The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: A Year in Canadian Politics

Episode Date: December 27, 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 discuss the latest political developments in Canada and look ahead to the big trends will dominate the headlines in 2025. 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.

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Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 27th of December. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, the chair of the Monk Debates. I'm joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Mug School of Global Affairs. Well, happy Hanukkah, Janice. You and the family gather together. Excuse my ignorance, but what do you eat on Hanukkah? We had turkey, which is pretty predictable for Christmas.

Do you do something special on Hanukkah? We do, we do. It's so interesting, all the holidays at this summer year, Hanukkah, Christmas, tomorrow. They're all about light, right? So this, why do we eat anything fried in oil? From donuts to potato pancakes, why do we do that? Because in the retelling apocryphal, it's apocryphal story. When the maccabees came back into the temple, there was only enough oil to keep that seven-branched candlestick,

the manure burning for one night, but you know what? It burned for eight nights. So we celebrate olive oil. We go crazy on olive oil. Anything that you can cook in olive oil is good. Awesome. I like that. Mediterranean diet.

Here we go. That's right. It was gravy and clogged Protestant arteries at my house. Janice, off the top of the show, we got to talk. Before you just, before you move on, Richard. I'm sorry to do this to you, when I got into a fierce debate about wet brine or dry brine for turkey. What are you doing your house? We went right at it.

Well, look, this year, I didn't cook the turkey, so I begged off. But when I have cooked the turkey, I swear by the wet brine. But it's got to be like a lobster pot. It's got to be 24 hours. a fair amount of salt, and it is, I think, the secret. That plus an injector needle where I heat up butter and I inject it under the breast of the turkey like some L.A. plastic surgeon doing Botox on a stuff. That makes for, you know, the combination of the wet brine plus the butter injection

below the breast is pretty foolhardy, yes, but also fail safe when it comes to a great turkey on Christmas Day. All right. I'm not going to challenge you on this. So I'm going to let this pass because we ought to have other things to talk about, but we could consume a whole half hour just in this debate, Rogers. Well, we will, no doubt, hear from our listeners

and really enjoying the comments on each episode page. So just to remind people that we do have lively discussions about the program each and every week if you are a monk member and you're logged on and your donor. You're listening to the full-length edition of the episode on the website. You can scroll down into a comment section and leave a comment, interact with the comments that are there. We encourage that. This is what the monk debates is all about. Well, Janice, let's kick off the first half of the show on Canadian politics because it has not gone to sleep like I did after my big turkey dinner.

Instead, we've had a week of continuing rank speculation about the fate and future of our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, about potential liberal leaders and about a U.S. president which continues to troll RPM and, I don't know, sharpen his point that Canada should become the 51st state. We'd get military protection, Janice, and lower taxes. I mean, what possibly could be wrong with this picture? Well, it has been a week, a week, right with speculation wretches. And I'm astonished. We are in the front section of the New York Times three days running. That is, you know, a Canadian fantasy. You can get that kind of attention, but I don't think this is the right story.

Rumors are flying fast. What do we know? We know that the finance minister and the foreign minister are in Florida on December the 27th, meeting with Lindsay Graham and other senior Trump officials to continue to work on border security, how that is going to be implemented, how that is going to be executed. And out of those meetings is coming, really positive feedback. That's what we're hearing.

How much stock you put in that positive feedback? That's an entirely different story. Well, let's talk about the Liberal Party of Canada because there's a big decision coming up. The PM will, I presume, as early as next week, leave off from his pondering, his reflections. I forget what Proustian... Reflection.

Reflection. Kind of Proustian pose he would be in. in on his ski slopes in British Columbia, but I presume he'll come off the chairlift sometime next week and let us know what he wants to do. Will he stay or will he go? My sense, Janice, is based on the kind of radio silence from the prime minister,

really since that odd Christmas party speech to the liberal caucus, I guess well over 10 days ago, I suggest Janice that this silence means that he's more likely to announce he is stepping aside because why be silent in the face of reports that the entire Ontario Liberal caucus has now lost faith in his leadership with a president who is, you know, trolling him and frankly stirring up conversations about the fate and future of what Gore Vidal used to call this time of year, Our Lady of the Snow's, Canada.

None of this is good. That silence to me suggests Janus that he's probably. gone as of this time next week? I think you're right, Rogers. Again, for all our listeners, we are just listening like you are to rumors and speculation. But I think Redard is absolutely right. And I think the story's moved on from him now. The story is, who's running?

First of all, is he going to call an election or is he going to say he's leaving? That is still? We don't have good enough intelligence on that one. yet and it really does matter because if he simply says he's leaving we probably have a several month interact where he is caretaker prime minister while the liberals choose a new leader but all the discussion is focused now on two things who's running and that's taking up a lot of time and attention but also how long does this leadership campaign have to be Roger. Party rules say four months. But could you argue that under these extraordinary circumstances

where Trump is going to be inaugurated the third week of January, that the elders of the party could come together and say, let's cut that in half. Let's have a six-week campaign or something like that. That's enough so that we can move on with the transition. Yeah. So a couple things here. One, regardless of what timing the Liberal Party wants to come up with, the fact is that there's a very real risk that the government will lose the confidence of the House, either when the opposition parties regain control the House agenda in the final weeks of March or definitely by early April where there's a number of supply agreements that have to be voted through the House. And if those agreements aren't voted on and passed and they are confidence measures, you know, the government literally shuts down. that day. I guess my challenge with all this, Janice,

is I think the right thing is an election. This prime minister made a series of choices. There's choices not to go over the last two years when he had a variety of different off-ramps he could have considered. He's effectively ragged the puck to use a hockey analogy to the point where the third period buzzer has sounded and there is no game left.

I think the right thing to do if the Liberal Party wanted to put the country before its own narrow partisan interest would be to have an election and to elect a prime minister, all signs indicate that that would be Pierre Pahliav who would enjoy a strong majority to then face off against a Trump administration. And regardless of whether the tariffs are 5%, 15% or 25% on January 20, at the reality is we are in for years of intimidation, of pushback, of fisticuffs, rhetorical and otherwise with this president, as we've seen through

these tweets the last few weeks. We are the mouse caught by the cat and we need a strong majority government that can face off. And my rant here, Janice, because I always like to get one rant in, is that I worry that instead of putting country ahead of partisan interest, the liberal party will decide, well, why don't we have a leadership? Why don't we spend the next 90 days when the country is facing some of probably the most important consequential moments for its economy, for its bilateral relationship with the United States? Let's just run the country, put the country on pause and have a deep, meaningful conversation about the future of liberalism and the Liberal Party in Canada.

and we'll have this lamest of lame duck prime ministers who will, I presume, head back to the ski hills or maybe off to Maui. Who knows, as his party, you know, ponderes deeply their future and the leadership choices before them, Christopher Flynn or Mark Carney, with the reality, Janus, that either of them ends up in a general election where the overwhelming odds would suggest that they and their party will be, rightly punished by the Canadian public for having spent 100 plus days during a critical moment in our country's history, naval gazing to advance their narrow partisan advantage, which is simply to, instead of losing, I don't know, all their seats survive with a couple dozen under some new and battle leaders. You can tell, Janice, I'm not looking forward to what I fear will be the inevitable here, which is a liberal leadership race at the exact time that the country can't afford one,

that this prime minister's decisions frankly should and could preclude one from happening, but nonetheless, that's where we'll be in a matter of a week to 10 days. I cannot match the dripping condescension of that rent, Roger because I actually, again, think you are right. They will not call an election immediately. They will opt for a leadership race. But let's just get down into the granular political details of what that leadership race might look like.

They have a deadline of April because they can lose the confidence of the house. So decision number one, can the party elders get themselves together? and just amend the rules for this one go, which says we will have a six-week leadership race rather than a four-months one. And that's question number one. Question number two, do they avoid the catastrophic mistake that the Biden administration made, avoid anointing somebody in 48 or 72 hours because they want to compress this so that they don't put country through the rinkered. There'd be a convincing case to make for doing that. And that's exactly what the Biden administration did. And I didn't think it was the right decision at the time. And I don't

think it would be the right decision for the Liberal Party. So I don't think, I think there's a middle ground between calling an election in the winter led by this prime minister. Now, who's arguing for that option, by the way? A lot of people in the Liberal Party who are saying, agree with you. Let's have the election led by this prime minister because we will not sacrifice some good candidate that way. We're going to lose anyway. Let's get the election over with. And then we can have a leadership race that can take a year and get a lot of oxygen

and a lot of attention while that's happening. So ultimately, all these decisions are going to be driven by surprise politics because this is a political party after all. Yeah, and I just, again, if history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes, isn't it almost exactly like what happened to the Democrats under Joe Biden? Joe Biden waited too long. He had off ramps. He didn't take them.

He ran the clock out. The buzzer sounded. Play was over. The game was finished. Yet, you know, we're going to try. We're going to try. And out comes Kamala Harris, who frankly, I think, would be in a better, was in a better position, because the relatively close match, as there always is, between blue shirts and red shirts in the United States,

between Democrats and Republicans. But given the polling numbers, the overwhelming support, whether you're a conservative voter or not, the reality is, you know, they're up over 40% in poll after poll after poll. every indication suggests that regardless of who the liberal party puts up as leader, they will lose the next election. Now, look, that will not stop the blind ambition of Mark Carney or Christopher. Because as the old adage in politics goes, you can run and lose once. You just can't lose twice in politics.

So I think for either Carney or Christopherland, they would think, okay, this is a chance to rebuild over the next four years and come back to defeat Pierre Polyev, you know, in 2029. I just think, Janice, that it's a high price for the rest of us to pay for what will be a preordained outcome. It is, in a sense, a party not acknowledging that they made choices, not just the prime minister choosing to stay, but the caucus, Christopher,land, everyone around him, not for

him out. This was a group decision, not the decision of one person, Justin Trudeau. And therefore, it was by default, de facto, a decision of the Liberal Party to run the clock out. So now to ask for overtime, to ask for extended play, you know, when the stakes are as high as they are right now, again, I just think is a really dangerous and, incredibly selfish and kind of callous move on behalf of a party that, frankly, has played an important role in Canada, is a source of sovereignty and strength and can and should be, you know, an institution at this moment that, I don't know, one would hope would rise to the occasion. Alas, I don't think that's going to happen.

You know, Roger, let me one more scenario by you because, that's the fun of politics. If there is a quick leadership contest, which is the best scenario one can do. Hard to do, though. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, liberal cons. Yeah, yeah. It's party.

There's risks, too, running a fast one. Yeah, there are for sure. But just think, all the ministers who are running would have to resign. So, Christian Freeland is no longer member of the cabinet, But Dominique LeBlon is. He was disappointed finance minister. If he's going to run, he'd have to resign.

Foreign minister would have to resign. The minister of industry and Francois Filippe Champaign would have to resign. So during that period, who's minding the shop when tariffs and border security come up for discussion? Even with this prime minister staying around, you need to teach. But all the lieutenants who are responsible for the files that are front and center on the agenda with Trump are running. How do you manage through that? Yeah. Let's hope.

Let's hope I'm surprised. And there's the opportunity for an election and for us to have what should have happened a while ago, which is a change in government. Canadians have been demanding it for a while. We'll see. We may have to wait another 100 days for the same. outcome or or not well janice we're going to have to leave it there let's say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and join our donors on the other side our monk curators and supporters for a conversation about 2025 what the heck it could happen in the year ahead what are the big trends that we should keep our

eyes on to understand how the come 12 months could play out we'll have that conversation for you right after this 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 monkdebates.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 of 50 cents an episode,

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