The Paikin Podcast - Everything Political: The Strange Tale of Carney’s First Budget

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

David Moscrop joins the Everything Political panel with former MPs Martha Hall Findlay and Tony Clement to discuss the federal budget, if they thought it might not pass, if this budget was truly "transformational," how exactly this government can simultaneously "invest more" and "spend less," the "energizer bunny" Minister François-Philippe Champagne, and the usual "Good On Ya" round highlighting a politician from the past couple weeks.Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastX: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.socialEmail us at: [e-mail]

Tony, tell me something. Did you watch the budget vote live tonight? No, I was watching the Raiders get killed by the Cowboys. Sorry. You're watching NFL football on a night when the government could fall? Yes, because I'm a normal person. Okay, Martha Hall-Finley, did you watch the budget vote tonight live on the House of Commons? I most certainly did not, Steve. And I know you're going to say that you did. And even while you're sitting at the Giller Prize event and supposedly otherwise, That's so nerdy to watch a live vote.

Just doing my homework, folks. Yes, I'm here at the Park Hyatt Hotel in downtown Toronto because the Giller Prize just got finished. And yes, I had my trustee phone with me and I watched the vote live from the floor of the House of Commons. And I got to tell you, it was pretty, well, no, let's just hold off on what I thought about it because, okay, you two. Let's talk about everything political. Everything Political, presented by the Canadian Bankers Association. Happy to welcome back, former members of parliament, Tony Clement, and Martha Hall-Finley. And this week, we have a special guest with you, too.

We've got David Mastrop here. David is now a contributing writer with the Walrus magazine. He is a contributing columnist with the Globe and Mail. And David, okay, David, you watch the vote. live tonight, I presume, yes? Oh my gosh. Well, you know, in a manner of speaking, yes, but no. Steve, I'm so glad you asked the question.

What is the nature of watching the vote live? No, I was watching Christmas episodes of favorite shows. All my partner and I rebuilt the Batcave Lego set. I swear to God, this is true. as you can see, I'm a fan of Christmas. But I did follow it very closely on Twitter. We followed it very closely, Steve. We all followed it very closely.

No, you didn't. And I got to tell you, I'm incredibly disappointed with all three of you. This was a very exciting night. This was a night when the government could have fallen. I disagree. Quite sure. You know, am I setting this up with enough suspense? This was a night when no one would.

It could have been 1979 all over again. No, no. No, no, no, no. It was never going to happen. I'm going to pass. Never going to, never going to, the budget was going to pass. It never was not going to pass. I'm sorry. I'm going to go through the numbers here very briefly. And then I'm going to get Mosscroft to tell me why this is the most important story in the country tonight. Because I know he believes it, because he watched the whole thing so carefully. Okay, it was 170 for the liberals. It was 168 for the opposition. So the budget passed. The budget motion passed by two votes. What was interesting was there were two new Democrats who, abstained. There were two members of the Conservative Party who abstained. And of course, Elizabeth May for the Greens, voted with the government to pass the budget. So it got passed by two votes. Now, that's pretty close. And, you know, where I come from, that's pretty suspenseful. Just like the Grey Cup. It came down to the last play of the game. So, David, tell me about the significance of that vote in your judgment tonight, you having watched it so carefully.

Well, it was close, but it was a manufactured closeness, right? It's like if a ball game, you know, it was a two-run ball game, you're like, well, that's a close ball game. But not if they agreed to the score ahead of time. If they agreed to the score ahead of time, you think, well, that wasn't really a close ball game at all because they didn't really play it. And you could tell that nobody wanted an election in a few weeks who I wrote about this, how like every party was clearly preparing their best to avoid an election, but not to look like they were getting too close to the government so they could try to have it both ways. That includes the Tories, by the way, a few of whom also abstain, and two more of whom, Andrew Shear and Scott Reed, were ready to

abstain, incidentally, hiding out outside of the chamber. And so it was close, but it also really wasn't close. My worry was we would end up in a Guns of August situation, a World War I situation where no one really wanted the outcome of an election, but you accidentally ended up, you know, backing into it. But they avoided that because everyone decided ahead of time. It just wasn't the time for the country to go through one. Well, let me get to two parliamentarians on this one, because you both sat in minority parliaments. I think I'm right on that.

You both sat in minority parliaments where, okay, David says the vote was manufactured to be close, but it actually was never in question. And I want to give our viewers and listeners some sense about, Tony, how that actually works. Are we saying here that everybody went into that vote tonight, knowing for sure it was a foregone conclusion? I would say yes. In this particular instance, I think that the Conservative Party did what it should have done, would namely vote against the budget. There was a Matt Jenruh was a special case because he'd already announced his resignation. And Shannon Stubbs was the other one who could not vote because my understanding is her jaw is wired shut after an operation. And so couldn't actually voice her vote when she, you know, she was away from the House of Commons.

and she'd have to voice her votes. So she had a very good health reason why she could not participate. So aside from all of that, the Conservative Party voted against the budget, which is what they're supposed to do. And they had very good reasons to vote against the budget, in my opinion. The other parties are a bit more on the hook. The NDP, as I read earlier this week, is $23 million in debt after the campaign that was so poor and had such a poor result, so they weren't anxious to get to the polls, and they would

have found a way not to be the ones who voted against the budget. So I think that the result is entirely predictable in this case, Steve. Martha, do you agree? Was it entirely predictable? I might actually go even a bit further and say that it was so predictable that I don't think Prime Minister Carney had to do that deal with Elizabeth May. And I'm actually really pretty disappointed because even the International Energy Agency is finally realizing that the world is going to need a whole lot more oil and gas over the next number of decades. There is nobody who has any real knowledge of what's going on in terms of climate who really believes we're going to hit net zero by 2050. And we have in the last 10 years in this country implemented policies and taken positions with an unrealistic Canada needs to meet its Paris agreement targets to the detriment, frankly, of some of our economic prosperity and certainly a number of other challenges. This is not a comment on climate change.

It's a comment on let's be realistic about what we need to do as a country. and I think Elizabeth May is not realistic, and I'm actually really kind of disappointed that Mark Carney allowed that thing to happen because now he's just set himself up to have more people say, well, how come you're so far away from meeting targets? I just found that a bit frustrating. Because, Martha, we're really never going to meet those targets, are we?

Well, look, whatever you think about climate, I happen to believe that it's a really serious issue, but I also believe that Canada was never in a position to solve it on its own and certainly not in a position to do so at the sacrifice of sacrificing our own economic prosperity and so having some realistic approaches to this would actually be welcome so yeah I just I thought that was a bit unnecessary normally I like talking about climate change and what we intend to do about it but tonight I really want to focus on the dynamic on the floor of the house and give people a better understanding

of what actually went on there tonight. And I guess the reason I was a little more, well, apparently a lot more intrigued about all of this than either than any of the other three of you on this call, is that I'm old enough to remember 1979, and I'm old enough to remember a time when Joe Clark proposed a budget that everybody thought was going to pass, and nobody was under any illusion that the thing was going to fail, except everybody underestimated the fact that the liberal MPs of the day thought that Mr. Clark was very vulnerable and they went to the House and they pulled his government

down after just eight months and we were off to an election and the liberals ended up winning the next election. In other words the party that was in opposition ended up winning government in the next election and I must confess I was partly watching tonight for the purposes of seeing whether we

would get another I guess we can call it November surprise although it wasn't November back then it was December back then but David did you think there was any possibility of something unexpected happening tonight? Yeah, it's part of the reason I followed it on the internet, but didn't watch it, was that I hedged and thought, you know, something could happen, but if it happens, it's going to happen by accident. It's going to be a goof. It's going to be

because the parties misjudged one another, misread one another, that somebody screwed something up. It can happen. It can happen in an era where you're voting on an app. Some MPs are voting on an app. Lots of things could happen. But again, if so, there's reports now that Andrew Shear and Scott Reid were holding themselves back, ready to abstain if they could abstain, but they couldn't and they had to go in and so on and so forth. Because, again, you don't know. And the thing ends up passing by a couple of votes because, again, everybody wants it to pass. The conservatives weren't in a position for an election. The new Democrats certainly weren't in a position for an election. I agree with Martha on Elizabeth May.

I thought that was quite bizarre, quite frankly, on both of their parts because Elizabeth May has to know that we're not going to meet our target. So it's a bit of a pantomime. But honestly, I was watching for a screw-up. You know that great Joe Clark, I think unfairly gets saddled with, well, the Tories couldn't count in 1979. I think it was obviously much more complicated than that. But that's what I was watching for.

Can everyone in this room count? Because when you've got 343 people involved, mistakes can happen. But again, I was watching for the goof. And we've seen it, right? In those situations, it can absolutely happen. But I was pretty sure people would figure it out. And you notice that with the abstentions suggests there was a margin for error baked in by the parties. We're thinking what happens if somebody goofs.

So it ends up, and we were talking about Shakespeare earlier before we got on, it ends up looking like a bit of a play. all the world is a play does this look like it plays the thing the plays the thing there we go uh tony who which party wanted an election the least tonight uh nDP for sure uh and for the reason i mentioned they they don't have money and they don't have a leader and uh so you kind of need both of those things to run an election um you know a little bit more complicated for the conservatives uh i grant you that, but I think that if push came to shove, you have to understand the concertive caucus and members of the party and voters who voted for that party, this budget was a huge disappointment.

Mark Carney was out there claiming that this was going to be a generational change budget. Remember that line? Well, this was nothing of the sort. It's more spending, more deficits, throw off to the future, any kind of austerity. You know, there wasn't a lot of there there for this budget. And our former guest, Dave Coletto, he was on this program not too long ago. He had a poll out, Steve, that said that only 16% of Canadians thought that the budget helped solve the economic issues of the country. 16, 16. 1.6%.

So I think there was some room there if push came to shove for the conservators to make the, argument to the people of Canada. This budget is a massive disappointment. It is not solving our problems. Our problems are still here. We talked about these problems in the last election. We understand that you didn't vote for us in sufficient numbers that that became our government, but the problems have only gotten worse since then. So they'll have other opportunities, though, Steve. Let's not forget. This was a vote on the budget speech in effect. We still are going to have. We've got two more bills to come. The Budget Implementation Act number one and the Budget Implementation Act number two. That's how these things are done. And all and those are

both confidence votes. So there's going to be lots more opportunity if something turns and that people are more interested in having this debate in an election period. There'll be other opportunities in the months ahead to have that debate. Martha, I'm wondering if this is a bit of a replay of 30 years ago. And by that I mean, I think we all remember when Paul Martin brought out his first budget, and it wasn't nearly as sort of tough or ambitious as many people of the day thought it ought to be, but then the one the following year was, and that was considered the big successful home run. Are we maybe seeing a repeat of that?

I actually think that's a perfect description, because I've been thinking, about that. In fact, today, and looking at a number of commentaries and, you know, people like Tony saying, you know, this didn't, this wasn't the transformational budget that we were promised. Look, Paul Martin and the people around him knew the first time, the first one, that they needed to be transformational. I think they realized politically they couldn't. They just couldn't be that transformational. But it took the following period of time to really work at, getting the public to understand how serious the fiscal situation was in Canada. I don't think that without that, they would have been able to then do the really

transformational one. I think there's still a lot of work to do to really get Canadians to understand this is not about Donald Trump. This is about us. This is about the challenges that Canada has frankly created. for itself. You've heard me say this before. And this is not a partisan comment. I don't think we've just lost 10 years, although I think the last 10 years have been disastrous. I actually think we've lost a quarter of a century in Canada. When you look at defense spending,

when you look at productivity, when you look at infrastructure, when you look at interprovincial trade barriers, these are real problems we've had for quite a long time. And they're not they're not Donald Trump's fault. I think the benefit of Donald Trump is, if you can say that in the same sentence is that he's forced a greater recognition. I just don't think, I just don't think Canadians are at the place of understanding where we're going to have to tighten, how we're going to have to cut spending, what that's going to look like. And I do hope, let me just say I hope that the time between now and next year will give us, give the government and give all of us in the public policy space, time to really work at making sure people understand.

that it's going to be tough in order to give the government room to do something truly transfer. David, if you accept Martha's premise, does that suggest that the government has not done an adequate communications job, sort of educating the Canadian public on what's required at this moment? Well, yes, I do. And, of course, I think one of the great challenges in politics is trying not to overpromise and under-deliver.

And it's very easy, especially when you're on the campaign trail to over-promise. under deliver and then you show up on day one and say just kidding it's time for everyone to take their medicine and we're like hold on a second we were promised a candy buffet nobody said anything about having to take buckleys you know and then you're the one trying to shove buckleys down people's throats and and i think that's that's tough to do and it's particularly probably tough to do in a minority parliament where you're surrounded by other politicians who can pretty much willy-nilly promise everything else and of course until they win and then they have to be the one shoving the buckley down your throat the buckles down your throat but i i do

think, you know, you had Mark Carney saying, look, we can't control Donald Trump, but we can control our response to him. Okay, that's a good line, but then you've got to actually control your response to him. We're going to lower interprovincial trade barriers. Okay, great. There's some movement on that, but that's actually, you know, complicated, and it takes a long time to yield benefits at scale. Ditto the diversifying of trade relationships globally. I mean, you can go and pursue that, and you should pursue that. I think to Martha's point, we've also been derelict on trade. We've gone through a decade of not really having a Pacific policy. We say we have one, but we didn't really develop it. That was a mess. We didn't have a serious foreign policy review,

which we should have done years ago. We certainly should do now. We're like, okay, we've got to fix all this stuff, but it takes a lot of time. I think Mark Carney promised that he was going to move fast and break things like he was the tech bro. And then he gets in and is like, okay, well, stuff's actually going to take time. It's pretty complicated stuff. It's tricky. Did it with a deal with Trump. He suggested, okay, we're going to get a deal with Trump. We're going to get a good deal with Trump. And then you realize it's Donald Trump. And you can't anticipate Doug Ford ostensibly, you know, derailing the whole thing. What are you going to do about that? So I do think it's going to be a real challenge to get the country read up on what we're going to have to do. And then you've got

to shepherd that agenda through a minority parliament. So let me pick up on that with Tony, because that's a great, that's a great point. When Paul Martin was doing what Paul Martin was doing his finance minister 30 years ago, he had the luxury of doing it in a majority government. Yes. This guy's got a minority government, right? Francois-Philippe Champagne can't put a budget out there and become the second coming of John Crosby in 1979, where you've only got a minority government, but you're acting like you've got a majority.

Tony, is it fair to point out those differences, and therefore maybe that's why this budget isn't as ambitious as you wish it were? Well, I would concede that except for the fact that, again, To David's point, there's been a lot of over-promising and under-delivering since April the 28th, including during the election campaign itself, where the prime minister assured Canadians that he was the one who could deal with Trump the best, and he was the one who could get a deal, and he was the one who understood capital markets, and he was the one who understood budgets. All of that may still be true.

Well, okay, but at some point, surely to goodness, folks, we have to hold him to account at some point. All I've heard since the election is, well, he deserves, you know, some time to get things done. Okay, how much time, are we going to still have this argument six months from now, for crying out loud? At some point, you do have to deliver on your promises. Well, it's been six months. Is that an adequate amount of time to show your stuff? I thought this was a crisis. I thought this was a national crisis, Steve.

Didn't he run on the fact that this was a national crisis that this country has not seen since 1945 and that I'm the one who can deliver during this crisis situation? So, yes, I normally, you know, governments get a year, year and a half, or whatever, to get their act together. But this prime minister laid his case to the public saying,

this is different. This is a different time. you need a guy who can get things done immediately, and I'm the guy. And yet we haven't seen any of that. Go ahead. Martha, that's a big exhale. Go ahead. Well, but to be fair, I mean, even like one of the things I was encouraged by was, and certainly

in all the rhetoric and discussions leading up to it, clearly a significantly greater emphasis on defense, long, long overdue. And already, Prime Minister Carney's effort at increasing. the pay for our military, incredibly important in my view. Yes. And some of the budget aspects, very important. But Tony, you and I both know, you can't just spend that money tomorrow, right? You actually have to know the right things to spend it on.

You have to have the right, like there's still a debate about jets. There's still a debate about submarines. You can't actually do it tomorrow. I agree. And yet he promised he would. Yeah, but, you know, pull it. Okay, we've all known a few politicians in our days. And in a campaign, it's not unusual for people to say that.

I still, I personally still think that we need to give some time to implement some of the things that we've been hearing the right things. I will say something, too, though, the number of people who've said, well, you know, this isn't going to get things built. And, well, this is a budget, right? There are so many other aspects of Canadian policy, Canadian legislation that, frankly, I am hoping to see soon, sooner rather than later, things like, you know, getting rid of the ridiculous tanker ban on the Northwest Coast changes to the Impact Assessment Act. Those are all things that we also need to see. I think from a budget perspective, we just can't expect things to happen overnight. So it's not how this system works. David, I want to ask you about the Minister of Finance himself,

Francoi Fri Champagne, who we had the pleasure of having on this podcast. Well, I guess it dropped today. We did the interview last week, and it dropped today officially. I don't mind saying he, I thought he was a, how do I put this? He's a very charismatic guy. He's got a lot of energy. He is extremely enthusiastic in the way he presents his message. He uses expressions like transformational change, generational change, generational change,

transformational budget all the time. I'm interested in your take on the guy and whether you think he has been up to the task of presenting Mark Carney's first budget in a way that can gain the confidence of the Canadian people. You know, you're not meant to call him the energizer bunny. I read somewhere in Politico, there's some folks in his orbit that don't love him being called the Energizer Bunny, but it is unfortunately, I think, an apt description. You know, it's funny. because I was following the development of the budget, the drama of the budget. I was following the debates around the budget. He struck me as, in some senses, not an aphra thought, because that's uncharitable, but almost a quiet shepherd. He didn't out-sing the song. In some ways, I think

he's the, if I can keep mixing metaphors. He's in some senses, in Mark Carney's shadow, because Mark Carney has been sold to the country as the economics guy. During the election, if you were the sort of person who wanted a kind of comforting, avuncular figure or parental figure, Mark Carney was your person because he'd say, well, I got this. Don't worry about it. I'll get us through this tough times. I know the economy, as Tony says, I know capital markets and so on and so forth. And where does Champang fit in that picture? And I, in the sense, to the extent that he got it done, he got it done kind of quietly and behind the scenes, which I thought was quite smart. And can I say something nice about

the Stephen Harper government? Tony, am I allowed to? Is that allowed? I will allow that, sir. Thank you. Thank you to everyone. One of the things I really used to admire, because I get asked about this sometimes, like, what do you like about conservatives? Or what are you, you know, you're a raging lefty. What do you like about the Harper government? And one of the things I liked about the Harper government is they often, certainly in the early years, just quietly got things done on federalism in particular, bilateral deals. We weren't going to have any multilateral meetings because that's when the premiers tried to gang up on you. It was very quiet. I think to some extent, Champagne was out there doing that work kind of quietly. And I think we need more of that in Canadian politics.

People are getting things done behind the scenes because that's where the real work happens. Tony, it was kind of interesting. I did ask him the question, actually, you know, what does it like to try to put your first budget together when the prime minister is a former governor of the Bank of England and Governor of the Bank of Canada and, you know, surely knows the numbers as well as, if not better than the Minister of Finance does. And I wonder if you could just sort of, from the benefit of your historic experience on this, I think you were president of the Treasury Board. The Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was an economist. He surely knew the numbers and what he wanted to do as well as you did. What's that, what's the dynamic

of that relationship like when the Minister of Finance is not necessarily any better on the numbers than the prime minister well i certainly first of all let me just say something positive about uh minister champan when you're in a room with him there is no back that is left unslapped uh he's very charming he loves people he really loves people and he he is very good at that i must say um but to to hearken back as as you've asked me to do uh let me tell you a little story so one of the years as president of the Treasury Board, because I was kind of in charge of reining in spending, very fun job, by the way. I'm being sarcastic. You know, so I was part of the actual budget, pre-budget presentation to the prime minister with Jim Flaherty, the finance minister. So we rolled in with

trolleys, literally trolleys of documentation to brief the prime minister who is an economist by training. Stephen Harper was an economist or is an economist. And I was kind of in awe of the process because we started off on page one. And then the prime minister had a question about line 14 on page one. Then we got to page two. Line 29, the prime minister had some concerns about line 29. Then we went to page three. And this went on for like five hours. And we got through like a half a binder. And as we're leaving with the trolleys, I turned to him. I said, is this how you did budgets for like 10 years? And he said, yep. Oh my God. This is painful. He says, that's the prime minister. Well, Martha, I'm not sure it's any, I'm not sure it's any different right now because

because Monsieur Champagne not only had to introduce a budget, but apparently he had to find $60 billion in expenditure reductions over the next five years. So it sounds like he went through a very similar process that Tony and Stephen Harper went through, however many years ago that was. How many years ago was that, Tony? That was 2012, so 13 years ago. Yeah, 13 years ago. Okay.

So it sounds like they would have gone through a very similar process here. and they've insisted they found $60 billion in cuts over the next five years. I sort of said cheekily to Mr. Champagne when we did the interview, you know, I'll believe it when we see it. Are you confident we're going to see it? Am I confident or was the minister confident? No, are you confident there's 60 billion in cuts over five years to be found in expenditure reductions? I'm confident that it's possible if we have the leadership.

and if the leadership feels that they have the support of Canadians. And so I go back to the time before when this was done in the mid-1990. So this was, I think it was Paul Martin's 95 budget, and then 96 budget was the transformational one. So there are a number of factors. We talked about the importance of getting more Canadians to understand just what's going to this is going to take. I don't think they're going to find those budget cuts

unless there will be people in the country willing to accept that there may be fewer services, there may be fewer tax cuts, there may be fewer opportunities like that. So the reason I believe that this can happen, Steve, is just simply because we've been able to pull these things out in this country before. So we have been able to do really tough things, but it has required leadership and bit of a confluence of events for which the leadership has had, the leadership has had to depend on to be able to make sure that they had the people with them. And I do think that's, this is,

this is the one thing. I mean, how many times, thanks to Donald Trump, and you just feel so terrible saying that in the same sense. But this is a moment in time for Canada. This is an opportunity for the Mark Carney and his government to actually do some really, really important things that we need to do for us, not because of Trump. But, man, it's helpful to have Donald Trump as the boogeyman to really encourage people to understand that these are serious problems. I'm really curious, David, about your take on sort of four words that this government has tried hard to get Canadians to wrap their heads around. And that is, invest more, spend less. And I know those two things don't sound like they can both be possible.

at the same time. But the way Monsieur Champagne describes it, he says, people understand the difference between what you spend on groceries and buying a new house. They understand the difference between sort of operational expenditures versus true investments in the future of your family. And this is what this government is, this is what they say they are trying to attempt, right? Big expenditures that will build the country while reducing the sort of operational budget that is not necessarily. sustainable. How well are they doing at getting that message out there and people understanding it? I thought you were going to say catalyze. I was just ready to curl up into a ball under my Christmas. I don't get to use that word. That's the PM's word. I swear to Lord,

I hear it one more time. I'm simply going to die. Yeah, I mean, look, it, you know, it's a curious rhetorical device on the one hand because this is what I do when I try to convince my partner that I want a permanent LED lights outside of our house. I'm like, well, let's invest in these permanent $5,000 lights because when the Js do a playoff run, we can make them white and blue. It's a good boon for the neighborhood. You know, it's a generational investment in community. I have yet to persuade the household to back me in that. But, but, you know, what if you're going to build high speed rail? You know, what maybe now we're talking high speed rail. We talk about, it's funny, because we celebrate this country as being built by a railroad

and then kind of forget about what happened in the planes and with Chinese laborers. We built the country with a railroad. And now every time we want to talk about building rail, everyone's like, no, we can't do that. No, whatever, you know, a railroad in Canada. But, you know, what if we talk about that? What if we talk about infrastructure projects? You know, Martha mentioned infrastructure earlier. I happen to think building Canadian infrastructure is job one, including an electricity grid,

an east-west electricity grid that some economists have made the case for, that seems like an investment to me. Investing in nuclear power, I happen to think that's a big investment that we should be making. Ditto, again, as I mentioned, the railroad, if you can sell that, and I think the major projects office is part of the work of that, although, again, it's easy to announce that and to say, oh, we got all these projects, by the way, they're already underway. It's a bit of a slight a hint. But then if you keep it up, and over the years you introduce new ones, And we say, okay, now we're actually making infrastructure investments because that's what lets commerce, you know, trade, the movement of goods and services and people across the country go. So if you can sell that, okay.

But the problem is it comes back to something we said earlier. That takes a lot of time. It's not budget one. You know, you can start it in budget one, but it's all the legislation that comes after. And it's budget two and three and four. So it's going to take a lot of time. I'm willing to actually give them a bit of the benefit of the doubt on this because I understand that it takes time. I want to see what it looks like two or three years from now.

Tony, I wonder if I get you to follow up on that in as much as the prime minister has sort of, you could say, as a communication strategy, rather skillfully, every couple of weeks come out and put a whole bunch of new projects sort of before the public to say, look at these big magnificent mega projects we're about to undertake to build Canada as a process, as a strategy put before the Canadian people to convey nation building. How well do you think it's working? I guess they're banking on it showing movement progress, progress, right? And so each time that he's doing this dance of the seven veils, you know, and they're

they'll, look at, look at these projects, you know. So that's okay. I get that. And that's politics. I get that too. As, as David mentioned, many of these projects were already approved and underway. The, for round two, Steve, the one thing that was very obvious in its absence was a pipeline, which we were supposed to get by Gray Cubs Sunday and has not transpired. So maybe it will.

Maybe it won't. I don't know. But it certainly wasn't on that list. So that I think was a big omission. And the other thing is, I think this whole process is kind of wacky that you've got this major projects office that is going to and through Bill C5 is going to exempt certain projects from the overburden of regulatory reviews and such. So to me, to me, the issue is with this major projects office, exempting various projects from overburdened regulatory review and so on. Okay, that's great for those projects, but we could have 500 projects moving ahead

if we instead review the legislation. I think this has been Martha's point for three or four podcasts now. We've got legislation in place from the Trudeau era that is impeding the ability of private sector investment going ahead with certainty because of the overburden of this legislation, the tanker ban or the environmental review and assessment legislation. So wouldn't it be better to actually have the right legislative and regulatory framework so that, you know, let a hundred flowers bloom? Let's get hundreds of these projects going with certainty and with private sector investment. When you talk about the Trudeau area, which Trudeau are you talking about? Justin Trudeau. Although the one we had before also created certain challenges.

just for certain industries. Martha, how well do you think the mega project rollout's going? Well, one, I have a huge amount of time for Don Farrell. So, you know, if there's somebody who's going to just get proverbial S done, it's going to be Dawn. So I think that was a great choice and great to have it sent in Calgary for a number of reasons. I don't disagree, Tony. I actually think changing the regulatory environment, improving some of these things, is required for all of the different.

projects that are happening. I was just listening to the head of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. They already have over 100 projects on the go that they're invested in. They would like to see the regulatory environment improve to allow those projects to happen more quickly for them, for their investors,

for the proponents. I will say though, and I have to say this, there wasn't a pipeline on this list. Having spent enough years in the energy business, there wasn't anybody I know in the energy business who was waiting for a pipeline to be on that list. And even Premier Smith, her response was, I think, very positive about, you know, negotiations are continuing.

This is, you know, I thought her responses and her demeanor very, very positive. You can't do a pipeline if you don't have people producing the stuff to put in the pipeline. The people aren't going to produce the stuff to put in the pipeline unless they know they're going to have a pipeline. We have a massive chicken and egg problem here. We also have Enbridge's announced significant enhancements. are going to increase capacity. We can probably expand significantly DMX's capacity.

So there are a number of factors at play. I will go back to the chicken and the egg. No one's going to move forward on either the pipeline or the production unless and until we see significant regulatory change in Canada that encourages that kind of infrastructure. So I don't read anything into the fact that there wasn't a pipeline on this on the second list. I would have been really surprised because it wouldn't have made a whole lot of time.

Can I just add one thing on the previous point that you and David were talking about, Steve, on operating versus capital? Sure. Because we saw the independent parliamentary budget officer raise a massive red flag this week, that in his review of the budget, there was something like $94 billion that was in the capital, budget that he thought should be in the operating budget, and therefore it was inflating the size of the capital budget that was a good deficit to have and reducing the size of the operating budget, which was a bad deficit to have. So I don't know enough about it to know the

details of it, but that to me is a red flag on creative accounting that if that continues is not going to help our budgetary situation. Well, let me give David the last word on this, because on the other hand, the former parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, did an op-ed piece in which he gave the government a B-plus on the budget and a B-plus on transparency. So take that for what it's worth. David, where do you come down on this? I mean, to me it was, if this is a game of golf, the budget one is you put the ball in the T and the T in the ground. That's what it is. What are you going to do next? What does it look like when you swing? Where's the ball go? And it's a new government it's a it's a fall budget you know they moved the budget up to the fall from

the spring they wanted to get moving they had reasons for that the construction industry and so on and i think they also just wanted to get moving uh i thought it was fine i i think it was set up to be something much more significant than it ultimately was because i think that the next big thing is going to be the next big thing but i also think just as a little asterisk we may well have an election before the next budget right it's there's a non-zero chances with with with within a year, it's the government themselves. They're like, well, we better go to the polls. So, you know, I thought it was that it was just fine.

They did a fine job. It's a government finding its feet because there's a new ministry. But I think it was set up to be a lot more, much like the budget vote tonight. It was set up to be much, much more than it ultimately was because, look, we all love a show, right? Well, I've already expressed my profound disappointment with the three of you for now watching the vote from the House of Commons. you have a chance to redeem yourself if you give the right answer to this next question. Let me see a show of hands. How many people watched all or at least most of the Grey Cup game on Sunday?

O.M.G. You people are... I just, I'm so sorry. You people are terrible. I watched every Jays game in the world. Whoopty-do. Everybody watched every Jays game. I watched the Montreal versus Boston hockey game on Saturday.

night. Does that count? No. I had actually totally forgotten that the game was even happening until I saw a headline come across my screen saying, just the bread Friday was a one. In my defense, it was my mother's birthday party. I did check my phone for scores on the Grey Cup, but I was otherwise engaged. That is a semi-reasonable excuse, but only semi. Okay, you three have got a lot of work to do, but fortunately, you have an opportunity to redeem your right now because as you know we always finish up this program by asking all of you to give us a good on you as in something good happened in politics at some point over the last couple of weeks and i want to find out who gets your good on you for doing something that uh that showed politics

in a somewhat different light uh tony start us off what do you got well uh steve i'm glad you asked i would like to heap praise on nDP premier wab canoe if i could and province the great province of Manitoba, who passed a bill permitting the involuntary detainment of drug-intoxicated individuals for up the three days. And he spoke very forcefully about how important it was for the safety of these unfortunate individuals and also for the safety of citizens that this option be available. This was something that I was, when I advocated this as Minister of Health for Stephen Harper back in 2006 and 2007, I was pilloried and accused of being a heartless, terrible person. How dare I want to stigmatize drug addiction? And I was going 180 degrees in the wrong

direction. Well, it only took 20 years, but I think the verdict is that we need more better solutions than just leaving people to be decriminalized with their drug addiction, that it's important for society to get involved with these unfortunate individuals to get them off the drugs, to maintain their health and their safety, and to maintain society's health and safety. And that's what those were the arguments that Premier Canoe used. And I'm glad he did. And I want to applaud him for it.

It's a very interesting thing in politics that two things. Number one, timing matters a lot. Yes. We may not have been ready for this position all those years ago. And number two, the partisan affiliation of the politician that makes the announcement also matters. Absolutely. There are things we allow conservatives to do that we don't allow liberals or new Democrats to do. And the converse in this case was also true, right?

I think you're absolutely correct on that. But in the end, we want better public policy and we want better health outcomes. And that's what I think that his announcement will achieve. Gotcha. Martha, who gets your good on you this week? Well, I just want to remember that good on you a little while ago was, again, Wab Knoon, who ended up being quoted by the Premier of Alberta, different parties, because Wab Knoo had made the comment, it's the economic cart that pulls the social cart,

the economic course that pulls the social part, important coming from Steve to your point, an NDP premier, right, to recognize the importance of the economy. I know it's supposed to be something good from the last couple weeks. To be honest, leading up to the budget, there's just been so much slagging and stuff going on. So I took something that happened in the last couple of weeks to do a good on you for a group of people, but it's not that big group.

We have seen over the years quite a few people crossing the floor from one party to another. We have not seen very many who willingly leave their party, so they weren't kicked out, somebody who willingly leaves their party but then sits as an independent until either a by-election or the next election. And we all know that in a general election at the federal level, people, except for unusual circumstances, you usually vote for the party, then they vote for the leader. and only sort of third way down to they vote for the actual candidate. So when somebody runs for a party or under a certain leader, that's who the people of their constituency are voting for. And I think it shows a, so I don't want to pick on any one person

because I think it's happened a fair bit. You have to respect the voters. And so if you cross and join another party, that's not who your constituencies, your constituency, voters voted for. I think it shows an awful lot of principle and respect for the few who have done it, who have left and consciously sat at least as an independent. Their conscious couldn't they couldn't bring themselves to stay in the party at the very least to stay as an independent until the next opportunity for the voters to speak. So my good on you is for those people who've

been able to do that. Gotcha. Okay. Okay, David, you see how this works. You got a good on you for us? Do you want a silly one or a substantive one? Because I got one to each queued up. All right. Fire away. You want silly or you want substantive? Oh, we'll take them both. We'll take them both. Once you're on the block. Okay. Let me start with a silly one. Minister Champagne took a photo with David Eby, the Premier of British Columbia. Now, I don't know if folks have seen photos of David Eby, but he's a tall man. And Minister, Champagne is not a tall man, at least compared to David E.B and probably compared to the average height of a man born in the year he was born. Champagne was born. And he posted it. And it looks

like a movie poster from twins, the Danny DeVito Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It was just brilliant. I loved it so much. And I tweeted about him like, you've just launched a meme. But good for you for putting it up there because they had to know what they were doing. And I thought it was just a very, very touching a little moment in politics. That's the silly one. The substantive one is, now I'm going to play to type for a moment. If you'll excuse my irredeemable socialism for a moment.

Rob Ashton is running for a leader of the NDP, and he's running on an unabashed pro-worker, you know, pro-working class, class politics. And he came out with an idea that you can like or not like and we could debate all day, which was a jobs guarantee, something that Stephanie Kelton wrote about in her book. And it's controversial. But substance of the policy aside, you took a really big swing on a substantive issue that's going to

mix up the NDP leadership race and actually have a sort of polarized, ideologically driven, but also politically driven contest instead of a mutual agreement society. And I thought that was really interesting because I think we need more of that disagreement in Canadian politics around substantive policy directions based on big ideas. And so I thought that was a great swing. so good on him. I haven't met him yet, but we had Avi Lewis on this program last week. And I guess you're suggesting we ought to get Mr. Ashton on this show as well. He's, I like him quite a bit. He's a 30-year longshoreman from British Columbia. And I interviewed him recently, and he was extraordinary. He was brilliant. And he's not a politician. He's not like one of these,

I'm not a politician politicians. He is literally not a politician. So it's a little bit charming and disarming, but I think he'd be an interesting person to have on. And he's one of three confirmed candidates, I think, for the NDP leadership so far. Four. Four now. Yeah, with McPherson, Ashton, Lewis, Teneal Johnson, and McQuail. There we go. We're up to five. Let's keep talking. Maybe it'll be six or seven by the time we're done. Anyways, great to see the three of you. Former parliamentarians Tony Clement and Martha Hall-Finley. and David Moskrop, really glad of you to join us this week as well. Peace and love, everybody.

Until next time.