The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Where Are Canada's Friends? Why the Silence?

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

While Canada is being beaten up & its sovereignty questioned by Trump,  what are our friends and allies saying? 

Are you ready for Good Talk? Of course you are. Coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle Hebert and Rob Russo. It's your Good Talk Friday, and as always, lots to talk about, especially on the main issue, which of course is this relationship between Canada and the United States around some of the things that Donald Trump wants to do on tariffs and 51st State and you name it. It's certainly got Canadians talking, it's got Canadians worried, it's got Canadians angry, and today we're going to try and bring you the latest on some of this. I want to start, and then Rob, you can start me on this. I want to start with two quotes from Donald Trump,

two very short quotes. One, Trump on Canada, it is. Canada has been very abusive of the United States for many years. We're not well treated by Canada. And then Donald Trump on Russia. We each, this is following his conversation with Putin yesterday or the day before, we each talked about the strengths of our respective nations and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. What does that tell us about our situation right now? Rob, you start.

Well, I think it tells us that, like Alice, we are down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. created by the United States following the Allied victory in Europe over the Nazis in 1945, that rules-based order that kept the peace for three or four generations, for our generations, our kids' generations, our grandkids' generations, that rules-based order that allowed for prosperity and security for all countries who followed the U.S. into that rules-based order for 80 years, that's over. That is over. Russia, China, and now the United States under Donald Trump, willing to not just outline spheres of influence, but carve up portions of the globe and offer protection, but in terms of transactional protection. In other words, you want you want terror free access. You want us to defend you, as what Trump is saying to Canada. You're going to have to join the United States. Ukraine, you want our help in taking on the guy who rumbled into your own countries, bombed your hospitals. You're going to have to give us your rare earth minerals. So we're seeing the beginning of the dismantling of that rules-based order. I fear that we're going to see the collapse in Kananaskis at the G7 that's being held in Canada in June. And we may see, we may begin to

hear, based on what Donald Trump is saying, he's already saying Russia should come in. If Canada is the 51st state in his mind, how long before he says Canada shouldn't be in the G7 and Russia should be in? That's what we're facing. We will see the collapse in full frontal absurdity at Kananaskis. Chantal, what do you make of that? I don't disagree with any of that, but I'm going to go for the optimistic take on this. For one, I don't believe American civil society is quite where Russian civil society has had to be or Chinese civil society.

There is still enough elements of a democratic society in the United States for pushback to eventually gel into something more serious. And as you know, people who have lived in a democracy for almost forever, which is the case of the United States, do not suddenly stop being citizens who believe that they have rights and that they have expectations of their own government that go beyond the nationalistic, imperialistic language that is being used these days. Second, Rob is right about the post-World War world order being challenged in a major way by the current U.S. administration.

But World War I and World War II may have been, in the end, one with American participation, but there were other people fighting who held that fort for three or four years. So the world is not a defenseless place where America stands as the winner-take-all participant. The last few wars, and I'm curious, when I hear President Trump talk about Gaza and building hotels there and emptying out the place, I'm reminded that they seem to have forgotten that the last few wars that America got into,

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, were not military success and they were not fought on the ground of sophisticated opposing armies. The same can be said about Russia and Ukraine. So there's this outlessness sense out there, with good reason, because it's focused on leadership, but it's also focused on language and the kind of things that Donald Trump has been throwing around. But at some point, you know, the talking will have to turn into walking.

So I'm curious to see the Trump administration hold Greenland, Canada, the Gaza Strip, and the Panama Canal. And American public opinion saying this is great. We're on side with this. I'm not saying it's going to be easy. I agree about the G7. There are voices in this country that are calling for Canada to tell President Trump to stay home. I don't believe that's going to happen. I also see the invitation to Russia to join. It may be that if that happens, it's going to turn into a G2 summit taking place, maybe not in Canada, because I don't believe that other members of the G7, especially the Europeans, are about to say, great, let's have Putin at the table in the current circumstances. But at some point, citizens, be they in the U.S. or elsewhere, have to take responsibility for standing firm on the principles of that so-called world order. It cannot be just something that is

dictated by someone in the White House who just got elected for four years and can be taken down while everyone watches and says, oh, this is terrible. There are things and principles that people can stand behind. Of course, if everybody goes home by saying, this is the end of that, it will happen. Well, let me pick up on that, because the issue is those other countries. What are they saying? Why are they being silent when one of their allies is under attack? I mean, I hear you on Greenland, I hear you on Panama, but Canada is a NATO ally. Canada is kind of at the forefront of those other countries,

and here he is openly saying, he's attacking our sovereignty. He's basically... Yeah, well, we have not been... By the way, we have not been attacked. And if I were in Europe and I were a European leader, I would worry more about Ukraine and what he's saying about Ukraine and Russia than as war of words on Canada. Maybe somehow our allies assume that we are tough enough to respond to a war of words.

Maybe. Because that is what it is. Okay, well, let me use your European comparison. I mean, let's say one of the European countries started talking about absorbing either all or part of their neighbor. They would be saying something about that. All of them would be saying something about it. But, you know, I go back to what Rob said, I don't know, three, four weeks ago,

where he said, what I'll be watching for is what are our friends saying? What are they saying about what's happening? Yeah, well, I'm not. So you have to ask Rob, because I'm not saying, I didn't say what I'll be watching for. No, no, no. They seem to have more than enough on their plate that is more serious than what Donald Trump muses about. Okay. Fine.

Yeah, we have not been attacked. U.S. forces haven't been massed on. You know what I was talking about. I was talking about attack. Yeah. But the reality is that we have been attacked economically, that as a result of what he's saying and what he continues to say about Canada, about our sovereignty, there is there are billions and billions and billions of dollars that remain on the sideline and will remain on the sideline. And whether or not the tariffs are applied, Canada's economy, we can hear the gears seizing up, grinding to a halt. Investment is not being made at the same rate as before. Governor of the Bank of Canada said that earlier this week. It's already having a material impact. He said that he was going to launch an economic war. The war has begun. Shots are being fired constantly. We're paying a price. As to where our allies are, I think they were, I think, standing firmly in silence behind us and using us perhaps for cover,

because now he has put the European allies on the tariff firing line with his notion of what he calls reciprocal tariffs. Now, he's not entirely wrong there. OK, the United States allows foreign automobiles to come into the U.S. with a 2.5% tariff, whereas they face, I think, a 10% tariff, at least in Europe, and higher tariffs in places like Japan. So they knew that Canada and Mexico were, effect the chickens that were being killed in order to scare the monkeys. They were trying to find out if they were chickens or if they were monkeys. Were they being scared? Whereas a lot of people might think the monkey is really,

they're trying to send a message to China. But in the meantime, there's a lot of dead chickens starting to pile up. And that's who we were. So they were silent that way, saying all kinds of things. You talk to diplomats in Ottawa, lots of things murmuring about how crazy Trump is, but not saying anything publicly because they knew they were next. We will find out. We will find out at Kananaskis whether or not they support Canada. Canada, in many ways, shouldn't be in the G7 if you go by the seven largest economies in the world. We're not there. I think we're number 10. And the only reason we got in was because Helmut Schmidt, I believe, was a very good friend of Pierre Trudeau and thought that the Europeans needed a counterweight to the dominance of the United States of the organization. And they wanted Canada to come in because they thought that Mr. Trudeau was a like-minded leader. But we gained a great deal

of benefit from being part of the G7. We got a great deal of influence out of that. I thought the United States gained something out of it. When you have, you know, a large area of the world that you're looking for, you want your backyard to be okay, to be a place of peace. And you want a good fence with your neighbor there. But you want that backyard to be tranquil. And we were a very good backyard for Canada. We have let our responsibilities slip. But, you know, yes, Chantal is right. The foreign adventures, the United States wars since 1965 in Vietnam have gone badly. But since 1965, in effect, the United States has begun withdrawing from its role as the guarantor of peace and security because of the bad experience in Vietnam, accelerated through the second Gulf War, and then another taste of it in Afghanistan. There's a great deal of support for the United States doing what Donald Trump is bringing to a close. And it happened through Obama,

withdrawing from its role. What I'm not sure there's a great deal of support for is the United States doing what he said he was going to do in his inaugural address, expanding its territory beyond the realm of its own borders, whether by military force or economic force to in effect bully, intimidate, if not subjugate its neighbors and its allies. But economic wars like real wars have a cost. In real wars, they're counted in body bags. But the body bags are on both sides, ask the Russians. In an economic war, the economic body bag will not just be Canadian body bags or European body bags. They will take the shape of American consumer body bags. So you can't have a war without casualties. I don't think that the Americans who supported Donald Trump and the half of them that did not signed up for an economic war that sees them lose buying power, lose their, they have to pay more for just about everything, which is where this is going.

So at some point, I understand the, why are our friends not saying this or that? Our friends maybe are more sophisticated than us in this, that they know what a four-year period means. It basically means do not squander your ammunition and keep your powder dry during the first four months, because if you can't do that, you're going to be dead before the second year is up. Let me throw this old quote back. This is a couple of hundred years old.

But it's interesting this time. And I hear what you're saying, Chantal. I also hear what Rob's saying. But this quote, Samuel Johnson in the 1700s, in the end we'll remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. We'll see whether that plays out on this. It's four years.

Yeah. We're in month two. Well, four years can establish a lot of things. Yes, but in four years... As we've watched by some of the successive American administrations that have changed party lines, sometimes they don't change what was instituted in the time before. No, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if you're a good general, you wait for the enemy to put all his soldiers on the field before you engage. You don't put yours out, especially if you've got less.

On month two of four times 12, 48 months. This battle, whatever it is, will not be won or lost by July 1st. It's a long-sending operation. That's for sure. And you shouldn't squander your capacity for impact. What words in the second month? It's not been a month since the inauguration, people. Which tells you the breakneck speed at which he's going.

But that's okay. He doesn't have time on his side. That's why he figures he can't. But that's okay. But the more France he opens, the more he's going to have to then protect them. You want him, if he's going to do that, you want him to do it in a chaotic way. You don't want him to have focus. True enough. And I do agree that we have to sort of, we have to remain cool.

But in the meantime, there is a cost. Chantal and I were both at a conference with automobile dealers a couple of days ago in Toronto, and they are feeling the cost. They are worried. They were looking for some sort of direction from CEOs. And they got some from Detroit where it was very unusual to hear the CEO of Ford basically say that that Trump's tariffs, particularly on Canada and Mexico, were going to blow a hole into the North American auto industry. So there is a cost. I believe there could be a cost. particularly on Canada and Mexico, we're going to blow a hole into the North American auto industry. So there is a cost. I believe there could be a cost. And up until now, we've been very lucky to our national unity.

You know, he says he wants Canada to be a state. I don't believe he really wants all of Canada. He doesn't. But would he take the energy producing areas of the country? I mean, he wants he wants to make Ontario impoverished by getting rid of what's left of its auto industry. But would he take the energy? Yeah, he probably would, where there are a lot of conservative voters. And if he could do that, if he could grind us down, he'll do it. But I don't buy the assumption that conservative voters are by necessity people who will want. I understand that the people who want the minority that are interested tend to be conservatives. But I do not believe Albertans as a whole or conservative voters as a whole or people who wake up in the morning dreaming to be Americans.

I don't see that. I agree. And it's actually quite heartening to see the reaction. Anybody who watched the Canada-Sweden hockey game the other night, listening to 20,000 people in the Bell Centre in Montreal all drown out the anthem singer because every single person was singing at the top of their lungs. The bilingual version of Oh Canada was,

was something I said last week, there's something going on. If you thought that was something, wait till tomorrow night when it's Canada versus the U S it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in, in the arena. Okay. We're going to take our first break.

I will given Chantal is in such a feisty mood today, I will not, I will not raise the issue of why hasn't King Charles spoken out on this? Leave the poor man alone. This is carrying Keir Starmer's water. Who's trying to cozy up to Trump as well. Yeah. Okay, we're going to take our break on that royal note

with Chantel defending the king. Leave him alone. We saw that. I defend the lack of thought. Okay. We'll be back. Are Okay. We'll be back. We'll be back right after this. All right.

You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, which, of course, is Good Talk with Chantelle Hebert and Rob Russo. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us. Okay, let's deal with the political landscape here at home, exclusively at home now. Much of it having changed, if not all of it having changed, as a result of this issue with the United States. We have witnessed poll after poll after poll, a tightening of the race,

which looked like a blowout just a few weeks ago. Now it looks much more competitive between the Conservatives and the Liberals. How worried are the Conservatives? Chantal. Well, as a Conservative friend pointed out to me, you do not endeavor to fill the Rogers Centre, probably the largest venue in the national capital, with 5,000 people on a wintry February day, that's tomorrow,

when you're not worried. It is a tremendous logistical effort to bring 5,000 people together, especially when many of them will come from out of town, because there is today, Friday, a national caucus meeting, not terribly popular with everyone, by the way, because it is Valentine's Day. You tend to want to be home, but you don't wage that kind of effort unless you need some event that the media, and in this case, the press gallery,

because it's Ottawa, will have to cover, cannot ignore, unless you really want to get yourself back in the frame and possibly pivot to a speech that brings you back in the conversation. Pierre Poilier has been trying to get back in the conversation over the US, the Canada-US file, which has become at this point the only topic of conversation. But he's been doing it in bits and pieces in places that are certainly nice venues, probably more so in summer, like Iqaluit or Winnipeg, also Earhart. But that doesn't get you the kind of attention that you get

if you hold a major rally in the national capital and people who cover politics on a daily basis have to cover your speech. So I believe that tomorrow's speech by Mr. Poirier will be the beginning of a new chapter in the pre-election alignment. I don't know what he's going to say. I know some of the things he tried did not work as well as he might have hoped outside his base. Going after fentanyl sellers with jail terms that go on for life came across as saying

Donald Trump is right. We have a major fentanyl problem, saying that he would cut foreign aid to pay for the northern defense of Canada and the Arctic. One, it doesn't measure up, but coming on the heels of the United States, walking away from international aid, looked like Mr. Poirier was cloning what had been happening in the US. So we'll see what the speech is like. But I did notice that for the first time in two years,

I got a few press releases detailing what Mr. Poirier had to say that didn't really contain many attacks on the liberals. And that in itself is a bit of a shift. I think the conservatives are coming to the conclusion that they will have to win this on Mr. Poiliev's own merits, and not just on whatever faults the liberals may have accumulated over the past decade. It doesn't seem to be trotting out the Canada is broken line anymore, instead wrapping himself in the patriotism. Right. When your slogan for the last couple of years has been Canada is broken, and the entire country is mobilizing

to say Canada is worth fighting for, and we are prepared to fight for it, and one of your esteemed predecessors as Conservative leader and the last Conservative Prime Minister is saying I would be prepared to impoverish Canadians in order to protect the sovereignty and independence of Canada in the face of a US threat and winning plaudits for it. Winning plaudits for saying that he'd be prepared for us to eat dinner gruel for a while. What does he really mean by that? On that Stephen Harper we're talking talking about when he says that,

what is he saying? Well, what he means is that we are all going to have to accept a certain degree of economic pain. And Mr. Harper is saying that pain is going to, it could become acute, but it's worth the price of our freedom. It's worth the price of our independence. It's worth the price of our identity that Canada is worth fighting for. And even Mr. Poiliev in his changing of message, I mean, just in the last 15 years or so, we've had, because people's attention spans aren't what they used to be. You look at the lectern, they always try to have a snappy message on the lectern. The message on the lectern in front of Mr. Poitier has always been, for the last year or so, axe the tax. The message on the lectern in the last couple of weeks has been Canada first. How is he ending a lot of his speeches? Canada first, Canada last, Canada always. No matter what you say, Peter,

I did not cover the last election where that was a slogan. That was in the 1911, I think, Wilfrid Laurier. It was a good one. A liberal saint. He's reached into the magic bag of a liberal saint and come up with the slogan to end his speeches that way, that is telling us again that the ground, there's been a seismic shift, a tectonic shift in the political plates underneath the ground in Canada. And it's a very, very sort of clarion signal that he's had to change his message. I think it's been more than 10 days now since he talked about the border. And I was always mystified by it.

And I did get into some disagreements and arguments with some of my conservative friends who thought that we needed to do and show more about the border, because that was what was going to resolve our dispute with Mr. Trump. It was confirmed this week in some reporting by our national security agencies that Canada and the U.S., there is a problem at the border. It's the U.S. that's the problem, that the United States is a net exporter of drugs, a net exporter of guns, a net exporter of crime, and a net exporter of migrants northward. They're the problem. They're the problem. Do we need to get our own house in order? Of course we do. Do we have a fentanyl problem? Yes, we do. And do we want to resolve the tragedy that is ravaging, you know, thousands of families across Canada. Yes, we do.

But the problem is south of the border. And I keep hearing the thundering baritone of Derek Burney saying, who is telling the Americans to look after their own interests? What is Canada's interest in hardening the border? Why aren't we asking them to do something about what's coming northwards? And are we? I mean, obviously, we're not hearing that coming out of the mouths of any of the ministers in public. But do you think they're doing it in the various meetings

that they're having? I'm convinced that they are. But at some point, what we're not really saying is by looking like we're going to what is expected to shore up our border, we are also doing it in our own self-interest. Because Rob is right. And it stands in the case of migrants, for instance, it stands to become a bigger issue. Remember Roxham Road and all those migrants pouring into Quebec

via irregular ways into the country. But I think the reason they're not pushing it harder is they don't want nobody, not the conservatives, not the liberals, want to have a discussion about the safe third country agreement between Canada and the US. And the notion that maybe the US is no longer a safe country where you can send migrants back. And that opens up an entire new can of worms. So there are discussions that we are not trying to have, or at least at this point. in Trump land dominated when, if and when there is a new, well, when the new leader of the Liberal Party is chosen. Seems obvious to me also that we should resolve our election issue sooner rather than later and have a government that has a fresh mandate from voters. I think anyone we elect will have a clear mandate from voters to fight back

on the tariff war front. But we need someone who's not doing this with one hand tied behind his or her back because we are on the verge of an election campaign. What we don't know is whether by March 10, it will be necessary to bring Parliament back to pass some measures to help selected industries or individuals. At the speed we were talking earlier about, it's not been a month since the inauguration. Well, at this rate, who knows what the environment will be like on March 10th when the new liberal leader has been selected. But the Conservatives, I think, need to work on something that they haven't since Mr. Poirier has become leader, and that is present Canadians with a team that is sturdy enough

to meet this challenge. And at this point, I am not saying there are not people in caucus who are talented or who could be up to some of the heavy lifting. I'm saying we haven't seen anything of them, except to parrot Mr. Poiliev's lines in the House of Commons. That needs to change. And I'm not sure that they get the message. I got this news release yesterday, brand new campaign from the Conservatives. It's all about Mr. Poiliev's wife. I have nothing against Mr. Poiliev's wife, but she does not qualify as his finance minister or foreign affairs minister in the next government. And I wish her a happy life, but it does very little for voters who are thinking about the

challenges that are going to face the next government. Okay, this goes back to my original question in this segment, because Chantelle, you have been mentioning this lack of a team approach from the Conservatives for a couple of weeks now right here on the program. But as you say, it hasn't happened, or at least it certainly hasn't happened yet. It leads to this question of how nervous are they? I mean, what are you hearing from the ground level of the Conservative Party and the Conservatives you talk to? Are they, you know, they've been 100% obedient of Pierre Polyev since he was elected. Are they antsy right now, Rob? Well, it is unusual that they're going to have a caucus meeting in the middle of a long winter

break. I think that that's reflective of some of the unease that's out there. They are getting a lot of questions from people outside the OLO wondering what the plan is for dealing with what is clearly an erosion of their support for now. There are questions about candidate recruitment that a lot of people are asking. And look, I have my own unofficial kind of focus group. I talk to people in Lethbridge who are conservatives and some people in Elmont, Ontario, outside of Ottawa who are Conservative. And the other concern is that now that Mr. Trudeau is leaving, that Mr. Poiliev's tendency to go for the club when the rapier would do

is a handicap. And they want to know what is going to happen with that. When people are looking for security, when they are looking for somebody who's going to give them a plan to deal with what are difficult times, is Mr. Poilev's penchant for the jugular, is that something that they want from their leader right now, particularly when it comes to a partisan pension for the jugular as opposed to a pension for the jugular when it comes to defending Canada's interests?

There is some nervousness about that, that the demeanor of Mr. Poiliev, which hasn't been a handicap to him for two years. It hasn't. But I think conservatives are in essence saying nobody cared if he was relentlessly partisan when Justin Trudeau was there. Now that there are other issues that are more serious, that are more pressing, that will compel Canadians to make sacrifices. This is a man who's campaigned very, very adroitly, Pierre Poiliev, in identifying how difficult it's been for Canadians to get ahead, younger Canadians, working class Canadians to get ahead.

How is he going to move into a campaign era where we are going to have to ask people to sacrifice, perhaps? Is he capable of doing that? After telling people you've sacrificed too much, you've been left behind, is he going to be able to tell people you need to sacrifice some more now? I don't believe that Stephen Harper's intervention, as public as it quickly was, was divorced from the ongoing dynamics in the conservative movement. What did Stephen Harper say? You have to stop telling people that all will be okay and it's all the liberals' fault. We are in something that is more serious. What was he telling

basically Pierre Poiliev? Yes, there is a significant constituency within your movement that thinks Trump is great and the 51st state idea is good. You must disregard that. You cannot cater to both anymore. It's the expression in French is to try to sauver la chèvre et le chou, the cabbage and the goat. You can't have both. So the goat needs to be eating that cabbage if you're going to win the election. And it's complicated. We've talked about, you know, the free trade election and how free trade came to dominate the entire campaign. But the dynamics were different. In the free trade election, you had the liberals against, warning against this agreement, and the conservatives selling this agreement to the country. In the next campaign, you will have the two major parties vying for who has the more efficient plan to deal with Donald Trump. That's

different. It's harder because you can't be poking holes in what the government is doing as leader of the opposition in the current climate. And I think the conservatives recently gave up hope that we could settle this with the border and fentanyl and that they could go in the campaign saying, see, we wouldn't have had all this trouble if Justin Trudeau had been up to the job and the liberals had done what needed to be done in time, I think they now have given up on this faint hope.

But how do you position yourself? This is not a great time to be the leader of the official opposition. Regardless of who you are, it's a really, really tough time. It's as bad as during the pandemic, the early stages of the pandemic. And the election campaign is going to take place in that environment. So I'm curious to see how that happens. And the other thing I'm curious about, and I'm sure they're happy that we have so far not mentioned them, is what happens to the NDP. Because what I see is this movement of the New Democrats traditionally going for

a place that stands to oppose two things, Trump and Pierre Poiliev, and that at this point is looking like the Liberal Party under a different leader. You know, I actually was going to raise that. I was going to save it until a little bit later. But let me do it now. I don't know whether you noticed last night, you know, in the Ontario provincial election,

there was an interesting move last night on the part of an NDP candidate in one of the Toronto ridings who decided, you know what? I can't win here. I'm a third place at best. I'm going to drop out, and I'm in effect going to support the Liberal against the Conservative because we have to stop the Conservatives, was her view. Now, you don't see that happen often in the middle of a campaign, but she did it just in time to have her name withdrawn from the ballot. And you wonder, you look at that and you go, at the same time you're looking at polls that are showing

a diminishing NDP vote on the federal side as a result of everything that's been going on these last few weeks, whether that's going to be the beginning of something, whether you could see that play out again elsewhere. Yeah, there's been one conservative majority government in the last 30 years. And when did it happen? It happened in 2011. And what was necessary for that to happen? You had to have NDP be very, very robust. That was the year 2011, Stephen Harper won a majority government and Jack Layton formed the official opposition with what was called the orange wave. In order for conservatives

to finish first in a lot of ridings, there have to be tight three-way races that allow the conservatives to come up the middle and win ridings they normally wouldn't win with 33, 34 percent. And so there are a lot of nervous conservatives when they see what's happening right now and what's happening. There are, in effect, New Democrats nationally doing what you saw in that riding in Ontario. They're saying, we do not want Mr. Poiliev to be the leader, so we are going to go to Mark Carney and the Liberals. He, Mr. Carney, is eating more of the NDP's lunch than he's eating of the Conservatives' lunch. And that's been the recipe for Liberal majorities for almost three quarters of Canada's history, modern history, political history.

And that's rattling for Conservatives. And I think it's got to be disconcerting for New Democrats as well. And it's one of the reasons why I think we saw Jennifer Howard, the campaign manager for Mr. Singh, telling the Democrats to get ready, that they believe if Mark Carney is the leader, and they think that he will be, that they need to get ready for a very quick election shortly after the leader is crowned in three weeks, and to start nominating candidates. I think they've nominated about a third, a little bit more than a third of their candidates, but let's get going. Let's get ready because this is going to

happen. And she didn't say we're in trouble, but she's trying to crack a whip a little bit. If you can't read, a grade five kid could read you're in trouble looking at any of the polls. To your question, I think by and large, with few exceptions, the NDP is too weak for it to be worth the liberals' while to hope that their candidates decide to leave before the end of the campaign, so there are no splits. I watched, like all of you, Mr. Singh tear up 22 times and metamorphically this agreement with the liberals that goes back to last fall. I don't understand why only one third of the ridings have candidates at this point for the NDP.

If you are so ready for an election that you want to end your relationship with the liberals that is preserving you for an election, wouldn't you be on full election footing by now? Would you really need to be told on February 10th that there might be an election called in about a month and suddenly you need candidates? I think the larger fear for the NDP is watching, for instance, I was watching this trade council that is supporting the prime minister at this point in the Canada-US file, and there was a photo op, and they were all sitting behind Mr. Trudeau, and there was Brian Topp, a major strategist of the NDP,

an architect of Mr. Leighton's Orange Wave. And there was Rachel Notley, the NDP premier of Alberta, who just recently left the provincial seat, seen as leader of a rather strong opposition NDP in that province. And I was thinking, this is kind of dangerous. This isn't scared, spooked NDP voters going to the liberals. It's the brains of the NDP movement who are standing behind Justin Trudeau in the name of the flag, which brought me to remind myself that in Quebec,

the biggest, loudest cheerleader for Mark Carney is called Thomas Malkier, who was a leading architect of that orange wave. So the message, by body language at least, is coming from people who have brought the NDP to success in the past. And they're not just doing it because they don't like Pierre Poilievre. They're also doing it because they believe we are in a very special moment in the country's history. And also because I think they don't find at this point that Mark Carney is offensive as a candidate versus Pierre Poilievre. Okay, we're going to leave it at that and grab our final break.

You know, I do want to touch on the dirty dozen plus one going to Washington in the last few days and what that actually really looked like. I thought it was kind of pathetic, but that's just me. Nevertheless, we'll, we'll pick that up when we come back right after this. And welcome back final segment of a good talk for this week. Chantel and Rob are here. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Glad to have you with us. Okay, so the 13 First Ministers, that's the provincial premiers and the territorial leaders, went to Washington this past week and trotted around up on Capitol Hill, at the embassy, and at the White House. They finally got to the White House as well.

Their target, of course, is Donald Trump. They never got to meet Donald Trump. In fact, I think the closest they got to Donald Trump was, I can't even remember the guy's name, basically a nobody, an assistant deputy, something or other, who talked to them and listened to their concerns about everything from the 51st state to tariffs. Was that trip a bust or did anything really happen there of consequence?

It just looked like bended knee stuff to me. I don't know. Rob, what was your take? Well, I'm going to give them their due initially, okay? I was eight years in Washington. And the number of provincial premiers who got past the West Gate of the White House to go into the White House during my eight years there, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times. I don't remember it happening. So they got past the gate.

They got into the West Wing. And they might not have met with senior staffers. But you know what? Like any time you can get into the White House and talk to people who will be forced then to write a report and send it to Katie Wiles, who's, or Susie Wiles, the leader of, or the chief of staff to Donald Trump and have her report something to Trump. It looks like an achievement and it is on the face of it. But- You could have just passed a note to the tour guide and, you know. Right.

No more tours, unfortunately, since 9-11. They kind of changed the tours that way. So you take that moment and you accept that you spent 85 grand U.S. And if you're Doug Ford in particular and you're in the middle of a campaign, it might not be a bad spending of eight. You know, you could probably do worse for your hundred and twenty thousand Canadian in terms of a campaign moment if you're Doug Ford. But if you're going to take the modesty of that was, you can say all you want, but that's not going to change President Trump's mind about where he sees Canada's future, which is as part of the United States. I think the real meeting that got a lot less attention that we all should

have paid more attention to was the meeting between Dominic Leblanc and Mr. Lutnick, who was the Secretary of Commerce, who, even though I don't think he's confirmed yet, is really, along with Peter Navarro, playing a huge, huge role in remaking the world, the rules-based world order we were talking about before. That was the real important meeting. I don't think it was a complete failure or an embarrassment.

I think it was an achievement to get through the gate. But let's be modest about what that is, and let's accept the brushback we got from the White House when we came out. Okay. Chantal, you get the final word. I thought it was a fairly bad political theater, and it distracted from the more serious business that was going on between the Minister of Finance and vis-à-vis that actually does have the ear of the president. If I understand Rob adequately, he would give the Oscar for best supporting actors to the premiers who acted as a backdrop to Premier Ford's re-election campaign.

Basically, that $85,000 was well invested in a re- economic and otherwise, showed up together in Ottawa on a major issue on Parliament Hill. And someone said, you can go to the prime minister's office. And there they were met with the press secretary and some other staffer. It would be a major insult. It's better not to let them in or not to have them come into the building than have them met by two staffers who afterwards issue a message to say, been there, done that, nice people, but we don't care what they had to say,

which is basically what happened to them. So if that's going to be the response, maybe you do not want to court that response by going in the White House. But they got nice selfies, I'm sure, out of it. Yeah, and it does reflect as well the reality that premiers are playing, I believe, not just an extraordinary role, but a role that, again, doesn't benefit the unity of Canada. I understand that they all believe in Canada. I understand that they don't want to be part of the 51st state.

But I say over and over and over again that they represent regional interests, their own interests. It was a glaring example of the void we have at the top, whereby the prime minister of Canada has trouble getting a phone call, let alone an invitation to the White House. Of course, that's undermined by the meeting that Dominique Leblanc held with his vis-a-vis. If we didn't have, if we had a leaderless government that is absent, Mr. Leblanc wouldn't have been in Washington meeting an actual real player. So Mr. Trudeau was asked this week if he would like to meet with the president at the White House, and he said he would. The invitation has yet to be issued. Well, that's okay, I think, for Mark Carney and Christopher Hill, and they both feel that if anyone's going to be meeting with Donald Trump, it can wait a few weeks. Yeah. Okay. I mean, you know, I listen to all this and I go, my God,

no wonder Canadians are worried and they're angry. As they should. As they should be, but they're also looking for some sign. The LeBlanc meeting, good for him. I'd like to know what happened in real terms and whether it's accomplishing anything. There's no doubt LeBlanc has been at the head of this file for the past month. He's been doing lots of meetings, whether they're virtual or whether in real time. There's an air bridge, Peter. It is constant.

There are cabinet ministers going down there on an air bridge every single day. And I do think they're making yards, but the United States has got a bunch of doomsday clocks going. You know all those James Bond movies that always, yeah, that's what's going on. They've set doomsday clocks. Yeah, well, define doomsday because, once again, four years people. So, and it's not a month. Okay. Maybe save the vocabulary all right we're gonna leave it at that another great conversation thanks to you both rob russo chantilly bear we'll be back in seven days take care of yourselves