World Report - Want deep interviews and documentaries? Try ‘The House’

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

This Canadian election will be a sprint, not a marathon. Only 30 days remain! And so, World Report wants to help you find the best election podcast to keep you informed. Today, we present The House with Catherine Cullen, a weekend digest dedicated to making politics make sense. This wide-ranging show talks to people across the political spectrum. And they like to mix it up — with in-depth interviews, immersive audio docs, special series and good old fashioned road trips. New episodes every Saturday. Their episode today: The Business Council of Canada explains the impact of Trump’s auto tariffs; Liberal candidate Marc Miller on how his party is prepared for the intensifying Canada-U.S. trade war; CBC reporters send postcards from the campaign trail; a deep dive into a Conservative-NDP battleground in Manitoba; party strategists explore takeaways from the first week of the race.More episodes of The House are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/YmVxcj

This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, John Northcott here, co-host of World Report. If you're a regular weekend listener, you already know Catherine Cullen well for her ability to cut through noise on Parliament Hill. Throughout this election kickoff week, we're sharing CBC's political podcasts. Today, Catherine's show, The House. Expect in-depth interviews, sound rich documentaries, and behind the scenes moments in Ottawa and beyond.

Let's listen. It would be a travesty, absolute travesty. I'm making a ghost town around here. For this auto sector worker in Oshawa, Ontario, Donald Trump's tariffs could be life-altering. But he's not going to take it lying down. He wants a fight. He's going to get a fight. We're Canadian, you know. We're going to fight for everything, whatever we can get. I say we shut the lights off on them down there. See how that works for them.

Though US Vice President J.D. Vance doesn't think Canada's chances of winning are very good. As President Trump often says, they just don't have the cards. There is no way that Canada can win a trade war with the United States. I'm Catherine Cullen and this week on The House, what could Canada's economy look like in just a few short days? And how effectively is this country preparing for a new road ahead when Canadian business leader weighs in? Plus, a Liberal candidate explains what it means when Mark Carney says the old relationship with the U.S.

on security and military cooperation is over. And our backroom panel on whether the Conservatives are missing the mark on Trump. But we begin with the U.S. President targeting one of Canada's biggest exports. The House is now in session. We're in the next round of this trade war, and this one could particularly hurt.

Donald Trump says this week he'll put in place 25% tariffs on auto imports and on Wednesday he's pledged reciprocal tariffs on the world. What could it all look like? Goldie Heider is the president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada. Goldie, thanks for making the time. Thanks Hugh for having me. Let's start with these auto tariffs. Can you describe for me what this is likely to look like in terms of people's jobs and the knock-on effects we're going to see in the coming weeks?

Well, one can still hope that they don't proceed. So I think every effort has to be made to prevent that from happening. But if it did proceed and if it went to the worst-case scenarios, you're talking about an industry that has about $51 billion worth of exports in which 93% of it is going to the United States. There are 500,000 jobs in the auto industry more broadly in Canada. I'm not just talking about the people who make the parts

or the dealers, it's the whole industry could be a half a million jobs. And so the trickle down effect of this could be very, very severe. And you're in a country where 55% of the auto parts, they're made here. And 95% of the vehicles that are manufactured or exported. So it's a complicated supply chain in an integrated way.

Very difficult if they were to proceed the way they're planning. How quickly would people start losing jobs? Well, look, the experts in the industry say the industry could shut down in a matter of a week or two, and so it wouldn't take long. Is there anything Canada can do to try to sort of lessen the blow of this particular set of tariffs, to try to manage this, to try to, you know, I think people are wondering, well, what about an industry

that's more focused on Canada? Well, those are not easy pivots to make. This is an integrated supply chain that's been built over decades. And so even the idea that they would just up and move to America, it doesn't work that way. And so it's very complicated. We have to get to the issues here.

First of all, honoring the trade agreement we have. Most of the, a large part of the USMCA agreement is in fact about the auto industry. And so let's find a mechanism and a means by which to get to the table to review and renew the USMCA. Something I point out is not only the president's agreement, but it's something he's never

disavowed or walked away from. And so let's not, let's not boil the ocean here. We have an agreement. Let's sit down and review and, and renew it and make it even, even stronger for all three countries. I mean, you say he hasn't disavowed or walked away from it. He has though, violated it. Yes, he's violated it.

I think it's different. And you have, sometimes you have to pay attention to not just what's said and done, but what's not said and what's not done. All the information that certainly I have from my interactions in Washington is the USTR, the trade representative, is continuing to explore how to review and renew this trade agreement. And I think we should pursue that before we go too far, too fast, too soon. It may not be necessary. I want to stay in a moment for the sort of more short to medium term threat of tariffs because obviously it's not just auto tariffs. We have this so-called liberation day where the United States says it's going to put in

place reciprocal tariffs globally. Give me a sense of the size of this. I know we don't know, but what are you bracing for in terms of how big an impact this could be on Canada's economy? Well, look, what is known is nobody does really know exactly what's coming or not coming, and that's them telling us this. We don't know. Different facets of the administration have different opinions of what is or isn't coming. What we do know is there's an intention to produce sort of a product-by-product table of global products. You can imagine how long that list will be to determine where it is that America

feels it needs to impose reciprocal tariffs. There is three categories that are being described. I'm just going to, for the sake of ease, call them, you know, small, medium and large. The large ones are the biggest abusers in the minds of the, of the United States. The good news is Canada is actually bucketed probably in the small category, which means the tariffs would be at the lower end. And most people believe that while they figure out how to do these product by product tables, the tariffs could be around the 10% range.

Donald Trump has also said that if Canada works with, say, the EU to try to hit back against these kinds of things, that he will then respond with even more force. Do you think that that should dissuade Canada from actions it might take on counter tariffs? No, I think it's really important that Canadians recognize that our response cannot be a yin to every yang. We cannot just keep responding to everything that takes place. Our economy is a tenth of their size. The prime minister has previously indicated that there um, you know, uh, we,

there are limits to what we can do. I think there's this general sense that if they're the G one, you're not going to be able to do it for a long haul, which is why we believe let's turn the temperature down. It was encouraging to see that a constructive call was, uh, took place between the president and the prime minister, one that respects our sovereignty, respects our prime minister, respects our country by, you know, by reminding everyone it is Canada an independent country. So there is hope to build on here, to get to a

table, to have a more constructive dialogue frankly on how to review and renew a trade agreement that has been working and if there's areas that, you know, each country feels that we can do better, let's do that but let's not lose sight of the fact that tariffs are taxes that create inflation and could run the risk of creating a recession in North America and that would be and beyond. We have to prevent that from happening. I know you don't want to be partisan. We are in the middle of an election campaign, but broadly, how effective do you think Canada is being in terms of trying to meet this difficult moment, this moment of change right now? Well, in fairness to everybody, there's no playbook. There's really no playbook to see

what we're seeing here and to be able to respond not only on the fly, but sometimes keep up with one announcement in the morning, which turns out to be something else by the end of the day. I think everybody's doing the best that they can. I think Canadians are looking for all of us, whether it's in the business community or in the labor community or in others to say, let us rise to the moment. Let us meet this moment. And in many ways, this is not only a wake up call for Canada, but frankly, I think we may look back at it if we do what we need to do to also reorient ourselves by not only stabilizing the relationship with the Americans, but also seeing this as the reminder that

we do need to diversify. We do need to diversify. We do need to build infrastructure. We do need to get out of our own way within our provincial trade barriers. So let's use this crisis as an opportunity to strengthen Canada for the long haul. Thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you for having me. The business council of Canada's Goldie Heider.

Trump's new auto tariffs has thrown a wrench into this sprint election campaign. How are the parties prepared to deal with the trade war and the other issues driving voters' concerns? We hope to talk with a candidate from each party over the course of this campaign. This week we have Mark Miller.

He is the liberal candidate in Ville Marie. We spoke late Friday. Thank you for coming on the house. To the auto worker, the auto part worker, the server at the restaurant across the street from the auto plant, all of these people who are afraid they could be unemployed

before this election campaign is over, what will you do for them? I don't want to minimize the risk, Catherine, and it is a very real one, given all of what we've heard from President Trump ever since he was sworn in, even before. But we've said time and time again that we're going to fight for them, whether that's making sure that they can keep their jobs, have great paying jobs in the best country in the world, or in the event that tariffs do come in, that we will make sure that they are taken care

of. That is the number one priority of any prime minister. I think if we've seen Prime Minister Carney in the nine days he was prime minister before the election was announced and currently now during the election, he's clearly said he's going to fight for these people. But we're there for them. I think at the same time that that is true, I don't want to minimize their fears because they are very real

and this is something that we could be facing for the next four years with our partner to the south of us where the trust in the relationship has been lost. You say we're going to fight for them and it is interesting that you choose those words when you contrast them with what US Vice President JD Vance was saying on Friday while visiting Greenland. I'd like you to listen. The Canadian leadership threatening retaliatory tariffs against the United States, as President Trump often says, they just don't have the cards. There is no way that Canada can win a trade war with the United States. They have a much bigger economy. Isn't he right? There's no doubt that in an economic relationship where 80% of our commercial flow goes to the US, that the US does have the ability to hurt us.

But I think what's sometimes misunderstood by our American friends is that we can make life hard on them and we're ready to dig in. We have the moral resolve. We've seen the wave of patriotism that has washed over the country in the last few months. And I think that's heartening, but it's in the face of a very real threat. Make no mistake, the US can hurt us, but we can hurt back in very, very targeted ways. And the US knows that. So I think it's in their interest to make sure that we have the best commercial relationship possible in the world.

We've been able to demonstrate that through NAFTA and USMCA. But these are difficult times. And as we've seen, we've been prepared for this from day one, and it's something that Canadians would expect us to do, Catherine, because it is potentially a million jobs that are on the line that are and do have a dependency on the US economy. But I would say that our pain threshold is pretty high, and we're ready to take a lot and ready to dig in for the long term. We don't want it to get to this, and I do say this cautiously, but the discussion with the

president that Prime Minister Carney had on Friday was positive. But I don't want to pretend that that is the end of the story or that isn't the end of the game of yo-yo that we've all seen in the relationship, again, where the trust has been broken. So we're ready for this. We're ready to fight. And I think that's what Canadians expect us to do for them. If you're saying our pain threshold is high, what is the pain you're envisaging Canadians

having to live through? What does that pain look like in people's lives in order to get to the other side of this? I think the very real possibility of a recession on both sides of the border, something that looks a bit like what we saw in 2008. As you know, in 2008, we had Mr. Carney playing a very important role at making sure that we got out of this. So it's not that we haven't seen this before, and indeed, this will be different if it does come to fruition, but it will mean job losses, It will mean an economy that contracts. But it will also mean that we have to adjust. And we've seen throughout this campaign that Prime Minister Cardin

has made some announcements to continue to diversify our economy, make sure that we look outwards. Indeed, his first couple trips as Prime Minister in the nine days that he had before launching the election, he went to both France and Great Britain. And that's an important signal to the rest of the world that we need to band together and work together with a protectionist country in the US that is intent on raising cash quickly through tariffs, which may work in the short term, but in the long term are bad for all

economies involved. I mean, you point out that Mr. Carney dealt with this in 2008. The conservatives have been quick to point out that it was Stephen Harper who was actually at the helm of the country at the time. But you also referenced that phone call between Mark Carney and Donald Trump on Friday. They made plans to start negotiating after an election campaign. The Bloc has said it is not appropriate for Mr. Carney to be, in the words of Francois Blanchet, pretending he will still be prime minister when we don't know yet.

Mr. Blanchet called this preposterous. Is Mr Carney out of line to be doing this, to be making plans for after the election when he hasn't won it? One thing is for sure, Catherine, is that Francois Blanchet will never be Prime Minister. He has the luxury of making these statements

in what I believe is a cavalier fashion with respect to a country that he wants to break up. Mark Carney, in his role as the candidate for prime minister, has to demonstrate this to Canadians. So he's in that position, as you allude to on election day, but also as the prime minister currently has to run the country. So he has to be responsible and measured in his answers and prepare for what might happen while convincing Canadians that he is the person that should be there.

So whoever is prime minister after election day, and I truly believe and I will fight as hard as hell to make sure that it is Mark Carney, will have to get into a series of very, very difficult negotiations. And no one deserves to be in that position if they don't make sure that they're putting the interest of Canadians first in this or in any negotiation with the United States. I'd like you to help me understand something that Mr Carney said this week. He said the old relationship we had with the U.S. based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over. I think we all understand economic integration is probably not the path forward. But what does it mean to say the old relationship

when it comes to tight security and military cooperation is over? Well, whether you're talking about NORAD, NATO, USMCA, NAFTA, the AutoPact, they're all legal documents in addition to the UN Charter, but they've all been thrown into some degree of question and precarity based on the lack of trust that's been infused through a very heated dialogue and toxic dialogue from the south of us during the election,

but also after the swearing in of President Trump. Is it a negotiation tactic? Perhaps. And perhaps it'll achieve a position that Mr. Trump believes puts him in a position of strength. But what it does do in the long term is undermine the trust that has existed between peoples who are close and the closest relationship that we have ever had as neighbors. My two kids are born in the US.

So it's more than just economic relationships. It's one that is based on blood relationships, tightness that we've had through war and through economic strife. And that trust is broken. When the trust is broken, you can have the strongest economic relationship, but the business certainty isn't there. And when you negotiate and use business uncertainty as a tool, it has impacts far above and beyond the actual goal that Mr. Trump is trying to achieve. But that is a card that we have to deal with and we will have to deal that knowing the business mind of the person on the other side who happens to be in one of the most military powerful, economically powerful countries in the world. I do want to understand though, can you give me one example

of something we will no longer do with the United States on the military front because this old relationship military cooperation is no longer the case? Well I think you've seen a lot of question marks about our ongoing procurement process. I think the United States itself has put into question our ability to support them. We've always been, and we've always been partners, whether it's through the First and Second World Wars, whether it is in Korea or in Afghanistan, fighting side by side. And that requires a tight relationship. So I don't want to say it's completely over, but when that trust is undermined, it does put into question not only the safety and security of the North American perimeter,

but also the relationship that goes much further and much deeper than that. Are you saying that that is in jeopardy now? It absolutely is if you can't reestablish that trust. We do work above and beyond just prime minister to president. There is tight integration in our forces, reestablish that trust. We do work above and beyond just prime minister to president. There is tight integration in our forces, in our border safety and things that we do on a routine basis, for example, to make sure that the border is the safest border to cross in the world.

We hope that those things don't go away, but we've seen with recent anecdotal evidence of people being detained that that is still a question mark. Again, I'm not saying it's absolute uncertainty, but there is a much larger degree of uncertainty that's been injected to a relationship that has been based on certainty trust than we've had, for example, even six months ago. And that's just reality that we'll have to deal with at least for the next four years. You've raised a lot of interesting questions. Unfortunately, we are entirely out of time, but we appreciate your time today. Thank you, Mark Miller. Thank you for having me.

Liberal candidate and former cabinet minister, Mark Miller. Coming up on the House pod, reflections from the road will take you inside what life is like on the campaign trail. Stay with us. I'm Catherine Cullen. You're listening to the House. Making politics make sense. Make sure you give us a follow so you never miss an episode. You're listening to The House. Making politics makes sense. Make sure you give us a follow so you never miss an episode. You'll also get our pop-up election podcast, House Party. Two shows, one feed. What a deal!

When an election campaign starts, CBC reporters fan out across the country to cover the different political parties. We've asked our reporters on the road to send us postcards or you know voice memos if you prefer to tell us what they're seeing on the trail. Hey Katherine, I'm Marina von Stockenburg traveling with the NDP campaign. Being on the road with the New Democrats is very different from the bigger political parties because the NDP don't have the money the others do. And so covering them means keeping some pretty close quarters.

When you get on the bus to follow their campaign, leader Jagmeet Singh is sitting in one of the seats. Reporters are in the front, Singh and his staff are in the back, and all of us are squishing past each other to get on and off. And it can get kind of awkward. We're taking calls from our assignment desks back in Ottawa answering their questions within Singh's earshot about how the NDP are polling worse than they have in decades and could even lose official party status in this election. Now to be clear our news organizations pay for all of us to be on this campaign. We are independent and we can and will

report on what happens any way we want. But it still leads to some kind of odd experiences. We'd gone to Hamilton, the steel capital of Canada. It is a place obviously deeply impacted by Trump's tariffs. But instead of talking to steelworkers or announcing a policy for them, Singh met with some seniors. So all the reporters were asking him pointed questions. Did you miss the moment, Mr Singh? Do you think the NDP still has the support of working-class Canadians? After we finished, the cameras turned off, we packed up, and then we all hopped back on the same bus together.

[♪ music playing on the radio and radio playing on the radio. Hey Catherine, it's JP Tassar covering the conservative campaign this week. You know, this is my third federal election campaign tracking the Tory leader, but it's a lot different this time. We're flying solo. That's because unlike previous years, the conservatives aren't letting journalists travel with them. The party does have a campaign playing with Poliev's name emblazoned on the fuselage. And the concertos invite us to take pictures of this snazzy jet when they unveiled it this week

so we could capture some visuals for our TV stories, but we couldn't go further than the tarmac. So that's left me and my colleagues booking last minute commercial flights and driving around in rental cars, trying to track Poliev down on our own. It's like planes, trains, and automobiles, except there's no John Candy. It's been a whirlwind of wrong turns and that Google Maps voice isn't happy with us.

Make a U-turn, you know, return to the route. And there's frantic calls to our travel agent as things change on the fly. How to get around our huge country on short notice isn't the only challenge though. The Conservatives are only allowing journalists to ask four, maybe five questions a day. Right-wing media, local journalists, and ethnic news outlets are in the mix. That means there's sometimes only one question set aside for all the national news reporters who've been traveling to catch up with them. And many of the questions have been about Donald Trump and his tariffs. And Poliev has been trying to step carefully,

condemn the president's threats without being too negative about someone who some conservative voters like. It's tricky, just like keeping track of my own travel and keeping that Google Maps voice happy. Hi, it's Tom Perry on the Liberal campaign. Mark Carney talks a lot about how he's not a politician. His background, of course, is in finance. He's never been elected to public office and sometimes it shows. Carney kicked off his campaign in St. John's this week and while I won't say he was shaky, his stump speech lacked a little sparkle.

When politicians are polished, they know how to hit their applause lines. The points in their speech where they're looking to get a big cheer from supporters. Carney wasn't quite hitting them on the first night, but as the week went on, he got better. In fact, at one point I asked one of his staffers whether he was practicing his speech at the end of the day to hit his cues better, and he was. Now, the other thing that politicians have to sometimes deal with when they're giving a speech is hecklers.

And Carney got some of those later in the week in Kitchener. Now the first time, the first time someone interrupted him, Carney looked rattled. He stumbled a bit. But he got back to his speech as security guards escorted the heckler out of the room. The second time it happened, Carney was more at ease. And when a third heckler started shouting at him, Carney shot back at them and then just kept rolling along. So, Carney may not be a politician, but it does look like he's a quick study. And in this short campaign, he'll need to be.

Hey Catherine, it's Raffy Bouducani on Traveling with the Bloc Québécois. On Wednesday, Yves-François Blanchet held a small rally on Montreal's North Shore. He focused completely on his prepared remarks, the potential for the Energy East pipeline project to return to Quebec as both conservative and liberal leaders have been speaking of national energy corridors. This is a boogeyman in La Belle Provence, traditionally unpopular with many voters. The thing is, this event was held right after the auto sector tariff news announced by US President Donald Trump. And I found it surprising that Blanchet did not touch on that threat at all. I know

he's good at improvising, this is his third campaign, and I've watched him fold the news of the day into his stump speeches before. Just earlier in the week he pounced on the news when Liberal leader Mark Carney made mistakes about Quebec. Carney flubbed the name of a high-profile candidate and got the location of the horrific Polytechnique shooting wrong. He also ducked out of a second French language debate, leading to its cancellation. I bumped into one of Blanche's candidates at a rally.

He insisted, this shows how much Carney does not know about Quebec. I asked him if these kinds of mistakes will really matter to Quebecers who are worried about Trump's tariffs. He said they will. And then I asked, is that because the Bloc intends to remind Quebecers of these flubs every step of the way in this campaign? He broke into a mile-wide smile.

Exactly, he said. And that's the view from the road. Back in Ottawa, all the campaign headquarters, or war rooms as they're usually called, are in high gear. My next panelists have all experienced those rooms powered by adrenaline and a lot of coffee. We brought these strategists together Friday afternoon to offer us some insights into how the campaign is playing out. Marcy Serks, former senior advisor to Justin Trudeau, now chief strategy officer at Compass Rose. Kate Harrison, conservative strategist and vice chair at Summa Strategies.

And George Soule, former director of communications for the NDP. Thank you all for being here. Good to be here. Yeah, thank you. Good to be back. Marcy, I'm going to start with you. One of the early notes out of this call between Mark Carney and Donald Trump are very positive. Donald Trump is a little unpredictable.

How much do you think Mark Carney's political success rests on Donald Trump's temperament right now? I think Mr. Carney is staking all of his political success on this relationship with Mr. Trump. So yes, we saw today a first pronouncement from the president by all accounts. It seemed positive, as positive as anything we have heard out of the mouth or out of the truth social account of the president in quite some time. There can still be another shoe to drop. I think anybody who is watching, even casual observers, but those who are

watching this more closely will know that we cannot rest just on our laurels and believe that one phone call and one positive social media accounting of it is enough. This is just the beginning of what is undoubtedly going to be a complicated relationship as all relationships with Mr. Trump are.

However, a good first step, it seems, for Mr. Carney. Kate, on Friday, Pierre Poliev was saying, you know, we're all hoping that the call went well with Mr. Trump. But while he may have the best of intentions for Canada's future electorally, it's probably not great for the conservatives that things seem to be off on a good note with Donald Trump and Mark Carney. I think Marcy makes a good point that the Trump of today is not necessarily the Trump of tomorrow. Or five minutes later.

Right. So I think it's important right now that all political leaders be invested in this relationship and the conversations, et cetera, being productive. I am not totally convinced that Mark Carney and the Liberals won't somehow find a way to play up perhaps the tension and the fervour that maybe he brought to that conversation because it is good for them politically to have Trump as a foe.

That's how they have really positioned themselves in this campaign is that antithesis to Trump. So I think for Polio and the conservatives, it's important right now to thread the needle between being sincere about wanting this relationship to go well because it's in the best interest of Canadians. And I'd note we don't yet have clarity on what's going to happen April 2 based on the president's social post, but also trying to put the ball back in the liberal's court to say, okay, just 24 hours ago you said this relationship was over.

What does the alternative look like? I'm getting some whiplash between the president's accounting of how things went and what Mr Carney said yesterday in terms of the economic integration and the military cooperation now being a thing of the past. ≫ George, I am going to bring you in here

just as the NDP wants to be a part of this discussion, but Marcy, I saw you nodding there. You agree with what Kate is saying about Carney needing Trump to be something of a foe? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, politics is a game of contrast. It's a game of opponents defining your opponents. That's what it all comes down to at the end of the day. And right now for the Liberal Party of Canada, the best boogeyman, the best opponent is the president of the United States. That's where the salience is for their campaign and I agree with Kate that the Liberals will play that to their advantage. However, that manifests in the coming hours and days. George, how does the NDP get into this conversation? Because all indications are

they're just being squeezed out right now. Well, I think some of this comes out even just how this conversation was described, right? I think talking about the need for contrast and that being part of politics, I think one of the things that the Conservative campaign and Pierre Polyev himself are struggling with is how much of a contrast they can be to Trump. I'm not suggesting that they're the same person, but a good chunk, not all, but a good chunk of Pierre Polyev's support do actually like Donald Trump, somewhere between a quarter and a third of those voters. So he needs to defend Canada without also saying that Trump's too bad a person because a lot of his votes do actually like him.

And at the same time, I think the Liberals need to be a bit careful by not looking too eager to have this fight. But is there any world where the NDP and Jagmeet Singh just don't get totally squeezed out? That is what the polls are suggesting. Well, yeah, I mean, the polls are what they are. And you know, I'm not pretending that they're nice right now, but I will say that like in 2011, a week before the debates, we were at 13% and we came back to win 103 seats, which isn't to say the same thing is going to happen again, but we're also not going

to get washed out to shore. Okay. So I do want to ask you about that because last week on the show, we had Anne McGrath, senior strategist with the campaign and I asked her, is this an existential election? And she said no. And I thought of that moment when I saw on the poll tracker this week that the NDP is projected to get four seats. It does seem like an existential election for the NDP. Look at what happened in Ontario, the most

recent election. With 13%, they held on to almost their entire caucus. I think what people see when they get new Democrat elected officials are people who stay in the community, work in the community, understand them. So those seats get a lot more sticky. So we might have low numbers but do well on each of those writings again. I think you're going to see that in this election.

And again, there's still a fair bit of campaign left for people to be looking for somebody who not only fights Donald Trump but can actually help Canadians when the impact of what's happening with Trump comes. And I think that's the place where they do trust the NDP. Okay, I want to turn to some of the challenging issues that each of the campaigns have faced. Kate, I'm going to start with some of the conservative infighting that we saw this week. It is spilled out into the open when we saw Corey Tenik, who managed Doug Ford's campaign and also worked for Stephen Harper, leveled some public accusations, I guess, or certainly

concerns. Let's listen to some of what he had to say. Here are a few snippets. Look, I think for the conservatives, you know, in the campaign cockpit, every buzzer and alarm is going off. And the plane is like going zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz tonight and hopefully this will permeate the the conservative party war room somewhere. You've got to get on the $%&%$% ballot question that that is driving votes. Or you are going to lose. So that was an event in Toronto at the Empire Club. Kate, do you think the conservative war room is listening to

Cory tonight's message? I think that they are listening to conservatives everywhere. I think that the conservatives federally are not the same party and they don't have the same leader as the conservatives in the province. And what might work for Doug Ford does not

necessarily work for Pierre Polyev. And I would compare just the incumbent government situation. Doug Ford could have a bit of a different fight with Donald Trump, much more akin, frankly, to the one that Mark Carney I think can have than necessarily Pierre Poliev is able to. My assessment as well, when you look at

the polling and you dig into the generational divide that exists and where accessible voters live, I think for the federal conservatives, it's not on the question of Trump. It is on the question of cost of living. It is on the question of cost of living. It is on the question of housing and immigration. So I'm not suggesting that the conservatives

don't have a message on Trump. I think Poliev has been doing a good job talking about his frustrations with the president, talking about the need to be more self-reliant. He's providing a lot more detail there than Mr. Carney is. But I would submit that that is not the ballot question that is going to help the federal conservatives.

I think the ballot question that will help them is around cost of living, affordability, and frankly the problems in the track record that brought Canadians to this place of vulnerability based on the last nine years. I take note of your words. The ballot question that will help them. And it's one thing to identify the ballot question that will help you, but it's another thing to see what the ballot question is

writ large. And I talk to conservatives who tell me on the doorsteps all they're hearing about is Donald Trump. Two-thirds of voters still say that their number one issue is cost of living and affordability. I think that there is a link that

conservatives can make between the policies of the last nine years, yes, the threat and the impact of tariffs and this existential threat that Canadians face without it having this be a referendum on Donald Trump alone. I think that there are still a lot of Canadians and I would really emphasize younger Canadians in particular who still want the dream of home ownership, who are concerned about not being able to find employment. Trump is not their issue and those are the people for the first time in many, many years that are open to voting conservative. So I think we do have to be mindful of the fact that it's largely

comfortable boomers who are worried about Donald Trump. Those people are not with the conservatives this time and the conservatives need to recognize that and go to where the votes actually are. And I think that that's young people and young families, including in the suburbs of Toronto. Marcy, for Mark Kearney, a lot of the friction he has been facing this week, it's the constant attacks on his time in the private sector. He chaired Brookfield Asset Management. It's a huge company. Political opponents are finding a lot to criticize in the track record of Brookfield and some of the work that Mr Kearney did there. For instance, this week it was revealed he co-chaired funds that used Bermuda as a tax shelter. Now we

want to be crystal clear, it's not illegal what he's doing, but his explanation for why in his view this was totally fine, I found it, I have to say, a little bit unclear. He knows these attacks are coming on his record from the private sector. Should he be better prepared? Well, I think that the overarching issue for Mr. Carney in terms of the Achilles heel for his campaign is, as we have discussed before, that he is an untested commodity. We do not know from a political perspective how he will perform under pressure. We know exactly how Mr. Poliev will perform under pressure. We have been watching him in a pressure cooker

situation in front of the big lights for almost two decades. Mr. Carney absolutely has had public profile for a very long time, but this is a different game. And going into a campaign of this sort is unprecedented, coming right out of a leadership. No one from any party has ever attempted to come out of a leadership

campaign, never having run for public office before, concurrently running for the first time in his own riding in Nepean, and running a general election campaign at this level while also governing. This is unprecedented. Should he be more prepared? Of course, the campaign should be prepared for what they can anticipate and also recognize that a political neophyte who is in this fight for his life, his political life, is undoubtedly going to have some learning

to do. The learning curve is incredibly steep. It would be for anyone in this circumstance. But that is the soft underbelly of this campaign. And naturally, what could potentially derail the campaign. So yes, they have got to be better prepared for these answers. I just want to say very quickly, I think Kate is very compelling in her answer about where the

Conservatives can find votes. I think she is right to say that. But if the overarching ballot question doesn't meet the moment, it's going to be tough to find enough votes. You talk about Mark Carney as a political neophyte. He has been through several campaigns. Yet this week, he's in southwestern Ontario,

he's not actually talking about tariffs even though an announcement is imminent. They had to rejig the plan, they had reporters shouting questions after them. Why is the NDP struggling with this issue

struggling with this issue struggling with this issue of being on top of where the conversation is about Trump and tariffs? I haven't seen that he has been to be honest. I think we're there.

We started off with some early meetings and discussions and a very early endorsement by the steelworkers and then also getting that from the transit workers as well and CUPE, the largest public sector union in the country

as well. So really working with those workers to say, you know, how can we support you and have your backs in these situations? And been in Southwestern Ontario, yesterday, it wasn't that they weren't there, it was that, you know, unlike I would imagine the Prime Minister's office, we didn't have a heads up that there was a conversation coming or an announcement coming from the United States. But as soon as we heard that was happening, Jigmeet was able to turn around the campaign overnight and then go down and be in Windsor to actually

deal with that issue head on. I think talking about the other leaders, you know, Pierre Poliev has spent his entire life in opposition and even when he was in government, he was the attack dog and had a kind of an opposition role even in government. And that's now how he was so successful over the last number of years. Now, you know, even as just Kate just said, finding those votes with the people who actually sympathize with Trump, it makes it complicated in this fight that we're having. Mark Carney, the time he spent in the private sector, he has made a lot of money for other millionaires and billionaires, which fair enough when you're working in the

private sector, no one's going after Mr. Carney for making money and making his clients money. But talking about some of these places like tax havens and things, he just puts it off and says, well, this is how you make money. That's great if you're in that business. But he's trying to run to be prime minister. Well, he currently is prime minister.

And the priority there should be making sure that Canada gets every cent that we can that we're due in taxation. His priority and his framing has always been how do you make the rich richer? That mentality makes it scary for people who are thinking this guy is going to be in charge of the country. Okay, we've only got a moment left here. Looking ahead, what is one thing you would like to see the party you are aligned with do in the next week, Kate? Quit worrying about the votes that you're not going to get and focus on the ones that you can.

I think the way you do that is through going back to the core issues that brought you significant support prior to the election. It's housing, it's immigration, it's crime. You double down on those and you try to let everybody know who isn't concerned about Trump and tariffs that you are the candidate to fix those problems. Marcy?

I think that the liberal campaign needs to stay the course in terms of the issue set that it is prosecuting in terms of Canadian sovereignty and growing prosperity for Canadians from coast to coast to coast would like to see more of a candidate slate unveiled. It needs to be Mr. Carney and team and we need to see some new faces. That is the most important thing to do to signal some change and some refresh blood on the bench. George. Yeah, I think obviously forming government is the goal for every party that's running

here. But I will say that I think as we get moved through this campaign, reminding folks of the questions they have hanging over Mr. Carney, and as a liberal majority or minority looks more and more likely, that the NDP positions themselves and reminds folks locally, elect your local New Democrat so they can hold the liberals to account. Interesting stuff. So glad to have this conversation with all three of you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Liberal Marcy Serks, Conservative Kate Harrison and New Democrat George Soule. Throughout this campaign, we're going to take you to some of the most interesting ridings in the country. The tightest races, the dynamics that tell us something important about the bigger national contest. First up, we are focused on Elmwood Transcona in Winnipeg. The CBC's Bartley Kivis is a reporter in the Winnipeg newsroom. Hey, Bartley, thanks for joining me. Glad to be here.

So you chose Elmwood Transcona as a key riding to watch. Why? Well, historically this is an NDP stronghold in Manitoba, but it's an NDP stronghold where the second place party is and has been for decades, conservatives. It is an orange blue back and forth riding, even though the Harper conservatives in 2011 were the only conservative government that ever held this seat. But conservatives have always finished second here. You have to go back

to the 90s to find the liberals there in second place. And that was a year when we still had a reform and a progressive conservative party. And I mean, it's interesting because of course we look at the national numbers and it doesn't seem like they're necessarily going to be a lot of NDP strongholds left at this point. No. And like you think there should be an NDP MP or a couple in Manitoba historically, but really even here the vote is cratered. There was a research poll here a couple in Manitoba historically, but really even here the vote is cratered. There was a research poll here a couple of weeks ago and that is a Manitoba firm polling

on behalf of the Winnipeg Free Press that found that NDP support in this province was down to 9% and at that level, no NDP seat is safe, not Winnipeg Center, not Churchill Q8 Newkasky. Wow. So, what this means is with the liberals and the conservatives way up and the NDP down low, this is a huge opportunity for the conservatives to take the seat. There was a by-election here back in September. Conservatives had a union member named Colin Reynolds and he lost narrowly to the NDP's Lila Dance. And now if there is any kind of bleed from the NDP over to the liberals,

the conservatives and Colin Reynolds have a heck of a chance to take it. So what are the NDP going to do about that? Well, the NDP are banking on some kind of familiarity with Leela Dance. I mean, she's a huge incumbent in the sense that she's been here for eight months, so she's had an opportunity for people to get to know her a little bit. And they're preaching a message that, you know, that a vote for the Liberals in Elwood Transcona is going to elect a Conservative. Now, I spoke to Leela Dance and I asked her if it's going to be hard for her to hold on onto her seat.

She doesn't think the liberals will split the vote. I guess it depends what poll you look at, but I think in this riding specifically, and the reason why we're talking, in the blue orange riding, when we're looking at the liberal numbers going up, it doesn't matter here in Elmwood, Transcona, right? When we look at in the by-election,

the liberals got less than 5% in this riding. If you look at the 2015 wave, the Trudeau wave, this seat, orange again. So I think it's really important that when we're thinking about keeping the Polievsk conservatives out of, we need to vote strategically here. And that's an interesting message.

Is that a message you're making at the door? Yeah, because I am hearing there are some people who are more invested now because of what's happening in the US, right? People are following a little bit more, so then are also now following the liberal race and are maybe even a little bit more connected now that certainly than what they were during the by-election.

So I'm just having that conversation with them. Bartlett, that's fascinating because when we think about strategic voting so often, it's something that actually hurts the NDP. Leela Dance is trying to use it to her advantage. Do you think it's going to work? I think it has already happened. If you look at the by-election, liberal

support was only 5%. I spoke to a liberal supporter who suggested this phenomenon is going to continue. His name is Mike Poitras. I see him in a cafe. He's wearing one of these blue Canada is not for sale hats, the kind popularized by Ontario premier Doug Ford. He says he's a huge liberal supporter.

He couldn't stand Justin Trudeau. He likes Carney, but he is going to be voting for Lila Dance and the NDP. My politics is definitely liberal. I'm not far left and I'm not far right. So I've always been more in the center. I see dangers in not far left and I'm not far right so I've always been more in the center. I see dangers in the far left, I see dangers in the far right. Basically I'm anything but conservative. With Pierre Poliev there's just too much

Trump-like qualities that at this point I'm not willing to risk and I think there's a lot of hard right people in his party that I'm scared of, frankly. So in this riding here, NDP has served us well. I'm going to stick with the NDP. I get the fact that if I was in any other riding, I would probably go liberal. It's really interesting. What did voters tell you about what was drawing them to vote for conservatives? Okay, so I sat down with a conservative voter named Don Gale. Now this guy could be a poster boy for a Transcona voter. He runs a Manitoba

major junior hockey team. He loves ice fishing. He's worked for Manitoba Hydro for ages. I'm retiring in two months. Two months? How many years at Hydro? Just over 30. Now here's a question I always ask electricians go, what was the worst shock you ever got on the job? I got blown up in 2000. Literally blown up. I was in an explosion with a hydro transformer. Whoa. Yeah, he's a real deal.

He comes from a long line of NDP voters. He's not just blue collar. I mean, he was born into an orange family, but he's just very blue period is a big conservative fan. We were all NDP years growing up. Couldn't change my parents ways of thinking if you tried. Well I think their idea behind the NDP was that they were for the working man and like more common people voted NDP. I think it's a lot of case in Transcona. People don't really look beyond the NDB because it was just built

into them that they had to vote NDP. It was in their families, it's a DNA. And people need to think for themselves and what's best. They don't realize that at the end of the day, we're getting taxed to death because of this NDB government and this Liberal government. It's the taxes are through the roof. So the conservative candidate in Elmwood Transcona is Colin Reynolds, who I've mentioned before. And he's just like Don Gale, he is an electrician. And Gale likes Reynolds and also says Pierre Poliev will do more for blue collar workers too. He's an electrician. I'm a journeyman electrician. So we have that in common. I think he's just a common blue collar hardworking man that wants to do what's best for Transcona. I think he's just a common blue-collared hard-working man that wants to do what's best for transcona.

I think we need to get somebody in there that has a conservative background if that's the way the country is gonna go. Hopefully they go blue. Pierre Pauliev would do a wonderful job. I believe he genuinely cares about the regular blue-collared person. People say, oh, he's never had nothing because he's been a politician his whole life. Well, that's the career path that he chose. And to me, what I've seen and listened to what he's had to say is he wants everything to be done for everybody in the country, not just the rich.

He's looking after everybody. But at the same time, he wants to balance the budget. OK, this is interesting because you can tell he has really been listening to what Pierre Poliev has been saying, and yet the Conservative message wasn't strong enough the last time out in the by-election. So what are the Conservatives going to do differently to try to help their fortunes here in this race? Well, I asked for an interview with Colin Reynolds, but the Conservatives didn't respond.

So I sat down instead with Keith Polson. He's a longtime campaigner for Manitoba PC candidates and for the federal conservatives. In the 2021 federal election, he ran the entire Manitoba campaign for the Aeronautal conservatives. He says Elmwood Transcona is becoming more conservative all the time and stats can't bears this out. The writings become more affluent, more suburban. There are also more newcomers. To Keith Polson, this election is a great opportunity

for the Conservatives to take Elmwood Transcona. If you'd said to me, quite frankly, three years ago, you know, that the NDP and Transcona would be in save the furniture mode, I'd be going, nah, I can't see it. Campaigns matter, right? And this campaign will matter. They'll have to, everybody will be working hard. I know that the Conservatives are very motivated to win this

Friday, right? So that is going to be a problem for the NDP right off because they're going to be fending off from the right end from the left because the Liberals are taking their left. Now remember, the NDP is polling polling very very low in Manitoba despite Wabkanoo's NDP government and their popularity. Keith Polson thinks the Conservatives will pull it off this year in Elmwood Trendscoa. This is a seat that the Conservatives should be happy about running a good ground game in. Just get out there, pull out every vote. Don't worry so much about the chatter you hear from the national campaigns because it's it's just chatter This is going to be a true ground game between the conservatives and the NDP

Those are great battles and I really looking forward to it. Do I think that the conservatives are going to win this one? I do I really do Okay, so Bartley he's suggesting that the NDP should really be sweating this race. What is your sense? How worried are they? Well, you know, I can't get inside minds. But at the same time, Lela Dance acknowledges the importance of strategic voting in writing and is very candid about it.

She says she doesn't care about the polls. I think that I am always going to be the person to just continue to door knock until my legs fall off and put myself in front of as many people. And whether that's strategic or not, it's really just about having people have a chance to voice their opinions, share their thoughts,

share their beliefs with me. And I'll do it every day until election day and we'll just keep pushing for it. Bartley, it's just fascinating to hear how some of these wild national numbers are playing out on the ground in communities. Thank you so much for bringing us this. You're more than welcome. The CBC's Bartley Kivis in Winnipeg.

Okay, that is it for us this week. Remember to give us a follow because then you'll also get our pop-up election pod, House Party. Every Wednesday a couple of political nerd friends and I discuss one big burning campaign question. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts. Our crew on the house this week is Caitlin Crocker, Emma Godmeier, Benjamin Lopez-Steven, and our senior producer is Jennifer Chevalier. I'm Catherine Cullen. Thank you for listening.