The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Trump Kills The Trade Talks

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Donald Trump has terminated the trade talks with Canada after Ontario ads running in the U.S. use Ronald Reagan's voice condemning tariffs. Is this serious or just Trump bluster?  Meanwhile, the Carney government's first budget is now just days away, and the PM says Canadians will need to make sacrifices. And, Pierre Poilievre has another bad week. All this and more with Chantal Hebert and Bruce Anderson. 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 Friday morning, Good Talk, and as always, we've got lots to talk about this day. Starting with something that I, I don't know, I guess either I've always wanted to see or I always thought was going to happen, a sort of Donald Trump, Doug Ford, you know, fight. And that's what we've got going on this morning. I guess it's really Donald Trump versus Canada against Mark Carney, but really it's been instigated by Doug Ford. The Ontario government running an ad campaign in the United States, it's been going on for some time

now, and Donald Trump has seen it. He's seen it for some time. But it's basically using Ronald Reagan's words against tariffs in an ad that Ontario is running in different parts of the U.S. Well, last night, Donald Trump got really upset about this ad, even though he's seen it, as I said, for a number of days. He got upset, and he killed the trade talks with Ottawa. He said, I'm terminating the trade talks now because of this ad. So I guess the question becomes fairly quickly, is this real?

Is it just bluster? We've seen bluster before by Donald Trump. How seriously should we take it? Chantelle-you-starters. Well, like everyone who covers politics for a long time, I don't believe in coincidences. And in this case, the coincidence is not that the ad is running and suddenly, President Trump, for a few days of reflection, deep reflection, has decided that it's so totally unacceptable that he's terminating negotiations with the Canadian government on trade.

This happens, this social media post comes out hours after Canada decides to fight back on auto by imposing tariffs of sorts on Stalantis and GM for having diminished the place of Canadian production in their vehicles. And so Stalantis, we heard about last week, moving the production of a vehicle from Ontario to the U.S. And in the case of GM, stopping the production of a vehicle in Canada and leaving the future of that assembly line wide open. So this takes place late yesterday afternoon. And a few hours later, suddenly the Ontario ad is so infuriating that there can be discussions about trade issues with Canada. At the same time, and despite leaks that hinted that there might be some kind of progress on some of the trade files between Canada and the U.S. next week on the margins of the Apex Summit in Asia, the prime minister in a speech Wednesday night and is a lead minister on the file, Dominique LeBlain, basically spent the week sending the message that, no, there's still quite a long road ahead. before we see progress on any of those files. My understanding is that at this point, Canada may be turning down concessions

that Donald Trump expected Canada to just accept just to get some progress. And let's agree about what we're talking about here, because I spend a lot of time trying to do that. We are not talking about negotiations that would lead if they took place to progress for Canada in the larger sense of the word. We are talking about negotiations to limit damage on Canada through tariffs. So a win is actually just a bit of relief as where we're at. And it may well be that President Trump has decided that Canada is not compliant enough in those talks,

so there is no point in pursuing them. Where are you on this, Bruce? few things. First of all, it's been clear to me for some time, I guess, that the only way that President Trump is likely to move away from his fascination with tariffs is if Republican sentiment in the United States builds up in the direction of, you know, opposing the tariffs. And so I think the idea of using Ronald Reagan's argument and playing. it out before Republican voters, especially in swing states, is a good idea. It's a fair, a fair thing to do. And it was surprising to me that the Ronald Reagan Foundation came out with the statement that they did, which said basically that the ad was misrepresenting somehow Ronald Reagan's views. It wasn't misrepresenting those views. Every piece of journalistic covers I've seen

in this story, by the way, including New York Times this morning, said that exactly, that claiming this ad was fake, that it was a misrepresentation of Reagan is not right. And a lot of them have, a lot of those commentaries have included links to the original full transcript or tape of what Reagan said. And one of the ironies of how these things play out in the digital landscape is that a lot more people will now see that ad and will probably consume the kind of extensive version, the more extensive version of what Reagan said, and we'll understand that Ronald Reagan was dead set against the idea of America using tariffs.

What do it really mean? It's not the first time that Ronald Reagan has declared by Twitter or true social post that he was mad and that he wanted to end the negotiations with Canada. He's done it with other countries. I think it's impossible to know how material it is at this point. probably part of, I'd say the cut and thrust, but the cut and thrust sounds like something that's a little bit more stylish than what is happening in terms of how the US is approaching

these conversations. Maybe it's part of the give and take. Last thing for me is that in the 10 years almost that Donald Trump has been central to our political conversation, the one recurring thing that we know about him is that if you, if you, if you land a punch that he thinks is harmful to his interests, he'll punch back harder, whether it has a good argument to make or not. And so that's what he's doing. And I don't happen to think that it's a, I don't think it was the wrong decision by the Ford government to run these ads. I think you've got to do something. You've got to make sure that people in the United States who might share your concern about the economic impact down there here, that point of view,

and they're not getting enough of it from Republican politicians, that's for sure. Well, I guess if punchback harder is the strategy, then the use of the word termination is probably part of that because that's a stronger word than he's used before. I mean, he said, we're going to shut down the talks, or that's enough we're going to cancel the next round of talks. Well, and two days ago, he said if he was Canada, he probably would have run that ad too.

I think words to that effect. Right. So he got outraged about it on a bit of a slow burn, I guess, is what I would say. Well, plus, I think it helped along by what Chantelle mentioned is the auto situation. And I want to get to that in a second. But I just want to, like, where does this leave Canada? If the talks are terminated for the moment, is there a choice that Canada has to make that Ontario has to make? I mean, the good cop, bad cop routine that seems to have been going on a little bit between Carney and,

ford who talk a lot um has that reached a point at which somebody's going to make a decision about this ad uh i do think that this brings canada's political class not just leaders uh to to to a fork in the road and they and by the way i taught this week that carney was coming back to playing bad cop with doug ford as opposed to being more good cop well doug ford was being bad bad cook, but Prime Minister Carney and Premier Ford can, if they so want. As a gesture of goodwill, we are going to take down this ad. I don't know that that is something that Mark Carney would want to do, and I certainly don't know that it is something that Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier, would want to do.

And I'm not sure how Canadians would react in Ontario and across the country to the spectacle of the Prime Minister and the Premier of Ontario, which is caving to a social media post from the President of the United States. That's one choice. The other choice is to allow the ad to stand and see if by some other way, and we've seen it in the past,

that Donald Trump finds his way back to walking back some of it at that tweet. Hard to tell. The other person who has a choice to make, is Pierre Pueleev, the conservative leader. Mr. Pueleev for the past six months has basically had one strategy, and that is to say everything that goes badly on the trade front or doesn't happen on the trade front is always Mark Carney's fault.

If that sounds familiar, it's because he used that strategy eventually, effectively against Justin Trudeau. But this is different because if Mr. Puelev's reaction is going to be, Mark Carney asked for this, responsible. And by the way, the Trump tweet blames Canada, but Canada did not run. This is not a federal ad. It's an Ontario ad. So if Therpoliev wants to go there, he is basically taking a shot at the leading conservative premier in this country. And that shot will not come freely to him. Why do I say that? Because in Ontario, Premier Ford is immensely more popular

than the current leader of the federal party. And I think Bruce would know that better than I do. But I think the last poll I saw had the Ontario Conservatives running around 50% in voting intentions. The liberals and Ontario are leaderless. But still, does Mr. Poliev want to take a shot at a premier that is so popular in a province that determines the outcome of federal elections? That is a choice he has to make. and he also has to assess

whether Canadians will agree with him that this is all Mark Carney's fault which sounds a bit like a stretch no matter how you look at it Bruce can you see Ontario pulling that at I don't know I mean first of all I understand that the first placement of it

was on one of the baseball games, and sometimes when you're buying like that, you're buying for multiple dates. And so I'd be surprised if they don't have those ads booked for tonight's baseball game and some of the subsequent ones, to spend 75 million Canadian running an ad means you're buying some expensive placements for sure, and over probably a limited period of time. So I think logistically it would be a tough call to make. Politically, I don't, you know, I can imagine that there'd be an argument inside the Ontario political tent that maybe it's a thing to do. But I can hear the counter argument as well.

And Doug Ford has not been uncomfortable being more pugilistic towards Donald Trump than the federal prime minister. And so, no, I don't think, I'd be surprised if he did, and I'm with Chantelle, I don't think it's Mark Carney's decision at all. I think that Pierre Pauliev may try to make it into something, but it would be ill-advised for him to weigh in on this, except on the side of Tarasur, a bad idea Ronald Reagan was right. That is the proper political position, I think, for Pierre Polyev to take. I don't know that he's going to do that. I'm absolutely with Chantelle that the chances that he would say, why don't I get in the ring with Doug Ford about this? That would be really stupid for him.

He is not as popular as Doug Ford. He would be beaten up in that conversation pretty badly. And it would be coming on the heels of a really bad couple of weeks. that Pierre Poliyev has had, that it's spooked, to say the least, a lot of members of his caucus who had been hoping that he would try to occupy more of a centrist, more of a pragmatic, conservative position, rather than kind of appealing to the fringe of his party, or more particularly, in this case, to sounding yet again like he was a little bit more on Donald Trump's side. I think the great risk for him is to sound like,

He is, he's kind of closer to Donald Trump just as a matter of chemistry. Okay, I want to get to Pahliaf after our first break, but I, I want to get at what, you know, seems to be the underbelly of this issue, and then Chantelle brought it up. And that is the auto sector in Canada and the importance of it to the economic growth of Ontario. Just like oil is to Alberta, the auto sector is to Ontario. And I think we sometimes, not we, the three of us, but we sort of collectively, perhaps don't understand how vulnerable the future of the auto sector is in Ontario as a result of what's going on right now. Maybe you can play this out for us a bit, Chantelle,

because there's a lot at stake, lots of jobs, lots of economic growth for Ontario and for other parts of the country. But it's a huge issue, and you can see why Doug Ford is so caught up with it in terms of pushing it. So do you want to give us some on that? With good reason. a good part of the economy of southern Ontario is based on the auto industry. It's not just a mine in some area that is that is ailing.

It's literally middle-class Ontario. And, you know, you would remember that arrow. I covered Ontario campaigns way back with William Davis, when he was Premier and others. And what would we do when we were on the campaign trail, follow the premier to make some announcement at an auto plant and then go to some other town with an auto plant. It's a big deal and it's electorally a really big deal too because those communities are communities that elect or defeat Ontario governments and the same goes in some parts for federal governments. Now the problem that the auto industry faces, one, the intention

of the American administration are crystal clear on this. President Trump said as much in the Oval Office with Mark Carney sitting next to him when they met a couple of weeks ago. Howard Lutnik, his trade negotiator, came to say as much to a Canadian audience. They want the auto industry. Forget that the auto pact has been in place for decades, and then this is a an integrated industry, they want it back. Now, the problem is, and that's a major difference with, for instance, aluminum.

It's very hard to take aluminum, the aluminum industry in Canada and create it or recreate it in the U.S. You need to do some really heavy lifting. But it is not, as we saw this week, very hard to decide that you are going to retrofit an assembly plant in one country versus the other for one vehicle versus the other. These decisions are taken out of the time, which basically means that it's a lot easier to carve out, empty out the auto industry from Ontario to the US.

And in the end, it is not a totally heavy burden on the US auto industry, by comparison, for instance, to aluminum or even softwood lumber, which the US needs. for house building and whose tariff impact on house prices, that leaves parts and we are producing them. But in the end, the U.S. position is we're leaving crumbs on the table. I don't think Canada can accept that. And I don't think Canada has found that it can negotiate its way out of that because of the stated intentions of the Trump administration on this particular file.

So the peril is real, and over four years, you can do a hell of a lot of damage to the auto industry. This is something that can happen within the timeframe of the current administration. Bruce? Unless Americans start to coalesce against the Trump approach. including towards the auto sector. There's very little chance to Chantelle's point that arguments from any other government are going to slow the U.S. President down.

The Republicans are not pushing back on him. The industry in the United States is murmuring its discontent is probably the best way that I could describe it. And so I think that the peril is real. I think that the hope to the degree, and hope is not a strategy. I think strategy really is about diversification and trying to find other ways to make the Canadian economy more resilient against kind of these rogue influences in the U.S. And I say rogue influence because it happened before, but it happened in 1928 or something like that to this degree. normally the American political pendulum would not swing this far in this direction.

And so we're dealing with an unusual situation. The peril is real, but the hope probably is that over the coming months, and there's another inflation reading coming out today, I think it was, in the United States, that more and more public opinion starts to point in the direction of, uh let's be careful not to go too far with this now i think the kuzma negotiations represent an opportunity for canada to have a broader conversation and for the politics of of these things to cool down a little bit because there are real interests on the u.s side and having this integrated trading relationship um but shantel's right the americans have been very clear about

that the americans in the trump administration have been very clear about what they want to see have happened with autops and it's a big deal in terms of the impact and potential impact on the Canadian economy and I know that there's a an instinct sometimes to kind of imagine that well there must be a simple solution for federal politicians to to find to solve this but that's wishful thinking Trump is unpersuaded by by most things on most topics most days. And don't forget, this is an industry that is being addicted periodically to huge government bailouts. Exactly. So from Canada, but also from the U.S., so at some point, its interest is to please whoever is sitting in the White House. And, you know, Canada is a

smaller consideration when it comes to the future of the industry. And for the record, I hope I'm wrong, but I think Bruce is being optimistic on the Kuzma negotiations. He sees a place for progress where I wonder if we will be talking about the demise of free trade arrangements with Mexico, Canada, and the United States this time, next year. Okay. Your differences on that are noted, and we'll get to them. Let's not bet on that. We'll get to them as those talks progress one way or another. Well, you both kind of shot me down on this when I raised it a couple of weeks ago.

It doesn't sound like that. Oh, no, where is he going now? So I do it in my own peril here by raising it again. Because it just seems to me that if we're going to like has happened this week, yet another plant moving south and breaking agreements that it made with the Canadian government for the help that it, got in setting up plants and setting up certain production errors, if that kind of thing continues and there's more evidence of that, is that not going to just push Canada and the

auto sector closer to China? We're going to have these plants that aren't being used. Did we shoot you down? I don't remember that. I guess Bruce did because. Oh, yeah, Bruce did, but I mean, the sense of all the shootings, I don't remember that one. No, seriously, but seriously. Well, I'm talking about EVs, Chinese EVs, okay? Yes, and there is an internal discussion ongoing about lifting the tariffs on Chinese EVs

in exchange for the lifting of tariffs on Canola. That is happening. There is also a discussion ongoing about moving, with government help, obviously, using some of those assembly lines are pushing to use more of them to do the EV industry thing. And the expectation that come a decade from now, that is where you will want to be.

So rather than try to hang on to whatever is leaving, try to reinvent the Canadian side of the auto industry. But this is easy to say. It's really hard. remember when Japanese cars showed up on the Canadian market and the North American market and how the auto industry screamed, ah, they're killing us. What did we do? We tried to attract Japanese companies, Toyota, and the Korean companies, Hyundai, to create plants in this country.

It's going to be a bit more complicated to woo Chinese interests to do the same. here, not just because of the politics of it, but also because the Chinese can produce EVs at a lot cheaper cost at home than they would here. And it would involve expanding the trade war with the US because whatever we do about EV tariffs on Chinese EVs or inviting the industry to take over some of those plants will put us directly in the sites of that White House. do you want to say anything do you want to join the cave in here

and join the Peter Oh my God he's so selective he invents memories He's got the thinnest skin It's so funny to watch But I think that

I do think it's too early to know about the EVs that China makes And the potential for that To become part of our Our industrial landscape I think there are lots of reasons why Chantelle's points are well noted, why that's more tricky than it sounds. I do think, though, at the same time, one of the features of the Trump approach to geopolitics

is that he at one in the same time wants to say, well, you can't do business with us the same way, but we also don't want you to do business with other people. And this is not just Canada that's facing this kind of pressure. Against that, I think that Canada is doing the right thing, saying we're going to have a different relationship with India from the one that we've had in the last number of years. We're going to have a different relationship with China. Now, stating those intentions isn't like concluding huge economic kind of two-way trade, but it's impossible for me not to look at the scenario with the United States and not come to the conclusion that Canada has to find better trade relationships with other,

big markets that have lots of potential to buy what we have to invest in what we do here at home. And so is that going to cause some political consternation in parts of Canada? Sure it is. Is it going to make Donald Trump kind of want to terminate? And thank you for attention to this matter. Probably it will at some point. But we can't have it both ways. you know, that's what's apparent to me now.

And we need politicians to pick a lane and decide, or pick two lanes, but decide to put as much emphasis on one as they're trying to solve for the other. That's a bad mixed metaphor, but I think you know what I mean. We do. If we want to seriously diversify our trade, and I don't mean just the stuff of speeches, which we've heard for what, 50 years and then spent 40 getting closer to the U.S., If we're going to be serious about this, you need to be clear-eyed about the fact that we're not going to be doing this by doing business with our G7 friends. There are, you cannot replace the huge part of the American market and what it means to us with trade deals with Belgium, although Belgium is an interesting partner.

you need to find your way to do better in trade with India or China or both. And that will be politically complicated, but it's, and in the end, we will still be largely dependent on the U.S. and that is the complication. You can't turn to India and China and say the U.S. is not going to be happy and we don't care because we're going to do India and China. You can't say that because geography and reality means that. no matter what you do, we will still be doing a hell of a lot of business if we can with the United States. Geography, reality commands that. So squaring that circle, it's going to be

quite a challenge. Okay. We're going to take our first break and we come back. We talk about Pierre Palliev and the kind of week he's had right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to Good Talk for this Friday, right here on the bridge. Serious Channel 167, Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Bruce Anderson, Chantelle-A-Bear, Peter Mansbridge here. You know, one of the great things about doing this program is you get to hear from a lot of Canadians every week.

I get, you know, between 100 and 200 emails a week, which is a lot. It's a lot more than I ever got when I was doing the national. He's so popular. It is a popular. It's a popular program. He's playing carne to your Trump here, by the way. But it also shows when I read this stuff that we have a wide array of listeners in terms of their political beliefs and their political likes and dislikes.

And it's quite often if we take shots at the prime minister, whether it's Mark Carney or before him, Justin Trudeau, we get liberal letters in saying, oh, you're being unfair, you're so unkind, and you're all in the tank for the conservatives. I do that a lot. Yeah. And we get the reverse from conservatives, especially from those who are big fans of Pierre Pollyev. As soon as we mention anything,

that has gone wrong for Pierre Poliyev or take issue with something he said those kind of letters come in. It's going to be interesting this week because the people who are at the core of the criticism of Pierre Poliyev in this past week have been, for the most part,

conservatives. Conservatives who work for the party in a strategic way, whether it's working on campaigns or working in the communications, Office of Senior Conservatives, including former Prime Ministers, and they're raising issues about the strategy that Pierre Poliyev is using and that it's, in their view, that it's damaging to the party, it's damaging to him, and it's not helping position themselves for any possible future election.

Well, I guess a future election is not just possible, it's probable. It'll happen at some point. Anyway, this... No, Mark, no, I'm not going there. I'll leave Trump to the canceling election thing. Well, he's certainly doing the construction work needed for that. I can't believe those images of the East Wing. I mean, when I've sat in there interviewing, you know,

they often gave us the East Wing to do interviews at the White House. I'm not just with former First Ladies. But anyway, I digress. Pierre Pollyev. it seems to be agreed upon this has not been a good week with the fallout from remarks he made about Justin Trudeau

and some of the position he's taken positioning he's taken as Chantelle mentioned earlier on the trade talks what's your take and Chantel why don't you start us on Paulieff's situation this week this has been a worst week of his leadership except I guess for the week

and he lost the election. There was one day this week when I was looking at National News Watch, which presents online a collection of stories from various sources, top-of-line stories. And the five top stories were all about Pia Pueleev, and they were all negative. And that's just on the English side.

I'm not going to go on the French side. Even people who dislike Mark Kearney, who are clearly not liberals, did not go out to write this was, you know, you don't understand, he's totally right on this, which we usually see. And you are right that the attacks came from inside the tent, which is always more damaging than when they come from outside the tent. But also the defense offered on behalf of Mr. Poitiev was very, very weak and very, very muted. you did not see a lot of conservatives rushed to the barricades to say he's totally right

and Justin Trudeau should be in jail to the point where, you know, the Pierre Puelev, we have watched in politics for the past decade, but also as conservative leader, has had one strategy when it comes to his personal communications and it is never explained, never apologize and always double down. And that is not what happened this week. What happened this week is suddenly Mr. Poitier was claiming that no one had understood what he was saying, that what he really meant was that he was targeting the previous chief of the RCMP, and he had never said that Justin Trudeau should be in jail, although it's a bit like the Ronald Reagan stuff we were talking about earlier. If you listen to it carefully, you cannot draw

other conclusions than that is where he was going. So that was very different. And why was it different because a lot of people who supported Piav Wadiyev in the past had been hoping that he would, after the election, somehow become a more mature participant in the political conversation. And this kind of marked, for many of them in their minds, the last definitive sign that that's not happening. that and, as one put it to me, that he's just not able to do it and that he is limited in that way. The fact that the polls show that despite the conservative support being very close to liberal support and voting intentions,

Mr. Poliev himself lacks double-digit points behind Mark Carney's best prime minister, also shows how perilous his position is, i.e. he is, he is, he is, dragging the party down rather than lifting it up. And few parties have a lot of patience for opposition leaders who were actually a drag on parties' prospects rather than an opportunity. But I want to make one last point because it struck me this week. Early on Monday, I was speaking to auto industry people from Quebec.

There were about 500 of them. We spoke for about 45 minutes. And after it was over, I realized that over those 45 minutes, we maybe had mentioned Pierre Paulyev for about 50 seconds. And what that says is how outside the mainstream conversation that is taking place now, he is positioning the party. Normally, you would be able to say, I couldn't offer them, as you may guess, a lot of hope that things would be okay.

but usually you would say, well, you know, the opposition has made this suggestion that the government should probably consider, or if there were another government, maybe we would take this stack as opposed. But nothing like that has been on offer, and it was very interesting because during the Q&A I had a question about the NDP, but none about the conservatives. All right, Bruce, this is a little like a slow pitch right over the middle of the plate for you, but let's see what you can do with it anyway. Well, I want to start by basically saying, you know, one of the great skills that

Pure Poliyev has is offense. He's a great to use a hockey metaphor, and you'll tell me if I got this right. He is a one-way player, though. He is only good on offense, and he's not always great on offense, but he is pretty good at it. And he's developed most of whatever political support that he's built up by being a great offensive player going at the other guys and using trenchant language and cutting right to the point. But when he has to play defense, he's miserable at it. And, you know, that old adage of it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. In this kind of situation, it's not the mistake. It's the attempt to clean up, which, you know, took him two or three tries. All of them miserably bad.

The most recent version featured him saying, well, I didn't say what you say, I said. And it's such a technical line that he's trying to draw there, that it caused everybody to kind of go, well, let's play the tape again. And let's look at what you said again. And so it should by now be a lesson that conservatives, and I'm sure that people around him know this lesson, which is that if you invite people to review the tape again of the thing that was to, to Chantowne's point, probably the worst thing that's happened to him at the worst possible time. You're compounding the problem that you created for yourself. He's 21 years, I think, in politics, and he's 25 points behind Mark Carney.

In the contrast of Mark Carney delivering a pretty sobering message the other night about the state of our economic risks and what we're going to do about it. Contrast that, and people can have their point of view about it, I thought it was useful for him to do that. With that scene of Pierre Poliev, kind of sitting back, shirt on button, kind of men spreading a little bit with Chantelle's laughing. This is where the letters are going to start. I don't think I could do that. When you put him in that situation, and he's with hard partisans who are going to want to hear that kind of red meat talk, you're taking a risk. And is it a risk that you need to take?

I guess that's the question behind all of this, is does he feel as vulnerable as taking that risk in terms of his leadership, as taking that risk might suggest? because I would have thought that he's going to get a pretty good number out of that leadership review. But he's certainly, there's evidence now that there are members of his caucus who are kind of tired of seeing him continue to play like he wants that last election over again. He wants to talk about Justin Trudeau. And so when I see people like Lisa Raid on panels saying, you know what, I don't understand why we're talking. talking about Justin Trudeau. You see a lot of other conservatives who generally would be rushing to his defense saying Justin Trudeau isn't here anymore.

So not just talking about Justin Trudeau, but the last point for me is it's such an echo of Trump to lock up my last adversary. Setting aside the question of whether or not a putative prime minister should be opining about who should go to jail, who should be prosecuted. after having spent all the time that he did talking about what was wrong with the whole SNC Lavalaf thing, that didn't make any sense but to decide that you're going to find a way

to sound more like Trump when pretty much everybody who'd be around you is saying could you sound a little less like Trump? It's mystifying, but he's a one-way player at best. You know, there are those within the conservative party who do want to still keep talking about Justin Trudeau. But it's a small group, right? It's not the group that's looking to the future

and hopefully for them to gain power again. And the argument has been, at least the one I've heard, expressed on this program and others, that it's those people that are going to make that number good in Calgary in January. I don't get that. It doesn't make sense to me. If there's such a small group,

are they the only ones going to Calgary? and the review vote? They're not such a small group when Bruce talks about Trumpian undertones, people who self-identify as conservatives when asked if they believe that Donald Trump is doing a good job, 40% of them or more say yes.

There's a minute percentage in the larger pool of voters that believe that, but all of them are conservative and identify as conservatives, whether for Maxim Belnese Party, if it still exists, or the conservative party

that Pierre-Puillard leads. But the problem is, one that what their views turn off other voters from voting conservative. But also, who else, this isn't a leadership contest.

Who else are they going to vote for when the leadership review comes? They will never have as Trumpian and leader as the current leader, I believe. So the notion that you would energize them because you want to have a great score on your leadership preview, at this point, it's kind of backfiring. There are a number of MPs and others in caucus, I should say senators, were now thinking, if I bring people to Calgary, I'm not going to bring them to vote for Pierre Puellev's continued leadership.

There are more of those people this week than there were last week. they may not think they're going to win and see him gone. But that is how trouble starts with people starting to think to themselves. I think we need to get rid of this leader. Many are waiting to see two things. One, does the budget pass or do we go in an election? But the other is what kind of a score does he get? And do I want to run again or even stick around?

And those two things are more in play now. than they were two weeks ago. And there's three months to go before that voting. And possibly an election. And possibly an election. Which would terminate if he loses his career. My understanding is for all the posturing, the conservatives are not very keen on having an election in 2025.

Well, to your point on that, Chantal, I mean, I think that if you're him and somehow you miscarriage, calculate and you say we're going to vote against the budget, thinking that somebody else will vote to allow the budget to pass. If the country stumbles into an election that way, the chances are really good based on today's kind of public opinion model, I guess, that Pahliev's career in politics would be over within 40 days. Exactly. But I'll go just a bit further if we're going to do political science fiction. There are many scenarios attending the budget vote.

But suppose that the Bloch, Quebec, the NDP and the Conservatives declare on the day of the budget that they cannot support this budget. And that the thinking among conservatives is we can keep enough members, four or five out, that the vote will not yield an election. You need to keep in mind that if Mark Carney decides that he wants an election,

he doesn't need to wait for the vote. He only needs to go to the Governor General and say the opposition parties have clearly confirmed that they are going to defeat my government so we're going to the polls. That's what Stephen Harper did in 2011. He didn't wait for the vote.

So everyone's fixated on the vote in 1979 and Joe Clark. But a statement of intent from all opposition leaders is good enough to say you want to do this, people, let's not have suspense for three days. Let's just go and ask Canadians how they feel about that. And chances are, you're right, Bruce, that Canadians might not look kindly on Mr. Puelliev in that scenario, but he would not have the chance to say,

I'm against this budget, and then not, you know, be careful enough to avoid the election that should result from that. So there are so many scenarios in place. in looking at this budget that it will make for a really interesting week. All right. I've got to squeeze in one more break. We'll do that right now and then be back after this. Okay, final segment of Good Talk for this week, Chantel, Bruce, Peter, all in the house for these last couple of minutes.

The NDP, they still exist. They're not an official party, but they are looking for a leader, and they trotted out their candidates for the first time this week. I'm not sure how many people were watching because they're not exactly top of mind for a lot of Canadians right now, but nevertheless they're giving it to go. Their vote for a leader is not until what it's March, isn't it? It's quite a long ways away. You watched it, Chantel.

Did you watch it, Bruce? I don't know how you know that, but yes, I did. I have that, you know, secret. I have that little thing on your television that tells me what you're watching. Okay. It's on my iPad. I was cooking. The great company.

There you go. What did you make of it? What stood out? A couple of things. One, this was not a debate. It was more of a meat and greet, i.e. the five current candidates were each given 10 minutes with some Q&A, most of the questions were similar, obviously. And it was hosted, it was sanctioned by the NDP, but hosted by the Canadian

Labor Congress. So the real first NDP debate under the auspices of the party will take place in November. Second, there were five candidates on stage. That is not necessarily the final lineup. There are still some weeks to go month before the list is closed. So there could be more people coming into this campaign than we saw on stage. They were all interesting in ways, but only two of them, I think, stand out as people who have the experience to lead the party and try to lead the party out of its current predicament and have the political experience or the political skills to do that.

And one is the other McPherson, who is an MP. And the other is Avi Lewis, who is run twice for a seat in BC and has failed, but does have, well, it's probably in his blood. His grandfather was the leader of the federal NDP, and his father was the Ontario leader of the NDP. me I talked that Avey Lewis stood out in the pack for a number of reasons one the NDP has a problem in this campaign the plan was to have at least one question

asked of every candidate in French and they renounced that because I don't think they wanted to give that spectacle Mr. Lewis spoke forth and he started off in French and he did not just say bonsois and in that way he kind of showed up the other McPherson she's been an MP in the House of Commons did not say a word in French the only sentence I ever heard of her in French was under a Reducaneda program I can understand she wouldn't want to deliver a whole paragraph given the state of her fluency in French so he showed her up I mean the message was was, I may not be, you know, able to do a Toulm en-Paul interview tonight, but I do understand that this is important for an NDP leader. I don't think that message was lost. I also found him very opportunistically political. I'll set aside the ideas.

But the last question was, is there something we don't know about you that you'd like to share? And his answer was, and that's where the political blood shows, He says, yeah, he says, I'm a diehard fan of the Blue Jays. My dad took me to their very first game. It was snowing that day. A lot of people left. I don't know if Tarantanians are that spooked by snow, maybe. But we stayed.

And I thought, this kind of shows, it's not a big idea. It's not, you're not going to vote on that basis. What it does show, though, is political skills and a sense of timing. I thought that was interesting so we'll see what happens next. Well, you know, these days, everybody's a Blue Jays fan, right? Of course, but were you with the first game?

You know what? You know what? I did have tickets to the first game in April of 1977 and I still have those tickets because I couldn't go to the game. I suddenly was sent off to cover a story in Europe. So I still have the tickets. Unused tickets.

So I'll accept offers if people want to send them in. On eBay. And I was also at the game where Joe Carter hit the home run to win the World Series in 1993. So there you go. I'm a Blue Jays fan too. But it's nice to see so many people across the country cheering for Toronto. That's not what they're doing. You sure don't see that at any other time of the year.

Listen, Bruce, I know you didn't see the NDP And we don't have time if you did So we've got to wrap it up for this week But another good conversation is always in it. I'll live with the pain. It's okay. Okay, and we'll do it again next week. So thanks to Bruce Anderson, Chantelle-A-Bear.

A reminder that the buzz is out tomorrow morning. 7 a.m. Eastern Time. If you haven't already subscribed, you can do so at National Newswatch.com slash newsletter. there is no charge. You just have to subscribe with your email. That's it for this week. Thanks so much.

We'll talk to you again on Monday. Have a good weekend, you too. Bye.