The Current - What’s the key election issue: Trump’s threats, or cost of living?

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

What will matter more to Canadians when they go to the polls next: housing, health care and the cost of living — or threats of tariffs and annexation from U.S. President Donald Trump? Matt Galloway explores what the parties, and new prime minister Mark Carney, are prioritizing with Conservative commentator Chad Rogers, NDP commentator Melanie Richer and Liberal commentator Susan Smith.

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. We will relentlessly pursue this positive agenda because Canadians know that negativity isn't strength. They know that negativity isn't strength.

They know that negativity won't pay the rent or the mortgage. The negativity won't bring down the price of groceries. Negativity won't win a trade war. It's not quite the sunny ways of 2015, but Mark Carney is clearly trying to put a spin on things and focusing on an upbeat tone. The former governor of the bank of Canada was sworn in on Friday as Canada's 24th prime minister.

Today, he is in Paris, then London to shore up support with European allies. He's off to Iqaluit tomorrow and pretty soon, of course, we could be in a federal election. There is a lot going on. And so back with me today is our panel of partisans. Susan Smith is a liberal commentator, principal

and co-founder of Blue Sky Strategy Group. She's in Washington, DC today, which is perhaps something to talk about. Melanie Richet is an NDP commentator with Ernst Cliff Strategies. She's in our Ottawa studio and here with me in our Toronto studio is Chad Rogers, conservative commentator.

He's with Crestview Strategy. Good morning, everyone. Morning. Morning. Susan, what do you make of the tone of Prime Minister, Mark Carney, still getting used to saying that, in his first few days in office? I think the tone is reassurance, Mark.

That's, Matt, that's what I feel. That's that he wants to reassure Canadians that he's serious about dealing with the trade challenges that we have and about ensuring that the Canadian economy can stand on its feet with its other trading partners and allies. I think this is what he wants to convey to Canadians. You open with the clip about, you know, not negativity. This is not a Prime Minister who's going to tell you that Canada is broken. But at the same time, he has called his new cabinet a wartime cabinet. So that signals that we're braced and ready and he's going to work to set the country

on a course to be able to deal with the trade adverse and other adversity that we're dealing with with the US and globally as a result of Donald Trump. Now, what do you make of those early signals? Yeah, I think we could see somebody who looks like he's off to the races, which is kind of funny, that he's crisscrossing so far going to Europe and coming right back when we've got election calls coming on. I hear what Susan says about telling the world

that this is the new leadership and what Canada will be doing or what Canada's place is. I kind of find it a little bit weird that you're, you know, going to Europe right before we're supposed to be in an election when folks don't necessarily know who Mark Carney is yet. I think Liberal members got to know him in the last few weeks, but I don't know that Canadians totally have gotten to know him yet. So it'll be interesting to see what he has to say when he's back here at home

and what the rest of the week looks like. Chad, what do you make of that? I mean, he said very clearly in that clip that we played that he's not going to be focusing on negativity, that negativity is not going to win a trade war. What is he trying to say in that? Well, it's interesting that he doesn't focus on negativity before and after he slimes the opposition leader for inadequate experience or his view of the world. I mean, Mr. Carney is a brand new baby politician asking for an 11th year for a liberal government. It's a tough thing to sell.

A hundred years ago when I was a young man, I worked for a provincial government. I worked in the legislature of Nova Scotia and they have a beautiful, beautiful thing called the Red Room right across from the assembly where we used to do all the press conferences and we did this massive redesign of the welfare system and announced it in the Red Room and it was a horrible failure and we couldn't figure out why until we played the news clip back later with no sound on and it was a bunch of white guys in a room that looked like it was the castle of Marie Antoinette talking about how much we cared about people. I think it's awfully hard if you're Mark Carney, the Goldman Sachs banker in your suit and tie walking around

the Quai d'Orsay or visiting Buckingham Palace and claiming I'm really attuned with inflation and street level crime and all the problems we're going to discuss in the 45th Canadian election. It's a bad strategy choice. He said today that he is in Paris because in his words, in these current times it's more important for Canada to strengthen links with reliable allies. I don't think the temporary interim guy is the one who's doing the new global deals for Canada. I think we're in the 45th Canadian federal election. I think this was a really weird first week pageant when Mr. Singh and Mr. Polly ever

going to be out saying prices are too high, there isn't an adequate supply of homes and our communities are less safe. What are you doing about it? And Mark Carney is reporting live from a series of castles visiting his European friends. It's a weird choice. Yeah. Susan? We are in a trade war. We're also in a serious situation where the president of the United States calls Vladimir Putin more often than he calls Vladimir Zelensky or his European counterparts in the EU and his NATO counterparts. So Prime Minister Carney is doing the responsible thing. He's been invited to France to speak with Prime Minister Macron, President Macron.

Then he's going to the UK to speak with Keir Starmer and the King. He's already spoken with Ursula von der Leyen. He's spoken to Zelensky. These are important trading relationships for Canada where we can trust our trading relationships with Canada. It's also important from a global security perspective. Canadians will have plenty of time to get to know Prime Minister Mark Kearney during the election campaign. So it's traditional for our prime ministers to meet with their global counterparts. Typically, it's the US we start with, but we are not in a normal day and age.

And so I think these are very important face-to-face conversations. The important thing is, Mark Carney doesn't have to introduce himself to them. This is the differentiation between Pierre Paliév, who's never held a global role or never held a broad leadership role at the national level. Carney has these relationships and they're going to be critical as the economic world order is being tipped over. Chad, is it not, just to the last point on this, is it not prudent to try to figure out if the United States, and we'll hear more about his relationship or such there is with Donald Trump, but is it not prudent if the United States wants to cripple, to, to cripple this economy and maybe take over Canada to reach out and figure

out what those other contacts might be? Well, I have to put my paid consultant hat on here, uh, not my partisan hat. And, and I have to look at the last US election where the Kamala Harris campaign said every day, what we have to take to the voter is how we fight Donald Trump, not that we have a two thirds wrong track number on the economy and street level crime and her failure to talk about that and break from the Biden agenda to talk

about what she was going to do to make streets safer and bring prices down, cost her a national election. I'm kind of shocked to see the Carney team embrace the Kamala Harris strategy of saying let's talk about the big things and let's talk about the Trump things. As opposed to let's talk about how people are hurting. Hmm. Susan, just briefly on that. Well, the main thing the conservatives wanted to talk about in this election was acts the tax. Pierre Poliev had lots of t-shirts made up. I haven't seen him bust one out recently.

And the first thing Mark Carney did was cancel the carbon tax. It was public. There was a signing. It was very interesting, but it's indisputable that that has been cancelled. So he is addressing the things that Canadians want to talk about, but Canadians won't have jobs if factories are shutting down because we haven't made a pivot from a trade perspective. That's what Prime Minister Carney is doing, that's what he's showing. And his ministers are out already reaching out. The Agriculture Minister was busy, the Jobs and Families Minister was busy reaching out to their Canadian stakeholders

at the same time. I don't think there's a single Canadian in this country that would like Mark Carney to be sitting at home waiting beside the phone for Donald Trump to call. He said he's going to be action oriented and this is demonstrating action in my view. This is what he said on Friday about Donald Trump and the threats coming from the United States. Have a listen. I look forward to speaking with President Trump. Just to be clear, we respect the United States. We respect President Trump. We understand the importance President Trump places on American workers and American jobs. We want him and his administration to understand the importance we put on Canadian workers and Canadian jobs and we will look for avenues to work together so that both objectives are met.

But then the Prime Minister said this when he was asked about Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, repeating Donald Trump's argument about why Canada perhaps should become the 51st state. It's crazy. His point is crazy. That's it. Melanie, what do you think of this? Should the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, be meeting first with or trying to figure out a way to meet first with Donald Trump, the American president, instead of heading to Europe to build those new ties, as he says? I think it's a really good question. And if we were in normal times, I think maybe, but I think what we've seen from both the

federal government and provincial governments in the last few weeks, few months is we're trying to appease someone who's not actually looking to be appeased. So a lot of the conversations that we're having as it relates with President Trump or the people around President Trump kind of doesn't seem like it's making that much of a dent. And I'm not saying that because it is important,

but what it seems like is he just kind of keeps talking as if he wants to totally decimate our economy. So how can you meet with someone? How can you propose things that don't really seem to be moving the needle as really so what the president wants on any given day? So yeah, obviously we need to build those relationships and we need to do some things, but I don't know actually that that's where the Canadian pulse is right now. I think the Canadian pulse right now is saying, hey, we need to stand up to this guy and we need to show that we're not just going to do everything that he wants us to do. So I don't, I'm a little bit divided on this.

Obviously we need a path forward, but we also need to say, hey, listen, we're not just going to do everything that you want us to do. And I think rightly that's where most Canadians are at right now. Susan, you're actually in Washington. How do you think Mark Carney's approach is going to play? It was interesting on Friday, he corrected a reporter who said Trump and he said President Trump. But he also said that he would meet with President Trump at an appropriate time when the president

gave some respect to this country. How do you think that's going to play in DC? The fact that president Trump hasn't said a whole lot about prime minister Carney at the moment, and he's dialed down his rhetoric temporarily on Canada, I think shows that there's a potential opportunity for a reset. No news is good news when it comes to president Trump. Where's president Trump's vision this morning? Look, I think Prime Minister Carney is trying to reset the relationship. I hope that President Trump is trying to reset the relationship, though Marco Rubio just parroting the line was a bit embarrassing for Marco Rubio in my view. I think there's an opportunity. Canada will do its best demonstrating respect, showing he also,

Prime Minister Carney also talked about an economic relationship that, you know, they're business partners. Canada is a client of the United States and we are, but it doesn't mean we're a supplicant of the United States. So I think, as I said, not sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring is a smart move. And I think they'll at least start off on a good front, but I'm glad Mark Carney hasn't rushed down to the White House to sit in those yellow chairs and see what Mr. Trump's going to wave his hands and say. In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies.

It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible, with less than anyone could imagine. But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together,

we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice and we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business.

Let's talk about things happening here. I mean, his first order of business, the Prime Ministers, before he got on that plane was to put an axe through the carbon tax. Conservatives must be delighted, Chad. The tax has been passed. Look, Pierre Poliev and people who were sick of paying too much in a life that got too expensive, I think are awfully happy. Now, he's got to actually do it and pass the law. So the next government of Canada actually has to finish the job on what we do about carbon tax. But there's also build the homes. There's also stop the spending. There's also make streets safer.

There are a lot of parts of the Polio plan, but, but what you'll find is in common with each one is that they're aligned with pain people are feeling coming out of COVID, coming out of a very bumpy economy. Are people still paying attention, just honest question, are people still paying attention to that now? You've, you've said this a few different times and it's for a lot of people, the sense is this election

will be about the guy who is in the Oval Office, that it's not going to be about those other things, but you're suggesting that maybe it will be about those other things. I think that politics stops at the water's edge. And by the time we hit the debate mid campaign, about three and a half weeks from now, each of the leaders is going to have an equal opportunity

to talk about what their plan is for how they would deal with our US neighbor. And I think they're largely going to be equal at those podiums. But like the Harris campaign forgot, the economic pain, the crime people are feeling, the challenges to housing supply are the issues that are going to drive what people do when they walk into a ballot box. And the Trump dimension only increases your economic anxiety about how you're going to pay your mortgage and feed your kids and keep your family safe.

I guess the only thing I would say to that is that Doug Ford just won another majority government in the province of Ontario, not by talking about anything other than Donald Trump, not talking about healthcare, not talking about affordability issues. It was purely about Donald Trump. Respectfully, I think Doug Ford never stopped talking about affordability. I think that's the blood that runs through the veins of his entire government. Doug Ford also is one of the few post-COVID premiers who's willing to admit he's wrong periodically, who's willing to stand up and say, we didn't get everything right, who's exceedingly humble. So I think the Ford energy is worth learning from, but I don't know that it's all about south of the border.

Pete Slauson Maloney is interesting. On Friday, Jogmeet Singh, leader of the NDP, described the political landscape as a race to the right between Mark Carney and Pierre Poliev. What's going on there? Is there ground, do you think, for the NDP that has opened up with, I mean he's been Prime Minister for a handful of days, but with already what he's doing when it comes to the carbon tax, but also some of the things that he's signaling with his cabinet? Right, you know, the second thing that he said that he was gonna do was get rid of the capital gains tax, which arguably helps, you know, the folks who are the most well-off in Canada.

So I think that that's one of the things that Jigni was kind of trying to point to there. It's funny, the conservatives will want to say to people how similar Mark Carney is to Justin Trudeau, and there's actually room for the NDP or a benefit for the NDP to say the opposite, to say that Mark Carney is actually quite different than Justin Trudeau. And the reason that you say he's quite different is he's not investing in people in the same way that Justin Trudeau, and I'm going to say because the NDP

pushed him to, to invest in people there. So I do actually think that there is an opportunity as Mark Carney is a very different kind of liberal than Justin Trudeau, to point that to folks and to say, you know, who at the end of the day when these two are saying they want to reduce spending and reduce investments in families who will have your back, particularly, you know,

Chad talks about affordability and I think it's a really important thing because sure, people are really worried about Trump, but what comes next when Trump does what Trump continues to do, who is left standing to help people? Who's going to protect jobs? Who's going to invest in our industries and who's gonna make sure that when things go really wrong,

who's investing in EI to make sure that workers and working families have that support? I think that this leaves a lot of ground to take up and to the NDP to tell people that, you know, when push comes to shove, they're the ones that are going to have their back. So I do think that there's a massive opportunity there. Susan, is this a race to the right? Is Mark Carney pulling the Liberal Party away from the left and opening up that flank for the NDP? To the center. To the center, which is where I'm thrilled to hear that the Liberal Party are going. Look, there's a couple of things here. Chad talked about Doug Ford, who's pretty much

endorsed Mark Carney saying he's a really solid guy and he's really good with numbers, which I think that's a, and he doesn't talk about Pierre Paliab. So there's that from an Ontario perspective, and I think that will have an impact on Ontario voters when they talk about the economy. In this election, all of the leaders

are going to have to demonstrate that they can walk and chew gum at the same time. Maybe for Pierre Pelliev, he'll walk and chew an apple at the same time. But this election, Matt, and you've said it, is about who can best handle Donald Trump and who can best handle Donald Trump and who can best handle the Canadian economy such that it keeps it robust and strong, we keep people

employed, and for the people who do need help as a result, who has got the capacity and the experience to develop the government programs that we need of the crew of leaders that people might be considering? There's someone who's need of the crew of leaders that people might be considering. There's someone who's worked at the Department of Finance and helped craft budgets and understands how Canada works. You have a career politician who's been around working on his question period lines for 20 plus years and never had a job in the real world. And you have Jigmeet Singh, who's a very nice man, but he's not who Canadians are considering when it comes to dealing with Trump

and dealing with the global order. I don't see Mr. Singh being invited to Europe to talk to our trading partners there and our allies there. And I think Canadians are smart. They'll take a pause. They'll look at what matters now and for the immediate future of the country,

and they'll make their decisions. They'll make smart decisions. They're smart people. So just in the last couple of minutes, this is about, in some ways, I mean, Prime Minister Mark Carney joked about how there will be an election call, certainly before November, but it's likely to come this week. Chad, what were you going to say just briefly, just in terms of what what Pierre Poliak needs to do in that context? I think it's dangerous to slime people who've dedicated themselves to public service and served in Canada's parliament and talk about that as meaningless experience. I think being a washed-out Goldman Sachs banker who became a bureaucrat in Ottawa is something I could also characterize Mark Karneas, but that would be rude and reductive and not respectful. You know, I think public service is a good thing. I think you have a really, really stark choice. I think the NDP have an opportunity to come forward and say, we introduced three entitlements bigger than the

Canada Health Care Act. And we weren't even the government. Mr. Poliev is going to say, I have a plan to get the economy moving again and cut spending. And I think the liberals are going to say, we'd like an 11th year in power. And if you like our values, we have some new ones we'd like to introduce to you. It's a tough race. Melanie, just briefly from you, what does Jagmeet Singh need to do to set himself up for this election call whenever it comes? I always find it a little bit funny when the conservative is the one pushing what I would like to push, but I'm going to say, you know, similar. There's a lot that Jagmeet can go to the writings and say to people, listen, you really like this thing, we're here for you. Here's what we were able to do when we were fourth or fourth party third opposition. Just imagine what we could do if you gave us

the opportunity. So I think a lot of that, particularly as it relates to affordability, how this puts money back in your pockets, I think will be a smart move for Jigmeet. The speculation is there will be an election call within the next few days, perhaps within the next week. They will not go back. The House will not resume next Monday. We will see in the meantime. It'll be great to hopefully have you here as that election unfolds. Thank you all for being here this morning.

Thank you. Happy St. Patrick's Day. And happy St. Patrick's Day. Susan Smith is a Liberal Commentator, Principal and Co-Founder of Blue Sky Strategy Group. Melanie Richet is an NDP Commentator with Ernst Cliff Strategies. And Chad Rogers, Conservative Commentator with Crestview Strategy.