The Paikin Podcast - John Ibbitson & Darrell Bricker: Is Canada at a Breaking Point?

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson join Steve to discuss their new book, Breaking Point: The New Big Shifts Putting Canada at Risk, how the country is in the middle of the greatest political crisis it has ever faced, the rising anger young people feel about housing prices and gig jobs, Trudeau’s failures as a prime minister, and how he destroyed the Canadian consensus on immigration. They also discuss the growing regional tensions in Quebec and the Prairies, the looming threat of Trump and tariffs, whether Carney (or Poilievre) can meet this turbulent and uncertain moment, and how exactly to bring this country back from this “breaking point.”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]

Hi again, everybody. Happy to have you alongside for another edition of the Paken podcast. I want to introduce you to two guys today. Daryl Bricker is one of Canada's longest serving pollsters and political analysts. Pound for pound, John Ivinson may be the best national affairs writer in the country. They have collaborated on book projects in the past and they've got another one out now. It's called Breaking Point, the new big shifts putting Canada at risk. What do these guys see that is so concerning to the future of Canada? We'll find out on the Paken podcast one-on-ones.

or in this case, actually, two-on-ones, coming right up. The Pagan podcast, one-on-ones, presented by Beer Canada. Happy to welcome the authors of this book, Breaking Point, the new big shifts putting Canada at risk. John, Daryl, great to see you too again. How's things? Great, Steve.

Doing well. Thank you, Steve. You've written another book in your, still speaking. So I guess that's a good sign. Or maybe I've jumped the gun. Maybe you aren't still speaking. No, this is our third book and just keeps getting better and better. Okay. Well, let's dive in on this because you open the book with a bang. Here's a quote. Canada-U.S. relations have never been this bad, you say. But believe it or not, Trump is not the biggest threat our country faces. Our own worst enemy is ourselves. Now, we're, of course, going to dive in deep in.

explore this statement from many different angles. But, John, just start us off with the thesis. Why do you think we're a bigger problem to ourselves than Trump is? Well, we've always said that Canada is, one of the most successful countries in the world, I've always said that. But we've always known as well that there are things, hands that keep getting picked down the road. And we keep thinking, well, we can manage this, we can manage that. But some of these, let's mix our metaphor, as chickens are coming home to roost. And they involve both what we call horizontal and vertical divisions. So we have a Western Canada that in the prairie provinces is more alienated than at any time in the country's

history at the very same time that it looks as though there's going to be another separatist government in Quebec that is promising a referendum. And the federal government keeps intruding in areas of provincial jurisdiction and it keeps creating more and more flashpoints. So there's that division. And then there's another division, which we can get into a bit later, which is the intergenerational division. A group of young people, millennials and Gen Zeds, who rightly feel that people of our generation have deprived them of a bunch of the opportunity that we had when we were their age. So between the generational tensions and the regional tensions and issues that we have simply not properly addressed from immigration to defense to the media,

we think the country is at an inflection point and perhaps at a breaking point. Well, we are going to talk about all those things. But, you know, we are all old enough to have remembered not just the last referendum in 1995, but the one before in 1980. And I think many people thought the country was at a breaking point then, and we got through it. So, Darrell, I just wonder how much that title is meant to be provocative, so people will buy the book or how much you really believe we are at one of those moments where the country really could be lost right now.

I really do feel that we're at a different point. I mean, what we were dealing with in Quebec was a unique crisis. It was a, it was dealing with one specific problem that the country, when it was initially formed, recognized, right from the very beginning, which was the uniqueness of the province of Quebec and Quebec culture, francophone culture in the country. Now, it used to not just be in the province of Quebec. It was obviously much more widely spread. but the Laurentian elite and the Laurentian consensus was developed basically to deal with that issue was the unifying issue of our political elite in this country. And when those challenges came about, I would say institutionally were a very narrow run thing in 1995,

but not in 1980. I mean, they absolutely thumped the sovereigns in that referendum. But Canada was structured to absorb that type of crisis. Our institutions were built to do that. our elites thought that way, the consensus that we developed, not that it wasn't a very close-run thing, but it was something that we kind of recognized. We're at a different type of an inflection point and a breaking point potentially. And, you know, for me, what it came from was really two kind of analogies. One of them was from George Grant, you know, and he asked

a fundamental question as lament for the nation. He can quibble with all sorts of things about George Grant's book and its interpretation of Canada at that time. But he asked one really important question that we need to ask ourselves now. And frankly, Donald Trump asked for us, are you an unique species on the North American continent? And that's the first time in a very long time that we've had to answer that question. And then what are we prepared to do to make sure that we maintain that situation? And Trump, you know, like Grimm's fairy tale, you know, the emperor's new clothes. I mean, he's not the emperor actually in this analogy or in this story, he's actually the kid who stands up and says, you can't defend yourself. What kind of a

country are you? You're completely dependent on another country for all of your trade. What kind of a country are you? And by this way, by the way, this line looks like it was drawn by somebody with the ruler. Like how genuine is it? And in fact, the truth is it was drawn by somebody with the that's how it was created. So it's exactly back to the point that John was making, it's less about Donald Trump, he just kind of is the catalyst for this. He's that caused the discussion. But those fundamental challenges that we have that are not the normal Laurentian elite, Laurentian Consensus challenges are the ones that are now confronting the country. You guys really don't like the Laurentian elites, and we're going to come back to that

later in our discussion because you attack them frequently in the course of this book. But at the Federal Liberal Leadership Convention that Mark Cardi won earlier this year, I think we all well remember Jean-Cretchea saying we ought to give the order of Canada to Donald Trump because he has unified this country as never before. So, John, where do you get off saying we're at a breaking point when you could look at this country right now and say, boy, we're pretty united in our opposition and discussed with the president of the United States? Except are we? I remember correctly in that election campaign, we were on our way to dismantling generations of interprovincial trade barriers. Seen any interprovincial trade barriers

dismantled lately. Not too many. We were going to fast-track major investments in infrastructure across the country. Well, maybe something's coming, and maybe we're going to get an announcement sooner rather than later, but I suspect it's going to be later rather than sooner, and we're already seeing Alberta and British Columbia drag that day is drawn over a pipeline. So I don't think the elbows are all that up. I think you had a momentary panic.

in which the country said, we could lose this whole thing, and then, you know, Torper kicked back in again. Yet the underlying crisis is still there. The underlying problems are still there. And if we don't get back to a sense that we have to make generational changes here, emphatic changes, we have to make them now, then we are going to simply continue drifting in entirely the wrong direction. We'll talk about that prescription again. I seem to be signposting a lot of what we're about to talk about in our conversation, but I still want to go back to the original thesis here. And to that end, how about this? You say a Canadian prime minister has three main jobs.

First, keep the economy moving. Second, keep the country together. Third, handle the Americans. Over the course of nine plus years, Justin Trudeau failed at all three of them. Daryl, is that a bit harsh? No. I mean, I think any objective observer would say, down and come to exactly the same conclusion.

And while that statement is fairly direct, as you go through the chapter in the book, it's more nuanced. And, you know, we kind of explain a little bit about, you know, not everything that happened with Justin Trude and the United States was bad. In fact, you know, we say the way that he left, probably his greatest moment as Prime Minister, was the way that he handled things as he was going out with Donald Trump and the way he dealt with those insults and the way that he responded to what was going on. It's not completely on him, but the truth is, any objective observer who is looking at those three big things would say that we're not in any better position on any of them. And we could go through chapter and verse to describe why that's the case. Now, that doesn't mean that Justin Trudeau wasn't successful in other areas, and we highlight those two in the book. But honestly, the ones that we just noted, the three that you just mentioned, are the existential elements of being

a successful prime minister. If you can't make those three things work, then this fragile unity that we have in this country all of a sudden becomes more fragile. And I think any objective observer, including Mark Carney, just based on the way that he's governed over the space of the last few months, underscores the point that the comment that we made

in the book is not harsh. It's actually quite true. Well, certainly Mark Carney has reversed a lot of Trudeau area policy. There's era policy. There's no doubt about that. But let me put another thing on the list, and that is immigration. And, John, you say the changes Trudeau made to immigration policy are his, quote-unquote, greatest failure as prime minister.

Why do you say that? Yeah, because Canada for almost this entire century, has had a unique competitive advantage over other countries, where other countries were royal to both the question of immigration, about bringing foreigners and causing... huge dissension in the United States and in Europe over how many people should be allowed into the country and what kind of people they should be. Canada had this amazing multicultural asset. We brought in 250,000 people a year. That's an awful lot of people. We brought them from all different parts of the world based on their ability to integrate into and work with Canada and the Canadian economy. And we had a broad consensus across the country in favor of this,

that this is a really great idea, that it develops our economy, that it improves our productivity, and that it makes us a really exciting, cosmopolitan, diverse society to live in. Justin Trudeau broke all that. He did it mostly by opening the floodgates to temporary foreign workers, by allowing universities and more important the colleges and even scam private colleges to bring in floods and floods of international students and then to be unable to control the border, causing a huge spike in asylum claimants.

You put all those three together. Suddenly, we had three million people in the country. We didn't know we're here. And we had polls showing that for the first time, Canadians believed that too many immigrants were coming into the country. Why? Not because of some new racism that's emerged inside the population. It's because there were too many immigrants coming into the country.

placing strains on housing, on health care, and in the competition for jobs. And having destroyed the consensus, the great competitive advantage in favor of immigration, that that more than any other thing will be the legacy of Justin Trudeau, and it will not be a positive legacy. Well, Darrell, it does raise the question of whether this consensus on immigration is gone for good or just gone for now and can be reachieved. What do you think on that front? Well, you know, it's we've gone through ups and downs when it comes to immigration in Canada, but it is really fractured.

It is really fractured and somebody will have to come up with a really good reason for why we need to do this because the traditional ways of talking about immigration, as John was saying previously, when it worked and there was a public consensus, we've we've torn us under. and so they're going to have to really establish, I would say, a new baseline with Canadians in the sense. And we wrote an article in the globe about this, I think it was last weekend, in which we talked about this very topic. And the difference in Canada compared to other places, and it's really important, I think, to underscore this point, is that it's not driven by culture so much. It's not driven by people like what we're seeing in the UK right now, for example, or we're seeing in France or we're seeing in the United States. It literally is the way that the government is managing it. It is the competence of the immigration policy and the result of being out of control, as John said, and the effect that that's having on the population that is already here. It's not that people

are looking across the street and saying, I don't want those people here. They're saying, I'm looking at people who are across the street and I'm wondering where they're going to find a house. And that's going to affect me finding a house. I wonder if my kids, there was an article today in a newspaper, I read about student summer jobs and the lack of them over the course of the summer because of temporary foreign workers and every job that students used to do. Okay, well, we need a reset on this. And then the government has to figure out, and not just one government, municipal governments, provincial governments and federal governments, the federal government here are going to have

to reestablish the need for this. Because the real tragedy in all of this, Steve, and we've been interviewed on your show on this topic before, on empty planet, is Canada needs immigration. Our birth rate is an historic low. We're not producing new Canadians, the old natural way. We're going to need to bring in a lot of competent help to keep our country going over the space of the next well. And tearing that consensus down was malpractice. Okay.

Get ready, guys, because I'm about to read my least favorite quote from the book. Are you ready? Oh, John wrote this. I'm sure. Here we go. Here's the quote. Canada, you write, is not a love story. It is a marriage of convenience.

A survival strategy conceived a century and a half ago for a collection of colonies that were determined to protect their autonomy from America's manifest destiny. Since the first grand bargain of Confederation, Ottawa and the provinces have lurched about like awkward dance partners, stumbling over obstacles and arguing endlessly over who should take the lead. The result is a nation held together, not by a shared vision, but by barely managed tensions. Ibbotson, I am tempted to ask you who pissed in your cornflakes this morning with such an outrageous line that Canada is not a love story. I mean, come on, man. Canada is a love story.

We love this country. And we love the fact that we're still together, despite the fact that it's the hardest half of North America to govern and to prosper on. And yet here we are still together, one of the great countries in the world. So I'll ask it. Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning? You simply described, Steve, in the history of federalism in this country. Confederation was the result of different competing interests, deciding that they had to put those conflicts aside in order to create some

alternative to annexation by the United States. That's what Confederation was. And from then until now, we had two things going on. We had French Canada continuing to work to preserve its culture and its language, and we had English Canada developing some kind of multicultural post-national sense, but not any sense of being a coherent nation. Now, look, on good days, this is not a bad way to run a federation. Everybody does their own thing. They keep to their own lanes. They respect each other's space. They get together when they need to in terms of national interest. That's

when Canada is working. But when Canada is not working, which is now, these regions begin to compete with each other. They resent each other. They resent the federal power. They feel that they don't have any investment in the country itself. And you've talked to people in the West. You talk to young people. And they don't have, which you just described, as this wonderful sense of devotion to the country. They have more a sense of resentment and displacement. And nobody's Fissing on anybody's breakfast. What we're simply doing describing is the resentments that a lot of people outside older Laurentian folk like us feel about what's going on in the country. No, that is a totally fair point, and I'll confess that I may be overreacting to your line.

Canada is not a love story because I think it is a love story, although I am quick to acknowledge all of what you just said, which is the younger generations coming up behind us, don't feel quite as devoted to democracy and capitalism in the way that we perhaps do, and that is deeply concerning. But Daryl, I'd hate to think, let me put it this way. I would think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that they don't remember the Cold War. They don't remember World War II. They don't remember what this country has been through and how it has emerged as one of the most successful countries in the world, notwithstanding all of the tensions and economic difficulties we're having. If they knew a little more history,

You think they'd like what they see a little bit more? Well, you know, keep in mind that 25% of the Canadian population wasn't born here. So they're not familiar with the history at all. They disproportionately are clustered in our major centers. So we can talk about all those great things. I mean, the cringiest moment of the entire last federal election campaign to me was the Mike Myers and Mark Carney at when they were standing with their elbows up. By the way, your elbows don't go like that, they go like this. You know, I guess a third string goalie from Harvard doesn't get that.

But, you know, not like, stop it, stop it. It's ridiculous. That was a memorable spot, though. That was a memorable spot. Yes, for a certain type voter for 45% that was thought that Pollyev didn't get it. And Carney was plugging into that for one specific reason. But just go back and watch it and watch about the things that he talks about. there were all things that you and I and John grew up with.

Yeah, old references for sure. Come on. Okay, so that Canada is not this canon. And that's the other thing about breaking point. It's not about the breaks in the country, but the breaks with the past. It's a new country, and we need new institutions. We need new commitments. We need new national identity that recognizes who we are if we are a unique species on this part of the North American continent.

And going back to that is just like that ad, you said that it was the most significant thing. I think for both sides. I think for both sides. Well, okay, since we're talking about the election campaign, let's go back there. Because, I mean, pretty clearly, public enemy number one in this country today is Donald Trump. And even you guys say, you guys admit in the book that Pierre Pauliev during the election campaign gave off a kind of a Trumpist vibe from time to time, which clearly heard him in that election campaign. John, I know you're in the sort of analyzing as opposed to advice-giving business, but that's not going to stop me from asking you what Pierre Polyev ought to do between now

and his date with destiny in January when he needs to have his leadership reviewed by the Conservative Party membership. What can he do to seem less Trumpist and more invested in the Canadian project? Well, as we said in the book, for conservatives in general, not just Pierre-Polleve, it's don't be angry, don't be crazy, don't be resentful, don't blame. Right now, Canadians appear to have invested a fair amount of trust in Mark Carney. They gave him government. It cost the conservatives more than 20 percentage points, just in a matter of a few weeks, because the conservatives looked angry and populace and we're going to shut down

the CBC and we're going to fire the governor, the Bank of Canada. We're not going to let anybody go to Davos anymore. And Mark Carney came along and said, let's be grownups. We have a national emergency here. We have to deal with this administration, and I have the experience to do it. And both four in ten Canadians said, no, I think I'm going to stay with the conservatives. A little bit more than four in ten said, you know what, we need to get this deal done. And they went for Mark Carney. Now, I think, you know, what happens with the Americans will happen with the Americans. But there are other issues as well. Again, we're not seeing any progress on housing. We're not seeing any progress even on bringing immigration back under control.

We're not seeing any progress and productivity. So there are big substantial issues that a conservative party could address in this minority parliament. But it's not going to happen if it just comes down to do we put the crazies in or do we put the managers in? Well, I should push back on immigration a little bit. I mean, we're nowhere near 500,000 new people coming into Canada every year anymore, right? Yeah, just the last couple years. I have not seen the actual immigration numbers of 2025. My sense is that the numbers are coming down, especially in the international students category.

I'm not sure how well they're coming down on temporary foreign workers. Okay. Daryl, I guess you agree with the piece that Dmitri Soutis wrote in the Toronto Star, I guess, a week and a half or two weeks ago, when he said, you know, the conservative party has become a grievance vehicle and an anger vehicle, but isn't showing the kind of maturity or forward thinking that a political party needs in order to form government. you on side with demetri on that column no i'm not uh and the reason that i'm not is he's misdiagnosed the problem this isn't a question of stop i mean it's it really is a question of parties understanding what the country has become and this is going to sound ridiculous and john's going to laugh when i say it i think the best thing that pierre polly do is read our book

and can get get a line or even mark carney i mean get aligned with who the country is stop pretending were Casey and Finnegan, stop pretending that there's some foreign affect that you can, you know, this mantle that you can put on and it's going to work in this country. You may have to explain that old reference of Casey and Finnegan, you know, speaking of Mike Myers' commercials. I mean, anybody watching this, just go back and watch it. I just about fell off my chair when I watched it. It was so nostalgic for a country that no longer exists.

And so I think, you know, the conservatives would be very well counseled. and be headed in the right direction if they understood that they're going to have to base whatever they're going to be doing on who Canada is and what the challenges are that we're confronting. And by the way, that Trumpy kind of affect that goes along with this, it got you 41. It's not going to get you a victory. I know Pierre Paulyev can't become anything other than what he is, but there's some ability here to connect more with what the agenda is for Canadians. And the funny thing is, he was, he was 20 points ahead. If you take a look back at the conservative campaign, I know people get really snipey about things like, you know, what the ballot question. Political strategists are two strategic something.

Really, what the problem was, was the country was going through as massive disruption during the course of that election campaign, and one candidate sort of got it, and the other one didn't get it at all. And the thing that Mark Carney didn't get, and still doesn't, And I think the misinterpretation of the campaign is that the campaign was all about who was best able to deal with Trump. And it wasn't. People, the number one issue through that entire campaign was affordability. Still is today.

Dealing with Trump has gone down the list and it was never really that was like number three or four in our polling. But everybody who was most concerned about that voted for murder. That's why he got 40. Even 15% of the people who voted for Pierre Polyev thought Carney would be better able to deal with the issue. So what Pahliav was incapable of doing was challenging Mark Carney on that single strength or giving people enough confidence on the number one issue that they would go back to that and deal with it. So I don't know that he's learned anything from the campus, but it really is having the right

tone and affect for Canada, the style of politics that would work for somebody who's ready to be the next prime minister of this country and understanding the point that we're at and speaking to it passionately. And it's not just about, I said this the other day, John. I haven't run this one by you, but I'll just roll it out. You know, Winston Churchill never met with his protagonists. I mean, neither did, neither, or antagonists, neither did John A. McDonald. What they did was they rallied their countries. That's what they did. So what is it going to take to rally this country? And that's going to be Mark Carney's challenge because he's shown not a lot of capability of doing that. He's a very technical kind of guy, but not a person who can speak to your

emotions. And Pierre Polyev speaks to the wrong emotions. So who's going to emerge as able to tell that Canadian story of the future? That's the challenge in mind. I guess I should ask, John, are you okay with that? He didn't bounce that off you ahead of time. You okay with the way he's characterized that? My own thinking on this changes from day to day. At some point, what Canadians want in the federal government is good management. And Mark Carney right now projects the idea that he is a better manager than Pierre Pahliav. On the other hand, I think Pollyov gets some of the great divisions intergenerationally and regionally better than Mark Carney does.

So on a good day, I'm listening to Pierre Pahliav and thinking to myself, you know what, he gets it. He gets it in a way that the liberals don't. And then on the other day, I'm looking at it and going, you know what, Karni's not doing a bad job right now of handing this particular file. So I can't say with any great certainty that either one of them is right or wrong for this moment. What we're saying in the book is understand the moment. Understand what is happening.

Understand what's happening in Alberta and in Saskatchewan. Understand what is happening in suburban, the 905 outside of downtown Toronto. What's happening, understand what's happening among immigrant Canadians who are new to the country. and understand above and beyond all else that you now have a group of Canadians under 45 who are more conservative than Canadians over 45 and they are more conservative because they feel dispossessed and the disposition is taking the form of anger

and that anger has to be addressed or it's going to wreck us. Okay, guys, get comfortable for a second because one of the things we have to do in the world of podcasting is the occasional ad rate because this is how we pay for stuff. So, I'm going to do an ad read here for the folks of beer Canada, and it goes like this. Canada, as we all know, is in an ongoing affordability crisis that no doubt affects the people who are watching or listening to this.

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There you go. Just to show you the kid from public television can learn a new trick every now and then, namely capitalism that comes with trying to keep a podcast. float. And it does, just before we go on and talk more about your book, it does raise a question for me, for each of you, if you had to sit down and have a beer with anybody, either in politics today or in the past, okay, Daryl Bricker, who do you want to sit down and share a beer with? Today, Johnny McDonald, as much as he's been canceled or whatever, the man who brought the country together. What was so special about what he did? Because whatever that was,

we need it in outloads. Interesting. A lot of people ask me, who would you like to interview today? And I say, usually, they're all dead. But top of the list would be John A. McDonald. I'd sure like to find out more from him. John, who you'd have a beer with? Well, I don't think McKenzie King drank beer, although I could be mistaken. In fact, I think he was a teetotler.

But he is such a fascinating man and a man of so many contradictions. and yet he is so important in the life of the country. He's often read it as our most important prime minister, and I think there's grounds for that. I'd just like to sit down and talk to him about the candidate that he inherited, the candidate that he left, and why did he name all of his dogs Pat? That's good. Good questions.

You surprised me a bit with that answer, because aren't you the guy who just wrote a book about two prime ministers, neither one of which was McKenzie King? I did. I wrote a book about John Deef Baker, Lester Pearson. I probably because I lived through their prime ministerships myself, although I was quite young. And I've read and researched so much about them. I don't have as much of a curiosity as I have about some of the things that McKenzie King did. Gotcha. Okay. I want to circle back a bit

before we get to some of the solutions that you put forward in your book because you did say something about Justin Trudeau. And look, I get it. Everybody gets it. We've all been around politics long enough to know that Justin Trudeau at the moment is going through just a remarkably unpopular phase of his political life, even though it's over. We probably all saw Lawrence Martin's piece in the Globe and Mail the other day in which he said the day will come where even Justin Trudeau will get a more favorable viewing from historians than he's getting right now. But you two do say of Trudeau that he, quote, wrapped his politics in moral urgency, casting conservatives not just as wrong, but as a threat to everything that any good Canadian ought to believe in.

And I'm just wondering, guys, I remember, Daryl, take this on first, I remember Justin Trudeau as also being the guy who said, Conservatives are not our enemies, they're our neighbors. So I wonder if you're not cherry-picking facts a little bit there to suit your thesis. Yeah, he may have said that because somebody put it in a speech, but it was certainly not the way that he acted. I mean, all through the course of the election campaign. And this is something that we said about when Stephen Harper,

you know, we were on the show before about our other book, The Big Shift, which this one falls up on. to a certain extent. You know, that was the reaction of the Laurentian of Leap, of which Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party or the sort of the quintessential, the apex of what that was. That was the reaction to the election of Stephen Harper. It wasn't that he just was conservative. He wasn't Canadian. He was bad. He was bad for the country. He had a bad vision of the country. And every time Justin Trudeau got that chance to bring things together, he chose, whether it was during the COVID pandemic, whether it was during the trucker's convoy, whether it was during, you know, dealing with

the West on anything to do with pipelines, whether it was with the carbon tax. Every time he got a chance to try and bring things together, he turned it into a wedge to drive people apart, and especially people who were interested in what the Conservative Party had to say. You know, partisan politics is always something that's important during an election campaign, but you have to have a capability as a prime minister to be able to reach across the aisle and, you know, reach across to other political parties who are in power in various provinces and people with other points of you to hold together what is a pretty shaky country remember not a love story you know a marriage of convenience so you have to be able to get along with the other spouse in the house right and he never showed any

interest in doing that he uh his his was always had the sharpest elbows i would say on most of the partisan issues um that that came up during the day it's where he have inevitably went well having said that john you know you guys don't say very much nice about him and the book. Let's be honest. You're pretty tough on him. I'm not saying inappropriately so, but you are pretty tough on him. Do you think historians will treat him any better than you guys are? I think in terms of many of his policies, they won't treat him any better than that he's being treated right now. I mean, he did not help the Canadian economy. And as Daryl said, he also created a sense of moralizing in public discourse that works for some people who

are progressive in Laurentian and living in downtown Ottawa, downtown Toronto, but that doesn't work for many others. You know, if you oppose the carbon tax, that means you oppose global warming. Or if you oppose Pharmacare or federal dictates on how health care, well, that means you oppose public health care entirely. No, we don't. We simply don't think the federal government should be dictated into the provinces. The one area, and we mentioned this in the book at some length, in which Justin Trudeau deserves great credit for, it was for making indigenous issues front and center. Now, some people will say, sure, he made them front and center, but what did he actually

do about it? He did some things. I mean, there's no question. There's a lot fewer boil water advisories in this country today than there were when he took office. Than there were in the past. Exactly. So I would maintain that the overall sense of reconciliation and economic opportunity that is the real pathway to the future for First Nations and other indigenous Canadians is not something that he embraced. But he's a bit like Brian Morrooney. Somebody pointed out once that Brian Marrooney didn't eliminate the federal deficit, but he made us think about the federal deficit. And people who came along after him were then able to address the issue because he had raised it. I think that's Justin Trudeau's

great achievement too. He is making us think about what does this mean for First Nations? What does this mean for Méti and Inuit? How can we make them a part of whatever it is we are doing going forward rather than just sort of try to make sure that they're not, you know, that we consult them, but then go and do whatever it is we want. That's not a future for Canada either. And as we say in the book. The future of Canada has to be a future in which indigenous interests are incorporated and that we move forward. Again, if we are to move forward as a country, it has to be that we do it together, respecting each other's space and working cooperatively where we can. And that applies emphatically for indigenous Canadians as well. And I give just a Trudeau full credit

for putting that agenda on the table. Well, you've given us a nice segue here to look to the future and how you see repairing the country going forward. And you've got a bunch of ideas, and let's go through some of them right now. And I think what's interesting, Daryl, I'll get you on this first. You guys really seem to detest the CBC. And yet in the book, you call for a reinvigoration of it, not Pierre-Poliev's solution,

which is essentially to defund it and put it out of its misery, but to reinvigorate it. What does that look like for you? Well, actually, I think it's better for John because he was really focused on media part of it but i'll just before we go to him i'll just say our quibble is not with the institution it's with how it's run and what its priorities are and who it represents and what visions of the country that it uh that it presents you know when it you know that treats different parts of the

country whenever they go to it like they're visiting a zoo of some you know viewing exotic animals or whatever rather than really incorporating those points of view in uh in the way that they report and given that they're just about the one of the last institutions standing to just de- refund it and get rid of it, doesn't get rid of the need that we need that we really have in this country to report Canadian news and to tell Canadian stories. Because as I said, if we want to be a unique species on the North American continent, we have to have unique stories. So our view isn't that you get rid of the CBC, but you have to reorient it. And with that, I'll turn to John. Well, John, tell us, tell us first of all what you don't like about what you see and then how

you'd reinvigorate it. Yeah. So what we do also talk about the media in the book and the to preserve journalism. We think that everything that Justin Trudeau did in an attempt to preserve and protect media was counterproductive. In fact, it left the situation worse than they found it. But we do need to have investigative reporting. We do need to have news operations, both national and regional. The CBC does those things. They just don't do it very well anymore. And again, if you are someone who's truly a small sea conservative, do you hear your concerns reflected in the CBC? If you're an evangelical Christian, do you hear your concerns reflected in the CBC?

If you're involved in resource extraction, do you hear your concerns reflected in the CBC? Well, why don't you? Why can't the CBC be in conflict with itself? Why can't it present, why can it not present opposing views? honestly, so that you at least at some time of the day, hear somebody saying something on the radio and television and say to yourself, oh, yeah, that's right, that's what I think. And now listen to him disagreeing with another person.

That's what a reinvigorated CBC could do. Also, again, more market forces. The national broadcaster is the national broadcaster, yes. But the CRTC does not need to be mothering us and deciding what content we're allowed to hear. We want to see that dismantled. We want to see the tax supports for media abolished because all they do is allow crippled papers, Google Mail, thank God, continues to flourish, but many other newspapers are crippled and are just limping along.

Instead, we would like to see tax credits for people who take out a subscription. So you decide where you want your money to go and also may perhaps create a nonprofit news organizations as well. The United States, by the way, is working well. at this, and creating big investigative organizations to replace the newspapers that aren't there anymore. We're not trying to keep the system where it is. We're trying to introduce market forces in order to allow journalism to continue to flourish, and rather than just shutting down the CBC, we're trying to make it something that all Canadians in all parts of the country recognize as a national source of discussion and information. Okay. Darrell, one of the

issues that you've brought forward is the notion that there is far too much concentration of everything, power, resources, everything in Ottawa, and you would like to see some significant decentralization of ministries, for example, you know, put the ministry of the environment in British Columbia or move the ministry of whatever to wherever. Tell me how that would work. Well, you know, John and I talked about this a lot, and it's, we've described it in some detail in the book, but it all comes down to one line, which is to govern the country you have to live in it. And the Ottawa government, Central Canadian government, does not live in the country. It's really clustered all the senior decision-making jobs are really in one place.

So our view is that with the advent of technology and the need to really, almost like with the national railway to bind us from coast to coast, we need our national institutions, our federal government, to do the same thing, which means that you don't need to have the fisheries department in Ottawa. It could be in Atlantic Canada. You don't need to have the, and we say sarcastically in our article today in the globe. You know, we could have, you know, our cultural institutions headquartered in Saskatoon. Why not? I mean, so, and by the way, you know, we've all learned how to work remotely.

You don't have to have all the cabinet ministers, you know, sitting under a closh on the, in the, in the PMO in Ottawa. Maybe they should be out in the dealing with the constituencies that are their natural, natural constituents. groups out in the uh wherever wherever it is in the country you got a bunch of examples here actually you say let's put parks canada in a park jasper or bam department of natural resources could be headquartered in calgary agriculture could be headquartered in winnipeg uh what else you got northern and arctic affairs could be one in the territorial capitals presumably that would be well i shouldn't presume it sounds like it would be frightfully expensive to decentralize all these services and create new infrastructure in the rest of the country.

But I presume your position is it'd be worth it. Well, the additional investment would be high, but wouldn't the running costs wouldn't be that much different than they are now. In fact, in some cases, it might even be cheaper. The point is, though, not just to take, you know, lower ranking members of the public service and stick them in, in some town somewhere while the power remains in Ottawa, get the minister out, get the deputy minister out. And again, people when they think about their federal government should see the federal government operating in their community and in their lives, not thousands of kilometers away on the banks of the Ottawa River.

The best way to keep the country together is for the dispersal of federal power out into the country and also, as we maintain, for the federal government to stop doing things inside provincial jurisdiction that only cause more tension and more heartache. So make the federal government smaller, disperse it across the country, and as well, we talk about, believe it or not, constitutional reform, perhaps making the Council of the Federation a former powerful institution rather than make that as a way of speed talking to promises into allowing the abolition of the Senate. You know, John, as a guy who used to cover Queens Park, I know you will know this, and that is that this is not a new idea. You know, 40 years ago, when David Peterson was Premier of Ontario, he took the Ministry of Transportation out of Toronto, and I think moved it to St. Catharines. He took the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission out of Toronto, moved it to Sue St. Marie, creating, you know, hundreds of decently paying, what's the word I'm looking for, permanent, permanent jobs that will be able to withstand recessions into, you know, the Ontario Provincial Police headquarters got moved to Aurelia. Not everything had to be in Toronto. So this has been done before, and here we are 40 years later. those decentralized moves have stuck. And I think people in those communities outside Toronto

were very grateful to have those anchor tenants, if you like, in their cities. Anyway, that's just a little walk down memory lane there. I want to ask you guys whether at the end of the day, because I know you are deeply concerned, as one should be, with the amount of angst in Western Canada right now and how they really don't feel like they're a part of the firmament of this country in the way that, say, the Laurentian elites do. I'm wondering if I'm reading between the lines here, you're basically just saying to the country, look at people, the liberals have had their day, it's time to vote conservative, and that way a lot of these national issues, national unity issues will go away. John, is that what you're saying? It's time to vote, Tory?

No, absolutely not. It is, however, I'm to recognize that the country works best when the federal government does the stuff Constitution says the federal government should do, defense, finances, the borders, criminal law, and that the provinces do the things that the provinces are supposed to do, health care, education, social services, and the like, with the country coming together in a collaborative way to discuss stuff. in areas of joint jurisdiction, but not imposing the quote, unquote, national interest, which just happens to be the national interest of progressives in the major centers of Toronto and Montreal and Ottawa, and instead respect the country for what it is, diverse, large, polyglot, and different in not just between the rest and the center, but all the reasons, Atlantic Canada, British Columbia, especially, of course, Quebec. and let that culture of accommodation be the way in which we run the country.

And if liberals can live within that cultural accommodation, by the way, Jean-Cretchen, at his best, did recognize that, then we can have a much more successful country. Daryl, you want to jump on that, too? No, I think that's absolutely the case. It's not a partisan message in the book. It's basically an agenda for anybody to adopt, just as when we said in the big shift, you know, The big shift isn't just about how conservatives will win elections. It's also how the liberals win elections by understanding that they're decided now in the suburbs of the car community suburbs of the major city.

So it's a strategy that anybody can adopt. And it's a governing approach that anybody could adopt. John mentioned Jean Crecheon being very good at that. Actually, Stephen Harper was really good at it too. In fact, if there's any prime minister that Mark Kearney is channeling at the moment, it's Stephen Harper. In spite of his objections and all the rest of it, he's channeling a bit of kind of that middle-of-the-road sort of approach, a little more market-oriented than that kind of thing. And that's why he personally is probably so comfortable with some of the policies he's stripped away from the conservative, I would say more progressive conservative aspects of the platform from the conservative party. But no, I don't think there's a partisan message here at all.

And one could even see, you know, if the NDP gets a new leader, people are really looking for change. If somebody is really truly inspirational, if you look at their strength, on the ground, they're one of the strongest parties in the country. They're certainly much stronger than the Liberal Party from an institutional perspective. This could be their approach as well. So, no, it's not a partisan message at all. And just as a postscript to that, one of the things we talk about in the book is the need for candidates to get real in trade and foreign policy and defense. We say over and over in the book that foreign policy is defense policy is trade policy. And that means getting serious about spending on defense, getting serious about diversification of trade.

And those are two things that Mark Carney has made high priorities in his liberal government. So there's nothing particularly partisan about it at all. Gotcha. I want to ask you two, one last kind of goofy question, which is, now that you've done so many books together, what do you do when you don't agree on something? How do you get it in the book if only one of you likes it and the other one disagrees? John, what do you do about that? when darrell and i disagree uh we do what the country needs to do uh which is we talk about it

um where we find where we can achieve consensus uh we do where we can compromise uh which is usually the case we do all right i won't go that far but i won't go this far um and every now and then we go let's just leave that out shall we and move on to something else is that fair darrell i got a jump on that darrell what did what did you have to leave out of the book because you couldn't convince Ibbotson of the brilliance of your position? I think sometimes I can get very specific about things and maybe a bit too into analogies and things that don't really work that well. And John is a masterful storyteller.

So when we started into this book, John was very insistent that it read more like a novel, that it really, we read it like a novel. I wrote the original outline of the book and John modified it, but his view was this is a novel. We are at a hinge point, and there needs to be a hinge point in this book. So it would be like that would not be something that I would think of. John is a great storyteller. That was something that he would think of. And I'd sit back and say, oh, that's a great idea.

And then on the other hand, I would find things when I was out doing stuff. I'd find examples of things or come up with stories that I'd remembered from things that I've been involved in. that I would share with John, and he'd say, yeah, that's a good one. That's not such a good one. You know, well, let's let's go with that. And so the interesting thing I think in our writing relationship is actually how little we disagree. Those points are like 5% of our cooperation. Things go back and forth. John is very, John is very much the person who sits on the schedule and make sure that all the things that are done, just like a good reporter, just like you, you would do if I was writing with you, Steve, you would do that.

And then, you know, I'm the one who keeps bringing in new data and new ideas and things like that. Some of them work. Some of them don't. But it's literally maybe five or 10 percent of what we discuss. But there's probably another whole book, just like there was when we wrote the big shift, and just like we wrote an empty planet that didn't make it in the book, that we just decided, you know, that's not really, it's not taking our story anywhere.

So it's a very iterative, cooperative process, I would say. And I think just one very quick addition to that. It's all about speed, actually. I strongly believe the political books have to be written quickly because the ground shifts. So this was a case of Daryl and I actually, the book literally came out of the fact that Darry and I were having a conversation last fall and said, you know what? The big shift is there. It never left.

It's coming back with a vengeance. But Jesus, we didn't realize when we, when we were. wrote that argument that's actually tearing the country apart. So we wrote that as an essay in the Golden Mail, which appeared last November. And out of that essay, Daryl said, well, we should make this a book. And I said, I got other things going on. And he said, look, and he literally came out with an outline and said, it could look just like this. And I said, well, if we can do it in six months and we can find a publisher who will publish it in six months, yes, let's do it. But but speed is the essence.

And McClellan and Stewart took the idea within 24 hours of our proposing it. We started writing, I believe, the second week of December. We finished it on the first week of June, and it's on sale October 28. Well, can I add one other quick things? Sure. Because I get asked this question all the time, and I'm dying to say this. We don't talk that much. We don't actually talk that much.

like maybe a couple of times a week for a few minutes. We don't, it's not like we're going back and forth and back and forth on the phone and talk. No, our communication, it's almost like two pen pals. Back and forth. And our commentary is captured in the redrafts. It's captured in how he'll take what I've written and rewrite it and I'll come back and say,

yeah, that's so much back. But you miss this point and maybe we need to pump this up a bit. So it's very, it's not a lot of, a lot of disagreement and that kind of thing. We're very much on the same page, right? Once we decide to do this, we're very much on the same page. And it's just details that get sort of through. Like I said, the disagreement for like 5%, 10%, maybe. Absolutely true.

I mean, we just say it the same way. I can write it, I mean, I wrote a chapter on media and just sent it to him. And he went, yeah, that's right. That's how it should be done. I love it. We did the same thing on Aboriginal policy, on defense policy. You can write a chapter knowing Daryl's going to agree with this. I don't have to consult him. I know when he sees it, he'll nod his head. And that's almost obvious the case. And the same with him writing chapters that I then meet.

Well, keep it going, guys, because it's been a great collaboration. And you know how much I admire and respect your work. And you always make me think if I don't always agree with everything you say. But it's really, it's good stuff. Breaking Point. The new big show. putting Canada at risk. Oh, and Daryl, I should say, even though you may have books in common with Mr. Ibitts. You know, I have something very important in common with Mr. Ibbotson. Do you know what that is? You're either both from Gravenhurst or... No, I'm from Hamilton. Give me a break. Oh, I love Hamilton. But the thing that I will always know is where I got the idea to write the book, The Big Shift, was actually John doing the death of the Laurentian Consensus on your show.

On the agenda, on TVO. That's right. The collapse of Lorenge Consensus was a speech that I delivered and that then we then dedicated the whole episode of the agenda to. And that's when this guy called Bricker phoned me up and said, you're right, you don't have data. I have data. We should do a book.

It's a bigger idea than you think. Yeah. That's very interesting, but that's not the thing I was thinking of in terms of what John and I have in common. John, do you want to put him out of his misery? No, I'm curious to find out what it is. Oh, my gosh. I'm hurt that you don't remember. John, we have the same birthday for God's sake. Oh, day birthday. Yes, of course. Sorry. Sorry. June 9th. You and me and Julius Caesar.

On June the 9th. And Johnny Depp and Aaron Sorkin and Dave Parker. And anyway, I could go on... Elizabeth May. Cole Porter. Mike Shriner. It's a good list. It's a good list. Johnny. Yeah, I said Johnny Depp. Yeah. Okay. Guys, it's been a pleasure being with you. Let me just give the email address in case people want to comment on what they've just heard or seen. It's the Paken podcast at gmail.com. That's the Paken podcast at Gmail.com. Peace and love, everybody. We'll see you next time.