The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Raj-Russo: Is Compromise In the Air?

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives suggested a few weeks ago that they would try to find ways to work together to advance the issues facing Parliament. We've heard that kind of talk before and nothing has happened, but what about now?  A hint yesterday that maybe, just maybe, there could be progress.  Rob Russo of the Economist and Althia Raj of the Toronto Star  have their thoughts on this week's Reporter's Notebook. 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 Raj Russo? It's coming right up. Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to the reporter's notebook, Raj and Russo. Althea Raj, Rob Russo. Althea, of course, from the Toronto Star and Rob from The Economist. Here's how I want to start. You know, a couple of weeks ago, both the liberals and the conservatives suggested that they were going to try to find ways to work together

to make this Parliament more productive. We've heard that kind of talk before, and I think there was a, you know, a lot of people were thinking, yeah, I'm sure, let's see what really happens. Well, yesterday, there seemed to be actually some progress on that front. On a bill call C-15, now I don't want to get caught in the weeds of what the bill's all about,

but it was a process that had the potential to really drag on and on and on, and it may still do that. But it appeared yesterday that there was a willingness on the part of the two main parties, the conservatives and the liberals, to work out some arrangement where they could move the bill along. So here's my question. How real is what we seem to see yesterday? But even more importantly, what does it suggest for the future if, in fact, there is some progress on this working-together stuff?

stuff. Alcia, why don't you start this week? Well, I think they are working together. Frankly, they have been working together, even on controversial pieces of legislation. And there is a part in C-15 that is quite controversial in terms of giving a cabinet minister, and potentially more than one cabinet minister

to cabinet ministers, the power to suspend laws from being applied in certain cases. But we saw that in C-5 when that was the first bills that was introduced by the Kearney government that basically gave cabinet the power to suspend laws to allow, you know, projects in the national interest to go forward. And the conservatives gave Mark Carney a helping hand. And frankly, we've even seen that going back to the throne speech, which was amended but passed on division.

And what you are seeing is the, Conservatives, I believe, want to be seen to take the fight to the government, but when it comes down to it, when you look at in the weeds, at committee stage, when things are actually getting done, they don't want to take accountability for helping the government pass things. So they're trying to pass things on division, which means there's no recorded vote, or they're abstaining when there is a recorded vote. But also not actually opposing the government's agenda. And the only pushback, and I'm going to say it's like quite minute, is,

on the Senate side where the senators are like, oh, wait a second. Like this is not getting the proper scrutiny. And I suspect C-15, it's being pre-studied, going to start getting pre-studied in the Senate. They're going to do the same thing on this clause in part five of this bill. So it's not necessarily new, but I do think there is a spirit of cooperation between the two major parties. And I'm not sure, frankly, it's a good thing. You realize how important the voices of smaller parties are and how few powers they have in a legislature with the rules that have now been adopted. So I guess the question becomes, you know, is it a spirit of cooperation or a spirit of survival, especially on the part of the conservatives?

Rob, what's your take on this? Yeah, I think that Andrew Shear is going to great pains to paw at the ground, snort. suggest that they compel the government to make all kinds of changes to legislation like C-15 and that he's prepared to fight them right up to the line where a confidence vote would be required that could dissolve Parliament and result in election. I think that it's poll-driven. Much of what we're seeing now in terms of the conservative posture is poll-driven. It's not a bad thing necessarily that parties get together and actually compromise it.

In a minority parliament, that's the way it's supposed to work. The compromises they made on C-15 are really rather mild. The liberals gave in so that there would have to be a 30-day public consultation on some of the provisions that would create what's called regulatory sandboxes, allowing companies to test things outside of, normal procedures, normal laws. And there's a two-ministers or two-key requirement to trigger this. It sounds technical, but it's really quite mild.

So what is it telling us? I think it's telling us that the conservatives have other problems they need to try and address before they can actually begin to oppose the liberals in a much more vigorous way. I think they need to get their own house in order. it's not just that they're losing MPs. They don't seem to have much control over their caucus. We saw that not just with Jamil Giovanni,

but with Mike Dawson, the New Brunswick MP, who dared to say that he was not going to take an increase, a salary increase. That's due to all MPs. It's regularly scheduled. And then was heckled and mocked in his own caucus room. All of that, all of that suggests that Mr. Polyev still does not have control of his caucus. So he needs to do that first.

And the other thing that he needs to do, and he's going to begin to do it next this week, is to roll the biggest rock out of the road between him and the Conservatives actually attaining power. And that's dealing with Donald Trump and the threat Mr. Trump poses to our national security, to our national economic prosperity, to our national integrity. those are the things that he has to get at, and he can't risk the potential dissolution of parliament until he gets at that, because those are the kinds of things

that are keeping the conservatives bracketed, I would say, at a level of support that is going to give them a vigorous opposition and the liberals an easy majority government, if polls are to be believed right now. Okay. I'll get to the U.S. The Polly have U.S. story in a moment.

But I just want to, I found it intriguing what Althea said about the Senate. That seems more a play on a bill called C4. And once again, I don't want to get into the weeds on what's happening there. But I do find it interesting. And Althea is, you know, one of those few journalists who actually spent some time checking in on the Senate and seeing what they're up to. but the Senate, which is a peculiar composition of the Senate now, given the independence that sit on the kind of what were the liberal benches in the Senate.

But are they really putting up a roadblock on the C4? Are they saying, no, no, no, it's not going to happen as quickly as you think it's going to happen. Yeah, okay, so two things. I just want to, on the C-15 thing that's happening in the House, I think it's important for Canadians to know that if conservatives really believe that this one clause was so egregious, they have the support to remove it. So they chose not to remove it. And I think one of the things that we need to be aware of is that the two main parties like to make decisions swiftly and without much public scrutiny. And they're kind of reshaping the laws in that way.

And the smaller parties who are incentivized to say, no, no, the legislature needs to have as much power as we can. a stronger role, they're lifting their hand up and saying, well, wait, this is not appropriate. Like, we still need to have a say in this discussion. So, like, in the greater frame, there is that conversation happening at the moment. On the Senate side, Bill C4 that you talk about is, in my view, a pretty egregious bill. Basically, it's one of the first pieces of legislation the CARTING government introduced, which is a bill that had the support of a lot of people because the election was run on it, which was basically a lower income tax cut that affects. basically everybody, and also getting rid of carbon pricing.

And in the back of that bill, they tapped on this bit that says, oh, and by the way, all political parties will be exempted from privacy rules. They will get to make their own laws, and they will have their own privacy person report back to elections, Canada, whether or not they have abided by the laws that they have set for themselves. Oh, and we're going to backdate that to 2000, because there's this court case in British Columbia that said that we were subject to the BC Privacy Act, and we don't want that to happen. So we're going to give ourselves these incredible powers.

And in the House of Commons, this was not studied at all. The parties just agreed to it. And then they shipped that off to the Senate. And the Senate is like, well, what? You want to do what? Come again? And so they have sent this bill to a special committee, legal and constitutional affairs that looked at it, heard from witnesses and said, whoa. we are here to save you from yourselves.

We don't have a conflict of interest. You have a conflict of interest because we are now mostly independent senators. And we think you should revisit this. So we're going to suggest that you take this out of the finance bill or that you get rid of it completely. Or if you don't accept that, that at least you give yourself a sunset clause so that you have two years to make this law better

because basically the political parties argue, well, we can't be subject to 13 different privacy regimes around the country, which is an argument that carries a lot of weight with the senators. Yeah, you shouldn't be subject to certain different types. Maybe there should be one federal system, but we think there should be some laws. So that committee is basically reporting back to another committee today. And we're going to find out whether they listen to the people who heard testimony or they decide we're a lot, we're under immense pressure from the government. We're just going to, pass this along and recommend to the Senate that we do the House's bidding. You know, we're unelected and we should bow to what the House decides, which is frankly what happened with another piece of legislation that's also pretty controversial on immigrants. That's what happened yesterday on Monday when the Senate said, yeah, we did hear from a lot of witnesses who raised a lot of concerns and clearly the government didn't do its homework, but we're not going to make any amendments to this piece of legislation.

So I'm renting a little, but the other thing that's important to note is that the Senate is mostly independent at the moment, as in they have more senators that weren't pointed under this Justin Trudeau framework with this independent advisory board, and then people in the public submit and ask to be a senator, and then a lot of them are in the Senate. Mark Parney has not said what he plans to do with the Senate. He has not appointed any new senators. There are a lot of vacancy on the advisory board. it's unclear whether or not he's going to continue with independent senators. So they are also in the back of their minds thinking, we need to show Canadians the value of having an independent Senate. End of rant.

You know, you shouldn't worry about ranting because you really got to rant out, Rand Rousseau. But you've got something on this, Rob? Do you want to put this? Look, I think this is going to be one of the test cases for what has been a fundamental change to the foundations of our politics. You can't make constitutional change in this country anymore. Really, since the Meach Lake process, anybody who thinks about constitutional change knows they're going into a political graveyard. Well, when the liberals abolished or expelled,

senators from their caucus, they in fact created something akin to a constitutional change. And now we're going to see whether or not the country is going to be okay with that. And it's going to be the liberal government that's going to be affected by it. In terms of the favors political parties do for themselves, I'm afraid that this is an old and disreputable tendency of all political parties that have held power. not just the liberals, all of them. I find it appalling, for instance, that if I want to make a charitable donation to the Canadian Cancer Society, it comes in at a lower rate than if I were to make a donation to any political parties.

Political parties have given themselves the ability to grant their supporters a bigger tax deduction than if I were going to try to do something to help the Mental Health Association or the Cancer Society. That's awful. And that's just an example of how political parties will look after themselves. So do they need a check? Yes. Is this going to be an interesting test of what happens to our country and the way we're governed by having independent senators? Yes.

It's an unknown thing. Both of those things, I think, are going to be illustrated over the next little while on this. I think what's really interesting about this one is that, for some, of all, if you want to have, like, the debate about the tax, charitable tax rebate, that's been in the public realm, right? But they've been, the government has been doing this, like, tacking things that are, like, really, frankly, bad and deserves scrutiny on the back of omnibus bills over and over and over again. And this bill, basically, like, as a Canadian, you have no right to ask a political party for the information they hold about you.

They are not limited from selling or trading your information. The people who work for them, the companies, like for the liberals, for example, data sciences, their provider, when it's working for the party, will have to abide by no actual privacy rules other than the rules of liberals themselves set out for themselves. So it's quite something. Like no company in Canada operates in a vacuum like this. And we are saying, sure, political parties can do whatever they want with your data. and you don't even have the right to correct the data, to look at the data,

and they don't even want to tell you what they're holding about you. So in this age of like AI and all these risks that we're saying, like this is an important conversation to have. And parliamentarians, members of parliament, are saying, we don't even want to be bothered to have it. Like we haven't heard from one witness. We didn't have one debate. That's quite outrageous.

So thank God for the Senate. I will say, kudos to them. Those are rarely heard words. I'll say. I think it's been really important. And if they had not raised a stink demanding to study this, we probably would not know about it until months later. Well, I'm glad you've raised it,

and I'm glad we've talked about it, because I think it's fair to say that for most Canadians, they still look at the Senate as a bunch of aging freeloaders who do nothing except turn up occasionally. and cash nice size checks. However, this does give you pause as to what's going on and whether or not there really is something worthy about a chamber of second, you know, sober second thought

if that, in fact, is what's happening here. So we'll keep an eye on this, and we know that Althea will, because she likes Senate stories and always has. Okay, let me, you know, we do have a couple of other things to discuss. And one of them is this thing that Rob raised earlier, which is that Pierre Polyev is giving him major speech this week, which is giving him, I mean, he's had the opportunity before and hasn't taken it, but he's going to take it this week and outline what his thinking is

toward the Trump administration and the U.S. policies towards Canada. People have been waiting for this. His caucus to some degree has been waiting for it. not all of the caucus, but some of it. And how different is it going to be than what his kind of rogue MP Giovanni had to say last week or two weeks ago? What do we know about, I mean, I think we know why he's doing this,

but what do we know about what he's actually going to say in it? Rob, do we know anything yet? No, not yet. But, you know, I think many of the senior leadership from the party were missing yesterday during the first question period. And it seems to me there's a lot of huddling going on. And I think the huddling is going on because they're wrestling with issues like this,

as well as issues of clear problems in the distant early warning system of their own caucus. What is clear is that there are vast elements, vast tracks of the Conservative Party membership that support, if not Trump, then Trumpism. and he needs to deal with them. He now has a mandate to deal with them because he has the support of almost nine out of ten members of the Conservative Party in terms of his leadership. But at the same time,

he also needs to deal with the rest of caucus who can do him in and who will not, many of whom will not hold on to their seats if he doesn't deal with Trump and Trumpism. So that's his challenge. Are there openings? There are very, very few openings. You know, his preferred destination is to get to cost of living issues facing Canadians.

We all know them. We all shop. We all suffer sticker shock every time we go in and try and buy something to make dinner. But he can't get there if Donald Trump continues to be the issue. that he's going to be. And there's no sign that Mr. Trump is going to let up. But he needs to get there. He needs to have a coherent position.

Is there a middle path? Is there a middle path of cooperating with the United States while not seem to be supportive of what Mr. Trump is doing in terms of perturbing, disrupting, and quite frankly, menacing Canada? There might be a middle path. And I would suspect that that middle path is continental defense. that it is in the interest of both countries to come together to confront the threats by the Russians, by the Chinese and others when it comes to cybersecurity, Iran and North Korea, to defend the continent's infrastructure, the Arctic, all of that. The truth is that Canada cannot do it alone.

No matter what the plan is to present a more robust defense front, we cannot. do it. We need the United States. Just like Europe needs the United States, if it's going to confront the Putin threat, we need the United States, at least for the next several years, to help us. It's in our interests that both countries do this. Is that the road that Mr. Poyleev is going to take? That's what I'm going to be watching for. If he pushes all the other stuff aside for now and says, here's where we can get along. And if we can get along here, maybe this is where we can get along on trade as well. Well, that's a tricky plan to strategize on continental defense with somebody who actually

wants your land and your water and your resources and everything else. Absolutely. But I think we've seen, we have seen that if it's not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning of Trumpism, I think, I think, I mean, maybe some people might say optimistic, but the last several weeks have been instructive that way. Althea, what do you see on this? I don't know what's in the speech. I haven't frankly made any calls on it,

but I do think that the opening, and we kind of saw Pierre Puehliev take it after the Davos speech in his response to Prime Minister Kearney, is saying it's great to work with other middle powers and expand our trade networks, but don't take your eye off the ball. Most of our trade is done with the United States, and we're not going to replace that overnight.

And I think that is his opportunity. To Rob's point about continental defense, a lot of conservatives don't believe that the American threat, the Trump threat, is as great as liberals make it out to be. And so not just liberals, progressives as a whole, I guess you could say. So I think that that is an opportunity for him to say, you know, like we need to be buying the F-35. We need to be more engaged. You know, this two will pass. We can't take our eye off the ball. Kuzma's really important.

And that's a message that some in the business community are really aching to hear and think that the government's focus is on things that are years down the line, if not decades down the line, and that the liberals risk doing irreparable harm to our relationship with the United States and that this two will pass. I think this idea of like, is it a,

This two will pass or is this, this is a transformational change that will never go back. That is kind of like the different visions between the two parties when it comes to foreign affairs. Okay. There's more to this discussion and we're going to have it. But we're going to do take a quick break here and we'll get back at it right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Raj Russo, reporter's notebook for this week. Althea Raj from the Toronto Star, Rob Russo from the Economist.

You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, are on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us, no matter the platform you are connecting with us on. Okay, the challenge for Pierre Plyev in all this, and especially this week, is trying to thread this needle that he has, which is on the one side, he's trying to attract a broader audience nationally.

on Canadians who are concerned about the Canada-U.S. relationship and don't like Donald Trump. And they want to hear something from Pierre Polyev on that front. The other side of the needle, if you wish, is his own caucus and his own party. Some of whom, and Rob and Althea have both mentioned this over time, are supportive, either Trump directly or Trumpism. And so he's got a while trying to attract more on one. side he's got to not lose on the other side. And losing on the other side can lead to all kinds of things up to and including

floor crossings, really. What, how narrow is that eye of the needle that he's trying to thread through given this speech? I mean, what's the risk here? What's the real risk that he has? Who wants to try that? I think the path is not as narrow as it was before Calgary when he won the backing of 87% of his party.

That gives him now, I think, more room to maneuver. Why are people crossing the floor? If we take Matt Jenneru at his word, it is in part because they are worried about what Trump represents in the world and what Prime Minister Carney is offering in response. What is the issue that moved the biggest segment of votes in my lifetime? It was Trump. So he needs a coherent position on this.

I was, I think anybody who believes in Canada was pleased to see how crystal clear Puehliv was in terms of the Alberta secession referendum. 100% of my caucus is behind Canada and behind, and would vote no one. in a referendum in Alberta, in essence, is what he said. There was no ambiguity about it. I think he needs to take a similar kind of position on the threat that Mr. Trump represents,

while at the same time, as Althea said, recognizing that you cannot ignore the gravitational pull of 340 million of the richest consumers in the world. He needs to be clear, he needs to be coherent, but at the same time, he needs to tell those people who are flirting with Trumpism, that we didn't turn our back on the United States. They turned their backs on their best friends,

and at the same time, they mocked and they scorned their best friends, and they told their best friends they didn't need any of their products. They told their best friends they're going to kill their auto industry. And by the way, they also told their best friends, you know, we're really interested in that lovely part of, It's almost like someone came to me and said, your sister's beautiful. We don't want anything to do with you,

but we're really after your sister, and that's Alberta. And that's the thing that I think will allow him to hammer back at Trump and Trumpism. No one in any part of the world should have come anywhere near threatening the territorial integrity of Canada. And that's the nail. He can be the hammer on that. All right, Althea, and I can tell you, she's going to try to ignore the sister line, but I'm sure she has some overall thoughts here.

Go ahead. Guess I will ignore the sister line. I don't think the Trump thing is as big factors you both seem to think it is. I think what is going to matter most in the days that follow the speech is frankly what Mark Carney says in India. what Mark Carney says in Australia, where he's supposed to be making a kind of a similar Davos-like speech, and where caucus members will do a compare and contrast. Because at the moment, the conservative leader seems to be unsure about where to land.

You know, the conservatives have always been really good at kind of gauging the public mood and driving towards an outcome, often based on emotions. And now they're talking about there's an opposition day motion today. you've seen social media videos appear polia of saying, you know, bogus asylum seekers should not be allowed to have health care benefits. Well, bogus asylum seekers should be forced to leave the country, but when it assumes that if they're waiting for an appeal, they can still get this interim federal health program. There's a lot of anti-immigration sentiment in this country, and the liberals have also. tried to respond to it. But if you're sitting in Pierre Poliop's caucus, do you want to hear from a leader who says, you know, these are the big challenges that we need to tackle and come be part of my

team to help tackle like the crisis of our time? Or do you want to pick on a vulnerable group that may or may not be trying to get a free doctor's visit or braces for your. child. And I think that it's kind of where does the Conservative Party want to focus its attention. They were being, I think, quite successful in the drive against the Liberals bizarre gun control buyback program, but because of Tumblr Ridge that has fallen off the wayside. So they're kind of like struggling to find an issue. And I think more than the speech, like Thursday's speech is going to be compared to Carney's speech. And it's mostly about where do you want to spend the next three years, if you're a conservative caucus member who kind of finds themselves, you know,

progressive conservative on the center rights spectrum where you feel as an MP that you will have a larger voice. I don't think that any of the, if you want to say pro-Trump, elements of Pierre Puellio's caucus are going anywhere. And frankly, you know, the conservative party is a really huge tent. Those people don't really like the caucus amates either. And And some of those people are in vulnerable seats that, you know, they could also lose if there is an election. Well, that sounds like, this is no easy party to lead right now. It never is, but yeah, it's not an easy time. But they will never gain power unless they deal with the Trump issue.

And as long as Donald Trump is there. If there's an election after Donald Trump leaves and all of a sudden we go back to where we were. and does anybody actually believe that's going to happen in a hurry? No one does. He needs to deal with this. This week's speech on Canada-U.S. relations is the beginning of three, four other big policy speeches he's going to make over the next few months. But he can't get to them. Nobody will listen to those.

Nobody will take him seriously unless he deals with this one here. I think they're important ones. They're going to be about affordability. They're going to be about housing. They are going to be about immigration. And I think Althea is probably right. If this is the way they're going on immigration, this might be how they appeal to some of the baser elements of their own coalition,

if they're going after immigrants, because it does sound like a dog whistle. It does. But nobody's going to even hear that dog whistle unless he does something about Trump. And he has to do that this week. somebody we all know, Jamie Watt, a long-time conservative strategist, writes a column on the weekends for Toronto Star.

And he wrote a piece, I guess it was two weeks ago, where he basically made the argument that until Pierre Pollyev utters the word Donald Trump, he will never be prime minister. That he's ignored talking about Trump. He ignored it again. in Calgary a couple of weeks ago and that he just feels

he's got to talk about it and I guess this week is the week he's going to on the floor across your front am I to take away from this conversation that they're sitting in the woods or they're sitting in the background right now waiting to see how certain things unfold and namely that speech on later this week by Pollyev is that what you're saying or could anything happen at any moment

I know conversations are still ongoing. I think, frankly, the prime minister's travel schedule is probably more of a determinant because what's the point of having a floor crosser if you're not there to welcome them? So I don't know. I mean, there are some people who were rumored to cross, and I don't know that they were floor crossers because I didn't speak with them, but I have noticed that there's definitely been some outreach on the part of the OLO's office to those potential would be floorgross.

You know, giving them questions and question period. You know, there's a lot of like, oh, I suddenly realized that you are a valuable member of this team. And I love you very, very much. Rob, the rumors are rife. I mean, this is a town that was built on rumors, but that the next one could come from Quebec. So I would watch, I'm sure they're watching their Quebec, the conservatives are watching their Quebec caucus very, very closely. I do think that if the liberals are going to get their majority, it will come through the province of Quebec,

but not because it's necessarily a floor crossing. A couple of things have happened. First of all, Terban, which could allow, if the liberals hold their seats elsewhere, it could allow for a possible majority government there. But we found out that Alexandreux is, he says he's thinking about, leaving. When you say that, you're all but gone out the door. He's thinking about leaving.

This is the NDP's only MP east of Manitoba. Okay. He's about to leave and run for a secessionist party in the province of Quebec, which is mind-blowing. But it's a writing that is he's managed to hold on to. It's his writing. It's not an NDP writing. It's his personal kind of fiefdom. And the Liberals finished a stronger second there in the last election, still considerably behind, but increased their vote substantially. And if the liberals win those two seats in the province of Quebec, where Mr. Carney remains quite popular,

they might get their majority that way. All right. Well, before anything happens this week on any of the fronts we've talked about, all eyes will be on the State of the Union address tonight in the United States when Donald Trump speaks to the U.S. Congress and the people of the United States. and in fact the people of the world,

because he does tend to attract an audience. You never know what he's going to come out of his mouth next. Should Canada assume it's going to get targeted here tonight? I mean, it's not the biggest vote-getter one assumes in the United States, but he loves to deal with Canada in ways that create all kinds of excitement and discussion. What do you assume? Let me start with Rob because he's the former, you know, a former Washington Bureau Chief for Canadian Press.

I think there's already a bull's eye on us. There are already investigations under Section 232, the national security provisions of trade powers for the president. Looking at pharmaceuticals, looking at semiconductors in Canada, looking at aircraft, commercial aircraft. People don't realize, because of Bombardier, We're the biggest commercial aircraft provider to the United States. So there are investigations going on ongoing there.

So we've already got that bullseye. Does anybody think that tariffs are going to be abandoned when they are the lynchpin and not just the economic linchpin of Trump and Trumpism, but his political linchpin, his diplomatic linchpin, he uses it in order to coerce countries into doing other things for him around the world. he cannot abandon it. So if you believe that, you have to believe that

that Donald Trump right now is like an enraged bull who's had his tail pulled by the Supreme Court. And that enraged bull is going to go after the first target that appears. I think that's one of the reasons why Canada, the Prime Minister,

everybody has been discreet in terms of their reaction to what's happened at the Supreme Court. But his rage increases with every setback. He's had a whole bunch of setbacks. And so should Canada be prepared for it? Yes, they should be. They've already got things that they're looking at.

But, you know, if I were other countries, I'd be more concerned. If I were in the UK, which signed a 10% tariff deal with the United States. And all of a sudden, I find myself looking at 15%. I would be very worried as well. Everybody's worried. I think, I said I was optimistic before, and I do think that we are seeing, not just with the Supreme Court case,

but with the six Republicans on February 11th who abandoned their party to vote with Democrats against, in favor of removing the tariffs on Canada, we see erosion there. The New York Fed, which came up with a report earlier this month, month that said that it's Americans and American companies that are bearing 90% of the cost of the tariffs, that it's weakening the U.S. dollar, that it's not spurring manufacturing in the United States. These are all things that I think are eroding the argument in favor of tariffs.

The Supreme Court's decision to have Section 122 and Section 301 of his trade powers means that Investigations have to be held. Time limits are on tariffs. That pushes all of this stuff into the primary season. And if you can get to the summer and you're a Republican who's worried about tariffs and the cost of living on your constituents, Trump can't launch a primary challenge against you. So by the summer, we don't even have to wait until the fall. By the summer, more power will be taken away from Donald Trump.

He's enraged. We should be worried about him while he's enraged, but his power seems to be abing. You get the last word out, yeah. I was going to say more like a wounded bear, but enraged bullshare. Let's go with that. I expect we'll be mentioned only because Donald Trump said that he was going to be a very, very, very long speech. And he normally speaks for a very long time when he doesn't say that. So I have no idea how long this speech is going to be.

On the plus side, I think what's most concerning to Republicans as the affordability crisis. And I think that's actually where American voters are focused. And this state of the union address is supposed to launch the marking point of the midterm season. And so I expect that the focus will definitely not be on Canada. Aside from saying that, you know, Canada and the rest of the countries are, you know, acting unfairly and treating us unfairly, and I must fix this because that is my job, I think the focus will be elsewhere. I mean, the Americans are so busy with what's going on in Iran. The fact that he is so deeply, deeply unpopular, just saw CNN poll yesterday that showed he had a 26% approval rating with independence.

I mean, it looks like it's going to be a bloodbath in the fall, so if we can just kind of stay out of the orange man's viewpoint, I think we will do, we will fare well. But of course, you know, Ottawa will be paying very close attention to what he says and adjusting it. And you will have those Supreme Court justices sitting right in front of him and right in front of that lectern. So they're going to be the first target the enraged bullsees. Yeah, and I'm sure he will say something about that. I mean, as Althea said, he's promising a long speech. you know if he just reads the prompter it'll be a long speech

but he doesn't just read the prompter you know he takes detours all the time and you know if there isn't something in the speech written about the Supreme Court justices I'm sure he'll he'll say something anyway when he sees them sitting there in their robes in front of him it's going to be a bit of a circus this speech from the

I was going to call it a speech from the throne but the State of the Union address. I guess in some ways it is a speech from his throne. That's the way you'll look at it. But on the one hand, you've got the survivors, the girls and women who are the Epstein victims, who are going to be supposedly in the room, invited by the Democrats.

They're going to be there. What are they going to do? Are they going to stand up? Are they going to be wearing their white t-shirts and put on a... you know, a protest of some kind when he's speaking. And on the other hand, you've got this situation where he's invited the U.S. hockey team. But the girl said no.

The women said no. They're not going. The man certainly seemed like after partying with Cash Patel the other day in Milan, that they'll be, they're going to be there. At least some of them will be. And, you know, I'm sure the Congress will, if they are there, are going to cheer for all of them anyway, you know, no matter what side of the partisan aisle they're on.

So anyway, it'll be a show, and there's nothing Trump likes better than a show. He likes to orchestrate a show. Yeah, although who knows if it will play in his favor, right? Because it does feel like the Democrats are kind of goading them when they're talking about who they've invited to sit alongside with them. I'm not sure what plays in his favor anymore. You've both mentioned the trouble he's having in the last few weeks. But it's, you know, everybody keeps talking about the midterms and he's going to get crushed.

The midterms are a long way away. Lots can happen. But there is this erosion in his support. But I do think you're right. Donald Trump is a sore winner. Just look at what he put on social media after the Olympic hockey game on Sunday. What's he like as a loser? Well, we're about to find out because he's losing.

and I don't think it's going to be pretty. And I think that he continues to be very dangerous in terms of Canada as well. Okay, we're going to leave it at that for this week. A couple of notes before I say goodbye, that the week's question isn't asking anything questions for Thursday's your turn. So already we've had a lot of questions come in for me to answer. So the last week of each month has asked me anything. This is that last week of the month.

Send to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Have it in before 6 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow. Include your name and the location you're writing from. And keep it under 75 words. So 75 words are fewer for that. Thanks to both of you. Fascinating conversation, as always. And have a good week.

Sounds like you. You've got lots to do. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. Talk to you again in less than 24 hours.