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- [00:00]
A
Hey there, listeners, a couple things before we get started today.
- [00:03]
B
First, we've got a live show coming up at the Comedy Cellar in New York City on May 13 with Nate Silver and Claire Malone.
- [00:09]
A
Make sure to get your tickets.
- [00:10]
B
I'll drop a link in the show Notes. Also, today's episode is from a substack live I hosted on Monday about the first year of Mark Carney's premiership with
- [00:19]
A
Eric Grenier of the Writ and Philippe Fournier of 338Canada. Call them the 538 of Canada. We got into all kinds of things which you'll hear in just a minute. I also do want to note, as I do in the live stream, that it's disheartening that we're once again dealing with political violence in America. Heartening that security prevented any casualties in the instance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner on Saturday, but disheartening nonetheless and something that unfortunately I'm sure we'll be speaking more about in the coming days, weeks, episodes. All right. For now, here's today's show. All right. And we are live. I am here with Philippe Fournier and Eric Greunier of 338Canada and the RIT. We've talked before. I'm very excited to chat with you guys today because Tuesday of this week marks one year since the Canadian general election which the Liberals won, securing a minority government. It was just two weeks ago that Canada held by elections which secured a majority government for the Liberals. So a lot going on in Canadian politics and I don't want to trigger you guys this early in the conversation, but the king of Canada does begin his state visit to the United States today. So this we, we got, we got in a little bit of a tiff about this the last time we did a crossover between GD politics and the Canadian elections data data journalism team. So you know, we'll say we'll save that for the end so that there are no hard feelings at the start. And I know, Philippe, you're particularly excited to talk about that one, right?
- [02:12]
C
I'm on the edge of my seat, Galen.
- [02:14]
D
So I honestly had forgotten that trip was happening.
- [02:17]
C
I didn't, I didn't even know. We don't, we don't care about that. But we will make it very exciting. Yes, absolutely.
- [02:22]
A
Oh, okay. Yeah. Play it off like you didn't even know. We have a lot to talk about. We have some fresh data of Americans and Americans views of Canada. We're also going to talk about Canadians views of America before we dive into all of that I do want to mention because this is our first live stream, so slash podcast since the shooter approached the security line at the White House Correspondent's Dinner on Saturday. You know, we've talked about political violence many times at GD Politics and at its forebear, FiveThirtyEight. And every time, you hope it's the last. And you also have some sense of dread that it might not be. So, of course, here's hoping that it's the last. You know, amidst it all, the security measures that were in place worked, which is disheartening. And we'll continue following that story to some extent and see what happens in terms of reviews of security and how things change and if they try to do this dinner again and whatnot. But I thought that I would mention that at the top. Now, on to Canadian politics and how they intersect with American politics. Let's begin with an overview, maybe. Philippe, we'll start with you. What has the past year of Carney's premiership looked like? You know, what issues has he tackled? How has the public responded? Challenges, successes for a perhaps majority American audience that doesn't pay close attention to Canadian politics. What should we know about the past year?
- [03:48]
C
Well, when Mr. Carney showed up as a Liberal candidate to be the Liberal leader and eventually prime minister, a lot of focus was centered around the Canada, United States relationship. Donald Trump was routinely attacking Canada's sovereignty, Canada's economy. The tariffs were new, basically mocking us, mocking everything that's around Canada. And so it had a backlash. And Mr. Carney rode that wave. And I still think the numbers show that he's still doing that today. But I think he's been quite competent in managing expectations because last year, and I think Eric can correct me if I have the red dates wrong, but the main goal was by late summer or at least in the fall of 2025 to have a new trade deal or to have the tariffs come down.
- [04:40]
B
That has not happened.
- [04:41]
C
And so when you promise something and you don't deliver, voters usually remember. But the numbers right now are telling us that most Canadians have a little bit patience with Mr. Carney because they realize we can't make a deal with someone who's not interested to make a deal. And they blame solely the US administration and Mr. Trump himself for not having a deal. But we know that this will not last forever. And at some point, Mr. Carney and the Liberals will have to deliver something. But so I would say that's mostly the state of Carney. There's more to say about the opposition as well. But we'll get into that, I'm sure, at some point.
- [05:19]
D
Yeah, I think it is a lot about setting expectations. I think that's been really the first year because there's a lot of stuff that Mark Carney has promised to do, and there's a lot of problems to handle when it comes to the Canadian economy, our relationship with the United States. And I think it has been a lot of starting to put things into place, and we're getting now to the point where we're starting to wonder whether and when we'll get actual results coming out of it. Right. There's been lots of attempts to make deals with countries around the world.
- [05:49]
E
Mark Carney has been traveling a lot.
- [05:50]
D
He's traveled more than past prime ministers have, especially in the early days of their prime ministership. So he's been doing that to try to secure deals with other countries, to
- [05:59]
E
try to diversify our trade. There hasn't been a lot. There's been a lot of, you know, like, good signals, but not so far. Lots of things that have been, like, kind of finalized. There's been pretty good relations with the provinces. We often have. One of the features of Canadian politics is disagreements between the provinces and the federal government. And there's actually been a decent amount of cooperation, especially from provinces, or not especially, but surprisingly from provinces that have been the least cooperative with Liberals in the past. So I think it's that here in Canada, there is more of a perception that Carney is focusing on economic development, on diversifying trade, these kinds of things. And one of the other features of the first year is that he hasn't
- [06:41]
D
proven to be all that ideological. I'm sure we'll get to it. But he's been able to get some Conservative MPs and some NDP MPs to cross the floor to the Liberals to join the government. He's taken policy proposals from Pierre Poilievre and just kind of who is the Conservative leader, the opposition leader, and has just kind of made them government policy. So I think that's been also one of the other features is that, um, he's trying to create the broadest tent, the biggest coalition of Canadian voters. And that is just something we haven't seen for a while. It's been a long time since we've had a prime minister who has tried to reach across the aisle that way.
- [07:14]
A
Is this all only possible because of the fact of President Trump? Could Mark Carney pull off something like this with defections, keeping peace amongst the provinces, you know, trying to build a tent that encompasses Conservative ideas, NDP ideas. Is that all because of Trump?
- [07:37]
C
Well, it's the, I mean, Trump, yes, but the broader Canada, U.S. relationship, our economy, economies are so integrated to one another that when one partner doesn't want to play ball, it hurts both sides of the border. And it hurts, of course, many Canadian businesses. So just to go back to the numbers and to give you the idea, the last time a party in a general election in Canada had 40% of the vote, we have to go back to the 90s and both major parties got over 40% of the vote in this election one year ago. To give you this polarization, how much people coalesced around either the Liberals and Mr. Carney to defend Canada's interests or Mr. Poiliev, who said, we need a change, we need to tackle affordability, which is also a problem that your president faces right now. But I would say it's not the only thing. But it was certainly the driver. And early in the campaign or in the pre campaign, the Conservative dropped the ball and never recovered. M. Poilievre sounded like M. Trump. And many Conservatives would hear this and would go like, that's not true. Well, we had clips and we had also clips of the Conservative leader blaming the Canadian administration for the turmoil between the two countries, whereas most Canadians saw that. No, it's Monsieur Trump that's just poking the bear here. But since then, the tone has come down and I think, as Eric said, the managing expectation has been their best asset for the Liberals. But we still don't know what's going to happen. You have midterms coming and we have noticed. We have noticed. I'm not sure if we'll get to that at some point, but know that we know you have midterms coming in in November.
- [09:25]
D
I think the only thing I'd add is that what Trump did is that it made Canada feel like we're in a crisis, in an urgent situation. So it made someone like Mark Carney more possible. And the kind of big projects that he talks about, the big infrast projects in Canada, stuff like that, it feels like it's more needed than it would have been without Trump. I think if Trump had not won the last election and Justin Trudeau had still resigned and been replaced by Mark Carney, he still might have been able to win because he was such a contrast from the previous prime minister and to Poliev. But I'm not sure if the last year had solely been focused on cost of living and not having someone else to blame. And in large part. In some part, you know, maybe too much.
- [10:08]
E
In other parts, maybe completely accurately, then
- [10:12]
D
I think he would have struggled more.
- [10:13]
E
So I don't know if he's. He's like 100%, but he might be 51, at least. I think Trump.
- [10:19]
A
Right. I mean, to set the table a little bit, Canada was facing a cost of living crisis, in particular, as pertains to housing, before the Canadian crisis involving Trump really began. Also in this moment, to put some numbers to all of this, it looks like Carney's approval rating is quite high, at least by standards. I mean, his approval rating is in the 60s.
- [10:41]
B
Is that unique in Canadian politics?
- [10:44]
A
Should we understand that also as a reaction to Trump, a rally around the flag, if you will, in the face of crisis? Or is it normal for Canadian prime ministers to be that popular?
- [10:57]
D
It's not very normal.
- [10:59]
E
Yeah.
- [10:59]
D
It's not normal to see a prime minister have high ratings like that. It can happen. We've seen, especially right after an election, usually prime ministers get a bit of a bump in approval. And during crisis, Justin Trudeau had high approval during the early days of the pandemic. But because Canada's not a binary choice between one party and another, you can be someone who wins a majority government, a big election victory, and you can have approval ratings of 40% because that's all you need. So I think that's the kind of the different context and the fact that Carney's approval ratings a year after the election are still, as you say, depending on the poll, you'd probably. Philip, I think you have an average somewhere around 60.
- [11:36]
E
Right.
- [11:38]
D
That is not something like the last time that I remember seeing a prime minister who wasn't, at least outside of the pandemic, who had an approval rating that high for an extended period of time. I mean, Trudeau's honeymoon, maybe. And then you probably have to go back to, like, Jean chretien in the 1990s when he. When he was up against a very divided and pretty weak opposition.
- [11:58]
C
So I have a tracker on 338 of government approval. It blends in approval satisfaction, government satisfaction
- [12:04]
A
with the prime minister.
- [12:06]
C
And one month after Carney's victory. So in May 2020, the average approval was 51% disapproval of 37. So that's a net plus 14. And on Sunday, the latest update that I did yesterday, 58 approved, 31 disapproved. So plus 17. So one year after his election victory, his approval number is actually higher than it was. And it's been sustained since the middle of the Winter, which is quite, I would say quite unusual.
- [12:37]
A
What information did we get from the most recent by elections? Perhaps given the fact that we have your handy approval tracker, we already knew what the overall environment was. Nonetheless, these were some pretty competitive elections, at least in terrbonne from what I understand. See, you know, I do pay attention, attention to Canadian politics. Did we learn something about Canadian politics that we didn't already know two weeks ago?
- [13:07]
D
I don't know if we learned something new. I think that it more confirmed suspicions. I think we knew that Mark Carney's numbers were good, his personal numbers were good, the party's numbers were up. So the fact that the Liberals did well in all three of these by elections was not surprising. Two of them were in very safe Liberal ridings, but nevertheless their vote went up in them. I think the, the surprise was primarily from the Conservative side that their vote dropped so significantly because yes, all three of these seats were seats that the Conservatives had no real shot of winning or even performing all that well, but their vote sank quite significantly. So it did kind of suggest that the weaker polling that we've seen is not just a mirage in the polls, that it was actually showing up the ballot box. So I think it was more of a confirmation of things than anything new that we learned.
- [13:56]
A
And to take a step back for folks who aren't familiar by elections are in America what we would call special elections. So filling vacant seats. But it all happens sort of at the same time. And Liberals won all three. Oh, it doesn't, it doesn't happen at the same time.
- [14:12]
C
No, no. This time they had three. But we could have a single by election this summer because there's another resignation today. But yeah, they're.
- [14:20]
D
It's up to the Prime Minister to choose the dates. He can just within a six month window, he can choose whatever dates and whichever byelections to fill. It's not like we don't have fixed by elections or special elections like in
- [14:30]
E
November, like perhaps we should.
- [14:32]
D
But yeah.
- [14:34]
A
And so Liberals won all three. And from a combination of those victories and defections from other parties to the Liberals, Mark Carney now heads a majority government, meaning he doesn't need support from any of the opposition parties. He doesn't need a coalition, he just needs Liberal votes in order to get legislation passed in Parliament. But Philippe, I interrupted you. You were going to give me your takeaway from the by election.
- [15:01]
C
Oh, I was just very happy to mention Terrebonne in suburban Montreal in an American podcast. I didn't have that on my bingo card. Yes, but Terrbonne, I think, is a special thing with Terrbonne. And I think Eric and I, we talked about this on our own show. Terrbonne is a Francophone, very Caucasian suburb of Montreal which had not gone Liberal since the early 1980s, when the Liberals were still a major, major force in Quebec. Like the major force in Quebec. And so just the fact that last year during the election we were one. Is Talbot gonna flip Liberal? No, there's no way that's happening. It can't be closed. And the Liberal candidate won by a single vote. It went to court because there were irregularities with an action scandal, had postal codes that were wrong and some special ballots. And so they had to redo it. And it was a clear. I mean, it was a tight victory, but it was a clear victory for the Liberals. And so we see now how the landscape has shifted and that the Bleu Quebecois, the nationalist separatist party for Quebec, was not able to hold on to this very Francophone writing at the expense of the Liberals. And the Conservative vote completely collapsing from 18%, I think it was, to only 3%. Yes, it kind of confirmed the polls that we did see recently in Canada, but also in Quebec, and that Mark Carney's good numbers have been translated into actual ballots.
- [16:29]
A
How much are the coalitions in Canada shifting? I mean, I think we've mentioned that there's more of a polarization and Canada looking more like two party politics as opposed to multi party politics, folks sorting into Liberal or Conservative camps. But how is that shaking out? What kinds of folks are falling into Liberal versus Conservative camps from which previous parties?
- [16:54]
D
I think for the Conservatives, we've seen them drop in the polls lately. So now they might be returning to their more traditional base. Usually the Conservatives can almost, you know, regardless of the situation, count on having 30 to 32% of the vote. And in some polls they're not much higher than that. So it's not clear at this stage that they've actually been able to retain some of the new people they brought to the coalition. What the Liberals have done is that they have gotten a lot of NDP voters. The NDP is the left of centre party in Canada. They've gotten a lot of those voters and they've held onto a lot of them. They've gotten some of those voters in Quebec who might have in the past voted for the Bloc Quebecois. They're now more willing to vote for, for Carney, and he's gotten a lot of people who might be open to the Conservatives and the kind of people
- [17:38]
E
that the Liberals have, it is university educated. They tend to still do better among those. But it's a lot of older people. It's people who are a bit more secure and I think that they see in Carney someone who can help retain that security or at least might be a bulwark against uncertainty. So I think the coalition that the Liberals have built over the last year or so is broader and surprisingly less fragile than I think we thought it was going to be at the end of the election because he seemed like he was just bolting all of these different parts to the party. But instead it turns out, oh, maybe these are more of a natural landing space for them because it does kind of remind you of the liberals from the 1990s and the early 2000s when there was a broader tent.
- [18:23]
C
Yeah. If you look at the demographics, Galen, just before the election, the tracker that I have on the 338 with the gender and the age brackets showed that the Conservatives were leading among men but slightly trailing among women by maybe 7 to 8 points. Now today among women, the liberals lead by 15 points and they also lead among men by about 7 points. Eric mentioned young voters. Young voters flocked to the Conservatives before Justin Boudor resigned and there was a bigger tightening between the campaign and today. And when we see today young voters, they completely abandoned the left of center party, the ndp, and have mostly joined the Liberals. So right now among the younger voters from 18 to 34, I have the Liberals leading by four. It's because the NDP has collapsed. And so this broader tent has not been linear among one single demographic or one age group. Eric mentioned the older voters among 55 and over, the Liberals are leading by 22 points. So it's a big mix of young and old.
- [19:30]
A
Those resistance boomers, we have them in America too. But I mean for the edification of folks living in a two party system. So an American audience or anyone else, what's the difference between the NDP and Liberals historically?
- [19:47]
C
How many people you want to anger here? Go ahead, Ajik.
- [19:50]
D
So the ndp, it's called the New Democratic Party, has nothing to do with the Democrats. It's just that when they formed the party, they formed it in the early 1960s and it was a combination of, of the Canadian Labour Congress, which is, you know, the labor unions and the old ccf which was a much more of a farmer, agrarian, almost a bit like the old populace if you remember in the states. And so the party has always been much more social Democratic. It's not quite a socialist Party, I don't think you would go that far. But the NDP has always had much more of a role for the state, a lot more centralization and just, you know, a larger social safety net. The thing between the Liberals and the NDP is that the Liberal, one of the reasons they've always been so successful throughout their history is that because they're in the center, they have been able to borrow from the other two parties and kind of shift back and forth when needed. So a lot of the things that we have in Canada that Americans are very familiar with, like our universal healthcare system, was something that was proposed by
- [20:50]
E
the NDP and it was adopted by
- [20:51]
D
the Liberals and made policy, especially at
- [20:53]
E
a time when they had a minority government and they needed support from the ndp. So the two parties have some similarities,
- [21:00]
D
but the Liberals are still much more of a. In the Justice Trudeau years, they were
- [21:04]
E
much closer to the NDP and there was less differentiation, which became a problem for the ndp. But traditionally, the Liberals are a little bit more centrist, a little bit more business friendly, yes, for government intervention, but also having role for the private sector. These days, the NDP has become more different from the Liberals because Mark Carney has taken the Liberals more to the center and has been much more business friendly, much more willing to adopt Conservative ideas. And the NDP just recently chose a
- [21:32]
D
new leader who is much more in the. He. He would like to be Zoran Mamdani, he would like to be Bernie Sanders, he would like to be aoc. There's that kind. And they're almost explicit about it. So the NDP now is taking a route that's much more to the left. One of their policy proposals is public grocery stores, which I know is a thing in New York.
- [21:52]
A
Part of that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [21:55]
D
So the difference now is much more starker than it would have been during the Justin Trudeau years when the two parties shared a lot of the same voters. And if you polled them on various views, virtually always had very similar views on any, any issue or policy.
- [22:09]
A
You mentioned that the Conservative Party is at about 30% in the polls, so maybe its coalition has not changed all that much. From what I understand after these, by elections, it seems very likely that the next general election won't happen before 20. So. Okay, all right, some eyebrows, some eyebrows raised there. We'll see whether it's, say, three years from now or less. What is the Conservative Party's theory of the case about how it might get back into power? Is it trying to moderate? Is it trying to focus on different issues from what Mark Carney is focused on, is it trying to differentiate itself more from Trump? How does it view its role in the ecosystem that you're describing?
- [23:02]
C
I would say, since we're speaking to mostly an American audience, the same way the Democrats cannot just campaign on not being Trump. That would not be enough. That will help you. Campaign against Trump, will help you. It probably will not be enough to convince voters that you're the solution to the problems. Many Conservatives, I mean, maybe in the
- [23:23]
A
midterms it will be enough, but probably
- [23:25]
C
20:20am Maybe in the midterms, as usually it does in the midterms, but not in general. So for many Conservatives, they say, okay, well, it will be our turn. Since Confederation, Canada has oscillated between Liberal and Conservative, or it was progressive conservative there for a while, but it has oscillated between two parties. And so they feel like at some point Mark Carney will falter, will become less popular, the honeymoon will be done, and they will be next in line. Well, the thing is, they felt that way with Justin Trudeau. And all the Liberals had to do is find a more centrist leader that has some amount of charm. I wouldn't say he's charming, but he has some amount of charm. He led an adult campaign, and the Conservatives didn't know what to do. And so if all they're doing is waiting for McCartney to falter, that's only halfway through. I'm not so sure, because the Conservatives is also a big tent party. We have a fraction of pro Trump people here in Canada. They're not that many, but they exist. But when we poll, we see those people are all aligned with the Conservatives. And yet then you have centrist Conservatives we call Red Tories, red for the Liberals, we call them. They are centrists. And many of them feel less and less comfortable with the current state of the Conservative Party. Four of the five fourth crossers came from the Conservatives in the past six months because they felt that the party that they ran for for many years is not working and the leader was too Trumpian, rightly or wrongly, but that's how they felt. And so I'm not sure the way forward here, half of it will be at some point, the Liberals will falter, but I'm not sure what the other half will be.
- [25:09]
D
But that's also the question that Conservatives have, right? When you ask what's their theory of the next election, the group around Poilievrev kind of thinks that the theory is, we just need to hold on, he'll eventually get unpopular he eventually won't deliver on the promises. Cost of living will become the major issue again, and then we'll be placed in the same place we were in 2024, where people are just upset at the government and want someone who's going to solve their cost of living issues. And Pierre Poliev is going to be there to do it. But then there's the other theory in the Conservative Party, which is more that we saw that against Carney, Poliev's style
- [25:41]
E
is not really going to work, that
- [25:43]
D
people don't really want that kind of attack dog, bulldog kind of situation.
- [25:47]
E
They did when they didn't like Justin Trudeau because they wanted someone to kind of, you know, say to Justin Trudeau's face that people didn't like him. It's a different situation when you have a Carney who presents himself as a very serious, experienced kind of leader against Pierre Poliev, who has never had a job outside of politics. And so there's people within the Conservative Party who feel they need to have much more of a more moderate approach, try to get the tent big again
- [26:14]
D
and try to present their leader in a more prime ministerial way or perhaps replace him. But those voices aren't as noisy as they could be, or they would be if we were expecting him to be ousted in the short term.
- [26:29]
A
Mark Harney now has a majority government. On one hand, you could say Liberals can do whatever they want. On the other hand, they no longer have any excuses for not doing whatever they want or whatever they've promised. So what can Carney do with a majority government that he couldn't do with a minority government?
- [26:53]
C
Well, he had many infrastructure projects on the docket. And as you say, there's no excuse. Now we're supposed to have a TGV in a few decades between Quebec City and Toronto. Estimated cost is $90 billion. I'm sure it will be great. Many European nations have such a system, and even though it cost a lot, nobody regrets it because it's fantastic. The Conservatives have been campaigning against that because they say it's way too expensive and we don't need it. So it will be very interesting to see. But before I go into the policies, Gillian, if I may just go to the pure numbers of his majority, his majority, Mr. Carney's, is still extremely thin. Like he has to keep everybody in line. He has 174 MPs, including himself, and the threshold is 172. So that means that you can have MPs that suddenly get difficult, that suddenly feel like, oh, I feel like this government is spending too much or spending too little, or maybe I need some. Some more stuff happening in my electoral district. And so it will be, you know, we have a government whip here. I'm not sure if there's the equivalent in the United States, but the whip will have a lot of whipping to do because you have to keep those people in line. And now it's easy because the numbers are great and, you know, the approval numbers are great, but that won't last forever. It will be very interesting if he's able to get that Scotch state coalition of MPs together when things go a little sad. So I'm not sure too much about policy. Perhaps Eric can speak more on that, but I don't think this majority is safe at all. It's safer than it was six months ago because there was no majority, but I don't think it's safe at all.
- [28:41]
D
I think with Carney, with the majority versus minority, I don't know if he's going to do anything differently that he wouldn't have tried to do with the minority. He does seem to be pretty focused on what he wants to do and kind of daring the opposition to vote against it. In the past, I think what changes is that there's now a bit more time and certainty and also that they can just kind of push things through the House much faster. So I think that he probably would have still tried to do all the
- [29:09]
E
things that they want to do in terms of, as Philip said, much more infrastructure spending, a lot more spending on the military, you know, trade deals internationally.
- [29:17]
D
Like, these are kind of the focuses
- [29:19]
E
that the government has. And now they just kind of map it out for the next three and a half years if they want, and they don't need to worry as much about getting it through the House through committees, all these kinds of things. It just kind of eases the way forward. And it's been said many times, but a majority government in the Westminster system, particularly in Canada, is one of the most powerful governments that there exists beyond an actual dictatorship. If a party is willing to support their party in both the party lines, which is almost always the case, there's very few limits on what a government can do. It might sound crazy, but a US President would love to have the powers that a prime minister has with a majority government. So it's just a question of now that he has no more excuses, no more, no more obstacles, can he actually deliver on a lot of the ambitious
- [30:06]
C
plans that he has, don't give them Ideas, Eric, come on.
- [30:10]
A
To answer your question, Philippe, we do have whips in US Congress, but oftentimes, practically speaking, a very sort of powerful, charismatic president is the most useful person in whipping the rank and file within the party. And so while there is an actual whip on the floor who's supposed to be talking to people and figuring out what everyone wants and making sure everyone's on board, just being a popular president is probably the most effective or prime minister or whatever is probably the most effective way of keeping people in line. So to that end, what are Carney's vulnerabilities within this coalition? Because you described a situation where pretty much anyone can be a swing vote if they want to. Is he worried about the left that wants, you know, more spending on social programs? The center that wants, I don't know, more spending on upping military or defense spending? Is it the recent defections from the right who say, you know, maybe we ought to have closer relationships with the United States and not go to the World Economic Forum and rally the rest of the middle powers against them?
- [31:23]
C
Sorry. That was pretty good.
- [31:25]
D
Yeah, I think it's great. I don't. It seems easy to think that the vulnerability should be on the left because they gained a lot of support from the NDP and he is addressing less of their concerns than. He might be a centrist swing voter. But I don't think he has a vulnerability on left or right because I think that they've now made such a broad coalition that making one side angry might be fine because they have enough on the other side. I think the vulnerability more is kind of a traditional liberal vulnerability, is that once they.
- [31:57]
E
Because they have been the natural governing party, as we call them, because they've been in power for most of Canada's history, there is this level of arrogance and entitlement and taking for granted that they have the right to govern, that could become the issue down the line. And then people just kind of sour on him and then they see him just as an entitled, arrogant liberal prime minister. I think that is more the vulnerability than necessarily on the left or the right. I think if he fails to live up to stuff, people kind of get tired of him. He could lose from both sides.
- [32:28]
C
I tend to agree with that. I would say maybe. I don't want to understate. There's a left wing in Canada. It's not huge in numbers, but it's bigger than what we've seen in the last election. And British Columbia, out west, The Liberals won 20 seats there. And the last time that happened that The Liberals won 20 seats in British Columbia is never it had never happened before. Usually the NDP, the left of center party, does very well in B.C. and it did poorly this time. They only won three seats in the province. All of them almost went to the Liberals. So at some point if the left in Canada wakes up and says, okay, this is a Liberal government that is disguising because it's actually a Conservative government and you rile up people on this front. If the Liberals lose 5, 6, 7 points to the NDP, suddenly the election becomes competitive again and it will not work. As Eric said, arrogance and hubris has been part of It's a Liberal tradition since confederation that at some point they're in power for a little while, they get comfortable, they get too comfortable, voters notice and they kick them out.
- [33:41]
B
Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listeners. GD Politics simply wouldn't exist without paid subscribers. Paid subscribers like Jonathan, who recently sent me this message hey Galen, just got a notification from Substack that my subscription will be renewing in the next few days. Normally when I get renewal notices, I roll my eyes and wish that particular thing was free. But I could not be more excited for my subscription to renew and for you to get paid Once again. Your podcasts are highlights of my week and allow me to stay abreast of the news in a way that helps me understand the forces behind it. I'm a happy, satisfied and excited subscriber. As long as you continue recording, I'll continue subscribing. Well, Jonathan, I'm flattered, but more to the point, people like Jonathan make this podcast possible. Your support means we can make an independent podcast guided by curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and can join in the paid subscriber chat. You can also connect your personal feed to your favorite podcast player so you get every single episode paid, unpaid. All of them. Wherever you listen to podcasts, Become a paid subscriber today@gdpolitics.com there's never been a better time to join the community. That's GDPolitics.com hope to see you there.
- [34:59]
A
Well, I started to maybe preview the hot stove that I'm now going to fully touch, which is the relationship between Canada and the United States. And you know, as we get into this, I think we will talk more about the Canadian economy and maybe what challenges lie within that topic for Mark Carney. But just to give an overview here, how do Canadians feel about Trump and the United States? And I guess I'M also curious, are those two different things in Canadians eyes? Would you describe the sentiment at this moment as specifically anti Trump, anti American, anti dependence on America?
- [35:41]
C
Give us the lowdown if I may start here, Eric. There was a research co poll, since this is a Vancouver based polling firm that's very respected in Canada that polled Canadians on how do you view these following countries? There was a list of like 25 countries. Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion? And you had the usual suspects on top of the list. France, the uk, Germany, Japan, Italy, Western democracies and Japan added to that. And the United States was way near the bottom, just between Saudi Arabia and Russia with other, well, non democratic countries. So the damage to the reputation of the United States in Canada has been profound. And yes, you will find people online, Canadians defending m Trump and his approach. But they are not the mainstream Canadian. And that's why also tourism has gone way down from Canada to the United States because we feel like we don't want to visit a country whose government consistently insults us.
- [36:50]
A
To put a finer point on this, you are saying it's not anti Trumpism, it is anti Americanism.
- [36:57]
D
Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say. So there's been polling on this for a long time. And during the George Bush years, George Bush was super unpopular in Canada because of the Iraq war, which we stayed out of and this kind of stuff. So he was very unpopular. But views of the United States, while they diminished at that time, did not match the unpopularity of George Bush. People were able to differentiate between their views of Americans in the United States and the views of the US President. That is less the case now. There used to be that differentiation, you know.
- [37:27]
E
Yes.
- [37:27]
D
When there was a Democrat in Canadians would tend to have the better views in the United States, it would go down when there was a Republican. But lately it's just, it is a big drop in positive views of the United States. The views that the United States is a government or a country that we can trust. We've seen that it has really dropped. And it isn't just the president. I think that's the main thing. I think Trump is less popular than Americans in Canada, but there's less of a division than there used to be.
- [37:54]
E
I think that a lot of Canadians have seen the situation that's happened in the United States and don't just put
- [37:59]
D
the blame on Trump. There's a lot of blame on the people who put Trump there and who
- [38:03]
E
have maintained them there and created the environment where that system could actually be successful.
- [38:09]
D
So, yeah, it isn't just anti Trumpism. I wouldn't know if I would call
- [38:14]
E
it as far as anti Americanism. I think it's more like we don't trust you anymore rather than we like, you know, have a visceral hatred or anything like that. But I do think there's less of a division than there used to be.
- [38:26]
A
Have views of Trump and the United States kind of fallen off a cliff with the initial 51st state rhetoric and stayed there, or have we seen views go up and down with the news cycle? And here I'm thinking particularly about maybe the war in Iran. A lot of countries have experienced energy crises as a result of the war with Iran, and perhaps views of the United States have soured further. I mean, I know that's the case for Europe. I'm curious if that's also the case in Canada.
- [38:56]
C
Haven't seen recent data on this, but the data that we did see was pretty constant since Trump retook office in January 25th. In about 85 to 15 ratio, people have a bad opinion of the president and what he's done. And that has not wavered much. Now, new data with Dion Rohr, I cannot imagine that it got any better. But we don't have fresh video unless Erica sees something that I haven't. But we have nothing recent.
- [39:29]
D
Yeah.
- [39:30]
A
And on the topic of the 51st state, Canadian sovereignty, to really just put my hand on the hot stove, when Canadians think about this, do they think about it in literal terms or figurative terms? Do Canadians feel like, oh, there is a neighbor country that wants to actually invade us and we might have to defend the homeland, or, wow, this is so disrespectful. This is not something another country should be doing. And as a result, I don't want to buy American goods, but not like I'm going to enlist in the military.
- [40:10]
D
Enlistments have gone up, but that's largely because of all the extra spending that's gone in the military, I would suspect. But I think that it is. I don't think. I think it was actually more. Not, I wouldn't say majority view, but it was a stronger view last spring that this was an actual thing like, that we could actually have our sovereignty be in question, then that annexation or an attempted annexation was possible.
- [40:33]
E
I don't.
- [40:34]
D
I feel like over time that has
- [40:35]
E
gone down and it is more of the. That it's mostly disrespectful.
- [40:39]
D
It's also a threat in a less literal sense. In the sense because one of the
- [40:43]
E
lines that Mark Carney used during the
- [40:46]
D
election to good effect, was that the
- [40:49]
E
United States wanted to break us so that they could own us.
- [40:52]
D
So I think that there is this
- [40:53]
E
sense that while, you know, I don't think anybody expects we're going to be flying an American flag, you know, on
- [40:58]
D
Parliament Hill, I do think there's the
- [41:00]
E
sense, though, that the United States has an intention to try to weaken us so much that we would effectively be 51st state that would have to sign deals with the United States that would be disadvantageous to us. I don't think there's that many people who are digging foxholes in the backyard. There might have been a few more maybe a year ago than there is today. I think after a year, we've learned what the taco thing, that when it comes to Donald Trump.
- [41:24]
C
Well, also when Greenland came back on the radar of Mr. Trump last, what was it? January? I think there are some people that fear this. Not that it's taken seriously, not literally, as you said, Galen, but at some point we also have multiple reports, like credible reports, that show that there is American mingling with the Alberta separation movement. Basically, they're funded by Americans and it is to weaken Canadian unity at the benefit of whoever benefits from that. But serious journalists have dug into this and there's clear American interference in what's going on in Alberta. And if you think for a second that it is acceptable to do that between allies country, I don't know what to say. So clear interference, not even the hiding.
- [42:21]
A
You said that Mark Carney's line was Trump wants to break us so that he can own us or the United States wants to break us so he can own us. I think that is in reference largely to the trade standoff, tariffs, Renegotiation of the U.S. canada, Mexico Trade agreement. In response, Mark Carney has suggested the idea of less dependence on the United States has met with China, has met with Europe. Europe has, as you said, been traveling all over the place and talking a lot about new trade deals. Canada ultimately sends 70% of its exports to the United States. So is this new idea of economic independence from the United States just politics or is it actually practical?
- [43:13]
D
Well, you know, we're not international trade experts. But. But I do think that. But I think that there is an understanding that because of geography and all the links, that we currently have historic links and all this, that we'll never be entirely decoupled from the United States. But maybe we should have been a little less coupled over the last few decades and that there was a little bit of an acquiescence, kind of like a passive laziness to it that we just kind of let it happen because we figured we'd always be best buds so we wouldn't have to worry about it. Like a lot of the deals that they're trying to sign, they will increase our trade with other countries by a few percentage points and this kind of thing. But I think it is just more about the diversification, the less reliance, the less complete reliance. So there's certainly a bit of politics in it because I imagine most Canadians
- [44:03]
E
don't really know the trade.
- [44:05]
D
They certainly don't know the trade numbers.
- [44:07]
E
But in terms of the share, the importance of the United States and all this, there might be an over expectation that we do a lot more trade with China than we actually do, for example.
- [44:15]
D
But I do think there's a level
- [44:16]
E
of politics, but there is also practicality here. We do need to have better and broader trade links with other countries just to minimize our risks when it comes to the United States.
- [44:25]
C
And I'm okay with drinking apple juice instead of orange. There are many Canadians at the grocery stores like, oh, is that product from the United States? No, thank you. Back on the shelf.
- [44:35]
E
They have little labels now. They have little labels that say product is from Canada, just so we know.
- [44:40]
C
So I'll eat Canadian apples instead of American oranges if that's what it takes. Right?
- [44:44]
A
It's so unfortunately, I think it's probably. That probably isn't all it takes. Well, unfortunately for Mark, it's an orange based economy. Political, political agenda. I mean, yeah, if you can. If Americans start driving Canadian apples to work, then I think we've solved the problem. But when it comes to this trade standoff, as you mentioned, there was an expectation that there would be some new agreement by last fall. There has still not been an agreement. You did some polling, Philippe, on how Americans are viewing this trade standoff, which I want to bring that polling in because it's really interesting before we talk about the actual standoff and gives us a little bit of a comparison point to what we were talking about with Canadians where the distrust is like 85, 15 at least as it pertains to President Trump.
- [45:31]
C
So the polling was done by Leger. Leger is a great Canadian polling firm that has offices in the United States. I think it's in New York. I think it was in Philadelphia, but I don't think it's in New York now. And it was commissioned by me. 338. I wrote the script and also meitna Mezia, which is a French podcaster, and Monier, the question is of American voters. It's what American voters think of the trade relationship with Canada. And let me quote you some numbers, if I may, Galen. So in light of recent trade tensions between the United States and Canada, how much do you trust that Canada is negotiating in good fate and seeking a fair outcome for both countries? 57% of Americans trust Canada, 22% don't. So that's what, A plus? 35. Right. We ask the same questions. Conversely, how much do you trust the U.S. administration in negotiating in good faith and seeking a fairer account? For both countries, it's 42 trust and 44 distrust. So obviously, with the usual polarization that we see, but we noticed that several Americans still have good faith that Canada is negotiating in good faith. And it goes across party lines, Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, whereas many are very wary that the United States is not negotiating in good faith. And I find that very interesting.
- [46:56]
A
Yeah, I looked at some of this data you gave me a peek behind the curtain before it published, and a majority of if Republicans, so Trump aligned voters, for the most part, trust that Canada is negotiating in good faith. So to the extent that there is animosity between Trump and Canada or the United States and Canada, even within the Republican Party, it's not a majority. So why do y' all hate Americans so much? No, I'm kidding.
- [47:29]
C
Well, I mean, don't answer that. Rhetorical. Okay, Rhetorical.
- [47:34]
A
Okay, now you can go ahead, Go ahead, take a crack at it.
- [47:37]
C
Well, the thing is, we do not usually have polarization like you do. Okay. If we take the. You would know this better than I, but how many people voted for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the provincial? It's like 96 or 97%. We just had an election where the main parties had 85%, and it was the highest total between the two parties in 50 years or even more than that, I think. And so the polarization of opinions is not as pronounced in Canada than in the United States. It's interesting to see that on the question of opinions of Canada and whether they are trustworthy, it goes across partisan line. Republicans, Democrats and Independents trust Canada more than the average Canadian trusts America.
- [48:31]
D
One thing I find interesting, just about those numbers is that this shows the kind of a unbalance between Carney and Trump is that in Canada, we've seen this from poll after poll, if the trade deals negotiations don't go well, most Canadians will blame Donald Trump and they will say that it was his fault that it didn't work out because he's not going in good faith. But in the United States, if, if those deals go south and people are upset about it, it's not clear that we're going to be blamed for it, which is a different kind of. I don't know how much leverage it is, but it is a different situation, a different political situation the two leaders find themselves in.
- [49:05]
C
If I may add more data to this conversation, Galen, So the question outside of the current trade dispute, how would you describe the relationship between United States and Canada? And if you combine excellent and good, it's 54% of American. And if you combine poor and very poor, it's 29% of Americans. So, plus 25 on the having a good relationship. Among Republicans, 69% excellent or good, 21% poor or very poor. So Republicans seem to think that, oh, this is all going super well. You know, we're happy. Aren't you happy? So I find that interesting. It's a very asymmetrical contrast.
- [49:50]
A
Right. So there's a lot of things going on here. One, it seems like overall, Americans trust Canadians more than they trust their own government to negotiate a trade deal. At the same time, they also think, one, Canada is an ally, view Canada positively, Americans themselves do. While on the other side of the border, Canadians don't trust the United States at all. I would assume to negotiate a trade deal and don't think positively of the United States. And maybe what I'm sensing here is that Americans spend so little time thinking about Canada or Canadian politics that they're perhaps not quite aware of the consequences.
- [50:37]
C
100%. 100%.
- [50:40]
D
That seems to be a common thread we've seen of Americans not being kind of as aware of how the rest of the world is viewing them as obviously the rest of the world is.
- [50:51]
C
I mean, Trump and his team threatening to break up NATO may not change the lives of everyday Americans very much, but it would be first, it would be a dream come true for Mr. Putin in Russia, and it would plunge the other countries of this alliance into a crisis. Like, what do we do if a major power like Russia decides to do what they've been doing to Ukraine for the last, what, four years? And so these kinds of threats, again, maybe many Americans do not realize how grave they are because it doesn't affect them directly, but it does affect Canada and European countries very much.
- [51:31]
A
Well, but here's something that might eventually affect Americans directly, which is if America and our president were popular in Canada. I mean, it's tricky, right? Because what the United States ultimately wants is a better trade deal with Canada. You know, the sense that Canada has taken advantage of the United States economically. We don't levy tariffs to the same degree Canada does. I can already see you rolling. Your eyes bleed. But not all of this is bunk, right? Like, there are aspects of truth to, like, unequal contributions to NATO and the United States being responsible for security across, et cetera. So if a president wanted to fix these things, they would want to create a dynamic in other countries, domestic politics, in Canadian politics, where Canadians view the United States advantageously. They think America is looking out for its own best interests, but also we want to be aligned with those interests. You know, soft power plus hard power. We like American culture, yada, yada, yada. And therefore, Canadians would say, Mark Carney, if you're not able to craft a trade deal with the United States, it's your fault. Screw you, you're wrecking the Canadian economy. But instead, Trump has created a dynamic where Canadians aren't going to hold Mark. It sounds like Canadians aren't going to hold Mark county liable or responsible if he doesn't manage to achieve a trade deal with the United States.
- [53:03]
C
In the short term.
- [53:04]
D
Yeah, in the short term. That's the thing.
- [53:06]
C
Yeah, I agree.
- [53:08]
A
So maybe ultimately that makes it harder for the United States to get what it wants because Mark Carney isn't experiencing that domestic pressure. I don't know, but maybe you tell me sort of what the state of that negotiation is. Are there things that Carney could reasonably give up? Are there? You know, so I don't think anyone in America is paying all that close attention to these negotiations right now, between the attempted shooting on Saturday and the war in Iran. And the list just truly goes on and on and on and on and on. The king of Canada arriving in Washington, D.C. today. But are Canadians paying attention to the ins and outs of these trade negotiations?
- [53:52]
D
I don't think they are, not to that extent. We are greatly impacted by it. And we have had some factories that have had to close down and lay off workers because of the change in the situation. So for a lot of individuals, it is directly impacting people working. The auto sector would have concerns, steel being another one, that kind of stuff. But I think what we've seen is that there is going to be a lot of slack that's given to Mark Carney if he doesn't get a deal done, in part because, as I said, people don't. I don't really think that the United States is acting in good faith. There's also the thing that we've also taken lessons from other negotiations and the past negotiations we've already had. Last year, we did give some concessions. There was a couple concessions we did on lowering counter tariffs, on getting rid of a digital
- [54:40]
C
service.
- [54:41]
D
I can't remember the yeah, Service act, because we thought that they were concessions. And we got nothing.
- [54:46]
E
We got nothing in return. So now there is this kind of acceptance that providing concessions is not going to get us in return. So why would we take that first step? And there's a view in Canada, in the Canadian government, that the longer we wait, the more pressure goes on Donald Trump, the closer we get to the midterms. And so why would we try to come up with a deal right now? And then there's just the question of what's the point of signing a deal if the president will break it at a whim and when he's already breaking the deal that he signed with us? He was the one who came up with the current Kuzma, as we call
- [55:21]
D
it, because we put Canada first.
- [55:22]
C
But yeah, the Kuzma deal, the US CMCA has Donald Trump's signature on it and he pissed all over it. Sorry if I maybe the wrong words, but you know what I mean. So are we going to really bend over to sign a new deal when we know that he could just break it again? Sorry, that's. I mean, I'm not saying my personal opinion. I'm saying the Canadian view is like, they're not trustworthy, so we're not in a hurry. And especially as again, the midterms are coming and if the numbers, and I know American pollsters are not as good as Canadian pollsters, and I'm sorry about that. But if American pollsters are close or closer, the balance should tilt. But that's another good discussion altogether.
- [56:02]
A
Wow. The pollster nationalism amongst Canadians is just sky high. Can we talk a little bit about the Canadian economy? Because obviously the Canadian economy is linked to all of this. And even if Canadians don't trust Americans to negotiate in good faith, at the end of the day, the philosophy of whose fault it is stops mattering. When you start feeling a scarcity mindset, the pressures of a faltering economy or an energy crisis or whatnot, how much risk is there for Mark Carney in the state of the Canadian economy?
- [56:40]
D
Yeah, that's the biggest risk. That's why we said he won't get blamed short term. But in three and a half years, if the next election, because you mentioned the next election isn't going to be until 2029. Another thing where I talked about the untrammeled powers of a majority prime minister. He can choose the election date whenever he wants. It could be tomorrow. He could decide. Eh, I feel like going to the polls tomorrow. But anyway, if the next election isn't.
- [57:03]
A
Wait, are you saying that then maybe it's in the Liberals best interest to hold the next election right before Trump leaves?
- [57:10]
D
Yes, it would be within their best interest to have an election while Donald Trump is still in the White House, Almost certainly just from a political standpoint, whether it would actually be good for the country, who knows. But the thing is that if there isn't a deal, if we get even more economic pain because of that by the next election, people might not blame Mark Carney anymore, but they might be like, but we probably still need to change because things are going so poorly. So that is why that is a huge risk. And the Canadian economy is still pretty fragile. We're still impacted a lot by a lot of these things. We are an oil producer, so the recent spike in oil is probably going to reduce our deficit for the next little bit. But yeah, that is a huge vulnerability. And one of the reasons why, when we talked about the kind of theory
- [57:53]
E
of the next election that the Conservatives
- [57:55]
D
had one, is that those issues will
- [57:57]
E
become more important than the things that contributed to Carney's win last year.
- [58:03]
A
Wrapping up here, you mentioned that historically when a Republican president takes office, Canadian views of the United States fall. When a Democrat takes office, they go up. Do you think that a future Democratic president could repair the U.S. canadian relationship relatively quickly? Or has something more permanent shifted in Canadian attitudes towards the US
- [58:31]
C
this is a deep cut. Again, we'll go with the data. We'll have studies on this and we'll see. But here's the thing. The next president will have a lot of repairing to do diplomatically and not just with Canada. And I think it could take a generation because there are a lot of people that I spoke to that are reasonable people, people with money that are saying, you know what, not only am I not going to visit the United States as a tourist, but I don't even want to transit towards the United States. I'm going to take a flight. A flight, make sure it doesn't stop in Chicago or Atlanta. And this does not. They can't fix that overnight. But again, we will stick to the data and we'll see if it repairs in a few extra years.
- [59:22]
A
Can I ask though? Because that to me sounds like I'm familiar with that. Kind of mentality here in the United States. I already referenced the resistance Boomer library. There's a lot of that kind of sentiment amongst people who were already inclined to not like President Trump, have the ability financially to make all different kinds of choices about how they want to spend their money, but they certainly don't represent the median American, and they're not the person with whom elections are won or lost. Now, Canadians with money who want to spend their money in the United States, yes, benefit the United States, but they don't probably represent the Canadian whole. I'm curious how much that sentiment has permeated throughout the entirety of the country.
- [60:05]
D
I think it's not like I don't know if a majority of Canadians have changed their behaviors that much, but enough has that it is getting US Senators and representatives complaining, especially those on the border, that they don't have tourists, they don't have. Bourbon producers in Kentucky very upset that we don't put American alcohol anymore on the shelves in Ontario and Quebec. Ontario, the LCBO is the largest, if I'm not mistaken, is the largest alcohol purchaser in the world. It is our publicly owned liquor commission. So they buy all the wine that Ontarians drink, and Ontario is a big
- [60:43]
E
province and they're not buying those from
- [60:46]
D
Kentucky anymore, the bourbon, not the wine, and no California wine. So these things have a big impact. Is it enough to say that the
- [60:55]
E
average Canadian is not going to travel
- [60:56]
D
to the United States?
- [60:58]
E
I'm not sure if it's that much,
- [60:59]
D
but there's certainly a little bit more
- [61:00]
E
hesitation than there would have been in the past. And to go back to your earlier question about whether we can kind of repair the damage, it's possible that the damage could be repaired in terms of views of the United States or trust in a Democratic president, even though the Democrats have not been that good on trade for us either. I think what has changed is that we're no longer going to take it for granted that we can count on the states. You know, you mentioned how if, if
- [61:26]
D
we had a US President who was trying to appeal to Canadians in a positive way, we could get a better trade deal, more success there. But the increase in our spending, we're now at 2% NATO spending, and we have intentions to go up to five, with some creative accounting of what counts as the five. But anyway, we wouldn't do that if we didn't think that the United States was still someone we could rely on. And that, I think, is a lesson that we'll have have carried in the future. That even if a Democrat comes in and says yes, we would go up and stand up for NATO allies, we might still say, eh, this is a long term investment now and we can't take it for granted anymore.
- [62:01]
A
I know this is its own rabbit hole and we're going long here, but is there a sense, you talked about the polling where Canadians view the UK France, Japan super positively. How do Canadians view China? Right. Because in this very moment when it comes to security, Canada can't say, probably can't say, well, we have no reliance on the United States. We're just going to rely on France or whatever. Right. Or the Europeans who for their own part are facing this problem themselves. Is there a sense in Canada that's like, well, if we can't rely on Americans, we'd much rather rely on China.
- [62:43]
D
We've seen some polls on it.
- [62:45]
C
China is not next door. There's a notion away.
- [62:50]
D
The polls indicate though that Canadians are so wary about China. China has a big story of interference in our elections and these kinds of things. But there has been polling suggesting that more people are like we should probably re increase our ties with China and India and other countries that we've had problematic relations with, not that we love them all of a sudden, but that if we're going to be trading with a bunch of countries that, that we have bad relations with might as well increase that. There is polling that suggests now that there was, I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure we've seen now a poll that wasn't too long ago where Philip mentioned United States between Saudi Arabia and Russia. I think there was another one that had positive views of China, still low, but above positive views of the United States. So it's had a huge impact and I can't, I can't emphasize enough to Americans how much of an impact it's had here.
- [63:42]
C
Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the following countries to Canadian respondents? China, 39% favorable, 50% unfavorable. That's a minus 11. In the same poll, the US is minus 32, which is worse than Saudi Arabia. So I think that's a good way to end this segment, hopefully.
- [64:04]
A
Final, final, final question. Is there any hope that a state visit by the king of Canada this week might be able to help relations between the United States and Canada?
- [64:14]
D
Is he attending as the king of Canada or is as the king of the British?
- [64:19]
A
This is an important distinction because as I learned while I was doing research this morning, King Charles is the King of the United Kingdom. Britain in a completely separate capacity than he is the king of Canada. Lest anybody get confused there, I'm fascinated
- [64:37]
D
we have some pedantic people here who will make that point, but to me, he's still a British king. We'll see. We do know, we think we have this view that Donald Trump likes the royalty and so he's more likely to kind of listen. If Charles says things about Canada, that's good, he could have a role in trying to tamp down any interference in Alberta separatism, that kind of stuff. But I don't think Canadians are banking a lot of hopes that King Charles is going to save us.
- [65:05]
A
Maybe Camilla can do it, you know. Anyway, thank you so much, Felipe and Erik, for joining me this morning, now afternoon. I've really appreciated it and I've learned a lot and I hope listeners have as well.
- [65:19]
D
All right, thanks so much.
- [65:20]
C
Merci beaucoup, Galen. Now let's do it in French.
- [65:23]
A
Yes, absolutely. There we go. Take care. My name is Galen Druck.
- [65:28]
B
Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you get your podcasts.
- [65:33]
A
Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes.
- [65:35]
B
You can also join in our paid subscriber chat and pass along questions for
- [65:39]
A
us to discuss on the show.
- [65:40]
B
And you ensure that we can keep
- [65:42]
A
making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor.
- [65:46]
B
Also, be a friend of the POD and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us.
- [65:52]
A
Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.