The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- What's Tom Mulcair Up To?

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

The former national leader of the NDP has been saying some nice things about Mark Carney lately.  Is it nothing more than just exercising his new role as a political analyst or could it be more than that?  Fun to talk about with Bruce and Chantal.  Also some fascinating comparisons between Canada and the UK as the British heard into an election campaign with the governing party down twenty points.  Sound Familiar? 

Are you ready for Good Talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with John Talley Bear and Bruce Anderson. I was giggling there a little bit because I was having my normal technical malfunction here, trying to organize everything, but I think I've got it organized now. You're here for Good Talk. It's our Friday episode of The Bridge, and we're happy to be here with you. Chantel and Bruce are ready to go, anxious to go. I want to start with something a little different, actually.

I've been intrigued watching Tom Mulcair, the former NDP leader, ran in the 2015 election. At times it looked like he was going to win leading up to that campaign, and then he didn't, and he didn't do that well. And it wasn't long after that he was replaced as NDP leader. Well, he's a political analyst now. He's on CTV. He writes online stuff. And he's really into the political analysis game in the last little while.

But what I found interesting is in a number of his pieces, including this week, he's saying pretty nice things about Mark Carney in a time seemingly going out of his way to say nice things about Mark Carney in a time seemingly going out of his way to say nice things about Mark Carney. And I'm wondering whether, should I be reading anything more into this than just a guy who's being a political commentator and has decided to play that card, the Carney card, for a while and see where it goes? Chantelle, what do you think? A mix of things, personal and professional, in the case of Mr. Mulcair.

I think it's no secret, if you've been reading his columns and listening to his comments since he left politics, that he will never totally forgive the man who beat him for the job of prime minister. And by that, I mean Justin Trudeau. So he has had at times kind things to say about some Trudeau ministers. He seems to like Treasury Board President Anita Anand a lot, but rarely anything about Justin Trudeau. That doesn't mean this analysis is off and in left field in this case. There has been, interestingly enough, a string of columns in Quebec, not just Thomas Mulcair, but others who have been talking up Mark Carney as an interesting and possibly the best replacement for the prime minister.

What was interesting about the Malcair column is that Malcair operates within the Quebec environment. And if there is one place in Canada where Mark Carney's profile is not particularly high, it would be Quebec. People are still parsing a few sentences he said in French at the Canada 2020 conference recently and debating whether he is fluent or not. So that kind of tells you how removed he is. And Mulcair does have a following in French in the sense that he's also on TVO. What was interesting in this column, since we're having this debate here about Mark Carney's French, which he could resolve by coming to give a speech outside some high think tank environment in French, is that Malkier mentions that he invited Carney to his class to speak with students.

And I'm assuming that conversation probably happened in French since last time I checked Thomas Mulcair tutorials in a French language post-secondary institution. The other interesting part of it, and he went from there, and I thought that was interesting. I happen to agree with him that the comparisons between Mark Carney and Michael Ignatieff are glib and simplistic. That there is a world of difference, for one, between someone who was in academia for decades before jumping into politics and someone who's run central banks in Canada under Stephen Harper and over the time of Brexit in the UK. But he also, and Thomas Mulcair remember was around when Michael Ignatieff was the liberal leader, also pointed out that when he had him over to his class he didn't find that Carney spoke like an academic or couldn't get over himself to kind of have a conversation with students. So by and large, you know, I don't know,

and I don't think Thomas Mulcair spends a lot of time with Mark Carney in his real life. But it was an instructive column in the sense that he'd seen carny inaction in Quebec and was looking at him from the perspective of someone who's actually been on the campaign trail and is looking at someone thinking, would this person be able to jump in the campaign fray and be effective? He used to be a liberal, right? Provincial liberal, as you know, in Quebec, a provincial liberal is like a provincial liberal when there used to be some in BC. Right. They're different animals. The proof is that a BC MP from Justin Trudeau's caucus is leaving within a few days to run for an NDP nomination in BC provincially.

So same difference. Well, you know where I was getting at. Yes, I'm trying to stop you from going there. Okay. Bruce, what do you think of all this? Well, I always enjoy reading or watching Tom Mulcair's political analysis because I've always thought it was interesting to see how he communicated. He has his own style. It's relatively unique.

I don't always agree with his analysis as a pundit. I find it sometimes a bit funky and unusual. But sometimes, you know, I think he says things that are right on and he says them in ways that cut through the clutter. I think that in this particular instance, I do sense that there must be, I hadn't thought about it very much until Chantal mentioned it, but I do remember in the campaign that he ran against Justin Trudeau, he seemed so convinced that he was going to wipe the did he use the term wipe the floor with Justin Trudeau? Or was that somebody else? Anyway, there was a sense of, I'm just going to, I'm going to crush this guy. And of course, that's not what happened. So there might be some lingering scar tissue there that influences the

way that Tom Mulcair assesses Justin Trudeau's situation. However, I do think his assessment of Justin Trudeau's situation is accurate. And he was pretty blunt in describing what he saw as being a very low chance that Justin Trudeau could succeed in the next election. And I also felt like he said something important about Mark Carney, which is, well, two things, perhaps. One is that meeting Mark Carney and getting to know him gives you a sense of somebody from the standpoint of whether you think they could be successful in politics. If you haven't seen them or met them, and you've only kind of read stories about them you don't necessarily get the same sense of somebody who's uh who's comfortable in his skin who can communicate with

people and and listen to people and kind of have an exchange and i think mulcair you know helpfully from carney's standpoint described that um and the second thing was the contrast with Ignatyev, because I too, I met both people and I respect them both. But to me, the idea that they are in any material way the same never really made any sense to me. It doesn't make any sense to me. points that Chantal said about the role that Mark Carney played as governor of the two banks. He's also been a pretty active person in the business community, knows a lot about business. I don't think that same can be said about Michael Ignatyev. And so I think he pointed up an important contrast there. And to your point, Peter, and I'll, I'll finish on this. The idea that somebody who is from the left,

understanding that the difference between a Quebec liberal and a federal new Democrat, everybody can decide how left is, you know, is he, that sort of thing, but he's somebody from the left. He led the national new democratic party But he's somebody from the left. He led the National New Democratic Party. And he's saying this person who some would describe as a business person or kind of an affluent elite, that sort of thing, is somebody that you could support. I think that's a pretty interesting note to be put into the into the conversation at this moment. I should just add that when Thomas Mulcair left Jean Chagas' cabinet, he was a liberal cabinet minister. It was over the environment issue. And so there are other

ways that the paths of Mark Carney and Thomas Mulcair meet that are outside the left-right divide or liberal and NDP, and it is on the issue of climate. And I would tend to believe, based on Mr. Mulcair's track record, that it does matter to him that the next federal government is serious about climate. And I understand that he would have no delusion that that would be the case under someone like Pierre Poilievre. because he's a banker and not because he knows the business environment, but because he can advance the climate file at a time when we are at risk of letting it fall by the side. But this is something that we shouldn't look at for anything more than the analysis of the day and his analysis of where things go, given his political background, which, you know, it's quite right. He was the leader of the left party, but he was the leader who had come from the centrist party, so to speak,

into the NDP. But anyway. I would struggle, having spoken with Mr. Molokir about the last referendum, and I did a book on the last referendum, and how he saw what happened then, how bitter he was about the federal liberals and their inaction on that file and on the constitutional file. I would struggle to imagine that someone like that, who enjoys an interesting life, who has been leader, would want to be second or third or fourth to anyone in the Federal Liberal Party. But I could be wrong. I'm not operating the assumption that there's a possibility of that. I just have found it intriguing the way he's been writing lately. And this conversation will almost certainly prompt him to write something differently. So nobody does take that impression.

But it's been an interesting discussion. And I agree with Bruce. Especially in the last year, I found his columns to really be interesting um in terms of cutting through some of the political stuff that's going on and um and giving us a different uh take on things so you know whatever the case is it'll be interesting when he was leader he had that i i I like the fact that he could deliver a sentence and not pull a punch. And I think he does that in his analysis, too. And I enjoy it for that reason. But if you're going to see it as a sign of a larger story,

set aside Thomas Mulcair's personal future, it is also a sign that the notion that Justin Trudeau should probably go is becoming more widespread in Quebec, which was not the case three months ago. But now it is part of the mix here too. And that's probably not good news for the Liberals. And as much as the Prime Minister, last time I checked, was still committed to staying on until after the next election at least. Should anything be read into this by Jagmeet Singh, the federal NDP? It's not that Mulcair left that party in good terms. It was not a pretty picture when he left.

There's no NDP. There's not even a puddle of an orange wave left here. Don't look for it. It's parched ground. It's not coming back puddle of an orange wave left here. Don't look for it. It's parched ground. It's not coming back in the next election. Alexandre Boulerice, who is the only MP left, if he runs again, stands a good chance of being re-elected because he's Alexandre Boulerice. But if he leaves his riding, the last vestige of that orange wave will be gone. I heard something else, though, in your question as well, Peter, which was, you know, how is this punditry by Tamil Kher

likely to make Jagmeet Singh feel? And I think the answer is not good. It's not like he would be counting on or wishing for or seeking some sort of a warm embrace and public rhetoric about how good Jagmeet Singh and the federal NDP look. But it isn't helpful for him, I think, to have somebody with the visibility and the stature of Tom Mulcair saying, here's a politician that I find interesting on the federal scene, and the chances are if he gets into politics, he's going to be with the Federal Liberal Party. Mark Carney, I mean, not Tom Mulcair. I'm not engaging in that question either. Okay. All right. Let's move on. Both, as some people know, both Bruce and I, for a variety of reasons, are spending a little time in the UK, and it's been an interesting time to be in the UK just in the last three days, as the election was called by Rishi Sunak. Now, you have a situation where the Conservatives, Sunak being their latest leader,

have been in power for, I think, almost 14 years. They have a huge majority government right now, but they are also way behind in the polls. They're behind in the polls roughly the same amount that the Liberals are behind in the polls in Canada. So the campaign was called on Wednesday, and they're at it already, and everybody was basically ready, even though there was some thought the campaign wouldn't start until the fall. But all the parties were ready, and they hit the airwaves with their ads right away.

So this was another little thing that I found fascinating this week, because as you know, we've talked about this before, there are a lot of governments in Western democracies that have elections scheduled for this year. And in almost all of the situations, not all of them, but almost all of them, the incumbent party is in big trouble and is way behind in the polls. So the Canada-UK comparison, different parties, different ideologies, is interesting because both governing parties are down about 20 points. So the thing that I was looking at was the Labour Party, who are in the lead in the polls, their opening ad campaign.

So I'm going to play this for you. It's about a minute and a half long. But listen carefully to the words, because what you'll find, you could, in my guess anyway, is you could replace this ad with Pierre Poliev talking about the situation in Canada. But this is Sir Keir Starmer. He's the leader, likely the next prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Here's what he had to, here's what he has to say. If you think I'm padding i am because i'm trying to get this thing started properly technical issues okay let's uh let's see what happens when i push this button it's time for change britain is a great and proud country. But after 14 years under the Tories, nothing seems to work anymore. Public services crumbling. Ambulances that don't come. Families weighed down by higher mortgage rates. Antisocial behaviour on our high streets. The list goes on and on.

Political chaos feeding decline. Feeding chaos feeding decline. The answer is not five more years of the Tories. They have failed. Give the Tories five more years and things will only get worse. Britain deserves better than that. Only a changed Labour Party will get Britain's future back. And make no mistake, the Labour Party has changed. We're connected to our purpose, to serve working people as you drive our country forward. With economic stability at the forefront of everything we do. Country first, party second. Always. And that is what Labour's long-term plan will achieve.

Replace decline with national renewal. To get Britain working, building, growing again. Switch on Great British Energy. Get our NHS back on its feet. Take back our streets. Break down the barriers to opportunity. So after 14 years, it's time for change. Stop the chaos, turn the page, start to rebuild. Vote Labour. Well, there you go. Time for a change. Turn the page.

Make the UK great again. That's about the only slogan that wasn't in there, but everything else was. And it is often the way all parties campaign who are trying to come from the opposition benches. That's what it's all about. Bruce, you've been involved in ad making before. Yeah, there's some unique things in this. And first of all, I just say to the podcast listeners and viewers, watch the video version of this if you can, because it doesn't work Whereas the techniques used in the ad are really pretty well designed to keep the eyeball focused on the ad. There's a use of color and different fonts and there's some motion effects with the way that certain video clips are

used. And there's an energy to it that in the video version is stronger. Otherwise, you wouldn't have a minute 47, I think it is, radio ad, which is what this sounded like when we just listened to it. And if you want to watch it, you can see it on our YouTube version. Right. It's on that. So you can find that at nationalnewswatch.com. But sorry, Bruce. We'll tweet it out as well after so everybody can have a little look at it. It really is an interesting ad.

I thought it was really well done. But sorry, Bruce, go on. I guess it was. And it made me wonder if this ad hadn't been kind of pulled together a little bit at the last minute. They would have had a lot of the raw materials. They would have known basically what it was that they were going to try to say. There wasn't anything in this ad that hinged off Sunak's comments on the launch day or anything like that. There was no visual of Sunak in a super expensive suit getting pelted with rain, which was a disastrous launch for him, for sure. But in the body of the ad, the things that really stood out for me that I found quite remarkable, describing labor as stability and conservative as chaos. That was really interesting um and now it makes sense in the uk context because the conservatives have had a lot of prime ministers been a lot of

disruption um but in the past you wouldn't have seen labor saying if you want stability and economic stability vote labor but that's what keir Starmer's pitch is because of how disruptive the Conservatives have seen to voters in the UK. Second thing that I liked about what he did is he talked about returning to the idea of the Labour Party and politicians as being the servants of the people. There was something about the language in which he used. He was really making a fundamentally important point, which is that if you don't trust any of us to do things that are in your interest, because you think that all we ever do is things that are about our party's interest, he wanted to manifest that this was not that

Labour Party. And the last point for me is he, and I think the words that were bolded in red, and maybe in the largest font in the video version that I saw, was Labour has changed. And if you're transposing that to the federal liberal context, for example, in Canada, there is such a strong demand for change, a desire for change. But people aren't sure that they want Pierre Pauliev. They do want a different liberal party than they feel that they've been getting. And I thought that it was clever of Keir Starmer and Labour to really emphasize that this isn't an old school version of the Labour Party. This is something different from what people had been expecting or seen and grown disaffected with in the past.

And he's desperate to have to do that. I mean, they've been in opposition for 14 years, partly because people had a distinct view of Labour and they hadn't seen change in past elections. So the question will be... As desperate as anybody 20 points ahead is yes yeah but but they have to maintain that because they know the the attack is coming over the next six weeks yes but 14 years in opposition uh is also an opportunity you're not wearing any of this stuff and And the chaos idea, it's not just that the Conservative Party has had almost half a dozen

prime ministers recently, but it's also that they've presided over Brexit. So when you say chaos and Brexit, let's be frank here, that's a particular issue to this election in the UK, no parallel here. But Brexit does not deliver the promises that those who sold it to the British people said that would deliver. And the Conservative Party gets to wear that. And I suspect gets to wear that for a long time. Yes, Pierre Poiliev. I don't think Pierre Poiliev would want to borrow the final section of this act

where he would be saying the Conservative Party has changed because most people would say not for the better or towards too much of an extreme. So I think Poiliev would be probably better advised to try to harp back to the better years of Stephen Harper or even Brian Mulroney than to say we are not the Conservative Party rejected in 2015. I don't think he wants to go there, but you're right. Otherwise, word for word, Pierre Poiliev could have done this ad. And what it does demonstrate is that all those elections that are going to be taking place or have been taking place and have seen change result from the votes have not been about the left sur getting rid of incumbents. If your incumbent is on the left, the right has come in.

If there was the reverse, you've seen the left come in. Now, I'm sure that both Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poiliev's people will be paying close attention to this election. Not so much for the themes that will be talked about, but to see whether a 20-point lead can be sustained to the finish line or whether you can catch up from 20 points. We have not had an incumbent in this country catch up from 20 points behind because the incumbents that got defeated all started ahead. John Turner, Kim Campbell, Paul Martin, Stephen Harper did not start 20 points behind. So basically, this is something we have no example

for this federally in recent history that someone goes in an election as the incumbent 20 points behind and finishes on top. The closest example we have of someone catching up would be Brian Mulroney in 88 after the last debate, where he fell way behind John Turner and caught up to him point by point by point until voting day. But this is completely different. And so I'm sure that with trepidation, the Conservatives will watch to see whether you can hold a lead of that magnitude or enough of it. And the Liberals, if they see that there's a reversal in the fortunes of those parties, will probably feel better about the result in the UK than they felt about just about anything in a year and a half. It's funny, Rishi Senak, yesterday was really

day one of the campaign. So where did he choose to come? I'm up in the Highlands, like way north in Scotland. He came here to this little town called Nigg, which is, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes from here. That was his first stop. This is not a conservative riding. Maybe he was just testing out. Big clean energy message, I guess, right? It was an energy message, yeah.

Anyway, Bruce, you want to make a point? Yeah, there was one other. It was a small thing, but I love the choice of words that are used in these ads sometimes when they, when you see something and you go, oh, that's better than that. Pierre Poliev has been using Canada's broken. And a lot of people think it's over the line. Some people think, no, it's really connecting with people. here starmer said a lot of things aren't working his version was something very similar to that like nothing seems to work anymore um and i think that the nuance the difference between those i think starmer's

line is better i think it it allows more people to agree with the argument that he's making because it doesn't require you to say something bad about your country or to think something bad about your country. Whereas Canada is broken, I think pushes people, some people away because they feel as though I don't really think it's broken, but I do think a lot of things aren't attack and 65% optimism. And the images used in the ad, if people look at the video version of it, that's what you'll see. It's not a lot of guns in the street. It's not a lot of stuff that's doom and gloom. At least that's not the majority of it. Okay. Let's take a quick break because we haven't taken one yet. So let's take a quick break, come back,

a couple more topics that I want to get into, and we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Friday episode of The Bridge. It is Good Talk, Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson, both here. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or, as we mentioned earlier, you could be watching us on our YouTube channel.

You can link to that by going to nationalnewswatch.com. Okay. A couple of interesting theories put out in the last week about how prepared Canada is or is not for the election of Donald Trump, if that, in fact, is what happens this fall in the U.S. election. Two competing theories. You've got one which was an op-ed piece which was written in the Toronto Star by Gordon Waxer. He's a professor at the University of Alberta, political economy.

The headline on his piece is as thus, Canada needs to brace itself for a Trump dictatorship. Progressive Canadians hope Trump will lose and the nightmare will disappear, but instead of magical thinking, we need to prepare by reducing our economic dependence on the U.S. That's Mr. Laxer's theory. Now, competing against that is Canada's ambassador to the United States,

Kristen Hillman. She said, she was talking in Philadelphia. The prime minister was down there, one of those kind of Team Canada charm offensives. She said, Mr. Trump does not worry us. We were able to work with him effectively in the past, implying that if we have to, we'll be able to work with him in the future. Who's right here? Chantal? Well, I would be unfair to the ambassador if I said that she's wrong

in the sense that she's not actually arguing the substance of this case. She's speaking as she should, like a diplomat speaking in a country where she is posted that is in the middle of an election campaign. So it's not her role to say, if you elect Donald Trump, we will try to go out of our way to reduce our economic ties with the United States. That being said, one of the reasons we did manage to work our way out of the first term of Donald Trump was our economic ties with the United States and the fact that we exploited that dependence, which is not strictly ours, it's also theirs, to make the point that if you hurt Canada here, you would be hurting U.S. economic interests there. So those economic ties have actually been useful.

But I don't know about you, but how many times have we heard over the past decades about Canada reducing its dependence on the United States? Over those decades, we have become more integrated economically. The suggestion that you could do that quickly, as in between now and next year or in two years, not happening. And in favor of what? There was a time when the liberals were really big on the China card. That's not happening.

They were also very big, and so was Stephen Harper on the India card. That's also not happening. So I'm not sure that either of them is offering very useful, let's ponder this advice on the way forward. Bruce? I think I agree with Chantal. The ambassador is doing exactly what she should be doing in this situation. And I do happen to think that on the basis of the numbers that we see in the U.S. polling now that Trump would win, not by a lot, but you don't have to win by a lot. You only need to win.

I don't think it's true, though, that Canada is perfectly prepared for this. And I say that because you can't be prepared for Trump. Trump is an entirely unpredictable figure. There are some things that we can be and should be anxious about, in particular, the push to have Canada spend more on defense. And I don't know if we were talking about that letter from the bipartisan group of U.S. senators. But they were, you know, very explicit in saying that Canada doesn't have a plan to meet that 2% commitment that other countries have shown a willingness to and that the United States says all members should. That's a real issue coming at us if Trump wins.

There will be no question in my mind that there will be a greater sense of isolationism and protectionism with Trump. But having said that, those things are predictable, but lots of other things are not predictable with Trump. What is the best that you can do in this situation is try to imagine those scenarios and probably not detail what the country would do about them, but at least have some strategies that you've spent some time working on and continue to work on. But I also think that Chantal's right. There's no question that you can sort of say, well, why don't we do this? Why don't we just reduce our dependence on the United States?

It's very, very wishful thinking. It's probably a good idea, but it's been a good idea forever. this? Why don't we just reduce our dependence on the United States is very, very wishful thinking. It's probably a good idea, but it's been a good idea forever. And it isn't something that people can get up every day and decide that they're just going to be a little bit less dependent on that relationship and have that become a thing. And I don't think that any Canadian political party would get elected with a platform that said, you know, we're going to make a very significant effort to reduce the economic interrelationship. Quite the contrary. I imagine that part of what Laxer is talking about, his concern is based on the fact that you've got a guy running for the presidency of the United States who openly declares he favors dictatorships,

and he even wants to make his presidency if he wins a dictatorship, he says, for one day. But the fact that it even comes out of his mouth is something that I think worries some people about what this could mean, going beyond the normal preparation for whoever may win in the U.S. race. I assume, and either one of you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that there is a part of the public service

in whatever department that is sitting there by now having meetings about, you know, how are we going to react if in fact Trump wins? What is, you know, what are the dangers that we face? What are the approaches that we should be offering up to the government of the day, whoever that may be, about how to deal with Trump and a Trump administration. I'm assuming that kind of thing goes on.

So when Laxer says we're not prepared, I'm assuming some of the preparation goes on behind the scenes. Am I right in assuming that? Yeah, I think you are right. I think there's no question that some of that is going on. But I also feel like it is true that you can't be fully prepared. So I think that there's probably more preparation than people know about, but there's also an infinite number of possibilities to try to be prepared for. And then in the end, all you really want to do probably with somebody like Trump is some combination of try to find a way not to be in his line of fire, not to draw attention in a way that might make him decide

that he needs to take a stick out and beat Canada with it, which he has done in the past over dairy and other issues. And maybe to look for some ideas that if he wins, Canada could put on the table that might appeal to him. I don't know what those would be. But I do agree with you, Peter, that probably that work is being done, it should be done. It's important work to prepare, but it's not a normal kind of transition that you would imagine in that situation from one party to the next. It's from one system to something completely unpredictable on the question of what kind of a democracy is it and what is his influence going to be? Well, I mean, if you're a civil servant as experienced as you may be, you can't game the US becoming a dictatorship very easily, for one. Second, if you are that person,

you totally understand that we do not know what the impact of the result of the U.S. election will have on Canadian public opinion, looking at the federal parties, but we have a certainty and it is that we will be going through a lively election campaign within a year of that result. And so much of the Canada-US relationship boils down also to the personality of the players, i.e. whoever is president, but also who is prime minister. You can think of all kinds of things. But if you're looking at the Justin Trudeau government, you probably have a fairly good idea of where the government would think it wants to go. But if you're looking at a Pyap-Valyov government, it's a new page and no one has written on it. So you would, I mean, at the same time

as people are looking at the transition to a possible new administration in the US, the public service, the top echelons have to be thinking about the transition to a different government in Canada. These are dual exercises that cannot be separated one from the other. No one's going to hand the next prime minister, be it the incumbent or someone else, a game plan for Donald Trump. It requires input from whoever is sitting there. Is it the majority or minority government? And the unknowns,

there are almost as many unknowns on both sides of this equation as there are known numbers. The one thing we do know, though, is that the Trump card is a joker in the sense that we don't have a clue what this guy will do from one day to the next. And even if you think you can imagine, you probably can't. Look, Peter, I just wanted to add that the one person who probably isn't looking forward to the day when he can't avoid saying something about Donald Trump is Pierre Poliev. The closer we get to the prospect of a Trump election win, the more insistent people should be to hear Pierre Poliev talk about how he would approach, if he were Prime Minister of Canada, how he would approach

that Canada-US relationship and how he would, in particular, deal with some of the issues that Mr. Trump is raising. Defense spending, his approach to immigration and what the reverberative effects might be for Canada, protectionism and the kind of policy mix that exists in the United States now that Trump might or might not unwind. Mr. Polyev has done, I think, an effective job so far of saying there are lots of things I don't need to answer because I'm not the prime minister. And I don't think he's paying any political price for that right now. But the clock is ticking towards these two events that Chantel mentioned, the U.S. election and the possible election of a conservative government in Canada. And there will be a point in time, presuming that Mr. Trump's fortunes politically

don't dissipate dramatically, where Pierre Poglia will have trouble avoiding that question. And for him, because of the nature of the coalition that he's put together, and the fact that a significant proportion of the conservative voter base in Canada does like Donald Trump, but almost everybody else doesn't like Donald Trump in Canada, that will become a trickier issue for Mr. Poliev to handle, even bearing in mind that people will generally want Canadian national politicians not to be overly critical of of a potential leader of the united states donald trump is is a different kettle of fish in that conversation especially given the kinds of things that he continues to say including a really remarkable speech yesterday in new york which you guys may have seen yeah all right um

time for a final break. We'll come back. Something Bruce mentioned a couple of minutes ago is worthy of comment as well. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week. Bruce and Chantel are here.

Bruce mentioned a few moments ago a bipartisan move by a group of U.S. senators, and it was almost 20 of them, who sent a letter to Canada saying, you know, it's time you guys ponied up to the NATO bar on the commitment you made to give 2% of your GDP to defense spending. You're not doing that. I think the latest figure is around 1.7. And Canada's saying we can't go any higher. Well, interesting that this U.S. group of senators, it's not the first time we've heard from the U.S. about this issue,

but by Bartosan group of senators, basically telling Canada, come on, you committed to doing this. This is a big year for NATO. There's threats out there, and we want to see these commitments met. What do we make of that? Chantal? It's an interesting move, but it's part of a more concerted campaign that's been ongoing on the part of the current u.s administration uh to to have canada spend more uh on defense and meet that

commitment not the first time that it comes up and it keeps coming back and it will keep coming back what i found fascinating was that even as I was listening to some of the conservative spokespeople say how embarrassing it was that we received this letter, I did not hear the second part of the sentence, which would have been, but once we are in government, we will be meeting that target, set by Stephen Harper, but not met, and then reset by Justin Trudeau and not met. And I think part of the quandary looking at Canada from the capital is that we have not had elections where promoting more defense spending has been a winner. And despite the current world environment, there is no sense that there is a party that thinks that it will get very far by championing a significant increase to get to 2% in defense spending, especially since it then begs the next question, well, if you're going to do that and you're Pierre Poilievre and you have promised that you will cut a dollar for every new dollar spent, how much will you cut where? And this is where domestic politics and domestic interests collide with geopolitical realities in a way that

in a pre-election year is probably not conducive to a big breakthrough for those pushing Canada. Bruce? Yeah, I think it was really significant in the sense that this is a quarter of the U.S. Senate roughly signing a letter expressing in fairly strong terms an expectation that Canada would change our national policy approach. That's different in kind, really, from Donald Trump waving his arms about and yelling about everybody must pony up. And so in that sense, it's a more legitimized and institutionalized U.S. expectation. And so we can't sort of treat it as though this is really just a byproduct of this one guy who keeps on kind of coming back to these same themes and he's a bit wild or maybe more than a bit wild. So I think we need to think of it as being a more persistent and important bilateral issue. It's a multilateral issue as

well. But I think with the U.S. deciding to put this letter or these U.S. senators deciding to put this letter, part of what's happening is they've been putting through big spending bills to support Ukraine. They see their own fiscal situation and don't like where they're at. So there's a sense of urgency and forced choice for a lot of American politicians around defense spending now that wasn't there, say, five years ago. find themselves in, especially with the amount of spending in the last budget and the evidence that there's not really much room to tax people without them rising up in opposition to that. What exactly can the Canadian government do to answer this letter when the letter basically says, look, our other NATO allies, they're not all meeting that target, but they all have plans to, and Canada doesn't. That was the distinction that I think they were drawing in that letter. So if I were Pierre Pauliev, I would feel as though I need to develop

a plan for meeting that. Now, what the timetable is and how you're going to pay for it, to Chantal's point, those are complexities. But I would expect that that's what the Conservatives will do. And then I think that it puts the onus on the Liberals to say, are we going to look more and more like, if not free riders, then cheap riders in the global defense coalition that we participate in that's called NATO. Okay. That will wrap up that conversation.

I've got a couple of minutes left, and I actually have an announcement to make. As you both will know, I've been wrong at every step of the way on my assumptions about what Justin Trudeau was going to do ever since the last election. So you're going to pick the other side. So you're going to have to write. I now have a new position. I have my,

I have my latest new position, my latest new position based on everything I've read, everything I've seen, everything I've heard from him is that he is not going anywhere. He's staying and he's going to run in the next election. Come hell or high water, he's going for broke. And broke may be what ends up happening to his party, but that's my new position.

And if it's as accurate as all my old positions, then obviously he'll be stepping down next week. We've gone from, he's going to be gone at the end of the year, which was some years ago, to there's no way he's staying, to he's staying. So congratulations, you will have been right on one of those. That's right. We may go back to he'll be gone by the end of the year one.

If he leaves, you can say, I predicted it three years ago. There will always be that clip that you can use. That's right. I have isolated all the possible clips now, and I will use the appropriate one at the right time. Yes. I had a colleague who used to say there will be a snap election and then he would write there will not be one.

And I would think, well, great, you've been right, whatever happens. Can you tell that I'm not about to even go there? We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Listen, thank you for the conversation. And you're right.

We will see on a lot of fronts. A good conversation today. Lots there was to talk about as we edge closer to summer. Another month away. Thanks to Chantel. Thanks to Bruce. And next week, monday of course uh jenna stein will be here on the middle east situation and ukraine and russia tuesday the new book on pierre polyev

the author will join us so in the last couple of weeks we've had one of the new trudeau books and we'll have one of the new Polyev books. That's to talk about next week. All right. Thank you both once again. Uh, and thank you to our audience for listening. We will,

uh, we'll see you again in seven days on good talk and we'll see you on Monday for, um, the bridge. Bye for now. All right. Take bridge. Bye for now. All right. Take care.

Bye.