The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Reporter's Notebook - Raj and Russo on Canada/Us and Much More

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Althia Raj and Rob Russo share what they're hearing on everything from Dominic LeBlanc's visit to Washington and what it says about Canada's latest stance on the relationship with the United States to what's happening inside the Liberal caucus and more. 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 Raj Russo? It's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Althea Raj of the Toronto star, Rob Russo, of The Economist. They're both with us for their every two weeks conversation about things that have been going on in the national political scene. I want to start with the fact that Dominique LeBlanc is on his way to Washington again today. it's a quick trip. I think he's sort of in in the morning out in the afternoon or evening. He's been going to Washington

so many times in the last year and a half that it said the flight crews call him by his first name now. I'm sure that's not the case. But nevertheless, he has made a lot of trips. The official Kuzma discussions, the Canada, U.S., Mexico trade agreement haven't started yet,

but there's a lot of preliminaries. this is one of them. But Rob, give me a sense. What's actually being accomplished on all these trips? Is anything being accomplished? Is anything changed? Well, there haven't been a lot of them for a long time. And I think we're going to find out this week, whether this is motion or movement.

I think we began to see movement. And I think we began to see it last week when the prime minister was in New York. and he said Canada Strong will help make America great again. I don't know about you guys, but I don't remember hearing that during the campaign last year, that part about making America great again. I might have missed that. Others might have missed it,

but I think it's an important signal as to where the government is going. I don't think you missed anything, by the way. Okay. I don't think those four words came out of Mark Carney's mouth. Yeah. Now, he has said that he wanted a new economic and security arrangement with the Americans. He did say that last year. And I think what we're beginning to see is some of the flesh on those bones. So what does he want to do? He doesn't just want to diversify trade. He wants to increase trade with the United States. He doesn't want to just assess. He doesn't want to. assert our sovereignty, which we need to do, but he also wants to increase defense cooperation with the United States. So it's not just a liability, our relationship with the United States we're being told now. It's also an asset. And I think Canada is acknowledging that,

that there's no changing geography, even if we're no longer bound by geography, that a lot of our infrastructure over the last several decades, has gone north-south, and it will take a long, long time for us to build the east-west infrastructure that's going to allow us to trade with the rest of the world. So we're going back to this notion of a new partnership, while at the same time, it's a recognition that the United States remains indispensable to our security and to our prosperity. You know, certain ministers, I remember Tim Hodgson's telling me that this is really where they want to go. They don't want to decrease trade with the United States. They want it to continue to grow. They'd love it if we doubled trade with the United States. That would be

wonderful. And that's going to be necessary because it will take a long, long time for us to achieve our objectives of diversification. And in the meantime, in the meantime, great swaths of the electorate are losing their jobs. Their jobs are disappearing in southern Ontario and in Quebec. And we need something quick on the horizon to help them. Certainly Terra relief would help them, but in the interim, we're going to need something else. And diversifying trade is not going to help them in the short term. Okay. I guess where that leaves me is, are we kind of misreading what he said last week,

or did we misread what he said in Davos? There is not a contradiction. You can do both. Okay. It isn't a contradiction. No, no, no, sorry. Like, the government's line is you can do both, but it is a contradiction.

This is a liberal party who told us during the election campaign, those who kneel before Trump won't stand up to him. And I can tell you, the conservatives are very annoyed and upset that the things that they have been saying, Mark Carney is now saying without giving them credit, which is one reason they're upset, but also because they were boxed in during the election campaign while he did the whole elbows up thing. And in the end, he's now adopting their strategy. And so you cannot say two things at once.

And I think that you can make the case, but you have to acknowledge that these are, like the government is now adopting the same two lines. And they are in conflict with each other. Like I have people who wrote to me when I pointed this out last week on ad issue. But, you know, in his speech in New York, he talked about the rupture being like a global rupture. But in his speeches before, he has talked about the rupture being our relationship vis-à-vis the United States that were a rupture.

And somebody was like, oh, you're swallowing up here, Puehlia's lines. No, I like set back speeches from November. Like, this is what the prime minister was saying. And I think there's a recognition that it annoyed Donald Trump, the Davos speech annoyed Donald Trump, that this is a president that responds to emotional arguments and that he, was offended and they had to fix that. And I think that's why you saw the Make America Great Again reference. And you saw the American ambassador really loving this as like a reset of the relationship.

So in a way, we like reset the relationship with India. We reset the relationship which I now know we're resetting the relationship with the United States. Or. Sorry to interrupt. But I just, I felt like that was important. No, that's fair game. I'm still I'm still not sure of whether we've been misreading. these things or the Canadian side is playing kind of a rope-a-dope game here where you don't really

know for sure where they're coming from on some of this stuff, which is not a bad position to have when you're in negotiation. No, I think they want two things at once. They want the continuation of the argument that they presented to people as in like Mark Carney is the best defender. I mean, look at his credentials, his relationship with Europe, let's diversify. He's the man you need to trust. And also we need the public buy-in for these big things that we want to get done. Because of the rupture vis-vis of the United States, we can't trust the United States. I think there's definitely they need to keep that going so they can keep support for pipelines,

so they can keep support for environmental assessment changes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and also at the same time recognizing the arguments that the conservatives have been making and others, with Black-Ciproa among them, that we cannot disassociate herself with. geography, our businesses are intertwined. The relationship is not, it has suffered, like 66%, our experts are down about 10% from what they were in 2024. But you can't say, like, I think the clash point will come, and we kind of got a hint of it last November when they were talking about negotiations on the sectoral tariffs. You know, if we're giving the Americans right of first refusal on critical minerals, if we're deepening our, if we're deepening the interconnection of

our economies, if we're are building fortress America in the way that Stephen Harper and Barack Obama used to talk about it back in the day. How do you, like, I think that question needs to be posed to the government. How do you square that with like kind of the vision that you sold Canadians last spring? Because I don't think those two things go together. Like one is very distinct vision and the other one is a different

vision. All right. Let there's middle ground there, but. Yeah. Okay. Let me back. I think it's, I think it's fair to paraphrase the prime minister that he campaigned on the poetry of nationalism and now is forced to govern in the prose of the reality of geography without a doubt. I don't know if it's a contradiction to say that you want to increase trade with the United States while diversifying. I think you can say that. But did he campaign on crass nationalism? He did.

Here's the other reality, though. we see this as a win-win. There are no win-wins with Donald Trump. He wants the other side to lose. So that's the other reality that we're about to run into. There can be very few wins for Canada under a Donald Trump regime or scenario. And so we need to prepare for that. He's not a guy who understands win-win.

I don't know. he's getting beaten up bad on the international front right now. Yeah. He ain't winning against Iran. He's losing against Iran. Yeah, yeah. And he won't acknowledge that. And in a way, that makes him more dangerous.

Will he, given his humiliation and rage, if things turn out badly with Iran, will he go charging into the midterms, campaigning against Canada, and threatening to tear up Kuzma. We all keep saying over and over again that it's one year renewals, July 1st, but he does have the option of saying, I'm pulling out in six months.

I don't anticipate that he would do that. I do anticipate that he would threaten to do it, though. I mean, look at what he's threatened to do with Iran and what he's done. So if you look at the trouble that the Canadian economy is going through right now, it's because of uncertainty. It's because nobody knows whether or not they can invest in Canada

and have access to the United States in a low tariff environment. So just the uncertainty, if he were to brandish the threat that I'm giving notice and he'll do it during, if he would do it, would do it during a campaign period, the midterm campaigns, that's something that could increase uncertainty at a time when Alberta is about to vote in the referendum. More uncertainty in Canada. Okay, let me just tie the knot on this segment before we move on. Is it fair to say at least that the government actually is no longer in the elbows up mode?

Elbows are halfway down or they're down? I don't know because I'm not sure what they're willing to trade and put on the table. Like January 1st was the deadline where Canada, U.S., and Mexico was supposed to have it's like list of grievances and that they're supposed to discuss on July 1st in address. We don't have a very open practice in this country, whereas like the Americans tell Congress exactly where they're going and what urges they have and they've been studying it, blah, blah, blah. I don't know what we're saying. We're putting on the table and what our list of grievances.

So I don't know if I don't know how to answer that question because I don't know what we're putting your elbows up on, and it would be unfair for me to tell the viewer, the listener, that. I think there is, I think the government is trying to do both things at once. You know, we see that with procurement decisions. And you can also see it as a way, like, you can see the procurement decisions also as a negotiating tactic,

like saying to the Americans, if you don't want to play ball with us, this is the direction that we can continue to go. You know, I'm thinking, for example, the surveillance planes, we're thinking about the submarine purchase, what we're going to do about the fighter jets, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know. We will find out in the months to come. Do you want to tell you, run out. Elbows are flapping. They're up sometimes. They're down other times. We've got flapping elbows. And now we're using our elbows to, that we've recognized

that Republicans in Congress, who are our friends on free trade, are supine. They're, they're I mean, Trump has shown his power over incumbents who defy him. So we're using our elbows to nudge business again, to business people who are close to Trump to do some of our bidding for us. That's what New York was about last week as well. Going to Republicans in that audience and saying, you guys donate money to this president, you guys trade with Canada. We need your help.

Okay. All right. that's segment one. Segment two is the latest on the Alberta story. And the point I want to bring up is what's in the globe this morning. And I guess it's really no surprise to anybody. We've all been talking this way that Stephen Harper would at some point be, if not the point man,

certainly a major contributor to the I Love Canada section of the debate that's going on in Alberta. and the Globe suggests through his spokesperson that in fact he will be taking that role. What impacts that have, Althea, do you want to venture into that? Stephen Harper, not surprisingly, going to stand up for Canada in this debate. Well, I would be surprising if he didn't, frankly. I mean, he told us that his portrait unveiling that Canada was worth fighting for. So I think we all anticipated that sooner or later somebody would be asking him. He didn't flesh out what role he was going to play.

And already there are a handful of his former caucus colleagues, Montes-Soulberg, Jason Kenney, who've started up their own group that is going to be, I understand a third-party advertiser in the campaign. But without having a fleshed-out idea of what the federal government's response will be, Like, I don't know if Stephen Harper is going to be doing his own thing, or will he be part of a federal response or is the federal response going to be, let's leave it to Albertans to kind of make the case. I have no idea. From my understanding that that is not actually completely baked yet, maybe not even partially baked yet. Will it have an impact? The hardcore sovereignists are not going to change their mind.

at least nobody that I have spoken to in Alberta is going to change their mind because of Stephen Harper convincing them to stay in Canada. Where I think Stephen Harper, and even people like Jason Kenney, who are more polarizing than Stephen Harper, can make a difference, is by making the case that this is not a consequence-free question, that if you are putting a yes, that you want to have a future referendum, what you're really saying is you want more uncertainty in the province, that you want more uncertainty in terms of business investment, that you want to see the economy do poorly, that you want this question to drag on for years and years and possibly decades and fuel more resentment

vis-à-vis the federal government. I think that's where the kind of like the centrist who are like, well, maybe we could use this referendum to send Ottawa a message. You know, a lot of the other questions, frankly, are that Daniel Smith has put on the list. are also very divisive and question, like we're not going to abolish the Senate. So telling Albertans that you're going to ban together with all their premiers to abolish the Senate is basically an exercise in creating more frustration

because it's not going to happen. And so I think that's where there is value in having somebody of that stature make the case that like, you know, please don't do this. There are other ways to send Ottawa a message that is not voting. to have a, yes, to have a future referendum on this question. Two points on that.

I saw the Maltese-Soulberg ad on television. They were online. I can't remember where I saw it in the last couple of days. It's pretty good. It's really well done. But it does, it raises the question for me. And Rob, I want you thought on, you know, on the Harper impact, if there's going to be one. But not only that is, who's the comparable voice on the other side?

Now, it may be comparable inside Alberta, but in terms of a national figure, is there such a person who's going to be speaking out for Alberta separation or independence? There are fears. There are fears about some of the people who might do it. I'll come back to that in a second. I think Stephen Harper was always going to be involved. He wanted to wait for a couple of things. Number one, he wanted to wait to be sure that those in favor of Albert Independence actually reached the threshold.

And then he wanted to make sure that there was going to be a question, and then he wanted to see the question. Once all those things were determined, he was always going to play a role, I'm told. You know, it's interesting when you ask Daniel Smith, when you ask Mitch Sylvester and other people, would they be doing this if a conservative government had been elected last April rather than a liberal one? Mitch Sylvester said no, and Daniel Smith only lowered the threshold the day after a liberal government was elected last year. So there does, there is, it seems, real faith, real currency, even among those who, A, like Premier Smith, who are putting forward the referendum, and B, those who are in favor of independence, they seem to put real

currency, valuable currency, in Harper or in Paulyev as well. I asked Sylvester, if Paulyev had been elected, would you be doing this? No, they wouldn't have done it. So there is real value, real currency in prominent conservatives, like former Prime Minister Harper getting involved. In terms of the other side, you know, we're quick to run to Jeff Rath and to Mitch Sylvester. Neither one of those people are polished politicians. I'll tell you that there are lots of people in the oil patch who are quietly encouraging independence, funding them. There's a fear that some of those people might emerge as leading spokesman. A lot of people are wondering where Preston Manning is going to go. You know, you speak to people on the federalist side and you know

that he's been talking to both sides. He, I mean, he cares about Alberta. Is he an example of one of those frustrated federalists who represent 20 or 25% of the province who are saying, you can't just say, you know, we love Canada. We've got to have something else. You know, we're in that situation comparable to 1980, where Pierre Trudeau had to go to Quebecers and say, if you say no to independence, we will come back with ABC, D and F. There are lots of people like that in Alberta, and they're frustrated. They want to know

what they're going to get in return for staying. And so if one of those frustrated Federals emerge, that could be a danger. I don't think it's going to be Jeff Rath. I don't think it's going to be Mitch Sylvester. Keith Wilson, a lawyer who represented some of the convoy folks, is a guy who's been engaging in debate with former Premier Jason Kenney. He's a fairly effective spokesman, not a dazzling or anything like that, but I think he presents a more structured case for independence than some of the others that we've run to in the past. But I think you're right.

I think that no kind of charismatic spokesman, no Lucien Boucher, has emerged on the independence side. Okay. Let's leave it at that for this week in terms of topics in the first half of the program, but we have two more coming up right after this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here, along with Althea Raj and Rob Russo. It's your Tuesday reporter's notebook from these two,

what we can call them, major figures on Parliament Hill in terms of the journalistic side, Both Althea and Rob have been around for a while. They've seen all kinds of things over the years, and they're seeing lots of things right now. You're listening on Sirius X-M Channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Okay. Also this week, the government's long-awaited strategy

on artificial intelligence. AI. What is the government's role going to be in A&E? in Canada, monitoring it, regulating it. What could be the case? We've seen all kinds of things in other jurisdictions around the world about AI and about everything down to regulating social media in schools in some countries for kids under 16. What about here in Canada?

How far and how widespread is this strategy on AI going to be? when it's unveiled at some point this week. Rob, you've been digging into the AI story. What are you finding? I learned a new acronym that is being used in government. It's FOBO, fear of being obsolete. And this is what the government is dealing with. It's trying to deal with fear.

So if you are looking for what the government's trying to do, It's coming out on Thursday. We're taping this on a Tuesday, but I think the strategy is coming out on Thursday. They're trying to be soothing. They're trying to assert sovereignty, digital sovereignty. And at the same time, they're trying to recognize that this could be the kind of thing that Canadians should actually own a piece of. So, so, you know, what are their, what are their opportunities and what are their fears? Well, you know, their fears are, like, are you going to inhibit a technology that is in many ways transformative?

Is there going to be a job coppelips? That was the other word that I heard. The job coppelips. All these fears disappearing, jobs disappearing. The government has decided it can inhibit the technology. It does not want to inhibit the technology. It points to Luddites, who in the 18th century, if they had been successful, what would we be doing now?

Well, we'd probably still be communicating with the equivalent of a hammer and chisel and tablets of stone. You can't do that. I mean, lots of governments in Europe are taxing the windfall profits of AI companies. Do they want to do that? Probably not. But they want a piece of the action. And so are they going to invest in our taxpayer dollars in some of this so that the money actually can be used to retrain to prepare adaptation for this?

Yeah, they're going to do that. But there's a recognition of this fear out there. And there's also a recognition of the political fear. I mean, they see mentions of AI being booed at commencement ceremonies across the country. and they see that. And so, you know, here's the political fear for them, though. Like they've looked at what happened in the failures of globalization, free trade. You know, we were promised that people would not be left behind in free trade.

And people were left behind. They were left behind in the dot-com boom as well. Those people who were left behind, a lot of people thought they wouldn't vote. And a lot of them didn't vote, particularly in the United States. but they coalesced and who did they propel and catapult into power, but Donald Trump, right? Different this time. The fear is among white-collar voters, and who do white-collar voters in Canada often vote for? Who do the better-educated people in Canada often vote for?

They vote for the liberals. So this represents a political threat to the liberals that they have to be aware of. So they're going to spend a lot of money, getting not just younger people ready for this, they're also going to spend some money training people like me, my age, who, you know, with gray hair, who to try and take advantage of this as well. And they're going to make Canadians, they're going to try to make Canadians shareholders in this enterprise. They know they can't hold it back and they're going to try to protect our sovereignty by keeping a lot of our information here. They know that people with, who have repetitive.

and easily kind of verifiable jobs, those people are probably going to lose their jobs. So they're trying to help those people. But they're also saying to people, and I think this is true of AI, and I certainly say to my own kids, if you have human skills, if you have empathy,

if you have resilience, if you have trust, if you have judgment, those things are not present in AI. And I think those things, the sort of human, are the reason why when this Prime Minister reached out to talk about his AI strategy, who did he talk to last week?

He talked to Pope Leo, which I thought was fascinating, fascinating, because he's done this before on markets with Pope Francis. And so I think you're going to see a lot of that mentioned in the AI strategy as well, the humanity factor. And the Pope did come out with his Encyclical That's right Is that the right word to use it?

It was an encyclical on A-I? It was, yeah. Okay. Anyway, just last week or in the last two weeks And so interesting that the PM spoke with him as well. You know, I get, you know, in my lead-up to it, I, you know, stretch it all the way to impact that, you know, kids have with social media and whether the government's going to enter into that.

Now that's not really under AI so much, but it is on this issue of young kids and they're growing up with social media and they're sudden through universities seeing what AI is going to do to them in the future. And Rob quite rightly points out the various protests that have taken place at different campuses you know, across North America as a result, whenever AI is mentioned in a commencement speech, it gets a rounding, a round of booze. What are you hearing here, Althea? What do you know on this? Well, I should say if people want a preview of the Thursday or potentially Friday announcement, the CBC actually broke the story on Monday and has some pretty technical details that is. in the announcement. What struck me from what I've been told from what's in this week's announcement

is the focus is on adoption. And if you read the Pope's encyclical, he talks about the need to regulate. And he talks about the consequences of this technology, how it can accentuate the gaps between those who have access to it and those who do not, the potential negative consequences to this technology, the lack of, like, the need for us to retain our humanity, to respect the dignity of others, to continue this dialogue, basically doing what we're doing right now, speaking to each other. And that is not where the government is going to be going. There will be some notes about regulation in terms of privacy, so they will be updating PIPAA, which is the private federal privacy law.

online harm, which is a legislation at heritage, so there'll be some overlap between Minister Miller and Minister Sullivan, Solomon. But where they're really focused is the problem that they have identified is that we're really great at the research part. You know, we have these, the gurus of AI in Toronto and in Montreal, and we're really good at building startups, starting them, and then they go to the United States to flourish. And Canadians are not so that that business opportunity is gone, but also Canadians as a whole are very skeptical of AI. We have some of the lowest adoption rate.

This is what I told from the government of like other Western countries. Like the South Koreans are like, yay, we use it every day. And we're like, and if people are like me, I'm like, I'm worried about losing my ability to think. So I try to lose it. I try to use it as little as I possibly can. But the government wants to encourage people like me and perhaps people like you, Peter, I don't know, to use it more. So it will spend taxpayers' dollars to encourage businesses to adopt AI in their small and medium enterprises.

It will send basically young people to businesses to help them use AI and implement AI in the way that they do their work. So there will be an interesting, like when I first read these six pillars and they were actually, actually outlined in the spring fiscal update. I thought when they were talking about jobs, it was about like helping people retain some sort of employment, like are we do reforming employment insurance so that people who lose their jobs, honey, I think that's going to come later because right now they're really just focused on like, let's use this.

And there's job opportunities, not so much focused on the other aspects of the ledger. Rob also, I think, spoke well to the cloud sovereignty, the government and the prime minister, I think maybe said this in the throne speech, but like a while back talked about our need to be sovereign in terms of our technology. You know, the government uses Amazon and Microsoft. And well, that's not Canadian. And so encouraging Canadian cloud development, data sovereignty, all that sort of stuff. I don't expect any of the kind of the conversation pieces that I think we have seen having in like cultural communities about like how to protect your copyright and or even in journalism like, you know, AI is scraping all our content and giving it back to people and the, you know, papers like mine are not getting any money from this. There's that's not, that's not going to be part of this.

So I think maybe it's more the way to see it is not so much like a fully baked. strategy, but like a work in progress. This is like the first step the government is putting forward. The prime minister is super gungho on AI adoption. Not only can we tell that from what he said, but also in terms of where he sees the future of AI in terms of its role within government. But I think the kind of the more negative aspects of AI will have to be addressed, and I don't expect them to be addressed in this strategy. This is a, woo-hoo, AI strategy. Well, you know, you both mentioned the data sovereignty issue. It's really important, you know, from the little I know about this.

You know, nobody's been trying to convince me on AI except my son, who's so deep into it because he's involved in a startup and he's doing all kinds of stuff. And he speaks a language I don't understand. But the data sovereignty thing, my understanding of it is one of the big issues is there's so much information out there, we have nowhere to store it. Our data centers, we don't have them as much as the Americans have them. And a lot of Canadian information is going into American data centers. And that, you know, the sovereignty issue around that is, you know, is worrisome, to say

the least. Okay. Well, listen, my sense is we're going to be talking a lot more about this as time carries on. Can I just say a couple of things, a couple more things about it? Because I think it's really important. have one more thing to get to. But you go ahead. I'll be brief. First of all,

our jobs, just think about how our jobs have changed. My job, I started off at the Canadian press. I took a tape recorder. I went up to Parliament Hill. I stuck it under Brian Mulroney's ample chin. I came back. I got my quotes and I put he said around them.

That job is going to disappear under AI. So if you look at journalism and how, it's going to change. That job is going to disappear because that information is going to be out there. That story is going to be transmitted, captured and transferred. But who will ask the question, Rob? Right. Okay. So here is where journalism is going to be affected. Okay. You and I have thrived, I would say, because, why? Because we go up there and we talk to people.

So that empathy, that trust, that judgment, that that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that humanity in journalism is going to be the most important things. Those people who can, in effect, use documents or use judgment and develop relationships, that's where the value in journalism is going to be. I also wanted to, like this notion of the prime minister talking to the Pope, I find fascinating because it's the second time we've done it, and it's had a huge impact on him. He did it with Pope Francis on markets.

Pope Francis and he talked about markets. And he talked about, Pope Francis said to him, you know, markets is Grappa. I'm going to tell you. Grappa is that distilled wine down to alcohol. Wine is humanity. And a variety of wines, different kinds of wines, those are people. You got to remember about wine and can't just concentrate on the distilled alcohol, which is markets. So I find it fascinating that our prime minister draws inspiration and counsel from popes this way.

But then he doesn't listen to them. I think he does. Certainly Francis had a huge impact on Mark Gurney. Okay. All right. We'll have a paper enclave on this on our next program. Let me just close this out this week. with this subject.

There are many pollsters in Canada, and many of them are very good. One of the ones at the leading front is Nick Nannos, who does a weekly thing, and you see his sense of where things stand in terms of where the parties are, who's moving, who's not moving, who has the preference in terms of prime minister

and all that stuff. And for the most part, his numbers have been fairly consistent, since the election, although there is about a bit of a closing of the gap that's taking place between the liberals and the conservatives. It's still a significant gap, you know, eight, nine points. That's big. And on the preference for prime minister, it's a huge gap between Carney and Pollyiff.

However, having said that, the latest numbers are in. interesting because the gap is, you know, it's about eight points. And the NDP is showing a little sign of life, a little sign of life. I mean, they were hammered in the election and they were down well into single digits on popularity. The latest Nanos has them around 13%. That's, you know, that's a long way from where they used to be, but it's not an insignificant number. So here's the question. You've made a bit of a name for yourself for the last couple of weeks of raising the subject

about some concern within the Liberal Caucus about some of the movements of the governing party. And last week we saw Stephen Gibo not only resigned from Cabinet as he did a month or so ago, but now out of the party. Last year. Last November. Last November.

is something, you know, is there some impact of significance from last week, from his departure, the things he said, the kind of things that others said about him, you know, from the party, friends of his, you know, we're very complimentary towards him. Even the prime minister was to a degree complimentary to him. Is there some lasting impact from, that or the beginning of an impact from that? It's too early to tell. There wasn't an impact in November.

There potentially could be an impact in Quebec, where Mr. Kibu is seen very, very well known, like has been a public figure for 20-ish years, and the coverage in the francophone media is very complementary to him and very, very critical. of the prime minister. Basically, did we get hoodwinked? Is he not at all the person that we thought he was?

Is he much more conservative? What has happened to his environmental credentials? The cartoons in the newspaper have been, I would say, for the last kind of month, pretty-thesicating with regards to Prime Minister Carney. I think what is interesting about the, the uptick of NDP support. And we saw it with the liaison pool as well.

They came out on Monday where they had the NDP at 16%, which is, you know, they had 6.3% in the last election. So they're like doubling. Is that, is there a space for progressives within the liberal tent? When you have Stephen Igboe who says, I can't find a home here, but you have Marilyn Gladu who can find a home. home in this liberal party.

What does it say? She's one of the conservatives who crossed the floor. The conservative floor crosser who was like a well-known social conservative. And probably, well, the conservatives themselves did not expect Marilyn Gladu to cross because they thought she was far too conservatives and then liberals would not want her. It's not just on the environment, I think, is where like the key point is. And there has not been a ton of critical coverage. but when you looked at the fiscal update

and you realized pharmacare is dead. The government has no intention of continuing this program that unless there's a lot of public pressure, childcare, the vision that Christia Freeland put in the window, although the government keeps talking about it, they're not putting the dollars there, where you know that when they see a priority area, they have no problem spending the money.

I mean, we have crazy deficits. Where they're not signaling, at least in the fiscal plan at the moment, that they plan to beef up health care spending. In fact, they're sunsetting programs on mental health, on long-term care, on home care. It's the cuts to the interim federal health program. So, you know, we talked about in the last segment, about the Pope, you know, part of the message on AI,

there's a section on how we should be really kind to refugees and asylum seekers. And that's what God would want us to do to treat people as humans. And now we have the government deciding in a complete reversal to the Justin Trudeau liberals who came in saying what Stephen Harper wants to do on this very program is inhumane and we are going to reverse it and they did.

Now the government has introduced copays. The doctors say this is a denial of care because, you know, some most refugees cannot afford to pay, let's say, $300 a month for a feeding tube for their child that has cerebral policy. and so that kid's going to end up in the hospital or die. And if it ends up in the hospital, it's going to cost taxpayers of hell a lot more than $300 a month for that co-pay. So that's, I think, the accumulation that is happening. And you have some caucus members who feel like they cannot say anything.

And you have other caucus members who feel like, well, we were not pragmatic enough in the Justin Trudeau era. But I think if you're a liberal voter or a progressive who lent your vote to the liberals over several terms, I think there are questions being asked about, well, what is the Liberal Party? Who is who, what are the values that this party represent? I think that's a longer damage. And I think that's a conversation that's just beginning to happen because this government is frankly just starting to flesh itself out beyond the broad scopes where we know the government is focused on the economy and wants to build out defense, etc., etc.

All right. You've got, I've got a couple of minutes for you, Rob, but no. I won't even take that long. I mean, we started this off by discussing polls. And I've always been with John Deef and Baker, particularly in between writ periods. You know, polls between rid periods are often for incontinent canines. So that being said, is there room for the New Democratic Party in Canada? There certainly is.

There certainly is room. Are there liberals who are wondering whether Mark Carney is not just a progressive but an environmentalist? Because Mark Carney was an environmentalist. Are there liberals in that caucus who are openly saying, is he still an environmentalist? Yeah, there are. I was struck by how broken up the prime minister seemed by Stephen Gilbo's departure. Did you see how upset he was? because I didn't.

I saw a man who was kind of chuckling and shrugging his shoulders. Now, not because he's callous. I wonder, I wonder. I heard both of them say, could, I heard the prime minister say, could we be working together again in the future? Yeah, they could be. Could Mr. Gilbo be doing something for the Quebec Liberal Party in an election campaign in October in Quebec?

He could be. He certainly could be. it will be, I think, a test of the Prime Minister's strength in the province of Quebec in that writing. That writing was owned by Gilles du Céppe. L'Ory Saint-Marie was owned by Gilles-Doucepe for a long, long time. After that, Ellen La Verdezure of the NDP had it as well. So it's certainly a Stephen Gilbo writing rather than a liberal writing.

It'll be a test of the Prime Minister's strength. But the prime minister has shown, to me, surprising strength in Quebec for a guy who still struggles in French at times and who isn't steeped in the province's lore in history. We saw that with the remarks he made at the Citadel. This will be a test of his strength in Quebec. And as long, I think, and this works across the country, as long as Donald Trump is the president, extraordinary things happen to Mark Carney. Mark Carney shouldn't be the prime minister. But as long as Donald Trump is the president and, you know, muses about our sovereignty and our independence and our viability as a state, that favors Mark Carney. And that's true in the province of Quebec as well.

That's the reason why support for independence in Quebec is at some of the lowest levels I've seen in my lifetime. I totally agree with that. The Trump factor is the thing keeping progressive still in the liberal tent. I also think just on Stephen Kippo's writing, his writing has become far more. friendlier in terms of demographic and income towards the liberals than it used to be. I'm glad that, you know, it only took us 47 minutes, but we did find something where you two agree on. So that's very good. I'm proud of that fact. We all unite against Trump. Okay, good conversation. As always, thanks to Rob. Thanks to Othia. We'll see in a couple more weeks.

but that'll do it for today. I'm Peter Mansford. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk in 24 hours.