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Transcript

610 CKTB | Diplomatic Decorum & Canadian Defiance: Carney & Ford’s Tag-Team vs Trump · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: John Lidkey is here a great voice and a storyteller
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: on the show today. Good morning, John, How are you.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Geen doing great? How about you?
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Good? Okay, we talked about this the story yesterday,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and you and I were talking about things on the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: telephone yesterday. You've got a pretty good take on everything.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: So anyway, what we're talking about is Donald Trump just
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: revived his thread about making Canada the fifty first state,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: right after news broke that Canada is now in a recession.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: But this time the US ambassador Pete Hawkstra, who's starting
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to drive me crazy, actually shared and defended the comment.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Also late breaking yesterday, reporters buttonholed him and he said,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: you know, it was the ultimate cop go, oh, well,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: my staff just automatically, does you know, not my job? Man, Like,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: don't blame me, take some responsibility. What do you make
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of all of this?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: You know, Jean, I think we all need to stop
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: collectively clutching pearls about decorum right now with things. I
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: know that he's a diplomat and thing we're supposed to be,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: you know, better than what he's doing. But look at
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: before modern democracy, political disputes were settled with broadswords and shields.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: The Trump administration right down to these ambassador Lackees, are
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: practically begging for a return to the dark ages. But
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: does this mean diplomatic decorum is dead? I don't know.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: You know, nationally, we're going to keep pretending it's on
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: life support here because we're Canadians and we've got a
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: pathological addiction to over politeness and a smug moral superiority
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: that's baked into us. But we've got to be clear
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: about it. We didn't break it Washington did. They torched
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: and burned the most successful lucrative bilateral partnership that's ever
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: been seen in human history. It took generations of trust
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: building to construct our dynamic that we add our relatively
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: open border, non militarized border, if you will. And Trump
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: managed to smash that from hundreds of years building it
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: up in five years flat. It won't be built back overnight.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: We're looking at a minimum, I would say, of three
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: generations seventy five years to repair this. The rot is
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: baked into the system now.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So Trime Minister kind of shrugged this off as opposed
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: by saying, well, Trump is an exceptionally active social media user. Yeah, well,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: hi everybody, and he just right off the bat rejected
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: any calls to expel Hostra. So is the Prime Minister
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: just playing this too soft? Or is he a bit
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: of a sucky baby?
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Carney is playing, I would say, like a really sophisticated
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: game of softball. He's not going to do things hard,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: He's going to do things soft and diplomatic. But we
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: ought to look under the hood. This is how we
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: sort of do things up here. When he dismisses annexation
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: and threats as the ramblings of social media users, that
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: is the ultimate display of dry smugness that Canadians have
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: built into us. It's polite, it's not rude unless you
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: know what he's actually saying. It's a masterclass and linguistic
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: dynamics though to sidestep what's actually been done. And we
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: talked about that with what he did at the synagogue
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: the other day. But we expect Trump to troll, we
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: shouldn't expect the ambassador to join in the circuit. His
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: job is to actually be the diplomat. So I think
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Cayene's cold, calculated, pragmatic response knows he shows exactly that
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: it's about the economic line and by refusing to hand
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: hoax to the walking papers. He's sidestepping having to have
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: that game that Trump would want to play.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Pete a diplomat who does not know how to
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: be diplomatic. But you know it was interesting though. Premier
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: doug Ford directly fired back during question period right before
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Queen's Park went on a twenty one week summer vacation,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: stating Canada will never be the fifty first state and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Canada is not for sale. So my question is who
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: has the better political strategy here, Karney or Dougie Ford.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Well, so we've got doug Ford swinging arrested iron pipe
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: versus Mark Carney playing the game of softball right now.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's either or one won't work without
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the other. This is political good cop, bad cop or
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: good cop on cop if you will, or whatever the
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: movie was, on a national scale. We've got to be
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: honest about that. We know how this works. The US
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: holds all of the cards and they know they are.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: So we're dealing with a bully who has the royal flush.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: So we have to play a wild card. And there
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: doug Ford, our own self proclaimed eight hundred pound gorilla.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: So will performative fury actually save our economy from targeted tariffs.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I have my doubts. Time will tell, but we're in
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: a street fight and we need a loud mouthed scrap
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: or making a scene out front while the quiet technocrat
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: is going to go into the back room and figure
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: out how to keep the power on.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, Pierre pauliof who, by the way, I think,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: is just hitting it out of the park. In the
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: question period this week, he said Trump's comments were ridiculous,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: but he also had a good point. He said, we
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: can't be distracted from domestic policies, the price of food
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that I talked about on Volitis on the news, and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: of course the fact that we're in a recession now.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: From a purely tactical and political standpoint, Poliev's pivot is
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: really smart politics. He's walking such a tight rope here.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: If he obsesses over Trump, he's going to lose across
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: the entire board. Populist base he has will hammer him
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: for not betting the need of MAGA, the moderate base
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: will scream that he's not condemning Mega enough, the liberals
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: will paint him still as Trump Light, and the National
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Press Gallery will just keep going after him, because that's
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: what they do. But what's his job to oppose? So
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: by shifting the spotlight back to the domestic dumpster fire
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: of the economy that we're in a recession full stop,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: he's doing the smart politics play. The GDP has been shrinking,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: families are having a hard time buying groceries. So bring
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: the conversation back to these self inflicted economic wounds. And
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: that's the only play that they've got, especially when as
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: much of the country is clinging to Carney's steady hand
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: for life support during this crisis.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Well, our Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc was in Ottawa. It
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: came out in the news he's officially sending a letter
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: calling for a sixteen year renewal of the free trade peck. Now,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I just I wonder how much of this Washington trolling
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: is a calculated strategy to put us over the barrel
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: before they who Kuzma review even begins.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: The entire Trump administration exists only to troll it's government
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: by grievance, and that's how they act. It's government by trolling,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: whether it's their pressers, the late night social media, or
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: weaponized official statements or replies to emails like Elon Musk
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: used to do with poop emojis. The whole playbook is
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: engineered to bait the media, trigger the left, and feed
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: the red meat to the base. But Trump gets better
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: than anyone else that all business, even politics, is show business.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: We get it.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: It's the line from the producers. So he puts on
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: the massive spectacle. The administration falls in line, but no
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: one should make the mistake. This is a brutal career
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: ending deal that are quietly made behind closed doors when
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: the cameras are distracting us from the main stage. The
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: real danger that we have is when everyone starts to
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: mistake the theater for the actual policy. But I think
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: that's where we're at right now in Canada. So if
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: we spend all day pretending to be a malicious actor
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: for the sake of the audience, eventually your mask will
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: eat your face and you become the villain you're portraying.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: And I don't think Canadians have any benefit of the
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: doubt left for Trump.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, if you take a look at these statistics,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Canadians not going into the US and boycotting a lot
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: of American products, No American spirits wines in the LCBO.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: You know when Trump does something like this, how heavily
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: is this organic consumer boycott going to hit border economies
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: like Niagara Falls, New York and other places right across
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: from Canada.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the risk, right when we have a
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: wave of performative patriotism driving Canadians to cancel their flortifications
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: or target US consumer goods, the immediate economic blowback lands
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: squarely on our doorsteps. And I mean that literally in
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Niagara and here in Windsor, where I'm based in and
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: right here in Windsor, we've been blurading just like you guys,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: tourism dollars for years due to this toxic political climate
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: and looming tariffs. And we're still living back quite frankly
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: from the post COVID border closures. So any drop in
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: cross border tourism or commerce harms our community's first, the
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: fastest and artists. But the irony is is because we
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: bear the brunt of this crossfire the most, and because
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: our regions possess a historically militant union dense DNA, it's
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: our local workers that are far more likely to cheer
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: on the doug Ford iron rod mouth of things rather
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: than the protectionist rhetoric of Carney's quiet mouth. So our
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: people want fighters, whether it be in Niagara or down
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: here in Windsor. They don't want memos.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, given Niagros, wine, tourism, agriculture, we also manufacture
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of things in the Niagara area. What should
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: our local businesses and municipal leaders be doing right now?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I guess to shield themselves from this political border crossfire.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think we've talked about this before.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: We need to stop waiting for our savior from Queens
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Park or from Ottawa. They're not coming for us. What
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: we need to do is formally weaponize the Windsor Niagara
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: economic corridor. We have to aggressively pivot. We need to
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: figure out our own market sovereignty and promote our own
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: domestic commerce and Canadian travel directly along the route from
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: down here in Windsor up to your region in Niagara.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: We can't operate as isolated economic silos or islands anymore.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: We've got great greenhouses, infrastructure, have the auto engineering, automation
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: and emerging culinary system. Of course, our wineries down here,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: and then you guys have your world class Vinta culture,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: excusing your established wine tourism, your green culture as well.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, the regions are anchored by deep manufacturing, extensive
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: cycling corridors, green revolutions, and of course our culinary and
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: wine regions. So we need to put together our municipal
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: and regional councils across both regions, forming a joint emergency committee,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: pool our ECTEV development funds, coordinate our supply chains, launch
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: major aggressive domestic advertising campaigns to shield our industries and
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: our tourism spectors, and bring our people from this region.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: We've got so much to offer in our two hundred
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: kilometer belt. Why are we focusing on trying to bring
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: people in from Europe or Australia or even disaffected Americans?
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Why not just bring some Canadians in?
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Good idea. Hey, one final point, I'm just about out
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: of time. Trump Courtleoni still will not allow the Gordy
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: how Bridge to open. I mean, how long is this
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: going to drag? One man? I mean, Canada paid for everything.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of the most frustrating parts of
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: it all. I mean, you guys up there and me
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: down here. We can look across the border and see
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: the very issues. But and winsor we can see the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: bridge that's worth multi billion dollars that still isn't turned on.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: And I had an American actually reach out to me
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: a couple days ago saying, you know what we should do.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: We should go watch the international fireworks that we do
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: for Canada Day and Independence Day, and we should all
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: go onto the GORDIAU Bridge and we'll put up a
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: wall in the middle of it and we can yell
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: tear down this wall Trump and I thought, that's a
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: really cute idea. I don't think it's going to work.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: When's it going to open? I don't know. I keep hearing,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: you know, a couple of weeks maybe, but that was
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: like a couple months ago.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, great, take this morning, John, appreciate you, and we'll
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: talk to you tomorrow.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Looking forward to it. Jim.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: There he goes John Lickey, what was a good take
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: on what's happening