The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Has Trump Lost It? Is It Advantage Canada?

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Remember that old saying "Stick a fork in him, he's done"? Some people are beginning to say that about Donald Trump, which may well work in Canada's favour. A little early or no? Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson on that, and also more on the possible Alberta referendum and Washington's supposed involvement. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle-A-Barre and Bruce Anderson. Good to have you with us. Lots to talk about on Good Talk for this week. We should start before we get into the politics of the week with the Tumblr Ridge story in the sense that we were as horrified as all of you have been this week by the story coming out of northeastern BC. and we just want to know that we've been thinking about the people of Tumblr Ridge,

those directly affected, and well, I guess everybody in a small community like that is directly affected by what happened. But I think it's made us all think about not only them, but in way, us, as we think as parents, about what happened this week. So I just want to say that. our thoughts and prayers, even though that's such a tired old phrase, I definitely would the people of Tumblr Ridge stay. All right, getting into politics.

You know, it's a dangerous thing to suggest that Donald Trump is kind of losing it, whether it's losing his mind on some of the things he's saying, or whether he's losing his support. Every time that's being suggested in the past, hasn't turned out that way. But at the last couple of weeks, one would look at what Donald Trump has said and what he's done and wonder about just what kind of support does he really have these days, from his own base, from his own Republican colleagues, and how does that impact what's going on between Canada and the United States. So I want to talk about that for a little

bit and being cautiously talking about it, because as we've seen, history has not shown this to be necessarily something that happens to Trump. He doesn't kind of lose it in real terms, in terms of support. Bruce, why don't you start us on this? Yeah, I do think that this has been the worst week for Trump in terms of maintaining support for the kind of agenda that he has. And I think that you're right, Peter, to we should all be cautious about overstating the degree to which he's affected by the troubles that normally would perplex an incumbent. But that having been said, the public opinion for him is getting worse by the week. He's underwater on all of the issues that brought him to office on immigration, on economic policy. and I think we're accustomed to feeling that Americans or American public opinion

doesn't reflect very much concern about how America is viewed in the world, but I think that's changing as well. In addition to the public opinion, though, you know, and one would be entitled to ask whether public opinion would ever affect any of the other stakeholders who influence public policy. There hasn't been much evidence of it up until now, but Trump lost two important votes this week, both of which had to do with the role of Congress in setting tariff policy and specifically tariff policy as it relates to Canada.

The Democrats had signaled that they wanted to have a motion in the House that would overturn Canada's tariffs. The Senate passed a similar motion last year. And the Trump administration tried desperately within the Republican caucus to stop that vote from happening. But they lost within the Republican caucus. And that was a big breakthrough moment, I think, because enough Republicans stood up to Trump and said, no, we don't like these policies. We think they're harmful for our economy.

We don't like the way that he's talking about our friend and ally Canada. And so we're going to allow that House vote to go ahead. And then the House vote happened and the House voted to overturn those. tariffs. Now, that doesn't mean those tariffs will be overturned for sure. There are more ways in which Trump can stop that process, including a veto. But it is clear now that both the Senate and the House have voiced a majority opinion that these tariffs are bad policy and that they don't like the way that Canada is being treated. And the last point for me is that why did this happen just now? I think it's accumulation of economic pressures and a sense of too much chaos in national policy.

But the flashpoint for the chaos in national policy was probably what Donald Trump said about the Gordy Howl bridge. This is a massive bridge that Canada has paid billions of dollars for. We bore the whole cost of it, but the understanding was that it would be jointly owned by Michigan and Canada, and Canada would get its money back for the investment in the bridge, collecting tolls. Well, Trump used a social media platform as he so often does to say, it's a terrible deal. We're not going to let this bridge go forward because Canada has treated us poorly. That's not that unusual for him to do something as strange and kind of unexpected, but what happened was a lot of Republican politicians, not just in Michigan, but elsewhere,

started to say, no, no, no, no, no, this makes no sense whatsoever. There was a deal. He announced it with Justin Trudeau. And so there was a sense of a straw breaking the camel's back there in terms of the Republicans saying, we just don't want to go along with this anymore. We need to speak out. And there were other things, but I'll stop there. I think it's been a really important week in the dynamic for Trump and Congress

and potentially in a dynamic between the United States and Canada over the medium term. How do you see it, Chantel? Well, for one, I believe the law of electoral gravity plays the same way in the U.S. as it does in Canada. So with every passing week going to the midterms, polls are going to matter more. They're going to matter more to Republicans who increasingly will feel that sticking with Trump on all this, is actually stinking that. And that we are starting to see some of that. I guess we will see more of that.

The Trump bridge, yes, that was someone scoring in his own net in the sense that, one, the statement, including the fact that the Chinese were coming to grab the Stanley Cup, made no sense. Two, it's one thing to stop a pipeline. Keystone Excel is a good. example that various administrations have slowed or stopped. It doesn't exist yet. It's another thing to have a fully built bridge and tell people, I'm going to stop you from using it.

The bridge is right there. It's a physical thing. It's not a figment of our hopes and dreams as, for instance, the fast train between Toronto and Montreal. Yes, in our lifetimes, that's been a recurring dream that seems to be always distant. But would we tell voters in this country, the train is there, the track is there, and it's never going to run because I don't like the color of the train. What would happen to that person? From the Canada standpoint, I think what's also happening is for the past year, Trump has gone out of his way to say bad things about Canada, to portray Canada as a predator of state that keeps grabbing, but does not. not ever give back. And after all those efforts,

what was the Davis speech by the Prime Minister, polls this week in the US show that Canada is still very, very popular, like plus 30 in appreciation versus Trump

that is around minus the same amount. So in the end, these attempts to kind of portray Canada in the way that Donald Trump has, have failed. Well, what happens, and Bruce could walk you through those things is if you're going to pick, and again, I'm assuming the electoral gravity operates the same way in the U.S., notwithstanding what Donald Trump may believe, if you're going to campaign against something or someone that is

unpopular, you're going to score points. We see it in this country when the prime minister is unpopular. Provincial campaigns tend to be elect me because this guy is someone that I'm going to keep away from us. But Donald Trump, looking at those numbers, is basically in the case of Canada, campaigning against some entity that is a lot more popular than he is. And that usually doesn't result in good outcomes. Now, are there issues stemming from that for Canada? I think the business lobbies in this country that have, and it's their task, being

pushing really hard to protect Kuzma and. ensure a renegotiation that leads to stability are up to a point of lost influence in the conversation in Canada in the sense that the more you see the bridge issues surface and the way that Trump presents them, the less they can make a cohesive case to Canadians that we have to make concessions to protect Kuzma because every episode leads to more Canadians saying it makes no sense to give anything to this administration because it won't matter. And the bridge is a perfect example. He stood there with Justin Trudeau to say this is a priority infrastructure.

It's important for America. And here we are with six, seven, eight years later, with him saying, this bridge is some vanity project on the part of Canada that I'm not going to allow to open. You know, and let me just say something here, first of all, about because I know some viewers are watching this on YouTube and they're going, what the heck is going on? There's kind of a weird look to the show. Well, here's the upside on this. We're all out of our normal locations this week. I'm in Winnipeg.

In spite of that picture in the background on the wall here, this is what they do in Winnipeg. When it's cold in the middle of the winter, they put up a picture that looks like the Caribbean is supposed to make you feel warmer. Bruce is actually in that area of the world, so he's happy, it's sunny and warm where he is. Chantel's in Calgary. So the upside of all this is there's no central Canadian bias on the program today, as some of you accuses of, because none of us are anywhere near Central Canada. Anyway, so I just want you to understand that, and the Internet connection to where Bruce isn't great. So that's why the picture's a little fuzzy, but it's stable.

so we'll be happy about that. And my iPad keeps moving me. I swear I am not moving. Yeah, no, we noticed that. Whenever you see that. It's like you got your own film crew there, giving lots of different options on the shot. I'm thinking.

Becoming a wax statue maybe would help, but I don't think I can do that. I'm back north in a couple of days, so my picture will get cleaner and I'll have a smaller smile on my face. But, Peter, can I just jump in on a couple of things? I want to, you know what Chantelle said about there are some voices, not that many in the Canadian business community who keep wanting to say things like

just do no harm in the relationship with the United States as though keeping our mouths shut and taking the beating from Trump is somehow a strategy that will work out for us. I like Chantel think that there's not much audience for that argument anymore, that it doesn't look like it holds any water either as a political. strategy or as an economic strategy for Canada. Maybe the best example of it is, you know, Jamil Giovanni, who we talked about last week, having gone down to Washington and set up meetings

and saying that he talked to Trump and Trump wanted to send a message that he loves Canadians. This was like hours, like 4872, I don't know how many hours before he said, we're not going to let that bridge go forward. Nobody's going to get to use that bridge unless we get, you know, all the money from it or most of the money from it. So the notion of America as a stable trading partner is really gone. And it's not just something that's being said in Canada.

It's being said, I hear it echoed more and more around the world. I follow a lot of what world leaders are saying about America. And I think there has been a very big shift. And I think it, you know, I think the Davos speech by Prime Minister Carney did help trigger that. you just see more and more evidence of it, the kind of language that President Macron of France was using in the last couple of days. I don't think I ever expected to hear a leader of France talk about the United States in my lifetime in the way that he did. He felt perfectly comfortable saying we need to assume that America is not an ally insofar as our defense and security arrangements are concerned. and he talked using more strident language than I think people expected about the breach in the

relationship and the importance of France and other countries looking at America as a state that can't be trusted, not an ally. And he didn't go maybe further than that. Maybe Chantelle remembers the exact words. And then the other thing that is occurring domestically, which we haven't talked about yet, and we maybe don't need to get into huge detail. But it's been a terrible week for the Trump administration on these Epstein files. Whatever they thought they were doing by withholding millions of pages of documents on the

assumption that they put out the first million pretty heavily redacted and the news cycle would turn pretty quickly towards something else, that did not happen. This is a, that's turned out to be a terrible strategy for them. And now there's three million more. documents, there's videos, there's all kinds of things. And they've got this situation where congressmen and congresswomen are allowed to go in and observe them and take notes and bring them back out. That, again, is kind of a drip, drip, drip scenario that's just going to kind of carry on and on and on. More people are getting dragged under by it. And then when the Trump

Attorney General Pam Bondi went and was questioned, I think, I think it was the House of Representatives, not the Senate. I may be wrong about that. Her performance was so aggressive that I think it shocked for Republicans who felt like, what is going on here. And so I think there's a real breach in the Republican caucus and the Republican Party over the handling of the Epstein files. And I think that is going to continue to be a source of massive chaos for the administration

as they try to find ways to distract people from it. But I don't think that it's going to work. A couple of points. Did you want to say something on that, Chantel? I just want to say if you want a story to die in a news cycle or two, you do not constantly feed it. You ripped a bandage once and then try to move on. But this is kind of a guaranteed you're not going to move off after a couple of news cycle

because you're basically feeding the story yourself. And with all the reaction, in the UK and Europe to some of those revelations, the fact that nothing happens as a result of them in the U.S. kind of makes it even more difficult for the administration to pull out of this. You know, I think his Trump strategy this past week has been one, you know, on putting a lot of faith in the people close to him in the cabinet. I mean, he's known Pan Bondi for a long time.

She was the former Attorney General in Florida as well. And she's aggressive. You know, she likes the verbal fight. But it backfired on her this week. There's no doubt about that. It looked horrible. And she's getting pasted and plastered by her own Republican colleagues as a result of it. But the other guy is this Lutnik, who's one of the trade people.

You know, you can trace the bridge story back to Lutnik. You know, the bridge is all about money. It's about cash. to, in many cases, Republicans, as a result of the original bridge that still exists, still gets tolls. It's owned by one family who has been very supportive of the Republicans in the past in various different races. It's made that family billionaires, and they're going to lose a lot of money with a new bridge because they won't be getting the tolls anymore. That's where their fortune is based on. it turns out according to the New York Times and not surprisingly really people were thinking about this almost right away when the bridge thing came out that one of the members of that family talked to Lutnik and said you got to stop this bridge even though it's it finished building it's been a seven-year project um anyways sir you got to stop this bridge and here's why you know the Canadians didn't pay a nickel for it and it's there's no American steel in it

and blah, blah, blah, blah, all these other lies. And the next thing that Lutnik does is he whispers it in Trump's ear, and the next thing Trump does is that night he puts out his tweet, that fire hose of lies, as they say. So that one backfired because he depended on his guy, who then turned out the next day to get hammered in the Epstein files. So it's one bad thing after another. But here's the hook to me and the reason I get, you know, I think, you know, it's this.

It's February. The midterms aren't until November. Lots going to happen, especially in a Trump presidency, where he's constantly trying to deflect, change the subject, move it to something that's going to benefit him. why are why does everybody think that in February it's going to impact November? You want to take a run at that, Bruce? You're the one who looks at numbers and polls on the depth of feelings on people's attitudes. Yeah, look, I mean, the first reason why I think people are inclined to make the prediction that there's going to be big losses for the U.S. administration

is the kind of the history of what happens in midterms to an incumbent, to incumbent president's party, which is that it often is the case that there's a switch back to the other party. Second thing is that the number of seats that normally switch, if an incumbent president's approval rating is in the mid-40s, is a number much larger. than the Democrats need in order to. So now that Trump's, in order to retake the House,

now that Trump's approval rating starts with a three in many of the polls that came out in the last week, you have to believe that he's going to fashion. It's calling into question now at that level of whether the Senate will actually flip to. You see more and more American analysts saying the Senate is now in play, and they weren't saying that three or four weeks ago.

So to your exact question, Peter, So this is February, that's November. Yes, in theory, somebody could turn it around. But in practice, what Trump does is accelerate. He puts his foot on the pedal of doing the kinds of things that have put him in this jeopardy because he has this instinct to if you're taking a punch, you punch back even harder. Is it possible that some number of people around him will sit with him and say, look, here are the 10 hard things that you don't want to do that are going to put us back on a path.

It is possible. But he's filled his cabinet and his entourage with people who are making money off the choices that he's making or who believe in a lot of the crazy ideas that he's representing, whether it's RFK or Lutnik talking about tariffs as though there's no impact on American consumers or Bissent talking about some of the things that he's. talking about, or Christy Noem, another Wall Street Journal story out today that people are going to want to take note of. There are a lot of bad actors around him right now.

It's not like the Trump first term where there was a group of fairly seasoned people from outside politics who could say, you know, Mr. President, if you want to change the trajectory of public opinion, here are some of the things that we need to do. I don't see that around him. His family's not really around him in the same way either. So all of those guardrails are off. And I would add that some of the things that he's writing and saying on social media, so outrageously racist, some of the bigotry that we see happening,

the way in which he's changing the face of Washington and how it presents itself, I think there's a cumulative effect there. And at some point, people just go, could the Democrats just give me some combination of voices that I can believe in? And what I see on that side is AOC and Sanders are still prominent, but their prominence isn't really about we need to take the Democratic Party further to the left. It's we need to get these Republicans out of office. And I think that's a big difference. And then among the names of potential presidential candidates, which will start to come into more focus and prominence in the months to come.

Our names like Shapiro and Pritzker and Bashir and Asoff, and then there are interesting candidates like James Tala Rico in Texas. So that's a cadre of names and people who kind of sit more generally towards that center of the spectrum and are the kind of names that will make, I think a lot of those swing voters go, I don't have to vote Republican this time. The Democrats did get a message from us, and it looks like a more centrist party.

Move us back to how this is all impacting the situation with Canada, Shantel. Well, I'm going to take two examples. One of them is climate change, and the decision that climate change, basically the highest scientific environmental authority in the U.S. is now decreed that climate change is not an issue. We're back to it's not really happening. What that means is that our policies are going to increasingly be divorced on the trade and economic front and manufacturing from the United States. When you've seen it with autos, it's going to increase.

Because I was listening this week to a report. It was fascinating about the penetration of EVs and the European and the Asian markets. We are already way behind, but if the U.S. is going to go in the other direction, the last thing Canada needs to do is to tag along as we have in the past, because we will wake up one morning, and that morning is not going to be in a decade in a market where the only buyers, maybe, are going to be Americans, and our auto industry is going to be completely overtaken. by the reality of what the market has become.

I think it's 96% EVs in one Norway, I think, which actually produces oil. So when you look at numbers like that and what's happening in China, you think, okay, go, but let's not us go there. And increasingly the rationale for that is going to be economically beneficial as opposed to we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot because our main trading partner is no longer on the same page. But the other, and I find that very disquieting, is vaccines. Some of the decisions that were taken over the past few weeks, because we can talk about

the politics as we just have, but things are happening in real time in the real world. Some of the decisions on vaccines, modern, I think, deciding it's no longer going to pursue the latest generation of vaccines. stand to leave us really vulnerable if there is another pandemic because basically the U.S. is exporting itself out of this market. And as it does, let's not make ourselves believe that the Canadian scientific community can thrive in an environment where the U.S. is missing in action.

So basically, we are farming out in a way the next pandemic line of defense to China and to countries that are removed and may not really be into helping America, including Canada. So you look at those developments and you think, okay, so the midterms may change something. Everything that Bruce said will likely or possibly happen. But meanwhile, big blocks of foundations that matter to the future are being destroyed. And I don't see that stopping for the reasons that Bruce explained. So, yes, there are consequences. And ultimately on issues like pandemic, it will leave us more exposed to risk as Canadians than it would have two years ago.

Okay, we're going to take our first break here. You know, there's always an irony in some of this stuff Trump does. I mean, the climate change position, you know, that it's a con job, it's a fraud, and the decisions that the U.S. made this week, you know, he seems to forget the whole reason he can threaten Greenland and sending a force to, you know, a naval force to the high Arctic to deal with Greenland if he was ever going to invade it or do whatever he's planning on doing, if anything, is because of climate change. the vessels he's got couldn't handle that, those waters.

You know, unless climate change had happened and made certain areas ice-free and more areas to come. So, you know, it's, I just find the whole thing bizarre at times. Okay, let's take our break, our first break, and we'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk for this Friday. You're either listening on Sirius XM or on our podcast, any one of our platforms, or you're watching us on our U-Term version of Good Talk. Sean Talley Bear, Bruce Anderson here. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Okay. Topic two, and everything's related in some fashion here, topic two, though, is the Alberta referendum, the possibilities of it, the question of Alberta secession, and the connection if it is between Alberta separatists and the White House, it kind of comes down to who to believe on this story, on, you know, same as many stories, who to believe. Some Alberta separatists say they've been meeting at high levels

with the U.S. administration. The U.S. administration says, oh, there's no high-level discussions going on here. But if you believe the Albertans who say they're involved, in these discussions. It is pretty high-level stuff that they say they're talking about. Now, some people see this as treason for this kind of stuff is going on. Other people say, what the heck, the U.S., you know, this is foreign interference in a Canadian issue. Where are we on this? You're in Caliburta, Chantal. What are you hearing? What's being said?

Well, I am reminded that you can discuss high-level stuff with low-level staffers. And at the end of the day, everyone is telling the truth. I did note as a subtext to some of the stories about these meetings, the State Department, the officials who speak for the State Department to kind of, you know, if you call them up or send an email, will respond. Their line is there have been no high-level talks. and I'm assuming that that also means that the Canadian government in some way, shape or form did get in touch with the State Department to say, hello, if this is real, you can't be playing this game,

and that the message was heard. What is being said here? What I've noticed since I got here is it's very much like Montreal and the maybe upcoming referendum on sovereignty, Everybody is talking about Trump and very few people are talking about how it would be nice to succeed tomorrow. It doesn't seem, people are concerned by all that they read,

but I'm failing to feel and I understand why this nationalism fever of Albertans and the reason why is that it's very much concentrated in the more rural areas of Alberta. So I'm not on the right place in Calgary to get a sound. of that. The

sound, the impression from people on the ground here is that there's a lot of BS, give my language, in this reporting by Alberta separatists that they're discussing an army for Alberta

with the American government. That frankly doesn't sound like it's happening and very few people believe it. So where that takes, that does mean that there won't be a referendum on sovereignty in the sense that if you look at the numbers and they were interesting ones, I think, from Angus Street this week, 57% of the people

who say they back Premier Daniel Smith's party would consider or would vote yes. A minority are convinced they would vote yes to separation. But the 57% number tells you that Daniel Smith isn't abound because more than half of the people who say, I'm a UCP voter, says I'm open to considering this, which makes it very hard for her to respond to calls for her to say, I'm for a United Canada and I will defend this tooth and nail. She has also facilitated the possibility of that referendum. So I mostly heard a sense of, you know, it's likely to happen. it's at this point very unlikely to change or to win.

And there isn't all that much that Daniel Smith or Mark Carney can do to prevent it from happening or even from giving things that will result in a more positive result. And why I say that is because this notion that has been prevalent in Quebec for a long, long time, is now prevalent in parts of Alberta, and it is the knife on the throat theory. If we vote yes and lose, we will still have managed to put more pressure on the federal government to get what I want.

That's mostly based on a somewhat rosy view of where Quebec is at in federal-provincial relations, but that could make people want to vote yes to send a message. some of the people who would like to vote yes to send a message might be deterred by the notion that the separation movement is playing footsie with Donald Trump and with ideas of joining the United States so it's kind of a fluid conversation

you know I've seen this stuff about the State Department officials sending a message back that you know we're not involved we're not talking there's no high level this that or the other that's all well and good except they're on you know one of Trump's cabinet secretary, is a senior one, Besson, the Treasury Secretary. He was encouraging Alberta separation just two weeks ago and not quietly. So, you know, I mean, he was getting oxygen to it for sure. He was helping full the media coverage. He was legitimizing the attention of the media to this number of what I think it probably rightly described as relatively low-level

people at this point anyway. It's hard to, it's hard to know how much institutional force to associate with them. I think Chantelle's right to say the situation is fluid. They don't have a mandate, but they are having conversations and they had conversations on three separate occasions in Washington. So that's not nothing. I do think that the way in which the American officials have discussed this more recently suggests that they don't want to get caught up more in this conversation now. I think that's encouraging and who knows what happened behind the scenes to connect the dots. But I doubt that we'll see another intervention by Bacent or someone of that stature that further adds oxygen to this. But I wouldn't bet on it. I would just say I would

doubt it. I saw Chantelle do a little. Well, I'm thinking, you know, the China's coming for the Stanley Cup, so you can't do that any possibility. But I want to say a couple of other things. I think that a lot of language that these individuals are using is about how Albertans want to be an independent country or they should want to be an independent country. I don't know how that squares with. Let's go down to the United States and talk about their currency. Let's talk about having a military together. Let's talk about having a financial dependency on them.

The co-mingling of the idea of being independent from Canada while at the same time driving into the arms of the Trump at. administration, you know, that isn't a one plus one equals two. That's a one plus one equals less than two, maybe less than one, depending how it unfolds over time. In terms of how Canadian politicians should possibly react to this, I think it's a, you know, it's one of those situations where if you read the public opinion carefully enough, you can see a difference between when people say, I like the idea of independence. Independence is a word. that feels nicer than dependence or even nicer than unity sometimes in terms of how people kind of react to the political conversation that they've been exposed to. That isn't the same

as saying, I want to choose independence when I think about what the upsides are and what the potential downsides are. Right now, I think we've got not enough politicians in the Alberta landscape saying, well, we need to think about what independence means. And not just from the standpoint if it would be breaking up Canada and isn't Canada better united. I think we've seen in the past that that appeal to the idea of unity sounds like it's a little bit distance from what's really in it for you. And independence can sound like here's what's in it for you. You can control all the revenues from the resources and you'll be better off financially. So I think that argument needs to be made in Alberta, largely by Albertans, talking about what the consequences of independence would be so that the people who are championing the idea don't get away with just saying, wouldn't it feel great in your heart to feel that Alberta was more independent or that you are more independent of other outside influences that compromise your economic well-being.

that has yet to develop and whether that's because you've got conservative politicians in the province and some at the federal level who just don't want to alienate that base that they have that likes Donald Trump

that's the most logical assumption to make right now that they're kind of waiting to hope that it fades away and they won't have to do it or somebody else will do it and they don't have to be the first but that's the work that needs to be done here

I don't think it's as simple as saying well people shouldn't really think this, it's seditious or treasonous. I don't think that gets anybody anywhere, to be honest. I think you have to accept that people have thoughts and can make arguments, and it's part of a free speech and a democracy, but the counter argument does need to be made. There is some irrational for allowing the current leaders of the separation movement in Alberta to have a lot of exposure. And I say that because I have not noticed that any of them was of Yustin Bouchard or Jacques Pegg's old caliber.

And up to a point, you maybe kind of want them to be all over the place. Because if you're a voter and you look at this, you know, I imagine this at the equivalent in Quebec, you would ask yourself, do I really want to gamble my economic future on these people? Yeah. And what has not happened in Alberta is a leader of stature. There's no back in the mix. There's no Lucian Bucar. I had coffee with Jason Kennedy, who has been very proactive on social media on both the Trump issue and on this separation issue. And he reminded me that over decades, this movement has only once managed to elect one person to the legislature.

And that goes back to the early 80s. So we're not talking here about people who have had votes of confidence even from their local voters to suddenly emerge. And yes, Preston Manning is somewhere in the background, but I would argue that Preston Manning has had his time in the sun, but that he is a bit like Lucien Bouchard in Quebec, more of an elder statesman than someone who will lead a flock to anything. So I'm not sure I would want to get in.

to the nitty gritty of what it means until that petition has been signed by the adequate number required to require a referendum, and that won't happen until the early may, the earliest. So until then, you kind of want, you also do not want, I guess, from those conversations I had. And this is not something that the Quebec dynamics is completely different. But in the Alberta dynamics, you do not want to give the impression that the elites are all against the project of the grassroots. Because the political culture here will backlash on you. And I think that also matters. That's a really good point.

And we've witnessed that happen in this country before. We saw it with, you know, Meach. We saw it with Charlottetown. You know, we've seen this movie before. Okay, we've got to take a final break back right after this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here with Chantel and Bruce. Good talk for this Friday. You know, Chantel, you mentioned that you had a chat with Jason Kenney, the former Premier of Alberta on this trip you were making to Alberta. Yesterday, here in Winnipeg, had a chance for a few minutes with Wob Canoe.

Now, we got a bit of a history. We used to work together at CBC. He was a fantastic journalist and documentary produced. or did lots of really fine work. And now he's premier. And I think when you look at the numbers, he's the most popular premier in the country. His numbers are really high. But I said to him at one point in our chat yesterday, I said, how much of this stuff of you 10 premiers

and the territorial leaders, how much of this stuff about how there's a common goal, you're united, everybody's getting along, because we all know there are differences for many of you, not just political differences, but differences in the way you want to see moving forward. I said, how much is this real when we see the smiling handshake stuff? And he said, you know, at the beginning it wasn't, there were problems.

He says, but there aren't now. We actually get along and we're moving towards this common goal of, you know, like kind of in a way saving the country from the, from the fellow south of the border. And I was impressed the way he said it. You know, it wasn't there at the beginning, but it is there now in spite of the differences. Do you see it?

I mean, he's in the room, so he obviously knows better than we do, but what are we hearing? Is it really that comfortable by that group? What are you hearing? Who wants to go first? Okay.

Go ahead. Yeah, I think the evidence is often in the body language and the outtakes after a meeting and in the lack of sustained friction when something goes wrong as it sometimes can. And we saw that in terms of the reaction, initial reaction, that Premier Ford had to Prime Minister Carney's visit to China an agreement to allow the import

of or to change the tariff structure so that 49,000 Chinese cars had come in. Initially, Doug Ford was pretty angry about it within days. And this week, he was saying things about Mark Carney that, you know, very few federal liberal prime ministers get to hear from a provincial conservative premier and would have given heartburn to Pierre Pahliav. But, you know, I look at it and kind of thing, well, at the beginning of the Carney government, there was a sense of enormous crisis. The stakes couldn't have been higher.

Everything seemed really urgent. And public opinion was looking like that as well. And so you could look at the dynamics between the prime minister and the prevention of territorial leaders and say they're all going to look like they're getting a lot. because they feel the public wants that to happen. That isn't what I see today. The crisis doesn't feel quite as high pressure for many Canadians. They've kind of grown a little bit accustomed to the conversation about tariffs

extending over time. They've grown a little bit more accustomed to the chaos of Trump. It doesn't make them relaxed, but it doesn't make them say this needs to be solved right now. The number of people who say we should take the time necessary to get a good deal is 75%. now, and it was about 25% if we go back about a year in time. And so that's changed. And so you could imagine that now there could be more friction, more natural friction,

because premiers could imagine taking their grievances or their pet projects or their priorities to Ottawa and using that kind of strident language that we've seen so often in the past and the federal government getting its backup and saying, well, we can't do this, we can't do that. maybe we just shouldn't be that much. How many times have we seen that movie replay itself over time? But the relationship seems to be going in the opposite direction. And I think it has a lot to do with general alignment in terms of people that are looking for investment in building the economy, investment in resilience, the economy.

The one big question mark, I guess, was the intersection of Alberta and Saskatchewan to some degree. But I think the prime minister and those premiers have made an effort to see if they can bridge the differences that have historically separated conservative Saskatchewan in Alberta and liberal Ottawa. And at the least, they seem able to have conversations, even if they don't agree on everything. And so I do think that what you were hearing is what I see in the way in which this is playing out. You get the last word, Shantau. It does feel like a more adult relationship than anything we've seen in the recent decades. I think if I go back on memory, the last time I saw constructive engagement between the premiers and the prime minister to that level would go back to the late 80s when Brian Mulroney

was negotiating the FDA with the United States, the first trade agreement and the Meach Lake Accord. And there were disagreements back then on the... initiative, but they were real conversations. And I think that what matters or what explains the chemistry is that they are discussing serious things. These meetings are not just about some prime minister coming to the meeting to present a fait accompli to the provinces and saying, my money is there. If you want it, you're going to do my bidding. That's not the kind of relationship that we're watching. I also believe that the fact that the prime minister, enjoys this almost a year in a very high level of confidence from Canadians,

reflects on the premiers. They are players in this conversation, but they are speaking to someone who still has a lot of political capital to expand on this. And that is quite something. I think I mentioned in the past that Mark Carney did not win the election because people loved them or even liked them. but a year in they want him to be prime minister because they trust him and that may be a more important quantity than affection or love at first sight

but I do think it impacts on the premiers I also think that they know that this is serious business and that their voters expect them what have we seen over the past few weeks we saw Stephen Harper with Mark Carney and with Jean-Critier we're watching as we speak all leaders in the House of Commons are off to Northern BC including Black Quebecuerre and Francois Blanchet

I think leaders' premiers are also responding to how Canadians feel about that and what they want to see from their leaders and that is more constructive unity not just we all get along because we are all Canadian but more constructive unity than the wedging of issues that we saw over the past two decades. All right.

Good discussion. And trust, you know, trust is hard to earn, but you can't replace it. You get trust. It can take you a long way. And not just in politics. We've seen it across the border on the leadership question for many different areas. listen both of you Bruce Chantelle thanks very much and for those who are watching or listening out there have a have a safe weekend take care we'll talk next week thank you both bye

have a good weekend