The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Moore-Butts: What Happens "Inside The Room"?

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Our first Moore-Butts Conversation of the new season, and Gerry Butts and James Moore take us "inside the room" to get a better understanding of what happens in high-stakes trade talks. 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 a little Moore Butts conversation? It's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Jerry Butts, James Moore, in our first Moore-Buts conversation of a new season. So it's good to have both of you with us, and we're all over the place. I'm in Scotland. Jerry's in Abu Dhabi? A busy neighborhood.

Not Abu Dhabi. He's in Doha. He's in Qatar. He's in Qatar. That's the place where they give you a free plane, right? if you come and visit. Only if you have a certain last name, I think. Yeah, right.

And James is, well, James is in his normal haunt in British Columbia, in Vancouver, or the Vancouver area. Here's what I want to try and accomplish this week. You know, we journalists like to think we're in the room, but we're not in the room. And we talk to people who are in the room and try to get their sense of what they accomplished in the room. But both of you at different times and for different reasons have been in the room or whatever that room may happen to be. So I'm trying to follow, as many Canadians are, the Canada-U.S. trade negotiations. And to really follow them, you've got to be in the room. Because the stories, depending on who you listen to, can be very different. So why don't you give us

your sense. First of all, Jerry, what we should be looking for that's really happening in the room. Well, I feel like I should say, Peter, that the room that I was in between

2017 and 18, and I never thought I would say this, but feels comfortable compared to this room. And not just because of the circumstances, but most importantly, the people in it. The people on the other side of the table when I was there, for the most

part, as much as we disagreed with their perspective on pretty much everything, we're professionals. And the people on the other side of the table for Janice Shoret and Mark Wiseman and the rest of the team who were trying to negotiate this thing are far from that.

And I think most importantly, the people who are making the decision don't seem to be in the room. And I mean no ill will toward Jameson Greer, by the way, the USTR who was in the room in the 2017-18 period and was a very

professional person who conducted all of the negotiations above board. But I think the problem they're having this time, or one of the problems that arose at the table was that Howard Letnick is no Bob Leidheiser. And

he was intermittently in the room and has not paid the kind of professional attention to it that Bob did in the last go-round. And I think a lot of what's happened, the miscommunication on their side, the last minute demands on their side, the inability to get a coherent approach on the United States from the United States negotiating team is largely due to that. So I think if you're asking me for signposts,

the first signpost, and maybe the most important one, is the room the room? And sometimes you're told it's the room, but there's another room where the person on the other side of the table has to go and make the case. And I will say even at the very end of the negotiations last time, I remember Jared Kushner and Bob Lighthizer

both saying to me, this is not a done deal yet. I have to go convince the president to do this. And there was a tense couple of hours where they went over to the White House, and we didn't hear from them. And then they came back to us and said that the president had signed off on the deal. I don't think there's any kind of, I think this is a problem writ large with Trump 2.0 that for all its faults did not exist in Trump 1.0.

But there's just no coherence on the other side of the table. So how do you do a deal in those circumstances? Okay. Just before James jumps in with his thoughts on this, it should explain a couple of things. Janice Sherretta is the chief Canadian negotiator. Great profile on her in the last few days. I ran it in the buzz yesterday, so if you want to get some more knowledge about Janice Charette, you'll find... Consumet Professional.

Consumet professional. And Mark Wiseman is the Canadian ambassador to the United States, appointed by Carney, not that long ago. And he's been involved as well. Dominic LeBlanc is there. Dominic LeBlanc, of course. The minister responsible for all this stuff. James, your thought, I know you haven't been in either of these two rooms. Trump one or Trump two,

but you've been in rooms where this kind of stuff goes on. What do you look for when you hear the stories coming out of these? Well, I was adjacent to the room on Trump 1, Trump 45, with the NAFTA Council that Jerry knew, obviously we had a hand in choosing under Prime Minister Trudeau with Minister Freeland, who was the quarterback on behalf of Canada. And the structure then was a lot different. The structure then about how Canada created our approach to it

was borrowed from what Brian Maroney did, what frankly, Prime Minister Craig Chan did and what Stephen Harper did, which was you would typically have, you know, the ambassador involved of the jurisdiction. Then you would have a core group of ministers who were associated with the files that were most delicately associated with that trade negotiation. Yeah, when I was in cabinet,

I was a part of the two of the big trade negotiations that Canada did. When Stephen Harper became Prime Minister, Canada had free trade agreements with exactly five countries in the world. Chile, Costa Rica, Israel, Mexico, and the United States. And after we left government, we had free trade agreements with more than half the global economy, including the Canada-Europe Free Trade Agreement. The plane hadn't been fully landed on that. That had to be finalized because of a lot of the complications of Europe because of Brexit

and a number of things that Prime Minister Trudeau's government did. But the agreement that was set was done by our government. And, of course, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which America walked away from as a result of domestic politics because of all kinds of things. but the structure that we use as our government was sort of the traditional one. And for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was the latter one that we did as a government, our chief negotiator was Kirsten Hillman, who then became, of course, Canada's ambassador to the United States. But the point is that we have through the Canada-Europe Free Trade Agreement, the Canada, South Korea Free Trade Agreement,

the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump 45 and now Trump 47, you take that together. We're now looking, stretching back about 15 years of a coterie of, of people in Canada's public service and political class and others who have become genuinely thoughtful and engaged not only with foreign governments about how to arrive at trade agreements and foreign investment and protection agreements and tariff agreements, but also who understand the balance between being outward facing on Canada's behalf to the rest of the world, but inward facing in terms of developing relationships with Canadian stakeholders who have to sort of come together and get that feedback and push-pull about what is in the middle, Canada's, quote,

made an interest and best interest. And that's the job of the people who are in the room that Jerry describes. And so for our government on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we had Stephen Harper who chaired it and led it. And then there were five ministers. There was, myself as a minister of industry because of, well, the second largest department in the government of Canada, plus all the intellectual property stuff and the industrial footprint and all of that. Minister of finance, Minister of Agriculture, procurement was involved, Treasury Board. Of course, the Minister of Trade or Foreign Affairs would also be involved. So five or six ministers thereabouts. And we would get, you know, calls that we have. And this is,

I think, a major distinction between all of those other approaches and then Trump 45 and especially Trump 47. The difference between Trump 45 and 47, as Jerry described, is that, you know, you've gone from what one would hope would be a normal relationship to one that is just completely bananas, right? Like in our government, you would have, we'd get a call. You'd say, well, our, you know, Ambassador Hillman or Christopher Hillman is back with her folks, and they're going to brief us on what happened with their bilateral conversations with the Japanese with regard to what they're big, because Japan was the big add-on for Canada and the

Trans-Pacific Partnership. And we would go through and they'd say, well, this is what's happening on pork. This is what's happening in an intellectual property. This is what's happening on language. And then we would give them a mandate, and then they would go back to the table and they would come back in a month or so. What's crazy about Trump 47, in my view, and I think Jerry framed it well,

is that it seems like, you know, when you go into a car dealership and you say, I think I want that car, and they say, well, and you work with the sales guy at the front who seems like it's Jameson Greer, probably. And then the Jameson Gray says, okay, I hear what you want. I'm going to go talk to my manager in the back and see if I, I'm going to go to work for you and see if I can get,

see if I can make this work. You know, you just wait over here. I get you a cup of bad coffee, you know, a little, you make yourself kind of comfortable. I'm going to go fight for you with the guy in the back that you don't know. And then you kind of watch and he kind of sort of disappears in the back. You can sort of see his shoulder and he's in a room trying to talk to somebody and trying to convince them that this is a good deal. And then he kind of looks at you and gives you a thumbs up that I think we're good.

And you kind of go, like what is going on? Can I just talk to the manager? Is it no, no, there's this sort of this kabuki dance theater of you're the guy, but the guy's in the back and how do I? It seems like that's what's going on here as everybody, all these professionals get together and try to have a rational conversation. But there's the guy in the back. Then is this mysterious guy in the back.

And nobody knows what he wants or how he's thinking. And that guy's Donald Trump. Except in this case, the guy in the back keeps tweeting that not only does he not going to sell you the car. He actually wants your house. Yeah, exactly. And at the same time, says we're going to get a deal. I mean, what he said this weekend.

Yeah. So it does leave all of us kind of wondering, like, what the hell is going on? Or is anything going on? Or is there, are there two levels of negotiation? Is there this, the ones you've described that are, you know, filled with a number of bureaucrats and put possibly some senior cabinet material on either side? And then there are the two principles. You know, the prime minister is saying in the last few days that he and Trump have been talking.

They've talked a number of times in the last week. Well, like, what are we supposed to make of that? that? Well, not necessarily too much other than a signal on both sides that there's an openness to discussion. But James would know this too. The Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States pretty much have to talk on a regular basis across a whole variety of issues and some of which can be made

public and some of which cannot be made public. Some of them are security related. Some are economic. Sometimes the President is notifying the Canadian Prime Minister of actions he or I guess always he not yet as she is taking around the world and of course there have been several security issues including one that's kind of uncomfortably close to my hotel right now that people have been needing to manage on a pretty 24-7 basis so I'm sure that's related to these conversations and where he didn't pick up the phone and call mark Carney or anybody else for that matter on the

NATO side correct correct um what about a guy like Lutnik. I mean, you talked about the impact I can have, but I mean, Lutnik and even be sent to some degree,

we'll say the most outrageous things, about the relationship, about the, about what the trade relationship is, about numbers, about, you know, we don't need anything from Canada, this kind of stuff.

What does that do to the, you know, for those who are, actually trying to come up with an agreement. I mean, you take whoever sitting across the table with you as, you know, an emissary on behalf of the president of the United States, so you take them seriously. But, yeah, but he comes across as he is. Look, we live in a world of, you know, saturation coverage of a lot of these things.

And when, you know, somebody, you see somebody and they make an impression of you, you kind of go, oh, I wonder if they're having a bad day. When we string together 48 bad days in a row, you kind of go, oh, I guess that's who he is. you know and so you know Howard Lutnik is what he is I think he is frankly a bit of a two-bit huckster who is a blowhard on TV who has extraordinarily questionable you know ethics and links to a lot of dodgy stuff you know I mean yeah I mean you know his investment stuff is you know he's made on 250 million dollars reportedly I think was in the Wall Street Journal reported about you know some of crypto investments that he did of shortings of some of

of the Trump crypto meme stocky stuff. So, I mean, he's just a very sketchy, dodgy guy. But if he has the ear of the president in some way, even if he influences maybe 3.5% of the president's thinking, that's three and a half percent that might be in the margin to getting the president back into sort of relative normalcy in terms of diplomacy. I think a big part of what everything that's going on here, too, is that, you know, and some people say,

why is Mark Carney going so hard? Mark Carney is representative of half of the heat that's out there amongst Canadians. I think Canadians are far hotter than what is being reflected publicly. Prime Minister Kaichani last week talking about, you know, Canada, Benz for no one and all that. And in that assertion, that was a very diplomatic way of saying stuff that Canadians are far more aggressive about. And the voting universe that the liberals rely on to stay in government is even hotter than that. And the NDP voters that have lent their votes to Prime Minister Carney to stand power, they're even hotter than that. So in a lot of ways, Mark Carney has to reflect this anger and

this firmness that Canadians have, it's kind of like you have to skate all the way over it and capture all of that so that should you be in a position to come to an agreement or a detente with the United States, that they will entrust and empower you to represent their interests back to sort of normalcy and stasis and a reconciliation with the United States. And that's not going to happen in three weeks. It's not going to happen in three months. I don't imagine it's frankly going to happen in a year. I don't think that's, I think this is a very long project towards getting to some kind of an agreement with Donald Trump so we don't have an escalator of tariffs and stopping the madness and having a new baseline of what the Canada-U.S.

Trading relationship looks like so people can operate for the next couple of years. And then proper reconciliation of the Kuzma question, because that's an agreement that's on a 16-year kill clock. That has to be reset. And then whatever the new tariff dynamic is and whatever the new trade relationship is, that, in my view, is not going to happen until you have a new administration, whether it's red or blue, whether it's Rubio or whoever, or if it's whoever on the Democratic side, I don't think that gets reset. And I think this, in my view, is a management exercise for the next

two and a half years with the existing administration. So you have a freeze on tariffs. You don't have an escalation. People cool down. They focus on domestic politics post midterm going into the 28 presidential cycle and just leave Canada alone. We'll do our thing. We'll re-fortify ourselves for the next two years. So we have options going forward after 28. But for now with Trump, there's no deal, because guy cannot be trusted. We have to go on. We have to move forward. And then we'll revisit this relationship in a bigger, more tectonic way in 28, 2930. So ragged the puck. Correct. Jerry? Yeah, I think Peter, a couple of things. And I broadly agree with everything James just said. And I find myself describing how much easier it was for us. And it certainly didn't feel easy at the time.

Let me tell you, and James can attest to that as well. But Lutnik is just a different breed of cat than the people we had to deal with. And in the first go-round, you had to worry about clowns like Peter Navarro popping off on CNN and other people associated with the Trump White House popping off on CNN in their constant competition for the boss's attention. and who could say the most colorful version of what they thought the boss wanted to hear. And that was signaled to us behind the scenes all the time that don't pay any attention to this nonsense. I, Bob would say to me behind closed doors that I've got control of this file. And as long as I'm in this office, you're going to be dealing with me.

And if the president decides to relieve me of my responsibilities, then you've got another set of problems on your hand. But for the meet in the interim, don't worry about what people. Navarro says on television. Now you have the Commerce Secretary and the Treasury Secretary of the United States of America saying things that are 10 times worse than anything Peter Navarro could have dreamt up in his adult mind to insult the president and the longstanding relationship. And at a certain point, it becomes less rhetorical and a matter of real substance. And I'll give you an example, a really important example.

here. You know, we hosted virtually. We hosted Howard Lettnick at the Canada U.S. summit at Eurasia Group last October. And I was sitting right behind Doug Ford as he was watching Howard Lettnick talk and you could see like this purple vein start to pop out on the back of Doug's neck at the premier's neck when Lettnick said, you know, we don't think Canada

should have an auto industry. And I I said to myself, these people don't know the first thing about how we came to have this trading relationship writ large, that it all came out of the auto industry in the first place, and that the basic deal was that we were each, both countries, was going to produce as much cars as it bought in any given year. That was the target. And that was the deal that Lester Pearson sold to the Canadian people who were very skeptical at the time.

And it was the deal that Lyndon Johnson, a Democratic president, president sold to the American people at the time, especially to the United Auto Workers, who were also very skeptical of the deal. And they both sides, detractors on both sides, said, it's never going to work out that way. The Canadians are going to steal our jobs. The Canadians said the Americans are going to steal our jobs. And then lo and behold, for the 60 years that ensued, we pretty much lived up to our end of the bargain on both, and as did the Americans. If you look at the numbers, over the course of those six decades,

we pretty much produced the cars that we bought locally. Now, why is that important? When the team at the table, as far as I understand it, from the media especially, has been the U.S. team, has been making the case that, we're going to give you the same deal the United Kingdom has. Right? So why are you complaining about the tariffs

when I think it might have even been a slightly better deal than the United Kingdom. Well, we didn't spend 60 years growing the automotive business together, right? And what they don't understand, and this is where I think it's their, I'm struggling not to use a negative epit that I might regret in the future, Peter,

but their lack of knowledge on this topic and their lack of interest in attaining knowledge is so detrimental to getting a deal. Because when Howard Lutnik says, we don't think the Canadian should be making cars. What he's really saying without knowing it is we don't think that Canadians should be buying American cars. Correct. Correct.

Sorry, James, I know I've taken up a lot of time here, but I just want to finish on this point because it's super important. And I think the prime minister did a good job of refocusing the conversation around automotive the next day. But think about this for a second. I've been in Doha for the last couple of days. I came here from Singapore. You could count on one finger the number of American-made automobiles I've seen in either city. And that's because nobody wants the stuff. And we are the largest export market for American automobiles.

We're so large, we're bigger than the next four combined. So Howard Leibnick wants to say to Ford workers in Oakville, Stalantis workers in Windsor, GM workers in the east end of the GTA that we're going to take your jobs and then we're going to expect you to buy the products made by the people who took your jobs. It's insane. And you never would have had to explain this to Bob Lightheiser. He knew it all. But Howard Letnik doesn't know, doesn't want to know.

All he wants to do is impress his boss. And probably, as James said, make a lot of money on the side. Do you want to add to this, James? sticking with the auto one because it's a good it's a good touch point because of what one third of Canadians live in the province of Ontario but 45% of Canada's economy is the province of Ontario the backbone of the Ontario economy is is manufacturing and the backbone of manufacturing is the auto sector the auto sector or it has been traditionally like the auto sector is is such an important and perfect example of a lot of this

confusion with regard to the United States Jerry's exactly right you know The United States said, we want to build cars here. We want to build cars here. Great. And then what? Canada is the fifth largest auto-consuming country in the world. We're the 37th largest in population, second-largest in terms of purchasing these things. And if you want to turn every single vehicle that's made into the United States into a traband,

people will know what a travant. That's how they'll be stigmatized and Canadians won't buy them. They'll say, I don't want these Trump cars. I want Canadian cars. And then in two years, further to the rag the puck argument, in two years, when Donald Trump is gone, they will say, well, no, these will be Canadian. And then we will have that reconciliation going forward because, as Logan Roy says, in the end, money wins. And the fact is, American auto workers know that their cars need to be bought by somebody. And a fixed market of 330, 350 million Americans isn't big enough.

It doesn't sustain the cost. the inflated, frankly, the inflated cost of North American made cars, particularly those in the northern half of North America, because the cost of labor, cost of input and all that, require you to have to sell them within North America because that's just the way it is. And we're the fifth largest auto-consuming and purchasing country in the world. And you want to take away our jobs and have the people who have been in the auto sector, then get jobs elsewhere and then go back and buy a car that comes from Michigan. Take your trubant and shove it. Not interesting. Yeah, as Logan Roy also said, Peter, I love you, but you're just not serious people. And that's kind of the way I feel about the administration these days, only I don't really love them. I'm going to ask you the flip side of that when we come back from the break.

But let me just say one thing. Jerry mentioned about how he doesn't see any American cars in Doha. I'm in the UK. You still see American cars here. Not many. But the fastest selling car here isn't American. It's not British. It's not French.

It's not German. It's Chinese. They're in big time here in the UK. And as we know, they're on their way into Canada, at least in some numbers later this year. Okay, we're going to take our break. Come back, talk a little more about this, because everybody's talking about it.

And we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Tuesday episode of The Bridge. And this Tuesday, it is a Moore-Buts conversation. Jerry Butts, James Moore, two people who've been on the inside. Jerry, of course, was a principal secretary to Justin Trudeau in 2015. James was a cabinet minister, a number of different portfolios for Stephen Harper. And we're getting their expertise on any number of things, which is great. You're listening on Sirius XM Channel 160. That's the new channel on Sirius XM for Canada Talks, which includes the bridge. You may also be listening on our podcast platform and on our YouTube platform. It's available on everything. The question of the week this week, this is a topic that I know Jerry loves, but we're not going to talk about it today.

I'm sure we will at some point. But it's another AI question. And it's not the normal or are you worried about AI? You think you're going to lose your job or whatever. It's a bigger question than that. Last week we saw some insiders at AI companies quit their jobs because they said the industry was pursuing advances with no regard to safety. One person wrote that it was possible that AI would kill all humanity within a decade. What goes through your mind when you hear stuff like that?

Do you ignore it as alarmist, or do you think we are sleepwalking to the end of humanity and are truly scared about it all? Or are you somewhere in the middle? What should be happening to shape the safe future of AI? That's our question this week. You can write to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. It's a big question, but you still only have 75 words to answer it. Anything over that and you get zapped? Include your name and the location you're writing from.

have your answers in by 3 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. All right. Enough said on all that. James, you start us off on the second half. Here's what I want to know. We talk about Ludley and you all made your points and the Treasury Secretary was sent to a degree as well. Is there a Ludnik on the Canadian side?

I mean, you keep hearing about the troubles in these negotiations. and the Americans blame us as much as we blame them. I think Canada has acquitted itself extraordinarily well. We are a confederation of different constituent parts. And you see when the talks broke down or we walked away that, you know, David E.B. had his narrative and he said what he said. Doug Ford had his narrative and he presented it in his style and he made his emphasis. Quebec is doing its thing with their election campaign ongoing now.

and people are choosing different pathways and narratives. The first half of the Quebec election campaign will be sorting out, who is the, in my view, who is the voice for the 70% of Canadians who are Quebecers who don't want a referendum. That's a bit of a primary. And then they'll present themselves versus the Pacekibiqua with, you know, caveats around Quebec City and the east side of Montreal with Quebec Solitaire and Quebec Conservatives. But my point is that politics in Canada is very fractured and people are finding their voice

and their expression about what the reaction is to what happened in the United States. but those who are actually in the room on behalf of Canadians have demonstrated extraordinary message discipline, thoughtfulness, at a time when investors, business community, you know, public private sector unions, NGOs, political commentators, everybody are looking for any kind of insight into what the creases and gaps are and what the weaknesses are of our argument. And stoicism is quotient is very, very high. But with Dominic Lebonne, Janice Chaghet, Ambassador Weissman, Prime Minister, all those key players around the table and in that group that was described. And I think that's really important and really helpful. So, no, we don't have a Howard Blattnick. We talk about, you know, people on the margins of the conversation,

whether it's peer, probably ever, others in Canada, who are kind of, you know, risking the sort of Canadian sense of solidarity that we have around the mission and about the approach that we're taking right now. And so far, everybody has really been playing their role, I think generally in a helpful way. I think we've skated up to the water's edge, or swam up to the water's edge, we don't want to go any further than it, but the whole, you know, show us the deal, show us the deal, show us the deal. That, that dog isn't going to hunt.

That there's no, first of all, there's no, there's no juice there. There's no politics in that. There's no substance to that. B, the government can't release the documents, see, because there are no, quotes documents. And D, you wouldn't want them to. And when we were in government, I mean, I often say this to my conservative, some of my conservative friends who are out there barking saying, you know, show us the documents. We wouldn't. When our government, we were negotiating the foreign investment protection agreement with China, like there's, and also the China-specific

partnership and the candidate or free trade agreement, there are certain things that you say in negotiation that you don't want out there. Like, you're trying to create some, there's some maneuvering in the room. There's some stuff that you put on the table that's not really on the table in order to get them to move off with something else that they don't actually bite on that. So you pull that back and you emphasize something else. There's a dance going on. And if you freeze the dance at any one moment, it's going to be, it might be really unappealing to Canada. So there's a maneuvering going on, you know, sticking to the auto analogy, right? Like when you're trying to buy a car, it's like, well, maybe I'll get the undercoding.

You don't never get the undercoding. Maybe I want the warranty. You're not actually going to get the warranty. But you dangle that to the sales guy. So the sales guy says, well, maybe he'll buy the warranty. Then you work on the financing. Like, there's a dance that's, going on. And if you froze it at any one moment, and then Canadians go, whoa, you're, you're going to get the undercoding and the warranty. We don't want the undercoding in the war. There's a process here. I'm trying to get to the goddamn terms of the financing. Don't worry about the undercoding and the warranty. I was never going to go there on the undercoding and the warranty. And so people, but it's hard for people to, I don't think it's hard for

public to get it. But it's hard for the government to sustain its momentum and authority to act on behalf of Canadians if others are trying to torque up the politics around the frozen moment around the undercoding and the warranty. And that's what can happen in trade negotiations. If the opposition parties or the provinces or people in the media are forcing the government in midstream, mid-conversation to divulge and be open about what's on the table, whether it's regard to supply management or quotas or language policy or IP or whatever, that just you have to at some point allow the government to govern and know that you're going to be able to punish them if they get it wrong. And believe me, those of us who have been there, we know that when we get it wrong,

the claw hammer waiting for us at the end of the process. They're not stupid. They know what they're doing. They understand the weaknesses of their argument. They understand the political risks of it. They're trying to get to a place that is a creative and beneficial to Canadians that Canadians will like. They're not trying to just have an agreement and then try to force sell it to Canadians.

there's nuance and a dance to this and it's complicated and it's so so people need to understand that and with and with the counterparts on the other side of the table that we're dealing with it makes it that much more challenging for the government to be rational about this I'm glad you used that example because that's what I was looking for with this conversation is to get it something that where we could better understand of you know like what's going on around that table in that room do you want to add anything to that jury yeah well i think i think james is exactly right and to to answer your question directly peter no we don't have a howard letnik because it's not the canadian brand to have

a howard letnik are we just saying that because we're like we're Canada no god no we'd never behave that way i mean there must be tough moments inside these rooms oh yeah for sure said that you probably regret later, although I don't think Ludnik regrets anything he ever says. I think the Canadians have a different style, right? Like, Bob used to complain about Steve Verhoole all the time. Steve Verhoole is one of the most accomplished puck rackers, to use James Imology, that the country has ever produced. He knew how to kill time, and Bob knew that time was on our side and not Steve's side. So he would get furious behind the scenes about Steve Verhole and why is he here?

I know what he's doing and you guys are playing games. That's the kind of strategy that Canadians would deploy. And we take maybe a little bit of joy from watching the Americans get uncomfortable with that situation. But we're just not, we don't have that need to be heard loudly and to watch ourselves on TV. and James's point about how we've, over the past 25 years, fostered a highly skilled and educated class of public servants who know how to do these kinds of deals is a really important one. But I also want to get to the point that you were alluding to, James,

and that you made earlier. Because I have this conversation. It's an occupational hazard for me to talk to a lot of Americans. And a lot of them say, oh, come on, you know, Carney's just playing to the polls here. everybody's really angry so Carney is giving voice to their anger and I say then look

as someone who advised the guy all the way through the campaign and through the transition he was the person keeping a lid on this stuff right there were lots of people who thought that Mark Carney should have been a lot more vocal about the way the

United States was treating Canada and how it would have been more advantageous to him politically to be to add a few rhetorical rhetorical flourishes. And he, it was his own, dare I say it, to use the word governor, that kept a lid on all of this. So while I do agree with James's analysis that you always as a political leader and, you know,

it would be naive not to think. As a political leader, you have to be in the same octave, so to speak, as your voters. and as the, if you happen to have the privilege of serving the government of the population at large, and those are two different things. But I really do believe, and people are going to say, well, Jerry's in the tank for Carney. But I really do believe that if Mark Carney thought a deal was on the table that was in the interest of the country, he would have signed it and then gone out to make the case for it. The fact that he didn't sign it will tell you, above all else,

he didn't think there was a deal there that was in the Canadian interest. and James's point about not allowing a snapshot to be taken and exposed publicly, it's exactly the right point. Nothing is agreed in those deals until everything is agreed in those deals. And sometimes you put things on the table you want to take away. Sometimes you keep things off the table that you want to put on at the last minute to get something that you would want. The people claiming, show us the deal, show us the deal, shows the deal,

either have no sense of how negotiations work. they're just trying to score cheap political points or they can't think of anything else to say. So where... Or all three. Or all three. Yeah. So where do we go from here?

You know, James was suggesting earlier, the kind of rag the puck, play out for time, get past the midterms, see what the landscape looks like at that point. Is that the strategy? I spent all like gaming out okay if this then that then that then this then if that one of these things and if one of those things then that thing like and that's I think a lot of time is spent sitting around sort of thinking about that in a very sober clear-headed way of just sort of well if they do that

they do that and if we do that and and you do that in all of the parts of what a deal would look like but at the core at the end of it and I think that people have focused on this appropriately which is that really it's true that a deal is only as good as its partners' character isn't enforcing it. And I think Canadians have very clearly arrived at that. And I think we just know that, you know, look, imagine Mark Carney, who has now built up this and whatnot, Mark, the circumstances. By the way, not just because of the fall apart of this particular deal a few weeks ago. This has been a decade of energy that has built up around Donald Trump that is now finding its voice and finding its footing. this decade of energy about Donald Trump and the distrust and the dislike and all of that,

which is substantive and reasoned. In order for Mark Carney to get a deal, he has to now sign a deal like they did in Argentina for the Kuzma Agreement alongside Donald Trump and then stand shoulder to shoulder with a guy and say to Canadians, this deal between us, you can trust this. This is good. But does anybody believe that Donald Trump can sign an agreement on tariffs, that because of either forest fire smoke or a bunch of really bad stories on fentanyl, or the American anthem gets booed at a bunch of hockey games or something,

or if Donald Trump just has a moment, that he, like imagine Mark Carney risks all of his political capital and everything that he's assembled and all of the weight of where he's at right now. And by the way, all of the momentum and energy around where he is politically right now, which could be directed at incredible projects, like whether it's building a West Coast pipeline,

reindustrializing parts of Ontario, building reconciliation within Canada on the National Unnergy Project. You see the PQ walking away from their referendum question, which buys us a five-year time horizon to do some really important stuff with Quebec. Reconciliation with the province of Alberta on energy. That energy that has been built up as a consequence is not just political energy, but steered toward projects for the public good, all of that's been built up. Now, imagine you take a piece of that and you say,

well, I'm going to risk some of this or all of this, and I'm going to put my arm around Donald Trump and say this tariff deal is good for Canada. and then you call a quick election in order to capitalize that and build the momentum. And then halfway through the election campaign, Donald Trump says, we're going to put a 4% tariff

on a Canadian alcohol coming to the United States because I just don't like this Doug Ford guy. Mark Carney's political capital collapses overnight. And we have a complete mess in front of us. And it's a nightmare. And then he has to explain, well, yes, he's violating the agreement that I'm campaigning on now, but it's only 4% it's this.

And we're going to talk to him afterwards. And trust me, it's just this one, not the next. It's over. It is over. So I don't know how Prime Minister Carney, given the value and the virtue of the momentum and the energy that's been built up to do good Canadian domestic projects for the next two years, how you can risk blowing that up for a deal that would satisfy some people in some ways in a short-term period with a completely untrustworthy partner on the other side. In the macro, I think, economically, time is on the United States' side because they don't don't frankly seem to care about their debt profile or bond markets.

Maybe that'll catch up with them, whatever. But economically, time might be on the American side. Politically, I think time is on Canada side. I think Canadians are prepared to endure more heat and more disruption in order to take the energy and the solidarity that's been built up in Canada to do big good things. It's up to the prime minister now and the premier is to deliver big good things. All right. You get the last word, Jerry.

Well, I'm tempted to just say amen to all of that. I think the point, and it is a real point. It feels like an esoteric one to people, but to me it is the point, and it's always been the point with Donald Trump. Since I was from here to that wall away from him in Argentina when he signed the deal, as James just described, and called it the best trade agreement ever negotiated

by anybody anywhere at any time or whatever the hell he called it. And within 90 seconds of him putting his hand on the Bible, not that that would matter to him, and taking the oath of office in January of 2025, he abrogated the basic terms of that agreement. It's incredible, Peter. And it leaves you in the position where you can't believe that the man either understands or believes in the dictionary definition of a deal. It is always subject to revision at his every whim and idiosyncratic want. And I just don't know how.

I'm not sure. Mark Carney has a lot of political capital right now. There's not enough political capital in the world to get Canadians to take Donald Trump at his word. Yeah, hard to argue with that. And that is why we ended up with the pencil line in that speech a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Great line. Okay.

we're going to leave it to that for this week. Great conversations. Good to have you guys back. We'll do it all again in two weeks with James Moore and Jerry Butts. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again on the bridge in 24 hours.