The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: A crisis in Ottawa - Canada as the 51st state?

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates' weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. Rudyard and Janice open the show with the surprising events out of Ottawa this week: finance minister Chrystia Freeland resigning in a blistering rebuke of the Prime Minister just hours before she was due to present the fall economic statement. What is next for the embattled Justin Trudeau? And what happens if the country is forced to wait through months of a liberal leadership race without a functioning government to face the existential challenges from the incoming Trump administration? In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice talk about Trump's joke that Canada should become America's 51st state. Should Canadians take Trump's joke as a serious threat? Is this the beginning of a sinister plan to bring Canada into the US? To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website.

Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, the chair of the Monk Debates. I'm joined by Janice Gross-Stein, the founding director of the Monk Debates. School of Global Affairs. It's the 20th of December, Janice. I've done none of my Christmas shopping.

I'm feeling like a headless chicken headed to the abattoir of consumerism that is Christmas. And here I go. What should I do? Amazon, it's too late. I can't Amazon my way to presents. Oh my goodness. That is a nightmare. My living room is stacked with presents. I just have to wrap them, Roger, and many of them were delivered. I can share some of mine with you. Because I am a big book giver time of year. So Amazon and Indigo were great partners here. What is your number one book recommendation for people looking for a book to buy a loved one,

a family member, someone they care about? Oh, my goodness, I have to pick one. It is so hard, probably a fun read that won't exhaust people between Christmas and New Year's and between the alcohol and the overeating is for reading the Giacari's book. Because it's a nice big, it's called Revolution. It's a nice big sweeping historical look back. You know, all the historians, the professional historians have nothing good to say about histories that are written by journalists.

But it does, it does ask have we progressed to register. And that's not, you know, that's probably he got, he got the vibe, let me put it this way,

that people are worried about where we're going. So let's think about progress from a straightly longer historical sweep. So when you need a break from your family and the food, go get a blanket, get light of fire and read for a couple of hours and think about progress.

Let's do it. Okay, well, talking about progress, the lack of a crazy week, Janice and Canadian politics. Roger, before we go there, can you remember you are somebody who knows Canadian history and Canadian political history spent your life on it? Can you remember a week like this, not Monday and Tuesday? Yeah, it's kind of, you know, memories, a bit of the Martin Cretchen duels around the liberal leadership, but at a different level. I think maybe listeners will correct me, but Walter Gordon Duncan had a resignation as finance minister back in the government. Was that of Lester B. Pearson. I forget. We're in the midst of time.

But to do the finance minister, Christopher, Lund to resign the morning of the FES, the fall economic statement, was a shocking event for an already heavily embattled PM. And just as a political observer yourself, Janice, what did you make of it all? What do we take away from it? No, I don't think we've ever seen anything like this. And you put your finger right on it to resign hours before you're supposed to deliver the fall economic statement.

There's always been tensions between finance ministers and prime minister. Nothing, nothing. This goes down, I think, as a unique, unique two days in Canadian political history. So I think the first thing to say is that this resignation had little to do with economic policy, despite the letter that the finance minister submitted. It had everything to do with an inept conversation by the Prime Minister three days before the fall economic statement, in which he, frankly, tells the foreign minister. He's going to fire her from her job and give her another one with no staff, no

budget, and no department. Well, if you're going to do that, you wait until Tuesday. You don't have that conversation on Friday and leave her the weekend to think about it and allow her resignation to have that

kind of impact. You just wait till Tuesday. It's just stunning that he wouldn't do that. And frankly, in the leaks coming out of Ottawa, in the aftermath of the tsunami, he does admit he mishandled the conversation. Memories of Jody Raebold and, you know, others who have interacted with this prime minister who at times, you know, despite a public image of, you know, charisma and caring and all those good things, now has a reputation as being incredibly aloof, aloof with his caucus members, aloof with his cabinet. ministers, many cabinet ministers rarely meeting with the prime minister, dealing instead with his staff. And you have to wonder if that splendid isolation didn't catch up with him this week in a

catastrophic way. I guess the question, Janice, everyone's thinking is what is next? My bold prediction, which I've been wrong about, is a walk in the snow, Janice. This is a man who has a very interesting and complicated relationship with his father. But he does, he does love mirroring Trudeau's kind of, you know, motifs and flourishes in his own political drama. And I, I think my prediction is that sometime between now and the return of Parliament at the end of January, there will be a walk in the snow on the grounds of Riedel Hall where he's, he's staying in the residence of the governor General's principal secretary, as he's lived there for a number of years. It's a beautiful place. I was up there a week or two ago. He'll walk under those trees and look out over the snowy

fields of the Gigi's residence and come to a conclusion. The only rational conclusion that he's finished. He is spent politically. And we will see, I'm sure, over the next few weeks, plummeting poll numbers, a growing list of MPs that are coming out, seems like almost every hour calling on him to resign and waffling in his own cabinet amongst cabinet ministers that are no longer emphatic in their support. So, Janice, I declare the king is dead. Long live the king. We are in for some kind of regime change. And I think it will happen before Parliament convenes at the end of January. So look, Redd, you've given yourself a very long window here.

We're at December the 20. I think you almost five weeks for your prediction to be right. And I think the odds are absolutely in your favor. You know, what's really interesting here is the cabinet is divided. His principal secretary, Katie Telford, is doing everything to persuade him to stay. And so if this had, you know, I think if he had posed instincts on Monday or Tuesday, he probably would have left. He would have resigned as time goes on and people reach out to him because there are many private phone calls that are going to him that you and I have no idea. Frankly, the momentum was there.

It's not clear which way this momentum goes over the holidays. Let's just talk nuts and bolts for one minute because. you know, politics matters here. Were he to resign, he would then have to, just so that our listeners have a sense of how this could stretch out, that this is not imminent. And we could be stuck with a caretaker government for months as we struggle to deal with Donald Trump.

If he resigns, he could do one of two things, Richard, right? So I'm going to push. He could call an election. that would be faster. He could dissolve the house, call an election, and we could have an election within six weeks, which would put us somewhere in March. And then there's another 10 days before government is formed.

That's the fast option here. What's the slow option? He resides as the leader of the party, and then they have to have a leadership convention. Now, that's really slow. Four weeks, it has to be at least four weeks. It would probably be more. It could be two or three months before a new liberal leader is selected,

and then that person has to become prime minister. You might prerogue the house. And then we'd have an election, which could push us out, believe it or not, till this summer without a government that really has public support. support. I think here to take your government deals with Donald Trump. Now, I have to say, this terrifying thought. Yeah. This is slow. So look, allow me a little bit of a rant here. Maybe some listeners will share this perspective. I'm tired. I'm sick of politics. I'm sick of people putting themselves in front of the interests of the country, which are real and urgent at this point.

And what this prime minister has done is a dereliction of leadership. He has put his own political survival for months now ahead of the country and ahead of Canada's obvious, Canadians' obvious desire for an election and for a change in government. And that was fine. He could do that. It was crass. It was self-interested. It was narcissistic, but he could do it. But everything changed in November with the election of Donald Trump. And everything changed again with the announcement of the 25% tariffs on Canada. We are facing Janice a real and urgent, a so-called clear and present danger to our federation. We need united leadership. We need whoever the prime minister is to be someone who has commands the majority of support of the House of Commons and does so emphatically,

and ideally commands a majority of the voting public of Canada. So for the Liberal Party to drag us through months of internecine naval gazing about who they're going to select to be their next candidate for Prime Minister, as you say, lasting for months, while the country twists in the wind as Donald Trump pokes and prods and, you know, terrorizes us is unconscionable. We need an election that is not in the interest of the Liberal Party. I understand that. But certain times come when country calls. And the Liberal Party is a great historic party in Canada.

And this Prime Minister and the people around him who are part of that party. should rise to the occasion and sublimate their, no doubt, keen instincts to drag us through months of liberal leadership, Quagmire, to a conclusion that will most likely be the defeat of the liberal party in the next election regardless. It's another delaying tactic. I'm sick of delays. It's over. We need to face Trump.

We need to face the Trump threat. And the time for waiting and delay has. passed. It passed weeks ago. Janice, you can tell I'm vexed about this, but I really worry that your scenario is right, that we're not going to an election. We're going to months of

liberal, you know, leadership and chicken dinners and, you know, as they, you know, clean up their mess, the mess that he created, and the country drifts. And it drifts in an urgent,

dangerous moment. I agree with you, I did that we need to have an election now. And that's why I put those two options on the table because that second one is very live and very real and could stretch out for months. And I don't think that would be, I know that it's not in the interest of the country. This is a very dangerous period that this country is going into. We need to be credible to Donald Trump and to his new administration. The prime minister needs whoever that person needs to commit this country and be able to stand behind those commitments. We are talking about the border.

And yes, there's the beginnings of a strategy now, but it has to be believable. And the person who's making these commitments has to be credible. We have to do something about defense spending. And we need a government that is going to be in place to carry out those commitments on defense spending. It is not business as usual now with the United States. And it can't be politics as usual when we face this kind. I would say honestly, existential challenge to Canada. And let's lay over one other issue here, which we've hinted at,

Roger, but I haven't talked about, that there are national unity implications. Donald Trump is baiting. Bating Canadian leaders all the time. Now, it's done because he smells weakness. Donald Trump does this when he smells weakness on the other side. And that's why he's got this so-called running joke going on that we are the 51st state. If this continues, premiers will be offside. Premiers will design their own strategies to try to protect their provincial economy.

There's really significant national unity implications here. So we need a government. The fastest route to a government now is an election. So what I'm hoping for is I don't think we can wait until Parliament reconvenants, frankly. That's the end of January. That's a very long time from now. And winter elections are hideous, hideous. You know, see, it's hard to campaign.

It's hard to get in the polls. All that's true. but I'm hoping that when New Year arrives within a very short time, the Prime Minister goes to visit his next door neighbor, the Governor General, and decides to resolve Parliament that we have an election, because that is the fastest route that we have to standing up a government. Yeah, that would be the responsible thing to do, maybe even the redeeming thing to do, but I think it's long odds.

I think, yeah, I think unfortunately. But it is long a lot. I think, yeah. Yeah. In our politics, we have really lost a view of the national interest. And it's the narrow partisan interest. It seems to Trump every time. Talking of Trump, Janice, let's take a break and say and reconvene on the other side to talk Trump tweets.

Because I think you and I both agree that while the tweets are kind of ridiculous and seemingly flippin, there are real consequences and effects here for Canada. And they are truly unprecedented. So let's get into that on the other side of this short break. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program, simply go to our website, www.w.

The Monk Debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site. Make a donation as little as $25 a year or 50 cents an episode, and we'll send you not only the full-length editions of each and every Friday Focus podcast, but all kinds of special offers, perks, access to events, and additional content. Again, you can do that right now by becoming a donor to the Monk Debates at Triple-W, Monk Debates with an S.com.

Thank you.