XL? Where is the resurrected project that was vetoed by Joe Biden and that we heard about for so many years? I'm just curious about the gap between all this talk and the silence from the industry on pipelines, be it liquefied gas or oil or whatever. You're precisely for the reasons that you raise, Chantal. Business has been silent because every time they try to invest in a project like that, the rules of the game change.

We all saw the small mountains of pipeline that had been stacked up for the Keystone pipeline, and it's probably rusting someplace. The notable federal presence while I was in Alberta was Tim Hodgson's speech to the oil patch. Listen, this man is, again, not a sort of political tub thumper. He was nervous.

He weighed every single syllable. He seemed very, very ill at ease. And yet, in a room of two or three hundred oil patch executives, his speech went over very, very well. And like almost ecstatic, to tell you the truth. And they were just words. I tried to introduce myself to him after his speech, and he couldn't run away from me fast enough. Now, part of it is, I'm sure, not because I'm not without my charms, but he was going straight from that speech into a meeting with a lot of the senior executives of those oil companies to try

and say to them how he's going to deliver on what he's promising. And, and, you know, therein lies a skepticism from the Alberta government. But the initial reaction was, okay, this guy seems serious. And so we will look again at investing in projects. And but let's talk about what we're going to do so that we don't end up losing money and what they're going to do so that we don't end up losing money and what they're going to do so that we don't end up wasting everybody's time. It's a dance. It's interesting. And yeah, okay, it's a dance. I can't wait for this minister to come and deliver the same speech in Quebec.

That will be a really, really interesting speech or to have someone deliver that speech. I'm not asking Stephen Gilbo to deliver it. There are other Quebec ministers, Francois-Philippe Champagne, possibly. But at this point, for instance, on this issue, when I go out of province, I hear about the overtures of the Quebec government, the new overtures to the possibility of pipelines. Every time I have to remind people that we are talking about a government facing an election in a year, the point when the premier is the least popular premier in the country and is running second or third by quite a margin to other parties in the voting intention polls. So you can put all your dimes in Mr. Legault's piggy bank, but that piggy bank is possibly on the way to be broken forever

in the next election. So it's one thing to go to Alberta and get all this applause, but it is another thing to build the consensus, to build on those good words and that consensus, oh, let me surprise you, that pro-pipeline, pro-development consensus, is not going to be built in Alberta, it's already pretty much there. So yeah, I'm going to give points for courage when those speeches are delivered in Vancouver, in Victoria, in Montreal, and Halifax. Yeah. I think why an LNG pipeline to the Pacific rather than a west-east pipeline to St. John is probably where they're going to start with first. But we've all seen it. Even as recently as 2016, when Justin Trudeau made a deal on emissions

with all the premiers. Remember that picture of all of them together and with all of their happy faces and everything else, how long that lasted? Well, you know that I used, I was giving a course at McGill for a while at their master's in public administration school. And I would use that picture with another picture,

the picture of those premiers and the picture of the premiers lined up a year later. And you know what? Oh, many of those faces that were smiling a year before were no longer in office. They'd all been defeated. That is what I meant with the Meach Lake example. Then elections happen

But if you make the stakes high enough, these states become the stakes in the election Someone will campaign against them on it and maybe win. I'm gonna do a Chantelle on Chantelle here Because she's always great at reminding us Chantel on Chantel here because she's always great at reminding us the danger of making comparisons on political situations. It's totally faulty. Yes. The, the, the only thing about the Lagos situation now and what it could be a year from

now, we have to keep reminding ourselves of what the liberal situation was a year ago and what it is today. I know that, I know the comparisons are different. If you're predicting, I'm not predicting anything. I agree. He should. Okay. We got to take our break. But before I go, who's the first minister to watch out for in these in these next couple of days as a result of this Saskatchewan thing? I mean, obviously there'll be a lot of focus on the prime minister as his first one. There'll be the normal focus on Smith and Ford. Who are you going to be watching? The NDP Premiers.

The two NDP Premiers? The two NDP Premiers. Not because of what will happen in their provinces respectively, although it will matter, especially in the case of BC, but because they will send a fairly powerful signal to the people who are looking at this with the skepticism based on climate policy, we're going to be looking for allies. It's going to be very difficult for what remains of the NDP on Parliament Hill to wage a battle on this if the two NDP premiers are on site. I'll be watching for Scott Moe. He has been far more quiet than Danielle Smith is in terms of his demands for infrastructure

and resource infrastructure in particular, but he has influence. He doesn't have the, he's not facing the rearguard action that Danielle Smith is facing, who is essentially trying to fight an insurgency in her own party. And he has influence, I think, in Alberta. People in Alberta watch him. So Danielle Smith has said that she's going to give Mark Carney three to six months. That seems an impossible amount of time in order to get things done. Scott Mowat doesn't have those kinds of demands, but he wants to see things done and his signal will be interpreted one way or

another in the province of Alberta, which I think is in very, very dangerous territory for the country after my week there. I worry about where Alberta is heading. Okay. We're going to talk about that when we come back from the break. I'm going to watch Wab Kinew over these next couple of days for many of the reasons that Chantel mentioned, but also that he seems to be able to touch on every aspect of some of the issues we've mentioned during the first half hour of the program today. He's passionate about them. He's not shy about them. It'll be very interesting to see how he handles these next couple of days. Okay, we're going to take a break. Come right back and we'll talk about Alberta right after

this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here with the Friday episode of The Bridge, which of course is good talk. Chantelle Bair, Rob Russo here. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. We're glad to have you with us,

no matter which platform you are connecting with us on. All right, Rob, you had your week, or almost a week, whatever it was, in Alberta. It sounds like from what you've already told us that you were talking to all the right people to try and understand for your audience and for us right now what to make of the Alberta Secession story tell us what you're what you're thinking well here's where I'm worried it's it's curdled from an anti-liberal thing

or anti-Ottawa thing into an anti-Canadian thing in many instances. And that worries me. There's a sense among some of the people who are behind the Alberta Secession movement that they have nothing in common with the rest of the country. I think that's wrong, but again, I think that that's an evolution

in something that has really been there for a long, long time in one form or another. I went to a rally of the Alberta Republican Party. And there was Gordon Kessler. Anybody remember him from 1982, Western Canada concept, won a by-election in Old Stidsbury as the first Alberta separatist candidate and so they brought him back to entertain about 500 people who showed up for a rally that I was at in Red Deer and

there I noticed that there's the census is we just Canada can't help us anymore. They're too much in our face and it's not necessarily true that they're interested in joining the United States. They see themselves as a distinct people who just want to be left alone. I spoke to a woman named Aretha Van Hurk as well, who's written a book called Mavericks that I really recommend. Great writer. Great book. Where she talked a little bit too about the mythology of all of this kind of Albertan independent cowboy

kind of streak. And that, you know, her point of view is Alberta has been given so much in terms of beauty and the resources that are out of that beauty and they've done very very well as Canadian citizens and that it's their duty to share that that wealth and that beauty with Canadians and then and they've prospered In in between all of these people is a premier who has acknowledged that there is frustration. That frustration now is something that, as she has said publicly, threatens to break out into another party, which would probably and could end up consuming her own party.

And so she has lowered the threshold for a referendum on independence in part in order to deal with a political problem that threatens her hold on power. She makes the legitimate point, however, when I point out Quebec's example to her, that Quebec went through about 60 years of discussions like this that consumed some of the best minds in the province, that saw an outflow of capital. You know we all remember when Montreal was a financial capital of Canada there was a reason why Montreal got the Olympics why Montreal got the first baseball team why Montreal got Expo because it was Canada's premier city. And we saw an outflow of capital, we saw an outflow of people, we saw an outflow of ideas, and it kind of held the province back in some ways

for a long time. And she said, when I posed this to Daniel Smith, she said, well, what about the last 10 or 15 years where Alberta's concerned? We've been held back as well. We can't get our resources to market. Our resources are priced below the world price because of that.

So there is a building tension there. There is, despite what Paul say, it's hard for me to conceive of majority support for independence, but I reminded her of David Cameron. And the David Cameron example came up a lot. This was a guy who had a lot of problems with the right wing of his conservative party

and decided to give them a referendum. And it turned into Brexit. So I take it very, very seriously. And I think the rest of the country should take it seriously as well. Well, I can tell you one person who's taking it seriously right now is Chantel. She's been winding up there for the last 30 seconds.

So a word about those great days we all remember as Montreal being the financial capital of the country. Yeah, those were the days when Montreal operated in English, as did the financial world that was dominating Montreal. And yes, people left, but they mostly left not because of sovereignty. They mostly left because of Bill 101 and this strange notion that the language of 90% of the population should somehow be reflected in the face of Montreal. So me, you know, you're asking someone who first traveled to Montreal on a train

with family, I must have been eight years old, I had Peter no sense that Montreal was not like Ottawa, an English city, looking at the signs outside the window. So before we rewrite history about how great life was before the Potskiviqua and before French took over, oh my God, how could that happen? Let's have a reality check on history here. As for the contention that Alberto has been held back, a trans-mountain pipeline, which was built with your dime and mine or expanded, is at 70% capacity.

Not that it will not reach that capacity, but it is not as if it doesn't exist. It never gets mentioned. It's like everything bad happened and nothing good. Can you name another government in our modern history that is financed with taxpayer money and taken over a pipeline expansion because otherwise the project would have failed miserably and that would have been a major problem for Alberta. I don't know very many. It's very strange that when kids read history books and were not around to talk about this, they will see that Justin Trudeau built a pipeline. Interesting difference between him and Brian Orlone, Stephen Harper, Jean-Claude Seen. Should I

go on? Me, I think the first duty of a sovereignty movement is to convince fellow citizens of the worthiness of the cause. And for that, you do need to build a real party that has strong support. To do it on the sidelines of a governing party and clear to hold that knife on the throat, not of Ottawa, but of Daniel Smith, which is what the sovereignty movement in Alberta is currently doing, is not necessarily a winning strategy. It's a fairly divisive strategy. I do take seriously the feelings of Albertans that they are always on the outside looking

in, but I do not necessarily believe based on what I see in Alberta, that the people that go to the meeting that Rob talked about reflect Albertans by and large. And on this, I'm not making my own judgment. I'm basing it on what people like Naheed Njiu, who was elected mayor of Calgary a number of times before he became the leader of the NDP in Alberta, or Jason Kenney, not someone without credentials in Alberto or federally as a conservative, are saying. So yes, when I went to work on the English side of the media, which was after the second referendum, but before the passions of the second referendum died down, Youssef Bouchard was still premier. I did notice that there was a tendency in the English language

media outside Quebec to lead every story with Canada is threatened, Quebec is going to moral. Every story out of Quebec was always about sovereignty. Even when it wasn't even the conversation in Quebec, you would have believed reading that the only things Quebecers did all day was think about sovereignty, which they were not. So I am wary of replicating the same media pattern about Alberta. I think it's a bit more complex than let's all be scared and do something about this. Maybe let's all talk and see where common ground is. A couple of things. In terms of the last point, the business there is already scared. Nancy Atko, the CEO of- Nancy Southern.

Nancy Southern, the CEO of Atko, has said it's already affecting projects there. That South Korean and Japanese investment is hesitating on a big project and asking very, very pointed questions. Others said the same thing. There is a premium that is going to be paid for this discussion. I asked Premier Smith what role she would play in any eventual referendum. She wouldn't tell me. She said she'd play the role that Albertans wanted her to play. Again, that seems to me a door left open. And, you know,

I see the danger of the wildfire and the brush fire. I see it there, and it concerns me. In terms of Quebec, Chantel is right. It was a much more monochromatic place culturally than it was now in terms of the dominance of English and the dominance of Anglophones in the business world. It's a far more vibrant place culturally now, I think, certainly than it was there. But there was capital flight. It did leave the province poor. And as I like to quote Jacques Parisot all the time,

ça coutrait toujours plus d'être un Quebecois, he acknowledged that price when he discussed independence. But he also acknowledged, I think as Chantel has, that there will be cultural riches that will be appropriated as a result. And I think that Quebec has proven that. Okay. I want to take this fascinating conversation, and it's a learning one for both of us, obviously with Chantelle's background and Rob is a former Quebec City correspondent. None of this comes new to them and watching this story unfold in Alberta, I mean as I said Rob has just been out there for a week.

Chantelle goes out there, what, in another few days. When you're heading to Alberta at this point, Chantelle, and you have firm views on this, as you've just expressed, what are you looking for? What's the question you want to hear answered? I want to hear the questions. When we speak, as you know, we always say our say, so I'll tell them about the angle of the questions than I am about anything I bring to those audiences. That's why we do these things.

Yes, we get money, but we also do them because we get to talk to people who come at what we do from a different perspective and you experience politics, especially these days, differently than we in the bubble might. I did something for municipal administrators this week, and a number of them obviously were from Alberta, and not just from Edmonton and Calgary. And it was really interesting. Some of them actually lived, or still live, in the writing where

Pierre Poilier was going to be running. And yes, there is a possibility that he may face a secessionist candidate in that writing. So it is really interesting. But I still believe that But I still believe that what I see from here is what I'm going to see there, which is that there is a healthy debate going on in Alberta between Albertans. And it is not for Mark Carney or Francois Legault or me to say this is right or this is wrong. The only way conversations like that get settled is by having them among the people who are actually impacted by the conversation. I understand the, well, business is always scared. So what's the news here? So I totally understand the perils on the corporate side of engaging in that conversation.

But I do not believe that you resolve a discussion by telling one side to shut up because it might scare some people out of putting money in projects. I find Danielle Smith's position untenable. You are either the premier of a federalist party or you are not, but you can't have a referendum and say, I'm going to decide what based on polls, if the yes side to secession looks like it's winning, she will become the champion for it. And if it's not, she will defend Canada. It's an untenable position for her, but it's even more of an untenable position for Pierre

Poilier should he try to straddle that same fence. You're going to find when you get there, Chantal, that many of the questions are familiar, that people are asking. I've got a poster in my office upstairs. I don't know if you remember the poster from the referendum. It was very easy. It showed the loonie, the passport, and the flower. You're gonna get your currency,

you're gonna get your passport, you're gonna be happy if you vote yes in 1995. And those are the questions people are asking. What passport are we going to have? What currency are we going to use in an independent Alberta? And nobody's answering these questions, by the way. What about our trade deals?

Like what kind of trade, how do we get our resources in the Landlocked Province to Tidewater? So those difficult questions haven't been asked. When I pressed Premier Smith on the role she would play, eventually she came around to the position, I'm going to try and make the best deal for Alberta. So that question never gets asked, the referendum question.

Again though, you've lowered the threshold from 600,000 signatures required to 177,000. That threshold is going to be met. What she hasn't done yet, she's proposed this legislation, it hasn't been passed yet. What she hasn't done yet, she's proposed this legislation. It hasn't been passed yet. If it doesn't get passed, maybe that question doesn't get posed.

But then she's going to have another problem on the right side of her flank as well. I think she's really hoping for some sort of quick sign from Mark Carney that gives her a political win, that sends her into an election next year so that she doesn't have to worry about her right flank. But again, she's juggling chainsaws. All right. We're going to leave it at that. Although I'm sure we're going to talk about it some more, especially when Chantelle gets back from her little trip to Albert

and I'm going out there as well in another 10 days or so. Okay. Enough on that. We're going to take our last break, come back and talk about Donald Trump. What a guy. We're going to take our last break come back and talk about Donald Trump. What a guy will try and figure out his latest maneuvers on the tariff question coming up right after this Welcome back final segment of good talk for this week Chantelle and Rob are here and I'm Peter Mansbridge. Glad to have you with us. So can somebody explain to me? When it starts like that, it's not promising. What is he up to? Our friend Mr. Trump?

It depends what the issue is, but it always seems to be when you think something is a done deal, it's suddenly not a done deal. When you think something is off the table, like talk about 51st state, it's suddenly back on the table. What's happening here with this guy? Well, I thought Pete Hoekstra, our new ambassador was gonna tell us, because he knows, he knew for sure

that the talk of the 51st state was over. And Pete Hoekstra has now learned that the difficult lesson of the twitch muscle that is Donald Trump's brain, he is, I think the word we use over and over again is Mercurial. But here's the reality. The reality is we still have tariffs and the clumsy threats against Canada are still there. I don't think Bob Ray was wrong when he talked about the

notion that we would pay 61 billion dollars for Golden Dome is anything less than a protection racket. I think he was right. The reality of all of that, particularly as we talk about First Minister's meeting next week in Saskatchewan, is that all of this feeds uncertainty. And that uncertainty is already having the desired effect of a freezing investment in Canada. And you listen to Tiff Macklem, it's already having the slowing effect on our economy.

So he is who he always was. He's not going to change. It makes dealing with him, and we are dealing with him at a very intense level. The trade officials were in Washington again last week. So was Dominique LeBlanc. There is this suggestion that we might be coming towards a deal sooner with Donald Trump on these two areas of defense and the auto trade than later, like before the G7 even, that's the kind of thing that they're working on. But how you make a deal with somebody like that is unfathomable to me.

And why you'd even wanna make a deal with him because he doesn't adhere to the deals he's made in the past. He signs deals and then just forgets about it. Our economy depends on it. I deals and it just depends on it. I mean we just cannot ignore it. Yeah, our economy cannot depend on a deal that the person who makes the deal doesn't respect. They're basically going around in circles here and wasting a lot of energy on something that does not bring the outcome, which is called stability, which is what everyone is looking for.

which is called stability, which is what everyone is looking for. There were things that were interesting that did happen this week, and one of those was the chickens are coming home to roost in the US with the courts, obviously, on tariffs. That initial trade court ruling that is now being paused changed nothing in the sense that until this is resolved at the highest level, it maintains uncertainty. It just makes it even more complicated to see what the outcome of all this will be. And if there is an outcome negative for the administration, are there other tools that this administration could turn to to achieve the same outcome? But it does go to show that things are not going well. And when the president is ranting against Walmart, that kind of tells you a lot about

what's happening to consumer confidence in the US. So it's not as if the Trump administration was coming out of these past few months with flying colors. On the contrary, confidence in this administration is flagging, and it's all self-inflicted. So on that sense, yes, it's hard. Yes, those tariffs are having an impact on Canada's economy, but the other side of the coin is there will be midterm elections and increasingly some of the people who are going to be running in those midterms are feeling the heat from a backlash against Donald Trump policies. policies. I did find it extraordinary in evolving diplomatic history that when the US ambassador to Canada sounded so sure that the only people who were talking about 51st state were Canadians because we were done. Book closed and then his boss comes back with 51st state. But I found it also fascinating that Bob Ray,

who is one of our senior ambassadors to the UN no less, would actually go on social media to argue that the president of the United States is engaged in a protection racket. You would not have imagined, I know Mr. Ray is more leeway than most. And this isn't criticism, but it's, it's, it's really new. We're on an unexplored, uncharted waters here. When a senior diplomat feels that it's, you know, okay. And apparently it is by all accounts to be so public. And so when your face about something that Canada's

main trading partner is engaged in, I thought that that probably gave a better sense of where the relationship is at, I am very bad place than almost anything else that happened this week. I would, you know, I think you're absolutely right. I think with Justin Trudeau, Bob Ray had a free pass. He could say what he wanted on any subject, and he did.

And it was one of the reasons you got to love Bob Ray, especially as a journalist, because he tells you what he thinks, whatever the subject is. Whether you'll have that same free pass with Mark Carney or not will be interesting to see. I think Bob Ray has grown to the point in his life, given the different things that he has done and positions that he's accomplished, is he's never going to hold back. If he's told he has to hold back, he'll probably punt and get out of there and sit in a university somewhere and… he has to hold back, he'll probably punt and get out of there and sit in a university somewhere. And still be that person who speaks out.

Absolutely. He will be. What is a diplomat but a good man sent abroad to lie for his country? Wasn't that the expression? He doesn't want to lie for his country anymore. Right. And when Donald Trump, and he did it even during the last campaign, when he tells countries in Europe, pay up, or if Putin comes knocking on your door, we're not going to be there to protect you. What's the difference between that and a protection racket?

You know what I mean? It's like, yes, Europe and Canada should pay a larger share of their defense, without a doubt. Without a doubt, we need to do a better job. That being said, I think it's in the interest of the United States as well to have peace, stability, and democracy in places like Europe and in its own backyard in Canada.

It helps the prosperity of the United States, and it prevents them from having to get involved later on at a greater cost. All right. We're going to have to leave it at that. Another really good discussion. Glad to have both of you with us on that one. We'll be watching over the next few days, see how that conference turns out in Saskatoon and we'll be especially concerned about those people in northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba who are fighting wildfires right now and having to move as a result of them. That's it for a good talk for this week, for Chantel, for Rob. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you all again in a week's time. Bye for now.