The Current - Can parties work together to make Canada less reliant on U.S.?

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to lay out his Liberal government’s priorities in Ottawa this morning, including details of an upcoming meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. Matt Galloway talks to Conservative MP Jamil Jivani and Liberal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne about how Canada can become less reliant on the U.S. in the face of a trade war and threats of annexation — and whether their two opposing parties can work together for the good of all Canadians.

1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg. I'm from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. In just a few short weeks, the House of Commons will return with a minority liberal government

and a hefty conservative opposition. There are many challenges facing this nation. The tariff war with the U.S. has already slung the economy and a report this week from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario suggested that tariff war could lead to the loss of some 68,000 jobs in the province of Ontario alone. In a moment, we will hear from Canada's finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne. But first I'm joined by Jamil Javani. He is a newly re-elected conservative MP representing the riding of Bowmanville,

Oshawa North. Jamil Javani, good morning. Good morning, Matt. Nice to speak with you again. It's good to talk to you again and good to have you on the program. The prime minister, Mark Carney, and the US president Donald Trump had a call this week.

They agreed to meet within the next week or less, according to Donald Trump. One of the things that people might know about you had a call this week, they agreed to meet within the next week or less, according to Donald Trump. One of the things that people might know about you is that you are very good friends with the US Vice President, JD Vance. You went to Yale together, you spoke at his wedding, among other things. Has that relationship given you some insight into how Canada should deal with this US administration? I certainly know JD and his family well.

Our relationship is mostly personal, not political. But to the extent I have any insights, my view and my message to the Canadian people is we really need to focus on becoming more independent and more self-reliant as a country. The platform that I campaigned on in my election in Bowman, focused on becoming more independent and more self-reliant as a country. The platform that I campaigned on in my election in Bowman, Galashua North was focused on building what Peter Poliev called an economic fortress, making sure that whatever is going on south of the border has less of an effect on our communities and our families.

I think that should continue to be our objective. And that's what I would encourage to Prime Minister Mark Carney, build pipelines, grow the resource industries in our country, make us stronger and more independent, put us in a stronger negotiating position where we, when we deal with the United States, but long-term we have to learn from this roller coaster that we've all been on. I've spoken to families who are incredibly anxious and concerned in my community about

what tariffs will do to their industries. And regardless of what comes from, you know, whatever meetings are going to happen between the prime minister and the US president, I think all of us across the country should take away, we do not want to be dependent on another country to this extent ever again. That's my hope for Canada, and I hope that's what comes next. Can I just go back to, I mean, just that friendship.

I mean, friends talk about all sorts of things. And I just wonder whether in those conversations, you have any sense as to what the United States wants. You talked about a roller coaster. Like, do you understand based on any of those conversations, what's going on? Well, I'll be honest with you, Matt. I'm not sure who understands what's going on down there.

Like one day we're told that, you know, tariffs are gonna be 25%, the next day it's 10%. One day it's the auto industry is gonna be included, the next day it's gonna be excluded. It has not been a coherent position. And I, it looks no different to me than it does to any other Canadian who's paying attention to this. So I don't know what the plans are down there. Um, you know, I have no idea if there is a vision for where this is going next.

Uh, you know, President Trump seems like a highly volatile, highly unpredictable person when it comes to these tariff policies. And I don't want any Canadian to think that there is more to this that, at least from my point of view, than what they can see. We're all looking at the same thing. And I think what we should all want from our country because of that, is that whatever volatility

is going on down south of the border, we are protected from as much as possible. Just the last point on that, Mark Carney has said repeatedly that the US wants to weaken Canada, in his words, so it can own us. Do you think that's true? I don't know what President Trump wants. If we take his comments at face value, there's certainly a disrespect of our country. When he talks about our border being this kind of invisible line, things like that. One of the things that I've talked to Americans about, when I do reach out, is just try to educate them more on who we are as a people. Bilingualism means

something to us. As a Black Canadian, it means something to me that we had communities established in our country from the Underground Railroad because we were able to offer freedom to people before the United States was willing to. There is something special about our history, our traditions, who we are. And I, like I'm sure many other Canadians who know Americans, have tried to articulate that as best as possible. This has ignited a sense of national identity in a lot of our citizens across the country. And I hope we hold on to that. There was a time not that long ago where it was mainstream to call our country racist.

It was mainstream in Canadian media and Canadian universities, Canadian political culture, to have people trashing our country. We have now turned away from that to be more proud of who we are, and I hope we sustain that because I think that's very important. You know, it's interesting, in the face of this, I was speaking with your Conservative colleague, Christophe Entremont, earlier this week on the program, and he said that the Conservatives may have no choice to work with the Liberal government on some issues. I mean, we are facing this huge threat, and that that may force two parties to work together. Do you think that's possible? I

Certainly hope so I will say Matt I'm one of the you know prior to this election I was one of the newest members of Parliament So I had only been in the House of Commons for less than a year before we were prorogued what I observed was, you know, a liberal government that wasn't very serious about governing, and it felt like a lot of delaying and a lot of, you know, just waiting till the next election. If they are serious about taking action, and they are serious about doing things that I think we can universally recognize as important, like building up our economy, I see no reason

why we won't be able to work together. The Canadian people absolutely expect action. They expect things to get done. And I don't think any of us should be going back to Ottawa with the mentality of obstructing good things. We do, as conservatives, have to hold the Liberal government accountable. But that does not mean getting in the way of good things being done. and we will, you know, I hope be able to find a balance, but we have not been back there for months. So I am looking forward to getting back there, see what it's going to be like, what are the new dynamics, what's the Liberal government's agenda, and we'll go from there.

When you get back there, I mean, there has been some debate within the conservative movement about the tone that your party should take going forward. The Premier of Nova Scotia, Tim Huston, said he hoped that there would be some soul searching within the Conservative Party. Have a listen to this. I think the Conservative Party of Canada was very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in, and I think that they probably saw that in some of the results they had across the country. Jamil Javani, what do you make of what Premier Houston had to say, that the Conservative

Party needs to work at pulling people in? Well, I do think Pierre Poliev and the party at large did pull a lot of people in. I mean, our popular vote share was quite high. We now have elected MPs in areas where we didn't like Brampton, Hamilton. But there were a lot of people who didn't vote for, I mean, we heard this from people who we would talk to out across the country, including in Oshawa, saying that maybe they supported some of the policies, but they didn't like the attitude of the leader. Well, there's certainly stuff we can learn. I don't want to pretend that we can make no adjustments or no new takeaways coming out of the election. takeaways coming out of the election. I do think that, you know, part of the approach, the tone, the style we had was one that was very focused on articulating the need for change in this country. And I think that is how we were able to build inroads with unions and attract a lot of young people. So there was a lot of upside to the approach that we took, but certainly we can improve. I mean, that's what you have to do coming out of an election where you don't win a majority.

We have to sit there and say, okay, where can we make improvements? So I take the feedback and certainly, when we're back in Ottawa, we'll have to consider what we do differently and how we continue to grow our coalition. You accused Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, of sabotaging the federal election campaign.

You called him a hype man for the liberals. You put out an image this week of Doug Ford kind of as Hulk Hogan tearing open his shirt and underneath that shirt is a liberal shirt that he seems to be wearing. Do you think it's good for the conservative movement for you to be feuding publicly with the premier of the largest province in this country?

Well, I said what I said and I've called Doug Ford out because I'm speaking for people. There are lots of people who poured themselves into this campaign. Volunteers, staff, supporters who really gave everything they had for this. And over the course of the campaign, I heard many, many times from people who felt discouraged by Doug Ford's criticisms of us and felt that he was betraying us. Does that help conservatives though, in

this country when that's out in the open? Well, I think if it's real and it's what we're seeing and hearing and feeling, we have to be able to talk about it. My approach to politics has been and will continue to be that if something is happening, that political correctness will not stand in the way of being able to call it out. And that is what I did. I appreciate that, you know, it's a controversial thing. It got a lot of attention. You know, people have strong opinions. I don't pretend everyone agrees with me, but my

constituents in Bowmanville, Oshawa North needed someone to say what they were feeling. And that's what I did. If Doug Ford can learn something from his behavior and in the next time, but out of our business during a campaign, don't offer his criticisms. Don't try to divide us. That would be great to see him learn that lesson. But if he's not going to learn that lesson and he's going to continue to be a bully, then somebody has to stand up to bullies. And sometimes that falls on me. And I will take that opportunity if I have to, because I think the people who support me, the people in my community deserve to have someone stand up for them. I'm going to let you go. But just finally, you know that your leader does not have a seat. He lost his own seat in addition to the election loss.

Do you trust Pierre Polyaev as a leader? Is he still the leader for your party in this moment, given everything that you've said about things to learn, but also where you want the party to go? He is our leader, and he has tremendous support from our caucus. I think a lot of the new people who came to vote for conservatives for the first time this election have faith in him and he will

continue to be our leader when we're back in Ottawa. All right, Jameel Javani, you and I spoke many, many years ago a number of times and it's good to have you back on the program and I hope you'll come back again in future. Yeah, look forward to doing it again Matt. Thank you. Thanks. Jameel Javani is a newly re-elected conservative MP representing the writing of Bowmanville Oshawa North. I'm Sarah Trelevin, and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now. Francois-Philippe Champagne is the federal finance minister. On Monday, he was re-elected as the Liberal member for Saint-Maurice-Champagne. François-Philippe Champagne, good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. What a pleasure to be with you again. Good to have you back on our program as well. Yes. Donald Trump said this week that he would be meeting with the Prime Minister within

the next week or so. Aside from telling him to stop talking about taking over this country, what do you think the goal for that meeting should be? Well, I think we need to put this discussion in perspective. First of all, we need to have respect. I think what Prime Minister Cardinal has been able to achieve is to have a sense of respect,

mutual respect. And this was present also at the G7. Canada presides the G7. I was presiding the G7 finance minister about two weeks ago. And that's what Secretary Besson said as well, is to engage with countries around the world with mutual respect. I'm sure that the prime minister has talked about an economic and security arrangement with the United States.

I would agree with what Jemil said before in a sense. I think this is our moment. I've done a lot of, you know, when you look back and you've been industry minister in my case for many years and then finance minister, I feel that 2025 looks a lot like 1945 with CDR where we kind of need to reinvent the industrial landscape of Canada. And therefore we'll look at things where we can do together,

but at the same time we need to diversify our industry and our markets. So we'll always have the United States as a partner, as an ally in many fields, but we need to be more independent so that we can build a stronger and more resilient economy. I mean, being a partner is one thing, but we are in the heat of a trade war right now. This country has imposed retaliatory tariffs on some U S goods.

What are the other cards that your government has to play? If this continues, and again, Donald Trump changes his mind, it seems like day by day. If this continues, what are the other cards that Canada has? Well, we have many, you know, despite what the president's saying, I say that with respect, our two economies are the more integrated that you find in the world. I mean, listen, we need each other.

You've seen that in the auto sector. We need, we have the same kind of needs with respect to critical minerals. They need our natural resources. So there's a lot of things that we have on the table and I think in negotiation what I think the tone has changed is you go there with strength. And I think that's what we got from the Canadian public to be able to engage with the U.S. administration with strength. And I would also say that we're presiding the G7, so that also

gives us a unique opportunity I would say to say when I was presiding, G7. So that also gives us a unique opportunity, I would say, to say when I was presiding, I mean, we've been able to maintain the unity in the G7, but you see a lot of tensions around the tariffs. So on one end, what we've been clear to the United States is that the fiscal capacity of countries of the G7 is limited. We need to invest in defense. We need to invest in infrastructure.

We need to invest in housing. But we can fight a trade war at the same time. So the United States will have to choose whether they want to work with our G7 partner, their G7 partner, and make sure that we can tackle the real issues we have to tackle, whether it's about competitiveness, whether it's about trading between our nation and make sure that we are more resilient. And now I would say the tariffs are preventing that in many ways. So I can assure you, if you were with me in Washington, you'd see those are quite interesting

discussions that are going on now. Do you think Donald Trump respects Canada? Listen, his words have not shown that for sure. It has offended Canadians and I think Canadian workers deserve respect, Canadian industry deserve respect, Canada deserve respect. And that's one thing I think that the Prime Minister has been able to establish is that, you know, we will deal with each other as equals because Canada has other opportunities. We've said first, you know, we have many things we can do in our country to build more, to

be more resilient. We can have a Canada first procurement policy at the federal level, provincial and municipal. We can build one Canadian economy. We can diversify our industries. And I've been clear with Canadians, yeah, there'll be turbulence in the short term, but I'm very confident in Canada. We're going to build a more resilient, more prosperous, and more ambitious Canada because we have the talent,

we have very strong industrial ecosystem, we have critical minerals, we have energy. And let's be clear, we are the only G7 country with a free trade agreement, all the other G7 nations. So when I look at the fundamentals, when I'm around the table of the G7, G20, I can assure you you Matt, a lot of countries would like to be in our position of strength with respect to negotiating with

the United States of America. One of the complaints that Donald Trump has made repeatedly is that he believes the US subsidizes this country's military and that Canada is well below that NATO spending benchmark of 2% of GDP. Mark Carney promised to get to 2%. Where is the government going to find the money to do that? We're going to grow the economy. First of all, you're going to grow the economy to be able to generate billions of dollars that we go to defense? There's three things you can do, Matt. It's very simple. Either you tax, either you cut, or you grow the economy. The plan that we've proposed in the prime minister, if you see in the platforms,

we're going to grow the economy. We're going to invest in our nation, we're going to build the nation, we're going to have that defense spending being made in Canada in a large part. And I would say when the presidency is subsidizing, we all know this is not true. I mean, you would have our trade balance is almost equal if you exclude oil, and that's something we have made as a point to them time and time again. And so we're going to continue to say that. This is a mutually beneficial relationship.

We buy more from the United States. So by the way, when I'm in Washington, I always say, I hope you're happy to see me. Because let's remember, we buy more from the United States than China, Japan, the UK, and France combined. So you're not talking about some small nation coming to the table. We are the United States of America largest customer. So therefore we have options when we can diversify our export and our import.

And that's why I say when I look at our position, when I sit at the G7 table, we are in a strong position to negotiate on the base of mutual respect. And yes, you know, we've been clear that we need to increase our defense spending. I think that's something that came out very clearly. And you know, six weeks has changed the world. Six weeks has changed the world, I would think, for a very, very long time. And Canadian understand that now we need to mine for our own defense and that that's going to be a priority of our government

to make sure we invest in that, but also we build the industrial capacity because money is not everything, Matt, I can assure you. You need to build industrial capacity in order to build these systems that are going to be needed to defend Canada. I have to let, I have to let you go, but there's, there's a real swagger to how you're talking

about this country. I hope. I think it's about time. Do you think that's different? You say it's about time and Jamil Javani talked about this as well. Yeah, well, he's still political. I hope the tone is going to change because people expect us to build this country.

This is not about the time of political, uh, you know, uh, statements and all that slogan. This is about building. This is about about the time of political statements and all that slogan. This is about building. This is about coming together. Canadians expect a lot from us, but they also expect people who have been going to the House of Commons to show their respect to Canadians and work with us. I've been there for a decade. So you've seen some, I've seen a lot of things over a decade in the House of Commons.

And I hope that what I heard is going to lead to a change of tone, because that's what Canadians expect. This is the time to build our country. This is the time to be ambitious. This is about a time to make sure that Canada is more resilient in the face of the biggest threat we have ever faced as a nation. I guess we'll see when the House of Commons returns, whether that tone continues or whether the politics sneaks back into it.

I look forward. I can report back, sir. After a decade, trust me, I would have a lot of examples. So happy to get back on the show and tell you where we are and what I've seen. And I'm sure Canadians will be watching that as well. You're always welcome to be back here and it's glad to have you here this morning. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, sir. Francois-Philippe Champlain, the Federal minister of finance, newly re-elected liberal member for Samouris-Champagne.