The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk: Trump and Carney, Did Anything Really Change?

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

When Donald Trump and Mark Carney met in the White House for the first time a few months ago, the meeting looked, and was, tense. Not so this latest time. Smiles, laughs and lots of almost boyish banter. What was that all about?  Has anything really changed? Could a deal be in the offing, or was it all for the cameras? Bruce and Chantal have their say. 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-Bear and Bruce Anderson. It's your Good Talk Friday. And as always, lots to talk about. With, I guess, the big chunk of the discussion being about what happened actually on Tuesday in Washington, we've had three, four, four, four days to think about the Carney Trump session that took place in the White House. You know, there was the part in front of the cameras and there was the part behind closed doors

where we sort of know a little bit, perhaps, what was going on. But let's start with what we saw, because as opposed to their first face-to-face session, which I think, you know, you'd have to describe as tense, that one earlier in the summer, they both looked like they were kind of feeling each other out in a boxing ring a little bit. This was different. This was like two buddies at the campfire slapping each other on the back, having the odd joke, seeming like best of friends. Now, that was all for the cameras.

But what do we make of that difference? Does it really actually make any material difference in what's really at stake, the negotiations. Should we read much into what we saw in front of the cameras? Chantal? I wish I could apply some rules to this that bring people back to previous experiences of negotiations and good relationships, but I don't think I can. Does it make a difference from what I've seen and the little I know about what makes Donald's. Trump make decisions, I think it does make a difference. Why do I say that? Because I believe, yes, there are ongoing negotiations, that yes, they may result in something positive for Canada.

But at the end of the day, the people who are negotiating with Minister Dominique Leblanc and others are going to bring this back to Donald Trump. And what we have found out over the past almost year is that at that point, it may depend on his mood that they, whether what they negotiated, gets the go ahead or not. And so being well disposed towards Mark Carney and thinking that their buddies can only help get to a yes, as opposed to the alternative, which I think would have make many Canadians feel better. You sit there stone face and you

can feel the unease through the screen. That would have been more comfortable, I'm sure, for many Canadians, at the end of the day, would it have been more productive? I don't think so. But we're in that environment where at the same time as all this

chummying up is taking place. Howard Lovnik is telling a Canadian audience that, forget the auto pact, and the integrated auto industry, the United States is going to make sure that it asserts a dominant position in the auto market, and Canada is going to have to make do with the crumbs. So somewhere in there, there must be some way to get to some relief, But I think the idea that you can make a deal that is comprehensive with this administration is completely out the window.

And even if we could, I don't think you could take it to the bank. I will add that there were also other bad news there. I think the signals are from both, which was said by Letnik and what happened in the White House, that it's going to be very hard to salvage Kuzma, the Canada, Mexico. U.S. trade deal and renew it on a trilateral basis. It doesn't sound like this is at all where the U.S. is going. All right. Well, none of that sounds very optimistic about where things may be heading.

Bruce, do you see it any differently? Well, I agree with a lot of what Chantal said. I don't know if I heard what she said and came to the conclusion that it wasn't very optimistic. And so I don't know if I agree with that because I don't know if she said that. But I think it's like a lot of things in this conversation about Trump and trade, not just for Canada, but for countries around the world. Is it if you start a day feeling optimistic, you might not five or six times throughout the course of the day, but you might feel a little bit more optimistic at the end of the day. Such is the nature of the dynamic.

and the nature of this particular US president. But overall, here's what I see. I think Chantelle's point about who makes the decisions there is absolutely right. And it's the most important point, which is that it is not a president delegating these decisions. It's a president who likes the idea that he has people who will meet with other countries

and talk about these issues and maybe work on some solutions. But in the end, he wants to be the person who is understood, to be making the decision about the economic fortunes of Americans and those of her trading partners. In that context, the question is, is it better to have good chemistry with him than so-so chemistry? I'm absolutely convinced that the evidence is it's better to have better chemistry, and we don't necessarily only need to look at what has happened to Canada. you know most of the countries that have had challenges with him I think you can make the case have done better

if he seems like he's feeling respected if he's feeling as though he's having a conversation that allows him to assert his authority and influence in the relationship and critically and I think this is maybe the most important thing for me in terms of what I saw coming out of this week's meetings is I think we spent a bunch of time in Canada, quite rightly saying free trade is a better idea than protectionism and tariffs. And tariffs are going to hurt the American economy as well as hurt our economy. We landed that message over and over and over again.

The problem is that Donald Trump doesn't agree with that. And so it's not that relevant to keep on saying it. In effect, the more time we would spend just saying that as opposed to finding a path forward, is time poorly spent. And what I interpreted from the way in which the two leaders were talking, separate apart from the chemistry, was that Trump was actually looking for a way to establish a more cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with Canada.

He used terms like, you know, the Canadians will love us again, we want that, and, you know, we're going to get there sort of thing. That's much different from, we don't need anything from Canada. we don't want anything from Canada. We want Canada to be the 51st state, all of that kind of stuff. How to get there, Chantelle put her finger on. Where does Kuzma lie in all of this? I think the answer probably is that there will be a Kuzma

and there will be bilateral arrangements between Canada and the U.S. that are a little bit outside of Kuzma. And there will be discussions that kind of separate out issues from aluminum and steel and auto parts and probably some other sectors. as well, all of those in my view go better if the president and the prime minister have a good working relationship that they can talk to each other. So it's, you know, back slapping is great, but the point I think is underneath the back slapping for me are these two individuals who can have a conversation about how the economy works and what they want to do together, what they're

willing to do together, how they will support each other. And I think it looked, it looked quite a bit like they do this week. All right. You know, I get all that. And I, you know, I understand certainly that coming out of Tuesday, the thing, you had reason to feel, oh, okay, maybe there's a chance here. Maybe there is some ability to work out a deal on a number of fronts. And we'll get into some of them in a minute.

But as the week progress, and you have things like Lutnik, who's supposedly his top trade guy, say what he said leaves you wondering how far this can go in a direction. That's an interesting question. I mean, I heard Chantelle's point about it and I go back and forth

about that individual kind of assertion and how to interpret it. And I could be wrong about it and well, I can't be wrong since I have two different points of view about it. Yeah, well, yes, I like the fact that you are jumping from one side of the fence to the other, but in this case, you can't read, you can't.

One of these two views is right, and I'll take whichever one is right. And then you can claim victory at the end of the year. He said, he told you this all along. Seriously. But let me just tell you what I think those two points are. One is that he has a mandate to, to crush the Canadian auto sector in favor of the U.S. auto sector. And that's what he was, you know, that's the point that he really wanted to make and that he's doing that based on a clear direction from the president

that that's what the president wants. The other is, you know, when he uses language, language like, language like America needs to be the number one in this relationship. it could be that that's actually a kind of a climb down from we don't need anything from Canada. We don't need any auto parts to happen in Canada. It could be that he's kind of restating what the U.S. objective is to be something that's a little bit more of a partnership. Now, you can make the case that it's an optimistic tape, and so I don't necessarily land on it. But I do think his comments could be interpreted that way.

But he's also, he's a very, he makes a lot of really blunt and often unusual comments. Let me put it that way that don't find fit the lens of diplomacy, whether it's about auto parts or other sectors too. All right, Chantel, go for it. The people in the audience, I did ask some of them. I wasn't there. certainly did not take it as a climb down from previous positions. And at best, a nicer way to say the same thing. That being said, the U.S. is number one in the auto industry sector.

But it is also, as opposed to aluminum, for instance, or even soft with lumber. It is a low-hanging fruit for the U.S. It is not very difficult to imagine car manufacturing assembly lines moving to the U.S. Those moves happen all the time in that industry. You cannot make aluminum appear and smelters overnight, but to put more on assembly lines south of the border is certainly doable, leaving Canada with the parts. I guess my main point coming out of this week is,

on the future of the Autopact or Kuzma, my main point is I'm not sure that what other strategy the Canadian government could pursue than the one that we are seeing in action. I am waiting for someone to come out and say, this is all wrong and this should be our strategy. Someone who puts forward a credible strategy, not a critique of you've got nothing or and no one is saying there is an alternative strategy here. On the contrary, I see the pendulum swinging back to reality, which is it's all good to talk about diversifying our markets, something like we've heard about for as long as we've been a dose.

But in the real world, that is not going to happen. You can talk all you want about building pipelines to Asia, or Europe, getting, sure, we couldn't do all those things, but in the end, and that was interesting this week, getting Keystone Excel then to send more oil to the US, actually is the fastest and most economical way of getting our resources to market. And that is true of just about any industry. We're not going to start being big car sellers and parts sellers in the auto industry to Europe. And we can send some of our aluminum overseas or steel. But the reality is that geography is geography.

And the market that is next to us is going to be the largest market available going forward and for decades to come. If there was an alternative that was at hand, we would already be using it and we are not because there is not. Okay. I think that's right. I think that there's, can I just pick up maybe, I think putting the Keystone conversation on the table was a, was an interesting thing to do and probably a positive thing to do in the context of how to solve for the tensions, both in the U.S. and also some of the friction in Canada. The second thing is that you heard at one point in the margins of that discussion in the Oval Office reference to a trillion dollars of economic activity that Canada and the U.S. can do together. going forward and I understood it to be a way in which the prime minister was talking with the president about how the continuation and the strengthening of this mutual trade relationship

would lead to this kind of economic activity over the years to come now pierre paul yeah mischaracterized that i think as a a promise that Canada was going to deliver a bag of one trillion dollars to to the united states when in fact I think a reasonable observer would say that this was a description meant to reinforce the fact that this is already a giant economic relationship, which I think is a really important argument to make, maybe more particularly with this president at this time, because he has regularly not drawn a clear picture, I think, of what the trading dynamic is. So putting Keystone on the table, adding that dimension to it, I think we're both really important things. And then the last thing for me is that it has been clear for some time that if Trump is going to change direction a little bit on the aggressiveness of his tariff policy, it'll probably come not because a foreign leader makes a compelling argument, but because the domestic political climate puts him in a more difficult situation. that's if it happens going to happen over the coming months as we head towards the the u.s midterms i don't think he's having a great shutdown if there's if it's ever possible

to have a great shutdown but it looked like he thought that shutting down the government was going to be a political win for his administration and i think it's turning into a political loser because the the opposition argument the democrat argument is health care premiums are going to go through the roof and I think it's a very compelling argument for a lot of American voters. So where I'm going with that is that the Kuzma renegotiation, the conversation between the president and the prime minister, this is going to evolve over time.

And Canadian public opinion is not saying we need it to be solved right now. They're saying we want it to be solved in the best way possible, given the circumstances. And that really goes to Chantal's point about, is there a better strategy? If there is somebody, you know, articulate it. Otherwise, don't rush because sometimes when you rush, there's more to be lost than gained. Okay. I just want to go back on the XL thing for a moment. I think we need to

we need a little quick snapshot of history on this. I mean, Excel first came up during the Obama administration and Obama knocked it down. This is a route from northern Alberta down into the states and as Shantel said, to market. That could be to market in the states. It could be to market overseas, but it's moving Alberta oil southwards. Obama shut it down. Trump came in in his first term, put it back up again. Biden comes in in his term, knocks it down again. The company involved, the private sector, decides at that point,

you know what, we're out of this. We've lost billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars on this, and we're done. We're not talking about it. And they didn't talk about it this week when Rosie Barton, And credit to her, came up with the story that this had actually hit the table between Trump and Carney. How, you know, Bruce mentions that they could ease tensions also in Canada because B.C. is really not a play on this pipeline.

And, you know, this whole idea of moving to Tidewater in Canada is clearly hindered by opposition from B.C. But what do we know on the Excel proposition? Is this a possibility? I'm going to give you more background than what do we know because neither of us, and you're not either in oil industry insider. And so it's really, you know, but the Canadian perspective on this, Keystone, Excel is a low-hanging fruit for the Canadian government as a pipeline project. And it's always been a low-hanging fruit.

Why? Because it is a pipeline going south. So it is a pipeline that would, or it was planned to go through Alberta and Saskatchewan. No east-west movement involved. It's a pipeline whose Canadian section was approved. cleared all the hurdles. And by two governments, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau both backed Keystone XL, which really matters in this debate. And we actually have pipes in the ground already from the beginning of that project, as others pointed out this week, that are going nowhere at this point.

It's also not a new pipeline. There is a Keystone pipeline already. Keystone Excel is kind of the expansion of an existing network. So the regulatory issues, why it's not happening, all have to do with the U.S. It became on the American political landscape, the equivalent in Canada of Energy East and Northern Gateway, two projects that became loaded with you were for or against and it says something about your brand, which is why the promoter, walked away. Could it be resuscitated? I'm, to your point, Donald Trump came back to government, signing he wanted this to happen. Everyone knows that the issues regulatory are not in Canada,

and yet no promoter has come forward since his re-election, which begs the question, can a promoter come forward. But from a Canadian standpoint, I was really interested this week to see that the Prime Minister got a lot of compliments for having raised this possibility. They didn't come from across the island, the House of Commons, but they came from Daniel Smith, the Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, the former Premier of Alberta, and Aaron O'Toole, the former leader of the Conservative Party. And while there is unease in the liberal caucus. There is very little unease on the scale of the unease over the notion of a pipeline to the north-west coast of British Columbia. It's a completely different pattern. Will a

promoter come forward? I cannot tell you this. I figure if there was one to come, we might have seen it already. But it was, I think, a smart move on the part of Mark Carney to bring it in the conversation. I assumed that it wasn't a kind of a spur-of-the-moment idea in the room. That must be a chip that they were prepared and willing to play. And it allows them to make different plays on the domestic pipeline. debate, i.e. Daniel Smith's bid to have a pipeline to over and above the objections of BC, which I gather from the latest federal statements will not happen. But it does allow them to

position themselves on the BC issue and pipelines while looking like they are promoting a pipeline project that actually has pipes in the ground. Yeah. Yeah, let's remember, too, that Donald Trump started in this term with the idea that he was going to put a tariff on Canadian energy. And part of what he was doing was saying we don't need anything from Canada. We don't need energy. We don't need cars. We don't need lumber.

Now, he still says some of that sometimes, but he doesn't really talk about energy that way. And I think that there was another point that I heard the prime minister referring to in an interview that I think he did with that. that David Cochran put on his show. And he was talking about the question of aluminum. And the prime minister in the course of that conversation was saying that he had, he kind of raised the point that for America to replace the aluminum

that it currently imports from Canada would require a great deal of energy because making aluminum is extremely energy intensive. And the analogy was that it would take the equivalent the power created by 14 Hoover dams to replace the imported aluminum, the energy required to make the imported aluminum. And when America looks at what it needs energy for, especially in the context of data centers becoming a bigger and bigger part of the future of the economy, and that's certainly part of what Donald Trump says that he wants to see happen, then it starts

to become, I think, at the White House, a more interesting and nuanced. conversation about what energy sources America needs and where they'll get that energy because certainly when you hear what the U.S. aluminum sector is saying about how long it would take to build the capacity. When you think about this argument that the prime minister made about how much more energy that would need to be found in the United States to make it, that's where I think it felt to me that there was some progress in breaking down this America first, America only we don't need anybody else conversation and turning it into something it feels more like well let's talk about the things where we actually do observe reality the same way we just

haven't maybe thought about it very much and we haven't figured out whether or not we can work out a different relationship on it and and I felt that that conversation that David Cochran played with the prime minister about aluminum was it was a positive indication as well okay let's take our first break. And we'll be back. There's another aspect to this I want to talk about. And we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk for this Friday, Bruce Anderson, Chantelle-A-Bear, along with Peter Mansbridge, here chatting with you on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada talks, are on your favorite podcast. platform or on our YouTube version. Glad to have you with us.

Chantel and Bruce both mentioned Pierre Polyev and his reaction to some of the things that happened this week. He didn't hold back. He called Carney of fraud. He said he caved in to Trump based on what he saw. Now, I think you can You can probably argue those points that Pahliav made. But at the same time, I guess he's banking on the fact that, well, there's still job losses in Canada, mounting. There are still issues about homes, housing. There's a variety of things. And I assume that as opposition leader, he's banking on those.

continuing and no deal happening because he's certainly pulling out all the stops and his criticism. Bruce mentioned one area where he may have been kind of off base on the criticism he was leveling, but there's more to it than just that. He's using tough language. The same kind of tough language that he used to use on Trudeau. What do we make of this? And what impact do you see it?

having. Chantelle. To me, it looks like he's again auditioning for the job of leader of the opposition when the Canadians who did not vote for him are looking for someone who is auditioning to be the prime minister. And some of those angles were so over the talk is to take Mr. Poliev out of the main conversation on the Canadian. the U.S. relationship. And it becomes more apparent when you look. I mentioned those conservatives, Daniel Smith, Jason Kenney, Aaron O'Toole, having positive

things to say about the visit to Washington. I'm not here comparing Mr. Pueleev to the liberals or to Mark Carney. I'm comparing him to people who have credentials in his own movement and who are in position or have been in position of relative political significance. I was struck this week by the fact that while the official opposition was doing what you described in the House of Commons, no premier stepped forward to say anything that resembled the approach of the official opposition in the House of Commons. Now, most premiers in this country are not liberal, and they're not actually. allies of Mr. Poilev.

So whether I talked to some conservative insiders last week who said, well, you know, if he only changes a bit, he's going to be in business. And I don't see any change. I just see a doubling down on what Mr. Poitiev believed worked with Justin Trudeau, which so far isn't working. I also saw the latest Leje poll this week. And I looked at the regional numbers, not the overall numbers. And in that poll, the conservatives are well behind in Atlantic Canada,

obviously well behind in Quebec at 23%, well behind in Ontario. But what struck me and the sample was small was the lead, the liberal lead in British Columbia. Looking at those numbers, regardless of the overall final national number, you can see a liberal government re-elected, a minority liberal government for sure, possibly a majority, but you cannot see a conservative government. And I don't believe that the numbers that the conservatives have are very different from this. It also showed that the conservatives do better with rural voters rather than urban voters. That's not a good sign. So I don't know if Mr. Ployev thinks he's on to a winning strategy. I'm hearing a lot of conservatives who are basically saying, where will this go?

If we are going to repeat what happened in the last election and think that we're going to win on the same basis, we may end up with the same result. Bruce, you're the resident expert on numbers. Let me ask it to you this way, because the numbers I've seen, and they kind of, of reflected by most of the different research firms is that in the party standings, it's tightened up a bit. You know, the liberals ahead, but only slightly. But on the individuals, when it's Carney versus Polyev, it's basically no contest. Carney has a significant lead. Some might say it's a huge lead. Yeah. So what? does that tell us those two things that you know i mean i think that the canadians were used to

looking at pierre poliev before um just and trudeau left politics in a particular way he was a a powerfully articulate champion of the idea of change to get rid of the government that people were tired of and his potency of his language and the way in the way in which he delivered those kind of, you know, aggressive attacks, kind of drew people in and made them feel, okay, here's somebody who's expressing a degree of frustration, not exactly the one that I feel maybe, but one that I could get some benefit from. I don't think he knows what to do in this situation. He always looks like he knows what he's intending to do. But there's nothing about his current approach that makes me think it's really a winner.

It doesn't solve for the fact that, as you say, Peter, when you test the personal characteristics that people see between him and Mark Carney, there's a wide gap, not just in an overall who would make a better prime minister number, but on a whole range of competency, experience, kindness, reasonableness, the ability. to inspire people, the ability to bring the country together, there's really almost no area where people, well, actually, the ones that I remember was like having a bigger ego and that sort of thing. So he's not addressing those things. And I think that I note what Aaron O'Toole is doing on social media, which is he's not exactly cheerleading for the Kearney government,

but on some days, if you were Pierre-Pauliev, you'd be looking at it going, well, that's not really helpful to me as I head towards this leadership review vote in January. And, of course, fair play to Aaron O'Toole. And I think O'Toole's, the way that he makes his arguments, they probably resonate with a lot of mainstream Canadians. The last point for me is I ran into somebody we all know, I won't say his name, but I might tell you after, who's a long time conservative. And I said, well, you know, if there's an election soon, who are you going to vote for?

And he said, well, you know, Bruce, he says, I'm a lifelong conservative and I always will be. And he said, but I say this. He said, this is the first progressive conservative government that I will not vote for. And what he was really saying was at his standpoint, as a lifelong conservative, it was pretty tempting to look at the kind of policy mix that Mark Carney is bringing forward as being consistent with his own personal values. Now, there'd be people on the liberal side of the spectrum be probably horrified to hear that articulation of it. But that's what I see in the polling, Peter, is that people on the center, center left, center right feel like, They're getting the kind of approach that they're looking for. Not on everything, but from this individual.

And they don't see it from Pierre-Pauliav. They still see him as being very strident and further to the right than most voters would want. I'm trying to understand what his thinking is, and I'm sure he has thinking on this. But, I mean, his big date is coming up in January, right? that's the vote by his party on his leadership and so you would think that he would be trying to position himself and his party in a way that would benefit him in January right now that doesn't seem to be happening

I mean it seems to be happening somewhat for the party that they're in the race that it's close I mean it is a minority government so but for him personally which is what the vote is all about That is not good. Yeah, but I think the calculation here is that it's not news, and Bruce would know this from his polling, that the conservative base is to the right of the right in large, but not total part, i.e., this is where you find the approval ratings, approval for Donald Trump,

This is the party where you find the pro-life section, the anti-trans section. So I think the calculation is that from that section of the party is more likely to show up, especially in Calgary, show up for a leadership review vote, than the mushy middle, which does still exist within the conservative movement, or people like the person that Bruce was speaking with this week. What Bruce heard this week, I hear from scores of conservatives who have credentials either in government or within the party. But I think that Palliev believes that he doesn't need them to win that leadership,

that it's a more radical wing of the party that is going to show up. And I put in that mix. They're rather astounding. statement that he put out over the convoy court ruling this week that found that the two of the main proponents of the trucking convoy that occupied the federal capital over a number of weeks some years ago guilty of mischief and condemn them to sentences at home but and pierre poiliev came out and basically hinted that they had been persecuted by Canada's justice system. Yeah, they were freedom fighters. Like he didn't use that language, but yeah. And when you look at that, that is so off-based with the perception of the majority of

Canadians, including people who live in the Ottawa area, I suspect. And it's also such a disquieting statement about what it says about how he feels about the rule of law. there were real Trumpian undertones to this statement. He didn't have to do that. He didn't have to put it out there. It drives away more votes than it will ever get him. But I figure he thinks that like-minded people will make the difference in his favor

at the leadership review vote in Calgary. Yeah, be more motivated to participate, that kind of thing. I think you have to look at it that way. I agree with Chantelle that the consequences of doing that are anathema to growing the kind of the conservative tent. So he must be thinking of a different math. And if he's thinking of a different math, he's got to be kind of thinking, well, I'm not going to, in a carny context, I'm struggling to find some sort of traction. I don't know what my counter strategy would be to his on the U.S. side. I saw yesterday he was kind of flame throwing about half of Canadians are on the brink of bankruptcy.

And I noted that our friend Andrew Coyne said, well, a number of people who go bankrupt in any particular year is one-tenth of one percent. So it's unlikely that half are actually on the brink of bankruptcy. So, but exaggeration is, you know, it's not a felony in politics. I guess it's just a fact of life. But Polyev needs to find something that isn't just flamethrowing and exaggeration and personal attacks and finding that language that kind of feels more shocking all the time. Because I do think that, well, there's a part of the political, there's a part of the political audience that is in doom scrolling mode all the time.

They wake up and they see nothing but bad news. and so they respond to somebody saying, everything's terrible, and I'm not the guy who's made it terrible. I'm the guy who's going to tell you it's terrible, and maybe you'll believe that I can solve it. That's not everyone, and not everyone who's in that mindset is going to think that he is the right solution as well. But he's leaving aside any argument that he would make

to people who are saying, I want reasonable solutions. I want a smart approach to a complicated, difficult situation. and I'm waiting for this conservative leader to tell me about one. And they're still waiting, I think. All right. We're going to take our last break. We're going to come back. We're going to talk for a moment about something that Bob Ray said in the last day or so.

I want to catch your thoughts on that. Back right after this. And welcome back. segment of good talk for this week. Chantel, Bruce, Peter, all here to chat for you about various things. And this latest one, Bob Ray, of course, is the, well, he's the former a lot of things. Former NDP MP in the House of Commons, former Ontario NDP Premier, former liberal leader, interim liberal leader on the federal side.

And of late, the former, I guess, he still is for another few weeks anyway, the Canadian ambassador to the United Nations. He comes back at the age of 77. Don't assume that he's going to go quietly

into the night. I've got a feeling we'll keep hearing from Bob Ray from somewhere. Could be at the university. Could be in a number of different places. He gave an interview, kind of an exit interview, in a way, I guess, from the UN position to political.

I was reading it this morning And he was asked How do you think it'll go with Canada and the US And his answer is I firmly believe That reason should prevail And I think it will prevail Because it's not in anyone's long-term interest Or even medium-term interest

To ignore the benefits from having strong relationships That are based on rational economics tariffs are not a great solution the way they're being put in place and generally speaking they reduce the amount of economic activity and they create more inflation and I don't think that's in anybody's interest you know we've all known Bob Ray for a long time

and I think we all have a lot of respect for him what do you think of that statement, that approach to looking at the current situation between Canada and the U.S., that reason will prevail. Bruce, what do you make of that? Well, I love a lot of things about Bob Ray, and I love that he is both a realist and an optimist. And this statement has a measure of optimism to it that I struggle to find some. sometimes myself.

You know, whether one can assemble the evidence to support it, I think is, you know, everybody can kind of add up the signals about whether reason is prevailing in the United States or on the brink of prevailing or mostly prevailing, whether the line is up or line is down. I think it's pretty debatable. I want to believe that he's true. I do want to remind myself constantly. constantly that, you know, that the dynamics of a democracy aren't always kind of linear and positive, you know, things go up, things go down. But I think it's good for him to try to put some measure of reassurance into the conversation, because I think that, you know, sometimes as we talk about politics, we tend to think things, you know, need to happen.

in a 24-hour cycle. Most people don't live their lives that way. Politics doesn't move that quickly. And on the whole, most people on both sides of the border want positive. They want mutually beneficial things. They're not looking to beggar their neighbors on either side of the border. So good for him for being both a realist and an optimist and good for him to have, you know, continued the way that he's approached politics for the longer term, which is to make useful

contributions to the public conversation. Chantelle? Okay. He was talking in the context of economics and trade. He was not talking about where the U.S.'s place in the world versus that of Canada is going to land. So it's easier to think that when economics are concerned, then mutual benefits, it's easier to be optimistic than about, and I don't.

I don't think that Barbara brings the same degree of optimism to what is unfolding on the multilateral front going forward or where the geopolitics of this planet are going to land. He also wasn't commenting on climate change, so I don't want us to take a very narrow statement, which I think reflects Prime Minister Carney's position. certainly when I heard what you were reading, if you hadn't told me Bob Ri had said that, I would have told you former Quebec Premier Jean Charray, who has been very active on the free trade Canada-U.S. front, could have said that. And I think it makes a lot of sense.

I think reason usually always prevails when economics are in play and when consumers are in play. And that's basically what Barbara is saying, time for many Canadians, and despite the pain that that time will bring, time is still an ally rather than a foe of Canadian interest in the Canada-U.S. relationship. Those trucks that are suddenly going to be tariffed, someone's going to have to pay for them. A U.S. consumer will show up on a trucklet and say, gee, why am I paying this much for trucks or for this or that? And the benefits of the tariffs as they are applied,

they are not going to materialize for American consumers in the short or even the midterm. So as for Bob Reeves' capacity to suddenly fade off, I also believe that we will still hear from him. I thought he was a remarkable ambassador to the United Nations who enjoyed a remarkable amount of freedom from his political masters in Ottawa, both of them, but mostly Justin Trudeau, which was really interesting, because at a time when it is possible to make a case that Canada's role in the world is faded, Canada's role at the UN under Bobbry certainly did not fade, and that was really interesting. And, you know, you kind of, if I were the NDP today, I would kind of feel sorry that Bobri is no longer part of the new Democrat family. Because I was trying to think this week, given their predicament, that they would really need some of their elder statesmen, stateswomen, to help them find a way forward. And that most of them are gone at broadband, Alexa McDonough, go down the list. And Bob Ray would have been possibly a useful voice to be heard in the debate over what, if anything, the NDP can look forward as a future.

So that's basically where I am. Can I just raise one thing about what he implied about tariffs? Because I don't think we can forget ever that Donald Trump has been oblivion. and tariffs, basically all his business life, right? That's what he thinks is. Yeah, but that doesn't make him a successful business person. Oh, no, I'm not suggesting that, but what I am suggesting is it's kind of hard to think that he's suddenly going to change his mind on that.

Oh, he won't change his mind, but at some point, and you can see it already with the closure, or the Congress not being in operation. He is losing support, both in public opinion on a variety of topics, but also within the Republican Party. And it's the same. There are rules and politics that apply to everyone. That ICE is getting thinner to skate on.

At some point, it cracks. It doesn't crack overnight. Bruce is right. Things don't happen in 24 hours. But at this point, if you're Donald Trump and you're looking for applause, your audience is diminishing objectively. And if there is one thing that will make it diminish even faster, it's cost of living issues. Because those hit people right where they are. And that is not what people expected.

I agree with that. I think that he does sometimes change his mind, although he never characterizes as changing his mind. He changes the way that he describes his mind and pretends that it was his point of view all along. I think the one point of consistency that underpins his policy on tariffs is that he likes to seek advantage, aggressively seek advantage in every dealing that he's had in business and in politics. I think the stories are kind of limitless of people who say he applies that same idea of, that is the equivalent of tariffs to his business relationships and personal relationships. So I don't think that will ever change.

But to Chantel's point, if his calculation of what is to his personal advantage changes, the way in which he'll talk about getting there might well change. And I think that's, you know, he'll probably always believe that you should pay to be in his orbit, it to be benefiting from what he's doing in business or in his life in politics. But his measure of what that looks like might change as he looks to where he sits and whether there are more risks or rewards by following that continued path. Okay. We're going to wrap it up for this week. But we're going to wrap it up by telling you about next week's special edition of Good Talk.

We're coming up on the 30th anniversary at the end of this. month of the 95 referendum in Quebec which for those of you who are old enough to remember was a pretty you know pretty amazing evening in Canadian in the Canadian story watching those numbers going back and forth between yes and no I can tell you I was one who sat there at the anchor desk of the CBC on that evening it was it was it was was quite the moment. But there were lots of backstories to what happened on the referendum, both leading up to it and immediately after.

And two people who can certainly tell that story are Chantelle and Bruce, and we'll do so next week. So that'll be a special edition next Friday of Good Talk. Thanks to Bruce, thanks to Chantel. Have a great weekend, everybody. It's Thanksgiving. Enjoy it. Give thanks where you can.

And we'll talk to you again.