The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Why Not Get A Risk Assessment For A U.S. Invasion?

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

The Prime Minister drops a news nugget in an interview in New York -- and, not surprisingly, it makes headlines. How surprised should we be that he's asked for a risk assessment on US troops crossing into Canada? 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 lo there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Chantelle-A-Barre, Bruce Anderson. It's your Good Talk Friday. And we have, as always, lots to talk about. So let's see how much we can get through this time round. You know, I've been following Mark Carney for a while, maybe the last 10 years, different times in different situations. I've always assumed that he's very careful about.

what he says and how he answers questions. Now, I have no reason to believe he doesn't think through things before he says them. So I was wondering, maybe Bruce, you can start us off. What he might have been thinking when he decided to answer that question? I know you don't know what he thinks. Well. But what do you assume would have been the case when he decided to answer that question from the six New York Times reporters?

about the possibility of, you know, American troops entering Canada? Well, I think through the whole interview, what he was doing was giving a, you know, a pretty candid explanation of how he, as Canada's leader, was thinking through the various impacts of how Trump has, how President Trump has been dealing with Canada. So for me, that one question wasn't as remarkable, I think, as some of the news coverage. suggests, his answer was consistent with the clarity that he gave on a variety of other issues. He talked about, you know, one that he used the expression. I think once you see something, you can't unsee it. And he was talking about the nature of the relationship that President Trump had started with Canada.

He talked about defense and security arrangements. He was fairly candid about some of those basically needing to have a second look. talked about we're going to diversify away from Starlink. He talked about will deepen economic integration with China, but not security integration. I thought that what he said about having examined the extreme tail risk of military action was, I guess I understand why it was newsworthy, but I don't think it was particularly newsworthy to me anyway, that somebody who's got that instinct for risk measurement and risk management that he does and that kind of disciplined approach to how to think through the big public policy problems,

it didn't surprise me that there had been some consideration of that. I would have been surprised if there hadn't been before, to be honest. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there have been before. I mean, I seem to recall years ago hearing about, and I mean years ago, 10 or 50, 20 years ago, that there was, there's always been a kind of book that's available to governments on what to do in the case of a U.S. invasion. As far as far as that seemed, it's just that in these days, in these times, it's quite a, it's quite something to talk about and to choose to answer that question.

I don't know. Chantelle, where are you on it? Well, it has crossed the minds of many Canadians. over the past year and a half, I suspect including years based on questions from past good talk shows. So the prime minister didn't raise the issue. He was asked. So I tried to think, you know, what are the choices of answers? I don't want to get into that is one answer, which basically means, yes, we did. Start thinking along those lines. So draw the conclusion. The other answer is it never crossed my mind.

That's a lie. So it's not a great answer. So you're kind of, you've got three answers. One is no comment, which is a confirmation. The second is I'm going to lie about this. And the third is, sure, I mean, we think that's a very extreme scenario, but it's our job to think of every scenario when someone says

he wants to annex you. So I'm with Bruce. I don't think the answer came as a huge surprise for most Canadians, and I suspect that it came as no surprise to those who keep up with the Globe and Mail, because a story in the Globe and Mail documented exactly that scenario and the conclusions that whoever was drafting contingency issues came up with. I also agree that I believe those plans always exist somewhere. I think the difference here is the Prime Minister asked that we have those plans.

What do they say? What do they suggest? Which also makes sense. So I'm a journalist. I am not going to go after a Prime Minister who answers a question and tries to keep as close to the truth as possible. I know that Mr. Carney did not dwell into the details. of what he was appraised of, but I haven't met very many people who were in shock. They may be more in shock this morning when they find that the White House response is that

no president before Donald Trump has taken as much care of Canada as he has. To protect us. Yes. He's a great protector of Canada. He's the greatest defender of women in the history of the United States. He's the greatest defender of Spanish-speaking Americans. people of color, you name it, of any other president in the history of the United States. And it's, so this would be exactly the same. He'd fit the bill on this as well. And can we agree that when Greenland was involved, Denmark had special military exercises.

Yep. So Greenland is right next door. It ends up on the same crazy maps that the current White House put out. So I think it's an interesting statement. It certainly got attention, both in the U.S. and here. And around the world. You know, it's been pissed up everyone. If I find one fault with it, it would be that I agree with Bruce's resume of what the prime minister was trying to say.

And it kind of obscured the actual real message that he was delivering with more substantial. And, you know, there is also a part of journalism that sometimes airs on the side of laziness. But to be truthful, most of what Mark Carney told the New York Times, he has been saying for a while. So the newest thing was that statement. And you try to go for new if you want people to read the rest of it. As both of you know, I'm the last person ever to be critical of journalism. So I'll remain restrained on this. But to Chantelle's point, you know, I was more interested in the way in which the prime minister talked about potash in the context of that interview.

Why? Because only a few days before, maybe a day before, President Trump had kind of revealed this whole plan that he had that he was going to buy potash from Belarus because because he was too expensive or whatever. He held that position as near as I could tell for less than three hours before people on his side of the border came to him and essentially said, I assume Belarus has no unsold potash to sell you. The U.S. government doesn't buy potash. Farmers do.

And the cost of moving potash from Belarus to farmers in Midwest America, relative to the price of Canadian potash without a tariff. It doesn't make any sense. What the prime minister did about that was he raised that issue, I think in part because he wanted those American voters who've been getting worried about whether Trump has really fought through this tariff policy. I'm putting it mildly. And especially the Midwest farmers who are up in arms

about the consequences of his tariff policy for them. He wanted them to hear him say, we can do a deal on potash. We can have a kind of a North American integrated market that supports the potash needs of Mexico and the United States and Canada because we have a great advantage in the huge supply that we have of potash.

And because we're a reliable supplier. So from my standpoint, that was a far more interesting and also very timely thing. But maybe it's because it's potash and it doesn't sound like war games or something like that. It didn't generate that kind of attention. But I think it should have. It's hard to imagine. Also, the Potash war was over by the time he showed up at the New York Times.

It did last only a few hours. And like the notion that we are going to go to war, I don't think anyone, And on this side of the border, got really excited over losing the potash market. What was a many surprising about it, though, is that the conservatives, unless I missed it, they didn't swing at this pitch the way that they do at most of them, right? I remember reading Jason Kenney and James Moore talking about how the conservatives had reacted to the potash war by saying, you see, you know, I think it was Andrew Shearer who said, it's because of the industrial carbon tax, which actually doesn't apply to Saskatchewan products.

No, but I think we should be aware now that there are the conservative adults and the conservative kids, the conservative kids led by Andrew Scheer, went with this very lame line and the adults, Scott Moore, the Premier of Saskatchewan, among others, took a different more adult direction. I think by now we are as used to that as to the crisis coming out of the White House that's like feeding a baby. Okay.

You won't have me stopping any conversation about potash. I was there in Saskatchewan covering the nationalization of the potash industry in the 1970s. You're a real prairie guy. You know, when I arrived in the Saskatchewan, I had no idea what potash was. I don't think I'd ever even heard the word before. And then suddenly here I was reporting on the, you can a massive move by the NDP government. of Alan Blakeney.

Anyway, moving on. Let me just tie the nod on that story. I wasn't criticizing Mark Carney. I wasn't challenging what he said. I was trying to understand, and I think you both gave great answers on why he might have said and phrased things the way he did.

And I take it from what Bruce said. You know, I think it underlines the state of the situation between Canada and the U.S. right now that he would even venture into that. answer in the way he did. And I have every reason to believe that conversations to take place between Canadian and U.S. military people,

which take place every day in various areas that the two countries are allied on the defense of North America, et cetera, et cetera, that those conversations these days are the way it was described to me by one, awkward they're awkward. And this is not the politicians or the bureaucrats. This is the defense officials.

And I think that's important to keep in mind. Okay. One point, because it's come up a lot this week, discussions about how Trump and the media have, you know, continued their tussle on the banning of CNN and MS Now and Politico and the court's decision on that, all that. I found it interesting, and I wonder whether you did.

And this is not, once again, this is not to suggest Mark Carney doesn't talk to the media in Canada, because he does. But to sit down with six New York Times reporters during his visit to New York and the UN, which has followed on a series of access by U.S. media to Mark Carney over the year he's being Prime Minister. Does anybody see any, not an issue with that,

but is there a similar access by Canadian media on that kind of level with the Prime Minister of Canada, and if not, should there be? First, I think any Prime Minister who would have been asked to spend an hour at the New York Times with six journalists would have accepted the invitation. I remember when I was doing the book about the referendum, how Raymond Crette, who was our ambassador in Washington,

was saying how the referendum week was the week and his tenure when suddenly Canada mattered to the U.S. media. So we do not get that level of attention usually, and we've been getting it a lot, not just in the U.S., but elsewhere, with Mark Carney. That being said, I for one totally believed that it would have been appropriate for the Prime Minister to do more than a scrum on the day after we broke off negotiations with the US.

I think I would have opted for an address on television to Canadians because this had become a huge story. and I probably believe as a fallback that there might have been an opportunity loss there of delivering a great speech in Parliament. Mark Carney has delivered great speeches to the UN, in Davos, in other venues. I don't think I can remember a speech of that caliber

that he's delivered in Canada, and please do not raise the plains of Abraham speech as a token of his great speaking skills because we're going to have a bit of an issue with that one. I also find that he should probably spend more time doing in-depth interviews with Canadian media and that he has not been doing a lot of those.

And I think that should be remedied because sometimes you look and you think we're getting more of our prime minister from a distance than we do when he answers questions in the House, which is not a venue for great thinking. Let's agree on that. So I don't fault him for doing all these foreign interviews on the contrary, but I do think that there's a, he's a bit missing in action on the national stage on that score. How do you handle that, Bruce? Well, I agree with Chantel for sure that any prime minister who has given the opportunity to speak to the New York Times like that would take it and should take it. And, you know, in part I say that is even more the case now because a big part of what the prime minister is trying to do is reach the rest of the world and say, bring your investment to Canada, trade more with Canada.

and the New York Times has a pretty big global audience and the kind of readership that, you know, can take an argument, a pitch like that and do something, you know, quite useful and in-depth about it, which I guess is going to turn into a series of pieces. I think it's also important because Donald Trump says things about Canada all the time that need to be refuted. He says we're nasty.

where he mischaracterizes our approach to the trading relationship. He implies that we've been taking advantage of America for decades. He doesn't need anything. And I think the more that, if we just sort of ignored that or assumed that we couldn't reach that American audience or that global audience to present the counterpoint, what is it actually that we're thinking about doing about what are we responding to and what's not true about what's been said about? I think that would be kind of negligence on his part. So this was a good opportunity.

On the Canadian media side, I'm not best place to judge whether or not the access is there. I'm probably a little bit where Chantal is, which I think he's, I think Primer's pretty good at explaining himself when he's in a long, I think he does all right in scrums, but I think he's good in long form interviews. And I think there are at least a couple of really good long form interview. that would, where I'd love to see kind of a longer form, David Cochran, Bashie, I think those are, those are situations where more of that from him would be good, timely. I think people would consume it with some appreciation.

I guess the question is, in some part anyway, given the fact that he has, as Chantel says, done a lot of stuff in, you know, in the U.S. media. and I understand the argument you're making, Bruce, that in these days we need to get our case in front of that media. But I guess the question is, do you think he thinks more of the quality of U.S. journalists than he does of a similar stature of journalists in Canada? I have seen no evidence of that.

No, I've seen no evidence of that. And that is a question to which none of us could answer by saying, of course, he thinks more of doing an interview with the New York Times, because one would have to ask, you know, Jean-Critz, rather than being talking to Le Monde than to La Pryce. It's not on my radar, put it this way. I'm sure that he finds us collectively more of a nuisance than journalists from the New York Times or Le Monde. That's understandable.

Any domestic leader will find the domestic media a lot more bothersome than the foreign media, and that's okay. And when you do the foreign interviews, as you know, you don't have to deal with the pesky stuff of the daily grind of politics. asked about something that you would rather not have to dwell in. So that's normal, but do I think that the prime minister thinks first trade journalism is happening elsewhere and not happening in Canada? Not really. No, I think that's right. I find myself watching him in scrums, and his face has a number of tells. If he doesn't really appreciate a question or he doesn't think that it's well thought through or it sort of grates on him, you know, he has the, you know, he has the, it. I was going to say he has the ability to show that.

Maybe he doesn't have the ability not to show it as another way of thinking about it. But I find he generally reacts with respect and he thanks people for the question. And then he gives an answer that is the best answer that he feels like he can give. But so I don't find that he's hostile or chippy with media in Canada or disrespectful of their role or the skill set. And the contrast, of course, for me again, to go back to Trump and President Xi yesterday, where Trump had banned these reporters. And of course, China does that aggressively. And Trump at one point said he was remarking on how friendly the media coverage that you could get in China was

without probably knowing that it's so tightly controlled that it could hardly be otherwise. I'll just add I don't think I should care or we should care one way or the other whatever Mark currently thinks of journalism as practice here versus elsewhere because he's stuck with us in any event. That's true point.

So, you know, I don't wake up in the morning worrying about the opinion of the people I cover when it comes to my trade. Yeah, I'm, you know, I agree with that, obviously, you know, but I also find it, I find it an interesting discussion,

wondering what, and we say, you know, there's nothing unusual about Mark Carney, it's everybody who's been in that position, whether they have a tendency to think they can, and you gave a couple of reasons why,

Chantelle, they would prefer to sit down with somebody from outside the country than inside the country. The frustrations, as Bruce says, can sometimes be seen. seen on the on his face there's no doubt about that okay we're going to take a break you know relative to

I was glad that there's a little bit of discussion this week as part of the overall discussion about how the conservatives are struggling with you know what kind of a party do they want to be chantelle used the you know the kind of more sensible grown-ups version and part of that discussion this week included um how the conservatives have approached the media in Canada in recent years by excluding more of them, by not allowing them to go on campaign buses or planes with Pierre Polyev in the last election campaign. Harper was somewhat in the same direction,

although not to the same extent, I think, as Pier Pauliev. I'm where Chantal is, that journalists should cover without fear or favor, they should just sort of approach it as this is their job in politicians, should as well. Yeah. I think we can all agree on that, and I wasn't doubting or challenging that.

I was asking from the other direction. Okay, let's take a break. I want to come back. I want to talk about this BC election. I think there's a number of things about that that we can all weigh in on. So we'll do that right after this. And welcome back.

You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, which, of course, is Good Talk, with Sean Tilly Bear and Bruce. Anderson. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 160, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, or you are watching us on our YouTube channel. Okay, I'm going to go back in the history books. I talked about potash. Before I talked about, or before I learned about potash in Saskatchewan, I was covering Manitoba politics. And in 1969, the premier of Manitoba was a fellow by the name of Walter Weir. He was just,

a couple of years into his mandate with a majority government. The opposition NDP were in a bit of a crisis. They didn't have a leader. So he pulled the plug, I guess, on his own consideration and those around him saying this is the time, let's do it. You can get another majority government and extend their life of this parliament, this legislature. There was only one problem.

The NDP elected in the middle of the campaign, a guy by the name of Ed Schreier, who then went on to win 10 years of government before being appointed as the country's governor general. So there was a lesson in that. You can look at the David Peterson election too, and he decided to go early and ended up losing to Bob Ray. So David Eby decides to do a Walter Weirre.

in BC on the day after the conservative leader resigns. And he's taking a bit of a beating already in terms of the reaction to it, that he did it all out, called the election the next day out of self-interest and the interest of his party. What are we making of that? Why don't you start, Chantal? Yes, we should maybe even from this distance, put a bit of context around this decision, which is the ongoing lack of popularity of the current NDP government in British Colombia and the fact that the implosion that was taking place on the right of the NDP

kind of helped David E.B. come back in voting intentions up to a point. But having said that, the one, the reason, the official reason is I need a strong mandate to deal with Donald Trump and the terror of war. Mr. E.B. had a majority government fragile. It may have been, but considering that the other side was imploding, it was a fairly sturdy majority government despite the numbers. Two, we are two years in.

And he had, you know, quite a lot of runway to go before another election. But three, maybe it is the distance between Quebec and BC that made the message not get to David E.B. But Christine Freshat has been trying for how many weeks now in the Quebec campaign to make it about Donald Trump. She's not trying anymore. It's not resonating. And why is it not resonating? because Mark Carney's popularity is so high that voters in provinces figure the frontline guy is dealing with this. So let's talk about other issues that you should be dealing with while he's busy taking care of business with Donald Trump.

So the notion that he's going to do what Premier Ford did early on and go and say, I need a strong mandate because look at this, is it is so, simplistic that it borders unpolitically stupid. The other thing is, I, and we'd all heard that the election would be called Saturday. It was not on Saturday. The conservative leader who was in battle quit instead. And you still call the election? What do you think happens to a party that thinks it may have a shot at government, if only it gets itself organized really quickly and turns around and presents a better face to voters. Suddenly, the numbers shift,

especially since you've insulted the intelligence of most voters, by telling them that you're doing an election for their sake and not for your own sake. So it's going to be an interesting campaign, but I too covered not Ed Schreier, obviously, but David Peterson. Peterson. And he went in the campaign.

It was a cakewalk on the day of the call. Bob Ray was actually leading his last campaign as MDP leader when he became Premier. And there was nothing that happened over the course of that summer that flipped the tables as much as the notion that people were being taken advantage of by having an election called in summer just to secure the Premier's position. Bruce. Yeah, I think it, I think that the Premier's position. you took an extraordinarily cynical decision.

I think the, you know, he knew for some time that his party wasn't particularly popular, that people weren't that happy with the way in which he was governing. The focus of his policy mix wasn't quite consistent with that, what we've seen really across the country with very few exceptions, which is that people want pragmatic, economically focused public policy. they don't want ideology either of the right or the left. They don't want culture war-oriented policy. They want a focus on cost of living and investment and jobs and trade.

And yes, at the provincial level, they want to make sure that health and education work and deficits are under control. And on most of those things, if not all, I think that the EB government has really been failing to win the confidence of the broad cross-section of British Columbia. But he was gifted by a splintered conservative movement. He was then subsequently gifted by the election of Carrilyn Finley to head the United Conservative Party who was more of a culture war, a battler than the conservative party

if they wanted to be competitive in that election. So you had him, I think, sizing the situation up saying it looks like her leadership is falling apart. I need to call the election before she completely has to abandon ship. And he missed that by a day. Now, that was no accident. I mean, conservatives, I'm sure, behind the scenes were saying, if we don't change her out right now, he's going to call an election and we're going to be saddled with her as our leader and we will lose that election because she will appeal too much she will show too much of that kind of far edge of

the conservative party that causes conservative parties sometimes to lose elections that they otherwise could win um so they got their work done um before he made the call and i think he's going to regret it because I think that that he missed that moment. If he had done this like two or three days before, he'd probably be in a situation where a victory against Carrilyn Bentley would have been

plausible, likely, maybe probable. And now I think we don't know. I mean, there's one poll out. We'll need to see other polls, but one pull out by Angus Reed, I think it was, suggested that conservatives are ahead. They've got a leader that people don't know

particularly. but if the proposition is this version of the conservative party is going to focus on centrist economic thinking and a more kind of less of a culture war conservative party then I think it's got a very chance a very good chance of winning that election and in keeping with the kind of experiences that we've seen happen before when governments kind of take that cynical move okay but it should It should concern the Carney government for one reason. And it is that some of the projects that Mark Carney has put on the table involve BC, obviously, but involve a strong degree of cooperation with First Nations.

And at this point in BC, the First Nations friendly party is considered to be the NDP. And the arrival of a conservative government, a centrist as it may try to be in the campaign, stands to make the handling of that file more complicated and a lot more difficult. And I think that's a really important point to make, because aside from the personalities and the things that have happened in the last week in British Columbia, there's so many major Canadian decisions that run right through BC right now, that this is an election that's worth the rest of the country paying close attention to.

because it's going to affect them. The issue that, you know, that Chantel points out, obviously, which has an impact on a number of decisions, you know. So this is going to be, you know, there's two big elections coming up, right? The BC one, which will now be, you know, near the end of October, and the one which we will spend a lot of time,

I'm sure, talking about next week, just a couple of days before the Quebec election. which too will have national implications, no matter which way it turns out. And we've got that Alberta referendum coming up as well. Exactly. I mean, I can't remember a time where, I'm sure there is a time,

but I can't remember a time offhand where three provincial votes have such national implications all occurring within a matter of days of each other. But that's the nature of the federation. Remember, Meach, what happened? First, an election in New Brunswick. Eventually, results in Manitoba, and then results in Newfoundland. And that is part of one of the challenges of running any federal government is the people you are doing business with may not be at the table.

The next time you try to continue to advance your files, and we are pretty much in that setting now. Same thing happened with the carbon pricing environmental plan of Justin Trudeau that everyone but Saskatchewan agreed on. But then if you take your picture a year later, three of the players have disappeared. And we have instead a photo called the Resistance, which features conservative premiers side by side with, was it Andrew Shear of all people. So it comes with the territory.

But that is what makes Canada a complicated place to advance issues. You know, Andrew Shear is probably getting more press now than he did when he was leader. Every day something comes up, and you know, for him, none of it's good. It just, you've got conservatives speaking out against him. You know, like Andrew McDougal was on the program earlier this week. It was a communications director for Stephen Harper, bright guy, well liked by most in the media, somebody who seemed to care about their plight. Corey Tenike, of course, Dimitri Sudas, all these people were close, and one assumed,

still close to Stephen Harper. And they're not being shy about what they're saying, not just about Pierre Pollyev, but about Andrew Shear. And the leadership, those two are getting. It's, you know, some conservatives across the country are always pouncing on us. You know, you give them a hard time. Man, we don't give anywhere near as hard a time. Some of the party's own people have been giving the leadership these days.

Let me, before we take our final break, this kind of, some people call the Bill Baby Build agenda and legislation that's been coming through. through in the last few days in Ottawa. There's concern about some of it, that it's, you know, that it's not good for labor unions, that they're being forgotten and their gains of the past have been forgotten. There's a number of concerns being expressed. Do you want to pick up on that, Chantelle? What are we used for this?

It's a bill C-39. is the number for it. And since I'd rather use numbers than the spin doctor's names for bills, I will stick to C-39. But C-39, it sounds so boring. Well, at least you can find it in the parliamentary calendar. That's right, and we all go there.

Yeah, and some of us do spend more time there than we care to say. It's almost 250 pages, which makes it the equivalent of an omnibus, bill that amends in part 18 pieces of legislation. To start with, along with many people who worry about Parliament and public service, public policy, have found that there are numerous studies that show that a bill that size does not lend itself to necessarily the best of scrutiny by Parliament because of its share

size and the number of topics. So on that score, I have to say I struggled just with the size of the bill. And to give you an idea when the journalist showed up for a technical briefing on the bill that they, halfway true, they still didn't have the bill in hand, only a press release. And press release is telling you nothing about the reality of a bill. My main concern is not with one section or the other of the bill. It's with the general spirit of expanding political discretion. writing basically writing into law a power for a minister or a government to ignore its own regulations and laws

in the name of something that to me is a concept that you can interpret as you want called the national interest I can ask you and Bruce to define the national interest and I can define it we may not come to the same conclusion It's a very vague concept. But I find that political discretion written into a law at some point does damage the rule of law in this country. And I'm going to take the example of the labor code changes. If those changes are put in law, they will enshrine the notion that in the future, when you want to end a strike in a harbor, railroad, etc., you can do so by the fiat of a minister,

which means you would never bring legislation to the House of Commons in Parliament to be debated back-to-work legislation. You are a sidelining Parliament, and you are doing this, the criteria, which is put in there is economic impact. Well, if you're someone who works in one of those federally regulated industries, of course your right to strike exercising it will have an economic impact almost any day of the week. So I believe the government is going to end up facing a lot more litigation in the courts than it assumes at this point based on this bill. and that it may not win all the battles that it believes it will win, not only on the front of this labor code changes,

but also on the front of some of the First Nation consultation process. I see this week that the federal court declined. They call on the federal government by the federal government to dismiss a case involving its own targets and whether it's not doing what it needs to do to meet the climate change targets. So sometimes wanting to cut a lot of corners in the name of a crisis by presenting legislation that will go on forever because that is also one of the features of this bill is a strange way to say we're using emergency powers because there is a crisis.

So I am not, as you can tell, a big fan of the spirit of this bill, although I don't disagree that we can do with less regulation and speedy or process. All right. I want to get Bruce's thought on this, but I want to take our final break before I do that. So, Bruce, you can prepare your case as we take this break. We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. Final segment of Good Talk for this week.

Bruce, Chantal, Peter, all here for you. As Chantel mentioned, the federal government better prepare for little. on some aspects of this bill, which they say and have claimed and uses the reasoning behind it is to try and speed things up on a process of building across the country, you know, the whole make Canada stronger issue. The old baby build, follow what you want, or call it C-39. Bruce, I'm assuming you're in favor of the bill.

stands? Well, first of all, I'm in favor of this debate. I think this is a really important piece of legislation. I think it, Chantelle laid out the concerns that some people have about it. I think she also touched on the rationale for it. I do think that the prime minister has decided in the context that he finds himself in, and it's his interpretation of his context and what his choices are, that he needs to put some of his political capital at risk to put in place a series of policy changes that will make it easier for investors to put money into Canada, to build the infrastructure necessary to rewire our economy. That's a choice that he's making. I think he's cognizant of the fact that he's putting some of his political capital at risk. And I think that's

one of the things that we should expect leaders to do, whether we agree with this piece of legislation or not. We should be personally, I think we should be happy to have leaders who say, okay, this is what I really believe we've got to prioritize. We're in a bit of a race against time, against the, you know, how much damage will the U.S. do to us before we created the structural changes in our economy that will allow us to thrive without that much reliance on the U.S. again, a thing I think that the Prime Minister laid out in the context of that New York Times conversation. Is it a gamble?

It's a gamble. And it's a gamble because we've got a healthy democracy because people will be on other sides of this question and there will be litigation probably and there will be some push and pull. Chantel described it as expanding discretion. You know, I think that is one way to describe it. I don't think that's an unfair characterization. I think that the proponents of the bill would say it's increasing pace

and reducing the kind of the political risk of considering investment in Canada. But that is, those are both reasonable propositions. It does expand discretion. I guess the last point for me is if it doesn't work out for Canadians, if they feel down the road that it has given. given too much discretion to politicians, that corners have been cut, that increasing pace did increase environmental risk, that labor rights really were trampled on, then a subsequent government can change that. And so I think we're at an inflection point where some of these

policy changes that this prime minister is putting in place, we're going to have to see over time, whether or not people are happy with the way that they turned out, whether the number of, for example, labor stoppages that are affected by this new discretion is an intolerable number or whether the use of that discretion is intolerable. Those are questions that we can answer hypothetically now, but I think we're heading into a period where we're going to see in practice, what does this kind of legislation actually deliver? I've rarely seen a government take back some of the powers that it gets on landing in office. And this legislation actually will outlast the current government

and probably the liberal parties reign in federal power. But Bruce is right that the prime minister is actually basing this on his high level of political capital because the same piece of legislation. and it had been presented by Stephen Harper or Pierre Paulyev government would have raised alarm bells from coast to coast to coast. My concern about, one, I believe that increasingly this type of legislation and these types of changes, sideline Parliament. And I happen to believe that Parliament, on the whole, makes legislation and policy better

because of the shock of ideas. and the more you bypass it, the less the legislation is sturdy because it's not being debated properly. And I'm willing to wait and see how the government wants this conversation on C-39 to unfold. So far, my understanding is they want it dealt with quickly, which does not make for sound conversation. But I also worry about something called the social peace. and you were around in the early 80s. We've had general strikes. We've had issues of people taking to the streets

or to blocking railroads because they lacked confidence and felt that their voices were not heard in Parliament. At this point, I believe that the conservatives, by and large, are in sync with what is in the legislation. And that basically means that there will be very few voices in Parliament to argue the countercase. The NDP does not have a voice, and the Black Quebecois, as you know,

is doing a fairly good job of having the argument, but it is having the argument for a Quebec audience. That could end up losing the streets in the large sense of the word to Mark Carney. And I think you should be aware of that, of this trifecta of environmentalists and climate-concerned Canadians, First Nations and labor, big labor, deciding that they have no voice in Parliament,

but that this is not okay. And it doesn't build confidence in what the government is doing to have this conversation not happening where it should, which would be the House of Commons and eventually the Senate. But at this point, I believe that the discussion on C-39, on the substance of it, is going to be more interesting in the Senate than it will in the House of Commons, given the state of clay in the House of Commons with the Conservatives, saying all kinds of things about the bill, but in the end, not wanting to say that they will oppose it,

because I don't believe they will. I've only got a minute or so left. As you mentioned, the NDP does not appear to have a voice in this debate, mainly because they don't really have any clout in Parliament, but they have a new leader, and is there any indication that he has been able to access the concerns that are expressed by a pretty powerful triumperative interests, as you just went through.

You'd think that would be an opportunity for Avi Lewis to make some ground, get some headway. Is there any evidence that he is? Well, but an NDP leader that is mostly unknown to Canadians and not necessarily bringing any political experience baggage to his job and that has no extension in the House of Commons is kind of a voice in a wilderness of kind. And the NDP can voice concern,

and Avey Lewis has been giving news conferences to voice those concerns, but actually they're not players in the actual parliamentary decision. discussion. Okay, you got 30 seconds, Bruce, for you on that. Yeah, I think the NDP's challenge is the best arguments that can and should be made on behalf of the climate concern that Canadians, indigenous people, and big labor, the most effective arguments will be made in a kind of a pragmatic way, in a way that enters the conversation that everybody is having. And I think Abby Lewis isn't really equipped or inclined. to enter the conversation that way.

And maybe the party base doesn't want him to. But those voices, I think, do deserve to be heard. It just doesn't feel to me like that's a match for today's NDP or Abby Lewis. All right. We're going to leave it at that. When we next talk to you, which will be seven days from now, it'll just be a couple of days before the Quebec election. And obviously that will be one of our major focus points on that program,

week from now. So look forward to hearing from both Chantelle and Bruce on that one. The polls that we've seen are fascinating. The one the other day, there's five parties all with over 10 points in the polls. I mean, that's unheard of. Anyway, we'll talk about that next week. The buzz out tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern

time in your inbox. You can subscribe at the national newswatch.com slash newsletter, no charge. It's all there for you. Is it free again this week? Oh, it's free. It's always free. So I better go write it now. Thanks to Bruce.

Thanks, Shantelle. Have a great weekend to you and a great weekend to all of those of you out in our audience. Bye for now. Have a good weekend, guys. Bye.