The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The Liberals Back Flip on Carbon Tax

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

The carbon tax has been a signature part of the Liberal's climate change policy but last night may have been the beginning of the end of that signature.  Bruce and Chantal have their thoughts on the prime minister's latest move on the energy front and wonder what might be next. That plus another good discussion on the national implications already coming out as a result of Alberta's plan for its own pension plan.

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, welcome to Friday. This is Good Talk on the bridge. Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson are with me. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Lots to talk about on today's edition, so let's get right at it. Last night, you know, I guess in a sense we're always in a pre-election mode because there's always eventually going to be an election at some point. But it's starting to feel very much like we're really in a pre-election mode now because everybody's promising us something. Last night this thing pops in the inboxes,

the release from the Prime Minister's office, and he gives a speech on a kind of campaign rally, delivering support for Canadians on energy bills, and there's all kinds of stuff in there, especially if you're on heating oil, and apparently there are still some people on heating oil, mainly in Atlantic Canada, and this is where this was designed for, I think, primarily. But I love the opening line of the release. As global market

forces and inflation continue to hit Canadians, in other words, it's not our fault, it's global market forces, too many families are feeling the pressure on their monthly bills. Already, the government of Canada has taken action on affordable childcare, home retrofits, grocery prices, and more. And we are now taking an ambitious next step with a new energy affordability package. Now, I don't want to sound cynical, and I don't mean to, because those are all technically correct,

what is said there. And this latest one impacts on the carbon tax, impacts on heating pumps, the whole bit, and oil, as I said. So does it make a difference in the equation? I know I've asked this before. I think I asked it on the housing thing, and Chantal and Bruce kind of jumped all over me saying, we can't tell yet.

Or it was grocery prices. We can't tell. We'll have to wait and see. So I don't know about this one, but there are starting to pile up these promises of action, and a lot of this has taken place since the summer when the polls started to really go the wrong way for the Liberals. Is this going to make a difference, Chantal? This is different. This is not about building more houses or sending you money to help with groceries. This is the Liberal government rolling back a signature policy.

And the signature policy is carbon pricing. If you live in Atlantic Canada and your home eating is oil, it's good news. What Mr. Trudeau has done, and I'm going to use the words from the conservative leader, is ax the carbon tax on heating oil. That is what he did yesterday. There is no dancing around this. If you live somewhere else, or you happen to be heating your home with natural gas, you're probably saying, well, don't I have to deal with an affordability issue? And why heating oil? And you're right, when you look at the picture of how Canadians heat their homes, oil eating, what is left of it is massively concentrated in the Atlantic provinces. But about half of Canadians use natural gas and they are

subject to the same affordability pressures as people who live in Atlantic Canada. Why do I say it's a retreat? Well, because a year ago, the Conservatives presented a motion in the House of Commons calling for exactly that, and the Liberals voted against it. Now, a year ago, I think we were already seeing that inflation, interest rates, and affordability were becoming issues. Now, what does that set in motion? You ask, will it make a difference? And I say this to my friends who are probably using natural gas. Maybe you should hold your breath for another retreat because now you have instantly, this

announcement is not 24 hours old. And you've got the federal NDP calling for it to be extended to people who heat their home with natural gas. You've got the Premier of Ontario, Premier Ford, calling for the same thing. You have Premier Smith in Alberta calling for the same thing. And you probably have a few British Columbians and Quebecers, the two provinces where none of these measures apply, thinking, what in the world is going on? And how did we do we end up with even more of a patchwork system? won the carbon pricing battle in previous elections are now thinking that it can save them in Atlantic Canada, because the big difference between a year ago and today, seriously, when they voted against that motion and that measure, are public opinion polls and a sharp

decline in support for the Liberals in Atlantic Canada. So I was a bit rich yesterday to watch the Prime Minister for a good part of half an hour try to convince serious people who have been following this debate that today was a good day for climate change and that they were doubling down on fighting climate change. And I think offering heat pumps, et cetera, is a good idea. But I also feel that the prime minister's words were doing all this because the carbon tax is not having the impact we had hoped on people's consumer habits. Well, that federal fuel charge that was taken away

yesterday only kicked in on july 1st in atlantic canada that sounds like a really short time to see if it was working all right bruce i think there's no question that what the government did yesterday was a an act of, conditional surrender perhaps. But they lost the battle to frame the carbon price, especially in Atlantic Canada. They lost it to Pierre Poiliev. They didn't lose it to his predecessors in the conservative leadership who were also dead set against it. And the best I think that can be said, no, maybe not the best, but one thing that can be said on a positive side about what the liberals chose to do yesterday is that over the course just of the last week, you can see some signs of a more ambitious and aggressive defense on the part of the liberals. I still don't see any evidence that they are mounting an offense or that they have a strategy to grow their support. But they seem to be more preoccupied and active in trying to figure out how to keep it from draining away. And it has been evident for some weeks, as Chantal has mentioned, months perhaps,

that if they don't do something to counter the messages that have been landing with impact in Atlantic Canada by Pierre Poliev on the carbon tax, they're going to lose a lot of seats. So I don't think there's any question that that political calculus was behind the decision yesterday. that it probably produced a pretty vigorous discussion within the Liberal tent about whether this was the abandonment of a signature plan or rather living to fight another day so that the entire carbon and climate plan of the government isn't lost as a result of losing the next election. I think there's a reasonable argument that could be made and probably was made on that side of the equation within cabinet. Whether it's enough, whether Trudeau is compelling or credible or not is an unknown. The bias, I think, in terms of what the polls are telling us is that he's unlikely to be able to fashion a way to make people believe that he's the right choice for them going forward, including now in Atlantic Canada. But the policy that they announced, with the

complicating aspects that Chantal mentioned of other jurisdictions now saying, hey, where's ours, didn't completely walk away from the climate agenda. It proposed a way for people to embrace cleaner energy solutions for their homes. I think that is a good idea. Chantelle, I agree with that for sure. But where we go from here, I think, is largely a question of whether or not at some point the government can get off the back foot, can get off having to patch holes in the hull that conservative torpedoes have opened up, whether they can establish an agenda that people can look at and say, this is more compelling to me than what is on offer from Pierre-Paul

Lievre. And I think that's still a very open question, notwithstanding the announcement last night. Do you think anybody cares? Sorry, do you think anybody you do realize sorry do you think anybody cares at this point um whether you know it's clear chantal mentioned that this is a straight steal from the conservative handbook from a year ago something the liberals in fact voted against right if i if i recall um but they're taking out this the heating oil uh issue um do you think anybody cares at this point? I mean, we've discussed this before, how parties steal from each other all the time. The Liberals have a track record of stealing from the Conservatives on different issues.

In this atmosphere, in this political atmosphere, do you think anybody cares about that right now, or do they just care about, this can make a difference for me? Well, fine. So if this is how voters want to go about it, this is going to make a difference for me. I'm guessing all those other voters who are using other means of heating their homes are thinking, well, you know, this Blyov guy was right on heating oil, and he's promising to axe the tax and the liberals have conceded to him that they should axe some of those taxes. So why shouldn't I vote for him? He's going to actually make me feel better. more legs to the conservative campaign on carbon pricing and takes away some of the electoral defense of the liberals who cannot anymore go in an election campaign and say,

we have managed to put carbon pricing in place. It is a central tool in the battle for climate change. And he wants to do away with it. Well, they have started to do away with part of what they have achieved. To me, I was told, and I totally understand that that is true, that the reason this happened was tremendous, tremendous pressure at the caucus level, in particular those Atlantic Canada MPs lined up behind Justin Trudeau for the announcement yesterday, claiming victory on their own government policy. What a weird way to approach policymaking. wonder if I were, you know, one of those, how many 300 and some defeated conservative candidates in 1993, and I had looked at that, wouldn't I have thought, what if Brian Mulroney had stood up one day and said, okay, I'm going to forget about this GST thing. Because the GST was a signature conservative policy that they fought for in an election in 1988. While we always talk about the free trade election, it was part of the conservative

package in 88 and then implemented and paid a heavy price for it. But the GST is still with us today. So I'm guessing it wasn't a bad public policy measure. And they didn't back off. Mulroney did not tell his caucus, I know times are tough, so I'm going to forget the signature policy. That is not what happened yesterday. The liberals fought for carbon pricing. They fought two elections on it.

And then, oh, well, it turns out that it was negotiable. If you look at how easy it will be for Pierre Poitier to dismantle the climate change infrastructure of the liberals, you have just seen the liberals handing him the first plank without even he coming to government to do it. I want to make a couple of points if I can, Peter. One is the specific answer I have to your question of does anybody care if a party steals another party's idea? I think no. I think the answer is it is below what petty larceny would be in terms of if it were a criminal offense, you wouldn't even get a ticket for it. And if you were a politician complaining about it, you should just save your breath because it will not matter. And we've seen plenty of evidence of that. I think the other thing that's kind of written into this is if the liberals look carefully at

the history of the conversation that they've had, the conflict or the fight with the conservatives over climate change, carbon pricing, an important takeaway from it is that I, and let me preface by saying, I believe carbon pricing is good policy. I don't think it should be abandoned. I'm not sure it ever will be abandoned on some level. It's more complex than Pierre Poliev makes it sound like it is to walk away from carbon pricing. There are provinces that embrace carbon pricing, and they're not going to abandon it necessarily because Pierre Pauliev becomes prime minister.

So this is not a criticism of carbon pricing per se, but what it is is a reflection, and it's easy in retrospect to do this, to say the Liberals got caught in a situation where the defining policy difference with the Conservatives was a single measure as part of an overall climate plan. And that single measure had the misfortune of looking like a tax to many people, even though we can sit around and talk about the fact that it was a tax and a rebate and all that. It was called a carbon tax or a pollution price or a climate action initiative. But the Conservatives succeeded in calling it a carbon tax and winning the debate with enough voters to say that's what it was.

And of course, it wasn't only a conversation in Canada. Carbon tax was something that people were talking about around the world. So if you're trying to tell voters what the difference is between you and the other guys, and you're in the world of, well, we're for a tax and they're not, and our tax is a good tax if you understand it really well, chances are over time, maybe not at the beginning when you're popular, but over time as you develop that scar tissue, you're going to start to lose that fight.

And instead, I think for the Liberals going forward, they have to take the wound that is this amendment to their policy and decide that the ground that they want to fight on with Polyev is not carbon tax, but climate action that leads to economic growth. That's what I think a lot of the policy measures that the government has been trying to do on EVs, on batteries, in support of the energy sector with carbon capture and storage supports. But most of that is kind of well in the background. And people hear the conversation about axe attacks and carbon pricing and liberals kind of feeling really frustrated that this sensible policy has now come under such duress that they've had to modify it somewhat.

A couple of things. I not noticed that Pierre Poiliev opposed EV expansion policies or subsidies for such changes or carbon capture or public money for battery plants. He certainly has not come out in public against any of those, which basically means that all those things are good things. Bruce is right. They're part of the policy package.

But there is, at this point, no significant difference on most of those items between the two main parties, which leaves the liberals, who totally enjoyed an advantage on the doorsteps, as documented by conservative candidates like Lisa Rigg, who testified that one of the hardest things about campaigning in 2019 was that suddenly people were saying on the doorsteps of the suburbs of Ontario, you're not serious about climate change, and this guy is. Well, it sounded great. It was a great communications idea to say we're going to put a price on pollution. Who would not? But yesterday, they framed it as we are suspending our price on pollution when it comes to heating oil. And then you think, people, can you get off your talking points and talk about carbon tax? Use the vocabulary of the conservatives when you're suspending it. Don't tell people we've been telling you we're going to put a price on pollution. Well, it didn't really matter in the case of heating oil.

We probably shouldn't have. I think they have undermined their entire climate change platform. And I know there's going to be pushback on me saying that. But I see, I looked at the government yesterday in the announcement, and I thought, so here I have a government that is beholden to the NDP for survival in the House of Commons, and that is allowing Pierre Poilievre to pull its strings on major policies that are part of its legacy on the electoral front, which begs the question, well, what do the liberals lead on anymore? How do they recapture the initiative?

You know, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about pharmacare and the big NDP ask on this. I didn't think that the Liberals would ever contemplate saying yes. I watched what they announced yesterday and I thought maybe I should review that. Maybe they'll say yes to anything at this point. Having said that, and before we leave this subject, what do you think then the odds are that they're going to, you know, move the tax off of natural gas? Do you think the odds are good at that? I mean, if you're backing off on your whole policy, why stop at oil? It's going to be really pleasant to watch them say we are not going to move from this line. New natural gas heaters are going to continue to pay the big bucks.

Very, very nice position to be arguing from, considering that natural gas heating is really a big deal in places like Ontario that happen to matter in an election campaign. I think the math is. Yeah, here's what I think. If the next election were to be, and I don't think it will be, an election decided on the basis of climate policies, I don't think the liberals would win. And I don't think they would win that. And this is a very hypothetical because no election is a one-issue election. But because Chantal mentioned the point about Lisa Raitt and conservative candidates saying

it was materially bad for them, unhelpful for them not to have a comprehensive policy in the past. My point is only to concur with her that Pierre Polyev has been so silent on all of the other climate measures where, you know, you could have, if you just looked at his base, said, well, they would want him to oppose these subsidies for investment in e-vehicles and battery manufacturing industry. They would want him to oppose more of the measures that he has been acquiescing to, but doing it quietly because he doesn't really want his base to be aware that he's become green Pierre Pellievre. But because what he has done is he has de-risked the idea of a climate oriented election for the Conservative Party. And he's done it quite effectively and he hasn't been held to account by the Liberals or the NDP or the Green

Party for doing that. And I'm not saying that they would win if they tried to do that. I'm saying it has been a path of no resistance for him, objectively. And that is another reason why the Conservative Party is so competitive. If it's not an election about climate change, and I don't think it will be, it could well be an election about who cares about the cost of living. And the Liberals have so overwhelming evidence that they are way behind the Conservatives on that, that that more than anything else is why they did what they did yesterday. It wasn't for sure a choice that they would have wanted to embrace in terms of how to solve the cost of living issue. But it is part of a series of measures that they're taking to try to stop bleeding support on the cost of living issue to the Conservatives or to the NDP.

And I don't know whether it will help or not, but I do think that's what it was. All right. We're going to leave that as our first segment for this week on Good Talk. And we'll be right back with our second segment right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk right here on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or on our YouTube channel.

Bruce, you mentioned a few moments ago the need for the Liberals to go on the offensive as opposed to being apparently on the defensive all the time. And I'm wondering, what is offensive in today's world? What can, that didn't sound right. How do you go on the offensive in today's world? How do you go on the offensive in today's world when you're not in an election campaign,

but you may be approaching one or you may be a year or a year and a half away from one. So how do you do that? Well, you know, I think the key to being on a fence is not necessarily about attacking the other party, although that's usually part of it. It's describing something new that people find appealing. It's hard for an incumbent government and especially hard for an incumbent government that has had the same leader for this length of time to sound like they found three great new ideas that they didn't think of before and that nobody saw coming and everybody will automatically be interested in. But all I'm really saying there is it's challenging, but you still have to do it because the natural force of things is that governments are going to be on the back foot unless they figure out how to get people talking about something new, something different, something promising, something that makes people kind of want to rally around it. I don't think they've got bad ideas on housing. I think they're good ideas, but the housing ideas were in response to a sense of crisis. I don't think that they are wrong to try to push grocery retailers on grocery prices, but that's not going on offense.

That's playing defense against that issue. So what is the economy of the next 20 years? What is it that is the geopolitical position that Canada wants to adopt over the next 10 years in the context of the China that we see, the Russia that we see, the U.S. that we fear, and the various other geopolitical issues in the Middle East and so on? It has to be in those areas as well as things where everybody kind of lives, that people see the liberals coming up with ideas that make them want to pay attention to the liberals and then put the conservatives in the position of having to say, we like that idea or we don't like that idea, but at least we're talking about that idea.

Right now, people are not talking about what the liberals are doing, except in context of as a consequence of declining polls and a less popular leader, the liberals today did X, and they just have to find ways to creatively escape that. All right. I was thinking more and more of the kind of traditional strategy that you see used at varying times. I'm not disagree and more of the kind of traditional strategy that you see used at varying times. And I'm disagreeing with what you're suggesting. That's an interesting way of looking at it. But the more traditional strategy is to sort of like really go after the other side and especially their leader. They've got to do a bunch of that too. But that's the more obvious

default, right? And I guess what I'm saying is if they only did that, it will sound like politics. It won't sound like something that's in the interest of voters. That's the problem you get into at eight years in, whereas opposition parties aren't held to that same standard. Opposition parties can be critical and opposition all day long, and people won't say, what are your positive ideas? Some do, but not very many. What are you hearing on this, Chantal? Well, first of all, I was listening to Bruce's very articulate explanation of coming up with something new. And I kept waiting for an example of what they could be presenting that is something new. And I know why he didn't come up with one, because all this time I was trying to think of one, and my mind came up blank.

And he named what they're currently doing. Maybe trying to lead the fight to save the Canada pension plan from Alberta's project to go away could be part of it. The problem is that I'm not seeing Pierre Poitier saying I'm going to give away the store to Alberta. And he won't ever say that because Ontario, New Brunswick go down the list would say, wait a minute, we're not going to vote for the guy who is going to plunder the Canadian pension plan on behalf of Alberto as our prime minister. So easy to say, not easy to do. I understand that the liberals are sitting on a bunch of ads that are negative in nature and targeted at Pierre Poiliev, and have still not presented any. Where was I at some panel? I think the Real Estate Association, where you also were. One of my co-panelists asked the audience, how many of you have seen a conservative ad over the past 10 days? And more than half of the people in that room, it was a big room, raised their hand. And how many have seen a liberal ad? Well, they did not because there are none.

I'm guessing that stems from the liberal notion that they have time on their side and they want to keep their powder dry. The problem is that meanwhile, the entire focus is on them. And as incumbents, they look tired. And every time they come up with some idea, and, you know, for instance, cabinet this week discussed whether they should tweak their position and their targets on immigration, which would pave the way for yet another strategic retreat. The prime minister yesterday said that it's important to preserve Canadians' openness to immigration. That is true, but that does seem to pave the way for another retreat.

All that I see, or all that they managed to get themselves into, are frames that see them either playing defense or erasing some of their own policies. And so being absent from the media battlefield with ads, giving Pierre Poilier free reign to basically say whatever he has to say. And with few exceptions, this is a leader who will not be straying from the cost of living message. He will if he has to for a day or two when, you know, Israel-Ammas happens, but he will always bring it back to cost of living. And I don't think they will get him to engage seriously in any other issue that I can think of. It wasn't a perfect week for Pierre Poliev.

In fact, I'm not sure how to describe it. Do you think he was embarrassed that he put forward a motion this week, a bill that got defeated? Or did he assume it probably was going to get defeated but wanted to follow through on his original promise? defeated or did he assume it probably was going to get defeated but wanted to follow through on his original promise and this was his covid bill um looking for the government to uh say it would never uh do a covid mandate uh or anything similar to that on on some other you know a pandemic or what have you um that was to force vaccines on certain elements of the workforce. You lost the vote.

Do you think that was that a major setback for Polyev or was there more to what happened in that vote than first meets the eye? Bruce, do you want to take a run at that? Whenever in the future you want to ask the question, was Pierre Polyev embarrassed? Just count me as always a no on that. That's the thing that he has the capacity for. He doesn't understand the meaning of the word. No, I think he's born without that little part of whatever our makeup is that allow us to feel that sometimes. And, you know, I think for a lot of politicians, there may be a little less of it than there is for other people.

But you have to have a tough skin in that business. Well, you know, it would have been right. I mean, I think that it could have been and would have been a bad day for Pierre Poliev or a bad week where he basically stood up in parliament and said, no matter what scenario we can imagine, we would not require people to take a measure that might save millions of lives. Now, that's me putting it that way. Now, conservatives might say, well, that's an exaggeration or that's a, you know, that's hyperbolic. So what? Politics sometimes is about that. And certainly what the conservatives say about the carbon price and about the liberals day in,, day out, is hyperbolic, often misleading, often littered with untruths.

This is true. And so what happened this week was how much push did the Liberals put on characterizing Polyev as unsafe for Canadians' health? How much did they try to describe that fundamental difference in the instincts of a populist who just wants to reach out every once in a while to that base of people who are aligned with him because they hate Trudeau and they hate the vaccination and they didn't agree with the COVID measures that the government took. He does that every once in a while. And he does it when he wants to now with impunity almost,

because there are some liberals I know that criticize it, but they're few. And the sound of the noise is low. And so if you're Polyev, you're going, I'm going to do this. And if people outside my base notice it, they won't like it. But maybe they won't really notice it because the Liberals won't really prosecute it.

And I think this is a little bit the part of the question of what is going on offense look like. Going on offense could have been that this week and for several more days. And instead, the Liberals are talking about their climb down on carbon pricing. Of course, part of what happened this week was Pierre Poiliev ticking a box and getting rid of something. This was a bill C-278, for those who care to check what it actually says, was initially Pierre Poiliev's private member's bill. And when he became leader, he passed it on to someone else in caucus. But it was his brainchild, as he insisted on saying. It is very, when you read it, it is very COVID-19 specific.

It doesn't say the federal governments of the future will never impose vaccine mandates on anything. It doesn't only cover going to work in a bank or at the CBC and having to show that you were vaccinated. It also covered travel, as in he disagrees with the notion that people who got on planes and trains during the pandemic had to be vaccinated to get on public transportation of that nature. The gamble that he's taking I don't think is in the immediate because I think most Canadians want to move past COVID-19 and any restrictions that came with it and are quite happy to allow others to make up their own minds as to whether they're going to get boosted again or not. It's kind of become a bit like the flu season and the flu shot season. So the gamble is, well, for one, that there will not be a major resurgence of COVID-19

between now and the next election, where fingers will be pointed at Erb-Poiliev to say if he were in government, he would just let this, write this through and take the bets for what they are. And that there will not be, and I don't wish it on Canada or on any government, including a conservative one, that there will not be another pandemic of another kind, maybe worse, within the next four to six years, where these words will come back to haunt Pierre Poilier. That being said, the conservatives were not the only ones who played politics with this.

And I always go back to this great op-ed by Peter Donaloe, a former advisor to prime ministers of a liberal persuasion, who a week before the last election said, if Justin Trudeau promises vaccine mandates in the campaign that seems to be coming, he's going to win a majority. And what happened within a week? Well, the liberals decided to push vaccine mandates and called an election. So on this issue, I don't think anyone speaks for angels in the House of Commons of the two main parties. Both of them played this. I am going to assume that if and when Mr. Poiliev becomes prime minister

and there is a pandemic, a set of circumstance that I don't wish for, that he will make decisions based on the realities of the moment and not on how the last battle was fought. That is often the case in politics and in government, is it not? No matter who the party is. But there is also, though, and Peter, I know you're going to put some data in your Buzz newsletter this weekend, but there is evidence that there is also, though, and Peter, I know you're going to put some data in your buzz newsletter this weekend, but there is evidence that there is a cost to society of the politicization. I take your point, Chantal, that it's hard to just associate the politicization with one side and not the other. But if conservative voters are three times more likely than liberal voters

to say we won't get boosted, I also take your point that boosters for something that many people equate as the flu isn't the sine qua non of will people take the right measures. We are now in a situation where one part of society, because of politics, has become more unwilling or uncertain about the science and the right behavior, even though the science is the same for everybody, whether you're on the right or the center or the left. The science doesn't change. So the politics for a conservative prime minister, Polyev or someone else in that scenario is more difficult than it would be had we not had this significant growth in people who say, well, I'm not going to believe the science or I'm going to believe that this is some sort of government overreach. And I know it's not a conversation that's only been isolated to Canada.

All right. Seeing as you mentioned the Buzz newsletter, anybody who wants to subscribe, it's free. Go to nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. You can sign up. And there will be, as Bruce mentioned, this weekend. It comes out Saturday mornings, early Saturday morning. It'll be in your inbox. And there will be, as Bruce mentioned, this weekend. It comes out Saturday mornings, early Saturday morning.

It'll be in your inbox. There is some data in this weekend's dealing with COVID and Canadians' attitudes towards the vaccine today and how that compares with the way it was not that long ago. All right, we're going to take a break, and then we're going to come back with our final topic, a topic that started off kind of provincially, mainly in Alberta, and has now basically gone national in terms of the reaction towards Alberta's pension plan proposal. So we'll get to that when we come back. and welcome back uh this is the final segment of this week's good talk

chantelle hebert bruce anderson peter mansbridge we're all here we're all on deck and we're talking pensions alber pensions, which none of us get. Danielle Smith wants to change. We've talked about this a number of times because it continues to get interesting in terms of the national dialogue on this. Danielle Smith wants to have Alberta's own pension plan. And to fund it, she wants to take a fairly significant chunk out of the Canada pension plan to do it,

which would, in many analysts' views, would cripple the Canada pension plan, or is certainly close to it. This week, again, more province. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Scott Moe is the only premier who's actually come out and said he supports Alberta's idea on this. But I think everybody else, and including of late Doug Ford in Ontario, is saying this is a bad idea. We can't do this.

The prime minister is against it. Pierre Palliev is against it, but it's still at play and it's still a discussion point. I get a lot of mail on it, mainly from Albertans, about this idea. So where are we on this story and what other tensions is it creating as a result of it being a story? Who wants to start? Who's raising their hand first on this one? Chantal's ready. There we go. Okay. Chantal.

It's an interesting conversation. Let's settle the first issue. Yes, provinces are totally allowed to bail out of the Canada Pension Plan. The way that it was framed, he is signing off on the specifics or the dream scenario that the government of Alberta is currently peddling. And what is that dream scenario? And that is where everyone is becoming engaged. The government of Alberta commissioned an independent quote unquote study that tells, notwithstanding the advice of most of the experts who deal in those issues and who are way above my pay grade, but that study says, well, if Alberta leaves, it's entitled to leave with 53%. That's more than half of the money that is in the fund. Obviously, Premier Ford, who runs the largest province with the largest population, has some thoughts about Alberta wanting to leave for one which would unsettle under any terms the

way the Canada Pension Fund operates and make it certainly more fragile. but he has clear, clear objections to this number of 53% that obviously will not survive even the first day of a negotiation if Alberta decides to go ahead and will, if Alberta leaves. I think where this is at this point is that the message that is being delivered to Albertans over the head of the premier of that province is that, sure, we can talk about you leaving, but you are not leaving with half the fund. You are going to leave with a much, much smaller percentage of the fund than what that study has suggested. So are you still sure you really want to leave? And if you do leave, here are the downsides. For instance, if you live in Alberta and you get this pension, it's going to have to look very much like the Canada pension plan pension that the others are getting. Because what if you want to retire to BC or Manitoba? What happens to your pension? What if you come to retire to BC or Manitoba? What happens to your pension?

What if you come to Alberta to work, having worked for 20 years in Ontario? It's easy to say we're going to go on our own, except that Alberta, like Quebec, is not divorced from the rest of the Federation. People who live in Alberta or work there, want to have mobility. And in retirement, mobility is tied also to your pension benefits. So you can't put Albertans in a golden cage forever because you're going to give them a bit more pension money. So it's interesting that Ontario has now joined the fray. There will be a federal provincial conference of ministers of finance to talk about this.

Chrystia Freeland has said this much. And I don't believe that Alberta will find a very little support for that 53% that she would like to sell Albertans on. I think part of the process is meant to send the message. It's not Justin Trudeau that's saying no to this. It's actually conservative premiers in other provinces who were also saying no to this. That probably will force a number of Albertans to think long and hard before they give their government a mandate to actually go its own way with the pension money. Bruce? Yeah, this initiative by Daniel Smith is essentially a gift to Justin Trudeau. I think it's becoming more clearly a gift over time. I think it was one of these poorly thought out ideas that probably emanated from conservative backrooms in Alberta.

Poorly thought out in terms of what are the dynamics that will likely ensue, not from raising the question of whether you want to exit the CPP, but from establishing 53% as the proportion of the existing fund that you want. If you thought about it for any length of time, you would realize that you're not going to win that fight. All you're going to do is produce a fight. And so if you designed it because you wanted to produce a fight, okay. But if you didn't think through the fact that at some point you're going to end up not getting what you said you're entitled to, how is that a win for Daniel Smith? How is that something that doesn't work for everybody who isn't an eight-year incumbent and people are a bit tired of what he has to say, especially in Alberta, Justin Trudeau might not be the best placed person to argue against the 53% or to act as the mediator in a discussion or an argument among the provinces about who should get what.

The Liberals would probably be better served with somebody else playing that kind of role. But we are where we are. And I think that my takeaway for the moment is that Trudeau is probably doing the right thing by not getting too – I always say innervated, and that's the wrong use of the word. So energized or too sort of hyperbolic about this. Let this issue come to him. You know, the fact that Pierre Polyev has definitely not endorsed Party at the next election, and if Alberta is still asking for some number that feels more like 53%, that will be an opportunity for the Liberals to be the federal government that the rest of the country would want them to be on this issue, which is to say no to 53% and say yes to some scenario that makes more sense than that. I've got a couple of minutes left. I want to ask a somewhat related question. It's about the relationship between some of the,

well, at least certainly one of the first ministers and a potential, somebody who wants to be a first minister, and that is Doug Ford and Pierre Polyev, both conservatives, both heavyweight conservatives, but both conservatives who don't seem, you don't see too many pictures of the two of them together on anything. They happen to be together on the Alberta pension thing, but I don't think they're working hand in glove on this. What is that relationship and how concerned are conservatives generally about the fact that there appears to be a problem in that relationship?

And as I said, we only got a couple of minutes, Chantal. Yeah, you don't see Doug Ford and Pierre Poiliev on the same stage very often. I'm guessing Premier Ford would say he's not going along with Pierre Poiliev on the same stage very often. I'm guessing Premier Ford would say he's not going along with Pierre Poiliev on this pension thing. Pierre Poiliev is going along with him and Justin Trudeau on this pension thing. It's not the first time that an Ontario premier gets along better with a liberal prime minister called Trudeau

than with the conservative leader of the day. Remember Bill Davis, the Patriot of the Constitution, the National Energy Program, and poor Joe Clark really wasn't happy about the great agreement that seemed to reign between Queen Spark and Ottawa over those years. But this is a big difference in the sense, and it's a bit riskier for Premier Ford, in the sense that you are now starting to pick up from Ontario members. It's the same party, the Conservatives, Ontario, federal, they're all Conservatives at this point. And you're starting to pick up a sense, and I've met a couple of them from conservative rank and file members on the ground saying, well, you know, we're starting to get really frustrated with this great entente cordiale between Ford and Trudeau.

We want Trudeau out and we think Poiliev is our ticket and we're well on our way to winning Ontario in the next election. And there is the premier going to make announcements and, you know, smoking cigars with Dominique Leblanc, etc. And there are tensions, but those tensions used to be more limited to the two teams of advisors around Ford versus around. There's no love lost there. That's clear. But now it's seeping into, you know, I was told Premier Ford told his people to stay out of a by-election that took place in Mississauga last year,

where the Conservatives would have liked to do better. And in the reverse, when there was a provincial by-election, the Polyev people told their troops not to lift a finger for the Ford Tories. So the unrest over this apparent schism is starting to gain ground at the rank and file level. And at that level, Poiliev is winning because he is the ascendant, could be prime minister, while Ford is sitting in office at the beginning of a difficult second term. If you can wrap it up in a minute, Bruce, you got it. In their origin story, Poliev and Ford looked similar, bombastic populists willing to say kind of semi-outrageous things.

The current version of Ford is much different. It remains to be seen where Poliev will end up more like that. But Ford says, I'm sorry, he gets embarrassed. He makes mistakes and tries to tell people I made a mistake and I'm going to fix it. Now, I'm not saying that to shine his apple or polish his apple. I'm just saying he's different from Pauliev in that regard. I don't think we know how this is going to play out because I don't think we know what's going to happen in the U S election.

Give me a Trump and a Republican ascendancy. And I think Pauliev is in a more vulnerable position, especially if Ford is a more centrist conservative premier. Wow. 52 minutes without mentioning the trump word until the right then the last sentence for me yeah i'll make a couple of people happy still having a bad he's still having a bad week he's going to jail he's going to be in jail there you go anyway that's it the definitive word on that subject listen thank you both chantelle and bruce have a great weekend and to you out there have a

great weekend as well grab the newsletter national news watch dot com slash newsletter you can uh you can get that um and thank you for listening we'll talk to you again on monday