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The Great Canadian Betrayal | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, now is the time of monsters.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words from Gramshee, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is sponsored by the Nation Magazine, which is where I work.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm T.T.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: here, National Affairs Course Foundation.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can listen to this podcast on all the major platforms.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: This week, I want to take up what is not the familiar monster of Trump, but perhaps the more complicated monster of the sort of liberal centers that make Trump possible.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Someone who actually went a lot of support from a liberal center left and even left voters in a recent election.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Earlier this spring in April, Canada held an election and to the relief of many on the left not only in Canada but throughout the world, Mark Carney of the Liberal Party won.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this was seen as a kind of rebuke to Trumpism because Carney very much ran as someone who would
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: defend Canada against Trump.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I noticed it's talking to American friends.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, this isn't all great.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I have to confess I was always a kind of skeptic of Karni and even just based on his sort of elite technical background.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my guest today Luke Savage has always also been a carnie skeptic and I have to say like early days in I think our skepticism has been warranted that I think carnie is betraying many of the promises that he ran on and this is something that is
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now being noticed, not only by critics on the left, like Luke and myself, but even some liberals, the former liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, used the word betrayal to describe how Karni is keeping it to Trump on many matters.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I guess the question we're going to address today is, you know, has Mark Karni betrayed Canada and betrayed his voters.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So first of all, I want to welcome Luke Savage.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: for Lific writer, for many publications, including Jack Devin and the Toronto star, and he's written recently on a Carnegie for both the star and the bathroom.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll link to those articles in the show notes, but first of all, welcome Luke.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Glad to be back.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, let's just start with this question.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Betrayal, like so there were promises made and you know, like I think there's good reason to think the journey is not actually fulfilling those promises.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So do you want to like outline what he ran on and why you and I are both like, if not disappointed, like pointing trees, the fact that he has actually led to his own voters down.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I mean, so I opened the recent piece in the star with, by quoting two slogans, Carnegie used, you made quite ample use of both of these, not only during the federal election campaign, but in his campaign for the liberal leadership in lead up to the federal election as well.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, these are both slogans that are associated with various kinds of economic nationalism in Canada's past.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they're both slogans that I think and phrases that have a distinctly social democratic connotation because of who said them in the first place.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So one of them was, Karne talked about the need for Canadians to become masters in our own home.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So some of our American listeners may not, the phrase may not scan, but this was used by the Quebec liberal party in the nineteen sixties.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: by figures like Jean Lassage, the premier of Quebec.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: During what's known as the quiet revolution, which was a period in which Quebec rapidly modernized itself, it built up a huge public sector.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: This specific phrase, Masters in our own home, was used during, I believe it was the nineteen sixty-two provincial campaign where, you know, government was seeking reelection and one of their big campaign promises was the nationalization of hydroelectricity.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, if the slogan, you know, if Master's in our own home suggests anything, we're talking about, you know, nationalization of industry, we're talking about the building of a welfare state, the building of the public sector and in Quebec, and that sort of thing.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second question.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also had in the Quebec context, because Quebec was basically a colony within Canada, with a kind of angloel elite that did not represent the people.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a slogan of decolonization.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was like, yes.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: In keeping with the spirit of the nineteen sixties, it was like the idea that, you know, like this nation will not be governed by foreign capital, but will take command of its own destiny.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, thank you.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly right.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And not just English Canadian capital, but put American corporations operating in Quebec as well.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's a very, it's a very potent, the phrase is quite a loaded one.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the second one was used by my late friend Ed Broadbent when he was the leader of the NDP Canada Social Democratic Party in the seventies and eighties.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, as far as I can tell, Carney was kind of lifting the phrase directly from Ed when he talked about
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: the need for candidate to take control of its economic destiny.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, you know, this when had broadband said it, he was talking about the need for an industrial strategy in Canada, you know, at broadband with someone who championed public ownership over certain natural resources.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in the early seventies helped spearhead the partial nationalization of the petroleum sector, that kind of thing.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know,
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: whatever people heard in these slogans, and obviously political slogans are, I mean, they're slogans, they're designed, especially when someone like Mark Carney uses them, you're meant to, you're meant to project into them somewhat, but whatever people heard, whether they recognize the specific historical reference points or not, I don't think they heard a neoliberal agenda of cuts.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they heard, and I think this is the other sort
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: the other thrust of my recent piece in the star.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The policy of kind of cajolary towards Donald Trump.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this was really the other plank of the carnie campaign that I think really resonated with people was the idea that we're going to have this very competent, calm, managerial figure who is going to, who's really going to stand up to Donald Trump and is going to pursue a new kind of economic nationalism, a new kind of nation building project in Canada.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: to respond to the fact that the trade relationship and the diplomatic relationship that Canada has enjoyed with the United States is in the process of collapsing.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you asked about betrayal and
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do think that's how many people will feel.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel betrayed exactly because I didn't, you know, I've been a skeptic of Carnegie from the very beginning.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's always seemed like a technocrat to me.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I have been very surprised by, I guess, how abruptly the government appears to have
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: appears to have pivoted.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, you know, the liberal campaign itself at the level of detail was often quite non-specific about what exactly it was going to do.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, I get into this in a piece of it, but there was, you know, kind of simultaneous a language of nation building that you heard, you know, strengthening national institutions and so on, but you also heard
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: the language of kind of budgetary discipline, fiscal discipline, and that kind of thing.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there was always a bit of a slipperiness in the thing's carny was saying, and my experience writing about liberal politicians as if
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, unless they're being very, very specific, or I've sent us liberal politicians, I should say, unless they're being very specific about what it is, they're proposing to do or what they believe, you know, the blank space in the things they say is often a conservative space, you know, that's, the things left unsaid is, you know, that's, that's often the, the conservative direction they intend to go in.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Betrayal isn't how I feel exactly, but myself, but I think many people probably voted.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think when many people voted liberal after hearing, we're going to become masters in our own home, they weren't anticipating the direction the government now seems to be taking.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, in the last election, I mean, one thing that happened was that there was a collapse of the Social Democratic Party, the NDP, which had one of its
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's worth showing in history.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know from going to events that there were a lot of people who are like, you know, die hard NDP voters.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: who had always voted for NDP and who voted for Karni, partially because there's a sense of emergency.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have to have someone to stand up to Trump and also thinking that this guy will do the job that one would expect center left politician of doing a nation building.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And today we're zeroing on a specific thing.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I actually specifically remember, like before the election, Karni was talking about like giving like sustained dedicated funding to rebuilding the CBC.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a Canadian broadcasting corporation, our national broadcasting company, which is suffered from a long period of cuts from what liberal and conservative governments.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's seem like a very specifically in the D said, and now he looks like he's the opposite, right?
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Am I wrong about that?
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so during the campaign, they pledged a hundred and fifty million to boost the CBC, you know, which is a significant amount of money.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it is
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's less than what the outgoing minister of heritage or the former minister of heritage suggested.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think her figure was two hundred million and the reason she was was suggesting that amount is because it could potentially allow the CBC to go add free.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nonetheless, a hundred and fifty million is as a considerable investment and don't quote me on this because I haven't
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: haven't had my head in, because I haven't had my head in it since I wrote the piece, but when last I checked the the government's line on this was that they're still planning, they're still planning to make the investment, but because it also they've also asked the CBC to find
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: to find a hundred and ninety eight million dollars in cuts over the next three years.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that would be looking at a net cut of something like fifty million dollars.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's like, you can, you can pump a hundred and fifty million dollars in, but if you're taking a large number out, I'm not sure that constitutes an investment.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: towards making sort of a cut-son social spending domestic spending while bolstering military spending.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think police sort of border control stuff, right?
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's right.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in my piece, I go into this in more detail, but there's going to be a budget later this year probably in the fall.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And ahead of that budget, it seems that much of the public sector, every single ministry,
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Almost every single ministry in the federal government, every department has been asked to find ambitious savings, which means cuts of up to fifteen percent over the next three years.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some places have been asked to find greater cuts.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: This extends not just to government departments, but also to places like
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The National Research Council, Statistics Canada, the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, you know, important institutions in Canadian civil society, and as you alluded to already, other places have been asked to find much lower, you know, they've been given much lower targets, so Department of National Defense, the RCMP,
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Board of Services, et cetera.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, one does have to speak a little bit tentatively here because we haven't seen the budget yet.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had one source tell me or suggest that the specific cuts that may have been demanded or that are being demanded by to the CBC are in fact a bit of a faint and they're actually still are planning to go
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: and invest in the CBC.
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we'll have to see, but I don't really see, I don't see a scenario where the finance minister sends letters to every other member of cabinet and says, find fifteen percent savings ahead of next fall's budget, and that isn't a prelude to cuts.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just to underscore the point,
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: If cuts were made on this scale, so if there were, you know, fifteen percent cuts basically across the board and government departments, I'm just studied by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, which suggests that that would be, we'd be looking at as many as fifty-seven thousand full-time civil servants losing their jobs.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So these would be absolutely lacerating cuts just the auto-agatina region alone, so Canada's capital region, something like twenty-three or to twenty-five thousand
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: jobs have been lost just in that.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: area and it's important to note here that I mean this would be this would be an explicitly broken liberal campaign promise because well Mark Carney did talk about capping the size of the public sector there was there was no sense that I mean you didn't say anything about about firing people so this would be quite an explicit betrayal if that's if that's the right word and I guess just just one more point to make here which which I guess I I kind of hinted at already
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The specific language Karni uses around spending and investment and fiscal discipline is it's worth putting on record here because I suspect this is a trick that we're going to see others borrow it's because it it you know I think it I think it proved quite effective during the campaign since Karni ran for the liberal leadership but as soon as he ran for the liberal leadership he started talking about this
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This way of bifurcating the federal government's budgeting process such that they're now there'd be kind of two budgets or you know, there'd be there'd be an operational budget and a capital budget, which as he says, you know, this allows the government to to spend and do nation building, but maintain, you know, fiscal discipline while it invests.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what this really seems to be describing is a situation where, you know, the government cuts a lot of, there's a lot of cuts to the public sector, but these are sort of labeled as investments because then the savings from that are partly redirected into this capital budget, and they are used to incarnies, while one of his favorite kind of technocrat phrases, to catalyze private sector investments.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we'd be talking about a sort of massive public private
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: partnership here, and it's kind of ingenious when you think about it because it really does seem to be a way that you can make potentially quite lacerating cuts and call it call it nation building and say you're actually doing investments.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're merely simply redeploying assets.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not austerity.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, I'm at your redeploying assets, but also basically creating an enhanced system of corporate government cooperation, right?
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like that sort of, you know, it is a kind of like state capitalism.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: model, but what we're like, the capitalist will keep getting all the profits.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It seems not highly dubious in many ways.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this austerity stuff does seem like the opposite of any sort of nation building that has happened before.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is really going to push Canada much further along a neoliberal line.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: The other aspect is the sort of relationship with the United States.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I do think people came to Carnegie with the sense of, here's a guy who will stand up to the United States.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump was the major election issue in the Canadian election.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think for the past two years, the conservatives were on track to win like actually a very strong majority.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: The reason that they fell behind was that the liberals were seeing as more willing to stand up to Trump.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: How is that going?
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, here, I mean, it's arguably worse.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, here, I think the, I mean, I'm in some ways more surprised by the posture of the government's assumed here because I think that, you know, it was so obvious that their election victory was, you know, was heavily about the
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: a deep feeling throughout much of the electorate, including I think among many people who are at least potential conservative voters, you know, the deep feeling that the country is being threatened by the United States and by Donald Trump specifically and we need to we need to stand up to that and
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: What we've seen instead is that the government is considering, joining signing on to Trump's proposed a his multi-billion dollar golden dome mis-defense initiative.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're considering it at least.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're currently pushing a border bill, which has been widely criticized by civil liberties groups like the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Amnesty International is denounced as an attack on the rights of those seeking asylum.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is all it would seem to humor the ludicrous assertion Trump's periodically made that the reason he's doing tariffs and obviously we know the justification for the tariffs and the trade stuff constantly changes.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But one of the justifications is that yeah, drugs are coming in.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: to the United States, fentanyl is coming in from Canada.
• 17:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: That kind of thing.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And our government's response is to shovel billions of dollars to border services and to pass this heavy-handed border bill.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: There have been other things as well.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: The government had a digital services tax plan, which would have been paid by companies like Netflix and Google.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It dropped out at the last minute on Trump's request.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just a few hours before it was going to go into effect.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the White House was quite explicit on that.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: They said, oh, yeah, you know, Carnegie capitulated, Canada capitulated.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it goes on and on.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think, you know, in the realm of foreign policy, we've seen
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've seen these little experiments I suppose.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was on a panel a month or so ago on on on on the agenda on a TV Ontario discussing the joint statement released by by Mark Carney, your star member and and McCron, which
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, was was kind of taking a different line at least rhetorically speaking on Israel and Gaza then then the Trump administration was taking and you know there was kind of a wider conversation between that and we haven't talked about this but Mark Carney inviting the king to come and deliver the government's throne speech a few months ago and so you know there there there's been a sort of I guess some there have been some trial balloons about you know maybe Canada should
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Act more independently from the United States by, I guess, in a sense, retrenching the empire that it used to have a special relationship with.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very skeptical of that for various reasons we don't need to get into, but to me, these have been kind of the exception.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the line the government has tended to take
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: in so many places and even on foreign policy as well is if it's different from the Trump administration, this is particularly trun Gaza, I think it is, it's largely just they're telling a different story, they're saying things that the rhetoric is different, but the policy isn't necessarily changing.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Canada, according to a recent report,
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: can still exporting arms to to the Israelis, you know, this is and there's been this announcement which, you know, is driven the Trump administration mad, obviously driven Netanyahu mad about, you know, Canada, France and Britain are going to recognize Appellan's Palestinian state and
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: September, which is a very different line than the one the Trump administration has taken, except that when you actually look into the details, it's very clear that in many ways they're just sort of reiterating the same position that these governments have had all along, you know, there's so many conditions attached to it that it's not actually, it's not actually recognition of a Palestinian
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: state.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, again, here, I think I bring it up just in part to underscore that often the differences, the daylight between Canada's New Government and Donald Trump, if it exists at all, is often, you know, in foreign policy terms is often, it's kind of just rhetorical.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's not, there's not the kind of, you know, independent muscular foreign policy that I think a lot of people were hoping to see.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, absolutely not.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is like more a difference in rhetoric rather than in reality.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I mean, to draw maybe a historical contrast, you know, like in some ways, kind of there was very complicit in the Vietnam War just as we are in the world of Gaza, but peer true to was like much more critical of the Vietnam policy than like Cardi has been of what Israel is doing.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trudeau and his predecessor, Lester Pearson, as he made very significant overtures that won against American desires in terms of an opening for its China dealings with Cuba.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is not just true of liberal governments.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a good question.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was it in Latin America?
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was in Latin America.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, are you going to tell me?
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was Nicaragua.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was Nicaragua.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a large recipient of Canadian foreign aid in the Americas.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And on South Africa as well, everyone could say really never did enough.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, he actually spoke against the part I did that period where Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were very much not inclined to do so.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, so, yeah, I mean, I think that Carnies willing this to challenge the American Empire under Trump is a significantly less than Canadian Prime Minister's in the recent past.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe I mean, I think that's where it's pulling back a little bit because, you know, with the rise, Trump winning like a second time, I had had the thought and other people had the thought that, you know, this would be a period for the NATO countries to actually like rethink their foreign policy.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, can you really, you know, like have a foreign policy that's so reliant on the United States, if it is willing to elect someone who basically sees the alliance system as a protection racket, who, you know, wants to use it to sell American weapons, but is otherwise like very unreliable and very, a material and destabilizing of, you know, your fundamental trade relationships and policy relationships.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you have one has seen, like, in some places, I think particularly France, you know, discussion of, like, what would an independent foreign policy look like?
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the larger actual action of European leaders, and I think currently as part of this,
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: has been like two double down on being fast sold to the American Empire to try to develop a strategy of let's you know try to give Trump a lot of what he wants let's give him the military spending he wants which you know like all these promises of five percent spending on the military like that is actually a protection racket is the same we will buy American weapons and this but this is a way for America to like make a profit from its empire
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And combined with a sort of policy of flattery of, you know, like of sort of praising Trump.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I really have to like question, you know, like
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it does sort of show all the sort of humidity and then willingness to think of what the alternative is.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And also like this is policy of flattery actually work with someone who is basically like running the country like a mob boss and always wants more and more.
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the recent example of India perhaps points to answer this question because in the render mode, the prime minister of India, you know very much follow this path of flattery of saying Trump is his great friend of campaigning for Trump.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: in twenty nineteen and now Trump just slapped India with like massive fifty percent tariffs because he did think that India went far enough he didn't think that India was praising Trump as he wanted to for supposedly helping us ceasefire.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've seen the government denies between India and Pakistan.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, why do you think that these policy elites are so committed to a status quo policy of flattering Trump and giving him a lot of what he wants and thinking that this is the way
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: to solve their problem with the United States.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is something that I would read with great interest, a really deep dive into, you know, I would love somebody to really explore this carefully in a long, in a long read of some kind, because I can only, I can only offer kind of some speculation here.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that the general phenomenon as you're describing is exactly right.
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I also think when it comes to Canada, when it comes to the Europeans, probably when it comes to other countries as well, we've seen just in the past few months really just since the start of the year.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there was a harder line being taken on Trump by lots of countries, including by Canada.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: We were doing big retaliatory tariffs.
• 26:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There were US liquor was getting pulled off the shelves, that kind of thing.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a province of Ontario where I live was threatening to shut off the lights and upstate New York, that kind of thing.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, struggling to think of specific examples, but you know, I think that the Europeans were
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: kind of adopting a similar posture and that all seems to have kind of evaporated in the last few months.
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I know of no way to explain this other than as as I think you said already, there is there is a class of political elites in place who really just are unable or unwilling to think about what a future in which the United States is not sort of the the anchor of
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: of the international order to which they subscribe they're not they're not able to think in those terms so really they're they're just they're hoping they can ride this out and kind of offer trump things in peace meal and that
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, perhaps after a year, after two years, he'll get bored.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, you know, the Democrats will win the midterms, Trump will kind of be a lame duck, a lame duck president.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, there, it seemed there was an opportunity earlier in the year for a really, you know, coordinated global response of some kind that would, would compel even the United States to, to back off.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, it should be said that when Canada, you know, Canada is case when, when we retaliated,
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trump's tariffs, the effect was often that he would postpone his own tariffs.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So pressure does work and I've seen really no evidence to date that this kind of strategy of cudrory that this works and I don't know why anybody would think it would.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean granted it is it would be difficult for for anyone any government any country regardless of size to to deal with Trump you know particularly when it comes to trade because you know as I said I mean the justification for Trump's
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: uh... you know for trumponomics is constantly changing right sometimes it's to it's to get it's to generate new revenue for the u.s.
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: federal government uh... so that the u.s.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: doesn't have to charge income tax sometimes it's because drugs are coming over the border from Canada and Mexico sometimes it's you know when trump announced the sort of uh... like for what do you call liberation day v e day the sort of global tariffs day with those big charts
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is being announced as this is where, you know, this is heralding a new global economic order.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, within a few days or a few weeks, now this is an negotiating tactic.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's about, it's about, you know, getting good deals.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how exactly one should respond to this is very much an open question, reasonable people.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: This can disagree.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's very clear, though, that
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: countries dealing with the United States in this situation, dealing with the Trump administration on a purely bilateral basis and trying to, you know, hoping that because of their specific economic advantages, their resource base, whatever it is, they can sort of just get a better deal out of the Trump administration than other countries or a slightly less bad deal.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think this is a losing strategy and it applies to trade, it applies to foreign policy, it applies to everything.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that's right.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think partially it is the feeling that Trump was backing down.
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the sort of rhetoric of tackle that like the really massive terrorist that he promised, he did back down in this sort of, I mean, I think it's a way a lot of the business class in Wall Street also feel that they'll have some tariffs, but they won't fundamentally change things and we'll be a temporary thing.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I chose to add to the rationale of Trump
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: doing tariffs are another thing is just to help particular American corporations such as Elon Musk or Silicon Valley, you know, get deregulation in foreign countries.
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean like an alternative to American like, you know, being the anchor of
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: global capitalism would be like trying to create an alternative structure.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It would mean kick Canada and the Europeans would have to start negotiating with China, Brazil, India and try to create a different structure for trade that is a counterpart to the US and can like you know sort of challenge the United States when an American president runs havoc the way Trump has been doing.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I just don't think like the weak spot of this that alternative is the Western elites.
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think Western elites are still fundamentally committed to a NATO world view.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as long as they have that, then they're really the challenge Trump is very much blunted.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'd be curious when you're thoughts about that.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't really improve.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't really improve on that except to say, I mean, there is an interesting, there's a bit of a parallel here in terms of, you know, a situation that just makes you kind of shrug your shoulders and frustration or more than shrug your shoulders.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it is, yeah, I mean, it's so obvious that this strategy, this tack, they're taking
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: with the trade war isn't working, but you might say the same thing about the way Western elites have responded to the situation in Gaza, right?
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, these are elites who have functioned in a system which since nineteen forty five has premised, you know, the entire that the whole legitimacy of Western countries to act in the world is premised on
• 31:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: ostensibly certain principles of human rights and certain rules about how countries are allowed to behave.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we've seen that over the past few years, we've seen that playbook thrown out entirely.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's always been many asterists attached to those rules when it comes to the Palestinians.
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, we've seen that playbook go out the window entirely.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I mean, there's various ways you could explain that.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it does speak to
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think on this and on Trump and on so much else, just a total sclerosis among Western elites, a total inability to break from the status quo, to break from certain learned habits, certain reflexes.
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And really, just a deep ideological investment in the so-called rule-based international order as they understand it.
• 32:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: which the United States is kind of the lynchpin.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so there's many things over the past few years that I thought at least for a time might lead to some kind of a crack up, some cracks in that, or ruptures in that consensus, and it hasn't happened yet.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if one thinks of, you know, the issue as being this kind of, you know, post-war elite that is unwilling to confront, you know, the new world and, you know, changes that are happening and the sort of lawlessness, uh, real right wing lawlessness within
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: their own system.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then I think Carnegie actually becomes a significant global figure.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I mean, one of the interesting things about him is that he is kind of centrist liberal response to this age of anti-system politics that doesn't try to rhetorically co-op populism in any way.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it does not, you know, usually you see politicians even from very elite backgrounds.
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, Trump himself is an example of this.
• 33:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it is very common that people from elite backgrounds will pretend to be bafferix outsiders challenging the system and I think in your baffler piece you bring out this very well, like Cardi is like, you know, he's of the elite and he's proud of it, right?
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like he has he say like I'm a leadist and a globalist.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, this he said the context is funny too because he said the quote was people say I'm going to lead us to a globalist Well, that's exactly what we need and he was he was on a podcast that I gather is hosted by I mean, if you can you can watch the clip it's he's talking do Anthony Skara moochie and Alister Campbell the former Tony Blair strategist so
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: strong nominee for the world's worst podcast, I think, by the way, but no carnie leaned right into this, right into this kind of elitist image, he leaned right into his background as governor of two g seven central banks and Goldman Sachs before that.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: and this kind of a giant asset management company that he was recently working at.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was doing ESG work and that sort of thing there.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Climate activism at least of the corporate kind.
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's worth saying he did periodically kind of try to brand himself as an outsider during the leadership race anyway because he hadn't held elected office.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you can't really be an outsider and no one thinks who are if your last title was vice chairman and head of impact investing at a global financial firm with the trillion in assets right it's not very convincing.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, if you run two central banks.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it carries and Carnies book the acknowledgments are fun because it's like it's this who's who of, you know, it sees that it's page after page of
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: of Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates and people like that.
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just it's the cream of sort of the Davos jet set.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, Carnie is basically leaned into this, you know, more so than really any other, I can't think of an equivalent
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: figure I mean if you compare you know compare to somebody like McCron right a kind of another sort of would be central savior figure you know McCron there he he still he still tried to embrace this kind of rhetoric of transformation you know we're going beyond left and right you know we have a
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: of a new, a radical, new synthesis we're, you know, we're doing.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to be this Jupiterian figure who who's kind of like stands a top, you know, the elites and kind of operates over their heads.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that sort of thing.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's just one example.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, Carney is not, he's not tried to do that at all.
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's explicitly presented himself as a managerial figure.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that probably would not have worked well for him in, you know, in really any other context.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The stars were aligned earlier this year for him in, you know, everything was perfectly lined up for somebody running with his, running with his message, person with his instincts and his pedigree and his credentials to have to have political appeal.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, I think, I have my hunch as the carnies political judgment in a lot of places is actually not that, it's not that strong, but I think one
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: One possible counter example or contrary piece of evidence is the fact that he, there have been rumors about him wanting to enter politics for at least a decade and he waited quite patiently for the perfect moment in which he could have the easiest and the fastest and most frictionless ascent to the Prime Minister's office and that's what he did.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, I mean, yeah, it is a very odd thing that he found be perfect moment, perhaps the only moment where someone like him could win in a national election.
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like we're getting near the end of this, but I want to suggest that there's a kind of cultural component to this.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Would you gesture towards when you said he wanted to bring King Charles into Canada and he often talks about Canada being the most European nation and new North America
• 37:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like a friend of mine who just sort of cultural studies points out that there is friendly a lot of YouTube and Instagram and TikTok videos with that kind of like thirst trap videos for Carnegie where he's presented as the kind of, you know, like daddy figure.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there is something like this kind of like, you know, in a moment of crisis where people are turning towards, you know, that's sort of in nineteen fifties, uh, technocratic father knows best, you know, the kind of, you know, NASA, um, astronaut or engineer who can like, you know, uh, has no hot now and can solve problems, right?
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a, uh, maybe something in the zeitgeist that that made, uh, this baffling figure possible.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I guess to some extent, this is partly just the clickbait economy and the sort of cringe content it gives us.
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I remember last summer after the British election, people tried to get hot-care summer going.
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that one really caught on and I suspect, though, I suspect the Carnegie equivalent will be kind of transitory
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do think all of this speaks to something we haven't really talked about that's an important factor in all of this I mean something that I've felt again and again that I found very frustrating throughout the whole time I've been writing about politics is that periods of crisis I think often breed a kind of they often encourage a kind of small sea conservatism in electorates and by that I mean
• 39:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, oftentimes in a particularly a moment like like this one, you know, Trump to point out, you know, there's, you know, you might intuitively think that this would breathe.
• 39:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This would, this would breathe a kind of more radical politics.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: There would be greater receptiveness to, you know, breaking with the status quo, breaking with consensus.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, to some extent that's true, but I think by and large in the political mainstream anyway, that's not what we tend to see.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what we've seen again here is that instead,
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: anti politics become quite appealing right people are are and you know I'm sympathetic here to a certain extent right people are sick of turning on the news and seeing things that are upsetting and disturbing and you know if you're Canadian being threatened with annexation by the president of the United States with certainly fall under that ages so
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: In that context, I think technocratic politics like those championed by a figure like Carney, there's an obvious appeal to them because what you're really saying is let's elect the nice daddy banker and he's just going to make politics go away.
• 40:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to think about this now.
• 40:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's going to go away and I don't know bring out his
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Spread sheets and he's going to call up his friends at Davos and he's going to use his roll of decks to talk to world leaders and get us the good deals and whatever.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's, and we're not going to have to think about it.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And right now in Canada, you know, the government's approval rating is still very high.
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Carnies own approval ratings are very high.
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think the more conservative direction it appears to be taking.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's really
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: kicked in and it'll be interesting to see how people respond in the fall when there's a budget but for now I think that there's a bit of a period of kind of national denial going on because you know so often and I and I think this is something that
• 41:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: American listeners can fully appreciate for their own reasons.
• 41:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you're dealing with a figure like Donald Trump and the news cycles he gives rise to, there is an obvious appeal to just make it go away.
• 41:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to have to think about this.
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to see less anxious things on TV or when I read the paper.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's very much where we're at in Canada right now with Mark Carney.
• 41:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, I think I'm glad you brought that because in maybe end on that note, there's this kind of vicious cycle where the threatening figures of the anti-system right give rise to people seeking safety and centricism, thinking that this will return to normal.
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then the inability of those centricists to like deal with problems, then feeds more right-wing anger.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think one saw that with the Trump's first term leading the Democrats to pick the oldest
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: and most centrist and most representative figure of the old order that they could possibly find the half-bed Joe Biden.
• 42:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: This did not work out well.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because that sort of politics, well, maybe it gives you a period where you don't have to pay attention to the news, you can go to brunch.
• 42:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it doesn't like address the fundamental problems.
• 42:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then it leaves the right to sort of harvest the anger
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: that exists because of the existing system and it leads to like further problems.
• 42:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that the current honeymoon that Mark Carney is enjoying, I do not think that this will be long-lived.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think that your articles, which I get linked to and which I recommend people read, you know, point for it's I think what we're going to see in the year or two years from now, which is that this project of Ansham regime restoration
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: is not going to play it very well and it's going to lead us to like a very dangerous place.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 43:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that note of comedy.
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will thank Luke once again and it's been a great talking to you.
• 43:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cheers.