The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Has Trump Just Put The Liberals Back In The Game?

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

The polls suggest it, the Liberals think it & the Conservatives look like they're trying to reposition because of it.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with Rob Russo and Chantelle Hebert. It's a Friday Good Talk right here on the bridge. We're glad to have you with us and we've got lots to talk about as we always do on Fridays. So let's get at her. The polls suggest it, the liberals believe it, and the conservatives seem to be trying to adapt to the possibility, leading to the question,

have we really seen Trump set a new landscape in terms of where we are politically in this country. Are the Liberals back in the game? Chantal? Yes, short answer. Are we surprised? No. Why? Because we talk to people, normal people, not people like us, and they only want to talk about one topic, which is the same topic we want to talk about. Have you ever seen people change their behavior in grocery stores at the speed that we saw this week? Suddenly, my grocery store, I was looking for lemons, wanted to know where they came from. In the small, small print, it did say where they came from, but they had added a sticker to make sure I could read the word Egypt

on the back. And if you want something better than anecdotal evidence, you can look at a Quebec poll this week. And why a Quebec poll? Because it shows a fascinating dynamics. It's a poll done by Légis. It asks first, how would you vote today? With Justin Trudeau as leader, obviously. And for the first time in months, the Liberals are tied with the Bloc Québécois in first place at 29%. The Conservatives, not doing so bad, 24%.

And then the NDP, where it usually is or has been for years, so in the lower teens. But then they put Ms. Freeland's name or Mr. Carney's name to voters. Christia Freeland barely moves the needle for the Liberals in Quebec, 30%, which is still better, 29 and 30, than anything they've had in months. But when you put Mark Carney's name in Quebec, and remember, this is a candidate from outside the province whose French is rusty and who has been campaigning, but only moderately in Quebec, 38% say they would vote for Mark Carney. And the bloc goes down to 22 or 23%. It goes way down. But what's interesting about that isn't so much that Mark Carney suddenly looks like a savior for the Liberal Party. It's where those votes come from and what it says. And basically, those votes, they all come from one major source, the Bloc Québécois. Why? Because for a long time, the Bloc Québécois has been going up in the polls

as a way to protect Quebec from a conservative government. This is the province where Pierre Poiliev was never first and was never headed for first place. But now the ballot box question has changed for Quebecers. It's become a who do we want to be prime minister to deal with Donald Trump. And a lot of those voters who may have voted liberal in previous campaigns are going home. Others who have voted for the Bloc are also going to the liberals. Why does it matter for the Liberals? Because if those votes come from the Bloc as they do, or could come from the Bloc, they are francophone votes. They're not the West Island suddenly rediscovering the value of the federal Liberal Party, which translates into seats that they usually never lose. And it is a major shift. I think we've seen some polls that suggest some kind of a shift is underway in Ontario. It's harder to read those Ontario polls.

Why? Because there is a provincial campaign that is ongoing. And when you ask in the middle of a provincial campaign where the Conservatives are best placed to win provincially. You can't be sure whether there's an echo effect in the federal numbers for the Conservatives. But basically, I saw, I think it was Abacus last week that showed the Liberals up in Atlantic Canada. Basically, they're having a great combination, a prime minister that apparently, based on last weekend, is very much in command, a cabinet that functions and whose main people have not joined the leadership battle, and a leadership race that features two candidates that can rightly argue that they have the credentials to manage the Canada-US relationship. You know, I recall a conversation I had a year and a half ago when it started to look like the Tories were not only going to win, but win big based on polls at the time.

And I was in a conversation with Fred Delory, who'd run the Conservative campaign the last time around for Aaron O'Toole. And I said, I asked him, I said, what do you make of this? And he said, listen, there's only one thing that can save the liberals here now. It's not a Trudeau resignation. It's not a new leader. It's Trump. Says you've got to look at the November 24 election and run everything according to that and assume that Trump's going to be back in some fashion as a result of that election campaign. I sort of looked at Fred going, yeah, okay, maybe.

He's right. He was right. It looks like he was right. Because everything that seems to be happening now, and I'm including the Trudeau resignation, everything that seems to be happening now, poll-wise, if we believe these polls, seems to be based on Trump and this whole issue that we've witnessed in these last couple of weeks. Rob, do you want to respond to that? I do.

Justin Trudeau was the most unpopular politician in Canada for a long time. He's now been replaced by politicians even more unpopular, and that's Donald Trump. And what has Mr. Trump done? In many ways, Canada has been a divided country, divided over issues that we never used to cover when we were covering national unity crises, divided over science, divided over facts, divided over vaccines, divisions between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people, divided between those who had homes and those who couldn't get homes. All of these divisions, all of a sudden, there is something pulling us together, a sense of the country under threat. And that is something that has been produced by President Donald Trump

and openly, openly threatening our sovereignty. And as a result, this sort of notion of the kind of polite, affable Canadian is being transformed into the kind of Canadian that pulls a sweater over the other hockey player and bashes him in the skull from time to time. And we see that manifesting itself at hockey and basketball games, the uglier part of that with the booing of the U.S. national them. The liberals have a historic tendency of benefiting in times like this. They have historically been seen as the party that keeps the country together. I'm fascinated by Mark Carney's rise in all of this, because it's been the equivalent of speed dating. Nobody really knows who this guy is. They're getting to know him very, very quickly. They don't know much about

him. I think they're making their decision based on his CV more than anything else. But they are being charmed by the CV. And I am struck by that. I'm struck by the Liberals' rise in Quebec. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm still thinking this is a moment and not necessarily a movement. It could turn into a movement, though, with the enduring threat posed by Donald Trump. That's what could turn it into a movement rather than a moment. And, you know, there's no doubt about it. The Conservatives have changed tactics. These kinds of conversations are the kinds of conversations that always exclude opposition leaders. They can't do anything about what's going on now. But Mr. Poiliev, give him credit, is trying to do something about it, is trying to come up with policy as to what he would do, because he's not in the conversation right now.

But whether this is enduring or ephemeral, I don't think we can make any kind of judgment about that yet. And, you know, you got to watch trump at times like this because he does tend to move from one you know splashy flashy uh object to to the next one and this week he's you know the last couple of days after the the pause in the situation with canada he moved on to gaza who knows where he'll be next week and whether or not at the end of 30 days he'll still go oh yeah, yeah, there's that Canada thing. Am I going to do something about that or what? Which can affect everything. Go ahead, Chantal.

But he doesn't need to be doing it for four years. He only needs to be doing it throughout the spring. And having asked for a review of all the trade relationships of the U.S. for April 1st, it's virtually guaranteed that he will keep this up at least until Canada Day. Why do I say it really matters that he keeps it up all spring is because by all probability, we will be going to the polls between now and July 1st. I'm not a believer in the fall election. That 30-day reprieve, which is now what, 20-some days, was actually a gift to the liberals in the sense that it forced, you know, any pressure

to bring parliament back has gone way, way down. I think most voters want to have choices in the election, not a leaderless Liberal Party or a Justin Trudeau led Trudeau party versus Pierre Poiliev. And so the momentum behind the Let's Recall Parliament is now being pushed off to a time when the next prime minister, Trudeau's successor, will have to make the decision on what is appropriate. But Rob touched on the liberals and the U.S. And yes, remember Lester B. Pearson revered for us going to the U.S. to talk down the Vietnam War and considered by Canadians as someone who did what he had to do. Jacques Rizet in Iraq, which gave Rizet an end of tenure that he could not have imagined by declining to join the U.S. in Iraq,

won the day on this. And remember also that Jacques Rizet used to score points by going after Brian Mulroney's friendship with Reagan and Bush, and then became a good friend of Bill Clinton. But that's another issue. But there is always been this rather large current in Canadian public opinion that wants prime ministers who are liable to stand up to the US, regardless of who the president is, but especially if the president is a Republican, and especially if it's Donald Trump. Now, you ask about Mark Carney. There is the CV, but there is also, I think it was, and I talked about this before, Stephen Harper,

who put the finger on this phenomenon a few months ago in a videotaped chat with what I presume were conservative backers, where he said the worst thing about the liberals is not that they don't keep their word or they have huge deficit. It is that they are not serious people. Well, the one thing that Mark Carney has, he may have boring, rusty French. Sometimes he talks about climate and he knows stuff about climate and finance that none of us really know. And we don't have a clue what he's actually saying, because he's not very good at bite sizing it so that we can swallow and digest what he's saying. But he looks like a serious person. And he is taken seriously in the country that is not Canada, where he also was a central banker, i.e. the US. It's also a problem for the conservatives that the person who recruited Mark Carney at the time

of a global financial crisis in Canada was called Stephen Harper and not Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, or Justin Trudeau. And that by all accounts, he was a big part of the solution to that crisis for Canadians and not part of the problem. So Mr. Poiliev wanted Parliament back to the point where he was willing to tone down his let's have an election tomorrow narrative. But he mostly wanted it back to have a stage for himself because he is not getting in the conversation. And, you know, he said send the army to man the border. Well, by the end of the day, there is a deal with the U.S. to put more people on the border, but they're not soldiers.

But the nuance of that is not going to create a lot of debate with people saying, oh, if only Pierre Poilievre had been there, he would have sent a lot of soldiers. Fentanyl offenses, it looks like you're trying to salvage something of your agenda in the larger debate. But I don't think many Canadians are going around saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's impose stricter sentences on people who deal with fentanyl. It's not really, it's a side issue. It's interesting, but it doesn't put you in the conversation. What is the issue for most Canadians?

And let me ask you it this way. Are we looking at the benefits for the liberals as a one week wonder or one month wonder as a result of what Trump has done? Or is this, does this stick? Does this hold? Is it a longer term play, Rob? Well, we all must be aware of the Turner-Campbell bounce, right? Let's all remember that when a new leader was replacing a leader, an unpopular leader who'd been around for a long, long time, and in the case of Mr. Turner, John Turner in 1984, replacing Pierre Trudeau and the case Kim Campbell replacing Brian Mulroney, there was a bounce. And the bounce did endure for some time. It was real. And you asked people who were in those campaigns, they think that they could have won those campaigns if those campaigns had been better run. But the bounce turned out to be ephemeral. Why this one might not be,

and why this might not be, why the dumbest trade war, as it's been called, it might not be the shortest, is because there is a compelling reason for Mr. Trump to continue. China did not get exempted. They still have a 10% tariff on them. So they might have backed away from Canada and Mexico. But as Chantal said, there's an April 1st deadline to

come back. And those reports will come back with other reasons to apply tariffs to Canada. The policy of reindustrialization is not a momentary thing in the United States. There are serious economists who've worked on Wall Street, who've worked in the best universities in the United States. They believe in the policy of reindustrialization. And in order to make that policy, that policy to bring back manufacturing that has gone to Mexico and gone to overseas and gone to Asia, for instance, if that's going to work, if they are going to re-industrialize, they have to allow for countries to be put into a box where they're forced to make a choice. Either you relocate some of your manufacturing to the United States, or you pay a tariff. And paying a tariff is not always a bad thing for some industries. If it's

a 10% tariff, a lot of industries, including Canada's oil industry, have said that they can adjust to a 10% tariff. But that's the choice that's being set up by a lot of the people who are not as mercurial, not as whimsical as Donald Trump is. The other reason why this is, in many ways, they're obliged to follow this policy of reindustrialization and tariff versus reestablishing manufacturing is because the United States is running the biggest deficit and huge debt. Our debt to GDP ratio compared to the United States is minuscule. And what does Mr. Trump want to do? Well, he wants another tax cut. In the dreams of Mr. Trump and the people around him, some of these people who are very, very serious, who look back on the late 1880s as the golden age of prosperity in the United States, there was no income tax then. There was no income tax in the United States until 1913. And in their

sort of sepia-toned reverie, they see an era of the United States, again, where they pay no income tax or much, much less income tax. In order for that to happen, they need money and tariffs raise money. It doesn't always help actually develop the economy so that the economy brings in revenue, but tariffs raise money. And so for all of those reasons, I think we have to assume that tariffs are not going to go away. And this is something that will, again, crisis benefiting a Liberal Party, perhaps. But, you know, again, I caution, we're all there for John Turner, we're all there for Kim Campbell. It's speed dating. Nobody really knows who Mark Carney or any of the other candidates are very, very well yet, except for Christopher Freeland.

And a bad campaign can undo this moment very quickly. All right, Chantal. I don't disagree about the bad campaign. And I'm assuming that many of the liberal strategists who are involved in either leadership campaign understand two things. One, that there should be a parallel effort to set up the kind of leader who will be handed the platform that he will obediently read toatieff. He's not going to let this lack of political experience force him into taking advice or being fed lines that he will then regurgitate at the microphone. Now, why it might hold? One, I think we are in a very, very different situation than we were when Pierre Trudeau or when Brian Mulroney resigned. And to tell you the truth, if we'd been in the same situation in the Campbell versus Chrétien battle, Chrétien would have won because he would have looked at the person with the most experience to handle an existential trap.

So that is basically where this is likely to be going. But I do think that the biggest opportunity for the liberals with their top candidates is the capacity, and that is where Mark Carney scores point, to talk about something other than playing defense to the United States, about building a kind of different economy, of putting emphasis in different places. I think that's probably something that the voters will be looking at, not just who's best to defend us, but who's best to take us a bit out of arms way in the future by resetting the clock on some of the assumptions that have governed the federal government of the

past decades, not just the liberals, but Stephen Harper's government. I'm amused sometimes, but I'm not saying that because it's funny to think about all this border talk and to be reminded that the first government that cut a thousand bodies from the border were the Conservatives when they were in government. Or when we talk about spending more for national defense, which certainly didn't happen under Stephen Harper. So we're talking about a fundamental shift, and I think Canadians are all open to that conversation. I also think that at this point, not just Mark Carney and Christia Freeland, but there are people in cabinet that are of a stature strong enough to entertain that conversation. I think Mr. Poiliev's problem is when you look around him, you see emptiness.

He has not been featuring his team in very significant ways since he's become leader. It's all about him. He was in Vancouver this week, and his candidate was made to stand at the bottom of the stage while Mr. Poiliev was on stage. I think Canadians will want to see a team. And at this point, the Conservatives are lagging behind

because they've showcased attack dogs, but they've not showcased, except for maybe Michael Chong and the Foreign Affairs Brief, they have not been giving a lot of light to people who are more into policy than into politics. Well, I think what you're doing is you're helping me raise that question, though. Because, listen, the conservative Polyev approach worked for two years. It worked really well. And Canadians, for the most part, were just simply saying, those guys are bad.

These guys are good, I've made my decision and this is the way we're going. Suddenly, in the last month or two, mainly because of Donald Trump and the threat from south of the border, Canadians, if we take Chantel's view, are looking at the whole issue more deeply than they usually do, often do around election time. They're really looking at answers to who are these people,

what do they stand for, what would they do, more so than they were doing just a couple of months ago. So that just underlines my question. Has Trump, unwittingly perhaps, because, hey, he and his people want Polyev. They've made that clear. But in the last couple of months, they've changed the game. It's been they that have changed the game. But how could they not?

I'll bring back memories for you. Canadians, yes, tend to look at parliamentary debates, games, etc. from a distance. And that translates in modest turnouts in some elections. But remember the parliamentary crisis in 2008? And suddenly, panels that talked about this, including the one we were on, hitting numbers that we had not imagined. We just had an election. But suddenly, Canadians saw a reason to become totally engaged in what was going on in politics. The fact is that just because people decide something is not important

to them doesn't mean they're not paying attention. And what has been happening over the past three months is something that anyone in his or her right mind would absolutely pay attention to. You say it worked for two years to say these guys are bad and so we're going to change. The problem has been, I think today, the chickens that are coming home to roost is that Mr. Poitier banked

on Justin Trudeau is bad and paid no attention to the same polls that said that he was failing to build loyalty amongst those voters who were coming to the conservatives. They were doing it by default. And polls showed that they didn't really necessarily like Mr. Poiliev. On the contrary, in many cases, but they wanted to vote for him because they wanted to vote against Justin Trudeau. sympathizers into people who are mistrusting of him and the way that he handles any pushback is now coming back to haunt him here. Given the choice, people say, well, I don't need someone who is actually being a jerk when I can have someone who can be both serious and not be a jerk every time he opens his mouth. Okay.

We got to, we got to, just a sec, Rob, hold on a sec. We're going to have to take a break. So I do want to hear what you have to say before that break. Sure. But keep it tight and keep, I think we all have to keep in mind that even with this, you know, somewhat slide in the polls for the Conservatives, they still have a 13 or 14 point lead in most of these polls, which is a huge lead.

As did Kim Campbell, John Turner, Gilles Sepp in Quebec going into the Orange Wave election. It's the one thing we've learned is that campaigns matter, one way or the other. Right. You know, Kim Campbell and John Turner have never had so many mentions as they've had in the last couple of weeks. Rob, give us a quick last word before we do that.

Well, we're talking about Kim Campbell. Alan Gregg had an interesting piece in The Hub about the differences between 93 and now. So I interviewed him for a piece I did in the magazine about what's happening in Canada with the polls. And he said that he's doing focus groups. He's never seen less attachment to parties than he's seen right now. So there is this 40 percent of voters floating around. The Conservatives have done a good job of trying to connect with voters that never voted for them

before, younger people and working class people. And he said there is an opportunity. There is an opportunity for dad. People are looking for somebody who's serious like dad to come along. But, you know, the kicker to my story was what I asked him, what the chance of this actually happening? And he said the best campaign slogan ever devised is still time for a change. Yeah, exactly. It's time worn. Which Carly has seized.

Yeah, they all seize it. Come a long time, right? And that magazine that Rob refers to that he works for is The Economist, where he's the Canadian correspondent for The Economist, and they're lucky to have him, as we are too. Okay, let's take our first break. We'll be back. And the name Elon Musk is going to pop up in the next question.

Coming right up. And welcome back. Segment two of Good Talk with Chantel and Rob coming right up. 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, whatever platform you are engaging with us on. Okay. Elon Musk. I bring the name up because

his name is now attached to controversy after controversy after controversy each day in the United States on various things that he's been doing. But the potential is that it could be a controversial subject here in Canada as well. He's aligned himself with Pierre Poliev. He seems to be trying to influence in his words and on his social media channel his views about Canada and Canada politically. He's no fan of Justin Trudeau, that's for sure. Is there a concern here, and Rob, you take this one first, is there a concern here about what Musk says, what Musk does, what Musk may involve his social media channeling, his money in. There are limits as to what he can do, but how limited is he in how he

could influence the Canadian political scene? So let's talk about a powerful man who has access to a huge, huge media platform where this man uses exaggerated headlines, unverified claims to further a partisan agenda, inventing scandals. It all sounds to many people quite terrifying, but I could be talking about William Randolph Hearst in 1895 to 1940-something. I could be talking about Joe Pulitzer, who really started yellow journalism in the New York world in 1883, I think. So we have been confronted by this in our hemisphere before. It's not unusual. What makes Mr. Musk different is, and Hearst was certainly wealthy, but Pulitzer became wealthy,

is Mr. Musk's extreme wealth. And where did his wealth come into play? Well, it came into play in helping to elect Donald Trump. He spent a quarter billion dollars electing Donald Trump. And a lot of people think that's a lot of money, and it is. But he's had a great return on that investment. All of his companies are going to profit as a result of that $250 million investment. Tesla's stock soared. SpaceX is going to get a lot more business. Starlink is going to get a lot more Pentagon business. So he's done well that way.

The difference between Mr. Musk and the other guys is that at the border, their ability to influence Canadian election campaigns with money stops. We have a seventeen hundred dollar contribution limit in Canada. Maybe he can round up, he can crowdfund money to try and influence Canadian elections. The Conservatives are doing more than well when it comes to raising money in Canada. They just set another quarterly record, I believe. Is it $29 million or something like that? It's just like at the end of the year, it's an enormous sum of money for Canada. And money is important. Money is important in Canada,

but it's not the lifeblood that it is in the United States. And people will vote the way they want to vote, whether there's lots of money in advertising or not. Conservatives have always outspent liberals, and liberals still, it seems, have been elected three quarters of our history in Canada. So, yes, it bears watching. It bears watching because in Canada, fewer and fewer people are moored to traditional forms of journalism, which they don't trust anymore.

But his ability to actually influence a campaign with money is very, very limited. What about social media, though? No, but yes and no. The people that the Conservatives, for one,, the conservatives do not need anybody's money. They already have too much money for what they will be allowed to spend in the campaign. So they will be spending a lot pre-campaign before the limits set in. But they don't need any financial help in our system from anyone who's got deep buckets because they're already in business. And actually, this money that the parties have is worth more than some money from Elon Musk. Why? Because it's tied to individuals. If you're giving $1,000 to the conservatives or the liberals or the NDP

or the Blyuk, you obviously want to vote for them. You have some loyalty built into the fact that you're actually giving money. So the money thing is not the issue. But when you go to the social media issue, I believe that at this point, Elon Musk's backing of Pierre Poiliev is a problem, a liability, not an asset. It doesn't speak to the kinds of people, the voters, who will determine the fate of the conservative party. Those voters are people who did not vote conservative in the past three elections. They are not part of the base. And Elon Musk has become a toxic presence to many voters. I saw a poll this morning, 46% of Americans want him out of wherever he's managed to insert himself in the governance of the United States.

So when Elon Musk goes on Twitter and tells all those Canadians who are not diehard conservatives how he likes Pierre Poiliev, given his proximity to Donald Trump, do you really think that's the endorsement that Mr. Poiliev is dreaming of getting? One time over the past few weeks, Pierre Poiliev made an off-the-cuff comment about Elon Musk and how if he were prime minister, he would try to convince him to invest in Canada. And he never repeated it. Why do you really think that the party that is courting the Jewish community and its vote wants to be seen next to someone who is addressing neo-Nazis in Germany and trying to convince them to convince Germans that they should go back to that

because the Holocaust has been overblown and it's time to move on. So I get what you say about the social media, but I think it's more than a double-edged sword. The benefits of Elon Musk and the social media to the conservatives are outweighed by the problems that it brings to the conservative brand in this country. I guess what I was trying to get at was not necessarily what Musk himself says or does on his social media channel, but how he's shaped that channel into his own, in some ways, image and thoughts. And who he allows on, who he gives certain freedom to exist on his channel, while others, not so much. I guess that's what I'm getting at and what influence that could have on the Canadian.

What he can do, Peter, is shape the debate. And he's done that in the UK, raising false fears about immigrants raping local women in the north of England. He has certainly tried to shape the debate in Germany by addressing the AFD conference directly. He can certainly try and shape the debate. The other thing that I think, not just Musk, but the others, Zuckerberg and Bezos, what they can do and what they seem to be doing is influencing the Canadian version of the tech bros, people like Tobias Lutke and others who were getting involved in trying to, I think, organize against the liberals. And I wonder if there's been a kind of a retreat from that, given the Trump threat. I'll be watching that very, very closely again for the magazine, this notion that a Canadian version of tech bros who see maybe business opportunities in a change of government,

whether or not they're going to keep advancing their interests or whether they're going to try and step back now that there has been this wave of patriotism unleashed by the anti-Trump sentiment. Okay, we're going to take our final break and I want to come back. I'm somewhat hesitant to throw this into the mix because it can be a confusing subject and one that some of us have run away from for many years. Is this when I say, sorry guys, I need to go? that some of us have run away from for many years. Is this when I say, sorry, guys, I need to go? Someone's knocking at the door here. Yeah, exactly. No, it's not that bad. Okay, we will tackle it right after this. and welcome back final uh final segment of good talk for this week uh chantilly bear

rob russo they're both with us uh i'm peter mansbridge and looking forward to uh how are you going to react to this one um the two or three words, interprovincial trade barriers. Oh, on par with equalization. Let's have a conversation. This has been, you know, this has been around for as long as the three of us have been covering politics and covering interprovincial negotiations on various subjects. But it is one that crops up every once in a while,

and people say, well, what the hell? Why do these exist? Why can't you buy this from, you know, BC and Ontario or this from PEI in Saskatchewan? Because of interprovincial trade barriers. That's why. And every once in a while, you'll see a move towards, we've got to do something, we've got to pull those barriers down.

It's a little hard to negotiate with other countries and be complaining and whining about barriers between countries when we have them within our own country and between provinces. So this latest round with the Americans has brought this issue up once again. And you have Anita Anand, who's the, among other things, is the trade minister, has been a senior cabinet minister for, well, ever since she's been in parliament. She's not going to run again this time, or at least that's what she says. Some people are changing their minds on that, but she says she's not running again. She is for Mark

Carney and she's said she's supporting Mark Carney and the leadership race. She has suggested in the last couple of weeks, she wrote a great piece for the Toronto Star, I think it was about two weeks ago, and she's followed it up. She's now saying, we can have a deal on interprovincial trade in 10 days as a result of the mood that exists in the country right now. So what do we make of that? Is there a real chance for that? Is it needed?

Is it something the country as a whole could benefit from if, in fact, we put an end to interprovincial trade barriers? Which of you two bright minds would like to tackle this first? I'm happy to give it a try if you'd like. Does it make sense that there are different regulations for BC and British Columbia for toilet seats on construction sites than there are in Ontario? No. Does it make sense that Nova Scotia wineries, which are pretty good, can't sell their wine in British Columbia, which has complained forever about not being able to sell their wine? No, no, it doesn't. Or does it make sense that, you know, a fruit grower in the Niagara region has to have different packaging when it sells stuff in Alberta

than it does in Quebec? It doesn't make sense. But I'll tell you that one of the biggest buzzwords that you're going to be hearing over the next little while as Ottawa gets ready for a budget that might never be presented, OK, because of the election Chantal was speaking of earlier. One of the biggest buzzwords you're going to hear is money for trade diversification, okay, trade diversification. Expect to hear a lot of that. And it's like we do not already have trade commissioners in 160 cities around the world. We do. And what are those trade commissioners offering if you go to their websites?

They're offering free money to business to set up overseas. They'll help you if you're a business person. Businesses tried this. There is a reason why we direct most of our business where we direct it, which is to the United States. And that's proximity and access to, with Mexico, 500 million consumers very, very close across land, not across sea. So, yes, get rid of some of the ridiculousness of some of these things. You're going to run into some trouble. There's a reason why we have 600 credentialing organizations, and that's because

a lot of these groups have mobilized and convinced politicians that it's in their political interest to have some of these trade barriers. And it'll be interesting to see if they can actually sort of stiff arm that kind of political pressure. But we're never going to change our geography. And our geography doesn't mean that business has been lazy. They've been efficient. They go where the money is. And if we want to talk about the reality of that, let's look at where Mark Carney started his campaign. He started it on a dairy farm in Quebec. And what's happening in dairy farms in Quebec? They're protected from competition.

They're protected from trade that the United States has certainly said for a long, long time through various precedents is unfair. That's a reality check for a lot of people who want to get rid of barriers to trade. Chantal. It's always a good thing to have this discussion and some momentum behind it is welcome. There are trade barriers between the provinces that serve their purpose or if they had a positive purpose, the negatives now win the day. It's wrong to make, and there are many people in this country, many constituencies who are, and it's fair game, trying to turn a crisis into opportunities for their agenda. But it would be wrong to try to convince Canadians that getting those

trade barriers down is the solution with a capital S, the alternative to having a free flow of goods between Canada and the US. It is certainly part of the puzzle, but it's not a central part of the economic puzzle for this country. There are also trade barriers that are related. Quebec has a monopoly on the most trade barriers, but a lot of those are related to language. Yes, you need packaging that's got French on it if you're going to sell in this province. That's not going to change in the name of whatever.

Don't expect any Quebec government to say, sure, just ship your unilingual labels to this province, or yes, you can come and work here, and you don't need to use French in the workplace. How would you communicate with clients, except if they were forced to speak English to you? So it's easy to say we're going to get rid of them. A lot of the things that Rob mentioned, frankly, have little bearing on the daily lives of most of us. There is a committee that is suddenly working at double speed to make more similar the rules for truck safety

between the provinces. Well, that sounds kind of like a no-brainer. But yes, there is momentum. But it's by far a least divisive issue than the other issue that has come back on the agenda, which is pipelines and pipeline development, where it is easy to see. We talked about this bump in support for the liberals and maybe it's short-lived. Well, if you're going to have momentum suddenly for building east to west pipelines in Canada

so that you can bring oil and gas to other places than south in the United States, you're going to need that momentum to last a lot longer than a season. Because to get a pipeline project off the ground, it takes a lot of time and opposition always builds up over time. But that issue has come back to the fore. You've watched the Federal Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Wilkinson, say we should be considering this. You've watched the Quebec premier say there's not necessarily social acceptability, but that could change depending on the circumstances. showed me a rejigged, more environmental-friendly liquefied gas project, I would be willing to look at it. This is all good this week, but where public opinion will be on those issues in six months, possibly back to where public opinion was six months ago, it's going to be harder to sustain,

is basically what I'm saying. International trade barriers, we'll talk about it and we can get some easy morale wins on that file, I believe, over the next 30 days. But the fundamental changes that will be required to lessen the dependency to the US will require a much larger conversation and some major issues of a climate management versus fossil fuels. You know, speaking of no-brainers, it would seem just on paper, and I recognize there are other issues here, safety, climate, etc. But it would seem on paper that if we are having to import oil for the East Coast, why are we exporting

our own oil to the United States from the West Coast, or from the West? I can remember asking a former Prime Minister this same question, who was very much an advocate of moving more into the States, moving more oil into the States,

that why are we still having to import oil from the East Coast? Why can't we just use a pipeline? Wasn't there at one point some discussion about reversing pipelines? You know, turning a gas pipeline into an oil pipeline and shifting the uh the direction well that came at the time of a horrendous terrible uh rail crash involving oil in quebec and i kind of put a stop to that discussion in some manners but there are other issues too involved in all this but it does seem that that east-west pipeline or that west-to-east pipeline

issue is back on the table. And Wilkinson, the energy minister, kind of advocating it in the last couple of days is an interesting move. On the interprovincial trade barrier thing, I mean, you know, it frustrates people who love BC wine, but live in Ontario and can't get certain BC wines. And the reverse is true. I mean, Canada has developed in this last 20 or 30 years.

I mean, we used to be kind of the butt of jokes about wine on the international. With good reason. But that's different now, right? There are a lot of great Canadian wines, and the fact that Canadians who like wine can access them all, you know, unless they fly to BC

and fill their suitcases with wine as much as they can. Anyway. Knock down the barriers preventing trade from 41 million people, between 41 million people. I think that's a good idea. But the government has not shifted its objective from trying to access 500

million people. That remains the number one goal. Okay. Yes. And it should, we've been in this since 1988. That has been the consensus. So just because Donald Trump has no respect for trade agreements, does it suddenly mean that we've all been wrong? Because by now it's a consensus issue, free trade with the US. All been wrong for all those years. Brian Mulroney must be spinning in his grave at this point. We always must remember that when Trump signed the latest free trade deal, whatever it's called, USMCA or something, he described it as the greatest trade agreement ever signed anywhere by anyone. You're suggesting it might be mercurial.

How could that be? He's the President of the United States. He can't afford to be that kind of person, right? Right. Okay, thank you both. Another great conversation on Good Talk for this week. Thanks to Chantal. Thanks to Rob.

They'll be back a week from now, of course. Tomorrow, The Buzz comes out at 7 a.m in your mailbox in your inbox if in fact you've subscribed which you can do at no cost just your email is needed at nationalnewswatch.com slash slash newsletter one slash and you can get that as well we'll be back on monday i'm off to van to Vancouver this weekend for the opening of the Invictus Games and to be at the Leaf game tomorrow night in Vancouver. It should be fun. Well, no one will be booing.

Yeah, no one will be booing. Well, they always boo the Leafs. Okay, take care, and we'll see you in a week's time. See you, Peter.