The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- The Trump Tariffs Are Tomorrow -- Or Not

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Mark Carney is the front runner in the race to replace Trudeau & finally dropped his plans to abandon the carbon tax.

Are you ready for Good Talk? Of course you are. Coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Rob Russo and Chantelle Hebert. It's your Good Talk Friday and lots to discuss today, as there always is, but there really is a lot today, so let's get right at it. We're even going to talk about Mark Carney dropping a policy announcement today. That seems like a first, but we'll get to that in a minute, because obviously tomorrow is Tea Day, or so we're told that it's Tea Day. It's Tariff Day. Donald Trump just yesterday saying it's going to happen on saturday february

1st that's tomorrow however we're still kind of talking about it and we kind of got a he was saying that he was having a meeting last night uh about the canada end of things and in fact there's a piece in the wall street journal that was filed late last night that suggested there are talks going on that may be able to come to some kind of arrangements with Canada, which would lessen the impact of T-Day. Well, we'll see. We've learned a long time ago not to buy into everything that we hear as these things are leading up to their apparent conclusion.

We'll see. But let's start on that on t-day rob why don't you start us what are you hearing what uh you know i think we should start with with what we know what what we know is is that uh canada's objective remains the same canada's objective is to try to maintain access to the u.S. market, which has been the foundation of its prosperity for 150 plus years. That's the objective. And when people talk about dollar for dollar tariffs, tit for tat, all that other stuff that can go by the wayside. Even if there is a trade war, there is the notion of calibration in Ottawa that they have to be very, very careful, because if they do get into an extended trade war with the United States, markets change. And if the United States becomes accustomed to not having goods from Canada and gets them elsewhere, those changes can become structural, enduring, and represents

a real risk to Canada. That being said, Canada is doing things like expedited looks at other markets. It's on a hyperloop now. It is preparing a package for those who are going to be affected by this. This package includes waiving the wait time for employment insurance. It includes helping businesses that are affected by this that might have to shut down

with credit and liquidity help. It includes adjusting or postponing tax payments for people and companies that are going to be affected by this. So there's this two-track system for Canada. Let's hope our objective remains we've got to have access to that U.S. market,

at least in the short term. And if we don't, we're preparing. But just a second, hold on. Those protection measures, you're talking billions, tens of billions of dollars. Yeah, this is akin to what happened in the first phase of COVID. It's the same thing. And there is a sense, if there's a 25% across the board tariff, that the initial shock won't be as bad as COVID when everything's shut down. The economy will keep going in many, many instances. But in certain sectors, it could be more than a staggering blow.

And people will be tossed out of work, and businesses will run out of money if they don't get help. Okay, let me bring Chantal in here for a minute. Go ahead, Chantal. Okay, so let's just deal very quickly with the COVID thing. It is not on the same scale as COVID. Sorry, people, but everything shut down. No, but also the aluminum industry, for instance, yesterday,

and over the course of a visit by Quebec Premier François Legault, said we can do this. They didn't say we're facing catastrophe and we're going to disappear. Why is the aluminum industry not saying that? It's not saying that because it does provide, what is it, 90% of the aluminum that the U.S. buys. You talk about tariff day. I believe there will be possibly two tariff days. Whatever happens this weekend and whatever happens April 1st when there is a report on trade between the United

States and most countries that makes or doesn't make recommendations. What we do know is that the Canadian government, and that is borne out by the Wall Street Journal story, believes that there are people on the inside, including the trade people on the Trump team, that are trying to find a way to maybe have tariffs on Saturday, but to find a safe-face way to lift or decrease them by saying, look at what happened to the border, or look at the fentanyl. There's really, we got action, we won something. That would only be a reprieve to the April 1st deadline. Now, there are, in my book, two fantasies that attend this conversation. The first and biggest fantasy is the notion by President Trump

that the US does not need cars from Canada, does not need car pieces to assemble cars in Detroit, that they don't need our lumber because suddenly they're going to take down forests all across America to replace Canadian lumber, that they don't need the aluminum, they don't need the oil and gas. The reality is that maybe at some point they wouldn't need all these products, but that won't happen tomorrow. It won't happen next year. It won't happen the year after that.

So yes, you can devastate the auto industry in the US to rebuild it, but it's going to take a bit more than four years. That's the first delusion, if I can call it that. And by the way, all those industries that I named that are in Canada, one of their competitive advantages is the low dollar, which has again gone down. So when you talk 25%, but the dollar is down maybe 10%, you're talking about a new scale of things.

But the delusion in this country is that we will find businesses that want to open brand new markets and build new infrastructures tomorrow or the day after. I think the real danger is not that the companies are going to make long-term decisions on what they believe is short-term presidency prospects. In some businesses, the outlook on the Trump presidency is not four years. There is this belief, wrong or not, that it's the first two years that matter, that after that he's going to be lame ducked because he, in theory, is on his last term. The real danger is that if you're going to make decisions and you're a business,

you're more likely to make decisions to open a plant in the U.S. tomorrow than to make a plan to build a pipeline in Canada that will take five to ten years to build and may be completed in a completely different trade environment than the one we are in today. So I think maybe at some point it's a good idea to deal with both delusions and look at what happens now and going forward, because those business decisions will not materialize in a way that opens brand new markets. How old are you, Peter? Now don't answer.

I'm old enough to remember that ever since I've become an adult, we have been talking about that third way, how we were diet. We changed our markets. Final point, the U.S. did not negotiate the FTA, NAFTA, and renegotiate NAFTA because it liked us. If they had not found some profit in it, it would not exist. So it's easy enough to say they're not being nice, they're going to tear up NAFTA or whatever it's called today. But seriously, they never signed it because they were being nice. Got it. Rob, pick it up where you were in there.

Well, I would say that Chantal is right in referring to delusion. I'm not sure that anybody would accuse Trump of being a rational actor. I'm not sure that anybody would accuse him of basing his threat of a trade war, economic war against Canada, on logic. It's partly on logic, not from him, but from the people around him, more about leverage. But I think we have to look at the people around him who do, from time to time, lay out the foundation of what the United States

is trying to achieve. They believe that in the areas of trade, in the areas of defense, in the areas of immigration, what the United States has tried to do for the last 80 years has failed to help the United States, even though when Trump took over, the United States was at peace and it was prosperous. They continue to believe that the deindustrialization of the United States has been a tragedy for a great swath of the people who are supporting Trump. And so what do they have? They have a reindustrialization strategy. They know that there will be short term pain. They believe that that pain won't be as severe as people people are saying. Other economists. I'm not saying this is right. I'm trying to lay out the case that the people around Trump are making. And where Canada comes into that is on defense.

And they believe that we've shirked our responsibility to defend our own country. And I do think that there's something to that. If you want to be a sovereign country, you have to exercise your sovereignty. You have to be able to defend your own territory. And I think that we can no longer do that. The balloon, the Chinese balloon threat last year showed that. And in terms of immigration, we don't represent a threat to them. They represent a threat to them. They represent a threat to us.

But they do see the United States as really having lost control of immigration. And it seems now there are Democrats who believe that as well. So that's the change. Trump, yes, delusional. Yes, menace creep. I mean, we had Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary designate, saying at one point, just solve the fentanyl and immigration problem and everything's all right. And then that menace creep came along the next day and said, yeah, that's not going to matter. You got to do that.

You got to do trade and you got to do immigration. And so logic, no. Leverage, yes yes and we've got to be prepared for at least the next two or three years for a shift a fundamental shift in the way the people who are running the united states see their role and see their neighbors okay somebody take me behind the oil issue trump yesterday says well maybe you know maybe we won't put tariffs on oil well i'm not surprised tariffs on oil for the americans would mean higher gas prices in the united states and that's the last thing he needs right now with that base that you're talking about rob um but is that is that what's going on here or is it the inroads that dan Smith made in her trips to Mar-a-Lago? It's gasoline and groceries that elect the U.S. president.

He can't do anything about groceries. The price of eggs has gone through the roof. Exactly. At the Winn-Dixie and at the Publix. He can't do anything about that. He can do something about the price of gasoline. And if he did put any kind of tariff on crude oil from Alberta, we all know what's going to happen. Shantown mentioned aluminum, a really, really good example of a bluster. It would take, the estimate is, six Hoover dams, six Hoover dams in order to replace the aluminum that they get from Canada.

How long did it take to build a Hoover dam? Just not going to happen. So he threw the door wide open for an exemption. The question for Canadians is going to be, does that sow division? What is the impact of that politically? We should actually applaud. We shouldn't be upset about the fact that Canada is going to get an exemption because exporting all the United States is good for our coffers. But there will be some division perhaps as a result of that. And we've got to guard against that because I'm one of the people who do believe that he's trying to undermine the sovereignty of Canada and the national unity of Canada. Chantal? Well, the first point on the oil, we're not sure.

Well, a couple of points. One, talk about improvisation. We're going to do something on Saturday and we're going to discuss on Thursday night whether it covers oil or not. There's a back of the envelope feel to this. Second, there are people, more serious people around Donald Trump who do believe in tariffs and re-industrialization. I agree. That is why I look at the April 1st deadline more seriously than anything that happens this weekend. But they are dealing with a president who has a low tolerance for pain, that short term pain that would stretch over a number of years, that would

raise housing prices, for instance, when you think of lumber, let's not go to aluminum, is not something that Donald Trump wants to live with. We know that he has a short attention span and he wants quick wins. So whether he has the fortitude to see the US through a period where prices go up because of his tariffs, I don't know. And I'm not sure you can convince him to take that pain. I've not seen his capacity for self-sacrifice on exhibit very often. What happens if oil is exempted? I think at first, probably nothing happens for the unity reasons that you talk about. That being said, it would be wrong to believe that 100% of Albertans believe that Alberta has no dog in this fight, or that it doesn't matter what happens to Ontario and Quebec as long as Alberta's oil is being shipped without tariffs. So there will be a debate over that. It will put conservatives, the federal conservatives, in a tight spot, as if it's not tight enough already,

because it will really place them between Ontario and Quebec, which will, both provinces and both premiers will say, this is a collective effort and the national economic good is not just based on oil versus the Alberta base of the Conservative Party. I'm not sure that those divisions, given the current mood, will tear the country apart. But there will be a healthy debate. And I believe that debate starts in Alberta, not in Ottawa, not on Parliament Hill. Can I pick up on something you said there? I'd like to hear from both of you on this. You know, I know there have been a number of recent polls lately

that show the race, the national race here in Canada tightening up a little bit. But you dropped a line in there, Chantal, that this situation is making things tighter for Polyev than they had been. Talk to me about that for a minute. How serious an issue is that? It's a serious issue. Why? Because look at Ontario voters. For all of the things we say about Quebec voters or Alberta voters, the people that do decide an election are Ontario voters. The way this is lining up to be, they will be hit first and foremost. Why? Because that's the economic powerhouse of Canada. that we are not fighting back or we are fighting back with one hand tied behind our backs,

because the Conservatives Party political interest lies with Alberta. That's where the base is. It's not a perception that Pierre Poitier wants to have to drag into a federal election campaign that will center on how do we fight back and how do we preserve our economy. If you're going to tell Ontarians, we don't care that your auto industry is being devastated as long as Alberta oil is going south and Alberta is having a great economic time despite tariffs,

that will impact on the electoral prospects of the Conservatives and on their odds of forming a majority government or be government period. Rob? I think we saw an important shift in tactics from the Conservative leader this week. We saw Mr. Poiliev give an interview in Atlantic Canada, CDV Atlantic, where he laid out some fairly detailed policy about what he would do in response to tariffs if they were levied from President Trump. It's a shift in tactics for a couple of reasons. Number one, he did an interview with a mainstream media journalist, something that he hasn't done a lot of in the last little while. In French, he has, to be fair to him, but not a lot of it in English. That was a shift in tactic.

The concentration on the tariff threat, I think, is more noteworthy in that it, I think, confirms that there has been a change in priority for now in terms of what the campaign, the ballot box issue is, what's concentrating the mind of Canadians right now is the future of their prosperity based on the threat coming from the United States. And we all know for the last two years, this has been in the minds of conservatives, a carbon tax election. That, they thought, crystallized the notion of change, crystallized the burden on the ordinary voter. And so they were building their campaign about that. They successfully not just dented but pulverized the policy in the carbon tax that had won favor with voters three times. So there is a shift in tactics there that's important.

And I think that that signals that conservatives realize that there are other issues that are on the minds of Canadians. There are other concerns. And I think Mr. Carney is also signaling that as well by putting this out as his first substantial policy, putting that carbon tax behind him as well. We'll see how far behind him. My understanding is that the Poiliev theme came very reluctantly to the necessity of

that pivoting. And why? Because it's harder to distinguish the conservatives from the liberals on this issue. There are not 60,000 things that if you can put forward that will be strikingly different. And I don't think appeasement is really an option that the conservatives can or would want to consider. But the other problem for Pierre Poilievre is that he is now pipped against someone, a future liberal leader, and I don't just mean Mark Carney, but whose credentials on the Canada-US front are stronger than his own. That's not the playing field that he was on only six months ago. And he has, I would argue, a team problem. It's been all about Pierre Poiliev for years now, two years, Pierre Poiliev,

Pierre Poiliev. But at some point, you know, this week, he sent a letter to ask Mark Carney or Christia Freeland or Mark Carney to fire everyone who has been a minister under Justin Trudeau. I'm not sure how that goes down in Atlantic Canada. Are you saying you want to fire Dominique Leblanc, who enjoys quite a bit of popularity in Atlantic Canada? Mr. Poitier needs a stronger team, or he needs to showcase his team in another version than the Tech Dogs. My final point, the Conservatives in Quebec have virtually gone, I think the cat got their tongue.

It's like they're, to put it in perspective, the Conservatives, I'm talking about the Quebec caucus, in Quebec have as much presence as the NDP, which has virtually no presence. It's amazing. I listen to a lot of TV, radio, I'm on X to watch what's happening. I don't know. Did they all go off to Florida to sample orange juice before it becomes too expensive? I really don't know. But apparently, the word from the leader's office is we don't want to hear you. Well, great, but that is not going to make Mr. Poitier a household name that you want to have as prime minister in this province if all his yes men and women are mute on top of...

Whether by design or by necessity, I think that's another reason why there's been a slight shift in tactics. Nobody was listening to Pierre Poilier when he was talking about a carbon tax election. They had lost the oxygen of media. Why? Because another issue was dominant. They couldn't get any kind of traction. If you don't have oxygen and people aren't paying attention to you, they might begin to look at the alternative. And that alternative has become, it seems, slightly more palatable, not because of whoever is leading the party, but because I think of the drain of the Trudeau toxicity. And I think that there was some concern

about that as well. Okay, got to take our break. Still to come, we're going to talk about this Mark Carney carbon tax thing. And where is Mark Carney exactly on the T-Day issue? We'll get to that. Plus, Jagmeet Singh, somebody is going to explain to me what his position actually is, because I can't keep track of his flips and flops on exactly what he's going to do if and when the House comes back to sit at Parliament. We'll get to all of that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Friday episode of The Bridge. It is, of course, good talk. Chantelle Hebert, Rob Russo in the house.

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. And listen, thank you for the support on our YouTube channel. The views are way up in the last month or so, and last week I think was another record viewing thing on YouTube for Good Talk, over 50,000 views, so we're very

happy to see that. And hopefully you're heading over there today as well to listen and watch on our YouTube channel. Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth from Tuesday is also on our YouTube channel, so you can watch that our YouTube channel. Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth from Tuesday is also on our YouTube channel, so you can watch that there as well. Okay, let's talk Mark Carney. If Mark Carney has a clear position on the tariff issue, on the U.S. issue,

on the relationship with the states. He might want to share that with liberals who are voting on their leadership and with Canadians at large, seeing as he seems to be the frontrunner in the race. He did share today in what is one of his first major policy announcements, something we've both referred to, all three of us have referred to already in this program, which is abandoning of the carbon tax structure as we have known it. And that's quite a move for him. Remember, he's the, he's carbon tax Carney, right? According to Pierre Polyev.

Anyway, I'm actually in this moment more interested. I mean, he's buried this carbon tax thing on a Friday before the tariffs. It'll be interesting to see how much play it gets over the next couple of days. But I'm more interested in this moment, at least. What would he do about Donald Trump? Like, what actually is his position on that? And when is he going to tell us what it is? Chantal? So, me, I believe that Mr. Carney is wise to keep his powder dry.

Why? Because we don't know. We just spent 15 minutes explaining that we don't know. 26, actually. Great. And you want him to come up with a plan to respond to we don't know. That sounds to me like that game that kids play, you know, pin the tail on the donkey with a blindfold on your eyes.

I do not want a plan from Chrystia Freeland or Mark Carney on how they would handle this. You've got one from Chrystia Freeland, though, right? I mean, she has. It was more of an intention. I don't, for a second, believe that Mark Carney believes that he should just play dead if he were prime minister in the face of tariffs. Nobody actually believes that. But then there's the other issue. Chrystia Freeland is kind of running against herself in this campaign. So she's got a plan that basically suggests, if I were prime minister, I wouldn't do anything that Justin Trudeau used to make me do that I supported and applauded and defended. Mark Carney doesn't have that problem, but he does have one consideration. He cannot look like he's undermining

the Canadian response to tariffs. He is not the prime minister. So he not only must wait to see what Trump will do, he must wait to see what Trudeau will do. Because he can't look like he's shooting. He's like Pierre Poitier, but in the same kind of position. Neither of them can look like they're standing at the back of the front line using friendly fire to shoot at the current government.

Well, he just did that with carbon tax. Carbon tax has been, and he gave plenty of advance warning, but I think he resolved the carbon tax issue within the government when Stephen Gilboa joined and Mr. Wilkinson joined his camp. That kind of neutralized the issue. All right. Well, listen, it is a classic kind of frontrunner's position. Don't say too much. Don't give them ammunition when you don't need to to, but Rob, what do you think of that?

What do you make of this? I think Chantal is right. Certainly in one respect, there is a sense among the Kearney people of let's not fight suntan tawny phantoms. Okay. Don't, don't, no need, no need to try and get into a dance with that guy because you're just going to end up dancing and you're not going to look smart. The other reality is, because I put the question to some of the people around Mr. Kearney, why no policy? And at the moment, they don't need policy. They don't see policy as a motivating factor to attract support. He is attracting considerable support without it.

And that suggests to me that the liberals who are going to him are not going to him based on the fact that he's a banker and that he has guided Canada through the recession of 2008 and Brexit. It's winnability. This is the grits right down to the studs, okay? They're always about winning. And they believe that he has the best chance of either making them competitive or, in their dreams, winning the next election. So that's happening without his coming up with any policy. Now, there are going to be two debates after February 17th,

one in French, one in English. I think what concerns some of the people who would like to support Mr. Carney is a lack of chops. If he becomes the leader, he goes up against somebody who for the last two and a half years, has been touring every town, every village, every hamlet and attracting hundreds, if not thousands of people to Legion halls. And that guy has chops in Pierre Poirier. Does Mr. Carney have the chops? certainly very, very good when you get him in front of a room and you're discussing economic perils, when you're discussing complex theories. But can he actually get in a room and connect with hundreds, if not thousands of people? Can he sustain that kind of back and forth in French? That's still an open question. I watched him on the weekend.

He was in Schoenigen, and he did a ride-along interview with Radio-Canada. And there was some colloquialism, but as somebody who watched him in Ottawa a dozen years ago, when his French wasn't bad at all, he spoke, compelled to speak a lot of French, there is some rust there. Can he chip away and chip off that rust in French? And can he connect with, you know, the canola farmer in Robinson, Saskatchewan? That's yet to be tested. So on the French thing, he has been getting a passing grade from commentators.

I am still waiting for the devastating column that says this guy's French is all fake, it's not up to it. It's been the opposite. To a Francophone, someone who speaks French with an accent and who makes grammatical error is the same as someone who does the same thing. And to tell you the truth, Pierre Poiliev and Christian Freelance, French is both more than fluent enough, but they still earth our ears. Mr. Poilier, for instance, does not seem to realize that every time he says le gros bon sens,

which is his translation of the common sense conservatives, he looks like he's dumbing down. That's how it comes across. But he doesn't have the ear for it. But he really sounds like he's dumbing himself down to speak to those poor Quebecers

who need to be told le gros bon sens, as if no one goes to school in this province. You really need to talk down to people, which is not something that elected people in Quebec tend to do for obvious reasons. As for the debates, I have found over the past few weeks that one of the things that has been most helpful to Mark Carney has been the perception that he was another

Michael Ignatieff. If there is one comment I've heard over the past few weeks is, this guy is no Michael Ignatieff. And I go from there to say, here is someone who is going to be walking into that practice debate, because that's what the leadership debates will be, underestimated. A bit like Justin Trudeau in 2015, people believed that Justin Trudeau could never withstand the intellectual heft of Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair, just because he held his own for two hours. People said, well, you know, look at that. This business is about exceeding expectations. They are still very low because no political experience can be beat Pierre Poilier. I think that's a benefit. I now understand why it was wise from the people who actually wanted him

to run to spend very little time trying to dismiss the perception that he was another Michael Ignatieff because today it does serve him well. And it may be that those leadership debates will go some way to actually raise or dismiss some of the concerns. I don't know. We'll see. But those two debates will be really important. Okay. We're going to take our final break. But before we do, I just want to say, you know,

I know his political career was a disaster. There's no question about that. I'm talking about Michael Ignatieff. But it's really too bad that that's become the footnote for this guy in our country because he's a brilliant guy. There's lots to offer.

He was talked into a political career I don't think that he ever really wanted. But it's just a shame that that's how we footnote him. Politics was not for him. It's a tough business, right? It is, yep. Can I just make an important distinction between the two, though?

And one of the reasons why Mr. Ignatiev struggled is because, really, for the last 50 years, he'd only spent five years in Canada, maybe six. That's not the case with Mr. Carney. Mr. Carney wouldn't do what Mr. Ignatieff did when he returned. He went to British Columbia and marveled at the mountains like a tourist. Mark Carney has been the tiny villages in the Hamlets as governor of the Bank of Canada. He has stayed in Ottawa. He could live in Singapore.

He could live in New York. He chose to stayed in Ottawa. He could live in Singapore. He could live in New York. He chose to live in Ottawa. Never sold his house here. That's the important difference between the two. I think one really never left Canada except for a sojourn like I've made in Washington for a few years. He has remained Canadian. Sorry, I didn't hear a word you said because I was mesmerized by what was going on behind you. I couldn't tell whether it was a cat or a dog.

Now I can tell. That's Gracie the Wonder Dog and she wants in. She wants to be part of the Good Talk panel. Okay, I'm going to take our break and we'll come back. We'll talk about Jagmeet Singh. I can't wait to hear that conversation right after

this. And welcome back. It's the final segment of Good Talk for this week with Chantel and Rob. I want to start by talking about Jagmeet Singh. The NDP leader, I was trying to count them up, and I've lost track. There's at least a half a dozen different positions in the last couple of weeks on what he would do when and if Parliament returns. March 24th is the date, I think, that the proroguing of Parliament ends

with a speech from the throne? And will the NDP, will they or will they not, vote non-confidence in this government? I'm not even sure what his latest position is. He changed it seemingly a couple of times in the matter of 24 hours. I think it's you will not support the Liberals. But I don't know what that'll be. Who wants to start this?

And what this says, not just about him, but about that party and where they are in this moment. Chantal, you start so when you earlier when you said somebody will explain to me what the mdp leader jacqueline singh is up to i thought you would invite the fourth person that's where the cat that's the dog is there to do that it is a dog's breakfast to build on this. My understanding of his current position, and it's only valid until he speaks again, I guess, is that he wants Parliament to be recalled now. He would then allow a Trump speech to be read. He wants legislation to deal with tariffs, those that we don't really know about or may not completely know about until April 1st, so that when this legislation, he figures about two months has passed, then you can defeat the government in time for the confidence vote on the credits, sometimes in the last week of March. That's his current position. If you can't follow, don't worry. You're not the only one.

For the, I think the first time this week, I saw people who are NDP voices publicly say what a lot of us have been thinking, as in, how hard is it to follow a weather vane when you don't know which side the wind is going to be blowing. One of those was Thomas Mulcair, his predecessor, who wrote a devastating column about where the NDP was going and the fact that it was totally incoherent to try to follow what the NDP position is from one day to the next, naming Singh in the column. And another was Carol Belanger, who used to work for a number of NDP leaders, including Jack Layton, but not exclusively,

who has been tweeting the evolving, if you can call it that, positions of Mr. Singh, with, you know, prefacing this with, if you think this is hard to follow, you're right. Those, that's not good. But at the same time, you have polls that show that a majority of NDP voters, those that are left, would rather have an election in the fall than have one now, that they would rather have a parliament that works than a parliament that brings down the government anytime soon. And I'm curious as to whether the NDP caucus is inclined from one day to the next to continue following that leader. I mean, that's quite a statement. I mean, I hear where you're coming from, but is there any move towards that? Not that I know, but if you were, I mean, I hear it.

People who are in the NDP and from the NDP tell me that they would like a change in leadership. Does that translate into action? I have seen no evidence of that. What are you hearing, Rob? Well, I think that there is a sense, a growing sense among New Democrats that the time for them to really bring down the government was in the fall, when their numbers were either very close to the Liberals or in some instances ahead of them in the polls, where they would have brought down a government led by Justin Trudeau, where they would have been able to put in the dream scenario always for New Democrats,

a two-election scenario starts with the first part of supplanting the Liberals as official opposition and then trying to form a government. Jack Layton got halfway there in 2011. That, if you look at the recent polls, I think one thing that almost all of those polls agree on, if the Liberals have come up a little bit, it's almost entirely at the expense of the NDP. And so that's the context, perhaps, for some of the uncertainty that we might be seeing in Jagmeet Singh. Conservative friends have been despairing about Jagmeet Singh as a partner in bringing down the government forever. I have a bet of a bottle of Barolo with a Conservative friend who believes that we're going until October because of Mr. Singh's inability to clearly state he's going to bring down the government at the earliest possible moment. Is there the outlines of a deal for the Liberals

and what Mr. Singh is saying? There might be. There might be. Because if you take him at his word, he is prepared to talk to the Liberals about bringing back the House to pass some of the relief measures we were talking about earlier, if they're necessary. And then if there's a confidence vote, he'd vote to bring down the government. So that would allow the government some time to schedule a confidence vote later on, allow whoever the Liberal leader is to go into the House and pass some important legislation as Prime Minister, look Prime Ministerial a little bit. And then I'm sure bring down the House themselves. I don't think they'd wait to be defeated for a confidence motion. So there are the outlines perhaps of a deal, but it's the kind of thing that does not delineate, distinguish the NDP

as a party that has been opposed, that is opposing the federal government at every turn, certainly not in the weeks before people would go and vote. I don't believe that there is enough trust left between Mr. Singh and Justin Trudeau's team for a deal to be asked. I also don't believe there's enough confidence within liberal ranks in Justin Trudeau's team for a deal to be asked. I also don't believe there's enough confidence within liberal ranks and Justin Trudeau to have Justin Trudeau bring the House back or make any of those kinds of decisions. It would be the new leader.

But the new leader, and I'm not convinced. Let's be serious about the scheduling of confidence votes. There is a supply vote that is inevitable. It cannot be pushed back beyond probably the first few days of April at best. And what Mr. Singh has been saying this week, his latest version of what he's been saying is that he wants Parliament to come back now. I don't see any scenario where Justin Trudeau goes back to the House of Commons as prime minister in any way, shape or form. And if he were to do that, it would be a move that would profoundly divide this party. Now, I'm not saying that anyone is thinking about that.

But the way that Mr. Singh has acted, it was Thomas Mulcair who noted in that news conference that he gave no heads up to the prime minister about last fall. He said 22 times that he was tearing up the confidence supply agreement with the liberals. At some point, if you were negotiating with someone like that, would you think that it's credible? Would you trust that person enough to even consider having a negotiation with someone who changes his word or doesn't tell you he's not going to keep his word from one day to the next? I don't think I would. You know, I don't think we can overstate the importance of that money bill, supply bill, whatever it is that has to be passed before the end of March. Because, you know, we kind of laugh at the Americans every few months

when they run out of money because of the passage in Congress to pay for government departments, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of that in Canada is dependent on that supply bill each year at the end of March. And if it doesn't pass, things come to a grinding halt. Just one quick, one, sorry. Just to, now, very quick point. This supply bill does not, things do not grind to a halt

if we are in an election. In the old days, you could prorogue and still kind of extend this. Now, because of a ruling by Peter Milliken some time ago, that happened. So if we were in an election and the supply bill is not voted on, it wouldn't matter. But also, we are not in the U.S. situation. There is money for ministries to continue operating, but there can be no new money easily for relief measures unless you have parliament pass them. The question for Mr. Singh is if the relief package was contingent upon supply, voting in favor of supply, would he vote in favor of supply? That's why he's saying bring it back now, parliament, so I won't have to vote confidence.

He has tied himself up in knots. Lots of paint on those shoes. Okay. Where I was going with that is, and it's not just government departments, and I understand the distinctions you've made and the Millikan ruling, but it's also crown corporations.

And, you know, in situations where certain funding for certain Crown corporations, whether it's the CBC or the post office or what have you, is contingent on that end of March decision. And if, say, there was a government coming in that wanted to defund, say, the CBC, it'd be a lot easier to do it if there was no money there for them already programmed for the following year. Anyway, that's getting way off topic. it'd be a lot easier to do it if there was no money there for them already

programmed for the following year. Anyway, that's getting way off topic. I want to come back to what you were saying, Chantal, about Tom Mulcair. And I want to, I want to try to, he has, we've talked about this on this program before, has an increasing relevance and readership and viewership. He works for CTV as well as his normal job. And he's not shy about what he says, whether it's about his old party, whether it's about the Liberals,

whether it's about Carney, whether it's Trudeau, whatever. How important is he right now within that group, the NDP, considering they tossed him after the last election? What he says, does what he say, what he says matter? He's no Ed Broadbent, who was, and I don't think he's even Alexa McDonough, who also was a significant voice within the NDP. I think that ship has totally sailed on both sides.

He's a bit more like, it's a strange comparison, but he's a bit more like Lucien Bouchard and the Parti Québécois. Lucien Bouchard was a Parti Québécois premier. He quit, never ever attended another PQ meeting and never said goodbye to the party. I think that is more Mr. Mulcair's position in Quebec these days and also in his CTP work. He has been a major booster of Mark Kearney. He is the person who first vouched for his French, having had him as a

guest for more than an hour with a Q&A with the students at Université de Montréal. He certainly, as his writing and what he has been saying, has had a major influence on that no pushback on Kearney's French that I was referring to. Because do you really want to contradict Thomas Mulcair, who can tell who can speak French and who doesn't? Not some person from outside the province who has a hard time putting a French sentence in a column without making an error. So, clearly, he has come to the point where he believes that the Singh has not only lost everything that he and Jack Layton built in Quebec, but is never going to build it back.

And that matters to New Democrats in Quebec. Mulcair and Layton together built something that has disappeared, gone, not coming back. I do think it's important to remember that the people around Mr. Layton after he passed away were intent on trying to prevent Mr. Mulcair from leading the party. That's what Brian Topp's candidacy for the leadership was really all about. Brian Topp, who worked very, very closely with Jack Layton, ran to try and stop Mulcair. Mulcair was never really of the New Democratic Party.

He went in there, did a great job winning Outremont, and a lot of people thought that would be quite a coup, and it was quite a coup. But Mr. Mulcair does have real influence, particularly from a thundering column in the Journal de Montréal, which is pugnacious, and I think full of great perspective as well. But is he of the New Democratic Party? No. I don't know that he has a lot of influence, but I certainly think that he can provoke debate, and he's very, very good at that.

Okay, we've got a minute left or so. The next couple of days are going to be kind of critical on a number of fronts as it relates to Canada and the various political situations. What's the one thing you're going to be looking for over these next couple of days? What are you going to be watching for most? Chantal. We've been told that there's a list, many lists, A list, B list, C list to respond to tariffs.

I want to see that A list and what's not on it. Because we've been, you know, talking. We've been repeating the same things for a month and a half now. So let's see what that plan looks like. Me, I'm searching desperately for Canada's friends. If tariffs do come, I want to know who Canada's friends are. It seems that we're friendless in the United States. Main Street Republicans have abandoned us for fear of primary challenges if they do support something that goes against the president.

Do we have friends in the UK? Do we have friends in France? Buckingham Palace was asked if the king was concerned about the sovereignty of one of its most important Commonwealth nations. And we got silence. Where are Canada's friends? Who's going to come to help us at a time when we need friends. Yeah, that King one was a puzzle. I hope we didn't count on the monarchy to save us.

I was wondering how long that would take. Just an example, though, of how no one is coming to our aid, it seems, these days. But we're tough. We're resilient. We'll get it together. We're all those. We'll see. Okay.

Listen, thank you both. That was a great conversation, as always. The Buzz is out tomorrow, 7 a.m. in your mailbox. Subscribe at nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. And look for this on YouTube if you just listen to it on your audio. There's lots of appearances by Rob's cat, or dog, sorry, in the program as well.

Okay, that's it for now. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Everybody have a good weekend and we'll talk to you again soon.