The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Reality Sinks In ... This is Going to Hurt

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

As the week ends thousands of Canadians are out of work because of the Donald Trump tariffs. Thousands more could be soon.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantal Hébert and Rob Russo. It is your Friday Good Talk. And as always, lots to talk about. I guess in some ways, reality has now sunk in. I mean, there are hundreds, no, correct me, there are thousands of Canadians out of work today as a result of what Donald Trump did on Wednesday with his tariffs,

and there are going to be thousands more almost certainly within the next little while. And I'm wondering if that reality, as it sinks in, is having an impact on the campaign. Has anything changed about the campaign as a result of the terrorists finally coming through this week after weeks, if not months, of speculation? Rob, start us. Yeah, I think so. I think that the grim reality of thousands of people now wondering about groceries, about mortgages, about rent, about clothes for their kids. I think that that has had a realigning effect on, on the campaigns. I think, I think we saw it in, in Mr. Poiliev reorienting his campaign, trying to address the situation in, in front of a crowd of conservatives. I know that they were cast

as business people in Toronto, but they were really, it was a, it was a quiet version of a crowd of conservatives i know that they were cast as business people in toronto but they were really it was a it was a quiet version of a rally in downtown toronto on wednesday and we've begun to see uh the emergence of a plan between uh the two front runners and mr kearney and mr poiliev in how they would actually deal with what's happening and i think we are getting to the most important part of the campaign. And it's interesting. It's interesting to note the differences. But I want to stick with the mood for just one second, because I thought it was really captured by the premier of Nova Scotia, Tim Houston, who said, who put a long note on X in which he voiced concern for the anxieties and,

quite frankly, the mental health of Canadians. He realized that this was having a detrimental effect on not just people's moods, but on their mental health. And again, just a sobering reminder that this is real, that this is going to be wrenching, that this is going to have impact beyond an election campaign, and that we need to get to a point where we're trying to help each other rather than fight each other. And I thought that the two principal campaigns were getting there. Now, as to that plan, it was quite interesting.

Mr. Poitier has not just said what he's not going to do. He issued a lot of red lines this week in terms of what he wouldn't do in terms of Canada's culture, its sovereignty, its borders. But he also began to, I think, fill in some of the broader strokes of what he would do. And in effect, he would go back and make a deal with the United States on trade, and it would be backstopped by expanded obligations by Canada in terms of its security, its military spending. And if that deal didn't work out, in other words, if Donald Trump or one of his successors reneged on it,

Canada would pull back. We can come back to that in a second. Yeah, let's... Whereas Mr. Carney, though, said, it's the end of globalization as we know it. We can't just go back and have a comprehensive deal with the United States. We can have a deal on security and the economy,

but it's going to have to be segment by segment. And one segment he would keep, for instance, would be the auto industry because we face competition from Asia and North America. But otherwise, a much more careful approach to how he would deal with the United States. So the mood changed, the campaign changed, and I think we got some more details

on how we would deal with the United States as a result of all of this. Okay, Chantal, he did leave you with a minute or two. I will use them fully. A word on what Rob said about the conservative gathering on Bay Street, which was widely presented as speaking to a Bay Street audience. It wasn't totally wrong in geography as it was a venue on Bay Street, but this was not the Chamber of Commerce. It was a room filled with people who are actually part and parcel of this campaign, whether directly or indirectly. John Baird,

an early Capoeliev supporter was there, for instance. There were others. And Caroline Mulroney. One day we will get back to her introduction of Mr. Capoeliev. But yes, I don't believe the campaign changed this week. I believe it evolved. And why do I say that? Because what this week made crystal clear for any voter who believed that at some point there would be closure anytime soon from the Canada-US conversation that we've been having, that's gone. Everybody now understands that this is going to be the new normal for months, maybe years, or at least until the midterms. Whether tariffs come and go, who knows? That demonstration on the White House lawn kind of told you how unpredictable reality is. I'm sure that those penguins who have been tariffed by the senior government of the largest economic power in the world will remember forever that they were included in the list of countries to be tariffed.

And why do I say it evolved? One, in time, but two, and that's probably bad news for both the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, both main leaders are basically saying, after the election, I'm going to be negotiating with Donald Trump on your behalf. So it comes down to the real thing. Who do you trust to negotiate a mojus vivendi, a way to get through this era on your behalf? And that, by definition, and it is not a reflection on either of their campaigns, excludes both the NDP and the black leader, they will not be front and center in this decision. I read Tim Houston's long note,

including the paragraph where he praised Mark Carney for the way that he has been handling this file, which I thought was interesting from the perspective of a progressive conservative premier, not a liberal, that he would be saying that. I think the dynamics of the campaign have not fundamentally changed. I agree with Rob that both leaders, under the guise of saying the same thing about the need to negotiate or saying different things. And I have to say, I did note that Mr. Poirier's idea

that if they don't comply, we're going to back off our commitments. My problem with that particular offer of the conservatives is if the United States are not going to respect the next deal, if there is a next deal, and the next president or this one is saying, I don't care about Canada, and says, let's have the 51st state conversation resume, are we really going to pull back from our security and military commitments? Or shouldn't we be wanting to firm them up in case that happens? So it's really hard to see how in practice you can do that. But they are two visions. It's also hard to see how long or by what mechanism Mark Carney would articulate

his notion that he can reduce the dependence on the Americans and defy geography up to a point so that our trade flourishes without as much dependency on the United States. But I don't think it's going to come down to what we just said, nitty gritty stuff like that. It's going to come down to trust. Who makes you feel the most reassured that nothing terrible will come out of those negotiations, that nothing fundamental will be given up in the search for more stability, which is basically what that search is going to be about in the first place, stability, some predictability, which may or may not be possible to attain under the current administration. Well, you know, I think many Canadians will want to know whether

it's Carney or whether it's Polyev, why. I understand the importance of negotiations, but I understand also that a lot of people are saying, why the hell would you go into negotiations with this guy who doesn't keep a deal he makes? And that's the kind of situation we're confronting. There's no one on the ballot that is saying, let's just not answer the phone for the next four years. That's not happening. I hear you. It's not an option. The problem with the Carney plan is it's maybe the end of globalization, but it's not the end of geography.

Geography is still going to be there. And it's the same problem with the Poiliev plan. If there was the commander of NORAD, General Greg Guillaume, was in front of a congressional hearing yesterday in Washington. He said the same thing. If we don't have a security arrangement with the Canadians, missiles are going to come over the 12 o'clock horizon over Canada.

We need their help. In other words, they're going to be blind for a few critical moments or minutes while those missiles are coming over. So you can say it's the end of globalization. It isn't the end of geography. And there are always advantages in geography as well, in economic terms. Nobody can ignore those either. The gravitational pull southwards towards 340 million of the richest people in the world isn't going to go away.

If I can add, why I say the dynamics haven't changed, it's not just the third parties. If that is really the question, then Pierre Poilier has quite a lot of work ahead of him, because every single poll has shown that on this issue in particular, the Carney advantage is huge. When you ask voters, who do you feel would best handle this? We're not talking five, six points. It's a matter of taste. We're talking double digits and 20, 30 points. So to restore that speech I saw this week, and I heard a lot of conservatives tell me that too, the Puelio speech.

If only he started giving it two months ago. If only he'd gone on American talk shows during the Liberal leadership campaign to establish himself as that person, it probably would have made a difference to how the Conservatives have come out of the gate. Let's be serious, we're 10 days in and this happens. And whenever people are looking for reassurance, they look to the prime minister. He has a larger scene stage than Pierre Poilievre can ever hope for. And you cannot level that, I believe, just by going to two debates and showing off as being able to articulate your ideas. Right. Americans call it the bully pulpit, and it's true. It is the advantage of the incumbent.

Okay. I don't want to dwell on these two points, but you both brought up things that I think need just a bit of explanation. You paused, Chantal, over the Caroline Mulroney issue, and I do think it caught a number of people by surprise that she stood there to introduce Polyev in glowing terms that she used, especially after Doug Ford had said he is not going to allow any of his MPs to do anything in this campaign because they're too busy. Well, apparently she wasn't too busy that morning. Is there a story behind that or did we just let that pass?

Can I be cynical for a second? No, really? Tell me I watched that introduction. It was very generous. It seemed to speak for the Mulroney clan and even from the grave for her father. Fine, it's her father. That's allowed. But I have to say that it got my mind thinking to what happens after Pierre Poiliev if he loses and who would maybe want to be the next leader

and how you do build IOUs when you step across a real divide in the conservative family, Red Tories, progressive conservatives, Brian Mulroney and Pierre Poilievre's family to help out the other side of the family. That's just me being cynical. You're not cynical at all. No. Okay. Thank you. You're not cynical at all. There is a growing relationship and real affection between the Poiliev and Mulroney families. It won't be Caroline who puts her name on a federal ballot. I believe it will be Mark Mulroney. And I believe that, well, I'll leave it there. But you're not being cynical at all.

There's something there. I don't think her leadership ambitions have dried up in any way. And nor were they for her from her father, who talked to me a number of times privately about his hope and desire that Caroline would be Premier of Ontario one day. So we'll see. We'll see where all that goes. Okay, here's the other point.

As I said, I don't want to dwell on these. But, Rob, you dropped in your opening answer that there's been a pivot by Polyev. And there's no doubt there has been. An evolution rather than a pivot i'd say yeah okay because i i don't i think he's he's not abandoning abandoning any of his positions or slogans uh from his speeches and everything else it's kind of a version of what thatcher used to call i'm not returning you know he's given a hint but he's still he's not abandoning any of

his previous positions in terms of the campaign. No. And if you if you watch him at his rallies, he he still does the greatest hits of woke ism, globalism, elitism. All the isms are there still. But I do believe that the message is sharper when it comes to the United States. Last night during the interview on RadCan with their anchors, their chef d'antenne, he used the word stupid to describe the actions of President Trump. So he's being more direct in his language. I think there's a recognition to a certain extent that this is the issue. He said he's not going to abandon the other issues. And I don't blame him for abandoning the other issues. The polls continue to show that cost of living affordability is right there, if not higher than dealing with Trump. But in terms of the issue that's moving voters, the issue is Trump.

And he's finally recognized that, focusing a lot of his public time on that and coming up with issues to try to reassure people to get to the trust deficit that Chantal referred to early. He's trying to get at that now. And his demeanor has changed as well as a result. There's a separate section for slogans in his speeches. In this instance, he's trying to look prime ministerial. But, you know, we spent a lot of time whenever I've been on this panel and other panels talking about how great a time it was to be in opposition in the four years after the pandemic.

This is a moment, and there are very, very few, given the tribulations that the country's gone through over the last 10 years, where it's a good time to be the prime minister. Why? Because the country is united, united behind the idea of a Canada that's under assault, economically and in other ways. And they are looking for a figure to drape themselves in the fluttering cape of the Trump buster. And Mr. Carney has incarnated that.

The fluttering cape of the Trump buster. I love it. Okay. You mentioned what happened last night, and it was on RADCAN, the French language service of the CBC, where they actually had on this special program, it wasn't a debate, but it was kind of close to it in the sense of the look of it.

They had all five players, leaders, they called it, what, five chiefs, one election. They had them on the screen uh some of them were in the same room uh poly one at a time though one at a time exactly but there was there was the opportunity for uh viewers to compare uh listening to the different leaders so what did they get out of it? What did we get out of it? Did anything happen in this? How long was it? An hour, two hours?

An hour and a half, I think. Two hours. They gave more. So it was an order of seats in the House of Commons. So it was Carney, Poiliev, Blanchet-Singh, and Jonathan Pernaut, who is the lead person, the co-leader of the Green Party and not Elizabeth May this year. And I was much more comfortable in French than Elizabeth May in any event.

So that's probably a good choice, both on, you know, someone to look to for a successor, but also someone who will do OK, probably in both debates. No news came out of it. The headlines this morning were mostly about the fact that it happened. I happen to like that format. You've got three journalists asking leaders questions and poking at their weak or their stronger points, and you do get a chance to hear them answer the $5,000 question with Marc Carné's French, clearly the least fluent in French of the leaders who were on last night. But they asked him at the end how he would rate his French, and he said he would give himself six out of 10, which is a passing grade.

And seriously, I was sitting there and before he answered, the only number that came through my head was six. But a passing grade is a passing grade. And I don't think very many commentators are going to quarrel with the fact that yes, he understood every question. No, he did not stumble in the sense that he put his foot right in it. And this morning, that's the headline. I think Mr. Carney is helped in Quebec by the fact that people keep saying, his French is so bad, his French is so bad. So when he puts a sentence together that amounts to a clip, people are saying, what's your problem with this French? Pierre Collièvre was also very nimble. Did it change his perception? He was not as aggressive as he has been in previous interviews, which probably helps. Did it make a huge difference? He was also less the attack dog than he has been. He goes after the liberal record, but you didn't hear

the French version of sneaky Carney or whatever he used to call Jagmeet Singh. François Blanchet and Jagmeet Singh desperately needed that evening to get some attention. I think Mr. Blanchet himself alluded to it. Wouldn't go to the French question and Mark Carney said, I'm not going there. I'm not going to judge that. Didn't say that disqualifies him to be your prime minister. Nothing. He took a real pass on this. Did it move the needle? I don't think so. I think it was an interesting exercise. If you felt Mark Carney was probably the guy to get you through the trampoline, you didn't come away thinking he's not as strong as I believed. He did okay on that score.

If you like Pierre Poiliev, you probably, but had doubts as to his personality, you probably still like him. But if you didn't, you probably don't. And I don't think the other two, it's not their fault, but it's impossible to get to seg into that conversation. Jagmeet Singh did not challenge, and that was wise on his part, the contention of the journalists that he was not in the running for prime minister. Rob? Yeah, I felt the same way. Earlier in the day, I was listening to Reds of Canada radio, and there was a woman on who teaches French as a second language to

Anglophones. And she was listening to Mark Carney's French to give an assessment, and she basically shrugged her shoulders and said, he can be understood. You know, he did, he did, he was asked the question at the end of four years, what grade are you going to give yourself? And he said, I'll be an eight or a nine out of 10 by then. And that I can read documents in French. So was it reassuring to the extent that people are nervous about it? We'll see. I think that the debate will really answer that.

I thought Blanchet's question was answered to that question was the right one, which is it'll be up to Quebecers to judge. I Mr. Blanchet, he's been saying this the last couple of days and he said it again last night. It's time for us to move on. You're not going to be thrown out of work. And they're going to be thrown out of work on both sides of the border. Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee plants are going to come offline. But, you know, in Arvada, in Jonquia, there are going to be people who are thrown out of work at Alcan. There are going to be people who are thrown out of work in Oakville, in Windsor, in Cambridge, places like that.

That's not going to make this go away. And unless Trump is going to join the senior tour, he's going to be there. He's going to be present and he's going to be a menace. So this issue is the issue. And it will affect also the affordability and cost of living issue as well. If people don't have jobs, it's a cost of living issue. If all of a sudden everybody's poor and there's a global recession, that's going to affect other people's jobs who are not directly impacted by what's happening in the auto industry as well. This issue is not going to go away. Mr. Blanchet has to understand it, has to find a way

somehow to look after the interests of Quebecers in the most politically profitable way he can, but to suggest that it go away, or as Daniel Smith suggested, it's over, is nonsense. There were a few things in the Blanchet interview that I thought spoke to how desperate he is to reframe the debate. One of those was his contention that unless the Bloc Québécois is strongly represented in the House of Commons, the next government of Canada will make decisions based on the interests of Ontario, which is hard to document at this point because the central target of what Trump has been doing remains the auto industry, and it is in Ontario. That does not make the current government, Ontario, playing favorites with Ontario. But his other contention when he was challenged on that and asked, well, you know, do you really believe

that ministers like Mélanie Joly or François-Philippe Champagne are going to sell the shop? His answer to that was, well, yes, they're only taking orders from the prime minister. They don't have a voice of their own. I'm not sure that's a winning line in Quebec. And I think people don't pay attention to these small things.

But one of the more reassuring sites for voters who are listening to these messages has not been Mélanie Joly or François-Philippe Champagne. It's been Dominique Leblanc. When you say, well, his lead minister on this is an Acadian, he doesn't have an Ontario bone in his body, and Mr. Leblanc has been all over. Almost every second day when I do a panel, he's giving an interview just before the panel is on. And he has been a real presence in this province. But I think the fact that those three lead ministers are Francophones is a problem for Yves-François Blanchet to overcome,

because it's harder to argue, to make that case when every time you turn around to hear about the file, the senior minister happens to be either from Quebec or a Francophone. And it does defend Mark Carney a lot way the response from Ottawa to the tariffs. So I hear your point. We've got to take a break here. I want to come back, ask one more thing about something you guys said, and then we'll move on. But first of all, this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here with Chantelle

Hebert and Rob Russo. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, which of course is good talk. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us. There was something you said there, Chantal, about last night on RadCan, where Polyev didn't look angry like he quite often can look. In fact, much of his leadership, much of his career has been based on anger. And when you're opposition leader, there's a certain degree of that necessary.

But we're in an election campaign, and anger doesn't look good. You know, I remember the 2011 campaign. Remember the debate night on the 2011 campaign? They were all sitting around a table, the five leaders or six or however many there were that year. And the opposition leaders were all angry. They were all charging after Harper. And he was calm, cool, focused on the answers, never looked down,

always looked straight up. And, you know, that was the campaign where he won a majority government. And I wonder sometimes whether they've sat Pierre Poliev in front of that video as much as anybody can with him, say, look, this is how Harper handled this kind of situation, the reverse. And it looks good for viewers. I don't know. Is that looking too deep?

If I were to sit Mr. Poirier in front of past debates, there are a number. This wouldn't be my first choice because sitting in the chair of prime minister forces you to kind of step back from the fray. You can't be attacking the opposition. It looks weird. I would sit him in front of Stephen Harper's first debate in 2004, where he was the leader of the opposition against Paul Martin. And if you were a debating club, he scored goals all evening, to the point that many pundits on networks other than yours, for the record, declared the election over and Stephen Harper to be the next prime minister. That's not what happened. Paul Martin won that debate because Stephen Harper was too hot, too aggressive. He spooked people into going back to the liberals, especially in Ontario. I would also make him watch

the 2011 French debate, where Gilles Sepp took a real run at Jack Layton, saying there are two people on this stage who will not be prime minister, but one is pretending that he can, while I know that I will not and I don't want to be. And he was pointing at Jack Layton. What happened after that debate in Quebec? It gave momentum to the orange wave. People talk, well, you know, why is he attacking this guy who is actually running to be prime minister? And it was downhill for Le Bloc all the way from there. So the anger thing, final debate that he could watch, the debates of the 2015 election. And let's give Mr. Malcaire a close look. He was clearly, like Pierre Poilievre, a very efficient leader of the official opposition. What happened at the debate? Justin Trudeau looked meek, but not aggressive, actually won those debates and eventually the election. So anger on a debate set may win you the debate club contest, but it can make you lose the election. And that's the most interesting part of this dynamics. I am curious to see what happens in the debate. I know there are conservative strategists who fear that Mr. Poitier will go on in an angry rant and that it will just shore up as negatives. So we'll see, I guess. You know, I want your thought on this too, Rob, but, you know, I've

been watching Carney lately and, you know, we've all interviewed him in some format in the past, Carney, and he's always very careful about the words he uses and chooses. But he seems, in this moment, certainly in the last couple of days, even more careful than he's ever been. He's pausing, and then not for effect. I think he's pausing to ensure that the words that are about to come out of his mouth are the words he wants to use in this particular situation. But he's very careful, no matter which language he's speaking in, in the words he's using. Well, his entire career, the wrong syllable uttered at the wrong moment could cost people billions of dollars,

whether he was at Goldman or whether he was the governor of a bank of Canada. So this is a man who's used to weighing every syllable. A lot of people are asking me and others about the rallies that the conservatives are managing to put together. They go beyond organization. There are people who on their own, when you get four or five, 6,000 people turning up, this is not just a great organization and it is good organization. There are people who are coming there of their own volition to stand up an hour and wait for an hour in a lineup in the cold. But a lot of the time they are hearing that anger at those rallies. They are hearing, and because they're angry, these are people who are frustrated, who have been left behind. A lot of them are younger. If you look at the audience,

a lot of them are younger. And they're the people who feel like they're not going to get a chance at home ownership, the dream of having a house. But politics is about addition and not subtracting. You need to add more people. And right now, more people are nervous, anxious, fretful than they are angry, I would say. And so who can be soothing? Who can be reassuring? If you've talked to Carney in the past, you've heard him say this before, and he's saying it at almost every stop. I have a plan. We're going to get through this.

I have a plan. And that, I think, is connecting with people. The notion that somebody has a plan, which is why I thought it was noteworthy that Mr. Poiliev laid out what his plan would be. I think he's finally cottoned on to that notion that you need to add to your very high floor. If you're going to get above your ceiling,

you need to attract more voters. The crowd thing is, you know, last night he had a huge crowd, Polyev, in Ontario again. And I think, you know, it's somewhere between 4,500 and 6,500, depending who you want to believe. But that may have been organized well to get a big crowd, but it wasn't organized well as an event. There was one washroom for 6,000 people.

People were passing out. They had to yell at him to stop speaking while he had medical emergencies on the floor. That's not good. That doesn't look good. But the simple fact that he's drawing these kind of crowds, which are unseen anywhere else, there's a similarity in a sense to what we witnessed in the states last year in the election campaign and the crowds that trump was drawing huge crowds uh the people were people tended to dismiss the size of those crowds

and they probably shouldn't have and so i'm just wondering whether the same thing is happening here in the sense that they're being dismissed, where in fact, they're actually telling us something. No, well, I think they are telling us something, but I will get back to that. But I don't think they are telling us that there is irresistible momentum for Pierre Poiliev. And here's why I'm saying that. I do believe most of the people who show up, the vast, vast majority show up because they want to be there, not because someone went somewhere and filled buses to dump them in a parking lot somewhere and then bring

them home. But the dynamics of this election rest on the fact that NDP and Black voters are flocking to the liberals out of two fears. The first is definitely Donald Trump. The second often is Pierre Poiliev. And for those voters, the sight of those crowds is actually an incentive to stick with their decision to mobilize behind the liberals. It sends them the message, oh my God, Pierre Poiliev could win. The best thing that could happen to the Bloc or the NDP would be for Pierre Poiliev to show up somewhere and the room would be half empty. I guess that was the point of that speech on Bay Street. The room was not terribly full. And then people would say, you know, Carney's not going to be prime minister. It's a given. So I can go back home. I can vote my heart, the NDP or the Bloc. That is what the rallies are not doing for Pierre Poilievre, and I believe it's a problem. I do believe that if the Conservatives

lose this election, the next government, especially if it's a liberal majority, is going to have to not be tone deaf to the people who show up at Pierre Poitier's rallies. Because if that is what happens, if it's a, and the liberals have suffered from arrogance in the past, we are the owner of Canadian values and everybody else is just misguided. If they fall back on this, the already existing gap between a section of Canadians and others, those who identify with progressive, is going to become larger. And that will be a problem going forward. So I think, yes, you should pay attention to those crowds,

not for calculus for April 28, but because the people who show up there, what they have to say and what they think has to matter, even if their chosen party loses the election. You mentioned Manning. Let's talk about it for a moment because he made the headlines, President Manning, in the last couple of days over a statement he made. You know what? I'm going to take our final break so we don't have to interrupt it.

And we'll be right back after this okay final segment of good talk for this week chantelle and robert here i'm peter mansbridge good to have you with us um we mentioned preston manning the, the leader of the Reform Party, that had such an influence and such an impact through the 1990s especially, and of course was one of the founding fathers of the present-day Conservative Party. He said the other day, and it's been dismissed by a number of people, including Pierre Poliev, that if the Liberals win, secession is on its way in Western Canada again. The movement will pick up steam. Now, he's not the first person to suggest that in the last little while.

I see it in a lot of the mail I get here from reasonable people in Western Canada that you guys are really underestimating the depth of feeling here again. And, you know, listen, it's been a constant over my career. There's always been this issue about Western alienation, and it goes up and down in some ways. I hate to make the comparison, but in some ways that the sovereignty movement goes up and down at times in Quebec. What did you make of what Preston Manning said and the reaction that there has been to it? Rob, why don't you start? It reminded me of the 93 campaign when the argument used to be from the conservatives in particular,

if you vote for Jean Chrétien, Quebec will separate. It's going to put from the conservatives in particular, if you vote for Jean Chrétien, Quebec will separate. It's going to put such a win in the sales. It almost did, for the record. So let's agree that Mr. Chrétien was possibly not the biggest asset in the first weeks running up to the 1995 referendum. But voters didn't listen to those warnings, as they will not in this case. I understand totally that the last thing Pierre Poiliev's campaign needs at this point is for Daniel Smith, the Premier of Alberta, or Preston Manning to

wade in with open letters or interviews to say, if Central Canada won't do our bidding, we're going to go. Why? Because they're both allies of Pierre Poiliev, and in Ontario in particular. Language like that tends to send votes to the other guy, the person who's going to stand up to Preston Manning and Daniel Smith. So this is not a timely intervention, although on the substance of what he is saying, i.e. people are getting angrier and will become angrier

as a result of the re-election of the liberals, if that is what happens. I do believe that he has a point. Rob? Yeah, Leger had a poll this week that showed that I think it was 27%, about one in four conservative voters are interested in joining the United States as a 51st state. That was an alarming number for me. And I think it gets to the danger of Mr. Trump's suggestions about the 51st state.

He's not interested in Canada as a whole. He's not interested in Quebec. He's not interested in Atlantic Canada. He's not interested in Ontario's auto industry. He is interested in our natural resources and our energy. And if Alberta and Saskatchewan opted to vote to join the United States, he would do something which the Supreme Court of Canada now says is a vital part of allowing parts of Canada to secede. He would be one of the first to recognize an independent Alberta if that happened. So there is real danger there. And I would hope, as Chantal does, that somebody who grew up in Edmonton, if it's Mr. Carney, would understand the threat that that poses and deal with it accordingly.

People were outraged in Alberta that Mr. Carney said that he would not repeal Bill 69. He's going to have to do something to reassure that part of the pipeline. That's right. He's going to have to do something to back up what he says, because he does say that he would use some emergency powers if provinces agreed to get pipelines built across the country. Some sort of manifestation of that is going to be needed. And I think it would be in his electoral interests. I'm trying to decide where I'm going to travel next week to tell the story of where Canada is at for The Economist. And I'm looking at several places in Alberta that have not voted liberal in a long, long time. There are electoral reasons for Mr. Carney to give this reassurance. But at the same time, at the same time, there was real anger, real bitterness that they have to make this argument,

that they have to remind people who talk about using energy as a weapon that line five that brings energy from Alberta to the United States where it's refined back to southern Ontario, back to Trudeau Airport in Montreal that runs through the United States. So if we used energy, we would be cutting off eastern Canada from a lot of its gasoline, aviation, fuel, those sorts of things. There is bitterness about that. And that bitterness is curdling among that segment of the population. The problem is that when the Premier of Alberta calls what happened this week with tariffs a win, she is building bitterness and anger in southern Ontario. She did do one responsible thing this week, though, I thought,

which was to say that she would not be leading a referendum on secession if Mark Carney were elected. There is an option in Alberta where citizens can put forth a suggestion for a referendum, but she wouldn't be doing it. That she said that she still believes in Canada and she's going to fight for Canada. I thought that that was an important thing for her to say. And yet the next day she called Mr. Trump's tariffs a good day for Canada and suggested the issue was behind. I'm mystified by Danielle Smith because she's a very, very effective communicator. She did. She did nuance that tense a day later. And when the premiers met with the prime minister to talk about counter tariffs, Alberta and Saskatchewan were on side. So it's not as if there is an effort by those premiers to break whatever Canadian consensus

is emerging under the leadership of the prime minister. It would be possible if that was the leadership of the prime minister, it would be possible if that was the mission of these premiers. They could have gone to the microphones after the meeting, the virtual meeting with the prime minister and said, Mark Carney's got it all wrong and it's all bad or he's only doing this because of Ontario. That didn't happen. Everybody came out singing from the same hymn book.

Why so many premiers that are not liberals rally to this Carney leadership on this? I think it's in part because voters expect it, but also because premiers can read polls and they know that they may end up having to deal with Mark Carney in a more permanent position after April 28th. Okay, I've only got about four minutes left, which represents about 10% of the length of this show, which represents the amount of popularity that the NDP have at the moment. And so I want to ask a Jagmeet Singh question because it's interesting. It was, what, a week ago or 10 days ago that he came up with this idea on the GST. The Conservatives this week grab it, take it.

So next up, I'm assuming Carney's going to grab it and take it too, and we'll watch the evolution of this idea spring through all three parties. But the question is, is there anything Jagmeet Singh can do at this point to break out of the rut that the NDP is in here? Very little, although there is an opportunity with thousands of people being tossed out of work. When working people are hurting, I mean, that was why the CCF, the NDP was created. There is an opportunity there for them to, in essence, push the government to do more for people who are hurting. We'll see if they're nimble and adroit enough to do that. But this is why you have a new Democratic Party in

Canada. And I'm not so sure it's a bad thing that people are stealing each other's ideas. I actually think it's a good thing. I think it represents that everybody can understand the threat that the country is facing. We're probably not going to have a national unity government, but if circumstances called for a national unity approach to problems, these are the circumstances for it. But these grim realities for households and families across the country, this is what the NDP should be all about. Chantal?

I don't see it. I don't see it because if you're looking at what's happening to the auto industry, for instance, your first instinct is to vote for whoever can drag you out of this, not the person who can make it less bad to be in the hall. And I don't think that there are many things about the Trudeau record that are useful to the opposition parties. But I don't think that the Trudeau record makes people who are leaning center left think that the liberals are out to get them. And that's a problem for Jack Nielsen. I also still think that the NDP in its current version is a pretty weak party compared to what it has been under Ed Broadbent or Alexa McDonough or Thomas Mulcair. And that is contributing to drive voters away because at some point voters who would be inclined if they were stronger or Jack Layton, we should have said, don't see that. They're not part of the problem or part of the solution,

and I don't see how you can change that between now and the vote. You know, the NDPers still play that game of what would happen if Jack had lived. You know, and this is the third election, well, fourth election since then, since he passed. And, I mean, you do wonder. Anyway, last week, you know, it's interesting. This week that we're walking into now is, you know, sandwiched between two of the most important weeks likely to happen during this campaign.

Last week, the tariffs and the announcement by Donald Trump. The week after this one is the debates. So it's going to be fascinating to watch the leaders and the parties in these next seven days, how they continue to respond to what has just happened and those thousands of jobs that have been lost and more to come, and the debate, which could be the consequential debate. I mean, I know we tend to overhype these things, as we have done in the past, and they usually don't deliver the moment we were all looking for.

But this one, you know, might, and it comes at a very interesting time. But we'll watch to see how things progress this week, who changes their positioning, who changes their campaign style, their campaign rhetoric, and their campaign announcements. That's all to come in the next little while. Thanks to Chantel.

Thanks to Rob. Another great conversation. Remind you that the buzz is available in your inbox. If you subscribe, no charge, at nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. It comes out at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, Saturday morning. Have a great weekend. Keep thinking about the decisions you've got to make

because there are some big ones, and hopefully this is going to be an election where there's a big turnout. We'll see. The last biggest turnout was the free trade election in 88, which was somewhere around 75%. We'll see what this one gets to. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening.

Talk to you again next week.