The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The Government Could Fall on Monday But Will It?

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

The numbers certainly conclude that if all opposition MPs vote against the budget then the government will fall. But will that happen and will it happen next week? All that on the heels of the budget and the latest major projects list? That and this question -- Is Mark Carney still green? All this with Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson on this week's Good Talk.  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-Bayer and Bruce Anderson. It is your regular Friday Good Talk. And as always, on Good Talk, there's lots of things to talk about. I kind of hesitated to bring this up to start things, but I don't know, I can't resist, I guess. Every time there's a minority government, every time there's a minority government, every time there's vote during a minority government, the closer you get to the vote, the more discussion there is about, you know, the government really could fall here. In spite of everything you

may have heard in the last couple of weeks, the government really could fall. So we're at that moment again, where we're only days away from a vote sometime next week, possibly as early as Monday. And the rumblings are around that the government doesn't have the numbers and they don't have the support of any of the opposition parties, which would mean, you know, a government falling, and we're into a Christmas election. So what are you hearing? Let's start with Chantelle.

Is this a serious discussion going on or what? Serious. But that is not to hype, you know, the Christmas election scenario, which would actually be a January blues vote, not a Christmas Eve vote. But a number of things. A few weeks ago, I was asking myself, the first question is,

can the government find support within opposition ranks for the budget? But the second question was, does the government want to find support in the opposition ranks? for an election. I think it's become clear over the past week and a half that the prime minister since seems to be, I'm not working towards an election, but I'll take one if that is what comes my way. And so let me deal first with the liberals. My son used to have a tutor for math

for a provincial exam. And on the last day before the exam, he told my son, you know, what the first condition is to pass the exam. And of course, my teenager's son said no, like what, and the tutor answered to show up for it. So let's start with liberals. The assumption is that all liberals will physically be present for the vote. I think that is in part the reason why our ministers are going to be coming back from the big environmental conference in Brazil. Why? Because The last thing you want is for the government to be sent to have fallen because someone couldn't connect electronically and you cannot vote from outside the country in any event.

So that's the liberals. The second, Bloch, Quebec, forget about the Bloch, Quebec, they are going to bring their members to the vote and they will be voting against the budget. There won't be abstentions. You will need a really good excuse to be missing in action. Mr. Blanchet wants an election come hell or high water before next fall when Quebec goes to the polls.

So take them out of the equation. Then there was Elizabeth May and the Green Party. She openly said, reach out to me on Budget Night. That has not happened. She has heard nothing from the PMO. Yesterday's the national project announcements, including a very controversial project that the Greens opposed in BC,

have kind of sealed that deals. she will not be abstaining, she will be voting against the budget. So that's one less vote. So that leaves the NDP and the Conservatives. And it is still possible that the NDP will decide that it can't afford to oppose the budget. But I'm told that yesterday's announcement, including that major LNG project in BC, may have made it harder for some of the NDP members that were more likely to abstain and who are from BC to do so.

The project is called L-Sims. I hope I'm pronouncing slims. I went online to try to figure out how to pronounce it. It has been approved by the BC NDP government, but it is very, very controversial with a number of First Nation groups and with the environmental movement in BC. So the NDP put a question mark on how that actually ends.

And then there's the conservative. And their case is really interesting because last week, four of them went missing on a vote on the Conservatives amendment to the motion on the budget. I'm not saying that they didn't want to vote, but one had technical difficulties. Another one was ill. So would Mr. Poilev and the Conservatives voted against the Block Amendment to the budget that had support from the Green Party and the NDP, which, technically would have brought the government down if he joined that vote. So are conservative MPs going to go missing in action when the vote comes? And can Pierre Poelie have given the state of his leadership, afford that to happen? He is already taking

flag on social media from conservative members for not having supported the Blyck Amendment and having let pass the opportunity for an election. So the states are somewhat highish for him. And finally, this is where things stand. Today, if I were to say, you know, which way will it go, I still think on balance the budget is more likely to pass than to not pass and lead us into an election. But accidents do happen. And Mr. Carney himself said today he wasn't reaching out to anyone, not having talks with NDP or not having talks with the Green Party, confirmed by the Green Party leader. So this is basically where things are wrapped on Friday for a vote that could take place

as early as Monday. Well, that's a good overview. Bruce, where are you on this? Does Carney want an election? No. No, he tabled the budget, and he's got a lot of policy momentum that he's developing around his economic approach and he wants to persevere with that. And I think the evidence, all the evidence to me is that the country wants that too,

that voters want that. They're not looking for an election. It doesn't mean that, and somebody I was speaking to yesterday says they never want an election if you ask them. And that's to a certain degree true. But it's not as true only months after an election, which produced a government with a relatively strong mandate, even though it suits minority government. and part of that was fueled by a sense on the part of voters that the economy has some really

serious challenges facing it and we need a plan and we need to stick with the plan so to me that is the thing that turns it from a could go either way and I know Chantelle said it's still more likely on balance I'm more in the 90, 10 there won't be an election and I think that the reason I'm there is, it has a lot to do with the fact that politicians do live in their own world a little bit when they're in Ottawa and they're faced with this and what, you know, they have their own feelings and sometimes they lose sight of where the public is, but I think if they think about it carefully enough, if you're the conservative leader, and I'm not a great one to, like, people shouldn't trust me to understand Pierre Paulie. Well, let me just

We're allowed you put that out there. It's a good disclaimer just generally. But if I'm him, if I can't win that election that I cause, if I cause an election to happen because the NDP decides to vote against the budget and the block does what Chantelle says, then when that election is over, unless I won, I'm leaving politics. At least that would be my sense of it. Now, he might, you know, in the same way that Andrew Shear is,

still in politics and, you know, people do things that are unexpected. And again, with the disclaimer, that I'm not the great pure polyam reader. If I'm him, I don't want to take that chance. I think I'm going to get a good number at that leadership review in January. I'm going to live to fight another day. I'm going to kind of regroup, although his regrouping skills are not on great display right now. So then I turned to the NDP. I read a story the other day. I didn't get all the details of it, but it sounds like the NDP are in deep, deep financial distress, millions of dollars of debt. I know they have a building, but one of the reasons they're in such distress is that a lot of their candidates did not make, did not get enough votes to

get that refund of their deposit. How do you, in this context, where people don't want an election, where public opinion on the budget is not particularly positive, it's certainly not particularly negative. On balance, more people are saying, yeah, let's go ahead with this budget, let's keep going in this direction than not. When you see those kind of indicators and you have that big financial challenge staring you in the face, you don't have a leader. How are you going to get 340-odd candidates to decide to run under your banner? How is that going to happen without that financial and leadership infrastructure in place? And these elections, as we know, are pretty short-run things. So, well, there may be reasons why the NDP MPs are feeling uncomfortable with.

Should we abstain? Should we vote for? Should we vote against? On balance, to me, it kind of feels like inevitably some of those people have to decide not to force that election but okay except all of them are convinced that they could win back their seats and they're probably right to tell you the truth if they survived the last election they can do it again some of them have already said that they i expect none of them to support the budget they'll either abstain or vote again some will vote again some will vote again including another McPherson who's running for the leadership. And I frankly agree with her sense that she can't abstain on the budget

and want to lead the NDP. It would weaken her on the flank. Even if you're not hearing A.B. Lewis go around the country, pointing the finger at the NDP caucus and saying, please, please vote down the budget. Why? Because people who are running for the leadership actually want to become leader and not end up in an election campaign

where they may not, if they're not either McPherson, they may not win a seat and then their leadership bid kind of goes down the drain. But there will be a price to pay for the government for not having reached out because what we are saying here is this

budget will pass with zero opposition support. And that has consequences down the road. No one will have, on the opposition benches will have to be accountable for having given the budget a pass, which means they will all have a license to oppose some or many of its measures every step of

the way going down the road to the implementation legislation of the budget. There is also a price to pay on goodwill because this budget will have passed, because the government will have forced the opposition parties, excluding the bloc, to admit weakness. And that's humiliating. And there's always a price to pay in a minority parliament for humiliating your opponents. So yes, the budget may well pass, but the healthier scenario would have been that there would have been some opposition support for it, some sense that there was a consensus on many of its measures, someone to say, while I disagree with this and that, I agree that I agree that I am not in government, but there is enough here for me to support this. That's not what we're talking about this morning, and I think ultimately it will make the government's life harder as it goes down the path. I know we'll talk about the projects that were announced this week and more to come.

What I notice on the aftermath of the second announcement is the environmental movement, the First Nations, but also citizens that are in the area, of those projects are suddenly a lot more vocal about saying, wait a minute, and that goes for the project announced in Quebec this week. So time is not the government's friend in the short term. And I think wisdom would have counseled to find some accommodation to be able to point to some across the aisle support for the budget.

Okay, let me bring up a couple of things that you've both mentioned and it's, I'm glad we're having this discussion. It's good. If the motion, if the budget passes, as you outlined, but if it passes without any opposition support, it means abstentions of have to have happened somewhere. And if they happen inside the Conservative Party,

one would assume that is going to push the compass point back towards Pierre-Pololiev, kind of what happened? This was your chance. You couldn't even bring your party together, which will lead us off a path onto another different story. A couple of weeks ago, there may have been last week,

I mentioned, I think you both agreed that if we are into an election of the two main leaders, whichever one loses, is probably toast in terms of their... Is toast. Yeah, take it's probably out of that sentence. No matter who it is.

If the loser's Pauliev, if the loser is Carney. So I want to get back at Bruce on this issue of, does Mark Carney actually want an election? I know Bruce immediately said, no, he doesn't. And I hear that. But there is this sense. when you listen to some liberals and the way they're sort of positioning themselves

and their comments, then in fact they'd love an election right now because the numbers seem to indicate, seem to indicate, in terms of who's the preferred prime minister, certainly, that it would fall in favor of the liberals. Why wouldn't you want one? I understand what you're saying, Bruce, you know, there are issues for the country and we have a, we have to have a plan and we've got to move on it.

Well, I have a plan and they are moving on it, slower than some people would like to see. But they have a plan and they are moving on it. An election just sort of gets in the way for six weeks. Over the Christmas break, it also doesn't stop whatever is in the pipeline from, sorry about the use of the word pipeline. but whatever's in the pipeline for continuing. To Bruce's point, I wouldn't be so sure that Mark Carney doesn't want an election, but I know what he wants is a majority. And he has demonstrated that over the course of Budget Week.

The Prime Minister routinely doesn't meet with opposition members in the way that he did, and there were more than two who met with him from the Conservative Caucus, and ideally without having to go through an election. But I am not keen on the notion of an election campaign, but let's be serious here. That does not mean that suddenly every plan is derailed until January 10. So I suspect Mark Carney's position is that's not his plan. He's not looking for an election, but he'll take one if it comes his way. Okay, Bruce.

Well, Chantel's last point, I think I agree with completely that, pardon me, I don't think that Mark Carney wants an election because I think he wants to continue working on what he's doing. I don't think he got into politics because he wanted to prove that he could be a successful politician. I think he got into politics because he wanted to advance policies that he thought were in the country's interests. And if there's a criticism that you hear around Ottawa sometimes about the prime minister, it's that he's very driven and that he's very pace-oriented. That's not the same as saying he's a political animal who's constantly looking at the political calculus. How can I get an advantage over my opponents? So I think Chantel's point is right, that he would like a majority.

But the purpose of the majority is so that he can keep on moving forward quickly with his policy agenda and not hear that criticism of why is it taking so long? Why, you know, why when you're trying to move projects, do you hear dissenting voices? Well, it's always been the case. The only thing that's different is that he's announcing that he wants to have these projects evaluated within a shorter time frame, not no time frame,

but a shorter time frame than the otherwise would be. But those tensions and dynamics in our democracy are healthy and they're normal. All he's really trying to do is say, I said to the country, I wanted to do this because I wanted to do these kinds of things that I'm trying to get done right now and with some pace. And I believe even more today than maybe back then because the geopolitical situation remains destabilized that this is important. I also would say that he got into politics with very little notice and managed to put together a campaign, which will have one or two days that looked like hiccups from an organizational or logistical standpoint,

ended up being very successful, his leadership campaign. And then not very long after that, an organization had to be built to run a national campaign as well. So sometimes parties fred a lot about whether they're able to mount a campaign without much advanced notice. I don't think that he would be particularly concerned about that. I think he thinks he knows what it is that he wants to say. He would know how he would want to campaign. And, you know, to go back to the NDP for a moment, if you're an NDP candidate, it takes Chantelle's point.

Some of those MPs would probably win their seats back. But if you're seen as the group that forced this election campaign, and you know that the only outcomes are either going to be not the only possible outcomes, but the only plausible outcomes, are Pierre Polyeva's prime minister or Mark Carney backed to do the same thing that he just tried to do that you voted against or abstained or caused an election around, what's the rationale that you used to explain to voters that you just had to you just had to treat this vote this way, knowing that these are. were the only two plausible outcomes, I find it very hard to believe. But I don't think that,

I don't think that the prime minister wants an election because I think he wants to keep on doing the job that he feels like he's got, you know, his kind of, the bit is in the teeth and he's off and running. All right. Do you have a last point on this, Chantal? Yes. If I were an NDPMP, I would nevertheless consider that Mark Carney has lost one advantage versus, and the point that Bruce makes is valid in the end, if you're not getting Mark Carney, you're going to get Pierre Puehlia of his prime minister, and that would weigh in the decision of NDP voters. But since the last election, Mark Carney has lost the enthusiasm on being polite of the environmental wing of the Liberal Party and that section of the NDP vote.

The comments by Catherine McKenna, the former environment minister, echo what the other unease, that people who put faith in Mr. Carney's environmental credentials no longer have that faith at this point. And that would impact possibly positively, if that's the angle that the NDP took, possibly positively on their vote. The other issue is the NDP isn't looking to get Mark Carney out of power as much as it wants to win five. more seats. That's not a huge proposition. Why five? Because 12 is the number you need to have official party status. Up to a point, the NDP and the bloc would be happy enough for a majority liberal government to come in. It would shelter the block from whatever tremors will come

from the next Quebec election. And it would shelter the NDP for long enough to redeem its fortunes financially and find a new leader, get back on its feet. So let's be careful about the fear of a minority government for the parties who hold the balance of power. They might not be so sad, and they would be happy enough to see the termination of Piapuadiev's career because a less abrasive conservative leader would not spook their voters into running to the liberals for cover in the way that they do when Piapadiev's a good point. So it plays, I mean, it cuts both ways. I understand that Mr. Karnay wants to continue his work, but let's be serious.

He would mostly be sacrificing his Christmas break to an election campaign at this point. Okay, we're going to take a break. Let me just say, when Chantel mentions official party status is the goal for the NDP in some future election, and that would only take another five seats, assuming they held on to what they've got. official party status means more than just the phrase. It means money, real money, supplied by the Parliament of Canada as an official party. It means office space. It means all kinds of things.

So it's a major goal, and I'm sure Sontel is correct. If they achieved only that, it would be a major accomplishment. But Chantel has also mentioned, so as Bruce a bit, this whole issue of the environment. And the green status of the Prime Minister of Canada, is he still green? He certainly made his name as green as the UN's climate ambassador for some time until he became Prime Minister of Canada, and he dropped that title. But is he still green in the kind of things he's been announcing of late? That's our topic when we come back right after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, which of course is Good Talk with Sean Tele Bear and Bruce Anderson. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, are on your favorite podcast platform. Or you are watching us on our highly successful YouTube channel. We invite you to join us on whatever platform you wish. Do either of you know what COP stands for? The Council of the Parties, the Congress of the Parties? Close. That's close. The climate... No, it's Conference of Parties. Can you think of a more boring title than that?

No wonder they went to just the letters. But COP 30, which is the current one, which I've never quite understood. always sort of like years ahead of where they actually are when they have the conference, is going on in Brazil. And Mark Carney used to be a familiar figure at some of the past COP conferences. And certainly, as I said a moment ago, has made a reputation as somebody who is deeply concerned about the climate and some of the directions that governments have to take

to get on the right side of the climate issue. Some are wondering now whether he's really as green as he used to be, whether he ever was green, what he's doing to show that he's green now. The latest list of major projects, as Chantelle has mentioned, has underlined that concern for some people. I wanted to get your sense of where we are on this issue,

of where does Mark Carney stand on environmental? environmental concerns. And Bruce, you get to start this one. I think this issue for a long time has had two central aspects to it. One is the moral question. Do we have a moral obligation to do more to stem the damage that's being done to the planet and to mitigate future damage? And the second is an economic question. And there have always been, or at least for the last 20 plus years, two side questions around. the economic one. One is, is it better for your economy to go slow in making an adjustment to decarbonize your economy, or is it better to go faster? And for a good number of those

years, the answer to that question has been, it's better to go fast, that there is a race to decarbonize and the strongest economies in the world will be the cleanest economies in the world. And the reason that that conclusion was more evident is the way in which the U.S. in particular, but other countries as well, we're treating their own economies because we sit as an economy in a world where we depend a lot on being able to trade with and compete with other industrialized countries. Trump has changed that equation. I don't think he's changed it permanently. But I do think that any, I think in other words, that decarbonization will continue to be a driving force in the modernization of economies that we sell to, buy,

from, compete with. The pace will be affected by how long a Trump-style Republican is in the White House and whether those kinds of Republicans run the Congress of the United States. But I think the direction will still be towards the cleanest will be the strongest. In addition, Republicans under Trump do not accept the moral imperative by and large, or at least he doesn't, and one presumes that many of his followers don't. So that's a big difference as well. In Canada, most people, not quite as many as did 10 years ago, still accept the moral imperative. Young people in particular are not as convinced of the moral imperative,

which I believe is part of the disinformation problem that we've talked about before that's going on. But to get to Mark Carney, I think Mark Carney is very much a moral imperative, and the economy story has to be towards decarbonization guy. I don't think that's changed. I think the question of what he can do and how he can, talk about this issue publicly and bring the economy and the public and our trading partners along in that conversation is a different political chemistry than it was when Justin Trudeau was prime minister. But I don't think he's a different person. I don't think he has a different

moral code and I don't think he has a different economic theory. And so it's going to sound different. It's going to look different from what we've seen before. But that's not because he's changed, it's because the world's changed and because he's adapting what he's trying to get to, I think, in the context of the world it is. You buy that, Chantal? I'm actually going to set Mark Carney's green character aside for a few minutes, because how would I know? It was convenient for him to be where he was, and pushing those issues.

When the U.S., I agree with Bruce, was led by a more proactive government, on climate. It no longer is at this point, but I think it also reflects a political shift in this country that we see with this COP 30 conference. It used to be, yes, that the prime minister would show up for many of these conferences, but also that premiers from major provinces would show up. Now, having watched the news all week, I noticed that the Quebec premieres in this country, Ontario, B.C. Manitoba. I saw all of them in their normal venues, not in Brazil. So I'm, of course, Alberta and Saskatchewan. So there's been kind of a pullback in the profile of Canada's participation in those international conferences. Just a funny anecdote that reflects

the times. This morning, I was doing research on COP 30 in Canada because I knew we were going to raise it. So I went to Google and put it there with Canada. And what did artificial intelligence come back with? Came back with Environment Minister, Stephen Gilbo, who is no longer the Environment Minister, is attending the Coch30 Conference, which tells you about the low profile of the current Environment Minister. I don't think we have had an environment minister with this lower profile since Stephen Harper was in office. which also tells you how much leeway she may have within cabinet. The news this morning in French had Stephen Gilbo, who is at the COP 30,

not as the Minister of the Environment, saying it would be very hard to reach our objectives and our commitments on climate. That is not to say that the government wants to scrap them. We heard that this week from both the Minister of the Environment and the Prime Minister, but they are seen as more aspirational goals now than they were, let's say, three years ago. My biggest concern about Mark Carney and where this is going, many of the announcements this week are meant to tailor a climate change agenda in the sense of decore carbonization by exploiting critical minerals, putting Canada on the critical mineral. minerals map. Two years ago, our policy and our aspiration was to be on the, you know, electrification EVs. What I worry, when I look at where we are today and the announcements that we make versus

our ambitions is we are reversing to a natural resources provider rather than a manufacturing country. And that seems to me like a step backwards. I'm not seeing enough transformative structural projects that would involve us actually doing things as opposed to us exploiting our natural resources in this case critical minerals. And that does trouble me. Because I, you know, there's an expression in Quebec for this. It's viewers of water and cutters of of wood. I don't really think that's where Canadians want to go back to, but those announcements I'll speak to that rather than leading edge expertise. We have other projects that will possibly come. I also believe the government is treading water on those major projects and finding

low-hanging fruits to announce. But still, Bruce talked about that Carney's, uh, objective was to speed up evaluations. All those projects were already evaluated and passed evaluation. I talked to the people who run the Port of Montreal, part of the first list. I asked them, so what does the National Interest Projects Bureau Office does for you, I mean, if they reached out? And the answer was, from the person who runs the port authority, yes, they have, but we've cleared all those hurdles.

So basically what they're doing is facilitating conversations with various sections of the federal government. So we're not yet, I think, in the major projects of national interest in the sense of beyond one province and beyond one mine here or there. I'm curious to see if we will ever get to it. But I would really like to see projects that are more structural for the future of our labor force than going back to the 50s economy. And, you know, not that it's my role here, but in defense of the government on that point,

it would seem that there's a lot of expectations surrounding what Evan Solomon's going to do with artificial intelligence and how that is going to play out in terms of industry and potential for the country, not just domestically, but internationally. So, you know, there is. Yeah, but expectations, please put some, since you went there, please put some flesh that people can understand on this expectation, because most people will look at you and say, Peter, great, my mind is blank here, which is what I'm basically saying about myself. Listen, there's a lot of expectations surrounding a lot of stuff right now.

Okay, that's a cop-out. Well, no, it's not a cop-out. I mean, there is some justification to say, okay, you know, this swing is how. happened in the last six or eight months and, you know, getting our act together is going to take a while. So we're setting out the parameters of it. And you can see they're further ahead in some areas than they are in others. AI is the future. I mean, there is no question about that. And where we get into this game and how significantly we get into the game seems to be resting on the shoulders of one guy who barely has even an apartment behind him.

Still looking for space, I think, for an office. Shouldn't it also rest on private investment and projects that don't come? As all of these things do. Yes. But that's not been happening. And that is the test of not only the AI agenda, but the oil and gas, the critical minerals, is are we suddenly subsidizing industry because no private investment is coming forward.

At this point, I'm not seeing it. You want in on this, Bruce? Are you happy just to sit in the background while we punch each other out here on the... Well, mom and dad punch each other out or take care about their stuff? Sure, no, I would like to say a couple things. I mean, I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough

about what the ideal economy is to say what Mark Carney is trying to do isn't it. Maybe that's an admission I shouldn't make, but it does feel to me like he has a theory, which isn't an either-or. It isn't that we either should go in the direction of technology and AI and the knowledge economy, or we should go in the direction of viewers of wood and drawers of water. I think he's looking at both. I think he's also in the resources sector. I think there's more conversation that I hear anyway

that is about processing resources, not only exporting them in the rawest form. So different people hear different conversations. I'm not here to say I have all of the facts or the only facts. But I think I'm a little bit where you are, Peter, which is, I don't feel like I can judge how this government's actions are going to work at this stage. And that doesn't keep me up at night.

It's going to take a while to see that private sector investment come towards Canada, look at our permitting process with fresh eyes, look at the supply of energy for whatever it is that they need to do, whether it's data centers or compute power or mining or, or LNG, and then they're going to decide whether they want to put their money into projects in Canada. I think this was always the theory. And so for me, measuring it on a month-by-month basis feels like a political conversation that is a little bit futile. I mean, it's always going to feel frustrating if that's the timeframe that we want to see results on or if we need to say we've got to know all of the pieces all at the same time.

I just don't think that's how the world works. I think that the idea is that you put in place and policy changes that open the minds of international companies up to the idea of investing in Canada. And yes, to Chantelle's point, is it public money? I guess if it's public money to prime the pump, that's the calculus. And the calculus that the prime minister is making is not. one that he's, that he's alone in making. Other countries are doing the same thing, too. Is it a good idea to do? You know, our friend Andrew Coyne will say it's never a good idea to do.

The government should just not do any of it. And I don't know where Pierre Paulyette is on this, because he's careful not to say he would be against all of these projects, which is an interesting question if there's going to be an election in the near term. But I think that more of our competitors, are doing infrastructure-type pump priming to attract investment. And we haven't even mentioned the defense side of things, which is a very significant area of economic activity. It's been an important part of our economy in the past. I saw a story about Swedish fighters and this, pardon?

Saab. Saab. And, you know, the potential that there would be a lot of manufacturing in Canada. So I think I'm maybe just a little bit more patient to kind of see how this strategy manifests itself and that the timing of the announcements have a lot to do with the timing of the conversations of companies that are looking at Canada and saying, well, maybe there is something that we can do there that's a little bit different. And that negotiation, you know, it's a commercial negotiation.

So it has to take place a little bit on the pace of commercial negotiation and a little bit behind the scenes, too. So, yeah, probably patience is kind of my instinct as I try to evaluate this. I think they knew Brunswick mine that was suddenly proposed for as a project of national interest. That's been in the work since 2018, so let's not rush things here. And what troubles me about the, I don't disagree that it's too early to judge, but let's be serious, the list that Bruce just gave is was all about.

attracting, I'm setting aside defense, but the major projects initiatives so far are all about attractive people to come and get more natural resources out of Canada. The data centers, for me, a project of national significance is the transmission line and the agreement between Hydro-Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. That, to me, is transformative and structural. So is that fast train between Quebec City and Toronto. In my mind, and I think many Canadians, when they were told we are going to give ourselves the power to move faster on big projects, they weren't thinking about a mine that started off in New Brunswick in 2018. It's certainly not a bad project.

That's not the point. But the point is we are not living up at this point to what looks like a strategy to to kind of go for real projects of national scope. The SAB story is really interesting. Yes, they are courting us because we are reviewing whether we want to buy our military equipment. And that's a big issue from the US as opposed to other sources.

And that's why they are aggressively pursuing this, and it could translate into high-quality manufacturing jobs in this country. But it's completely aside from this major project office that will speed up minds that have, or, and that cannot overrule the duty to consult indigenous communities or provincial and municipal legislation regulations on the environment. All right. I'm not sure who's right on this argument.

I don't think we're trying to, but I heard. We're both tying the same thing on different ways. I've heard two Let's Be Clear, which that's more than my normal quotient because then I get a little bit, uh-oh, I'm not. Don't think she means, let's be clear. I think she means I don't agree with you, which is fine. All I know is it's taken me five years to get either one of you wedged away from the other to be sort of on my side in a discussion. So I'll take that as a victory in spite of whatever. the concerns may well be on your side.

Who did you hear was on your side? I heard Bruce say, I agree with Peter on this little point. On AI, yeah, right. It's still waiting for him to pleasure. Okay, let's put a hold on that discussion and come back for the final segment. We've got a few minutes left, and we'll do that right after this.

And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week, Chantel, Bruce and Peter, here for you. You know, two weeks ago, the big discussion that we had on this program was about the collapse of the trade talks. One week ago, the big discussion was about the chaos inside the Conservative Party. You know, I think there's still, as we've highlighted here, some discussion about the chaos. in the Conservative Party, but we're not talking about any more crossovers at this point anyway. But let me go back to two weeks. Seemingly nothing has happened on the trade talks. Now, maybe there is some stuff going on in the background that we're not aware of, but it doesn't appear so.

What should we make of that? Is this like, is this all over but the shouting in terms of trying to come up with a new deal of we moved on at times it looks like we have? We're saying, okay, we'll check out of that. We've got our other plans, and we're going to work on those. I see Dominic LeBlanc saying, I'm ready to get back to talk to the table at any time that the U.S. President wants to, but at the moment there's nothing going on. What should we read into all that? And as I said, we've only got a few minutes left.

Bruce, you start us. Well, I remain of the view that taking a little bit more time. to get to a better, you know, a better framework for a conversation, a better mood for a conversation is a good idea. And I say that because I think most of what's happening is happening in the United States politically. I think President Trump has had the worst two weeks of his second term in terms of his standing with the public and the dismay within his party. A big chunk of that, obviously, is this incredible Epstein story,

which continues to look like it's occupying a great deal of the energy of the White House to try to manage. But separate and apart from that, we are seeing Trump do things and say things now that reflect an acknowledgement that people in America are very unhappy with his handling of the economy, that they're unhappy with what's happening with prices, that he's talking about giving them each a $2,000 check, which his Treasury Secretary seems very uncomfortable with, as a proposition, and today I was reading stories that suggest that they're about to announce some tariff reductions because of the impact on consumer prices. So having moved from trillions of dollars coming into the country, no impact on consumers, they're now in a different political situation. And he knows, Trump knows, that the timing to the midterms

is becoming a bigger and bigger challenge for him, that the Republicans, that the Republicans, Republicans are behind the Democrats by eight points on the generic ballot question. The Democrats aren't particularly popular, but the Republicans are trailing them in popularity by numbers that would lead to a reversal of who controls the House. And it's a pretty substantial gap that they face right now. And it pretty closely links to frustrations with the cost of living. So I think the politics in America are changing. and I think it's in our interest to not slow walk these conversations, get back to the table as soon as the Americans are willing to,

but get back on the understanding that the political chemistry in the U.S. is adjusting. Shantelle? I agree. I think that there's concern also in the White House about what the Supreme Court will say about the use of tariffs by President Trump and some of the questions that the justice has asked that came from the more concerned. conservative Trump allies on the bench give them cause for concern. But I also think if you want to focus on Canada, I also think that for all the stuff that we said about the Ontario ad, what it did demonstrate in the U.S. is that we are winning the PR war against Trump on this.

Canada comes out of questions as to who do you think is a good guy. Canada comes up really well in public opinion. in the U.S. while Trump does not. So basically, there's not much political capital for him to have to be forever hitting on Canada, regardless of what the people around him say that usually makes little sense. I also may have missed the day when that extra 10% tariff that was going to be applied to Canada because of Premier Ford's ad, I must have missed the day when that actually became fact rather than a threat.

You didn't miss it. Okay, it hasn't happened, but I think part of the reason is that this threat undermined the White House case and the Supreme Court brought it to a different level. If you don't like an ad, you can use that power to impose more tariffs. It's not a great legal argument. It's an argument for the other side to say, look at how he's abusing his power. If he doesn't like the tie you're wearing tomorrow, He's going to impose tariffs on your country.

It's hard to see it as an emergency. That's for sure. In the Supreme Court conversation, there is also this issue that's been kind of looming in the background, which is that if they rule these tariffs were illegal, the monies that have been collected notionally have to be given back. Now, I don't think there's any accounting for that in the U.S. administration, and you can tell that people are freaking out about this a little bit. Yeah, we're talking.

And given back to the consumers who actually paid for it, it's not our industries, because that's not how tariffs have worked. So maybe that's where the $2,000 each is going to come from. Okay. We're out of time. Only time for a one-word answer here. Does the government fall next week? Yes or no?

Maybe. Maybe not. No words. Okay. well, we'll hold you to those two. That was one where I just compress it. Maybe not. Right.

Okay. Listen, a great conversation again. Thank you both. Have a great weekend. For listeners out there, the buzz is available tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern time in your inbox. All you have to do is subscribe. It costs nothing.

Subscribe at national newswatch.com slash newsletter. All you need to do is put in your evening. email and you'll get the buzz, which is kind of, you know, articles or things that I've seen in the last week that I found interesting and thought-provoking. So you can look towards that. And you can also, if you're looking for the ability to replay some of the great conversations that are on the bridge this week, including this one, good talk. And earlier this week, a fabulous Moore-Buts conversation, James Moore and Jerry Butts.

You want to hear that. That's about crossing over and chaos in the conservative party. It's pretty good. All right, that's going to do it for this week. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in seven days. Have a good weekend, you guys.