At Issue this week: With U.S. President Donald Trump refusing to bend on tariffs, is there any point in Canadian politicians going to Washington for further talks? As Mark Carney gets ready to take over as prime minister, who will fill his cabinet? Plus, can 24 Sussex Drive be saved?
00:00 Canada-U.S. tariff tensions
07:15 Carney's approach to cabinet
17:12 Future of 24 Sussex Drive
#canada #Politics #News
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The National is the flagship of CBC News, showcasing award-winning journalism from across Canada and around the world. Led by Chief Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault and Ian Hanomansing, our team of trusted reporters helps you make sense of the world, wherever you are.
00:00 Canada-U.S. tariff tensions
07:15 Carney's approach to cabinet
17:12 Future of 24 Sussex Drive
#canada #Politics #News
Subscribe to The National:
https://www.youtube.com/user/CBCTheNational?sub_confirmation=1
More from CBC News | https://www.cbc.ca/news
The National is the flagship of CBC News, showcasing award-winning journalism from across Canada and around the world. Led by Chief Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault and Ian Hanomansing, our team of trusted reporters helps you make sense of the world, wherever you are.
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NewsTranscript
00:00At issue tonight, Trump's trade war.
00:02Donald Trump says he will not bend on steel and aluminum tariffs.
00:06We've been ripped off for years and we're not going to be ripped off anymore.
00:09No, I'm not going to bend at all.
00:11Aluminum or steel.
00:12Canadian officials are meeting with the Commerce Secretary.
00:15Howard Lutnick has been critical of Canada's response.
00:18What does Canada do?
00:20They put a tariff on sports equipment.
00:23I mean, really?
00:24This is just, it's tone deaf.
00:27So, what does this meeting mean for trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada?
00:31Can cooler heads prevail?
00:33I'm Rosemary Barton here to break it down again tonight.
00:36Chantelle Hébert, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj.
00:38Good to see everyone.
00:39I mean, we are talking tariffs pretty much every week.
00:41But it's because they're on, they're off, they're back on.
00:45What I think was interesting this week, beyond that,
00:48was the way Howard Lutnick reached out to Doug Ford,
00:52asked for a meeting.
00:53Doug Ford, you know, not going ahead with the tariffs on energy.
00:57There's some interesting moves there.
00:59And I'm not sure what, if anything, they tell us.
01:02Chantelle?
01:04And then you turn to me.
01:05And then I turn to you.
01:07Yeah, right.
01:08I'm not sure that they mean a lot.
01:10I think what we've seen over the past month, month and a half,
01:14is that it doesn't really matter what any Secretary of State in this Cabinet says.
01:22Because in the end, the mood that Donald Trump has,
01:27depending on the time of the day or the night,
01:30is going to dictate for at least a few hours what policy will be in place.
01:35So whatever, it may have been a productive meeting.
01:39I don't know.
01:39We weren't in the room.
01:40But whether that is a step forward, I very much doubt.
01:46Why?
01:48Because I'm not convinced that it has any impact on where Donald Trump is going to take this.
01:54I believe the only thing that can have impact on this president and this administration
01:59is pressure from American voters and American business,
02:02not meeting with whoever, and as well-meaning and effective as they may be, Canadian politicians.
02:09But surely that proves the point a little bit, Andrew,
02:13that the tariff on energy that Doug Ford was threatening, 25% tariff, got their attention.
02:19And to the point that Howard Lutnick had to call him,
02:22and then the president rolled back the additional tariffs on steel and aluminum,
02:26he was threatening 50%.
02:27I mean, does that not show that some part of our strategy is working?
02:32Some part is.
02:33I'm not sure this part is.
02:36I think these meetings are, if anything, worse than useless.
02:41The premise of them is there's some set of demands,
02:44some reasonable demands that the United States has that we can at least go partway to meeting.
02:49And if we do that, we'll somehow resolve this conflict and put it to bed.
02:53I don't see any evidence that there's any such demands.
02:56I think Canadian negotiators, Canadian government officials,
02:59have tried in vain to find out what exactly might be those sort of demands.
03:04And I'll repeat what the prime minister said,
03:06that the most likely scenario, the most likely explanation of whatever is going through Donald Trump's head is
03:12that this is purely punitive, this is purely designed to harm the Canadian economy
03:17with a long-run ambition of making it so painful and so difficult to carry on as a country
03:21that people will be suing for peace, suing for annexation.
03:25Whether or not that's the case, it doesn't seem to me to be anything achieved by this
03:30except to make this normalized, to make them look reasonable,
03:33like they're involved in some kind of actual negotiation.
03:36As Chantal said, our best weapon in this is American public opinion.
03:43And every time the president slams on tariffs on Canadian exports, imports into the United States,
03:49he's hurting his own consumers and losing part of his base.
03:53So the best thing that we can do, it seems to me, is to keep the pressure on.
03:57Every time we apply tariffs, we may not be hurting them much directly with our tariffs,
04:01but we goad them into overreacting in the way that the president is given to doing
04:05and disqualifying himself and making himself look, as what he is, extreme and irrational.
04:11Althea?
04:13I think two things happened this week.
04:15One is actually Doug Ford was more successful, perhaps, than he intended to be
04:20in the sense that his message on American TV networks is going through.
04:25You know, the questions are being asked in the White House briefings about the tariffs.
04:30Fox News is talking about tariffs.
04:31Real people are googling, what are tariffs and how does it impact me?
04:35Like, it has creeped into everyday life of Americans and they're worried about prices going up.
04:41And his threat of cutting off the power got everybody scared.
04:45And the impact was that the White House panicked and decided to charge its own citizens for more.
04:53And then the kind of off-ramp that Howard Lutnick negotiated with Canada got Canada to ease.
05:01But it didn't help, you know, it saved American pain.
05:05It didn't help Canadians.
05:07But the background of that is actually, it feels like Doug Ford was freelancing on his own.
05:13And in that call with the Council of the Federation, he was told, like, you can't just do this
05:18because you're escalating a trade war that will affect the rest of us.
05:21So if we want to escalate, I think the message from this week was,
05:26we need to be united and sing from the same songbook.
05:30And we can't make big moves without everybody being on board.
05:34Yeah, and that's probably why Doug Ford today was saying things like,
05:37I'm speaking for myself, I'm not speaking for anybody else.
05:40Because other premiers sure didn't like that, Chantal.
05:43Yes, but Doug Ford is the leading premier in this battle.
05:48Why? Not just because he's comfortable with a four-year majority government that he's leading,
05:55but also because he leads the country's biggest economic engine.
06:02If a smaller province tried to do what he did, it would hardly get any attention in Washington.
06:08So he is part and parcel of the federal government strategy.
06:13I'm assuming that the time that Mark Carney spent with Premier Ford,
06:17more time than he has spent to date, as far as I can tell, with any premier.
06:21And the fact that that relationship with Finance Minister Dominique Leblanc
06:26and the Ontario premier is so strong,
06:29also means that the federal government is not being blindsided every step of the way by Ontario.
06:35No, I would suggest that Doug Ford is a convenient bad cop in these negotiations.
06:40Andrew, last word to you, then we'll take a break.
06:43Just took the words right out of my mouth.
06:47I'm generally in favor of premier singing from the same hymn book,
06:51ideally the federal hymn book in these things,
06:53and on the assumption that this is coordinated, and you can't always assume that with Doug Ford.
06:58But yeah, having this kind of loose cannon, if you will,
07:02and the Fed saying, look, we're not doing this, this is the premier of Ontario doing this,
07:08and you know what a loose cannon he is, it does have some effectiveness.
07:13At issue, Mark Carney's cabinet.
07:15The next prime minister is opting for a leaner cabinet focused on the trade war.
07:19Some ministers will be out, while others will see their roles change.
07:23Mark Carney will be sworn in tomorrow as our new prime minister,
07:27and it will be his prerogative to tell us who will be a part of his next cabinet.
07:33What will the Carney cabinet tell us about his approach and who will stay to take on Trump?
07:37Let's bring everyone back, Chantal, Andrew and Althea.
07:39Althea, we are all sort of doing what we do in Ottawa,
07:42which is trying to figure out who's going, who's staying.
07:45We don't always know, but we have a couple of things that we do know in terms of who's staying.
07:49Melanie Jolie, for instance, staying in the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs.
07:53What are you going to be watching for tomorrow?
07:56Well, basically, how much change is Mark Carney bringing?
08:00So we already know that the cabinet will be much smaller.
08:02How small, we don't yet know.
08:04I've tried to count. I can't get below 21, so I'm guessing it's around that.
08:09There already have been signals of huge changes.
08:12Some caucus members are calling it a purge.
08:15Mark Miller at immigration, Mark Holland at health.
08:18In some cases, I think these were surprises.
08:21Mr. Holland announced that he is not running again.
08:23Daniel Boutelier, fisheries minister out in Gaspé, is gone.
08:28Also is the Quebec lieutenant of Justin Trudeau and a Quebec City area minister, Jean-Yves Clou.
08:34In terms of the new people, well, I don't know about you, Rosie,
08:38but I've called a bunch of people today who are not answering their phones, who normally respond.
08:44So they're being good soldiers and not calling back and probably on their way to Ottawa tomorrow.
08:49So there's a lot of new faces, some promotions, I suspect.
08:54I should say that.
08:56And then I think it's, you know, how Mr. Carney positions himself
09:01in terms of what the message he wants to send.
09:04Mr. Trudeau did that with renaming ministries.
09:07Environment and climate change, for example, he had changed.
09:10The indigenous services portfolio he changed.
09:13Is he going to create new ministries that we don't have names yet to refocus our attention?
09:18I mean, it was interesting.
09:20I will note that they shuffled Stephen Guilbeau out of the environment and climate change portfolio.
09:25Apparently he's still in cabinet.
09:27But he is a lightning rod out west on the carbon tax issue, on the pipeline issue.
09:33And so removing him, I think, sends a strong signal.
09:36The fact that he remains in cabinet, though, is an olive branch, I think, to Quebecers.
09:40There's going to be a lot of, from what we understand, consolidating of ministries
09:43in order to get down to those numbers.
09:45The only way you can do it.
09:47Yeah.
09:48So you're going to, like, this is kind of the first test for Mr. Carney on a bunch of fronts, Chantal,
09:53because you're going to upset some people.
09:55The way that they seem to be selling it is to say, well, this is just the cabinet for now
09:59to get us, you know, into the election and through the election
10:02so we can deal with other things going forward.
10:04But tell me what you're watching for on that front in terms of how he manages people and their expectations.
10:11Well, for one, if you're going to cut the cabinet down to about 20,
10:15everybody is going to have a real job.
10:18I don't think you need to invent new portfolios.
10:20You have to consolidate what's around the table.
10:22Second, I think the most important thing to watch for is whether those front-line ministers
10:29who are dealing with the Canada-U.S. file on a daily basis are staying in place,
10:35starting with Finance Minister Dominique Leblanc.
10:38Because what you do not need is, at the beginning of an election campaign,
10:42people who are kind of on a learning curve in these portfolios.
10:48We've seen it this week.
10:49Stuff will happen that will require responses, government responses,
10:54between now and whenever the campaign ends in six or seven weeks.
10:58So you need ministers who actually know what they're doing, who have staff in place.
11:03Finally, yes, Stephen Guilbeau, as far as I can tell, I'm told, is getting larger responsibilities.
11:11And he would be.
11:12If you're staying, you're getting more work.
11:15Because there is less bodies around the table.
11:19So it's not a demotion.
11:21And actually, the places where you send people who are demoted, as in the shelf-watching ministry,
11:28those won't exist in this smaller cabinet.
11:31The impression they're trying to send is not that they're saving money.
11:35It's that this is a war cabinet, like a unity cabinet,
11:40if the referendum had resulted in a defeat for federalism.
11:44A smaller team to be more focused on what they will describe for the entire campaign as an existential crisis.
11:52Yeah.
11:53Andrew, and then I know you went back in there, Althea.
11:55Andrew.
11:57I will leave to my colleagues the speculation on who will occupy which post.
12:01But to me, the absolute revolution in this is the numbers.
12:04If they come in with a cabinet of less than 20, that will be the smallest cabinet since the 1950s.
12:10It's not coincidental that the decline of cabinet as a decision-making body and of cabinet ministers as having any real responsibilities
12:18coincided with the rapid expansion to these ridiculous numbers where we've had close to 40 cabinet ministers.
12:24The larger the cabinet, the smaller the minister.
12:27When you have 12 ministers or 15 or 20 ministers around the table, they're all basically players.
12:32When you have 40, they basically turn into ants.
12:35And to get to those numbers, you have this proliferation of meaningless titles, overlapping responsibilities where it's not clear who's really responsible for what.
12:43They're basically handed out as tokens and as baubles to coveted interest groups or demographics or regions of the country.
12:51And we get further and further away from the actual business of cabinet, which is governing the country.
12:55If you cut it down to less than 20 or even close to 20, you are sending a signal that cabinet government is back.
13:02You are sending a signal that we are in serious times and we need a serious governing model.
13:07You are certainly sending a signal that you have made a major break with the way in which this country has been governed,
13:13not just under Justin Trudeau, but under a number of previous prime ministers.
13:17Yeah, so it would send that message of change that he's hoping to be able to send here while he still has to keep some of those key figures inside in some way.
13:25Althea, then Chantal.
13:26OK, a few things. On the unity thing, one of the big things to watch tomorrow is, is there an actual surprise?
13:32Is he reaching out across the aisle and putting people from different partisan stripes in his actual cabinet?
13:37What happens to Karina Gould and Chrystia Freeland?
13:41Ms. Freeland seems to suggest that she's in there. We haven't heard peep squat from Karina Gould.
13:46If she is not in there, I know she represents the left side of the flank that Mr. Carney is not necessarily a fan of,
13:52but there will be some management of caucus that will need to be done on that.
13:57On the question of such a small cabinet, it means that representation somewhere will suffer,
14:02either its regional representation or its gender or its ethnicity or its religion.
14:07And those stakeholders will also take some management because they are not going to be happy.
14:13And last, I would say on the whole, you know, the original team behind the Canada-U.S. response.
14:19I think we had spoken about that last week.
14:21I don't expect a lot of changes, but I do think that Dominic LeBlanc could easily move over to a portfolio,
14:27a Canada-U.S. portfolio in my imaginary cabinet, Canada-U.S. intergovernmental affairs portfolio,
14:32because he doesn't need to have the finance behind him.
14:35And frankly, a budget is about to be delivered in about two and a half months.
14:39And it might be good to have somebody who actually is more focused on the finances of the country
14:44than Dominic LeBlanc's skills, which are frankly people skills that are attuned to the Canada-U.S. intergovernmental.
14:51And we see that with Doug Ford and this, you know, the meeting with Letnik, for example.
14:55Yeah, I have also heard that theory, that there's a way to move him around
14:58so that he's doing the things that he's best at and let someone deal with, like, to your point,
15:02the budget and the other things, Chantal.
15:05But the last time we talked about the lead minister on Canada-U.S.
15:09Oh, I know, I know.
15:11was a minister who didn't have a ministry.
15:14That's right.
15:15And it's all nice to say intergovernmental affairs, but you're kind of not putting the way behind the title that you should be.
15:26And that rightly, Chrystia Freeland declined on that basis.
15:29So we'll see tomorrow on that particular thing.
15:33Yes, representation will be diminished.
15:38I'm wondering, looking at all the names of people who aren't in cabinet,
15:41whether there will be more than one minister east of Montreal.
15:45And what does that mean for the battle against the Bloc Québécois in most of Quebec's territory?
15:51But this is basically Mr. Carney's way of saying,
15:57one, I'm a changed prime minister, and two, I have one file that I want to focus to be on.
16:04A final word on Carina Gould.
16:07She's from Burlington.
16:09Sometimes you feel like déjà vu.
16:12I watched Paul Martin become prime minister and then find a way to send out of cabinet and caucus Sheila Copps,
16:21who was from the same area.
16:23And I'm thinking, is history really, really going to repeat itself?
16:27And by the way, that sent a really bad signal to a large section of the Liberal Party and to many, many female voters.
16:35Yeah, he paid the price for that one, for sure.
16:38Quick 10 seconds to you, Andrew.
16:40Just two quick things.
16:41One is it'll be interesting.
16:42There's been some talk that he might appoint a conservative, small seat or large seat to the cabinet.
16:48That will be interesting to see in terms of national unity.
16:51And the other thing, and Sean tells me this point many times,
16:53is what's going to be the response in terms of the cabinet-making of Pierre Poilievre?
16:57He's been the frontrunner for so long.
16:59He certainly had the opportunity to be able to attract people to run for him with the promise of cabinet posts.
17:04Can he put up a cabinet that is of equal stature or comparable stature to the one that Carney's going to unveil?
17:11At issue 24 Sussex, the prime minister's official residence has been in disrepair since 2015 with issues of mold, rodents and lead.
17:19But in one of his last acts as prime minister, Justin Trudeau is calling to remove the politics to save the building.
17:26Is this solution viable?
17:27Will the famous address ever get fixed?
17:29Let's bring everybody back, Chantal, Andrew and Althea.
17:32I know you've talked about this for many, many, many years.
17:35But I will tell you that it is one of those stories and issues that Canadians do care about.
17:40I don't know whether this has any weight at all, if Prime Minister Trudeau is doing it on his way out the door.
17:47But he's at least trying to come up with a solution that removes the politics from this.
17:51Althea.
17:53Well, he could have come up with the solution nine years ago.
17:56I'm sorry.
17:57I'm going to appoint, please minister, appoint that actually now no longer has a job.
18:02But please minister with two days left.
18:05Appoint a nonpartisan advisory committee filled with former parliamentarians of different stripes to tell me what to do with this property.
18:13I mean, come on.
18:14That's not.
18:15I don't even know why they bother doing that other than we would have written, oh, he like left 24 Sussex in disrepair for nine years.
18:23So, no, I don't think that that's a real solution.
18:26I'm not saying that the suggestion is not necessarily a good one, but it could have done come a lot earlier.
18:32And the CBC was reporting that, you know, the cost of fixing 24 Sussex is just continuing to balloon.
18:38And it's not just that it could be upwards of 100 million dollars.
18:42It's that the NCC, even like 15 years ago, had on its plans some very grandiose plans, which included building basically like the White House down on Sussex at a cost of like 400 million dollars.
18:55The costs of fixing this property are going to be insane.
18:59And I think the Canadians just need to accept that it's going to cost more than we think because the security has to cost a lot more than we think.
19:07The building is so close to the road and unless they move the road, they have to fence in the building with some sort of steel.
19:15So there's no truck bombs. I'm probably saying things I shouldn't be saying out loud, but it is a big problem.
19:20And so if that building remains in that corner, it will continue to be a security risk that needs to be addressed with a lot of money.
19:28I mean, I take your point, but I do think that Justin Trudeau cares about the residents because of his personal connection to it.
19:34So then why didn't he act earlier?
19:36I don't know. I don't know. I'm not going to make excuses for him. Chantal?
19:39I don't think he cared about it enough to want to live in it or force his children to live in it.
19:45Actually, I predicted early on that he would never live in it.
19:50And the best way to avoid that was to do nothing about it.
19:53That being said, I do find merit to the proposal because it's kind of becoming a stupid argument.
19:59Whoever becomes prime minister doesn't want to act because etc.
20:03So, yes, maybe giving all these people who have apparently so much to contribute and who are former prime ministers
20:11something to do by putting them around the same table so that they can talk about the future and make a recommendation.
20:21Maybe that would take the next prime minister or the one after that out of the impasse of making a decision.
20:30I mean, the last time I was there, because sometimes journalists got invited there, was with Stephen Harper.
20:34And he lived there. So you would think that maybe he has some sort of interest in this issue.
20:38I don't know. He's raised his children there, you know, for a large part of their life, too.
20:42So I don't know. Andrew?
20:45We've all been talking about how we need more grownups in government.
20:48We also need to grow up as a country on this issue.
20:51The prime minister has to have an official residence.
20:55Then it has to be functional and it has to be secure.
20:58It doesn't have to be palatial or impressive or grand.
21:01In fact, I like the idea of its appearance being modest.
21:04But even just a functional, secure building, the logic of these things, the inevitable of these things is going to cost a lot of money.
21:10We need to bite the bullet and get it done, for God's sakes.
21:13See, you all have things to say, even though you have talked about it five million times in your lives.
21:19Thank you very much for that.
21:21I'm going to see some of you on Friday to talk about the cabinet shuffle.
21:24I'll see the rest of you next week. Thank you.
21:26That is that issue for this week. I'm Rosemary Barton. Thank you so much for watching.