The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Who Blinked First -- Trump or Trudeau? - Encore

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

An encore of Bruce Anderson & Fred DeLorey go head to head on tariffs. Keith Boag with his non partisan take.

And hello there, Peter Vansbridge here. Welcome to Wednesday. And Wednesday, of course, is our Encore Edition program. And we're going to repeat yesterday's, because there was a lot of good stuff in yesterday's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, and then a pretty good session with Keith Bogue about what has this whole tariff thing meant so far, and what's likely to happen in the next month. So sit back, listen to our encore edition. Enjoy it. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth.

It's your Tuesday show. Bruce Anderson, Fred Delorey, they're both here. So you've got your liberal, and you've got your Conservative, both working on election races right now. Fred's working on the Doug Ford Ontario campaign, and Bruce is working... You're the Green Party guy. Everybody knows that.

Who, me? You, yeah. I'm the Green Party guy. Okay. And Bruce is working with Mark Carney on the liberal leadership race. Okay, here's what I want to start with. Let's set the politics aside. Let me ask one of those journalist-type questions that Bruce hates,

which is who blinked? You know, last night, it kind of, the air goes out of the trade war, at least for a few weeks. Who blinked first here? Bruce, you start. You're, sorry, let me, are you asking the question about Canadian political parties? No, no, no, no, no. Trump, Trudeau.

Who blinked? Did somebody blink or were these just two really caring guys who worked out an agreement that will last at least a month? Yeah. Well, look, I think it's really important that Donald Trump feels that he got what he needed to get out of his call with Justin Trudeau and from the federal government, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to spend a lot of time saying all of that stuff was already promised.

If this is what Mr. Trump needed in order to say that, in effect, he got a wall on the northern border and we paid for it, then if that means that there's some chance that we can move on, I think that's great. But yeah, I suppose, Peter, I mean, if I'm to get right to the nub of your question, yeah, I do think that something made Mr. Trump move from yesterday, from his earlier position, where he said, if Canada retaliates, I will escalate. So Canada retaliated, and he didn't escalate. He, you know, he engaged in a phone conversation about the border. It's still very hard to know what the ultimate yardstick of success will be for Mr. Trump, because at different times it's been

he needs to raise money to pay off the U.S. debt with all the money he's going to get from Canada and others on tariffs. It's going to make IVR free in America. It's a fentanyl issue. It's a migrant, illegal migrant issue. It's a 51st state desire. And he's just trying to apply economic pressure to us, which he said again just before his phone call with Mr. Trudeau. So I don't think we really know. And so I'm reluctant to say he blinked because who knows what he'll do tonight or tomorrow or the next day. Yeah, exactly. Fred, where are you on it?

Yeah, look, I think we are in store of four years of chaos with President Trump. I don't know. You know, there's a ceasefire. But at the end of the day, our closest friend and trading partner, our ally, someone that we're a country that we're so interconnected with, not just through trade, but culturally and language and so much so much shared history. They declared economic war on us and it rattled Canadians. And I think over the next number of years, we should always need to be on guard. This 30 day reprieve or ceasefire, we have no idea what to expect. Is the border what was driving him? It didn't seem to be. Those are things that they're saying

at times, but they've been saying so many other messages about tariffs that it's just at the core what they seem to believe in. So in 30 days' time, we may be right back at this again. It's just so unpredictable. And again, I think this is going to have a deep impact on the Canadian psyche. I know myself, I was talking to my wife this morning. I'm a huge New York Knicks basketball fan, and I'm in Toronto right now for work for a few days. They're playing here tonight, and I was going to go to the game,

and I probably still will, but I had this conversation with my wife. Can I cheer for them? That's a U.S.-based team now. And I can't imagine, you know, me ever thinking that. I watch this team every year, 30, 40 games a year on TV. So just these little things, you know, we saw Premier Ford and other premiers taking alcohol off the shelves.

Like, people are are angry and we're seeing them at sporting events they're being booed i think this had a deep impact uh but i think this is just the beginning we have four years of this in front of us yeah i i'm amazed at how fast and how deep the feeling became on this side i mean you you hear it mean, you hear it on, obviously, you hear it on open line shows. And, you know, I get a lot of mail. And I got a tremendous amount of mail yesterday on Monday. And people are really upset. I mean, it's running at least 10 or 15 to 1 in terms of how they feel about this.

I've never seen anything like it. You know, there's been a little bit of a debate on social media about whether Canada should have retaliated. And I mean, I think it's a lopsided debate. I don't think there's a whole lot of people who were against retaliation, but there were some, including a very high profile Canadian company that said, you know, it will only be a disaster if we if we retaliate. I don't think that's true at all. I think that the you know, it was good to see the political parties in Canada come together.

There were differences between where the Conservatives were or the specific items that the Conservatives wanted to to profile or push from the liberals. But the NDP and the liberals and the conservatives were all, you know, singing from the same songbook, which is that you've got to push back on this and you've got to push back hard because that's the only thing that might have a chance of getting the attention of the business community. And I think also some of the media in the United States that I don't think there's that many parts of the media that that Donald Trump really cares about. But I saw a rumor. I don't know if it's true on the Internet this afternoon that Rupert Murdoch was in the White House. I thought that the language that The Wall Street Journal used to describe this tariff

war was very pointed, very tough, called it the dumbest trade war in the history of the world or something like that. I think that sort of thing does make him, does give him pause a little bit. And I think that, you know, there are times when he feels like he has complete command of everything and doesn't care what anybody else says. And he crapped all over the Wall Street Journal on his truth social. like he has complete command of everything and doesn't care what anybody else says and he he crapped all over the wall street journal on his true social but uh i don't think he likes having people say he's making dumb moves for the u.s economy or for the geopolitical situation more

broadly you know you touched on it on the beginning of your first answer br Bruce, when you said, you know, he likes to feel that he's won, that he's got a win. You know, even when he knows he hasn't got a win, he likes to be able to portray it as a win. Yeah. And that's what he's doing. But some of the things that he says, and I don't want to make it sound like everybody on our side of the argument is, you know, is consistent

because they aren't always. But on his side, I mean, even yesterday he dragged out this whole new thing about banks. You know, there are no American banks in Canada. Well, like, what's he smoking? I mean, there's Citibank's been in Canada for 100 years. You know, and there are other examples too but he throws stuff out that just simply isn't true to try and show a win in some fashion

let me get back to this issue of how there was such a united front in Canada especially over the weekend I mean it was quite something and not just between the different political parties but even in the leadership race they all signed an agreement together in the liberal leadership race all all the candidates who were left in the race uh taking a common stand i mean how surprising was all of that fred to you that uh saw that kind ofity. It's broken a little bit, you know, since, but

certainly over the weekend. Yeah, look, I think all political parties in Canada and the leadership contenders for the Liberal Party all agree we don't like tariffs. They're not good for Canada. But at the end of the day, it's about what's next after that. It's not just about tariffs. How do we make sure that we're getting our natural resources and our products to market? And I think that's what differentiates now to that point where, you know, the conservatives do believe we need to diversify where we're sending things. You know, we need to get our oil and gas. You know, we're one of the major producing countries in the world, and we're only shipping directly to one when we could be putting it on more boats and getting it to other areas. There's so much opportunity for us there.

And I think that's one of the driving points that's going to differentiate as we need to diversify our economy. And the Liberals will have a challenge. Obviously, the current leadership, I think, has a credibility problem if they ever tried to pivot to go into that. The new leader, whoever wins this, will at least have an opportunity to try to tell their story on how they can do that. But I think Canadians now are all united as well in that we do need to diversify and we do need to find other markets. So it'll be interesting to see if the Liberals follow along that as well Bruce do you want to give us any or can you give us any background to how that

joint statement came out well that would have been pretty easy to get done I don't know where it started or who started it but it wouldn't have been hard to I mean these people with the exception of Ruby Dalla and Frank Bayless who was in the Liberal caucus there in the Liberal caucus.

And I think it was pretty easy to get behind that statement. So, look, I think that the you know, Fred makes a good point that there are going to be differences that emerge. So, you know, Trump has signaled that he wants to have a discussion about a new economic relationship with Canada. We don't know what that includes. I think it's fair to speculate that the conservative version of that, that they'll present to Canadians in an election, will be something that puts more emphasis on oil and gas, and the liberal version of it will be something that puts more emphasis on lots of other sectors and diversification as well.

But I don't think that there's going to be one diversification party and another anti-diversification party. I think that everybody's going to be dialed in on the same goal, which is what will a stable and resilient economy look like for Canadians? And who do we trust to fashion that for us? So that's a very different election from, you know, the Justin Trudeau election, from the carbon tax election. The table has been completely reset. You know, right now, you've got the Conservatives every day sort of saying, come back to Parliament and let's have an election now. You know, I think that most Canadians will probably look at that and say,

well, we're going to have an election this year. Maybe we could, you know, not have an election right this moment when the Liberals don't have a leader. Let's get the Liberals to have a leader and then let's work on this economic relationship with the United States. And then give us your best shot, parties. Tell us what you have to propose. And I don't think that most Canadians are going to feel like that election is more urgent than having a good competition between these parties once they've had a chance to, in the case of the Liberals, have a leader, and in the case of both parties, do more in response to the Trump threat that we all see. Do you want to take that on, Fred? Yeah, I respectfully, of course, as you are not surprised to hear, disagree. I think we need an election as soon as possible because we are dealing with a major crisis.

And we have to wait two more months before a new liberal prime minister or liberal leader, and who knows how long before they get sworn in as prime minister. So we're drifting for two months. And, you know, Trudeau's negotiating on our behalf and you know we do have this 30-day ceasefire but uh was not debated in parliament there was no discussion uh there was no real uh democratic mandate which parliament gives you to do these things uh so i think we do have a problem here when we uh when we wait this long now this is all would parliament have to give a mandate to the Prime Minister to do what he did over the weekend?

I'm not convinced of that. No, anything this important and this fundamental, I think Parliament should be weighing in on it. We have a Westminster political system where the government has to have the confidence of the House, and obviously when the House isn't sitting and things are happening. But this is pro-Roe. They purposely closed down Parliament for three months.

And now we're dealing with these things without having our Democratic representatives talking about it. It does sound, though, and I'm not going to, you know, and I say this respectfully, too. It does sound, though, that the point for the Conservatives about having the House come back isn't to discuss the issues. It's to force an election when the Liberals don't have a leader and while the issues are still pretty hot on the table day in, day out with the United States government. Unless I'm missing something, unless the Conservatives had said, no, no, we want to have some time to talk about this. And then at some point in the future, we'll have an election. It sounds to me like the point of calling the House back is to immediately cause an election to be held. And maybe I'm just old. It feels to me that there should be a degree of, it's not respect.

It's more like the rules of the road should be, yes, choose your leader, and then we'll have an election after that, rather than we want to have an election while you don't have a leader. I just think we're in a situation, though. This is an unusual time where we're in a crisis mode. Instead, we're putting the Liberal Party before the country in terms of having a full government with a mandate from the people. We've got to remember, Justin Trudeau, it's not that he just lost the support of the NDP and the bloc who want to take him down as well as the conservatives.

He's lost the support of the Liberal caucus. They've said he has to go. And yet he's the one that's still leading our country for these months and months of crisis before the liberal party decides who their choice is i think that's i think we should have gone he is going and it's you can count it in days now it's like 45 days or something like that so i don't know i don't think you two guys are going to agree on that point um so let's just move it. I'm intrigued by this use of the word crisis, because I'm trying to understand now, are we still in a crisis? Or, you know, there's no doubt we were in a crisis 48 hours ago. Did the air go out of the balloon a little bit, the crisis balloon, in the last 48 hours, or is it still there? Trump talked about tariffs last summer. He got elected. He said he was going to bring them in on Inauguration Day. Inauguration Day came, and he said he's going to bring them in February 1st. February 1st came, he said they're going to bring them in on Tuesday following that. And so we'll just keep going down the road. They may be just preparing, and some, we don't know what they're doing on that side. I think this is an absolute crisis, and I think

we're, you know, if it's kicking the can down the road or if the air is going out of it, we need to be careful because it can come right back to us very, very fast. Yeah, I think it is a crisis. I think, honestly, the only thing we probably disagree on is if I'm a voter, I'd rather have a choice between two parties that have a leader. I mean, not to disrespect the NDP or the BQ or the Green Party or the People's Party, but it is a crisis and it's going to be a crisis for four years. Because whether it's us or it's something else that's going on in the world, the threats, the conversation about territorial expansion. If you ask me what really united people in Canada, yes, it was the economic threat, but maybe just as much, it was the way that he talked about us.

It was his constant kind of demeaning of Canada. We don't need them for anything. They're awful people to us. He did that a little bit in his first term. But this has been more persistent, more caustic, more derogatory. And I think people are sick of it in Canada. I think they don't want to hear him saying it anymore. And they're not interested in and they want to meet him wherever we need to meet him in order to protect our economy. But they're not going to forget the way a U.S. president talked about Canada and Canadians and the relationship between our countries. How does this, how does the situation we're in now, in the pause for the next 30 days, how does that impact the two races that you two guys are concerned about? Fred, the Ontario election, and Bruce, the Liberal leadership.

How will it affect that? How will that pause? Will it change things at all? Ontario first, Fred. Well, as Premier Ford is doing, he's running this campaign to get a new mandate so that it will outlast Trump's mandate. His mandate was up next year, so he's going now to have that full mandate so that he can be the premier of this province and put forth the programs he needs to protect the province, to protect Ontario,

which is the main slogan for the campaign. Because this is going to be the dominant issue. It is the dominant issue. And Ontarians have a right to cast their ballot based on what that's going to be. So it's going to impact it big. There's no question. This is the issue, and it's a unique campaign. I could think back to another trade campaign, the 1988 free trade election, which was a fascinating one, and it was my first one.

I was only 9 or 10, but it was an election that I watched very closely because it impacted me. I was a huge video game person or video game kid, and my dad convinced me that free trade would lower the price of video games. So that hit me personally. And it got me into politics in many ways. So it's a, you know, that was a single issue campaign in many ways. And it flipped so many ridings, traditional liberal ridings went conservative and some traditional conservative ridings went liberal because that was the type of campaign it was with that single issue.

In Ontario here and anywhere else in Canada that's voting soon, this is going to be the dominant issue. But did it reduce the cost of video games? I mean, let's get to the nub of that election. Is that what happened? Yes, they're much cheaper now than they were back then. Bruce, what's it going to do to the liberal leadership? Well, you know, I think the liberals were already headed for a more economically focused leader. That's, you know, what I was seeing in the way in which the party was approaching this.

This is an unusual liberal leadership campaign in the sense that you just don't see those candidates who are championing kind of big social spending, big social justice initiatives. It's not that the party has kind of abandoned its values on those, but it's definitely a party that has become pretty dialed in on what is it that Canadians need in terms of an economic focus, in terms of a government that doesn't spend money just to grab votes, regardless of whether or not there's a real need to do that spending. I think, you know, it does. It does create a dynamic in that leadership race where people are going to look at the candidates and say, who do I think of these candidates would be the best person to deal with the United States, deal with the idea of

repositioning our economy so that it is less reliant on that one relationship. And I think, you know, I'm biased, obviously, but I think that plays to Mark Carney's advantage to some degree, not because Chrystia Freeland doesn't have some chops in that area, but because I think he has more. And I think that that she's been in in that key role for a while. And so it's reasonable for people to say, let's let's look at Mark Carney in terms of how it should Mark Carney win that leadership race. I think it sets up a really interesting fight between carney and pauliev and i've been watching pure pauliev in the last few days and the sense that i have is that he is evolving the way in which he's talking about

issues there is less i can get away with just a slogan and a mini tirade and saying justin trudeau's awful and this guy's just like saying Justin Trudeau is awful. And this guy's just like Justin Trudeau and everybody's carbon tax, this and carbon tax that I see an evolution there. And I kind of feel like that's a good thing. I feel like competition is good for voters because it makes politicians focus on the things that will matter most to, to voters. And I think that's what we're,

we're headed for is a more competitive election, where I think the Conservatives obviously still have a very sizable advantage. But I think the Liberal Party looks like it could become competitive come election time, too. Can you each give me, as kind of our closing issue here for this week on SMT, give me your sense on polling, because, you know, Bruce, you just mentioned, you know, the Conservatives had, at least going into these last few weeks,

a substantial lead. There's some evidence that it's tightening up a bit. Some polls even suggest it's really tightened up, but most are saying there's been a closing of the gap somewhat, but it's still a big lead. And then you have the Conservative lead in Ontario, Doug Ford's lead, which I don't know, did I see a poll the other day that said he's over 50 points? Now, that's a huge lead.

But what's our take on polling right now and the impact that this whole situation with Trump versus Canada is having on it? Who wants to go there? I'll go first, and as the pollster, Bruce can close on it and correct me on all the errors I'm about to possibly make. Polls go up, polls go down. That's something you always have to be mindful of. And I know any political campaign, the Conservatives, Liberals, whoever it is, you know, you look at the polls and you adjust based on what your actual research tells you

and where the voters are going, not just the horse race. Horse race is for us. That's for pundits, for media, for Canadians who are interested in that. But really getting into the weeds and seeing what's driving people to go where they're going, that's what's important. And I know all campaigns are constantly doing that. And that's where, you know, a lot of messaging and how they come out of it is based on that. So Polyev, what he's doing, you know, his numbers are still solid.

I think there is, you know, when Kim Campbell became leader, I believe those, you know, she was, Marooney was trailing significantly when he left. Kim Campbell took a lead. We may see something again where it'll tighten up. And during an election, when people focus, it'll tighten up without question. That's just a natural part of it. But it still shows, I think, the muscle of the Conservatives to lead so much in that it'll tighten. And then I think it'll open back up again closer to E-Day at the federal level. Bruce?

Yeah, look, I think that the polling on the federal side is a little bit kind of hard to really evaluate because it's it's testing of the liberal party without a leader um and so either people are assuming it's trudeau because they they don't know what else to assume or they they're answering absent a leader or so i think we'll need to wait until after that to to see where the parties really are at from a federal standpoint. I think that the question, you know, Fred lays out the tighten up and then open up again. And I think that's entirely possible, but I think the, the question of who it opens up for, I guess, it's an open question because I do think that we're going to have a contest

that focuses pretty extensively on these two individuals. If it's Mark Carney and Pierre Paulief, It could still be Chrystia Freeland, but the indications I think we're all looking at suggest that Mark Carney's, you know, in a pretty good position at this point. And so if it's Mark Carney versus Pierre Polyev, I think that is going to be more central than sometimes is the case with with leaders. I think we were headed for an election before this leadership race started that was really just about I can't wait to see the, you know, the back end of the liberals and Justin Trudeau in particular. And I think that that's, you know, a lot of that energy has kind of gone out of the

conversation. And part of it is because of what's happening with the United States. And part of it is just the notion that that won't be the contest, Justin Trudeau versus Pierre Polyev. It'll be something else. All right. We're going to leave it at that for this week. Smoke mirrors the truth.

Bruce Anderson, Fred DeLorey. Thank you both. You bet. Take care, guys. Okay, so you've heard the partisan answer on the Hoobling question. And as we listen to our Tuesday episode of The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, we welcome in once again Keith Boak, former CBC Chief Washington Correspondent, Chief Ottawa Correspondent.

My sad kick on more than a few elections over the years when we were both at the CBC, but we're both now in our pension years. But we haven't stopped thinking. So you tell me, who blinked in that yesterday? Was it Trump or was it Trudeau? Well, it's pretty hard to see that Trump got very much more than he already had before the tariff threat came in. So I think it's pretty clear that he blinked.

And I think that's partly because in spite of his self-described talents as a negotiator, he seemed to go into this negotiation without knowing exactly what he wanted. And so it was hard for him to judge, I think, when he had achieved something other than crash the markets. And as I think we've known for a long time, he's very sensitive to how the market responds to everything. And he has a tendency to gain his own performance by the performance of the stock market. So I think that he was, I think you could construct a pretty solid argument that he was responding to headlines about what was happening in the markets and not really paying much attention to what he actually wanted out of this brutal tariff threat to begin with. You know, I think you've hit on the nub there, which is what did he really want?

You know, tariffs is all about the economy and how you take economic measures to better yourself or at least better the situation that you're in. But his kind of gunfire on that aspect of the trade war kept spraying the room in different directions. It would be different things that come up every day as to what he was really going after. And yet the one constant there, it had nothing to do with the economy per se. It had everything to do with sovereignty on the 51st state. It started almost as a joke, and then it proceeded to become, you know, the drumbeat throughout all his discussions.

Is that what he really wanted? I think in a sense it is what he wants. Yesterday when he talked about it, he said that, you know, something about playing the game the way it's supposed to be played, which I interpreted him as meaning being really tough with tariffs and trying to strangle the Canadian economy until Canada says uncle and agrees to negotiate the terms under which it becomes the 51st state. And Trump said, but, you know, excluding himself, I assume the others around him weren't ready to endure the kind of pain on the U.S. economy that that would involve. And he said, yeah, there would be some. But if you were playing the game right, that would be that would be what the end game is. But I think the other indication that he doesn't know what he wants is how adamant the White House was in saying this was always about drugs, this was always about the drug war, when clearly it wasn't. Clearly, they were the ones who were trying to

figure out for themselves what they were going to say the victory was for Trump. And all they got was a little bit more on a drug czar to look after fentanyl, and no real explanation for why they would be targeting Canada on fentanyl anyway, when it's clear that the problem with fentanyl is elsewhere, not here. You know, Trump has no difficulty at all making up storylines and narratives that suit him, and he's doing that now, but I think it's more transparent than it usually is. What did you make of the, I keep referring to this as if it's over, you know, it isn't over, and there's another month of this, although I imagine it will be settled down in terms of the topic of the day issue, but then it'll come back up again at the end of the month as he hits his latest deadline,

of which there have been many on this issue. But through this, especially this last few days, you've seen enough of these kind of issues over the years and how Canada ends up divided amongst itself and trying to present a side in these international situations. But they didn't hear. I mean, they were and have been as united as we've seen Canada on almost any issue in the past.

What did you make of that? First of all, I think that Canadians are genuinely angry now at the united states and that is that anger is something that any reasonable politician could look at and find ways to exploit and they will i mean look how lucky doug ford is uh you know this comes along just as he's already thinking about calling an election and suddenly it all fits into place for him. I'm not saying he wanted it this way, but it certainly suits him to suddenly appear as Captain Canada in some people's view in the middle of the biggest crisis we've had in the bilateral relationship in the memories of many of us. So there's a usefulness to it. You see in the Globe and Mail today saying, finally,

you know, Canada is going to have to take seriously the problem of interprovincial tariffs in its own country. And so, you know, things are not going to spring back to the way they were before last Friday. Something serious has changed in the Canadian-Canada-U.S. relationship, and it may have to do only with Trump, but Trump's here for the next four years, as far as we know. And so it is going to color the relationship in a very profound way. And certainly this is not what Donald Trump intended out of this, but it's what he's got. And there is an opportunity now for Canadian governments, federal and provincial, to have it make a difference, to capitalize on it, and to exploit the anger that Canadians feel towards their best trading partner or formerly best trading partner,

and to do something to clean up their own house. So I'm rambling a bit there. I don't know whether I answered the question for you. But look, in the next 30 days, what happened here is that that trump has has has told everyone this is going to be my my administration is going to be an administration of uncertainty markets don't like uncertainty he's going to have to deal with that and we're going to have to deal in canada we're going to have to deal with how we prevent him from feeling that he can be as erratic as he wants in this relationship without paying any consequences. Well, if one believes, and I tend to agree with you here, that it was Trump who blinked,

and that basically Canada won this round of what has already been a long issue in terms of time over these past couple of months is a constant issue and could well do that for some time yet. But it has provoked an anger, I agree with you on this point too, unlike any we've seen in Canada. I just go by what I hear in the coffee shops and in the diner in our little town that's deeply affected by any kind of a situation that affects the auto business here in southwestern Ontario. Lots of auto parts shops, and they're all deathly worried about losing jobs, losing their homes. So that anger is there.

And you see it in letters. You see it in the whole booing thing at hockey games, which I think we've got to control somehow because that can get ugly. But that's kind of one thing, this sense of a united political front in Canada. I mean, you know, I've witnessed this for enough years to know that kind of stuff's not going to last. Well, what he did was remind us of how small we are in relation to the United States. I mean, there was a lot of anger and defiance and support for retaliatory measures, as far as we can tell.

All of this happened pretty quickly. But there was also, I think, lurking in the background, the sense that we are kind of defenseless if the United States, if someone like Donald Trump is going to be in charge of the United States and he's going to talk about making Canada the 51st state. And if he's serious about using economic force to do it, as he has said, we are very vulnerable to that. I'm not saying that that means it's going to happen, but it's been a very sobering few days. And you're right. It probably won't last at the pitch that it is at now. But one would think that politicians would understand that and seize this opportunity to strike while the iron is hot.

And to do the things that they have known for a long time were necessary to safeguard the Canadian economy and make it less vulnerable to a single partner. Not that it's the only partner in the world, but it's clearly the most important one to us. to safeguard the Canadian economy and make it less vulnerable to a single partner. Not that it's the only partner in the world, but it's clearly the most important one to us. And we need to have ourselves better prepared for the erratic behavior of a rogue president. Well, the whole united we stand, divided we fall theory is going to be tested here over this next month in terms of the political makeup of our country. Yeah. Because, A, it surprised us that it was as united as it was, and there were some division lines there, as we all know.

But overall, it was pretty united. Can that last? I mean, obviously, yes, in the short term, and probably not in the longer term. We need to get through this moment and see, you know, I mean, as you've mentioned, we got a 30-day brief. We didn't get an end to the battle. And we have to see what happens in those 30 days. But there are lots of ways in which it could fall apart,

and some of them are pretty obvious that even Donald Trump could probably see them. The way that he treated the energy sector differently in his threat about tariffs, I think, reveals that he understands more than he admits to when he says, we don't need your oil and gas, we don't need your lumber. But the fact that they do need those things in order to maintain the, you know, the kind of the status quo in their own country, I think means that they also explore them and see how they can be divisive issues within Canada too. How they, that by playing favorites with some provinces and being more lenient

with them, he can, he can sow division within the country and make it feel like one side is having to pay the price for this. And one part of the country is trying to pay the price for this. And one part of the country is trying to pay the price for this. Well, another part is paying less of a price. And I think that's a situation that's obviously exploitable for him and that he will choose. And then what's the reaction to that? You know, the reaction might be what we've seen for a little while, or it might be that there's an internal reaction that is effective for Trump and that it sets one region of the country against another, which would be a terrible thing.

I've only got time for one, and it's not a quick one, unfortunately, but I'll need a quick answer. Why is interprovincial trade such a problem? Well, not such a problem problem but seemingly so unsolvable in this country because it's not like we haven't heard this before that we've got to solve those short-term political interests in the provinces and i mean it's not like we haven't overcome some of it you know back when i was covering trade, remember the big fights we used to have about whether you could buy beer from Nova Scotia in Ontario? Well, you know, we've got past that. We can get past other parts of it. But at the root of it all is that there's an economic structure that has been built up around the

status quo. And if the status quo isn't serving us as well as it should as a country, that nevertheless doesn't mean it's going to be easy to dismantle that status quo. And it requires a coordinated political will among players who have different political calendars, shall we say. So it's very hard to coordinate. It's very hard to find the political will and get it together all at once. I think that may be too superficial an answer, and you can find a lot of trade lawyers who will make it much more complicated than that because that's basically what they're paid to do. But I think in all of these cases, self-interest is going to be at the heart of it.

Well, perhaps the crisis we're in with our southern neighbors will make it easier to find a resolution to this problem. But I agree with you. There are many angles to this issue. And history has taught us that all of them tend to leave the thing in a deadlock. In some ways, it's been our near-death experience. And we need to take advantage of what that means. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. Keith, it's been our near-death experience, and we need to take advantage of what that means. Okay, we're going to leave it at that.

Keith, it's always great to talk to you, and you always leave us better informed than when we started. That's kind of you, Peter. Thanks for having me. Okay, take care. And that wraps it up for this week. Another fascinating show, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, with Bruce and Fred, and then closer with Keith Boak giving us his take on what we witnessed yesterday

and what's likely to happen over the next month. And that was our Wednesday encore edition of The Bridge. Hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back tomorrow with your turn and the random ranter. We'll see you then.