The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke, Mirror and The Truth -- A Summer of '26 Special

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

SMT is one of the first shows we used to do when the podcast started all those years ago;  Bruce Anderson would join me and we'd lay an SMT verdict on various issues and quotes. So as we lounge through the summer of 2026 Bruce wondered whether we should try a special holiday edition of SMT. So here it is. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Smoke mirrors and the truth. Yes, you heard that right. Smoke mirrors and the truth makes a comeback right now. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Bruce Anderson on a summer special and we dragged out the old files. We brought out smoke mirrors and the truth music because that's what we're going to do today.

A little smoke mirrors and the truth, a little middle of the summer special. There was too much smoke and not enough truth. It's time. Yeah, let's redefine or not redefine. Let's just so everybody is clear. Obviously, we know what truth means. Truth is truth.

We're going to pick these quotes out from this summer. And if it's true, then it's truth. Smoke is sort of half-truth at best. There's a lot of kind of smoke over the issue. truth. So it's kind of partly true. What's mirrors? Mirrors is I think people basically saying don't look at that, look at this, trying to create a distraction. And God knows there's a lot of that too. There certainly is. Okay, let's get started. These are in no particular order.

They're just sort of, you know, pull these quotes out of the news in the last few days. let's start with one with our favorite person to quote and that's Donald Trump here's what he said just in the last 48 hours about Kuzma about the deal between Canada and the U.S. and Mexico Donald Trump here's the thing Mexico and Canada need us we don't need them the deal is important for them it's not important for us

smoke mirrors of the truth it's smoke it's not it's not true you know i think that anybody who takes a moment to really evaluate that relationship they understand a couple of things one is it america actually has a trade surplus with canada uh with the exception of in energy so they're importing oil from our country it's an important thing that they do it's good for canada but it's also something that they don't do as a subsidy for Canada. They're not doing us a favor by buying our oil. They're buying our oil because they use it. It's convenient. It's close. It's something that feeds their refineries. And in all other goods and services, there's an actual surplus with Canada. So that's one dimension of it. But the other was really in, it brought forward last week, really,

when a number of Democrats in particular, but not only Democrats, Democrats in particular, stepped forward at the latest round of tariffs that Trump put on Canada, and they said, tariffs are a bad idea, tariffs on Canada are a bad idea, and they're hurting our economy. So you had people who were representatives from Vermont, for example, talking about how devastating these tariffs had been to the relationship with Canada, to the two-way trade, but also the tourism businesses. So it's a complete fallacy if you're a farmer in the Midwest relying on Canadian potash and wondering what he's doing with tariffs there and the relationship with Canadian providers. It's a complete falsehood if you're anywhere close to the tourism business in places like Arizona or California or Florida or Las Vegas, Nevada.

And those voices are starting to be heard in the United States now, it seems to me, Peter. And so I think Trump is, again, he's trying to sell something to Americans that fewer and fewer of them are willing to believe. And more and more of them, hopefully more still to come, are willing to call out and say, no, that's not true. Absolutely not true. All right. So smoke on that one. It's worth mentioning, too, on the oil. I mean, we sell oil to the U.S. at a very good price, well below the world price.

and then the Americans do what they do with that oil. In some cases, they end up selling it again at a profit. Well, I think they pay us 10 to 15% below world price. One of the arguments, of course, for having a pipeline to tidewater on the West Coast is that our oil can reach markets that will pay us the world price for oil. And so that's happening now because of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. but at the same time as Trump is kind of promoting this idea that he's built the strongest economy in the world, he's got a public opinion that says he's doing a terrible job on the

economy. His approval rating for handling the economy throughout his entire first term was never below a net zero. There was always more people who said he was doing a good job managing the economy than said he was doing a poor job. It's never been above zero, I don't think, in his second term, and it's at an all-time low for him. He's on the question of energy, which is one of those things that everybody really noticed. What's the price of gasoline? They really notice the price of groceries. They notice the price of gasoline. He's disrupted the supply of oil that comes from

the Middle East. It's affecting all kinds of places, not just America. But we see that in the United States, the price of gas has been going back up again. And in some states, it's hit that number, that magic $5 number, which is a real stress level for a lot of people. The political consequences of being a person in power in the United States that has influence on the cost of living like the president does. A $5 gas is real. And it starts to make waves pretty quickly. and I don't know how he's going to get out of that. So saying he doesn't need Canadian energy is not even close to factual,

especially in that context. You know, talking of four or even $5 gasoline in the States per gallon, reminds you that it was around two or just over two in February before the Iran war started. It's a dramatic increase. And so no end in sight, right? Nobody can sort of say when is it going to be normalized and how is it going to be normalized? And I was looking at the New York Times this morning and it sounds like there's fighting that's breaking out in more parts of the region that the U.S. is involved in as well.

And it just seems as though that a policy is so chaotic and poorly thought out and the consequences are obviously very real, including for American consumers. All right. Here's another quote on this one. It's somewhat related. It's from Christia Freeland, the former Trudeau Cabinet Minister, when you can argue certainly some Trudeau people do, that she's the one who plunged the knife into Justin Trudeau,

and it was game over for him after she quit the cabinet on the day of the, she was supposed to unveil a budget, so it's quite something. Anyway, here's what Christian Freeland said yesterday in a piece for the New York Times. Even if democracy eventually prevails inside the United States, America's old friends will wonder whether Trumpism permanently reshaped Washington's relationship with the rest of the world. You know, there's been this feeling ever since Trump got in that when he's gone, everything will return to normal. That was the feeling a year ago. I'm not so sure it's still the feeling now.

I mean, relationships have definitely changed over this past year, but the feelings about what might happen once Trump is gone are not along the lines of everything is going to go back to normal. No matter who wins the 2028 election. So smoke mirrors and the truth on Christian Freeland. that column, the entire column was a truth bomb. It really read like a sober analysis of what has been happening. And just because we're doing smoke mirrors in the truth,

let me go back to your setup of the quote, which is did she plunge the knife in Trudeau? Because I kind of feel like they, she didn't, you know, whatever happened there, and I don't know all of the details. But she didn't wake up that morning and go, I think I feel like plunging the night when Justin Trudeau. Something happened before that.

And sometimes in the retelling of that period, people forget the part that happened before that, which was something about the prime minister saying, here's what your role is going to be going forward, that obviously didn't clear that the bar of a relationship based on trust or whatever it was. Anyway, there was an action in there was. was an action and there was a reaction. So I'll set that aside and say that's point taken.

Point taken. I thought her column was really an excellent read. I thought that there were so many good points in it. I'm glad you picked out the one that you did though because it really goes to the, what are the long-term consequences here? And I think the long-term consequences for Canada are probably a sense of we can be stronger and we can feel more independent. We're going to have to be more independent. And I see in my polling that Canadians are

feeling pretty resolute but also fairly optimistic about how the long term is going to go for us, not in terms of whether our relationship will get back to the way that it felt before Trump. I think people are kind of wary now of the way in which the U.S. operates, the sense that there are institutions in the United States that will self-correct for when the country makes some mistakes.

People don't believe that to the same degree anymore. And I think Ms. Freeland was really talking about that indirectly in some instances in her piece. I think the other thing that's so fascinating to me is that I've spoken with Chris Yefriland about China in the U.S. at times. to pass. And she's a great student, as you know, of international relations. This is something that she's written about it and is quite expert on. And the U.S. is incoherent in its relationship with China

right now. Everybody that I talk to knows how the Trump administration is thinking says they're really more worried about one thing than all the other things, which is we can't fall behind China, especially in areas like artificial intelligence. But they haven't had a consistent approach to China. They ratcheted tariffs up to 150%, and they're down averaging around 23%. Now, why? Because China retaliated. So you've got this situation where I think a lot of Americans still think that the

terror policy is a bad policy, but the rest of the world is not really reacting to it that much. but the rest of the world is reacting and the biggest thing that the rest of the world is doing is not retaliating so much but getting on with their lives figuring out what they're going to do if they can't count on the United States

to be what it has been in the past. I think that the risks for America are really, really profound and I think that's part of what I enjoyed in the reading of that column is that she's pretty blunt about that. I think it's important to note as well that all the risks for America may be significant right now or more than significant, huge.

They're pretty big for Canada too. No matter what's going to happen here, things are changing. And the Canadian economy is changing. And some of the things that we've always taken for granted about the Canadian economy and where the engine of growth is in the country and all that. things are changing and the disruption is on the way. It's going to, you know, it's going to cost jobs. It's going to cost a certain degree of the way life unfolds for a lot of Canadians in the near future.

So, you know, this is going to be a difficult road ahead, no matter which way you cut it. Okay, moving on here. We've got a lot of these, so we'll have to keep. that in mind as we're talking. This one comes from Michelle Remple Garner, a friend of this program. She's been on the bridge a number of times. I know you talk with Michelle Remple Garner often. Over time, Conservative MP, former Cabinet Minister

in the Stephen Harper days. Here's what she said about the continued infighting that's going on inside the Conservative Party in her substack. A lengthy piece, well worth the read. So here's what she said. The wrong path for our movement to take after this loss, talking about last year's election, is descending into yet another round

of prolonged, grief-driven, frustrated, and puerile inward tent-pissing. Smoke mirrors of the truth. Oh, it's 100% truth. But it also is, and I read her substack piece, She's a good writer and, you know, a careful analyst of national politics. And I think a real student of the conservative movement and how it has shaped itself over the last number of years. But as I was reading it, I was also kind of reminding myself that you and I are a little older than she is.

Let's put it that way. And we can remember a time when the conservative party well, we can't remember a time when the Conservative Party wasn't beset with internal infighting. I remember those Clark Mulroney years and then the involvement of the Reform Party movement and all the trauma around that, the destruction of the Progressive Conservative Party, the creation of the Canadian Alliance, the creation then of the PCDR Coalition, because there were parts of the conservative movement that wanted to come together in order to have the opportunity to win, which is precisely what Michel Rampelgarner is putting on the table in terms of the way that the Conservative Party should think about itself.

And I think that so I think that's always been a challenge. And one of the things for the Conservative Party, it's been a challenge at times for the Liberal Party. The biggest, the Fractricide that I can remember in the Liberal Party was the Martin Kretchen, period of time. Relatively speaking, the skirmishing around Justin Trudeau was a much, much smaller and more contained version of that.

I think that, you know, I would love to hear the second part of Michelle Rampel-Garner's piece. She says that one of the more important principles of the conservative movement is that you reject the idea of homogeneity of thought. It's a good principle. It's good to have a tent where lots of people can say different things. But it's not good to have a tent where people can say any kind of things. And I think that's the tension that she was describing, saying that Harper had a knack for

figuring out, okay, there needs to be a discipline, but you can't overdo it. I think the problem right now for Pierre Poliev is that he's underdoing the message discipline thing. And And so I don't think that it would be infighting to say, you know, do we need to have the Allison inquiry that focuses on COVID vaccination injuries being a prominent thing? Do we need Jamil Giovanni talking about how we should deal with the United States as the country? Sometimes you just have to enforce that discipline. And how you do that without looking like you're picking a fight inside.

I don't know. I think that's hard, but I think that's where the conservative party does need to go. Okay. Truth on that one then. Here, this one's going to be interesting. See how you handle this one. Mark Carney. Here's what he had to say about the Gordiala Bridge, you know, discussions, negotiations, the various things that have been said about why that took so long to finally open. So here's the quote from the prime minister. I should have been clearer. I've explained it better on a Sunday morning at the stampede.

Yeah, with a cowboy hat on. Yes, I could have explained it better. He's talking about what the eventual deal was and what it was going to cost Canada or not cost Canada compared with the original deal. Smoke mirrors of the truth. Oh, I agree. He could have explained it.

better. So what is that? What is the truth? He's saying the truth there. He could have explained it better. And I also I thought the reference to wearing a cowboy hat was interesting to me because I remember, and I think it was on the, on the, I remember all the different episodes of politicians saying, you know what, when you're giving a hat, don't put it on. It's sort of like a truism in politics that you probably shouldn't. Remember Michael Dukakis in the 1988? Michael Duccas is an example.

The helmet in the tank. That's right. Now, you know, I think the hat looked fine, but I think the hat in that context makes sense. The hat in that context talking about something that people are like leaning in to try to understand what exactly happened here. And let's be clear that people aren't really looking at it

from the standpoint of there, accountants and they want to know that how did how does net get you know decided and all that kind of thing they just want to know um did we get screwed around or did we stand up for ourselves something more or less like that um so i think that um you know i think it was a little lesson for the prime minister about him in a context where you're going to get asked a question like that um he's always going to do better when he's always going to do better when he's he's, when he looks like he's there to address the business of the country, as opposed to he gets accosted or stopped and queried at a social function for an event like that.

I don't know. I think the whole hat thing was smoke. I think saying he could have been clear is the least he could have said in, you know, in trying to make up for that situation, but at least he said that. Okay, moving on. Richard Warnock is a senior opinion writer for the Toronto Star. Good one. He's got a piece in the star where he's been out in Alberta, trying to understand the situation that's going on there. So he writes,

even if, as polls currently suggest, the referendum fails, it could still reshape politics in Alberta and the entire country for just, generations. But in Calgary, I found huge parts of the city trying to stick their heads, cowboy hats and all, they're back again, into the sand. Smoke mirrors the truth. You know, smoke. I mean, the Alburntons that I talk to have been taking this conversation pretty seriously. They're nervous about it.

They don't, you know, I don't happen to talk to people. who want to see Alberta separate, and I'm sure those who do feel that way also take it very seriously, but they're clearly in the minority. In my research, it's more like 17%. There is another 15% who have been less engaged, generally lean towards, well, why would we leave Canada? I'm not sure it would be better, but they're not completely closed to the idea. I don't sense that the conversation is heading their way. I sense instead that Albertans are feeling more confident that the relationship between Alberta and the federal government is on a path that

hasn't been on before that feels more constructive, feels more positive. You've got politicians like Jason Kenney and Daniel Smith saying this is a relationship that we can work with that's good for Alberta. So I see a fair bit of that kind of commentary. It's true that Stephen Harper hasn't yet delivered the speech that I think everybody is waiting for him to deliver, but I have no doubt that when he does, he's going to continue to advance the case that staying in Canada makes sense. And the last piece for me is I do think that Albertans generally recognize the question of whether

investment flows to places that have stable political jurisdictions and that welcome investment. And I think that if companies haven't been as vocal as Mr. Warnika has suggested they should be, maybe they're biding their time. Maybe they think that sometimes a big business sort of tells people this is how you should think about how to vote, they can have a backlash effect. But I don't sense that there's a lack of interest or a lack of a significant leaning towards the leaning is too soft to word, a significant kind of bias towards the we should stay in Canada. That's where we can produce the best outcomes for people.

Okay. You know, you talked to a lot of people. Well, what is your sense? I just get this sense that it's going to be that the vote for another referendum is going to be higher than conventional wisdom thinks it's going to be. I don't think it's threatening in terms of a pass vote, but I think it's going to be more significant than some think. And partly because of what, you know, Richard's writing that, you know,

people have got their head in the sand. They're sort of drifting through summer. You know, maybe Stephen Harper will make a difference on that score. Because obviously for him, everything's about timing right now as to when he's going to make his speech. I don't think there's any doubt he's going to make one. Yeah. But when he does, whether that will, you know, focus the minds, you know, well, Rone used to say nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.

Hanging in the morning. hanging in the morning. But so we'll see. That's just the sense I get and I get these kind of warning signals from the people I talk to in Alberta that, you know, don't assume too much. I think that if that first number is a three in favor of a referendum, I think the question of does that shape confidence in Alberta? I think that's real.

The highest number that I've seen is more like 24, 25%. I think it's a bit hazardous to pick a number arbitrarily, but I think the point is probably right, that if it's too high, even if it's not a majority that want a referendum, there won't be a referendum, but there will be a lingering uncertainty. And so maybe it is right to be concerned

that people are taking it too much for granted and if they're federalists and they need to do more and talk it up more. Well, you know, the point being there that if, you know, one can assume that the pro-separatist vote is going to be there on October 19th. They're going to vote. The assumption about the non-separatist vote being there, given a mood of heads in the sand, is not as strong.

And so obviously, if that's the case, the percentage of vote at the end of the day will be higher for the pro-separatist vote. Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting question because the data that I see, if we just look at the vocalization, as reported in the media,

the leadership of the federalist point of view and the leadership of the separatist point of view, this is something that does, generally happen in referendum is that the separatist's point of view, even if it only represents about 17% of public opinion, gets, you know, closer to 50% of the weight in stories that are that are developed. So it kind of artificially boosts it and gives it a sense of there's a lot of people. They're highly motivated. They kind of know what they're there to argue for. If we look at the kind of the intensity of the turnout kind of figures underneath the surface, it doesn't look

like there's 17% who are desperate to get to that voting booth to vote for a referendum because they want to get out of the country. The leaders of that movement definitely are, and some portion of that 17% definitely will, but I'm not convinced that all of that is highly motivated. And I think that if the argument remains Albertans to Albertans mostly, rather than Ottawa telling Albertans how to vote, I think it'll still feel socially uncomfortable for people in their neighborhoods with their next door neighbors saying, I'm going to vote to separate from Canada. but they're saying that to a neighbor who's in Albertan like them and saying, I want to stay in Canada,

that kind of 8317 effect does matter, and it affects turnout potentially. Okay. We're going to take our break here. This is interesting. Summer special on Smoke Mirrors of the Truth. Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansford, here with you. We'll be back right after this.

And welcome back here listening to Sirius X-Ex. Channel 167, Canada Talks, or your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel for this summer special. This came out of nowhere. Bruce and I were chatting the other day and thought, why not? Let's do a special SMT. We haven't done one of these for a few years, really. So it's been fun and we'll continue to be fun for the second half of the program.

Okay. Here's your next quote. It comes from an unlikely source for this program anyway. Conrad Black. Conrad writes a weekly column in the National Post. And, you know, he is an unabashed Trump supporter. Trump gave him a pardon for the issues that he was... In prison for.

In prison for. So he's a big Trump supporter. Yet of late, there have been some interesting things in some of his columns, including his last one last weekend, where he says, among other things, there really is no trade deficit in America's accounts with Canada. As most of that is oil, and that it buys at a knockdown price from us and sells at a high profit to itself. If the United States, something we dealt with earlier in the show today,

if the United States persists in its declared goal of eliminating our steel and automobile industries, we should take over at a minimal cost the automobile factories of American companies in Canada and build our own automobile industry in cooperation with a foreign partner and ensure that no American automobile is ever sold in this country again. Brad Black playing hardball on the auto industry. What do you make of that? Smoke mirrors or the truth? Well, look, I think Conrad Black is wrong 100% of the time these days.

And when you said to me the other day, said, oh, there's a quote from Conrad Black, have you read his latest piece? I said to myself, I haven't read his latest piece in a couple of years probably because I I just find myself getting so mystified by the fact that somebody who used to be a real intellectual thought leader in Canada, in my estimation anyway, and I wasn't alone in thinking that. He wrote some very well-regarded books on history, Canadian and U.S. history, a real scholar. and somebody who, well, he kind of owned the largest newspaper chain in Canada for a while. He was very, very involved in the public discourse. And to see what he's been writing, and this is what really kind of turned me off of paying attention to him.

The things that he would say about Donald Trump just made me think that he wasn't really a reliable narrator. of the facts. And so I stopped. But this argument, this idea that we should react in a way that, you know, I think relatively few capitalists and certainly Conrad Black would consider himself to be a capitalist. I think very few capitalists would say, yes, let's nationalize those plans. It's not a serious proposal in my view. So I don't know why he's writing it.

It doesn't make sense to me. He doesn't fit with his incredible admiration for Donald Trump. I say incredible, but he did, as you say, he did get a pardon from Donald Trump. So maybe it's not that hard to believe. But I understand the logic of saying we should push back. And I think that a lot of Canadians feel that we should push back. but even more Canadians think that we should be firm but serious in how we approach things. In other words, that we shouldn't do things that are rash or radical for the sake of feeling that emotional release of pushing back.

We should push back in ways that are smart for us. And I'm not sure that what he's described in there will equip a struggling North American auto sector with what it needs to succeed against the way in which the Chinese, for example, are building cars and selling them around the world now. Yeah, nationalization may be a stretch, especially coming from Conrad Black, that idea. Yeah. But the fact that the automobile industry in Ontario is on the precipice here right now is real.

And I think those kind of conversations, It's not about nationalization, but about what's plan B are going on at a seriously high level. So interesting on that part. You know Conrad Black. I've talked from time. I stood beside Conrad Black at the wedding of one of my best friends, Brian Stewart. Ryan and Conrad went to school together way back decades ago. and there were three best men for the wedding.

Conrad Black, myself, and Mike Duffy. So that's quite a trio when you think about it, and you can draw your own conclusions about what you want to think of that trio. But I remember that day for, well, obviously for the great wedding that Brian and Tina had, but also that one of my sole duties was to ensure that Tina's mother was brought, ushered into the church and placed in her proper seat at the front of the church. And I forgot to do it. And so the wedding was starting, was about to start, and the priest came over to me and said,

the minister came over to me and said, where's Tina's mother? And I went, oh, my God. And I went running back to the front of the church, and she was standing there waiting for the escort to bring her up. Anyway, that's mirrors to today's event. Deflection. Here's another one. It's not Conrad Black, but, well, some people may think that what he has to say is equal in weight.

Jamil Giovanni. Canada needs leadership that will do what's necessary, not what's fashionable. That means treating Canadian families as a priority, not chasing international applause of global or globalist approval. We need a change from the same old politics in Ottawa that has lowered our quality of life for over a decade. If Mark Carney wants to be leadered, the Democratic Party, he should move there and add a U.S. passport to his collection. Canadians deserve a prime minister who will put Canada first. Let me guess. Smoke mirrors of the truth.

You know, I just find what he says to be kind of hard to follow, to be honest. I mean, this is a guy who's claimed to fame for most of the last year has been, I'm really close to J.D. Vance, the U.S. Vice. president, went to school with him. And so I can go down and I can fix the Canada U.S. trade relationship because of that relationship. Well, of course, he hasn't been able to do that. He's also been chasing this idea that you hear in some quarters that is kind of roughly about young men not getting a fair shake or something like that. And it's a popular topic of conversation in some political circles, but it usually has a lot to do with trying to mind.

a little bit of misogyny in society where people are feeling like if things aren't going well for them, it's because somebody else is getting more rights or more benefits than they should. I think that his latest, this quote, implying that the time that the Prime Minister is spending on global relationships or the Canada-U.S. relationship in particular is not relevant to the incomes and economic life of Canadians. It's, well, it's lame. It's not going to land. People aren't going to believe it. So it's not clever. It's not likely to land and cause people to kind of go, well, you know, maybe he's got a point or I've heard other people talk about that. Maybe we should Talk about that a little bit more.

This is an argument that really just kind of runs headlong into almost 85% of Canadians, who I would say think that we should be trying to diversify our trade relationships, and we need to consider the U.S. relationship to be an absolute priority. I still don't. I mean, I understand the argument about kicking him out of the conservative caucus, that the danger there is alienating. that segment of the Conservative Caucus that Pierre Poliov thinks is important

for his continued leadership. But I still think for the things he's done that make his leader look bad, I don't understand why he hasn't kicked him out. I'm sure Stephen Harper would not have put up with that to Michel Ripple's point. They're being long gone by now.

Long gone. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, Donald Trump. We're going to put a big tariff on Canada because of the smoke. I've told Canada they have to do something about it. We've never had this problem. All of a sudden we have this problem with Canada. Smoke mirrors, smoke, smoke, or mirrors are the truth.

You know, when we were talking about should we do something where we harness the smokers and the truth idea and talk about some of the nonsense that people say in politics, I thought for a minute we should say it's a special bridge about smoke, lettuce mirrors and the truth because Trump and his tariffs it's almost like

somebody brings him something that he can get angry at and take a swing at and his only swing thought is I'll throw a tariff at this such a stupid idea, such a stupid kind of argument everything gets normalized and so the news cycle turns and people stop going

is it crazy that he's talking about a tariff because of the smoke? Crazy for a few reasons, right? One is that obviously there's some smoke that's coming from U.S. fires into Canada. Setting that aside, though, a tariff on the smoke from Canadian wildfires isn't going to stop the wildfires. All it's going to do is cost American consumers more money because he refused. refuses to acknowledge that American consumers and businesses are the ones that pay the tariffs. He went to court, was taken to court, and lost last year by putting tariffs on Canada because of fentanyl and immigration. Remember that one? And the court came back and said, well, the thing about

putting these tariffs on is that if you don't want to go through Congress, you want to use this executive emergency authority, the tariff has to be connected with the problem you're trying to solve. So explain to us how the tariff is going to solve the fentanyl or the immigration problem, and you can't do it. So we're going to knock those tariffs down. I think it was part of Trump's general love of taking a swipe at Canada. I think he likes to do that. I think he, you know, he feels like it riles people up. Maybe he convinces himself that it puts him in a better negotiating position with us, that it kind of exerts some leverage over us. I don't think it does.

I think it has the opposite effect. But I think he's very disconnected from the reality of how his comments affect the future and the economics today of his country. What did you think when you heard it? I just, he's crazy on this stuff. This was a classic mirrors, right? You know, he's deflection. And totally ignorant of the fact that there's smoke pouring over the border the other way, too,

both on the West Coast and in the Midwest coming up from Minnesota. You know, listen, is it a good situation? No, it's a terrible situation. And the only way we're really going to get at this is to do something seriously on the climate issue. But nobody seems to want to go there right now, including us. Okay. You know, you worried that we couldn't do 25 minutes on this special edition. We're already at almost 45, and we're almost out of time.

So I'm going to squeeze one more thing in. Last Friday night was the reconstituted White House correspondence dinner, which turned into another disaster, another rambling bizarre speech from Trump and made actually didn't make just him look stupid. It made everybody in the audience look stupid. To the point where Peter Baker, who's sort of one of the acknowledged,

you know, leaders of the American political press corps, Peter Baker in New York Times, said it's time to rethink the dinner. Now, we go through this occasionally in Canada as well when we rethink the parliamentary press gallery dinner, of which both you and I have been to over the years. I've been to the White House Correspondence Dinner as well a few times.

Is it time to rethink the dinner? You know, write it along the lines more about what it says about the press than it says about Trump. You know, there was somebody wrote on X the other day, and I thought it was pretty good. Any journalists that smiled, clapped and laughed at this event, meaning Trump speech needs to find another career. What do you make of this stuff?

And these quotes, you know. 100% agree. I don't think it takes a lot of rethinking. I think they should just stop doing it. I think they should stop doing it, at least in the sense of getting together with the president. You know, I don't think it really works to have the press get all dressed up, in anticipation of hearing some jokes from the president that they cover in a situation where he's so hostile

to what they do as an institution, as a part of democracy. And he has been for all of his time in public life, going back to 2016, I guess. He's always fake news, fake news, fake news, the enemy of the people, that sort of thing. So I don't think it makes sense for the press to get together with Trump. I don't think it's good for confidence in journalism to have people see, you know, a group of journalists get up on the stage to accept a prize for covering him and Epstein and they're shaking hands with him and smiling and he's doing the same thing. It it creates a false sense of Bonamy, but in the end it plays more to his advantage because it undermines the confidence that people can have, that these people truly are independent,

that they're not interested in having a relationship with him. And I think all of that has become so blurred in recent years that it really is time for the press to take step back. In Canada, we've had a small version of it. You've sort of alluded to it there, Peter, that the peer Poliiev can be so aggressive in the way that he deals with journalists, that you have to be ready to stand your ground and you have to be ready to say I don't care if he likes me I don't care if he smiles at me I don't care if he wants to take my question and not somebody else and not just focus on other people it's important to keep that separation even though generally speaking you know this better than me journalists will do a better job if they can have conversations

with people in politics if it's not always that dagger strong that's for sure true but we've seen way too much attempt by the U.S. President to belittle, marginalized, insult, demonize the press, and it's had an effect. And I think that people in that room should have walked out when he said the things that he said about that CNN reporter, Caitlin Collins. I think that's the moment where there's a real gut check. Are you there? because you believe in some principles

around what you do, and if so, there does come a point, I think, where the line has to be drawn. What about you? Where are you on that? Well, you know, there used to be a time, and not that long ago, 20 years ago, I guess, where in both cases, in the American side and the Canadian side, those evenings were off the record. And there was,

no televised nature of the evening. You didn't see the speeches by the part of anybody. And the public and some in the media said, this is wrong, we should really, this should be all public information. We should allow our audiences to see exactly what happens in these meetings. And so they both opened up and the speeches were televised. And interestingly, it's,

worked in the reverse because it now looks like this happy little group family photo and everybody laughing at each other's jokes and even to the point where you had this bizarre nature of the other night

where Trump crapped on a number of reporters of Caitlin Collins was one example. She's an example of the way he treats women in the press corps over and over again and nobody says boo you know like nothing happens uh you know a turn around and a walk away from

a scrum or a news conference may accomplish something i don't know maybe not but it's interesting that it's come to that point now where you actually are saying and you're having people like peter baker say let's just end it let's stop it now you wonder is this all trump like is it because of Trump? We've reached his situation on the way he treats the media and the way he, you know, lies and, you know, makes up stuff in these sessions. Or does it go beyond that? And I'm not sure, you know.

I think that the ownership changes in journalism are also something that people need to be concerned about, right? You've now got ultra wealthy people owning like the Ellisons and Bezos to pick two, owning really important media enterprises. And these people are so wealthy that they don't really care about whether the journalism is this kind of classic journalism. They don't care if it's financially successful because the financials of these media businesses don't matter to them that much. They're that rich. And they lean hard towards Trumpist themes.

They, you know, when people talk about the billionaire class and they're skeptical of it, there's reason to be skeptical of it. There's reason to feel like some of these people are going to try to use the industry. institutions that they can wrap their arms around, that they can own and try to influence opinion in a way that's not great for the average person. It's a little bit different, but in Canada this week, we're seeing, you know, this billionaire, one of the founders of Shopify, you know, championing an idea that, you know, at a certain point in time, you should age out of voting, or if you don't pay income tax, you shouldn't vote. And if you pay more income tax than other people, you should get more votes.

These are terrible ideas put into the marketplace by super wealthy people who've lost sight of how a democracy is supposed to function. And so I definitely think that Peter Baker's right. If anything, he kind of pulled the punch. Media should stop going to dinners with Trump, and they should stop pretending that he's in any way. a reasonable actor in their democracy and the relationship with the fourth estate. All right. Well, on that note, we're going to end this special summer edition of Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. It was fun.

It was, you know, something that we just thought about this week. And, you know, maybe we'll do it again sometime. It's not like there's ever a dearth of quotes available to talk about. There's a lot to talk about. That's right. All right. Enjoy the rest of the summer. We'll talk soon.

Thank you, buddy. Thanks, Bruce. Bye.