The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Trudeau's January and lone wolf terrorist attacks

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

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 talk about what to expect in Ottawa in January: Trudeau's support in caucus has collapsed, MPs are speaking out, and Justin Trudeau could be stepping down as early as next week. Will the Liberals opt to prorogue Parliament for a leadership race? And how will a new party leader fare against Pierre Pollievre in a general election? In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice reflect on the recent lone wolf terrorist attacks at a German Christmas Market and on the streets of New Orleans. Why is it so hard to protect innocent people against these assaults? 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. 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 for the 3rd of January 2025.

I'm Rudyard Griffiths, the chair of the Monk Debates. I'm joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Happy New Year, Janice. Our first show of 2025 together, it's going to be, I don't know, nail-biting, exciting. What's the right mental state, Janice, to embrace the coming year? Well, I think it's all of that and terrifying at the same time, Redyard. Let's just look at the month that we're in January. big inauguration coming.

I'm in Washington a big inauguration coming to this city. Tariffs could come the same day or the day after lots of speculation. And a pretty sobered up group of people who are leaving. It's funny as well. Just a jump in on tariffs for a sec. You made me think of a pun, terrifying. Good. Good job. Terrifying, 2025. Do you think we're in a different place than when these were first announced? I'm kind of struggling to figure out what could happen on the 20th. On one hand, there's been all these bizarre comments about Greenland, Panama, Canada. There was a nasty kind of fight. People may have missed it over the last week in Congress around refusal on the part of Republicans' holdouts to raise the debt ceiling.

which is now going to be kind of breached in the coming weeks and months. It's a kind of technical thing when it actually happens, but very, very serious. All this, though, landing on the president's lap. So kind of spending debts and deficits, I think, has taken on greater precedent. But at the same time, I don't know, the president's remarks about Canada and Greenland and Panama all just seems so kind of cockamamie. What's the temperature read for you right now on the likelihood of tariffs? on the 20th. You know, I got here yesterday, Reggie, so had time just to check in with a few people. People are puzzled. For some reason, Canada, they say is now at the top of the list of his attention.

They don't quite understand how that happened and how we got there, but we are there and that's not a good place to be, actually. I think there is some grounds for optimism, though, that the work that officials are doing with his team is going reasonably well. So what's the expectation? Something will happen, but not the 25% that he originally spoke of him. So it'll be something. It'll be terrifying, but not quite as terrifying as it otherwise might be. I think we've got a title for today's show for the website.

We can go on to our next topic. But my bet is that there's a lot of theatrics, obviously, in the way Trump operate. So my bet is that there will be an executive order on the 20th that will be scary and that will have some big number attached to it for Canada. But everything is going to be about the implementation and the negotiation. So I guess what I'm saying is I don't think tariffs are going to come into effect at 25% on the 20th. It may be something like an escalator clause. Like, we're going to bring in, you know, 6% this year, 6% next year. And over the four years, it's 24%, blah, blah, blah.

And it's all, in a sense, a negotiation. The Canadian dollar is depreciated by well more than 6% since the announcement of these tariffs. So in some ways, a 6% tariff is moot at this point. We've lost that and more in terms of our purchasing power. That causes some problems with us because we import a lot from the United States. might see a tick up in inflation. But the fact is that the economic effects of tariffs have already been adjusted through our currency if it was, let's say, under 10%. Anyway, that's my bet, but let's spend the first half of the show on... Let's have just one more comment before we leave

the terrifying tariffs. You know, when our currency dropped 6%, Roger, it actually makes our exports more competitive in the U.S. market. So here's a president, bitterly complaining about how much Canadians exports flood into the U.S. market. Well, this period, threat has actually made those exports more competitive in that same market. So there's so many paradoxical pieces to this. Yeah. And the problem is the low-U-S., low-Canadian dollar, high-US dollar makes it much more expensive for us to also import machinery and software and technology and all the things we need to make our

lackluster economy more productive. So a low dollar is in some ways a claim, a confiscation of future wealth and prosperity. We should keep an eye on it. Let's talk in the first half show, just catch up on liberal land because it was another week of drip, drip, drip of bad news for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. We seem to have almost Janice every major caucus of the liberal party has, in a sense, two parties. There's a party outside of parliament, which we all know is the Liberal Party of Canada and people buy memberships to it and elect leaders, but then there's a party inside Parliament, the so-called Parliamentary Party, which is made up of the liberal MPs. And all the major caucuses have either come out explicitly or have, in a sense, leaked that letters and

feedback has gone to the dear leader indicating that he should step down and that different paths could be open to the party going forward, but the fundamental reality, Janice, seems to be in the last seven days or so since we've talked, that his support within caucus has collapsed. Is that correct? Yes.

I mean, I think caucus leaders are speaking up, MPs are speaking out, Roger. So it seems inconceivable to me that the first week back, which will be beginning next Monday, that there won't be. significant movement. There's all kinds of rumors. Ottawa is a rumor city that actually there will be an announcement as early as next week in Ottawa. I think it is over. And what the issues are right now

is how does this transition unfold? As you just said, Roger, the OLP, the Ontario Liberal Party has no procedures to remove a leader. So he has to resign. And then there has to be a path forward. And there are two discussions. And these discussions are already happening, that's why this game is over. But here's there are two tracks.

One, who chooses the interim leader? Is it the prime minister in consultation with the party? That's what the constitution says in some very vague way. Right. But that would be a bit bizarre where the outgoing leader gets a voice in his successor. Doesn't happen that way always. And moreover, this interim leader has to be somebody who doesn't want to run for the leadership. And then how long does this bloody leadership contest take place?

You know, there's a provision, which is, just think about it in today's world, 27 days. 27 days could be 27 years right now. We are dealing with outdated constitutional provisions by a really cumbersome machinery. So I think people are scrambling. That's why we're hearing all this noise. People are scrambling to get some consensus on a path forward here. Yeah, a couple of things. One, you know, I think there is a date by which, you know, things will have had to happen.

And that's early April when various supply bills come in front of Parliament. So these are bills that are required to be voted on and passed. They are, in a sense, explicitly because they're money bills, their confidence measures, and there can be no prorogation without those bills being passed. So either Parliament has to be reconvened or Parliament has to stay open and not prorogue and show up in early April and pass these bills. It's a bit like the American government, Canadian government, literally shuts down in the absence of these bills being passed.

So I think they're as bad as it would be, given all the risks coming to the Trump administration and no doubt bad news on the 20th of January, the fact is that if the Liberal Party wants to run a leadership, it's going to have to not only happen within the period between now and late March, it's actually going to have to happen faster because whose ever elected leader is going to have to come back with a throne speech. I presume, you know, shortly thereafter with a budget, I think that they would likely be defeated on the throne speech, but one never knows the NDP could do a late-minute reversal. It seems kind of implausible, given that the NDP would only get an extra six months.

And the fact is, the NDP is polling pretty well now. The liberals haven't dropped, you know, down into the low teens. Maybe the NDP now sees not great electoral prospects for itself, but certainly better ones than it did even a few weeks ago. So all this, Janice, makes me think that the actual, the better path forward is not to go through a leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada outside of parliament, but instead have the parliamentary party as it has the right to select the new leader. The caucus can simply get up and say, we support person X. And that person, that day, that moment becomes the liberal leader. There is no need for a vote for some complicated process. All that can happen during a quick prerogation that the government general would grant.

And this person, probably likely, Christopher Friedland, could come back in good time, maybe even in February. Maybe this could be accelerated. lessening the damaging effects on the country of a kind of on and on liberal leadership discussion into the spring. So, Janice, a lot to a lot to parse here, but my sense is, A, this has to happen. There's already a time frame on it. And it would be better if they went the root of the parliamentary party. Some people will say that's undemocratic, but the reality is they've made choices, particularly the prime minister has made choices. He's kicked the can to the end of the road.

And there are consequences for that. And one of those consequences is you probably have to select the next leader through the parliamentary party, not the party outside of parliament. You know, your argument makes a lot of good sense, Roger. That's for sure. I'm in a city right now at Capitol City where the very same arguments arose not too long ago. The president stayed too long. There was no time for a national primary. We're going to short circuit this.

The, you know, the heir apparent got, worked the phones and within 24 hours had locked up the number of votes that Kamala Harris that she needed to become the nominate. Boy, is there buyer's remorse from short-circuiting the process and from having, and here's the interesting point, from having no race at all. A race generates some excitement no matter what red here. that, you know, candidates rough it out with each other. There's a bit of rough, give and take back and forth. And you do learn something about people's capacity to withstand criticism and engage in debate. I think if they had to do it all over again, they would not follow your advice. They would try to do a leadership race within four weeks if they could just to build in the

and the legitimacy that comes from a race too. And I think these are the arguments that are live in Ottawa right now as we speak. Yeah. Well, I think, again, that would have been a great option if the prime minister had, you know, seen what everybody saw not only about a month ago. I certainly, and I think we saw it in the polls a year or more ago, his collapsing popularity, he should have exited stage left and allowed the party of the time to run that kind of liberal leadership.

Again, I just think he has made choices. Choices have consequences, as we like to tell our kids. And unfortunately, the liberal party is now going to have to live with those consequences. And I just, I think the, as nice as it would be to run a, you know, some kind of truncated, shortened liberal leadership within the party structure outside of parliament. Boy, that could get messy fast. It could, it could equally look very elitist because it'll probably have to have all kinds of rules that would just benefit the very same. incumbents who would win in a leadership contest run by the parliamentary party inside parliament. So I think, unfortunately, there are no good options here. And I guess we'll just have to wait and see next week. I think you're right. We're going to get a decision. My bet is when we're together next Friday, some of the pieces on this chessboard will

have moved. And there will be some public announcements. It cannot stay the way it is, right? Yeah. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the first. Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program, simply go to our website, www.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 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, MUNK DebateswithanS.com.