The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk Encore: Taking on the U.S. Ambassador, Was It About Time?

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Encore Episode. The U.S. Ambassador to Canada was in Banff yesterday for what turned out to be a tense conversation with former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson. The ambassador, a seasoned American politician, and Robertson, no stranger to Canada-U.S. relations, went at it over some of the things that have been said between the two countries this year. Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson have lots to say about it all, too. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, and welcome to our holiday season, encore episodes of the bridge. All of us here at the bridge send you the best for the holidays. So enjoy now one of our episodes a second time from the fall of 2025. Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantal A Bear and Bruce Anderson. And we're ready for our Friday good talk. And there's lots to talk about, as always today. We're going to start in Banff, Alberta,

where the U.S. ambassador to Canada, a fellow by the name of Pete Hochstra, who's, you know, he's a seasoned politician. He was a member of Congress. He's been an ambassador before in other countries. He knows how to have verbal sparring matches. He's been trained in that. Well, he certainly got into one.

And those who were in the room in Banff say it was kind of tense at times. Who was he dealing with? He was dealing with somebody who we all know, Colin Robertson, who was a former Canadian diplomat himself, not a politician, but very well-versed on the U.S. Canada file, was a part of the U.S. Embassy, Canada's Embassy in the U.S. during the NAFTA dealings. so he's tried to make the argument about Canada in the U.S. before. But they got into a bit of a verbal punch-up

basically about Trump, whether it was, you know, the old 51st state comments or whether it was Colin's suggestion that perhaps the president isn't quite as informed about Canada as one would think he should be. Anyway, this is not the first time that Hoekstra has made headlines talking about Canadian's attitudes towards his country. What should we make about this, Chantelle? I guess he was, I'm talking about the U.S. ambassador. I guess his comments were not directed at the Canadian audience

unless he's as tone deaf to the reality of that audience, as some of his comments suggest, but to his bosses in the State Department in Washington and to the White House, because the points that were made, the 54 state stuff, this ambassador started handling it as if we never went there, you started this, you're the ones who were doing this, which is kind of a, yeah, I didn't want to beat you up, but you provoked me because the chicken sauce was into my liking, kind of rationale. And then the other point that was made about the president being ill-informed.

I think it's polite to say ill-informed rather than to say doesn't really care about facts and reality. And the point was made about fentanyl going across the border. There is not a Canadian who is not aware at this point, regardless of whether you like Donald Trump and some Canadians do, that there is no basis in fact in the assertions that the massive amount of fentanyl is crossing the border. So I'm taking it as part of the way that the Trump administration works, i.e. if the boss is criticized and your response might make its way to Washington, then you should always pay homage to your boss. Bruce, your thoughts? Well, you know, I'm tempted to say that Ambassador Huxret is the worst U.S. ambassador that I can recall in my lifetime, except I don't. even think that he plays the role of ambassador in any way that that resembles what you would

normally expect from, you know, a key diplomatic appointment. It almost feels as though from the time that he arrived in Canada, he felt like his mission was to pick a fight with Canadians. And so many different meetings that I've heard from people who attended, he just seems to have this instinct to say Canada is really disappointing to me. Canada's frustrating to us. We don't, you know, why is Canada complaining about the things

that we're doing? Canada never seems to be satisfied enough. And I don't know where the value lies in that for President Trump or for the United States. I know that it is exacerbating

the friction between the countries, especially at a time where I think he talks about wanting to work with businesses that want to do the business in the United States. But contributing to friction this way seems to me the exact opposite of what somebody in that role should do. And yet he seems either strategically or temperamentally incapable of not doing that. And I don't know whether it's a strategy on his part. If it is, I don't understand it. It does feel sometimes like he's hot tempered like the president that he represents.

But either way, good for Colin Robertson to be precise and probing in the way that he did. I think those were important questions that he raised. And of course, the comment that I read in the story as well, where he was pressing the U.S. Ambassador to be clear, I think about what would happen to the preclearance facilities that the U.S. has set up at Canadian airports across the country. And he said, well, we'll have to look at that since the tourism levels have dropped. Well, I can't imagine a thing that the U.S. could do that would further exacerbate a drop in tourism than to shut down those preclearance services. So, I don't know, it all seems so counterintuitive, but it's not anomalous in the sense that a lot of what comes out of Washington right now seems quite counterintuitive.

You know, this preclearance thing, you know, that sort of came out of nowhere. least to me it came out of nowhere, but I mean, that's been a big benefit for years, decades. I think it goes back to the 50s when preclearance started and basically you can, you know, Canadians traveling into the U.S. clear in the airport of their departure, you know, whether it's Pearson or Vancouver or wherever, that they have these facilities. He made it sound like because tourism is down or travel into the states is down by as much as 30, 35 percent, that it was, you know, a cost thing. costing us too much then for the benefit we're getting in return so maybe we'll

shut it down but it just sounded you know it sounded like another sort of twist twist of a of a knife in a way in a way to try and get Canadians saying nice things about the US I do wonder at the end of this will there be a friend of this yes and you put a date on it I'm at the end of our discussion on this today. Okay, it feels like we feel like to be doing with it. But what actual difference does it make that you have a kind of hot-headed U.S. ambassador to Canada saying these kind of things.

I mean, I think it probably means more elbows up on the part of Canadians at a time when their government doesn't appear to be as elbows up as it was a couple of months ago. But does it make any real difference at this point, Chantelle? Well, I guess it depends what the agenda of that ambassador is versus the Canadian agenda. I'll give you the example of what you were talking about, the pre-clearance. Pre-clearance also means that if you can't enter the U.S. for whatever reason, including flimsy ones, you are still in a Canadian airport. You can walk away from the U.S. U.S. section and not travel. If you get rid of it, you will be in the U.S. if that happens.

In the current circumstances, that's more likely to make more Canadians fearful of going to the U.S. It doesn't send a reassuring message, especially when the tone of the ambassador is you better travel to the U.S. or else, really? Tomorrow, I'm going to be overjoyed to go to the U.S. So if the agenda, and I'm not sure there is an agenda, so I figure that this ambassador is basically in an echo chamber speaking to the people who sent them to those nice digs in Ottawa. I'm not sure how great a social life it is to be the U.S. ambassador in Canada these days. I suspect it's not as interesting as usual. But does it help? Does it hurt?

I think wisely, the Canadian government is allowing people who are more than at arm's length from it, like Colin Robertson, to tackle issues like those that we heard about without getting directly engaged and just keeping an eye. It doesn't hurt the Canadian government that Canadians are more elbows up at this point. It gives them more of a mandate to not rush into some kind of an agreement. that might not be in Canada's interest. We'll see over time. It's too early to tell because at this point, President Trump is busy with so many other distractions

that it's hard to know whether we're advancing any file or not. You know, I'd be shocked if anybody in Washington was, you know, up to date on what happened in BAMP yesterday or even carried one way or the other. So if he was making the kind of remarks he was making, because he was hoping his boss had hear about them, I think that's probably a stretch. But he might be worried that if he had another tone,

his boss might hear about it. That's the flip side of this. I think that's a good point. I mean, Peter, on your question of what difference does it make ultimately, I agree with Chantal about the difference in the day-to-day dynamics. I do tend to think that they're two kind of larger, longer-term, issues that this contributes to. One is the destruction of norms. And for me, it's kind of easy sometimes to look at the diplomatic services and say, do they really help? Do they really make

a material difference? But I think we're going through a time in the world where we kind of need them to do the work that they're intended to do even more than we do at times when there aren't wars, when there isn't this amount of geopolitical disruption. And so to have, have a U.S. ambassador in Canada, and I gather from remarks that President Macron made about the American ambassador to France the other day, that he's experiencing a similar set of frustrations with the U.S. envoy that is, I guess, Charles Kushner. For the U.S. to, you know, conduct itself out of the White House and around that cabinet table and the way that it does is hard enough, I think, on the set of,

of norms that kind of keep planes flying safely, keep, you know, people living healthy lives, keep the medical system functioning the way that it was built up to do. But to kind of put those kinds of agents of disruption into those key diplomatic posts without a clear sense of why and what it is that is the end game, I think is a destruction of a norm. And the second part for me is there's so much misinformation and disinformation that flows these days, whether it's around pharmaceuticals or climate change or what crosses the border and what doesn't cross the border. It's really unhelpful to have someone in a position of such authority,

a platform that can reach that many people to be part of the misinformation that we see being so problematic. today. I don't know how informed the ambassador was about who he was going to be up against in that back and forth with Colin Robertson. But I can tell you, if I was going to be debating Canada-U.S. relations, probably the last guy I'd want to see on the other side was Colin Robertson. He knows his stuff. And he sounded like he knew his stuff in what I've heard of that discussion yesterday. Anyway, let me go back to a point that was made a little earlier. Chantelle, I think you made it.

This probably doesn't hurt, these kind of more elbows up on the part of Canadians, it doesn't hurt the Canadian position in the negotiations. Even though at this time it appears in another example yesterday that elbows are kind of down in terms of the negotiation, down may be too strong word, but they've lowered. You know, with a certain tariffs, it turns out now, we're also lowered on the part of Canada against the U.S. In the last little while, quietly, without telling anybody, or at least without telling the Canadian public.

Maybe we should have expected it. I don't know, but talk to me about that level of things in terms of the Canadian government's position versus what might be the Canadian public's position. So the story is that more tariffs came down than just those covered, when let me rewind, when the prime minister announced that he was dropping counter tariffs, he said he was dropping them for items, merchandise, etc., covered by Kuzma, the free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, and keeping them on, and it's important to remember that list, aluminum, steel, stuff with lumber

and auto parts, et cetera, which are counter tariffs to U.S. tariffs. As it turns out, more items than those covered by Kuzma have seen their tariffs come down. But to me, that is not a negotiating move. It's not a chess move. It's not even a checkers minor play. It's a technical move. Why is it a technical move? because once you've covered the 80 or whatever percent of products covered by Kuzma,

and you've got these sectors that I named that are under tariffs, to find out what is less left and then to administer tariffs would probably cost you more just to get to the proper list and figure out how to do it than to actually do it. So for me, it sounds not like a decision that should have been communicated to Canadians as a big or another step back, but rather an administrative common sense decision to say the list is very long and we don't even know. And nobody really knows whether a significant amount of money and tariff revenue is lost to that because it is happening in the margins of this debate. So for me, it's more of a, okay, so this is, you know, we've kind of done the reasonable thing for ourselves.

Then we've sent more of an olive branch or made it bigger to the Trump administration. You want in on this, Bruce? Yeah, I'm with Chantal on this. I think that there is a portion of the public that wants a, They had signaled consistently. It's a minority, maybe 20, 25%, 30, depending on the question that you asked. It wants a kind of an aggressive response to America's tariff position. But the rest of the public just wants a smart one.

They want a pragmatic one. They want a practical response. And that might include sometimes putting up counter tariffs, but it might include also dropping those counter tariffs if you think that you're close to get into a better place. in the context of the Kuzman negotiations, or if you just look at the impact of the counterterrorists, which typically end up costing Canadians more, because that's the nature of the counterterrorist. And so you only leave those on if you think that they're going to accomplish the outcome that you want, which isn't to have counter tariffs in place forever, it's to get the United States to amend their negotiating position.

but the moment at which you don't think that those counter-tariffs are going to achieve that outcome. And I think if we look at where the U.S., where the White House is now on tariffs, relative to where they were five months ago, if anything, they seem more dug in on tariffs, that the cumulative evidence that it is weakening their economy, that it is costing their consumers more money, still hasn't persuaded the White House that they should turn it back. I saw, in fact, another clip of President Trump talking about in the same quote, he said $310 billion and then $310 million of extra dollars that he found. And he said, we found them on the tariff shelf. And now we're going to give some of that money to our farmers.

So he's described multiple uses for multiple sizes of tariff revenue, which disproportionately, as we know, comes from America. My point, though, is that he doesn't appear to be on the verge of saying the tariff thing was a bad idea, I should drop them. And so, you know, in that context, I think we need to be very careful not to pursue ideas that don't fit the current context for that trade conversation. And especially those ideas that can either cost our businesses money or cost our workers' jobs or, to Chantel's point, cost us more in administrative. fees than there would ever be value for Canada in that negotiating position. All right. We're going to take our first break.

Come back. I want to pick up on this on a different angle, really, but we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the bridges. Friday edition of Good Talk with Chantelle-A-Bear and Bruce Anderson. You're listening on Sirius XM, 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 wherever you are joining us from.

Okay, so pursuing other options in trying to deal with this situation as a result of the trade war, want to call it that. You know, some people get kind of upset about using the war word on those trade negotiations, but nevertheless, it's a tense situation and it's as the potential of, well, more than a potential of changing the way Canada operates. The other path that can be pursued is one of dealing with other countries and trying to open up trade with other countries other than the United States. Nothing can ever replace the U.S. in terms of its size and potential market for Canada.

But starting to move away from it in some areas appears to be what Mark Carney is doing. So while he's got the opposition saying what's going on, all he does is to pick up air miles, he's traveling all over the world, and he's going off again now, and in fact he's in the UK right now. I want to try to understand that process of what's going on in terms of dealing with other countries, where we're getting on that, and what the potential, you know, payoff is,

if you want to use that term. Bruce, why don't you start on that? Well, you know, I think that there's a couple of different ways to look at it. I think that in the election campaign, Mark Carney made it clear that he thought that the defining issue of our time going forward is going to be this great disruption in a relationship with the U.S. around economics, around security, and not just for Canada, but vis-a-vis many other countries in the world. And I think that sense or that prediction, if you like, has been borne out. It continues to be a source of great disruption for a great many countries, including Canada. I think the second thing is that he talked about, what would our strategies be to cope with that situation? And obviously one of them would be to try to work out a better relationship with the U.S.

And the one that was being proposed at that point in time by President Trump. And that remains, I think, ongoing critical priority for the Carney government. And there are people talking with the U.S. administration all the time. But if you only did that, it would be a weak bet. It wouldn't be a great way to kind of organize a strategy for the country. It might work. It might not work as well as you like. But there are other things to be done.

And Carney stipulated that for him, removing as many intra-provincial trade barriers as quickly as possible was one of those things that he feels that we can do a lot of what it would take to replace the economic activity with the United States. if we were able to do more economic activity inside Canada. And then beyond that is to attract investment and talent from around the world and to work out trading relationships with other partners. I think these are the areas where face-to-face meetings,

working on the details of how you break through trade dynamics or investment dynamics that have been kind of encrusted by rules and regulations over time, but you really want to make a change happen, that's where the presence of the senior most official from the government of Canada can sometimes make a difference with other countries, with businesses that are thinking about where to put their next investments. And so I think the meetings that the prime minister has been having, whether we're on the margins of the UN General Assembly meetings,

wherever else he's been going, I think are pretty seriously geared towards looking for those economic opportunities. And it's a bit of a race because other countries are trying, to do the same thing at the same time. It's more than Canada that has this diversification agenda on its mind. Chantelle. Well, a part of this is not particularly new or surprising. Every single new prime minister has used this first international forays

to kind of get acquainted, Justin Trudeau. So that Stephen Harper and notoriously for all, for all of the decades that we've been covering politics, the fall has been a heavy international summit season, that and late spring with the G7, et cetera. So if the suggestion is that Mark Carney is doing something incredibly novel by participating in all those meetings and meeting all those heads of states and heads of government,

Well, I would like to know whether the inference is that Pierre Poilev, if he had been elected in April, would have stayed home since then because he would want to do things differently from every prime minister that came before him and felt that he didn't need to talk to anybody outside of Canada. Now, among those meetings, there are some that stand out more than others. Yeah, the trade deal with Indonesia is objectively a good thing, as is the promise of Ireland to sign on to the free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union in the coming weeks or months. And it is the Conservatives who spent the time. But since Brexit, saying we need a new economic relationship with the UK, which you're not going to be getting unless you show up to talk about it.

But I was interested, or I'm more interested in where the opening, well, the meetings with Chinese leadership will lead. For instance, the prime minister met with the Chinese prime minister at the UN, given the Canola issue in particular, I think any Canadian prime minister would want to try to find some common ground with China on this. And I know that's not of interest to the conservatives, but on climate, at this point, China has become the leading major power on climate policy. It's not a small deal that this is happening, and they are actually putting actions behind their words. I also am curious to see how far we are in the process of normalizing our relationship with India, which, remember, before all the bumps in the road, took place last year was one of our alternative ways away from China to kind of engage and expand markets. So I don't find all those meetings to be useless, including the meeting in Mexico.

Yes, you should want to meet your free trade partner on leave of maybe a renegotiation of the relationship with the United States for the two countries. Do I expect the Prime Minister to come home with signed, sealed, delivered, investments, deals. I'm not sure in what universe that happens. And again, I would be curious to know if the main critics of this, the conservatives, have a game plan to show for it, since they were so close to government, for how they would have handled this and how long or what was their deadline for coming up with the actual results, because it seems to me they must have some magic hidden somewhere that

produces results that no one else has ever brought about. Yeah, can I, Peter, can I just pick up a couple of points of what Chantelle said. The contrast on this climate issue between what the U.S. President said in the General Assembly to the world the other day, the climate change was the biggest con job ever. He's shut down wind farms that were basically, as I understand it, almost completely built. wind power is a major source of energy in places like Texas and California. And Alberta. Yeah, so I mean, American businesses do rely on clean power more than his con job assertion would suggest.

But the policy mix that he's putting in place is shutting down the increased access to that clean power. at a time when America is going to need more and more and more energy for the data centers, for the cloud services that everybody can see are becoming a bigger part of the economy of the United States. And at the same time, you do hear some Republicans criticize China saying they're not doing anything. Well, that's not true. The Chinese are massive, massive investors in clean energy systems.

And they've put themselves in the leading, position in terms of the international market for electric vehicles. And the U.S. has kind of slammed its auto sector in reverse. So I think that contrast is really interesting, either because you know, America will prove over time to have a smarter competitive strategy, which I don't think is the case because the rest of the world is moving in the decarbonization direction, or it will be the case that Trump's policies will make America less competitive at a time when everyone else is kind of going in this other direction and reconfiguring their economies to run on on cleaner energy. And I think the other thing that, you know, when Chantelle mentions

China and India, there may not be a better way of crystallizing how the Trump administration's approach to the rest of the world is creating a realignment of discussions with different countries around the world. These were not the discussions that we were having with India and with China only a while ago. And the thing, the most important thing that's different has been the, I guess the aggression of the U.S. administration towards pretty much every country in the world with the exception of maybe one or two. All right. Let me just mention a couple of things here. First on China, I've mentioned this before, but there's no doubt that there are ways of looking at, or not just ways, there are clear plans underway in

China that are dealing with the climate issue. This at the same time that they're still opening coal-fired plants, one or two a week in different parts of their country. So, I mean, coal is still a player there, still issues around coal, obviously, on the climate front, but China is doing stuff. You mentioned the Chinese EVs. They're still not allowed into Canada. I assume there's the potential.

They are. There's a tariff as I understand. They are. Right. The tariff in the U.S. They asked us to put the same tariff on the Chinese EVs. But it's not like we see a lot of them driving around and they're good. Oh, and 100% tariff, I think, is what it is.

We're not going to see those cars. But they are huge in the European market and in the Latin American market. Exactly, and they would be here, too, if they came in. And maybe there's a deal there, canola for EVs. Who knows? I assume... Careful of the impact on the Canadian auto industry

as it's already hit with tariffs, though. That beyond displeasing the White House, that has to be a major factor and go back to the era when Japanese cars were a huge threat to North American auto industry, that there's a replay of that in the works. If you're looking at this picture, it's not just Canola, U.S. administration, EVs, it's Yeah, I agree, Chantelle. We need a competitive EV, North American integrated auto sector, and the Trump policies are pushing it in the opposite direction, but that's what we need if we want to see

those jobs protected for the long term. Okay. Well, I will get out of the trade negotiation. business immediately now after hearing that. Okay, well, I mean, I see, but you know, the thing you drop there in that answer, Bruce, this sense that we've got to be careful, we don't want to antagonize the Americans while we're in the middle of a trade negotiation, we're going to be careful what it is we're doing in other countries.

I get that to a point, but I mean, look at the example of Kirstarmer, who Carney is spending the weekend with, or a good chunk of the weekend with, in the U.K. Here, last week, he and the royal family, you know, bend over backwards to look after Trump, parties, whatever, for two days, state dinners, the whole bit. And what do they get for it?

They got that speech at the UN, which basically crapped all over them and their Western allies for everything from climate as a fraud and a con job to, you know, their military alliances. You name it. They got dumped upon by Trump at the UN.

So what did they get out? to that. Sorry, Chantelle. No, you know, I'm the monarchist on this panel. But people have

been mystified as to the U-turn on Ukraine on the part of Donald Trump and the U.S. administration. Let me be a contrarian and say, maybe that royal visit did have some impact on Trump's thinking on Ukraine.

He was won the king of the last persons that Trump spoke to about Ukraine, and he did publicly the king state Ukraine's case in front of Donald Trump. So let's go there. I'm not sure that Starmor was expecting what I hope for his sake. He wasn't expecting flowers from Donald Trump as a result of that visit. I think the only reason Donald Trump was pleased to go for that visit was the royal side of it. I didn't care about the rest. But that doesn't really tie in with your point

about not the EV cars, because the arguments on the Chinese EV tariffs go to the health of an industry that is already under attack by the US. And that is a big deal, a bigger deal and then ruffling feathers in the White House over it. Bruce? I want to roll back the tape after we're done because in your preamble you said, you dropped the thought, Bruce, that we have to be careful how we are with other countries

to avoid angering the United States. And I wasn't sure exactly what you're referring to there. Well, whatever deals, though, that we might make, don't infringe on deals. we're also trying to make with the Americans? Yeah, I was more kind of in the world of our first priority in automotives, I think, really does have to be to have a healthy auto sector

that's integrated across the NAFTA countries and to have our steel and aluminum industries be able to continue to thrive in the context of that integrated sector. So there are two threats, I think, that the Trump administration is putting on the sector. One is the taras on steel and aluminum and the role that those products play in the auto sector. And the other is his constant denouncing of e-vehicles and the idea of decarbonization. because people can debate how quickly this decarbonization push is going to happen

or how quickly the EV adoption rate is going to be. But I think that the demand for those vehicles has proven itself. And over time, it will be the biggest part of the automotive sector in the world. And so for the U.S. auto manufacturers to end up being. set back, the U.S. and Canadian auto manufacturers, set back for several years. That's a separate problem. I'm with Chantelle, which is that we need to figure out our canola situation with China, and we need to deal with the automotive sector as a separate question,

because we have huge economic stakes in that relationship with the United States around automotives. And our canola relationship with China, you know, the Americans did kind of bring those two. things together in the way in which they prosecute their issues, but I don't know that we should. Well, I know I run the risk of upsetting the U.S. ambassador, but I don't know why we would believe anything that Trump says on trade negotiations, including EVs. This is the same guy who a couple of months ago was standing on the White House lawn, flogging EVs and parking one in his parking spot. Well, I don't know if you saw the clip, but this is going to feel like a non-secretor, but it isn't.

But I saw another clip today of President Trump saying that he would never allow Israel to annex the West Bank, that it wasn't going to happen. And in addition to the Ukraine comments the other day, this seems like another about face almost in the position of the United States on the two most obvious and significant conflicts that are happening in the world right now. Yeah, I agree. I just wonder what are you saying about both those situations a week from now. Yes, but I guess that's the point since on those two top fires,

what he's saying this week has nothing to do with what he was saying last week. The answer to your question is, how can we know? How can we know? That's right. It's the right question. We can't. It's just not stable. Well, you know, it's not stable.

and it makes you wonder, like, how we've been asking this question for the last six months. How can you negotiate with another country when you have that instability on what they're saying and promising? No, it's the right question. So I don't think you really can't. And we've got two contrasting positions in the two leaders of the major parties right now. We've got the conservative leaders saying, I will negotiate for a zero tariff agreement. Well, to Chantelle's point, well, good luck with that. I don't know anybody that doesn't want that,

but you probably need to put a little more meat on the bone in order to convince people that you have an idea for how you're going to accomplish that because it isn't apparent to me. And Carney, on the other hand, saying we're going to do what we can with the relationship with the United States, but it's not stable and we need to find other things that are going to help our people thrive.

And I think, you know, right now most Canadians are looking at those two propositions and saying, well, one seems increasingly far-fetched and only loosely described, and the other has a measure of risk associated with it, but against the idea of kind of sitting and hoping for the best, you know, it feels like the right strategy. And by the way, the government of Canada did not make a choice between let's negotiate zero tariffs with the White House or let's do what they're currently doing. That was the initial game plan.

Now, I have absolutely no reason to think that if it was achievable, it would have been achieved. I would be curious to see if it was ever on the table and at what cost to Canada. But I suspect that if there had been a deal that didn't come at prohibitive cost to Canada in many other ways, we would already have settled a deal with zero tariffs. So if that was dropped, there must have been a good reason. I don't think incompetence was the reason for that. Okay. Yeah, in fact, it sounded like the deal that was on offer was the 51st state.

In all but name. All right. Let's take our final break. I want to come back and talk about about, about, Finances, the country's finances. Where are we as we approach a month from now, a budget? We'll deal with that right after this. And welcome back, final segment of a good talk for this week.

Chantelle, Bruce, Peter, all here. I feel a little ambassador hoaxster getting beaten up. by Colin Robertson and I saw you rubbing your head and you insisted you insisted on coming back I still I still I'm not going to you fed yourself into the Chantelle wood chipper that's not oh my god as if Bruce had not participated yeah right we'll see where we are six months from now and you two are groveling at the ground saying oh Peter why didn't we listen to you are so wrong yeah um okay let me try this i won't even take a stand i'll just throw it out there and you guys can chew over the bones you spook them and to retreat them

the interim parliamentary budget officer jason jacques put out some stuff about the country's a financial situation economic situation and forecasting federal finances ahead for before the anticipated fall budget. He used these words to describe the country's finances right now, stupefying, shocking, unsustainable. I think he forecast a federal deficit somewhere around 70 billion was actually lower than a lot of other places, but it's higher than obviously what had originally been forecast for this year.

But he paints kind of a devastating picture, of where we're at and says it's unsustainable. What do you make of that? Let's see who wants to start here, Bruce. Well, you know, I think the first thing I make of it is it's great to live in a democracy where there's a public square

that encourages diverse opinion and people have access to it. I mean, you know, I thought... Well, you didn't give me that credit in this public square. He just dumped all over my... You have a huge platform, and you just get to use it for all kinds of purposes. On the day, you're not with us.

This is just the one day of the week where we get a chance to shape the conversation with a little bit. So we have an obligation to do that, too. But no, I'd say that, you know, the prime minister, I did talk about this as one of those features of Canada. I thought it was quite interesting that he mentioned it in the U.S. when he was there this week, that Canada has a number of things that people around the world would look at and say,

this is a good place to live and maybe do business, maybe invest. And having that vibrant democracy where you can have a parliamentary budget officer who can say those things and have everybody go, you know, as the finance minister did, he's entitled to his opinion. My obligation is my obligation. I'll table a budget and people are going to come to their own conclusions about whether the measures that the government is going to take and the costs associated with those measures is the right way to go or not. Because I knew we were going to talk about this, so I also went back to the things that Stephen

Harper said in the 2008-2009 period when there was that financial collapse and all of a sudden Stephen Harper went from being a fiscal hawk to somebody who posted the highest deficit that we'd, I think, ever seen up to that point. And, you know, he was making the case that there are circumstances sometimes where you have to do extraordinary things from a spending standpoint to make sure that the economy doesn't go into some spiral of kind of doom that becomes self-reinforcing.

And I think Carney made that point in the course of the election campaign, that that was what he was going to do. So people decided that they were, at least in significant numbers enough for him to win the election. They decided that they wanted to try that approach, and he's embarked on that approach, and the budget will come down, I guess, in November, and people will have a chance to review it

and see whether or not over time the parliamentary budget officer is right, or Mark Carney's argument is more compelling. Last point for me, though, is that when I was reviewing that little history of what the former Prime Minister Harper had said, He actually did say words that were very close to. These will be short-term deficits, and the economy will grow us out of them, which, of course, conservatives have often pillory Justin Trudeau for saying something very, very similar. But it was interesting to me to have.

I hadn't remembered that he used almost those words back in. That deficit that followed the 2008 financial crisis was, in fact, the largest in the country's history at that point. But he did deliver on his words to bring it back down. He didn't get it back down to zero, but he got it down considerably, I think, 10, 15 billion from 50 plus billions. Yes, yeah. And he was right. The economy did create that uplift in revenues, which is kind of the idea here as well. Yes, of course, Stephen Harper didn't have to deal with the kind of U.S. administration trade moves.

It looked like they're going to linger in the picture for the next three years, which I suspect is beyond the mandate of the current liberal minority government. A couple of points before I get to the meat of this. If the parliamentary budget officer, who, as you said, his interim wanted to become permanent, this is a great route to go, why? Because to not appoint him on a permanent basis on the part of the government increasingly will look like, the government is trying to get rid of a critic

and so points for a strategy I'm not saying that's the reason but it's an interesting thing. It wasn't so long ago that the number for the deficit had been floated around I suspect from government sources

of a hundred billion for some reason I always have the sense that maybe it was convenient to let a hundred billion and float around to come in with a deficit that was significantly lower. That's me being a conspiracy theorist here. But in the same vein, there are two ways you can look at what happened with this report

and the presentation that was brought forward. It comes with an if, if we stay on the current course, our path is unsustainable. if you are going to be presenting what was initially described by the prime minister as a austerity budget in a month, you probably want outside agents to be saying we need a serious correction or else we are headed into a wall. It kind of prepares the ground for a non-pleasant budget in a better way than if someone comes and says, you know, this is a one-time thing. We need to do what we need to do.

So you can either say, why is this guy saying this, he's setting us up for failure on the budget, or why is this guy saying this, he is setting up the budget to be not a happy news budget, but one that can be described as the only responsible thing to do in the current circumstances as described by the parliamentary budget officer. Take your pick. We will know all this on November 4th. And the opposition parties will have to decide where they go from there. What's your betting on that, by the way, in terms of the opposition parties?

Does anybody in opposition, aside perhaps from Pierre-Poliev, won an election now? I don't think the bloc would mind an election. This, between now and the end of January, next spring, that's another proposition, because the Quebec election will be just around the corner at that point. the Quebec goes to the polls this time next year. There are reasons why the NBP should not want an election, but it becomes difficult. I'll tie it in with something that's not budget-related.

I don't know how the government is planning to deal with the postal worker strike and its plan to restore or to change the way postal delivery is happening in this country. but the NDP and the Blocke are going to invest themselves on the side of postal workers on this. They've already started. If it becomes a showdown between unions and the government, the NDP is going to be in a bit of a tight corner to support the government on its fiscal plan. You know, I have thoughts on both those subjects. but one we don't have time for them

and two I shudder to think how you do you use the remaining time then there is no rebuttal so let's let's hear them no no I literally don't have time left in the in the program plus the rebuttals would just be another exhausting run of the kind of things we've heard for the last hour

all right I always love this it always sets me up for a good weekend of feeling good about myself. A feeling. Listen, thank you both. As always, a great conversation on a number of topics, and we will talk to you all again next week. So thanks to Bruce, thanks to Chantelle. Thanks for joining us for this holiday season encore episode of The Bridge.

We'll be back with the first of our new shows on January 5th. We'll talk with you then. Thank you.