At Issue this week: Canada and the U.S. trade shots in a bitter trade war, but is Ottawa’s strategy working? Liberal leadership candidates gear up for the convention that will decide Canada’s next Prime Minister. And, how will Canadians remember Justin Trudeau?
At Issue is Canada's most-watched political panel, hosted by CBC Chief Political Correspondent Rosemary Barton and featuring leading political journalists Chantal Hebert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.
00:00 Is Canada’s trade war strategy working?
08:47 Final days of the Liberal leadership race
17:09 Justin Trudeau's legacy as prime minister
#news #politics #cdnpoli
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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.
At Issue is Canada's most-watched political panel, hosted by CBC Chief Political Correspondent Rosemary Barton and featuring leading political journalists Chantal Hebert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.
00:00 Is Canada’s trade war strategy working?
08:47 Final days of the Liberal leadership race
17:09 Justin Trudeau's legacy as prime minister
#news #politics #cdnpoli
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 followed through on his decision to bring in tariffs
00:05but is now pausing the action on most Canadian exports.
00:09It's just a modification, short-term,
00:11because I didn't want to hurt the American,
00:14it would have hurt the American car companies.
00:16Canada is keeping $30 billion in counter tariffs in place
00:20but will pause the second round.
00:22As long as there are tariffs on us from the United States
00:26that are completely unjustified,
00:28we will be responding strongly.
00:32So what does this trade war mean for Canadians?
00:34How is Ottawa working to get these tariffs removed entirely?
00:37I'm Rosemary Barton, here to break it down.
00:39The latest on this trade war, Chantal Hébert,
00:41Andrew Coyne, Elthia Raj,
00:42nice to see you all on a very, very busy week.
00:46Chantal, I'll start with you.
00:47Is this a win, a delay, a reprieve?
00:49Where do you think we are today?
00:53Well, I guess it's a win because we didn't give up anything.
00:59And if you thought that we were having a conversation
01:03with serious people, I guess this week has demonstrated
01:06that that's not happening.
01:08But the notion that we're pausing the second wave
01:12of tariffs because suddenly there has been
01:16this second reprieve actually means,
01:20I mean, that second wave was supposed to kick in
01:22on March 21st by my calendar,
01:26and so we've postponed it by about a week.
01:31So I guess that is where we are today with the sense
01:35that we are talking to people who are so unserious
01:38that I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
01:41And with other tariffs hanging over our head,
01:44Andrew, steel and aluminum next week,
01:46whatever's going to happen in reciprocal tariffs in April,
01:51it is hard to know what's going to happen next, that's for sure.
01:54We're by no means out of the woods.
01:56The one thing we have going for us,
01:58I've said this all along, is the people opposed,
02:01Trump and his people, are not very bright.
02:03They haven't thought this through.
02:05They don't know how government works.
02:06They don't know how the economy works.
02:08And they don't seem to be familiar with basic politics.
02:11It was to be entirely predicted that if you bring in
02:14these kinds of tariffs, you're going to make a lot
02:16of people hurt in the United States.
02:19And a lot of consumers, a lot of interests
02:21that have been squawking quite loudly.
02:23It seems to have come as a surprise to Donald Trump,
02:26or perhaps he was surprised that Canada didn't roll over.
02:29But as somebody put it, we're almost in the position
02:32of Ukraine having the kind of defender advantage here.
02:35You know, when your back is to the wall,
02:37when your country's existence, so to speak, is at stake,
02:41people are going to be up for the fight.
02:42And if I read Canadian public opinion at all well,
02:46people have basically said to the government,
02:47do what you have to do, just stick it to these bastards.
02:51We'll take whatever price we have to take to do it.
02:54Whereas in the United States, nobody signed up for this.
02:57None of Trump's constituencies voted for him
03:00because they wanted to have a trade war with Canada.
03:03So I think we're seeing that asymmetry here
03:06where the Canadian government has public opinion
03:09very firmly at its back, the Trump administration does not.
03:13What do you make of where we are on Thursday,
03:16as the Prime Minister himself said today,
03:18this is just Thursday now with Donald Trump.
03:21Well, it's more than just Thursday.
03:23I mean, it's the last Thursday, perhaps,
03:25that he is the Prime Minister.
03:27It is also, you know, three days
03:29after these terrorists were levied.
03:31I don't think it's clear to the government,
03:34nevermind to the rest of the country,
03:36what the Americans want.
03:38What is the end goal that they are after?
03:41Is this just about raising revenue?
03:44Is this about more public policy asks?
03:47I mean, it's very clearly not about fentanyl.
03:50And the government has always, frankly,
03:52known that it wasn't about fentanyl.
03:55But it is not clear what the ask is.
03:57So if you don't know what the other side is asking for,
03:59you don't know what off-ramp to give them.
04:01And I feel like that's the position that they're in.
04:03Like you heard the Foreign Affairs Minister talk about,
04:05well, in the meetings, they bring up Five Eyes intelligence,
04:08they bring up bulk water exports,
04:10they bring up defense spending.
04:12What does any of that have to do with, you know,
04:16cars coming across the Ontario border back and forth
04:19and car parts?
04:20Like, not much.
04:21So you can understand why it just feels like constant chaos
04:26and why even that as a strategy
04:29doesn't seem to make any sense.
04:30I mean, today, the president was out there
04:34trumpeting his own executive order,
04:36amending his own tariffs,
04:38saying he was saving the American auto industry
04:40and American farmers from the tariffs
04:42that he had imposed two days earlier.
04:45It doesn't make any sense.
04:47Like, I don't want to say that I always agree with Andrew,
04:50but like, I think we have to open ourselves
04:53to the possibility that maybe they're just stupid.
04:56Well, and also, and we did have that extraordinary statement
05:00from the prime minister,
05:03that the president's, to the best that anybody can parse out
05:06his aims, it's to basically just harm us and weaken us
05:09so that at some point, you know,
05:11people will be so fed up with it
05:12that there'll be movements towards annexation
05:15or economic union or what have you.
05:17It sounds far-fetched,
05:18but nothing's far-fetched with Donald Trump.
05:20And certainly when there's no, as Althea is saying,
05:22when there's no concrete demand,
05:24there's nothing we can actually,
05:25there's no blackmail we can even pay.
05:27That has to be your working supposition,
05:29which is why we need to look at this in the long run
05:32and say, okay, he's on his back heel today,
05:35but he's going to be back.
05:36He's going to have other demands and other tariffs.
05:39And we've got to be prepared to tough this out
05:41through the long haul.
05:43Yeah, Chantal.
05:45So one, I think we did the right thing,
05:48not to say thank you,
05:50and we're going to back off on whatever we're doing.
05:53I think that was the smart thing to do.
05:55Two, I think that this second, you know,
06:00we back off from the US perspective
06:04is probably meant to try to divide Canadians
06:07or at least Canadian politicians,
06:10which I don't think is going to happen
06:13given the mood of the country.
06:15And three, with the 50 for state thing,
06:20Donald Trump probably did a service
06:23to whoever is running the government
06:25in the sense that the stakes are so high
06:27that there's no mood out there.
06:29And I tried to find who was arguing in the mainstream
06:33to say we should be nice.
06:35And there's no one saying that
06:37because he is up this game to a level
06:41where no one wants to play in that movie.
06:44So going forward, I don't know,
06:47but I guess the good news is
06:49they don't seem to have much of a great plan.
06:52No, and I'd also think part of it, Althea,
06:55is that they were met with a serious coordinated response
06:59from this country that maybe they just didn't expect.
07:02I don't know.
07:03I don't know how they could not have expected, frankly.
07:05I mean, there is nothing in the government's game plan
07:07that has changed in the last six to eight weeks.
07:10So the government was told that this was coming
07:14and they planned for it.
07:15And even the amount of money, I believe,
07:17is exactly the same as it was
07:18when they first communicated this plan to us.
07:20So it's not, you know,
07:21they've been waiting to implement their plan.
07:23And Donald Trump has been saying,
07:26well, there's nothing you can do to change my mind.
07:29I'm gonna come forward.
07:30And apparently there was something
07:31that we could do to change his mind,
07:32which is to reduce the death counts,
07:34fentanyl death counts.
07:35It was actually something that he had already said
07:37or Howard Lutnick had already said to Dominic LeBlanc
07:40as that was communicated to the premiers
07:41like a month and a half ago.
07:43None of this makes any sense.
07:45I do agree that by raising and by the prime minister
07:49raising the bar to the 51st state level,
07:52it has brought Canadians together in a way
07:55that when you have, you know,
07:57it's not just one part of the economy,
07:59it's our national sovereignty is now affected.
08:02And so the cost that you're willing to bear
08:05as an individual, I mean, at the moment,
08:07for most of us, we're not really feeling,
08:09maybe if you looked at your savings, if you have stocks,
08:13maybe if you have money, you felt the pain,
08:16but there aren't that many people
08:18have actually lost their jobs in the last four days.
08:21But in the next two weeks, in the next four weeks,
08:25in the next six months,
08:26that is gonna be really different.
08:28And so by having raised that specter
08:29of what that pain tolerance is like,
08:32that was in a way really smart
08:34because there are more people
08:36that are gonna be willing to accept acute pain
08:39because they think that the risk is so high.
08:42Yeah, and it keeps the country united
08:43in a way that maybe wouldn't have happened either.
08:46At issue, liberal leadership.
08:48The race is almost over.
08:49A new leader will be announced Sunday
08:51and will become prime minister within days.
08:54Then take on the trade war.
08:56We need a united Canada right now
08:59that can stand up to that tariff threat.
09:01We have to be very clear with the Americans
09:04that this action is inappropriate.
09:06If I'm elected as prime minister,
09:10to take the proceeds from our counter tariffs
09:15and ensure that they go directly to those workers.
09:19So how to break down how the race is ending.
09:21Chantal, Andrew, and Althea are back.
09:23You're all gonna be here Sunday too.
09:25I'm excited to see you in person.
09:26But what are you thinking now as this race ends, Andrew?
09:29And I think perhaps more importantly,
09:32this person who wins on Sunday
09:34is gonna have to be thrown into the middle
09:36of all of this immediately.
09:38Yeah, well, it's a different setting
09:40than it was at the beginning of the race.
09:41Partly because the liberal support in the polls
09:44has come up so much since then.
09:46Only I think partially because of the race itself,
09:48but maybe partly in that.
09:50But mostly as a result of events south of the border.
09:53So, you know, they've got a little bit
09:57of a different strut in their step perhaps.
10:00Mark Carney has not had a great race, if you ask me.
10:03He's not exactly set hearts on fire.
10:05There's been a few questions raised about his veracity.
10:09But it's hard to see anybody else winning at this point.
10:11I hate to just, you know, thump home the conventional wisdom
10:14but that sure seems like the case.
10:17I think the other thing is, I think there was a lot of talk
10:19that, oh, as soon as he gets in,
10:21he'll wanna go straight to the election.
10:25I'm not so sure that's the case for a couple reasons.
10:27One is, I think if you're him,
10:29you surely would rather be seen to be governing for a bit.
10:32You'd rather be putting together a cabinet,
10:34meeting parliament, et cetera.
10:35And I think you can do so now.
10:37Maybe I'll be proven wrong.
10:38But I'm getting signals from the NDP
10:40that they're not quite as keen
10:43on voting no confidence anytime soon.
10:45That may have something to do with them being down
10:47at 10% in the polls.
10:49But it's-
10:50Might just, yes.
10:51I don't think it's a given that the minute
10:54they meet parliament that they're going down.
10:56And maybe rightly so.
10:58If we're right in the middle of an April 2nd
11:01next round of tariffs.
11:03Except Mark Carney doesn't have a seat in the House.
11:06So that would be, I think, a problem, Althea,
11:08if he turns out to be the winner.
11:09But give me your sense of where we're at
11:11as this race comes to an end.
11:13Well, Andrew's right.
11:14But it's also because the NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh,
11:16has plainly said he's willing to support the government
11:20again.
11:24I am gonna disagree with Andrew.
11:26I actually believe that whoever is elected,
11:29assuming, let's say it is Mark Carney,
11:32that he is incentivized to go quickly
11:33because the conservatives are sitting on all this cash.
11:36And they will use it to bombard the airways
11:39and try to frame him with the time that they have,
11:42the extra time that they have.
11:44I think it would have been beneficial to the party
11:46to have a much longer leadership race
11:49if the prime minister had decided to resign in the autumn.
11:53Because I don't think that any of the candidates
11:55have been properly tested.
11:57The last leadership race was quite long,
11:58maybe arguably too long.
12:01But the first few instances that we have seen
12:04about Mr. Carney, I mean, if he's chosen on Sunday,
12:08he will be the prime minister.
12:09And we don't have a very clear idea
12:13of how he would govern, what his priorities would be,
12:18what his value set is, how he handles pressure.
12:22It has been very, very short.
12:25And neither do we have such a clear idea of the others,
12:28more so Ms. Freeland, but that's because we have seen her
12:30for the past 10 years.
12:32And so it would have been beneficial
12:34to have a longer leadership race.
12:35That being said, that's the timing
12:38the prime minister gave the Liberal Party.
12:40And so that's what they have to deal with.
12:43Chantelle?
12:45I think the last thing we need is more months
12:48of will the government survive,
12:50will the government not survive?
12:52And I have, since last fall, been of the school
12:56of we need a prime minister, pick whoever you want,
13:01but we need a prime minister who's got a mandate.
13:04It can't be someone who is a future lame duck
13:07or an actual lame duck.
13:09And on that basis, I don't really see the upside
13:12of coming in with a speech from the throne
13:15and all that that involves,
13:16because that is what it means to reopen parliament.
13:20What we do need is for Canadians to choose
13:23the person who's going to be leading them
13:27at least for the next two years, maybe four,
13:29depending if it's minority or majority.
13:32But that choice belongs to Canadians
13:34and I think they need to make that choice
13:36sooner, not later.
13:37Yeah, it does seem, Andrew, as difficult as it might be
13:41to have an election with all of this
13:43hanging over our heads, it does seem as though
13:45it is kind of critical that Canadians
13:47get to weigh in on this now.
13:49We've talked about how people are united,
13:51but that they get to weigh in on the person
13:53and the approach.
13:54And I know you're not saying differently,
13:56I'm just saying it feels like it's the moment for that.
13:58I don't disagree, I'm just saying
14:00from the liberal standpoint, they might wanna wait,
14:03but we'll see.
14:05But I agree with Chantal that we need,
14:08I mean, as I say, there's the specific thing
14:09of April 2nd being the deadline for another round,
14:12and so whether you have to have an election
14:14right exactly at that moment,
14:15but sooner rather than later, absolutely.
14:18And yeah, we need to clear the air,
14:21we need to have a clear sense that the person
14:23leading the country actually is leading the country,
14:25has the people at their back.
14:28We're going through right now a period
14:31of intense national unity because we're right
14:33in the middle of the fires.
14:34But to come back to the point I was making earlier,
14:36this is gonna be a long slog,
14:38and we're gonna need to keep the public onside,
14:41and that's gonna need leadership
14:42that has a genuine bona fide mandate
14:44to be able to do that.
14:46Dalthia?
14:47Well, if we're talking about election timing,
14:48whoever's leader is incentivized to go sooner,
14:51not just because that person may not have a seat
14:53in the House, but why let a good crisis go to waste?
14:56You know, now is the moment where everybody is united,
14:58now is the moment where there's the least pain,
15:00you never know what's gonna come around the corner at you.
15:04The challenge, though, is if you wanna put
15:06a fresh face on the government,
15:09you're incentivized to keep a lot of the same players
15:11in your cabinet as caretakers
15:13because of what has just happened.
15:15And the road map that has already been set
15:17by the current government is likely the road map
15:19that you're going to continue
15:21because your transition may only be a week or two
15:23and you may not have time to develop a new strategy
15:26and to meet with the premiers and to get everybody onside.
15:29So I think from a strategic point of view,
15:32there may not be such a difference put forward
15:35if there is a campaign so quickly.
15:36But you wouldn't wanna get rid of people
15:38who have contacts and relationships
15:40with people south of the border, yeah.
15:41Exactly, but that's the challenge
15:43about being different and then being the same.
15:46Totally, Chantal.
15:47But it's possible to do one and the other.
15:49Let me talk about the current finance minister,
15:52Dominique Leblanc, a strength in his own right
15:54in Atlantic Canada.
15:56Why would you want to get rid of someone
15:58who can carry a region and who also happens
16:01to play well in Ontario and Quebec
16:03and is friends with the conservative premier of Ontario?
16:07So it's not as if everyone on that team
16:10is not someone you would want on your election team.
16:13That's right.
16:16And as for changing directions,
16:19if you believe, as I do, that the overriding question
16:22is going to be about tariffs and Trump,
16:26then you're not gonna go into the weeds
16:28of would you keep dental care and how would you fund it?
16:33You're gonna want to, it's kind of a plebiscite
16:36on who you want, not an election
16:38about which platform do you pick.
16:41Though those issues could be important, right?
16:43If you're thinking about how the Canadian economy
16:46might fall apart, those things might matter to you.
16:48Okay, as important as they were in the Ontario election,
16:51which I believe is a template for the federal election.
16:55Chantal always says good things at the end.
16:56Quickly, Andrew.
16:58Every election's different and you never know exactly
17:01what the public's gonna have as their main priority,
17:03but I think in the current climate,
17:05absolutely it's gonna be who can handle this crisis.
17:09At issue, Justin Trudeau's legacy
17:12with days until the Liberals choose that new leader,
17:13the Prime Minister is reflecting on his time in office.
17:16The focus that I certainly have in these my last days
17:21is making sure that some of those things that we have done
17:24that will shape the country for the long term
17:30are seen and relied upon by Canadians.
17:36So how will Justin Trudeau be remembered by Canadians?
17:38Let's bring everyone back, Chantal, Andrew and Althea.
17:41It's kind of hard to talk about legacy this early.
17:43I will admit sometimes the history looks more fondly
17:47on people or less fondly after a bit of time,
17:49but certainly the Prime Minister is talking a little bit
17:51about legacy.
17:53Chantal, do you wanna jump in there?
17:55History, at least for the time that I've covered,
17:59politics has always looked more kindly on Prime Ministers
18:04than at the time that they retired.
18:08And I think for the second time in the time
18:11that I've covered politics,
18:12an American President has given a Liberal Prime Minister
18:17a better exit than expected.
18:20And I go back here to Jean Chrétien and the Iraq war,
18:24which allowed Mr. Chrétien to leave
18:26in more of a blaze of glory than he could have expected.
18:31And I think that the Canadians,
18:35now that they knew that Justin Trudeau
18:37wasn't going to be around for another election,
18:41I've seen someone who did not say the dog ate my homework,
18:46didn't go surfing, skiing,
18:48and has been on the job since his resignation.
18:52And that will serve him well in the future, I believe.
18:55Yeah, it is kind of remarkable how much he has still done
18:59and will do up until the last day
19:02because he has had to do that.
19:03And I do think that that will mean that his legacy
19:08will be considered perhaps a little differently
19:10than if he had just walked away and done nothing else.
19:13Althea, you want to weigh in there?
19:15Well, I think Donald Trump
19:16has given Justin Trudeau an honorable exit,
19:19and it has reminded people
19:21who may have vehemently disliked the Prime Minister
19:26about some of his better attributes.
19:29He has a remarkable ability to bring people together.
19:32He does, albeit, you know,
19:33I know COVID is a big asterisk there.
19:36But on the whole, he has that ability.
19:40His tenure has been marked by chaos.
19:42You know, Donald Trump, number one,
19:44the renegotiation of NAFTA,
19:46a once-in-a-generation pandemic,
19:48and he has survived those crises well.
19:52I think when you think back about what his legacy will be,
19:54and today he talked a little bit
19:55about what his father's legacy was
19:57in terms of bilingualism and multiculturalism
19:59in the charter,
20:01Mr. Trudeau's legacy is going to be
20:03probably indigenous reconciliation, the environment,
20:07lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.
20:11So I do think that there were going to be a lot of criticism
20:13about how much money,
20:15in terms of direct transfers the Liberals gave to people,
20:18and, you know, how they weren't focused on economic growth
20:21as much as they probably should have been.
20:24But he has shaped the country in a certain way.
20:28And while the Liberals did not do a great job
20:30in communicating what that vision was
20:32or what they were driving towards,
20:34it's not a government that didn't do anything.
20:36It was quite an activist government.
20:38Yeah, last word to you, Andrew, on this.
20:40Yeah, I mean, it's a government that came in
20:42with enormous political capital, enormous goodwill,
20:45and quickly squandered a great deal of it,
20:47whether it was through broken promises,
20:49like on electoral reform,
20:50whether it was through scandals and abuses of power,
20:53like SNC-Lavalin,
20:55or whether it was through an accumulated sense
20:57that it was focused on its own particular
21:00ideological obsessions,
21:02whether they were worthwhile or not,
21:04but very much on its own views of things,
21:07to the exclusion of what may have been more on the mind
21:10of the average Canadian,
21:11meat and potatoes issues like the economy,
21:13like affordability, like housing,
21:15all of which really came to bite him in the end.
21:17So, yes, there will be some accomplishments,
21:21things like the Canada Child Benefit,
21:22things like daycare, things like legalizing marijuana.
21:24These will be enduring things.
21:26Those were part of his plan of government
21:27when he came in.
21:28But as Althea said,
21:30as with many, if not most prime ministers,
21:33the biggest chunk of it is not the stuff
21:34that you came in planning to do,
21:36it's how you react to events,
21:37how you handled things like the pandemic,
21:40things like Donald Trump.
21:41And I do think they scrambled pretty well.
21:44He scrambled pretty well on that.
21:46And that often is, in the end,
21:48what is part of your legacy.
21:49What do we remember Jean Chrétien for most of all,
21:51perhaps, or I remember him anyway,
21:53is conquering the deficit,
21:54which he never even,
21:56he was opposed to doing when he came in.
21:58Brian Mulroney, free trade.
21:59He didn't come in campaigning on that at all.
22:02So the ability of prime ministers to react to events,
22:05to do things they hadn't planned on doing,
22:07probably would rather be doing anything else,
22:09but is as much a part of their legacy
22:12and their leadership as the planned programmatic stuff.
22:16Okay, gotta leave it there.
22:18And we're gonna see you all Sunday.
22:19Looking forward to it.
22:20That is that issue for this week.
22:21I'm Rosemary Barton.
22:22Thanks for watching.