The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Some answer, some friend. Britain shoves Canada under the bus.

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

So much for Britain's PM Keir Starmer.  Given the chance to stand up for Canada with Donald Trump by his side, Starmer instead left Canada, his Commonwealth ally, twisting in the wind.  How bad does that look? Does it even matter?

Are you ready for Good Talk? Of course you are. You betcha. Coming right up. And hello there once again. Peter Mansbridge here with Chantelle Hebert and Rob Russo. Good Friday to you for Good Talk. Once again, just to tell you where I am, I'm in Petawawa, Ontario. That's why you've got the kind of hotel backdrop here, because I'm in a hotel. So let's just hope everything works for the next hour

as we have a little good talk. All right. You know, it was two weeks ago today on this program where we talked about the silence by Canada's friends on this whole issue with Donald Trump and he's asked directly about this Canada issue and he basically passes. He kind of sucks up to the guy standing beside him and says, you know, you're trying to make a division between me and Trump, which really wasn't what the question was about, but nevertheless.

You know, if Churchill was still around, he'd probably say some answer, some friend. But he's not around, so we say it instead. Rob, you're the correspondent for The Economist in Canada. What was that all about? What is Starmer afraid of? Well, I can tell you why Monocle feels tarnished this morning. And I have no doubt that the Republican movement is probably going to pick up steam in our country. Look, we are alone. If we had any doubt about whether or not we're on our own, that doubt should be erased now. We are on our own.

I should also say that it is past time that we wait for anybody to come running to our rescue. We are going to have to assert our own posture here and our own independence. No one's going to come to our rescue. We shouldn't expect anybody to come to our rescue, given the fear, it seems, that Mr. Trump is inciting in people. I do think there's an opening for question was that he tried to cut it off. Trump tried to cut it off. He said, that's enough. When the reporter asked Starmer whether or not he mentioned Canada's independence, that suggests that there is some prickliness there. Trump seems to delight in sticking it to Canada

whenever he can, but when it's done in an international forum, it doesn't suit him. There's an opening for Canada right there. So we know that maybe, maybe if we can, we want to get under his skin, there's an opening there. And I think we should point out that not once, but twice, Keir Starmer turned his back on us. He did it again later on in an interview with

Fox News with Brett Baier. When he was asked about the question, he tried to sidestep it. He didn't. What he said was, it's not because the question for our listeners and viewers, the question was to Starmer, did you bring up Mr. Trump's repeated threats to annex Canada during your discussions? And his answer was, you're trying to divide us. In other words, don't bother me with Canada right now. I've got other things that I've got to do. I've got to try and build a bridge to this guy over here. He was asked the question again about the king.

And he said, it's not for me to tell the king what to think about global politics. We all know how the monarchy works in Britain these days. It is for the PM to tell the king how he thinks about global politics. It was Keir Starmer's idea to invite Trump for his second state visit to Windsor Castle. So, yes, it is for you, Mr. Starmer, to tell the king how to think about politics. You chose to turn your back on Canada. So we can't rely on Keir Starmer. We shouldn't rely on anybody else. We know Mr. Trump is prickly about it. So let's, if we want to get under his skin, let's think about that as an avenue for our lobbying efforts as well. Chantal?

Well, sorry, guys. I mean, they notioned where I live that you would wait for the king to come to your rescue is kind of a really, at this age, that's like asking, being an adult, a 40-year-old waiting for your grandmother to bail you out. So, as Anne, it's kind of ironic that having watched those visits to Mr. Trump from European leaders, maybe Canada would be better off counting on France's ties to Quebec to have France stand up for Canada, then it ties to the UK, which apparently means very little to the current government. That being said, I did notice the fact that the question seemed to get under the president's skin.

I thought, well, this is fun to watch, for one. It probably doesn't play well as a general theme in the international arena, the notion that a G7 and a NATO member would want to annex the G7 and a NATO member. It kind of boggles minds. I suspect that Mr. Starmer does not take that intent of the president as stated very seriously. But I will be happy to watch the UK negotiate a free trade deal with this administration, given how President Trump seems to have absolutely no respect for the trade deals that he negotiates. Earlier this week, the same president said that an idiot had negotiated the latest trade deal between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Guess who the idiot is?

He signed it. Mind you, he might not remember because he also didn't seem to remember over the same press exchanges. Didn't seem to remember that he called President Zelensky a dictator. Oh, did I say that? He said, so up to a point, I don't know. I mean, I'm sad that arts are broken and monarchist areas of the country, but I did notice months ago that the majority of Canadians have increasingly little time for the monarchy. Yeah, well, you know, the monarchy is one thing, and yes, it was included in that question, there's no doubt about it. But the whole sense of a British Prime Minister standing there next to the US president and basically throwing Canada under the bus, to use an overworn phrase,

did seem rather startling. One person who hasn't forgotten from inside the American administration, the guy's a bit of a wild card, there's no question about it. He was in jail this time last year. It was Peter Navarro, who's the trade negotiator, and he supposedly is saying stuff, some pretty, you know, negative stuff about Canada, including let's rewrite the boundaries. You know, let's change this, that and the other thing about trade to the point where there seems to be a shutdown of actual talking going on. Yes, except that story, which you read in the same place as I did, is it called the telegraph, was denied from top to bottom. And everyone who has checked with the Canadian government has come up with the same answer. We've not suspended any negotiations.

We're talking to everyone who in Washington talking to people. And they did not bail out to go home. So I'm not convinced that that story had legs. I'm also not convinced that we should pay a lot of attention to what Mr. Navarro has been saying, given that he's had quite the week where he, and that was better sourced, apparently suggested that Canada should be thrown out of the Five Eyes community, the security community with Australia, New Zealand, the UK, etc. And then had to say, I don't know who made this up and where this came from, where he apparently was the source.

And he was forced to walk back whatever leak he himself caused. As I said, the guy is a wild card. Well, he's more than a wild card. So far this week, the two things that he's been associated with have been denied or proven to be non-existent. Yeah. But he is, if you talk to people who are dealing with the United States at the official level now, they say that he is the guy who amps Trump up last, is what he is.

That the pros in the room, the people who have serious government experience or serious business experience, explain the roads to Trump. Even when he wants to go in a direction they don't necessarily agree with, there are very few people who don't want to go in the same direction now. But whereas along comes Navarro and he's the bulldozer and says, nevermind those roads. We're going to bulldoze our way through this thicket that these guys are talking about. And we're going to go straight to here. And he, and officials believe that he has an outsized influence. It's like the old movies where you had the angel on one side and the demon on the other.

He's the demon whispering in Trump's ear. And Trump likes the sound of the demon in his ear. The last thing before he goes out and actually gets in front of a microphone in front of the podium. My point was not to deny all that. It was to say I'm looking at what I saw this week. What I saw is a guy forced to walk back his own blustering and a story that did not stand up to scrutiny. I'm just saying. So that doesn't mean he doesn't have influence on Trump, but someone must have had influence on someone for Navarro to be forced to go to the mics and deny himself in public. Okay, but you know, in fairness, it would hardly be the first time Navarro has done

that. And you know, at other times, he's denied things he's said, and they're right there on tape. Yes, but the point is, do they happen? Or are we going to spend our lives over the next four years talking about stuff that might happen that was denied that hasn't happened? I'm totally now in the school of, can we talk about stuff that actually happens? Otherwise, we can all write novels. Some of them were written. Richard Romer, I did read that book about the invasion of Canada. But if that's the business we're in, we'll have material forever. But it would be probably more useful for the way to handle this to see what actually happens rather than to throw out 60,000 scenarios that last for two days. Yeah. I know you're on a military base and you are there as an honorary officer,

and I understand the temptation. I'm just saying. No, I'm not. Can we have real soldiers when we need them? All right, all right, all right. All right. You know, I think there is some agreement in what we're saying here. But the country is supposedly in the crisis of its life. And you have senior officials on both sides of the border saying certain things.

And whether they end up denying them, even when there's proof that they said them, or, you know, withdrawing from their bluster, as you said, I still think it, you know, I think, so we obviously disagree, that there is some reason to keep these in mind. He's not just some dummy who's walking down the street in Washington. He's a player. I agree, but then Donald Trump is president, so talking about... Yeah. But my question to you now is, because you just said something that I'm unaware of, you said there have been statements from both sides of the border. So what equivalence did you find on this side?

No, not equivalents, just statements. I mean, I think we parse the words of all these ministers or strategists or advisors to leaders. We parse them all the time. And Navarro, you know, you heard Rob. This guy is a player with the ear of Donald Trump. And I think what it does is it engenders a posture in Canada's relationship with the United States that is unprecedented. And that it does put us on a different footing in our relationship. We now treat them, if not as an adversary,

but as a country with which we need to tiptoe. We need to be very, very careful. There is less frankness. And at many levels that are astonishing to people in government, there are people who are saying, should we really say that to them? Do we really tell them about this? How careful? What punch should we pull? Which was never the case in our relations with the United States, no matter how bad it got, many times, you know, Pearson and Lyndon Johnson, Obama and Harper, while they were there. Now, it's at the officials level where there are punches being pulled. And I don't mean that in a

pugnacious sense. I mean, in terms of what are we going to say to the Americans? How are we going to say it? Do we really want to get into this? Is this person a Trumper? It really comes down to the easy relationship we've had at, you know, at thousands of contact points every day. When I think about the people in the Commerce Department, people at the Pentagon, people at the National Security Council who have these relationships with Canada at so many, like thousands of contact points every single day. Those contact points are not now running as smoothly as they did before. I don't think they are. And you've just explained probably what went through Mr. Turmer's mind yesterday when he was asked about Canada. Do I want to say this? Do I want to go there? Do I want to wait on this? Does any British prime minister ever expect to be asked about whether he thinks the U.S. should annex Canada in his lifetime?

They don't prep you for stuff like that, but what you've described explains a long way to explain why Sturmer took a pass on this. Okay, well, then he's got bad advisors, because if he didn't realize he could have possibly walked into that question, given the history between Britain and Canada, the whole thing, you know, so let's just agree to disagree on some of this stuff.

Because I think it's in the journal. When you say given Canada's history, you have to understand our different perspectives. I think of Acadians whenever you say that. And I say, yeah, great history. There's lots of bad history. Let's say my heart did not miss a beat for lack of being defended by the UK. Okay.

It also reveals, I think, that the Commonwealth is a bit of an empty shell. Right. We in Canada have romanticized the Commonwealth for a long, long time. And we now know what the current government, anyway, in one of our mother countries, thinks about the Commonwealth. It doesn't think very much about the Commonwealth.

Same as La Francophonie. I was going to say, but I didn't want to get into that. No, but talking about empty shells, some of those clubs have kind of exhausted their purposes. Okay. Let's take a break. There's lots more to discuss, debate, and disagree on still to come right here on The Bridge. So we'll take our first break and back right after this. And welcome back.

Segment two of The Bridge for this week. Chantelle Hebert, Rob Russo, Peter Mansbridge here. 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. We're glad to have you with us. All right, moving on from international affairs to interprovincial affairs, if you wish. Ontario election yesterday. Now, you know, provincial elections don't get a lot of discussion on our program. But hey, we're talking about Ontario, where the majority of Canadians, well, most Canadians, or more Canadians, let's get this right.

A plurality. I don't want to get hammered by Chantal. A plurality. A plurality of Canadians live in Ontario. There's enormous influence in terms of the country's direction and discussions and debates as a result of Ontario. So last night, the Doug Ford government comes back with its third majority in a row, which is, I think it's been almost three-quarters of a century since the last time that happened in Ontario.

We go back to Frost, right? Right, 59. 59. 59. Anyway, significant win. Majority of the seats, this odd situation where the Liberals had twice as many votes as the NDP, but half as many seats at the end of it. We know that scenario at times. But in terms of the country, what impact, what influence does that result have? And Chantal, why don't you start us on that? Well, I'll take it first to the very,

very basic partisan political level and the Canada-US thing. Start with Canada-US. We have seen very different provincial reactions to the notion that we are going to spend the next four years dealing with challenges thrown our way by Donald Trump in Atlantic Canada. Two premiers of two different political stripes, both popular, both headed for re-election if they so wanted, quit over the past two weeks. And the reason that they gave us, they just didn't have the stomach to go through the next four years. That's Premier King and PEI and Premier Furry in Newfoundland and Labrador. It's very, very rare that you see successful premiers look at the landscape and say, I can't do this. It's just too much for me. I'm going to let someone else take on that challenge, someone who would do so in full

knowledge of what is coming and what to expect in the sense of this is not going to be a nice ride the next four years. And then you've got Premier Ford, who I believe took advantage of this Trump moment to secure himself a mandate, a third term, not just to fight Donald Trump, but as he himself pointed out, to get himself over the current Trump tenure before he next has to face voters. And what I'm feeling this morning is a lot of Ontario envy and the backrooms of Quebec and the backrooms of Alberta, two provinces where the premiers would be happy enough to have secured four years now, rather than have to go to the polls at some point over Mr. Trump's tenure.

Now, I'm curious, my premier, François Legault, who has been around for quite a while now, will he go the way Atlantic premiers have gone and say, I did the pandemic. I've been running a government. I'm tired. You need someone fresh for this challenge. Or will he try to go the Ford way and at some point over the next months find an opening? For now, the Post don't suggest he tries that but find an opening that allows him to go and

get cover from uh the ups and downs of the economy uh under donald trump's uh thumb uh before they materialize there is an option there is a choice to be made here and I believe that a lot of Quebec advisors are going to be looking at the Ford victory and the pattern to it and tell themselves, well, we could try that. Sovereignty, the PQ is leading in the polls, Parti Québécois, but sovereignty is down. There is not a lot of appetite

for this kind of upheaval at this point. Maybe it's a good time to go to the polls. So first question, nationally, I don't think this is the best news for the federal conservatives. I don't think that the provincial success of theatives can be translated into support for Pierre Poitier. You can read it as a support for the not, let's not rock the boat too much option. And let's go with the team we know and the incumbent party that we know, rather than try out a prime minister whose team has very little hands-on experience in government. Also, Ontarians tend, and it has been the pattern,

that when it's blue at Queen's Park, it tends to be red federally and vice versa. So I don't really know how this translates, but the good news for those of us who read polls is that over the next few weeks, the polls that we read, the national polls that deal with Ontario, will have less of a possible contamination effect from the popularity of the provincial conservatives. So, we may see more clearly what the landscape looks like in Ontario federally. But there was, you know, the turnout was abysmal. 45% something. 45%. I'm going to make a rare prediction. I believe we will have a much higher turnout federally than what we've seen last night and possibly higher than we've

seen over the past few elections. And if that was the case, you're pushing around 70% or higher, which would be quite something. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I know you will, but I didn't see Pierre Polyev on the stage with Doug Ford at all during that campaign. They've never been seen together. They've never been seen at a joint event since Poirier became leader. And I don't believe there are plans for a reunion anytime soon. Rob, what do you think? The two groups don't always get on very, very well. Although Jenny Byrne and Corey Tanik, Jenny Byrne is running the Poirier campaign and Corey Tanik ran Doug Ford's last three campaigns.

They're very close friends, but there is some much unease between the two camps, particularly because Doug Ford is very, very chummy with liberals in Ottawa. He has no problem saying that either. I took a few things away from last night's result and and i think you're both getting at number one we i think we can now say it's something that would surprise would have surprised people uh in 2018 and that doug ford is now the most powerful premier in in the country um not only does he lead the most populous uh province he's won three straight majorities. He's won it at a time when other premiers, they find themselves on the run. Danielle Smith is on the run a little bit with some scandal in Alberta. David Eby barely got through in British Columbia.

Scott Mowi, yes, still won a majority government, but was chastised by voters. Other premiers, as Chantal noted, are leaving office. So he's the most powerful premier in the country right now. He proved that Trump, as a straw man, if you're going to campaign against somebody these days, you campaign against the least popular politician, that's Donald Trump that he proved that that's an effective straw man to campaign against and and again that that has lessons I think for federal politicians and he also did it I think in a way that is becoming a bit of a fashion a bit of a trend there are lots of complaints among our colleagues in the in the Queen's Park reporters gallery that he campaigned a bit of a trend. There are lots of complaints among our colleagues in the Queen's Park Reporters Gallery that he campaigned a lot of the time in the United States. And we see people

like Christopher Freeland and, to a certain extent, Mark Carney also doing some campaigning in the United States. That seemed to be effective, not because Americans were paying attention to what they were saying down there, but we as Canadians tend to pay a lot of attention to our politicians when they turn up on US TV. So the question now becomes, what will he do with this mandate? He's won three successive majority mandates. I'm not sure if you can point to any signature achievement that Doug Ford would leave behind if he were to leave office tomorrow. Is he going to do something with this? Or is he, like other politicians, and Chantal, I think, referenced this, realizing that you got to get out ahead of the voters right now, because what could be coming is going to be an economic tsunami. In Ontario, it's the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

You want to get ahead of that. He now has a mandate to deal with that. He said that he was going to look after Ontario workers and do what needs to be done fiscally, which means spend a lot of money. So, well, kudos to Doug the guy now uh is has mapped out a blueprint that others are probably going to follow on those two or three points okay two two quick points before we take our next break um you know you said he didn't have any achievements in his two terms already any master big big achievement. Right. He's had a few disasters and quite possibly, you know, aside from health and care, which is clearly an issue,

but an issue in a lot of provinces, Ford's biggest problem may well have been the Greenbelt, the whole scandal around the Greenbelt area and the land being sold off. You know what was interesting last night? In those green belt ridings, and there's quite a few of them, Ford won, almost all of them. And their vote total in all of them was quite high, which is surprising because most people thought that that was a scandal that could bring their government down.

And they still bring it down. Exactly. Yeah. The other point, and I think that Chantel made, that I really think is important, and I'm not sure how we spend more time trying to get at the real issue here, not in terms of the two personalities, the premiers of PEI and Newfoundland. But I don't recall anything quite like that in terms of a major politician in our country saying, I'm out of here, not because I think I'm going to lose, not because there's some kind of scandal, but I just can't deal with it anymore.

That's quite an admission by politicians who look like they could easily win if they ran another election. And I think we've got to think about that in terms of what that means for the process at a time when it's hard to encourage people to run for public office. Okay, well, let's take a break. We'll come back right after it and talk about Mark Carney's week. That's right after it and talk about Mark Carney's week. That's right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week.

We've got a good chunk of time to talk about it. For the last, I don't even know how many weeks it's been now, four weeks, five weeks, of the Liberal leadership contest, the assumption has been all along that this was Mark Carney's to lose. And it may still be that way. But it's hard to look at this past week and say, hey, he had a really good week. Because there were issues. There were issues about his performance on stage,

his performance in the two official languages, his performance on trying to explain his own business, past business dealings. There were a lot of questions raised around Mark Carney. So let me try and, maybe Rob, you can take a crack at this. What is the business issue about his past and conflict of interest and allegations of such? What's the issue? Well, and I should start off by saying, I'm not sure that it's the business decision that's bedeviling him about this. He was chair of the board of Brookfield Asset Management, I think is the name of the company. There are various offshoots of Brookfield, but he was chair of a board. And the board was urged to move its headquarters from Toronto to New York

for a bunch of reasons, that it was supposed to be in the best interest of shareholders to make this move. Carney was asked about it, and he said that that decision was made after he left the board. It's true that the decision was approved in January, but he urged the board and he urged shareholders as chair of the board to go ahead and approve this decision. So that's embarrassing perhaps, depending on how many jobs are at stake. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure a lot of jobs are at stake or whether or not this is a tax decision. It's embarrassing, but explainable. And he should explain it. I think where people have trouble with Mr. Carney's sort of decision and explanation is it's not that it's the business decision.

It's that he failed to come clean about it when he was asked about it, because he said that he had, in effect, nothing to do with it. When there's a piece of paper showing that he urged the board and shareholders to go ahead and make this move. So I think people are prepared to forgive a stumble. We were talking about Doug Ford earlier. This is a guy that made repeated, repeated errors, and people forgave him because he said, I made a mistake. And in this instance, if you made a mistake, tell us. But it's this sense that he hasn't come completely clean about it. And he probably should. Chantal.

Yes, talking about Mr. Ford, this is the guy who, during the course of his own re-election campaign, told Canadians at this juncture that he was cheering for Donald Trump to become president last fall. And he doesn't anymore. But still, this is the kind of statement that can cost you a couple of days on the campaign trail. I believe that transparency is your best weapon in politics. What is in broad daylight, what you don't look like you're trying to leave in the shadows is always less interesting than what you can make up from what you perceive in the shadows. And what Mr. Carney did this week by saying, he didn't say the deal wasn't approved,

he said it wasn't finalized during my tenure, which is actually a play on words in the sense that he worked for this change to be made. He pushed for it and then happened not to be there anymore when it was, quote unquote, finalized. I understand that you're way out of my area of expertise here, but I understand that the Carney team, that no Canadian job was sacrificed over this and that the presence of the company in Canada has not been diminished in any way, shape or form. But all these things would have needed to be said.

And by trying to skirt the issue by saying it wasn't me at the end who sealed this deal, so I don't have to tell you anything, he allowed the Conservatives to accuse him, one, of lying, and a half-truth is also a half-lie. That's how it works in real life. And two, of having, because if he has his version, I wasn't there to finalize it. He's not all that proud about this move, I guess. So I allowed them to say he was actually busy shipping off jobs and a Canadian company to the U.S., which is not really the case. But I was just curious about one thing. I believe the Tory play was totally fair game, along with the criticism of the other parties. It was well deserved in those circumstances.

Me, I guess I would have kept all this powder for the election campaign, because I don't believe, and we will get to that, I don't believe that this or anything that happened this week will change the outcome of the leadership vote come March 9th. But I do believe that this same story, had it been exposed in an election campaign, which would be a lot more competitive than this leadership campaign has been so far, would have cost the liberals one or two or three campaign days. And when the next campaign comes, they will have no days to lose to issues like that. So up to a point, I'm sure that Mr. Carney and his team are unhappy about this turn of event, but I think the silver lining is, one,

this was a good practice for how reality is going to play out in the real world when he faces off against the other parties. And two, it shows them that there are still many, many things that Mark Carney needs to learn to be good at what he does. And one of the things he does need to learn is not to let himself be handled to the point where he becomes someone who goes for word salads. Because I suspect there's a lot of advice that's been given to him to say,

you need to go safe, so word salad. Well, if he's not a great politician, which he isn't at this point, he might as well be great at getting, you know, talking, speaking his mind. I think most Canadians want to elect Mark

currently. They do not want to elect a version of Justin Trudeau that has a better CV when it comes to economics. Okay. He's trying to make a virtue of not being a politician. This would have been a very good way to try and make a virtue of not being a politician.

He could have come out and said, I wasn't trying to be misleading. This is what I meant to say. This is how many jobs are actually at stake here. And so I'm going to come back out and tell you, if I was misleading, I didn't mean to be. And that's it. Put it behind you. I never, never understand why people don't understand

in politics that the truth sets them free. And as to whether or not they should have held this back, I'm not convinced that they don't have other things. The Conservatives, as we all know, they're delivering their donations on a weekly basis at Conservative headquarters and Brinks trucks. They got lots of dough. So they probably have some other things. But it is indicative, I think, the fact that they wanted to get it out now, that they know that they're being seriously hurt by Mr. Carney, that the tectonic shift is now real. And as a result, they needed to get out there and hammer him while they could. Okay, well, let me ask it this way, then, because

I don't disagree with anything I'm hearing here. And also, as Chantel said, it's hard to see any evidence that Carney is in trouble in terms of winning the leadership race. That's kind of a lock at this point. But what is it telling us about him? When you look at this overall picture, not just the issue, the apparent conflict of interest, or at least the charges of a conflict of interest. Not only that, but this was the guy that appeared to be heading towards a coronation, may still do exactly that. But he doesn't seem to be the shiny object that many liberals were hoping for, that there are questions raised about him now and just how ready for prime time he is.

And, you know, I know we've heard this and dismissed this at times, you know, the Ignatieff comparisons, all that stuff. But what have we learned about him, especially in this week, this past week, that could have an impact when he gets into the real campaign? I don't think we've learned anything that we didn't know. We knew that Mark Carney had no political experience, and it showed on the debates. He's not been in question period for 10 years. It's an adversarial setting. It has shown over the course of his news conferences, he talks in language that probably is understood by people around the table at the

boardroom, but it is left often journalist mystified as to what his words actually mean. Not that they're wrong. It's just that he speaks a language that is not really accessible often on complex issues to the people who have to report on what he's saying. His news conference on climate, there's a section of it, people who were staffing this as journalists must have been dumbfounded trying to figure out what he was saying. The same goes for the so-called economic plan. It's hard to, I think Mr. Carney has been exposed to journalists before, but he has been exposed to those who cover economic issues.

People who cover, people of the press gallery, of which I was, we are generalists. We are not specialists of one thing or another because we have to cover a whole range of issues. And if the politicians who are speaking are speaking in tongues, we can't interpret it. And most Canadians will be more like us than they will be like the people who write for the financial post.

So we knew that. We knew it was French was rusty, although it's been quite an experience over the past week to find that everyone who has taken high school French outside Quebec has become a better judge of what is acceptable than Quebecers themselves. If you look at the number of words expanded on Mr. Carnet's French at the French language debate, you will find that you've got 10 comments in English for one in French. That's about the ratio. And anyone who is listening in context to this Amos thing, we're used to anglophones mangling the syntaxatives shored up Mr. Carney's success this week, despite all those things I've just talked about, by doing not one, not two, three news conferences that were just about him, including one that featured an English-speaking, non-bilingual MP explaining to Canadians in English how bad Mr. Carney's French was. To turn them to a Quebec MP to re-explain it in French, and you think, wonders never cease. They sent a unilingual Anglo MP to say how terrible it is that Mr. Carney doesn't speak French properly.

And in so doing, they kind of confirmed the conservatives that Mark Carney was really someone that was the person they wanted to beat, which probably goes a long way to explain why. Every time I asked liberals who wrote to me, we met one, Peter, you and I together, who had just voted. And I didn't ask, you did, but I didn't, how he had voted. But I asked all those people, did you watch the debates, did you change your mind? Because the people who need to change their minds would be carny people who would then go on to Freeland or Gould. And none of them had changed their minds as the result of those debates. So I think the liberals are going with Mr. Carney with their eyes wide open.

One, it's a better deal than going with Justin Trudeau. Two, this election is not in the bag for anyone, including the liberals. I'm going to dip my toe into the bilingualism discussion at risk of incurring Chantal's wrath. I think I'm bilingual. Chantal has corrected my French. No, no, Rob is totally bilingual. Okay. But I thought that Carney spoke the worst French of anybody on that stage that night in Montreal.

But the question is, does that make it? OK, does that make a difference? This is an important question, because if you look at the recent history of Liberal Party leaders, anglophones who spoke French as their second language didn't fare very well. Paul Martin accepted. I don't consider him an Anglophone. I consider him a fluently bilingual guy who could go into both cultures. But, you know, Ignatieff didn't do very well.

Turner didn't do very well, even though Turner's French was pretty good. Didn't do very well in the province of Quebec. If Quebecers do support Mark Carney, it will be because of this, because they trust him in this moment. And that's why the previous discussion we had about trust in what Mr. Carney says is very, very important. Quebecers still in the last two elections delivered between 30 and 35 seats to the Liberal Party, which were vital. And he needs to be able to deliver those 30 to 35 seats if they're going to have any hope at all of hanging on to power. And it won't be because of his French, I'll tell you. I do think the most important moment Mr. Carney had in the debates

was the moment where he, in essence, wheeled on Ms. Freeland and attacked the Liberal government's economic record, saying that they spent too much money, that the only growth that they enjoyed during their decade in power was because of immigration, in effect, and that they didn't spend wisely. I thought that that was a really important moment because he wasn't necessarily going after Liberals there. He's going after some Liberals who might have drifted over to the Conservative Party. And he needed to establish himself as the change candidate in a change election. And so that was mission critical for him. It was the only time that I really saw any kind of passion or counterpunch from Mr. Carney.

And I think it was important that he did it. Okay. I've only got a couple of minutes left and I want to squeeze this in. I hadn't been planning to bring this up on our program, but the last couple of days has made me think that there's probably some connection to some Canadians, certainly sports fans, even occasional sports fans who have looked up to Wayne Gretzky over the last 50 years. And even the Globe wrote this week that, you know, the love affair with Wayne Gretzky is over. 50 years of it, it's done. And it's all about his association with Trump. They are friends. Trump's suggestion that he'd make a great governor of the 51st state.

Gretzky's kind of performance as honorary captain of the Team Canada team. You know, a variety of things. He's taken a lot of hits. He's been hammered on this issue about his association with Trump and that somehow he's left Canada without the kind of friend they thought he would be on issues like standing up for, you know, our sovereignty and our independence. Now, according to Trump's wife, he's brokenhearted by the way this has played out over the last... You mean Wayne's wife? Wayne's wife. Yeah, I'm sorry.

What does this mean? Does it mean anything? What do you think, Rob? You're a sports fan. No, it's not just a sports story. It is a Canada story. We love our heroes and we revere them. And it doesn't matter if they move to California or they move to Boston. It doesn't matter if it doesn't even matter if they're Trump supporters. I mean, you know, Bobby Orr far better than I do. But Bobby Orr is a Trump supporter. Nobody's surprised that a multimillionaire athlete is going to want his taxes cut. I think what it shows about Wayne Gretzky is that despite Trump wanting to appoint him to a political office, he's not a political person.

It is reflected. I mean, that's reflected in the fact that he chose Donald Trump to try and get him out of this mess. Nobody who was political would have ever have done that. It tells you about the toxicity of any association with Trump would have in Canada at this moment. So don't get Donald Trump to explain for you why you're not defending Canada. I think it would behoove Wayne Gretzky for him to explain it himself and to renounce the notion of annexation. If you're a boy from Brantford, like Janet Gretzky keeps saying that he is,

his heart is still in Brantford, well, you know, don't renounce Trump, but renounce the notion of annexation. And for God's sake, come and pick up your Order of Canada. I'm on this panel with two people, I'm honoured to be on a panel with two people who have the Order of Canada. It is a noble prize awarded to deserving people. He's had it twice now. He's been elevated in the Order of Canada and since 2009, he hasn't come here and picked it up. I think it's time for him to do that as well. Mine was for the fact I got 50 goals in one season. And I'm very proud of that.

Chantelia, sorry, you only got a minute. Yes, I agree with Rob. It's not about Trump. It's about not pushing back on annexation. And on this, I would like him to be governor of the 51st state. It's the minimum you expect from someone prominent to just be honored in this country to say, thank you for being thinking of me, but this isn't happening. And that wasn't said. And it's also the fact that, I don't know, you don't need to be a politician to stand up for yourself and speak for yourself. So unless someone tells me that Mr. Gretzky has lost his voice, I don't see why Donald Trump or his wife have to be the people who want to convince Canadians that we should be nicer. But there is a warning here, flashing yellow light for those in the conservative

movement who had not seen it. It is not a good idea to go to a party with Kevin O'Leary or Wayne Gretzky or whoever has been in the club, the 51st State Club from Canada, between now and the election. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. Thank you both, as always, and thank you for listening. The Buzz is out tomorrow at 7am. You can subscribe, no cost, at nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Ch Chantal a good discussion a really good discussion as always and you can find it

on YouTube or on the podcast I'm Peter Mansbridge thanks so much for listening talk to you again coming up on Monday