The U.S. president says Canada is a tough country to deal with and has an opinion on who he'd like to see win the next Canadian federal election.
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00:00U.S. President Donald Trump is once again sharing his feelings about Canada, including
00:05who he would prefer to see when the next federal election happens.
00:08Let's bring in our Glenn McGregor in Ottawa now.
00:10So Glenn, the president not holding back last night in a Fox interview, even taking a shot
00:15at one particular federal party leader.
00:18Yeah, Faiza and Mel, I don't know how we would fill a newscast were it not for Donald Trump
00:23talking about Canada, because he does it on the regular.
00:26Last night, a long-form interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, and she asked him whether
00:32or not he was being harder, harsher on Canada than he was on the United States' known adversaries
00:40like Russia and China, and he also did, yes, weigh in on a preference for the upcoming
00:46Canadian election.
00:47Listen to what he said on Fox last night.
00:50My endgame is I don't want to have a big deficit.
00:53I don't want to see the United States of America, and you say 60 and I say 200, but
00:58it doesn't matter.
01:00I don't want us to pay 60 or $200 billion to a country that if they were a state, think
01:06of this, it would be our biggest, most beautiful, it would be great.
01:10This state, it would be cherished, we'd take care of it.
01:13The people would pay half what they're paying right now.
01:16You know, Canada pays very little for defense.
01:21So this has been a known irritant to Donald Trump is our NATO, the amount of money we
01:25spend on national defense as a percentage of our gross domestic product.
01:30The NATO target is 2%.
01:32Canada is running around 1.3% or 1.4%, and this is something that irritates him a lot,
01:38and he claims repeatedly that the United States is effectively paying for Canada's defense.
01:43He also used that $200 billion figure there.
01:46That is actually a reference to the balance of trade between Canada and the United States,
01:51the amount of goods we sell them less the amount of goods that they sell to us.
01:57Right now, it's in our favor.
01:58It's not $200 billion.
01:59It's somewhere around, it goes up and down, somewhere around $70 billion, and that's entirely
02:04because of the amount of oil we sell to the United States that gets refined in the Southern
02:09U.S., and then some of it gets brought back up into Canada and sold here.
02:13So it's something they actually make money on.
02:15The figure is completely misleading.
02:17Now, in that interview last night, he also went on to talk about his preference for the
02:22upcoming election.
02:23He kind of dissed what he called the conservative leader.
02:27He didn't name Pierre Poilievre because he couldn't seem to remember his name, and he
02:30says he doesn't like him because Poilievre has been speaking out against him.
02:34That's true.
02:35Poilievre did kind of pivot a little while ago because he read the tea leaves.
02:38He saw the way this is going in Canada, how unpopular Donald Trump is here, and he's trying
02:43to kind of make himself clear that he doesn't have any sort of similarities to Trump in
02:48style or policy, really trying to distance himself from Donald Trump.
02:53And so the conservatives today are seeing this as good news that Trump was critical
02:58of Poilievre and also said that he could see himself better working with a liberal.
03:05Didn't name current Prime Minister Mark Carney, but he said it's easier to deal with liberals.
03:09The conservative point of view is that means Trump thinks the liberals are going to be
03:13a pushover.
03:14So Poilievre was asked about this today at an event in northern Ontario where he was
03:18promoting the Ring of Fire and promising to expedite permits to extract minerals from
03:24there.
03:25But he was asked about this.
03:26Listen to what he said today.
03:27And I once again say to Donald Trump, why would you go after these people?
03:31These are great Canadian people.
03:36Canadian workers, just like them, are going to lose jobs if this continuing trade war
03:41insanity goes on.
03:44There is no good reason to do this to these good people.
03:48Stop the tariffs.
03:49Stop the chaos.
03:50Let's solve this problem.
03:53And that will mean that workers on both sides of the border can get their lives back and
03:58both the nations could be stronger.
04:02So there's another example of Poilievre talking tough to Donald Trump.
04:06Are voters in Canada going to buy this?
04:07Do they really believe that Donald Trump would prefer to deal with Mark Carney than he would
04:12with Pierre Poilievre?
04:13Hard to say.
04:14Public opinion polling recently has been kind of mixed on this, but generally the sense
04:18is from respondents to some of those polls is they think Mark Carney is better positioned
04:23to deal with Donald Trump than Pierre Poilievre.
04:25Regardless, it's very clear we're going to be into an election campaign probably in the
04:28next couple of days, looking like Sunday is the most likely day that the Ritz will
04:32drop and the election will officially begin.
04:35Also very clear that Donald Trump is going to be a factor throughout this and he may
04:39also be injecting himself into the campaign through interviews like he did last night
04:45on Fox News.
04:46He's not shy about commenting on it.
04:47This is going to be a factor, Mel and Faiza, for up until election day.
04:51All right, we'll see what plays out in the coming days and weeks.
04:54Senator Glenn McGregor in Ottawa, Glenn, thank you.