The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Mr. Carney Goes To Washington

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

The two government leaders meet for their first face to face since Mark Carney assumed office. There's a lot on the table but what is realistic to expect?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. It's Monday. Dr. Janice Stein is here. Trump. Carney. What should we realistically expect? That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to yet another week.

Welcome to Mondays. Welcome to Dr. Janice Stein coming up in a couple of moments' time. And the conversation will be about a number of things, but we'll start off on this question of what we should realistically expect from tomorrow's meeting between Donald Trump and Mark Carney. This will be the first time they meet as leaders of their country elected as leaders of their country and their first meeting face to face. What should we expect realistically? So we'll take a crack at that. But first, because it's Monday, and because we'd like to give you fair warning on what

the question of the week will be, here's what I've been thinking. Throughout this year so far, right from the beginning of January, the question of the week has always been in some form or another related to politics. I mean, we have had an amazing political year. Of that, there is no question. So, one can get not tired of politics because I don't think anybody has, although there's always a kind of a post-election letdown on that. But there are other things in life than politics. So

here's the question for this week. And this is assuming that, you know, we are one of those people who can think at a time that politics has become much more persistent in our heads. And that's probably not a good thing overall, right? So here's the question. Do you sometimes consciously try to stop thinking about politics and the news? How do you do that? How do you relax? Alright, I think we could all use some advice on that. So where's the best place to get advice? On the bridge from our listeners who have been amazing,

especially this year with their thoughts on this. So here's the question again. You sometimes consciously try to stop thinking about especially this year with their thoughts on this. So here's the question again. You sometimes consciously try to stop thinking about politics and the news. How do you do that? How do you relax? Okay, there's your question. Normal rules apply, 75 words or less. We've been extremely successful with that rule.

So that's stayin'. 75 words or less, and many of you do far less than 75 words. Have your answers in by Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern time. And send them to themandsbridgepodcast.gmail.com. Themansbridgepodcast.gmail.com. Include your name and the location you're writing from. It's amazing how some of you forget those two things.

So full name, location you're writing from, 6 p.m. Wednesday is the deadline. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com is where to send it. 75 words or less. I'll repeat the question at the end of today's program podcast. at the end of today's program podcast. So let's get to the point. And the point is, as it always is on Mondays, is our conversation with Dr. Janice Stein. So let's get that started. Here she is. Well, Janice, we're, I don't know, 24 hours away from this meeting between Trump and Carney. And what's your sense going in? Let's talk about the optics first. What do you expect this is going to look like?

So we know the script, Peter. There are, there's Trump in his arm chair, on the right hand side of the viewers, there's Mark Carney in the left hand, and then there's a sofa now, in which most of the senior people, minus Mike Waltz, but Marco Rubio, even Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, is often there, Pete Hegsat, they're all lined up. And so it's set up to script a meeting. And there are formalities.

Usually there are pleasantries between the two, between President Trump and whoever else is there, it lasts 90 seconds, two minutes, and then the press are asked to leave the room. And that's when the real conversations get started. Well, he broke that mold with Zelensky. And it is really remarkable how that one meeting has flown around the world to every other leader. So apparently one of the issues was Xi Jinping not picking up the phone. He doesn't want to find himself invited and trapped in that formal peace, which can turn into an ambush or a setup. Does,

does the visiting leader have any choice in who's in the room? No, your own people, right? You can bring one or two of your own and they're usually far off on the left. Um, but he certainly cannot tell the president that he doesn't want Pete Hegseth in the room or he doesn't want Suzy Wilds in the room. But he could, surely he could at least say,

why don't we have a one-on-one? Why not just the two of us have this discussion? Well, he would, first of all, these are negotiated out before, right? It's the teams, that's the advanced teams in both countries. So there will be conversations going on today about who's going to be in that room. But generally speaking, I don't think we Canada would want to waste a lot of political capital. As far as I know, you know, said to him, keep your people out of the room and we'll let our guy go into the room too, because that can happen anyway, if they want.

So after the cameras leave, there are both delegations. And by the way, Kirsten Hillman, our ambassador, will be with the prime minister. She probably will not go into the overall office, but she will be there right outside in the empty room. And they will have had a chance to talk, and she'll be involved in these negotiations. But that one-on-one, the two of them can have after the cameras have gone.

They each ask their people to leave and they can have a one-on-one. Now that's fairly risky with Donald Trump. But you know, it was just a week ago he had the one-on-one with Zelensky at the Vatican. Now that all happened sort of like impromptu. I don't think that was planned. But it looked pretty impressive. Just the two of them sitting there and they were clearly talking. Yes, they were leaning in. You could see by their body line what they were leaning in.

And it's just entirely conceivable they might do it. What's the risk here? Who knows what he said? Exactly, no note takers. Who knows? He's not faithful. He's not gonna tell his own team if there are no ears in the room. And there was nobody around Zolensky and Trump.

You know, our prime minister, I think, is a faithful reporter and will know what he said, but we'll believe him. So that's one of the difficulties, frankly, with doing these one on one. And the as you mentioned, that, you know, the sort of the difficulties frankly, with doing these one-on-one. As you mentioned, the pleasantries last a couple of minutes and then they kind of order the cameras out of the room, the reporters out of the room. There's a couple of problems there. One was Zelensky, the camera stayed for a long time.

Nobody asked them to leave, Right. It got so heated. And I mean, that's why we think it was a fix, right? That's why we think it was a fix. The J.D. man's laced right into him and they didn't ask the cameras to leave. And that's not a bad indicator. This was a setup. And that's everybody's nightmare now with him. And if the cameras aren't asked to leave and the reporters aren't asked to leave, or even if they are, there's going to be attempts to show questions.

And you can pretty much assume that one of those questions is going to be, you know, 51st state stuff. Yeah. So, you know, Trump yesterday on Meet the Press is certainly not shying away from his thoughts about, you know, 51st state and his calculations on what the subsidy is to Canada of a couple hundred billion dollars a year, which is really depends on how you look at trade really, to come up with that number. But what do you

do with that question? So that's why there are a number of people, frankly, including me, who watch these meetings and say, I would have rather kicked that one down the road. Let's say Xi Jinping is kicking it down the road for China. I actually don't believe it's in our interest, Peter, to be number one, number three, not even number five, frankly. I think let others be first. Let's see what he does with them.

Let's see if there's any meaningful negotiation at all, really, and you get a much better sense than of the risks. But they did have that phone call during the campaign, they did commit to do this, and so the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's staff made this decision to go quickly. I think it's overwhelmingly likely that if the president doesn't raise it, as you say, somebody else will. There'll be a very uncomfortable pause. And if I were Carney, I'd get in first. If if it's not the president who raises it, but it's a reporter,

I get in first and say what he said all along, this is just not gonna happen. And that's all that we're here to talk about. If it's the president who says it, it's much more awkward because you're his guest. Well, listen, we all know Trump, even if Carney does, if it happens, if it unfolds this way

and Carney goes first and says, this is not on, you know my position on this, you know Canada's position on this, this is not why I'm here to talk about it, Trump's not gonna shut up. Well, you know, it's interesting because we've seen him let some stuff go by occasionally. Apparently, and Carney in his first press conference said that in their last call, he didn't raise

it. Now, that's different than letting it go by when somebody else races it and puts it on the table. But, you know, he could turn to Carney and let him answer it and then move on. If who knows, but a little bit gets this is the worry here. It gets really awkward. If he doesn't let it go by and goes into a rant is only Trump can because it's never said it's long. He'll tell us what a beautiful thing it would be and how beautiful North America would be and how beautiful everything would be.

And then Carney's left sitting in this other armchair in this really, really awkward position. And I think it will make Canadians feel very uncomfortable to just you know to see and to see him sitting there having to listen to all that even if he's gone first but the alternative is off the table Peter which is to let himself get baited and do what Zelensky did. Mark Carney is a very disciplined human being, he won't do it. Yeah, I believe that he won't do it, but I mean, what are his options at that point? If the conversation starts to go off the rails on 51st state, I mean, what's the option? You get up

and say, I'm out of here? No. I mean, you know, people have suggested that, that it's so uncomfortable for him to sit there that he just get up and walk out. That's about the worst thing you could do to Donald Trump, frankly. Yeah, it's so humiliating. That story would be everywhere. And we all need to remember that Zelensky had to crawl back two days later. We remember that he stood up and, you know, shouted over the president. We forget that 48 hours later Macron and Stormer forced him, President of France, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, forced him to crawl back. And so we don't wanna be under any circumstances in that position.

I think if this is the way it rolls, Prime Minister has to sit there, one sentence, it's clear we have a disagreement here, but we're here to talk about, I just changed the sentence. And you know how good politicians are. You ask a question, they don't want to answer it. They give you a half a sentence and they move on to what they want to talk about.

That's what Coney really has to do here. But he's been a politician for a couple of months. Yeah. But, you know, somebody suggested to me the other day, in fact, the thing was Rob Russo, our friend Rob, who suggested the other day that Trump actually sees this meeting sitting down with a respected, known world leader on the economic front as actually making him look like a world leader on the, I mean he is a world leader on the economic front but a respected one. Sitting down there with Mark Carney that

it would it would be not to Trump's advantage to try to make a mess of this. Well that's what I think the team around Carney is hoping, and I'm sure they've had some conversations in which they've said, look, it clearly would be very embarrassing to our prime minister for this to come up. We've turned the page. We are looking forward to a constructive conversation. And I do think Rob is right here. Mark Carney has special cache with Donald Trump. And it does come because he was a respected central banker.

Donald Trump has always needed bankers in his life. He's always needed bankers. And let's just layer on one other piece to this, Peter, because ultimately it does matter. New York bankers looked down on Donald Trump. They condescended to him. He was an upstart. He was never part of the same circle. You know, they're clients that bankers socialize with. That was not the, Donald Trump was not part of that New York banking social circle.

So for Mark Carney, the Uber banker of them all to come to the White House and to be respectful, to be cordial, to be firm, but to be respectful and cordial will matter a lot to Donald Trump. It really will. So you have to hope he doesn't blow it. I gotta hope that neither one of them blows it, right? What's actually possible in this meeting? This is the first, I mean,

these two guys have met each other before in a number of occasions, but this is the first time as world leaders, they're sitting down together, no matter who else may be in the room. What do you think's actually possible in this first meeting? So let's just take a step back for one second and look at what Carney has been saying throughout the whole campaign and said the night of the election to our old relationship with the United States is over. That's very strong language from

any Canadian leader, frankly. And there are some mainstream Republicans who are not happy with that. Former ambassadors to Ottawa who are saying, oh my goodness, what's going on here? So I think what has to happen here is, and this is tough for Canadians to swallow right now. The message has to be, we value a relationship with value the relationship, a relationship with you. We want a relationship with you. It may be different than it's been in the past, but we live next door to each other. We have no choice but to live together. And I want to explore how we can take the earth and sand, how we can, what we can do together, and what the new arrangement will be like

on trade, on security, on defense, on the economy. That's why I'm here. This is an introductory meeting, Peter, no more. It's at the very general attitude. What will come out of this if it really goes well is an agreement to turn it over to officials to start conversations, to start work. And here's where I hope the Prime Minister slows it down. Let me add one more thing here. There are members of the cane business community and I think the

large majority who want this done ASAP. They're and I understand where they're coming from for them the uncertainty is getting in the way of investment. They can't make decisions, they can't plan, the markets aren't turned well and generally private sector leaders can adjust to anything as long as they know what that anything is. So they want this to move at high speeds. Whereas I think outside that group, there's much more caution.

So they would then, those business leaders would not be happy with a meeting that simply ends with, okay, we're going to turn it over to officials. No, no. But they want to know how fast we're going to get this done. Right? Now these deals, normally two years. But he, you know, Trump could set aside things in the meantime.

Yes, he could. I mean, Trump could say as long as these negotiations go well, we're not going to force the tariffs. Now, is he going to do that? If he, it depends, it doesn't really depend on us. Trump and his team, it's really fascinating, are stunned by what Xi Jinping have done. They have really boxed themselves into a corner. They went to 145% cash. Peter, they're not going to be toys for Christmas. They're not. All the Christmas shoppers are going to think, well, shelves are going to be empty. You know, toys, shoes, clothes, furniture.

And we really think about this for a minute. Trump has no interest, in the United States, has no interest in bringing those jobs back to North America. They're not sustainable when you have high labor costs. But it was all put in the same basket and they're trying to climb back off the tree that they climbed up as you keeping is not letting them.

Finally, there was just one indicator this week. Well, maybe we might consider conversations. If you're Donald Trump, you are getting desperate for a deal now. You need one deal to put in the window. Yeah. I mean, it's been what, a month since the tariffs were finally announced. And it seems his position, Trump's position, is much weaker now than it was then. For a lot of different reasons

and with a lot of different players, with the possible exception of the Brits for some reason, they seem to eager to cut a deal. Yeah, yeah. There's no question about that. So that's why I think that we gain by delay. We lose by haste, we gain by delay. Because I actually think at the highest level here,

in the macro level, I think Trump has lost already. He's lost. And they're now gonna do their best to put as good a face on it as they can, and to salvage what they can. But this was so incoherent, so messy, so badly executed that they are looking now for ways to calm down. So we don't have an interest in rescuing him too early. So here's my last question on this on this topic. As you said, we don't know who's going to be in the room. We don't know what the lineup on that couch

is going to be on the couch is on either side. But assuming that it's going to be there are going to be some people on those couches, Cabinet secretaries or senior officials of some kind. On the Canadian side, I mean we can guess who's going to be there, but at the end of the day is there just one person talking? Yes, yes, yes. And I'll tell you why. The new cabinet is unannounced until the 12th of May. That is still another week away. Who knows who the minister of finance now? Maybe the, you saw Carney's answer to that one when he was asked whether François Philippe Champagne

is gonna be finance minister, he quit back. Well, did he put you up to asking that question? It's entirely possible that they know, the big ones know, but it doesn't matter. They don't really have the authority that the cabinet won't for at least another week, frankly. There's only one person we know, even our ambassador, who knows, right?

Prime ministers, that's their prerogative. One person on the Canadian side has authority right now. Until the cabinet is announced and Parliamentary called him, that's the Prime Minister. And he just happens to be the expert on this file. This is his file, yes. So even if the others had been sworn in already, the odds are it would still be.

It probably wouldn't matter. You know, Jean-Claude Chant said, and he was absolutely right, the prime minister really only has, any prime minister of Canada has two files. One is the national unity, and this all affects national unity. Those two are so intertwined.

And the other is Canada, US. That's run by the prime minister and the PMO. It doesn't matter who the foreign minister is. Okay. We're going to take our break. We come back. We're going to bring back our, what are we missing file? Because we've been missing a lot over the last couple of months. I'll bite now. And we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Monday episode of The Bridge, which is of course, Dr. Janice Stein from the University of Toronto, the Monk School. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

And what are we missing? Up front, two of the most potentially dangerous countries in the world who have been face to face for decades, India and Pakistan, both have nuclear weapons. This is a story Peter that's been building for two weeks. We've seen this movie before they went out in 2016. They went out of the gap in 2019 over the same set of issues that there are militants who allegedly crossed the border into the Indian control part of Kashmir.

And they recently killed 26 people. And Modi is absolutely furious. He's furious. You can just see it in his body language. Because after 2019, he removed the autonomous status of Kashmir because it is Muslim majority it's one of the few Muslim majority heritage princely states that came princely states that came, that were incorporated into India in 1948. This has been going on since 1948. It's just as resistant to solution as the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Well, when he and he is now threatening in the ICS tones to pursue these people, What makes this story so important is the fact that these are two nuclear armed states, Pakistan and India. And there is a fascinating description in a book that Mike Pompeo published in 2023, in which he described the call he got when he was in a hotel late at night from the Pakistanis who told him that India was preparing to use nuclear weapons against Pakistan.

And he said, hold on, I'll be right back to you. And he called India and Modi told him, no, no, no, that's not what our intelligence is saying. Pakistan is preparing to use nuclear weapons against us. He spent 12 agonizing hours talking those two men down. And I think the preconditions this time are worse. First of all there's a more militant chief of the Pakistani army who's under a lot of political pressure. The chief of the defense staff then had already started informal conversations with India. Secondly Modi staked his reputation on this.

After that conversation in 2019, he incorporated those Muslim dominated parts of Kashmir into India and there's been direct rule and he's told Indians, I've solved this problem. Well, that raid showed him and showed the Indian public that he has not solved the problem. So the preconditions, and let's add the third thing, and this is astonishing to me, no American ambassadors, either in Delhi or in Karachi. They have no appointments, nothing, not even started. Is, is anyone trying to play a peacekeeper here?

Well, not the United States doesn't have bandwidth right now. Frankly, Marco Rubio has four jobs right now. He's a secretary of state. He's Pompeo's equivalent. He's National Security Advisor. He's head of the defunct USAID, or what's left of it, and one other agency. He has no bandwidth. Pete Hagg said,

we're not gonna say a lot. We know his bandwidth. We know his bandwidth. We know his bandwidth, right? And the Chinese are engaged here. They've issued a statement. At least they're paying attention. They've issued a statement to both sides saying, don't escalate. But historically they've had a very close

relationship with Pakistan and the relationship between the Indian and Chinese tents. So if Modi strikes, and here's the scenario that's keeping everybody up, the headquarters headquarters of this group, you know, it's called Lashkar-e-Tayba, L-E-T-L-E-T is the acronym for it, are over the border, just very, very close to Lahore, which is Pakistan's second city. If there are airstrikes, which is what Modi is threatening, into Pakistan beyond Kashmir, you can't predict the scenario from that moment on. You know, we've talked about this before, but here you've got India and Pakistan at each other. You've got the situation in the Middle East, Israel, Gaza, Iran, and you've got Russia, Ukraine. And in all these talks and all these negotiations and all these

crises, do you ever hear the word you win? No. No. So what's the point anymore? You're talking to the wrong person. We'll have to get Bob Ray. We will. We will. We should get Bob Ray. And he will give us a much better answer because he's the president of ECOSOC, the Economic and Social Council, and some of those UN agencies are great, Peter. But I completely agree with you. The UN was set up to promote and preserve peace and security.

It's dysfunctional. It's completely dysfunctional. And it is always dysfunctional when there is tension among the great powers. And you know, Trump said it two days ago. I thought, well, I couldn't put it better myself. And he said, he said, the country that has the gold makes the rules. That's how he thinks about world order right now. The powerful, the rich make the rules. And when he says to Zolensky or to Canada, you don't have any cards.

That's what he means. Now we do, we do have cards and Carney knows that. Yeah. And, uh, and Trump knows it too. Of course he knows. And, okay. So I'm going to be watching, I mean, I know, I'm going to have ADD here as I watch that meeting in the White House, glued to those first few minutes, but keep your eye on what India does next year. Okay. Before we wrap it up for this week, where else are you looking at in terms of…

Well, I was really interested to report on our own election. People are drawing all kinds of inferences from our election. Anti-Trump, Trump elected Carney, Trump defeated somebody who occasionally sounded like him in Canada, the conservatives, followed by the election in Australia, where the first incumbent actually got reelected, because he also, for very similar reasons, Albanese, considered better able to deal with Trump. So we have the Trump effect, except in Germany, that wasn't the case, but really striking, and I think Canadians

may have missed this in the middle of all the tumult we're going through, local council elections in the United Kingdom in which Nigel Farage and his party, stunning number of seats, party, a stunning number of seats, very bad news. His party came first ahead of labor and ahead of the conservatives in Britain. There's somebody who sounds a lot like Trump. So any, any, you know, when we kind of look at this, we're encouraged, we think that the Trump effect is driving out the more extreme right-wing politicians.

Just look over the ocean and you see a very different result. And I'm over the ocean at this point, this week, again Again, I was watching Faraj on a program yesterday here in the UK and he looked like the cat had swallowed the canary, right? Even to the point of dismissing those who said Brexit has been a failure, even though most ordinary Brits who've suffered as a result of Brexit would take the opposite position. But he looked like a guy who figured, and we've seen these people before. We saw it in Poliev for a couple of years, right? So they could end up being in for a surprise themselves. But right now in this moment, he's looking like he's...

He's looking like he's, he's riding on. And so, you know, for us in Canada, it's important to pay attention. Why? We're talking about Europe in our diversification strategy. Well, look what's going on in the UK. Look what's going on in France. Look at the AFD, the journal, right? So we have to be fairly, this may not be this fantasy as an escape route from Donald Trump.

Now we tend to tell ourselves it is. Okay, you've given us lots to think about and you've got us all psyched up and prepared to watch what happens tomorrow. It should be interesting. Very interesting interesting as these things often are. So thanks Janice. We'll talk again next week. Perfect. Janice Stein, Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School of the University of Toronto.

And she comes in every Monday. And if your mail is is any indication that's a day you look forward to every week, because, uh, expands our knowledge on world events gives us things to think about things, times to agree with things at times to disagree with. And I get all that kind of mail, um, as a result of our Monday episodes. And we're indebted to Janice for her time that she spends with us every week. Okay, let's go over a couple of things.

The question of the week, I promised that I would repeat it before the end of the program today. The question of the week deals with politics really and how we've been consumed by politics, especially on the domestic front, ever since the beginning of this year. And as a result, our questions of the week have been about politics, about the election, about the leadership race, about Donald Trump. So we're going to try and, at least for this week, we're going to try something different, because I'm starting to see the frustration in some of your letters. So here's the question, do you sometimes consciously try to stop thinking

about politics and the news? Both of them. How do you do that? How do you relax? So how do you give yourself a break from politics? What do you think about? I'd love to hear your answers on that. As usual, we restrict those answers please to under 75 words. Have them in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time or 3 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday of this week. That's the cutoff time. Send them to themansbridgepodcast.gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast.gmail.com. Include your name and the location you're writing from. Very important. So if you meet all of those conditions, then you end up in the final draw. Let's just see which letters get on. And you know, we, I don't know, we get hundreds of emails every week. And of that, there's usually somewhere between 40 and 50 that make it on air.

Sometimes it depends on how fast I can read. Sometimes it depends on how long the random ranter is. But we get the best of the best on Thursdays on Your Turn. Reminder of what's coming up this week tomorrow tomorrow, it's Smoke Mirrors No Truth, Bruce Anderson, Fred DeLorey will be by because there's still hangovers from the election. I think we've got a couple more weeks with the boys for sure on SMT. Maybe until we take our summer break. And boy, that can't come soon enough. We're all a little burned out from this year, but looking forward to it. So that's tomorrow's episode.

Wednesday is our encore edition. Thursday is, as we just mentioned, our Your Turn and the Random Rant. Friday it's a good talk with Chantelle bear and Rob Russo a reminder to the two of our programs are on our YouTube channel that's SMT smoke mirrors on the truth tomorrow and good talk and That channel has been doing extremely well. I Guess through the height of the election, it'll be interesting to see in the post-election period

how things do on that front. But we're getting tens of thousands of viewers each week on both of those channels. And we appreciate your support through your viewership on that. And likewise, the buzz, my weekly newsletter comes out Saturday mornings at 7 a.m. Eastern time. It's in your inbox, there's no charge,

but you do have to subscribe by going to nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter. Or is it nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter or is it national news watch dot com yeah national news watch dot com slash newsletter and you just have to include your email in that that comes out 7am Saturday mornings and it's you know it's kind of a look back at the week. Some of the articles that I found especially interesting, helping us to understand some of the things that are up and down in our world. And so grab that if you can. We've got a large subscriber list on that as well.

Okay, that's gonna wrap it up for this day, for this Monday as we head into yet another week of action packed news. That's going to be some kind of meeting tomorrow. I'm looking forward to watching that or seeing it or hearing about it, depending on what they let us, what access they allow us on that. Of that we don't know yet. Alright, I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in less than 24 hours.