UNCOMMONS

Canada needs to play a more proactive role towards peace abroad and we all need to collectively address the rise in hate here at home.

There should be no equivocation when it comes to the immorality October 7. Hamas committed a heinous terrorist attack, taking hostages and killing over a thousand innocent Israeli civilians.

With the architect of that attack now eliminated, one would hope there’s a new opening for a path to peace.

Because otherwise, we are so much further from it than we’ve ever been.

Consider that in the aftermath of October 7, Israel responded with indiscriminate and disproportionate force, razing Gaza and killing an unthinkable number of Palestinians. It has also killed aid workers and blocked the flow of humanitarian and medical supplies, causing further untold suffering. It has expanded its territorial violations of international law. It has refused to abide by the ICJ’s interim orders.

There should be no equivocation about the immorality of that response either.

Canada, alongside many other countries, has rightly called for a ceasefire and the release of hostages on countless occasions. 

The world’s pleas have been ignored.

A UN Commission recently reported on Israel’s “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system”, and said that its “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities” constitutes a war crime. That commission is led by a serious human rights lawyer and former South African and international jurist, and it also found both Hamas and the IDF responsible for torture and sexual violence.

Now, through the expansion of its operations into Lebanon, Israel has even attacked UN peacekeepers.

France, Italy, Spain, and many other countries quickly condemned this, and the EU said “such attacks against UN peacekeepers constitute a grave violation of international law.” The UN Security Council reiterated that UN peacekeepers and premises must never be the target of an attack.”

Israel tells us that it didn’t target the UN peacekeepers. Yet four warnings “to steer clear of the mission’s premises and operations” were issued, the peacekeeping force calls it “direct and apparently deliberate fire”, and at this point we’ve just seen too many cases of kill first, “review” later.”

A separate and long list of UN experts recently condemned both Hezbollah’s “indiscriminate attacks” and Israel’s “indiscriminate warfare.” They concluded that “Israel is operating as though every provision of [the Geneva Conventions] were null and void.” 

A former classmate of my wife lives in Beirut. She texted: “They are bombing everywhere, even in places not related to Hizballah. They even bombed near a building we own, and 2 kids died in it. This will haunt me for life…I lost hope in humanity…They will turn Beirut to Gaza if no one stops them.”

Of course, Gaza is now subject to a further siege. We’ve recently watched displaced civilians burned alive in a hospital tent.

In response, the UN Human Rights Office demanded an immediate end of the siege, noting that despite repeatedly ordering residents to move, Israeli troops reportedly sealed off North Gaza and attacked those trying to flee. 

A year later, and a ceasefire still isn’t in sight. Maybe that changes with the death of Sinwar, but I’m not holding my breath. 

My initial instinct that President Biden could and would act to exert the necessary pressure to reach a ceasefire has been proven wrong.

And if there isn’t any change in course, Canada and our allies should play a much more proactive role towards that peace. 

In light of the international community’s restated commitment to the sanctity of peacekeeping, Canada could lead an effort to establish a UN effort or other multilateral coalition of countries to expand peacekeeping in the region. We have, as we once put it, a responsibility to protect.

Now, while much of the federal government’s attention should be focused on foreign policy, we also can’t ignore the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia here at home.

While designating terrorist organizations remains a federal responsibility, local enforcement obviously isn’t the purview of the federal government. And there are already clear legal standards of mischief, assault, harassment, intimidation, and hate that should be enforced. 

Political leaders should also condemn awful but lawful statements, even where criminal enforcement isn’t appropriate. It’s wrong, for example, to hold Jewish people accountable for the actions of Israel or to label those protesting for Palestinian human rights as pro-Hamas.

The great challenge in our democracy is that we cannot and should not silence legitimate (and even illegitimate) criticism in order to deliver a rightfully desired sense of security. Free speech is too important.

Bubble zones, for example, however well intended, would prevent protest of a problematic speaker simply if they are platformed at a religious institution.

Free expression rightly demands wide latitude from the law, so long as it doesn’t turn into intimidation, harassment and hate, at which point enforcement steps in.

All of that said, one way we can act at the federal level is to pass an amended and more focused version of the Online Harms Act that the government has already introduced. It would require platforms to identify risks and harms (like an explosion of antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate), to take steps to mitigate those risks/harms, and to subject the companies to independent audits of their assessment and mitigation strategies. Respect freedom of speech, but not necessarily freedom of reach.

Beyond federal action abroad or here at home, we all need to be much better at listening to different viewpoints that are equally motivated by justifiable anger and pain. It’s just unfortunately hard to see us getting there if the war doesn’t end.

On this podcast former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney joins Nate to discuss environment, economy and his political future.

On this episode, Mark Carney joins Nate on the podcast to discuss the current political landscape, sustainable finance and the economic opportunities of climate action, and his future in politics as now economic advisor to the Liberal Party and potential future candidate.

Mark has served as the Governor of the Bank of Canada and then the Governor of the Bank of England. He now serves as the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and as the Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management.

Transcript:

Introduction

Nate Erskine-Smith: Welcome to Uncommons. I’m Nate Erskine-Smith, and on this episode, I’m joined by Mark Carney. He is, of course, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, he’s the former governor of the Bank of England, and he is also much more political these days, including joining a podcast like this to talk about not only politics, but Liberal politics, because right now, he occupies the role of chair of an economic task force to the Liberal Party and Prime Minister, and he might well have a future in politics beyond that as well.

Sustainable Finance Within a Global Context

Nate Erskine-Smith: Mark, thanks for joining me. 

Mark Carney: Thanks for having me, Nate.

Nate Erskine-Smith: I was going to make a joke about how you are the first guest we’ve had since the Prime Minister and people can read into that as they like. But I actually want to start with why you’re here in Toronto–sustainable finance. And before people’s eyes glaze over, maybe you can help ensure their eyes don’t glaze over.

Mark Carney: We’ve lost the audience already.

Nate Erskine-Smith: But what do you hope to see achieved through sustainable finance in terms of actual serious climate action?

Mark Carney: Yeah, so first thing, thanks for having me and I’m here, I’m giving, a talk later on today at something called the PRI in person, which is 2000 people from around the world focused on more than just sustainable finance, but certainly sustainable finance, and I’m going to talk about that aspect of it and specifically what is the financial sector doing and not doing to get capital to solutions to address climate change.

In essence, that’s what sustainable finance is. Success in sustainable finance will be when we can drop the adjective, when this just becomes mainstream. And all the work that I and others have been doing, particularly since three years ago, almost to the day, there was a COP, one of these big processes in Glasgow, where finance was at the heart of it. And we’ve been working to make sure that people have the information first and foremost. 

And when I say people, I mean people, you know, out here in The Beaches, people working in the center of Wall Street or around the world, investors, people managing people’s pensions, that they have the information that’s needed in order to judge who’s part of the solution and who’s still part of the problem, that we have the right market structure. We need some new markets in order to solve this and that we see action and we can judge that action accordingly. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: And before we get to the possible potential impact of that disclosure–the Canadian context. So you had said in 2019 I think you’d expressed some frustration in one of your speeches about, and this wasn’t specific to Canada, but the global pace of progress towards sustainable finance was moving far too slow. We wake up and it’s five years later and in Canada, we still haven’t seen these rules put in place. And so what do you hope to see hopefully sooner than later here in Canada?

Mark Carney: Yeah, well, let me give a global context first. It’s a global event, global context, we operate in a global market, capital moves around the world. 

And if I look at the world, you have over 700 of the world’s largest financial institutions controlling over 40% of the financial assets in the world. Huge numbers, $150 trillion, US dollars, for that matter that these institutions oversee, They’re all committed to shift the management of those assets consistent with the transition towards net zero. In other words, to help companies and countries and municipalities get their emissions down. Okay. That’s what they’re committed to do. And by the way, that what comes with that is if somebody isn’t trying to get their emissions down, then money is shifting from those companies. 

And in one example, to those who are doing something. So globally, you have a huge shift towards this first thing. Secondly, it starts with just reporting on where you stand today. What does your portfolio look like? Who are you investing in or lending to? The next step, of course, is to have a plan. You don’t solve anything without a plan. You got to put the plan in action. And as we meet today, we’re in a situation where 500 of those 700 institutions have full blown, what’s called a transition plan, but a plan, to move the money, and they are moving the money, towards the solutions.

Sustainable Finance Within a Canadian Context

Fast forward to Canada, or shift to Canada. What we don’t yet have is the disclosure regime fully operating so that Canadians can judge who’s doing the right thing or not. A number of Canadian institutions are doing it voluntarily, but it’s not required for everyone like it is in Europe, like it is in the UK, and elsewhere. And secondly, we don’t have, sorry, a framework, an accepted way or consistent way of putting together those plans.

And look, I’ve been through a bunch of crises over my time as a central bank governor and policymaker. And the one thing I know is in a crisis, plan beats no plan. You cannot get your way out of a situation without a plan. It’s a good motto for life, I guess, as well.

Nate Erskine-Smith: What do you make though? So we put the plans in place. We’ve got the disclosure regime, hopefully sooner than later, as they say. How do we move away from, take ESG. And there’s promise to it, but there’s also the bottom line, and a company will, as fast as anything, walk away from ESG if it no longer matters to their bottom line. And how does this differ from that? 

Mark Carney: Yeah, so I work in a subset of ESG, so ESG–environmental, social, and governance. I work on the environment bit of it, and I work in a subset of the environment, which is the transition towards a low carbon economy or net zero.

because obviously in environment there’s nature and biodiversity and other aspects. I work in the bit where you can count very clearly what’s happening and that’s part of what so-called disclosure is doing. And therefore, people are able to judge, again, who’s part of the solution, who’s still part of the problem. Now in order to do that, in order for everyone to be able to make those judgments, they need access to that information in a way that they can,you know, access it readily. It should be free and it should be consistent. And one of the things that some of the voluntary work that I’m doing is to build out the net zero data public utility. First time that’s been on the podcast, I’m sure. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, I know eyes are now fully glazed.

Mark Carney: But what it means is that you can, you can judge which of our banks, as of, as of the middle of next year, which of our banks is doing well relative to the others and how are they doing relative to other international banks? What happens today is somebody will write a report and it’ll become an argument about the quality of the data or the, you know, the completeness of the data. So first is to get, is to get that information.

The second, but the bigger point which I think you’re driving at is okay, but why are companies going to do this? Companies and financial institutions are going to do this because Canadians and people around the world want them to do it. After all, they elected a government, your government, over the course, and a number of provincial governments, that have climate action at the core of their platforms. After all, it is the law of the land. It literally is the law of the land in Canada that we transition towards net zero. Now, how we do that requires certain policies from government, and a number of them are being put in place. More will be required without question.

But financial institutions and companies in Canada and elsewhere around the world react to those policies and they react to the values of people. A lot of the work that I’ve done in recent years has been around getting the market, shorthand, value, value in the market, what’s priced, to be consistent with what people care about, what people value, the values, in this case, of Canadians around sustainability and the transition.

Capturing the Value of the Environment

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, I mean, I remember reading your Reith lectures, which then were sort of the basis of the book. And, I know you’ve got another book we can talk about. But I mean, and the core of it is that idea that disconnect between value and values and, you know, the price of everything and the value of nothing, that old line. 

One of your examples, though, is, you know, we know how to, we know the value of Amazon, the company and we don’t properly capture the value of Amazon, the rainforest. And despite the obvious value to the world, to the climate, to the environment, the world, disclosure gets us part of the way there. So how do you tackle, take that example, that simple example of Amazon and Amazon, what policies should we be looking at to solve that problem? 

Mark Carney: Yeah, absolutely. And so, and just to make the challenge greater, the price on the Amazon, the rainforest actually occurs when the trees are cut down and they start farming. So it’s the exact opposite direction of what the planet needs and what future generations deserve. So how do we solve that? 

I mean, first and foremost, this is about the translation of what people care about, what people want through the political process, and setting in place objectives, clear objectives, policies today, and the prospect of more policies in the future, that are consistent with achieving those objectives. What the financial sector can do, what it does well, it does lots of things not well, just to be clear. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: You’ve lived it.

Mark Carney: I’ve lived it, and people have lived the consequences of it. Yeah, we’ve spent time clearing up those messes. But what it does do well is it pulls the future to the present. It sees where the world is going and then it will put money behind where the world’s going. So if it becomes inevitable or at least highly likely that we’re going to address this problem, then money starts to flow to those solutions. 

Okay. Now let’s go to the specific major issue around nature and the Amazon specifically. So how do we get to a point where we ensure that there is, not just disincentives to burn the Amazon or cut down the Amazon, but also what’s now needed is to reforest the Amazon. You know, let’s put this in context for those who are still listening. So speaking to my immediate family now… The, you know, deforestation in the world last year was 10% of global emissions, just the mere act of cutting down trees.

We lose the size of the Netherlands in effectively tropical rainforests, not all deforestation. So not including the wildfires, horrible wildfires we had in Canada, but just actually the harvesting of the tropical rainforest. So it’s absolutely enormous. And so we need to stop that and then reverse it. 

And so one of the things that we’re working on is with the Brazilian government and other governments around the world, is how can we get payments for reforestation and the value to the planet of that reforestation? 

Political Challenges to Climate Action

Nate Erskine-Smith: Okay, positive, because payments for reforestation make a lot of sense. I can imagine, because of the profile of the Amazon, I can imagine knocking doors and saying, we’re gonna deliver more dollars to international climate finance, and that’s gonna help make sure that we protect the Amazon, and that’s the work we need to do as Canadians, as leaders around the world.

I can also, though, imagine a world, because we’ve lived through it, where there’s a Bolsonaro government in Brazil that doesn’t care. I can imagine a world because if the election was tomorrow, it might well be a Poilievre government that is going to not only cancel the price on pollution and an effective and efficient way of reducing emissions, climate disclosure might be by the wayside. Who knows? Who knows what they have in store? Because climate is not part of their agenda. It’s not a going concern.

And how do you maintain that sense of optimism when we live in the political world that we do, and the political reality is that progress doesn’t always exist. That voter might care in my riding and in certain ridings across the country, but collectively with ‘First Past the Post’ especially, we’re gonna wake up potentially to a majority government that doesn’t have this on the agenda at all. 

Mark Carney: Well, okay, there’s a lot in those questions slash statements.

Nate Erskine-Smith: We have a progressive government that doesn’t even deliver the climate finance internationally at least that is required to do the work you’re even talking about, and that’s a progressive government. So, you know, the backsliding we’re going to see is going to be incredible given we were starting at a place that isn’t even sufficient. 

Mark Carney: Okay, so let me unpack a few, I’m to say a couple of rapid fire things and then you can pick up on any of them to drill down and, and full disclosure for those listening, there, there is, there’s a lot beneath what I’m about to say.

The first is in terms of payments for, for example, reforestation in the Amazon, my judgment is that that is predominantly going to come from the private sector through something called the private voluntary credit market. 

And that is going to be a consequence of a number of major jurisdictions, hopefully Canada included, but certainly the European Union, the UK, most of Asia, depending on the US outcome in the election, the United States as well, requiring companies to be reducing their emissions, including what’s called scope three. Okay. So I said a lot there, but it’s a lot of it will come from that. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: And jurisdictions like the EU forcing it upon others through carbon border adjustments and everything else. 

Mark Carney: Okay. So that’s the next point. So very important point. Sorry, I talked over you, but a carbon border adjustment mechanism, which Europe is putting in place, and I think underappreciated, the Biden administration has made pretty clear that they intend to put that in place. Obviously, it won’t be the Biden administration, he’s not running again. But if it were a Harris administration, I think it’s reasonable to expect that. There’s something called, this is in the public domain, the Climate and Trade Task Force. 

It’s headed by John Podesta, who’s one of the most able public servants in the US government. And it’s looking at what’s called, well, it’s looking at a carbon border adjustment and specifically how much carbon is in a product delivered to the United States. They use the term “embodied carbon”. So the issue is if I’m exporting steel, how much carbon do I have in that steel that shows up in the United States? And if it’s a lot higher than what’s in the US, then they’re not going to let it in. I mean, or they’re going to have a very large tariff on it.

Because after all what they’ve been doing, and we’ve got to think about this for our industries, is huge efforts to get carbon down and it doesn’t make sense to do that and then just import all the carbon from China or some other jurisdiction. I think actually the Americans are going to go further, and the Europeans are going to go further, in the following respect, which is not just to say how much carbon is in the steel that shows up here, but how much carbon is in all the steel you produce as that company, because we don’t want you just dumping the green steel over here and then polluting over there.

And that’s a fairer way of doing things for the US company, and let’s keep it close to home, for the Canadian company. So we’re going to quickly move, I think, over the course of the next 5, 10 years, certainly over the horizon when any business decision is being made to a global trading system or the core of the global trading system, Europe, the US, under certain political circumstances. But I would argue, if not the next administration, the administration after that will do this. 

We’re going to move to a system where it matters how much carbon you have in your product when you export it there. Now, fast forward to the next Canadian government after the next election. So are they just gonna walk away from that reality? I mean, we’re a trading nation, we’re an exporting nation. This is our most important market. I mean, you can live in a fantasy land and say, this doesn’t matter, and it’s all about the other guys, but that is not the way the world works and is going to work.

And, you know, one of the things we’ve talked about this, and it’s part of the reason I’m doing this growth task force, which we may come to, for the Prime Minister, is that the world’s being reshaped. The trading system is being reshaped. That creates challenges, massive challenges if you ignore it, flip side, massive opportunities if you understand it, get in front of it and start to embrace it. And, you know, Canada’s in a good position where, we can be in a great position to take advantage of this.

Personal Political Engagement

Nate Erskine-Smith: I mean, one might have, though, expressed a certain optimism around markets and the market that Ontario was in with Quebec and California, for example, then they walked away from it. So politics does matter. So I want to get to politics. And, one can be optimistic and market forces matter and the EU’s actions matter and one can be optimistic for certain reasons. But there’s a reason to get involved in politics to make sure you push back against the backsliding and to make sure you protect progress. 

You have gone from a role where you were political but divorced from partisan politics as the central bank governor, both in Canada and in England. You, in 2021, I think, spoke for the first time in a more partisan way at a Liberal convention. You’re now, you’re occupying a more partisan role, giving, you’re the chair of an economic task force for the Party and the Prime Minister. But again, a partisan front, not the machinery of government.

Why you’ve got, you know, you’re making money at Brookfield, you’ve got your UN envoy role. You don’t need to throw yourself into the Pierre Polievre tax and the Michael Barrett saying conflict this and “Carbon Tax Carney”. And why, why insert yourself in this way now? 

Mark Carney: I could ask you the same question and all the people that work for you, which is, you know, I mean, there’s, there’s a couple levels of it. 

I mean, there’s the personal level, which I, you know, this country has given me so much, virtually everything. I think when I think about it, you know, my education, my values, I’ve raised my family here. I owe it, I owe it a lot. I’ve been very fortunate. So, you know, and, and I can give back and there’s, there’s certain things I can do to give back. And I happen to know something about economic policy, I happen to have some experience, I’ve got some perspective. I can give it back. That’s the, that’s the first thing. 

And, know, I could stop there, but it goes back to what we were talking about earlier is this gap between value in the market and the values of Canadians, the values of society, what we’re trying to achieve. There are certain technical things, and they’re really important. 

They’re super boring, which is why you rightly diverted off the PRI in person. They’re super boring and they’re plumbing, et cetera. And I know something about that and I work in it. it’s, know, and it’s value, I, just trust me, tt’s, it’s useful work. Okay. It’s useful work. 

But at the heart is getting the, the heart is political in the end because it is translating, it’s building coalitions. It’s listening to people. It’s developing the consensus. It’s fighting it out in the, in the House of Commons, in committees, in order to get legislation through and move forward and you know, can be frustrating and it would be much easier for me to just sit back and criticize about this. But I’ve got some expertise, the Prime Minister has asked, we need to close this gap. I think it’s the right thing to do for Canadians because it’s living up to what Canadians want, say they want.

It’s certainly the right thing to do for our kids and grandkids. But also, you know, as time goes on, it becomes more and more an economic imperative. It becomes more and more current, you know, an issue in terms of how fast is this economy going to grow? Are people’s wages going to grow? Are we going to lose a lot of jobs that we shouldn’t lose or not create new jobs that we could create because we think that this is an issue for other people? It’s not an issue for other people, it’s an issue for all of us. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: When it comes to politics, I am not running again, solely because I’ve got a young family. I still think elected office, for all of its faults, and there are many faults, there’s a lot of nonsense to it if you watch the question period or the House of Commons. But it’s still the most important way to make a difference, bar none. Having said that, everything you said there gets at that sort of the man in the arena sort of idea, and an opportunity to make a difference. I believe in all that.

There’s a difference though between giving advice and being a decision maker, and, are you gonna put your name on a ballot at some point? 

Mark Carney: I’m taking steps to that, support that, support the party, because I believe in the party, I believe in the Liberal Party. I think it’s got the right values, it has the right combination of a social conscience and social priorities at its core and that’s, it’s demonstrated, it’s not, these aren’t words on a page, it’s demonstrated through decades of delivery and the past years of delivery. So it has its core, but it also understands that we need a strong economy in order to ultimately deliver that. 

So I absolutely believe in that. And look, the opportunity may present itself. This is what I can do right now and I’m doing it to the best of my ability. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: And do you think, when you think of politics, mean, you have occupied positions of great power and really difficult crises. And there isn’t that same grinding it out, knocking doors, engaging people who are, you know, the example I use is, you’ve got to be able to go downtown and have Bay Street with my friends from law school. You could do that in a heartbeat, but you also got to be able to go play cards and drink Rye and Cokes with my cousins from Sarnia. And are you, do you see yourself being able to do both? 

Mark Carney: Well, I used to drink Rye and 7UP. So am I allowed to have? 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, that’s allowed. That’s okay. I don’t know if you smoke joints. You can do that too. 

Mark Carney: That’s true. You can now. Thank you. There’s progress. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, I know. You’re welcome. 

Mark Carney: Look, I mean, that’s, I’ve been in and around it, I recognize that. I mean, you’ve got to be connected to the people you serve. And one of the issues, look, it’s also an issue, it’s not fully analogous, I’m not going to stretch it to that.

But even in a role like being a central bank governor, if you’re just in the monetary temple, so to speak, and you’re not out there talking to people up and down the country, which the Bank of Canada does, I did as governor, Governor Dodge did before me, and I know the current governor, my successors both have done it, I did in the UK, you’ve got to get out there and talk to people. And it’s not just businesses, but, you know, social groups, other groups, to understand how the macro economy, the numbers way up there, are actually impacting people for accountability, but also for perspective and you know, there’s something that was impressed on me decades ago, I guess was that you know, you see most clearly from the, from the periphery. 

So when you look at you know, the economy, how does the economy look if you’re unemployed? You know, how does, you know, the, you know, the, the situations where you’re under pressure and that provides a necessary, you know, grounding to everything you do. But yeah, you know, you’ve got to do that and you’ve got to build, you’ve got to build a consensus and you have to work. Look, let’s, let’s take another level of this, if I could, which is one of the issues. 

So, okay. We have a mini industry in Canada, which has grown up around that we don’t have any productivity or we’ve, know, the productivity or the rate with which we’re improving the way we work has slowed, it’s basically been flatlined since before the pandemic. Ultimately, that is going to put pressure and it’s starting to put pressure on governments, all levels of governments and the ability to, you know, continue to provide the social safety net, our social model, opportunities for children, our education system, all those things. So this is an issue we have to solve. We can certainly solve. And not that there’s going to be some magical report at the end of my task force work. I mean, there will be a report. I’m not going to say it’s magical.

Nate Erskine-Smith: We’ll get to that. We’ll get to that.

Mark Carney: But there will be elements of that in there. But one of the things I think is clear is that the nature of many of the solutions will require something that’s fundamentally political, which is political in terms of working across different levels of government, different stakeholders to implement solutions. And we’re going to have to do more of that or relearn that muscle, which is, in my experience, is kind of inherent to the Federation, maybe has weakened a bit. 

Challenges of Politicization

Nate Erskine-Smith: Well, I want to get to what you see as the objectives and what you see as the possible outcomes, what you hope to achieve through that task force and your involvement in all of that. But, I’m still interested in, you know, I like that you’re interested in politics. I like that good people are interested in politics. I think it’s necessary that serious people are still interested in doing this. And I worry that when you’ve got a certain crass attack before anything else approach to politics, you push good people out. Why are good people gonna wanna get off the sidelines and do this if you’re gonna join committee in 2021, which you did at the industry committee that I was a part of, and I was at a front row seat to Pierre Poilievre before he was the leader, just spent, he was the only Conservative to speak for that two hours of time, and just try and run roughshod over you, knowing that you might be in politics one day. That’s the approach. It’s, you know, take no prisoners. So I’m glad you’re interested. 

At the same time, you know, there are some challenges that will be thrown your way and I’m interested in how you navigate them. So you’ve got, on the one hand, a politicization of the Bank of Canada with Pierre Poilievre saying Tiff Macklem should be fired. You’ve got other folks though, like Stephen Gordon, who have said, well, you know, Mark Carney, he was the central bank governor. If he joins partisan politics, then that also puts some independence of that institution at risk. Do you take stock of that in any way? What’s your answer to that? 

Mark Carney: Well, I think a couple of things. I think my track record at Bank Canada, others can judge it, I, know, inflation was at 2%. Our financial system was the strongest in the world. We had financial stability. We got through crises, got through a few crises.

I’d note that I was appointed by Stephen Harper as governor of the Bank Canada. Then I was appointed by a Conservative prime minister in the United Kingdom, David Cameron. And then I was asked to extend my term by a Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, and a Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson. And in all of those cases, I discharged, did the best of my ability, I did my job. 

I ceased to be governor of the Bank of Canada in 2013. We are 11 years later. We’ve been through a few governors. The world has changed. Look I mean if we were, if we were in a situation where the stakes weren’t so high, in part because of the start of your question in part because of the unseriousness of some of those in public life, I mean it’s serious, but the facile… 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, serious what’s at stake but a childish approach to it.

Mark Carney: Facile is probably, is a euphemism. So I’ll just leave it at that to describe the approach that’s taken. It’s not trying to find solutions, it’s trying to destroy and cut down. And who knows what comes after that, it’s not clear what comes after that. So the stakes are high, so that pulls me towards trying to be part of it, because this is our country, it’s my country, and I care about it. And so wanting to be there.

I think the thing though that’s in your question, as someone who’s been through crises, who lived through Brexit and the intense, everything was politicized in Brexit in the UK. The King, the now King was politicized. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England was politicized. The governor of the Bank of England was politicized. In other words, we were all attacked in various ways by various, well, one faction, I guess, on the referendum.

And many, many others, everything basically. So I know what I’d be getting into. I know what I’m in. Look, I’m in it now in the following respect. As you said, in 2021, I’m a private citizen. I’m invited to a committee. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Getting grilled for no reason.

Mark Carney: I don’t mind being grilled, but just getting, you know, sort of insulted, ad hominem attacks, basically being insulted. And well, four other expert witnesses have to sit there mute.

And just watch it. And just watch it for two and a half hours. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s a waste of taxpayers’ money. It’s a waste of time. It’s not advancing the cause. And so I know what’s involved. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: So you’re ready to put up with that absolute nonsense when it comes, like right now you’re living through people attacking you to say, he’s no. I mean, Andrew Scheer, I love that Andrew Scheer is the spokesperson they put up, as if anyone likes Andrew Scheer, but Andrew Scheer is saying, there’s no difference between Trudeau and Carney, carbon tax Carney and like, you are the object of their attention as much as anyone, and probably because they’re worried about you, but also there is, you are going to put up with an incredible amount of of hate and an incredible,you know, look what Trudeau’s got to put up with. Fuck Trudeau flags, and his kids have to listen to fuck Trudeau chants at ultimate fight events. So you’re ready for that?

Mark Carney: Look, yeah, yes, is the short answer. I think we’re, you know, this is an overused phrase, we’re better than that. Canada’s better than that. We should be better than that. And, but you’ve got to stand up. I mean, if you think that, you think that, you act it, you stand up, you stood up for the Ontario leadership. I mean, it’s, you know, these are difficult.

Nate Erskine-Smith: You’ll come in with more name recognition than I did, I will say that. Are you also ready? So I think your name recognition will… 

Mark Carney: I’m really touched by your concern about my welfare. 

The Benefits of Lived Experience

Nate Erskine-Smith: It’s not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure, especially in a leadership role. And they’ll come at you with everything as you’ve already seen, they’re coming at you as a citizen. 

The other challenge you will have to navigate if you get there is every time your name comes up, like I’m here in The Beaches and people will come up and say, what about that Carney guy, is he gonna run? And so there’s obviously an interest. At the same time, there will be another cohort, often people in the Liberal Party who have lived the wars who will say, yeah, but what about Michael Ignatieff? And the comparison comes up all the time. Why? Because intellectual, someone who has not lived through partisan politics throughout a career, and is coming to it as an intellectual who’s earned a reputation as an intellectual. And do you see that comparison? Are you concerned with that comparison? And how do you answer that comparison? 

Mark Carney: Well, think there’s a couple of things. One is we don’t want to restrict politics only to lifelong politicians. I hope not. I mean, that’s first and foremost. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Having done it for 10 years, I was also saying I hope we don’t limit it to that. 

Mark Carney: You understand, you’re going to go off and do something else for a while. Hopefully you’ll come back into political life. Maybe you won’t. Maybe you will have served that tenure. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, who knows? 

Mark Carney: But we’ll see. I’m not casting aspersions on people who are lifelong politicians, although if somebody is a lifelong politician and they’re talking about, for example, as only someone like Pierre Poilievre who’s been a lifelong politician talks about the market in a way, and the economy in a way, that betrays very limited understanding of how the economy actually works undervalues institutions, undervalues people, doesn’t know this relationship. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: I like when he talks about electricians and lightning personally. 

Mark Carney: Yeah, Yeah. the capture, there’s a few things that doesn’t understand. So that’s, that’s the first thing. So I don’t think this is a sort of simple, you’re ruled out unless you’ve gone through the school of politics. That’s number one. 

Number two, I think with, with the respect to Michael Ignatieff, I’ve been in the, I’ve been as close to the political arena as you can be. I have been a public figure through crises in Canada, elsewhere around the world. I’ve been there for making tough decisions. I’ve worked with a variety of governments. I’ve been in and around. Look, I know how to deal with tough issues and not just talk about them, but implement and get things done. 

So, you know, we’ll take where we started today, this discussion on climate change and what’s going on in climate change. Three years ago, there were no major, there were $5 trillion of money managed by financial institutions that was going to be managed towards net zero. Today, there’s 150 trillion. 150 trillion. That is 70 times larger than the Canadian economy. 

I helped marshal that. I chair the group that put that together. I know how to get things done. I have a track record. So I have experience in working with a wide variety of stakeholders across different geographies, countries, continents, political classes. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been appointed by the Conservatives. And so that brings something to the table. Does it answer every question?

And look, and Michael Ignatieff is a better intellectual than I am. I mean, I would not, do not aspire…

Nate Erskine-Smith: It comes down to connecting with people. And you mentioned it before we started recording, just everything, I forget exactly how you phrased it, but sort of everything is about authenticity. Because there’s no perfect candidate and not everyone’s going to see everything about themselves in any particular candidate. I was struck, I did my Master of Law in the UK at Oxford and my wife was there doing her Master of Nutrition at Oxford Brooks and

we visited the Imperial War Museum in London, and there was a genocide exhibit at the time. And I like, I recognize that voice. And there’s a film of Michael Ignatiev in a Jeep. 

Mark Carney: That was Blood and Belonging probably, right? 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Right. And he in some ways ran away from that. It was Michael’s just visiting. And there was no answer to say, you’re damn right I’ve been overseas. I’ve been a Canadian overseas being, as Canadians act, we deliver for the world. We act in the best interests of people around the world. And I’ve been out there addressing genocide. I’ve been out there speaking about human rights. I’m proud of that record. And I’m coming back to Canada to make sure I deliver on those values as a leader here in Canada for Canadians. I think it was a disservice to be skittish about that record.

 And you don’t have the same challenge in that you’ve had a high profile position here in Canada. You are now entering into partisan politics in a, you know, you’re not jumping right to a leadership position. You’re playing, I don’t know if you have a view of- 

Mark Carney: I’m in the trenches. I’m in the trenches. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Well, one question I would have is, do you see a value in elected office as a backbencher or as an MP before a higher profile role.

Mark Carney: I mean, there’s, you can’t map these things out. Of course there’s value in that. But let me pick up, something popped into my head while you were using that example. So one of the knocks on me that the opposition makes, or part of the opposition makes. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: You’re a WEF global elite. 

Mark Carney: Exactly. I’m a WEF global elite.

Nate Erskine-Smith: John Barrett is too, I don’t know, campaign coach here, that never comes up. 

Mark Carney: And you know, when… 

Nate Erskine-Smith: He’s banned his ministers from going to World Economic Forum events to cater to conspiracies and you’ve been a board member for over a decade. 

Mark Carney: I’ve rolled off the board, but that’s absolutely right. I had a board member there and I used to go there with the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, when he was there, and etc. 

But let’s be clear what you know, my international experience. I understand how the world works. You know, I know other world leaders, I know people and I understand, I know people who run some of the world’s largest companies and understand how they work. I know how financial institutions work. I know how markets work. I know, and I know the good and bad of that. I’ve experienced it. I’ve had to, in some of my roles, discipline it, discipline the financial system, discipline, with others, the world’s largest banks, the, you know, the Wall Street banks in America after the crisis. 

So I understand how the world works. I’m trying to apply that to the benefit of Canada, you know, so I’m not going to run away from the fact that I understand how things work. And actually one of the issues, one of the things that has drawn me more into, into politics, right now is that we have an opposition who’s leading in the polls, who doesn’t understand the economy, doesn’t understand where the world’s going, doesn’t understand what’s necessary to build this economy for Canadians who thinks it’s a series of simplistic slogans. There’s nothing behind those slogans. There’s nothing behind those slogans. Plenty of opportunity, plenty of opportunity after this podcast comes out to release, you know, some platforms, behind those slogans. They won’t. And, and that’s a, that is a massive risk.

That is a risk. Doing nothing is a choice. Pretending we’re in the economy of the 1980s and 1990s, that is a huge, huge mistake. And the other jurisdictions are moving. I understand that. I can contribute part of that. We’ve got to do it in a way that is socially inclusive, that brings Canadians along, that supports people through these big transitions. And we can do it in a way that really wins if we’re deliberate about it. But if we shut all that out, we’re gonna lose. 

Recommendations of Economic Task Force

Nate Erskine-Smith: That’s a useful turn then to the role that you now occupy to chair this economic task force. You are in a position now, principally, I mean we’ve got a Fall Economic Statement and we’ve got a budget, but principally as I understand the role, it’s also to inform, we have an election in the spring, in a perfect world that might last all the way to October, but that seems unlikely these days. 

You’ve got one version of the cartoonish slogans you’ve got a debate in Parliament right now where the Bloc is saying we demand support for 16 billion dollars over five years to a poorly targeted and expensive program, seems an ineffective way of using a taxpayer dollar we don’t have right now. I don’t want you to be so prescriptive about here are all the answers, I’ve got all the answers. I’m, you know, this is the platform today, because you’re at the beginning of it, but where, if, put it this way, in 2021, you said, we need a growth agenda and this budget isn’t delivering all of that, but it’s the beginnings of it and it’s gonna take a number of budgets to get us to where we are. 

Well, we’re a number of budgets in and I was at the Canada 2020 speech where you were talking about, it sounded like a third way almost, you’ve got government spending, you’ve got cuts, and you were talking about a little bit of a different path as between them. Articulate what, and not at such a high level, maybe, but articulate, and maybe there are examples you could point to, of what we can expect to see in the advice you’re giving and the approach that you hope the government takes hold of into the next election. 

Mark Carney: Yeah, well, let me, again, these are great questions and there’s a lot in them. Let me make a couple observations, and I noted your comments, not because I was coming on this, I just happened to catch them in last 10 days or so, about that Bloc proposal and the fact that all the opposition parties supported it. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, it’s wild. 

Mark Carney: It’s wild. So an extra 3 billion of spending each year, and is that really the best use of that money. And what came to my mind instantly, and I think you observed it as well,is that in the simple slogan category, Pierre Polievre has a simple rule, a dollar for a dollar. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, spend a dollar, cut a dollar. 

Mark Carney: So what are the $3 billion of spending cuts that he’s going to make? I mean, if you’re going to put up new spending and you have that rule, you’ve got to show Canadians what’s there. Okay, but let’s talk about the growth issues in Canada. So how do we get growth back up? 

And let me put it in context, which is if the Canadian economy were as productive as the American economy, so if we had used all our resources, so to speak, as efficiently as the American economy, if we close that gap, which is about 30% with the US, it’s an additional $35,000 Canadian, for every Canadian. So it’s a huge amount of money. 

That’s money that goes obviously for government, for social programs. We can invest in our health service, not rely on compound increases in foreign students in order to pay for our post-secondary education, all these sorts of things. So there’s real value in doing this. It also means much higher wages for Canadians by definition. So, why are we less productive? Which things can we change in order to close some of that gap and where can we build on our advantage, our unique advantages? And that’s basically what I’m looking at with others through this task force, and so one of the core things in terms of why we’re less productive is we actually give our workers less to work with. There’s less so-called capital, there’s less software, there’s less investment, fewer tools, so to speak, for our workers. It’s like shoveling your driveway with a shovel. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: And it’s business investment. 

Mark Carney: And it’s business investment, yeah. And you have to, when you look at outside of the resource sector, we just don’t, we don’t invest in much in our workers. We also don’t use those tools as effectively as others do, so it’s also kind of how we work. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: We’ll talk about frameworks, just on that though and I’m interested in the rest of what you’ve got there, but you talk about the need for frameworks and the importance of a plan and a framework to deliver. What is the difference when you look at American companies that do invest in their workers to a much higher degree than Canadian companies invest in their workers? Is there a policy framework that explains the difference? What explains that difference? 

Mark Carney: Okay, so this is part of the challenge, which is there’s no one magical change to the tax system or one regulation that you adjust that is going to instantly write this or start to close the gap. And you have to look across a series of options in order to get there.

Nate Erskine-Smith: But this will be a core focus. 

Mark Carney: But that is going to be a core focus. The element of the diagnosis of the problem needs to look at part of it fundamentally is about under investment. Why is that the case? How can we change it? 

Part of it is about the industries that we have. Where have we built up and what haven’t we built up? But to use that overused analogy, also where is the puck going? If the world is going to be moving to lower carbon, which parts of that transition can we lead? In fact, can we dominate in? Also, how are we going to apply AI? mean, this is one of the world’s leader in AI. We just had a Canadian win the Nobel Prize, Jeffrey Hinton. I mean, amazing, his impact in this country and the AI ecosystem has been absolutely enormous. We can build off of that in so many different ways. The companies themselves, how we use AI for all, not just use AI to displace workers. That’s what we don’t want to do. We want to use AI to give people more tools to have better jobs and be more productive and do that. So there’s lots of things that we can do with that. 

So it shifts from the overall why do we invest not as much? Why do we not use the tools as well? But then we’ll go to which areas, which parts of the economy can we build up and which are the elements that make all of the economy more productive. So let me be, can I be a little more specific about this? 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Specifics are good, yeah, specifics are always good. 

Long-Term Investments for Productivity

Mark Carney: So, you know, the previous prime minister, Prime Minister Harper wanted Canada to be an energy superpower. And in many respects, we are because we have hydro, we have oil and gas, we have nuclear, et cetera. We need to be a clean energy superpower. That’s where the world’s going. That means a couple of things. So there’s certain things, my point, which I should have started with, is there’s certain things that can make all of the economy better, all of the economy more productive, can help close the gap.

Nate Erskine-Smith: Cleaner, cheaper power is an example. 

Mark Carney: Cleaner, cheaper power across Canada is good for Canadians. It’s good for Canadian jobs. It is great for Canadian manufacturing because companies around the world, as the world’s being rewired, are looking for low-risk jurisdictions, we’re about as risk-free as anyone can be, with trade access to the biggest markets. We’ve got the best trade relationships of anybody, and who have clean power.

That is ever more the case in the new industries on technology, the so-called hyperscalers, the big technology companies. They are looking to build out data centers and computing in jurisdictions outside of the United States where they can trust, but they have to have clean power. So we have to take our natural advantages in clean power and grow them quickly. 

But let’s do that in a way that benefits Canadians above and beyond just having those data centers come and built here by let’s say, Google or Meta or Microsoft or whoever. We want to make sure that a portion of those data centers is available for our companies. The companies that Jeffrey Hinton helped spawn, the Coheres of this world, if you will. 

And as well, we want to make sure that Canadians are learning how to use these tools to solve problems for the world, whether it’s protein folding, in life sciences, by the way, another Nobel prize, we’re recording today, Demis Hassabis, won the Nobel prize for that. Okay. And we have the capability of building that out. So we build out the ecosystem around that. Then you take a step back and say, and there’s every reason why we should, the great universities here in Toronto and in, in Alberta and Montreal, et cetera, that are building this expertise, the creative destruction lab just down the street here. All of that is part of, I’m sorry to use the word ecosystem, but it’s relevant to how we can build this out at scale. What else do we need to do to incentivize and reward the builders of that economy? And so you work your way back. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: I’m curious. I haven’t read Hinge. It’s not out yet, but this is your book. 

Mark Carney: It’s not written yet. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: It’s not written? Okay, well, I saw an announcement around it. 

Mark Carney: It’s large. I mean, it’s not finished. Sorry, my publisher is listening. It’s not perfect. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: I like that. It’s good. In some summary that I read though, whether you wrote it or not, maybe the publisher wrote it, it does talk about it being time to build. But what I found interesting about the knock-on language was not just governments. This isn’t just governments putting public capital in to build. 

This is about encouraging the private sector to invest in things that also are going to create long lasting value to our country. It’s one thing to say we want businesses to invest in workers and that’s a priority, but when we talk about building things and you know, I wish we were waking up 10 years after the Liberal government was elected in 2015 and we had high speed rail between Toronto and Montreal. We don’t have that unfortunately. I mean there is high frequency rail, maybe high speed. 

Mark Carney: With a spur to Ottawa. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Maybe it’s coming, I don’t know. 

Mark Carney: And between Edmonton and Calgary. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: But when you say it’s time, do you have something in mind of what this country up looks like? 

Mark Carney: I’ve got, yeah absolutely, without question, without question. Look, and I’m glad you raise it because where we are around the world is, we are at the start of an investment era. I could call it an investment boom, but investment era.

Let me use an example from the European Union. So, Mario Draghi, central banker, became a prime minister, just did an analysis.

Nate Erskine-Smith: You should’ve used that example. 

Mark Carney: I know, I threw it in, took me a while. Just did a very comprehensive analysis for the European Union and where do they go in their next phase of their growth strategy. One of the things that’s striking is their analysis is that the scale of investment that Europe needs to do for the net zero transition and the AI transformation or revolution, depending on how you frame it, plus a bit on security, is twice the size of the Marshall Plan, which was put in place after World War II to rebuild an absolutely destroyed Europe. 

So it’s five percentage points in his estimation of GDP in additional investment year in, year out for decades. We have probably not quite that level, but something similar. That is building. That is an enormous opportunity for this country because the actual act of building clean energy, the act of building out the computing power for AI, the act of investing in skills, all of that is growth at the time. But what it will do if we do it right, it will lock in competitive advantage for our companies and futures for Canadians and their children in the industries of the future. 

And because both being low carbon and deploying machine learning, artificial intelligence, are generalized drivers of competitiveness, in other words, across a bunch of industries, you don’t have to be working in AI to get the benefit of it if we do this right. You can be manufacturing or in the resource sector but if you’re, if you’re low carbon, you will have access to those markers. We talked earlier about CBAM. So how do we get ahead of that and how do we build? So it’s absolutely a time to build. You had, you had Lisa Raitt on the podcast a few weeks ago. And she with Don Iveson, did, did great work, on this housing report. Mike Moffatt was part of it. Others, was, I was a small, part of, part of the group.

You know, we need to build a lot of houses. Okay. We all know that there is a smart way to do that. There’s an effective way to do that. There’s a way that builds a Canadian industry and Canadian expertise on next generation, you know, efficient, energy efficient and livable houses, housing that can build a real industry in this country, above and beyond provide the needs for that. 

And, and at the core of their report, is that strategy. We have taken, I think, as a country, components of that strategy, the more immediate components, but not fully drawn through the recommendations. It’s time to build. We should pull that through because we don’t just get the benefit of, I mean, look, it’s an imperative. It’s not a benefit. It’s an imperative of building these houses, somewhere between five to eight million additional houses. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, we’re well short at the moment. 

Mark Carney: Yeah, we’re well short. So we know, we’ll worry about whether it’s five or eight, you know, several years down the line. But let’s do it in a way that builds an industry that, you know, Canada can export around the world. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: I’ve got a question around fairness, but before I get there, just on the productivity question, do you worry about, you’ve got, I think it’s something like 75% of consumer debt is tied up in mortgages. You’ve got 50% of the bank balance sheet is mortgages. 

You’ve got, when you look at the percentage of our economy that is premised on real estate, and we’re not just talking about building new houses at that point, which is productive use of capital. In many cases, it’s acquiring an existing asset and it’s not the most productive use of a dollar in Canadian society. Do you worry about just how much we have invested as a country in the real estate sector? 

Mark Carney: Look, I certainly had jobs where I had to worry about that. That was the second nature of that. I think the following, which is that we’re in a position where we are very short housing and we have a responsibility, all of us, whether we’re in government or those who are in the sector, in the private sector, and particularly, it’s all levels of government to solve that problem to make sure that every Canadian resident has a decent place to live, that it’s affordable, that they can manage it. We can grow our way into that situation. It’s natural that, you know, the separate point or related point, it’s natural that people, you know, that their biggest asset is their home. And, you know, their biggest liability is their mortgage. That’s natural. You know, if everyone waited until they could buy their home for cash, yeah, no one would own a home. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: But it does strike me, pushing investment dollars into building. And again, what the framework is, we want to push any new dollar that’s coming into the housing space, we want to get new housing built as opposed to competing with first time home buyers for residential resales, for example. 

Mark Carney: Absolutely. Yes. I mean, we need to build a lot of homes and that has implications for building standards codes, permitting, the way we build those homes. It would be a huge missed opportunity if we build the homes of yesterday for the world of today, in a world where, again, in Lisa’s and Don’s report, they quite rightly make this point that the risks from a changing climate change the specifications and the locations of where you should build. And, you know, the efficiency of greater density in our cities is, look, it’s great for neighborhoods. I mean, we’ve got a great mixed, I mean, this is one of the classic neighborhoods, great neighborhoods in the world, let alone Canada. But more of that infill density is valuable if you do it the right way.

Inclusive Growth and Fairness

Nate Erskine-Smith: Your focus on this task force is growth productivity, but you have also written a good deal about inclusive growth. You have written that we have to be more honest with people about winners and losers when it comes to trade and technological transformation. And then the idea behind inclusive growth is to make sure we support people along the way. And there’s an underlying sense of fairness to it. And when you look at the Canadian context, when you look at the work you’re going to do with this task force, how much does inclusive growth factor into it? And how would you articulate, you know, I’m not gonna knock on doors and talk about inclusive growth. I don’t think that is a doorstep way of talking about it, but helping people in need and helping people who are struggling and helping make sure we’re addressing cost of living, that sounds like what we’re trying to drive at when we talk about inclusive growth. What do you mean when you talk about it? 

Mark Carney: Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I would frame it a bit this way if I could, which is, it gets us substantially the way there towards an inclusive society, but not all of the way there to an inclusive society. By which I mean, there’s ways to grow that recognize that you’re going to have, it’s an ugly word, but it’s an ugly process, where you’re going to have big churn in firms, in industries, and therefore in jobs. 

So new jobs will be created, but old jobs will be lost. And the question is what happens to the people in those jobs? Are they ready for the new jobs? How do you get them ready for the new jobs? And look, the lesson of previous industrial revolutions, and we are entering two industrial revolutions at the same time, the sustainable revolution and the AI revolution, the lesson of previous industrial revolutions is what happens is that you go through a long period with huge change of jobs and industries, and that workers are slow to benefit from the benefits of those new industries. 

Now that doesn’t have to be the case and what happens is that eventually people get retrained, eventually new social safety net and welfare systems are put in place to support people, but it happens decades after the fact, the political process lags. I think we should benefit from that knowledge, that history, and do this in real time. And it therefore has to be part and parcel of the growth strategy. So a huge element of this is necessarily going to have to be around the skills agenda, and the skills agenda in real time. 

And make these changes not threatening for people, but legitimately, legitimately exciting for people because they have the opportunity to develop the skills that you know, are in the clean economy, are applying AI across a huge range of those economies and they’re growing their jobs from there. And that means, you know, it means multiple levels of government, as you can appreciate, because the skills is not unique to any level of government. And it means being coordinated with industry, it means coordinated with other stakeholders. 

And I think it also means, and this is, I don’t think I’ll draw this out in the report, but it’s a broader question. You’ve thought about this is, well, what does it mean for social welfare and support? Because ideally, look, what’s happening, not ideally what’s happening, but what is likely to happen is, you know, you have people in their thirties or forties and the industry is changing and they have an opportunity to shift into a new role. But ideally, this is where the ideal is, they have a partner. You know, they have a mortgage because they have a place to live. Maybe they have children as well. So they have obligations. So how easy is it for them to then take a year out or time out to develop some social support? And how do you, so how do you integrate the, both, the social welfare system with that, or the social support for that, as well as make sure you have real places, real opportunity to get that training.  And we need to be thinking about that right now to integrate that.

Nate Erskine-Smith: Well yesterday, because apart from any transformation which you’re getting at, you have 1.5 million people that don’t have a job right now. And there’s got to be an overriding focus on supporting people through the social safety net, where they are unable to work and helping people, properly supporting them, not get off your a-s-s approach of Doug Ford, which is, I don’t even know what decade to accuse him from being from. But actually supporting people with that skills training and that education and those social supports on the income side. 

The other question on fairness, and I did ask you this, a version of this at least, when you gave that speech and then no one was putting up their hand and I was like, all right, I’ll ask Mark Carney a question. I’m not shy about asking questions. And I put it this way, and I’ll give you a second crack at it. 

Mark Carney: You really liked my first answer. 

Nate-Erskine Smith: Your first answer left a little to be desired, I would say. So, you have spoken about income inequality, but you then have highlighted rightly that income inequality is sizably outpaced by wealth inequality. And there are challenging ways of tackling this problem, but before we get to the tackling of the problem, just so people who are listening understand this, StatsCan measures this in different ways. Social Capital Partners, and this is what I referenced in my preamble to the question previously, but they estimate that the top 1% owns 25% of the wealth in Canada and the top 0.1% owns 13% of the wealth. And it’s an incredible amount of inequality when you think about the scale of it all, especially when you contrast that as against the insignificant disability benefit and the number of people who are truly in need in society. And so when we have that, I think everything through the lens of a fair and productive economy. 

You’re focused on the productive end of it, but when we talk about inclusive growth, when we think of inequalities like wealth inequality, fairness looms large. How do you think we can best address this? Now, the capital gains changes, I’m curious if you have a comment on that because I think those were a very useful step forward in addressing wealth inequality as the OECD has highlighted personal capital income taxes as the most effective path forward in terms of tackling this problem because of capital flight risks with other changes, potential changes in net wealth taxes. How would you best address that question of wealth inequality? 

Mark Carney: Well, I think the following, and this is where the trade-off comes and this is where the political system comes together in order to make the judgments around those trade-offs. Because we’re in a position where it’s a time to build, right? Time to build out the housing, the industries of the future, get the economy growing, and increase income and wealth for all Canadians. And for that to happen, and I’m going to come to your question, but I want to pick up on something you mentioned earlier, which I didn’t really highlight, which is, and you referenced it as a third way, as opposed to, you know, spend and subsidize and support or, you know, cut our way to prosperity, the destroy, deny type approach, demolish approach. And that’s a way that is clear through a political process about what we’re trying to accomplish, the missions, if you will, of the government. Are we trying to become a clean energy superpower? Are we trying to become the essential trading partner of our friends, et cetera, et cetera? What are we trying to do in order to create that wealth? And then how do we go about it?

And how we go about it, the role of government in that respect is partly through policy, present and future, partly through regulation, smart regulation, in fact, not too many, but smart regulation standards, and sometimes through a bit of capital investment themselves, is to catalyze a huge amount of private investment. That’s what’s necessary. Because the orders of magnitude are so large that no government can or should try to take it on. 

In order to get that last component, the private investment, we need builders. We need companies and individuals and entrepreneurs and people to figure out better, not just to invest, but also figure out better ways to accomplish the goals that we’ve set as a society. And they need to be rewarded, right? I mean, they’re going to do it in part to be rewarded. So they are going to create wealth. They’re going to create wealth for the country as a whole, but also they’re going to have some of that. And so the judgment is around what’s the right reward and how do you balance that with how much of the wealth that’s created, the total wealth is created that is captured by society. Do we capture it in general in the economy? Do we tax the economy in general, or do we go and tax at that, at that source, so to speak?

And the thing I didn’t, I’ll be candid, what I didn’t like about the capital gains discussion earlier this year was the way it was framed, the way it was toned. It was a kind of class warfare type language, which, well, as if, we’re entering an era where if we’re going to be successful, we need some people, some companies, some Canadians to be successful.

And that doesn’t mean they’re bad people, that they’ve done the wrong thing. In fact, they’ve been doing, they will have done what we want them to do. If we have a clean tech entrepreneur, carbon cure, carbon capture, you know, those people, and they get to scale. If, a Canadian company is the world leader in small modular reactors, for example, which is necessary for so many solutions around the world, yeah, actually we do want them to see some of the gain. They’re not bad people, they’re good people. They’re part of what we need to do. So then how do we balance that? And how do we balance it through overall levels of taxation, taxation of income on the way up? And do we have some form of, is it around capital gains? Do we have capital gains at the right level now? 

Nate Erskine-Smith: And is there a way to distinguish at times between active and passive income? Because, like, take housing as the classic example, but if you’ve got, and I mentioned this example earlier, but if you’ve got dollars coming in to build, I want to incentivize that every chance that I get, more dollars coming in to build. But I want to disincentivize if anything, dollars coming in to compete with first-time homebuyers in the residential resale space. That’s not productive capital in the same way, and you could have a tax regime that treats that wealth differently.

Mark Carney: Well, you can have, and we do have some of this, which is you can have other elements of the regime which support the first-time homebuyer which tilts the, you know, the playing field that way. So these are, look, these are all crucial things and I used the term earlier, the adjective earlier, it’s not gonna be a magical … 

Nate Erskine-Smith: It doesn’t sound like you’re gonna address extreme wealth inequality, but you are addressing productivity. 

Mark Carney: Well, no, but I think but you’ve got to address, yeah, you’ve got to address how are we going to grow this economy? How are we best going to grow this economy? And in part, how are we going to grow this economy in a way that brings, that puts people first and brings as many Canadians along as possible in that growth, in and of that self, in that growth, in the dignity of a job and a career and flourishing in Canada. 

And then, and then, but above and beyond that, there is these questions which you’re rightly raising, which is, okay, but there’s no perfect growth strategy that lifts absolutely all boats. That’s absolute. We’ve lived through that.

Nate Erskine-Smith: And we’ve just delivered after, so here’s the, you didn’t live through this in the same way I did, but we just promised people with disabilities, like we set an expectation here, we delivered this and it’s not nothing, it’s like effectively a billion dollars plus a year works out at 1.2, 1.3 on an ongoing basis, but it pales in comparison. I mean, we’re now having a debate about $3 billion in new spending for old age security, which is poorly targeted, when you’re talking about a senior that makes $120,000 in a given year is gonna earn, you know, they’re taxable benefits, but would receive $4,000 in benefits. That doesn’t stack up when I look at the who are we, what is inclusive growth, how are we gonna help people and make sure people aren’t left behind? And I do think as we think about productivity and growth, and that’s your overall variety objective, and rightly so. There, does have to be this knock on consideration to say, okay, well, I don’t see this skills training and this AI transformation necessarily benefiting someone who’s really struggling, who has a disability and is on this support. So how do we make sure we do both at the same time and we deliver the growth we need, but we also have, we also have promised to expand that disability benefit. 

Mark Carney: But that’s why, okay. But that’s, that’s, and you talked earlier about, why, you know, why am I involved working with the, with the Liberal Party working for the Prime Minister on this? But that’s because both questions get asked and both questions are looked at, to be answered. So the growth element and the social element, broader social, as opposed to growth, as the be all and end all. 

But we are in a position now, as I think other economies, you know, the UK, the EU, the US has a different weighting of these issues, but certainly those other economies that have a similar, not exactly the same, but a similar set of values, a similar set of balance between equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, and fairness across generations. Those three big factors, different societies weigh those differently. I think we as Canadians try to balance across all three as much as possible. 

But we’re in a situation, as is the UK, as is the EU, where our ability to meet all of those will be compromised unless we solve the growth equation. Okay. We have to solve this. That does, it does not follow that by solving the growth equation, we solve all these other things because we then have to make choices of what do we do with that growth? And what do we do with the fruits of that growth? 

Nate Erskine-Smith: Yeah, redistribution is still part of the conversation. 

Mark Carney: Yeah. That bring all Canadians along. 

Conclusion

I think you talk about it is redistribution and regeneration, but you need both.

Look, I appreciate the time. When you are, when you’re ready to beat Kevin Vuong in Spadina-Harborfront, I’m there to canvas for you. If you need any political advice along the way, I’m happy to help. And I really, I will, you know, with all sincerity, I really am glad that you have not been put off by the absurdity of our politics and that there’s still that interest. And I hope many people who are, who see you doing it will follow suit and say, look, I’ve contributed, I have a lot to contribute, I’m gonna contribute to politics. Because I do have this great worry that we’re gonna see people not leave the sidelines in a way that you seem to be willing to do because of the state of the state of our politics, so I appreciate you joining. 

Mark Carney: That’s very, that’s very kind I mean, but let me just say this, which is that if there are people like that on the sidelines and they come in, you can, they can flood the zone. They can come in and flood the zone and change the tone. 

Nate Erskine-Smith: We’ll leave with that optimism. 

Mark Carney: We can leave with that optimism. Okay, thanks Nate.

Nate Erskine-Smith: Thanks for joining me on this episode of Uncommons. A special shout out, by the way, to Beaches Sandbox, which is where we are recording this. You might hear the daycare that is happening right beside us. As always, you can reach us with topics, with guests, with ideas @beynate on social media and [email protected] by email. And otherwise, until next time.

Would it mandate vegetable proteins? Would it make your kids eat bugs? Are bugs even vegan?

*** There has been a campaign in the alt-right media that attacks my pandemic prevention and preparedness legislation as some hidden vegan agenda to mandate vegetable proteins. I wouldn’t normally respond to this grifting, especially from Rebel Media, but at least one Senator has expressed concerns based on this astroturfing and the bill now looks to be stalled. So here’s my message to my Senate colleagues.

Dear Senators and staff,

You’ve been receiving emails from people who have fallen down the alt-right Rebel rabbit hole online.

The bill doesn’t cede our sovereignty to the WHO. And it doesn’t mandate vegetables, make our kids eat bugs, or mark the end of animal agriculture.

In fact, it doesn’t grant the government any new authorities at all.

I know this because I wrote the bill.

In doing so, I consulted with expert reports from UNEP, IPBES, and The Independent Panel, and with experts like David Naylor, Peter Stoett, and Christine McNab.

What does the bill do? It requires the government to develop a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan, to table that plan in Parliament for public accountability, and to update it every few years so the issue doesn’t fall by the wayside as it did after SARS.

The bill also sets out a non-exhaustive list of issues for the government to include in any prevention and preparedness plan. For example, the plan must:

• identify key drivers of pandemic risk (section 3(2)(b));

• ensure Canada contributes to global disease surveillance (3(2)(g));

• identify preparedness strategies with respect to the availability of PPE, surge capacity for contact tracing, and the working conditions of essential workers (3(2)(i);

• assess our domestic manufacturing capacity for vaccines and treatments (3(2)(k)); and

• review measures to support global health equity (3(2)(n)).

There’s a lot more in there, of course, and I don’t suggest that I got it all perfectly right. When I testified at the Health Committee, I made it clear that I not only welcomed but encouraged amendments. You can read the full transcript here.

I know that there would have been a series of amendments to the bill at the House committee had the Conservatives not filibustered the entire process.

Now, the scary “vegan” section that’s recently attracted attention from grifters, alt-right conspiracy theorists, and Bovine University alumni is section 3(2)(l). It requires the federal government to consult with provinces and ensure there are measures in place to manage and reduce infectious disease risk in animal agriculture.

Let’s consider the specific language in the bill:

i) reduce the risks posed by antimicrobial resistance

The World Bank calls the overuse of antibiotics a public health threat and pegs AMR deaths at hundreds of thousands per year. Canada’s taking action and that work should be updated as needed. 

ii) regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture

We know that a high density of genetically similar animals increases infectious disease risk. Avian and swine flus aren’t new, and expert reports (see here & here) have laid this out clearly and then some. 

I had biosecurity rules in mind here, which shouldn’t be controversial. The CFIA’s Chief Veterinary Officer has testified that “most on-farm biosecurity standards are voluntary” at the moment.

Global travel is a key pandemic risk too, and no one is talking about ending either animal agriculture or travel. That would be ridiculous. It’s about managing and reducing risks.

iii) promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk, including the production of alternative proteins

As I’ve come to learn from far-right MPs like Cheryl Gallant, “alternative protein” is apparently communist coded language for eating bugs.

Of course, plant-based alternatives are already common as well as significant to Canada’s pulse industry. And cellular agriculture holds promise, as we already see products in Singapore and better industry support in the US and other countries.

We either meet growing global demand for protein in an unsustainable way at great risk to public health, or through a combination of biosecure meat alongside an expansion of alternative proteins.

More choices, no mandates. 

iv) phase out commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk, including activities that involve high-risk species

As we saw with mink farming in the pandemic, some activities have little economic value and come with disproportionate infectious disease risks. That’s why BC and other jurisdictions banned the practice.

The idea here was to ensure we take a national approach and follow BC, phasing out an activity that unreasonably contributes to pandemic risk.

And that’s it.

That’s the scary “vegan” bill in a nutshell, which isn’t a vegan bill at all.

Like climate accountability legislation, Bill C-293 would ensure that every government is accountable to Parliament and the Canadian public with respect to its pandemic prevention and preparedness efforts.

And all along I’ve been open to amendments.

I do hope we can work together to put the conspiracies aside, to amend the bill thoughtfully in the Senate, and to ensure that we have a framework in place such that all future governments take pandemic prevention and preparedness seriously.

The Bloc’s bill is too expensive and poorly targeted, but we can and should help low and moderate income seniors.

Generational fairness was the theme of this year’s budget, with significant new housing dollars. And it’s an idea that’s now being tested by Parliament.

That’s because the Bloc is threatening an election if the government doesn’t pony up $16 billion over 5 years in new spending for Old Age Security.

It’s a bad idea as a question of policy, and I also think it’s bad politics in the long-run despite recent polls.

And yes, I know, seniors vote. The Liberals know that too, having reversed Harper’s retirement age changes, and increased elderly benefits both for low-income seniors, as well as more broadly for most seniors 75 and older through OAS.

Now, I didn’t think increasing OAS was a good idea then. I lost that debate in my party. The Bloc’s demand to now increase it for seniors 65 to 74, oddly supported by the Conservatives and the NDP, is even worse.

Simply, OAS increases are both too expensive and poorly targeted.

First, consider who benefits.

The median income for seniors is less than $35,000. But if you’re 65 and earn up to around $90,000, you get the full annual OAS benefit of over $8,500.

Once you hit that $90k income threshold, the benefit starts to get clawed back, 15 cents on each dollar earned. But a senior earning $120k still receives almost 4 grand, and it isn’t entirely phased out until one earns about $150,000.

It gets even stranger when you consider that the claw-back is based on individual income, not family income. So a seniors’ couple could together earn $180,000, and receive more than $17,000 in benefits. Earn 240 grand together, and you’re still getting almost 8 grand from the federal government. 

Add all that to the fact that those aged 65+ also have the highest percentage of net wealth – the housing lottery winners of our society – and calling it a poorly targeted program is putting it politely.

Remember, this isn’t retirement income that one has paid into. This is a benefit fully funded from our general tax dollars. Your tax dollars.

At a huge cost already.

Without any further increase to elderly benefits, they are already the single biggest budget line item, responsible for roughly one in every seven dollars of federal spending. 

They are also projected to grow the fastest. 

Consider that this year the government budgeted $34.6 billion collectively for both the Canada Child Benefit and child care, projected to grow to $40.2 billion in 4 years. 

In contrast, the government budgeted $81 billion for elderly benefits this year. In only 4 years, that spending is projected to increase to $100 billion, and the number of beneficiaries (and spending) is expected to keep growing rapidly through 2035. 

Of these huge numbers, 75% goes to the poorly targeted OAS.

Do we really think now’s the time to add at least another $3 billion per year?

It is a direct challenge to generational fairness if new spending prioritizes poorly targeted old age security when young people are struggling with the very idea of ever owning a home or finding anything resembling affordable shelter.

Of course, low and moderate income seniors are struggling with rent too.

Yes, seniors have the lowest poverty rate among any demographic – in 2022, the poverty rate was 6% for seniors vs 9.9% for the general population, 17.5% for Indigenous people, 12.3% for people with disabilities, 9.9% for kids, you get the idea.

But it’s also true that no senior should live in poverty. And when you dive deeper into the numbers, you’ll find that the poverty rate is significantly higher for single seniors, rising to 13.8%. 

So let’s help them.

We could focus on the Guaranteed Income Supplement, squarely serving low-income seniors. 

Or we could adjust the OAS program to claw back funds more quickly from upper income couples, and direct those funds to low and moderate income seniors – especially single seniors – who are in the greatest need.

We could massively reduce poverty and financial stress among seniors without spending a single new dollar, so long as we’re willing to deal with fairness within an older generation and not impose further unfairness on a younger one.

For a leader who wants to be seen as fiscally responsible and fighting for young people, Poilievre showed us he was the exact opposite of both when he backed the Bloc’s proposal.

For a leader who wants to be seen as a champion for the vulnerable, Singh showed us he doesn’t understand how existing basic income support programs actually work.

If this week is any indication, it sure looks like there’s only one party that has any concern at all for generational fairness.

The Prime Minister joins Nate for an in-depth conversation on the Uncommons podcast

On this episode Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joins Nate to discuss the next election, successes and failures in governing, and what comes next.

Watch the full podcast on YouTube:

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Transcript:

Nate: Welcome to Uncommons. I’m Nate Erskine-Smith, and on this episode I’m joined by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and you should know at the outset there were no pre-approved questions. Now, before we get to that conversation, two quick public service announcements. We’ve started these weekly update videos of the week that was in Parliament. We of course call it Uncommons Weekly, and you can check it out on our social media @beynate.

The second thing is, do me a favor. If you like what we’re doing, go to your platform of choice and leave us a positive review because it does help us reach a wider, greater audience. And I could do a big preamble, but you know who the Prime Minister is. So let’s jump to the conversation.

The Importance of Conversations in Politics

Nate: Justin, thanks for joining me.

Justin: Oh, so good to be here Nate.

Nate: I was laughing. So, you, in the same week, you’re looking at your itinerary and you’re doing the Colbert show, and then you’re looking, you’re going “Oh, and I’m doing Uncommons with Nate. What is – what is happening? How did these two end up on my schedule the same week?”

Justin: Yeah. You know, it’s actually, it’s actually just right, because a big part of what I’ve been trying to do is have as many different conversations in different places about, about the challenges we’re all facing, because one of the things we learn and we’ve learned over the past years is, if we don’t go to where people are, then people aren’t listening. It’s not like I can give a speech on the steps of Parliament and know that most Canadians will have tuned in to the speech, through the nightly news or through – no.

Nate: Five people are really fantastic.

Justin: Well, and it’s great that they’re then, I’m happy to give speeches for them. But if I don’t start, if we don’t start making, you know, space for real conversations that actually do filter through everything that people are either bombarded with or just busy doing in their lives, then we’re not doing right in terms of either representing or serving people.

Nate: So for those who are regular listeners, they know a bit of my background. But for those who may be tuning in the first time, because we’ve got you joining us, this is a Liberal MP’s podcast, but, you and I have not always seen eye to eye. And I get asked all the time, well, what’s your relationship like with the Prime Minister, thinking that there’s some, you know, animosity that’s between us.

How would you describe our relationship to sort of set the stage for this?

Justin: Well, when people ask me “So, how do you put up with Nate?” I actually laugh because you’re actually one of the MPs that I have a better type of conversation with than many others. 

And we have all, and we’ve had some, some pretty important conversations over the years or at least crunchy conversations over the years. But I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed it. And for me, it’s a feature, not a bug, that I have thoughtful MPs who come at this with, you know, ways of challenging me with strongly felt beliefs, with points where we will diverge on things. 

And as long as I can have, as we have always had, and perhaps better than many others who are sometimes more divergent in their perspectives, as long as we can have really good conversations where you understand where I’m coming from and I understand where you’re coming from, then there is, I mean, that’s almost the way democracy writ large is supposed to work. As you know, people come together to vote on, you know, what direction the country’s going to take. If we can’t have these conversations, then, then nothing else is working in democracy.

Reflections on Leadership and Governance

Nate: Yeah. And a reasonable disagreement is, I think, central to not only our politics writ large, but also to the Liberal Party as, as I hope many of us see it. But when you think of, the Liberal Party, when you think of, you know, you’ve got, I will never be an anonymous MP in the media, I think it’s cowardly, but you’ve got any number of colleagues who are now speaking out in, less than helpful ways, if I’m putting it more politely. 

You’ve got others who are going on record and raising concerns, and the concerns are mixed. Sometimes it’s about direction, sometimes it is about you and, and they try to cast it as it’s not about, you know, fair or unfair criticism, but you know how people feel. When you look at it, you know, you’re in this for nine years. And I want to start with a bigger sort of question of why. You articulated the need for serious change heading into 2015. Many people like me left this, got off the sidelines to participate, because of that call to do things differently, when you think of what’s to come next, you’ve got anonymous MPs raising complaints. You’ve got people who are, who are, frustrated for this reason or that reason. 

Governing wears on governments. Why do you want to do this again?

Justin: It’s interesting that you go back to 2015, right. And that, the why we did this, because first of all, there were a lot of people, you know, telling us that we were wrong, that I was doing things the wrong way, that I wasn’t, I wasn’t, you know, tackling the right things the right way. There was a lot of skepticism about what that was.

And it was an opportunity to actually give Canadians a choice that I think was absolutely necessary for the country to say, okay, we’ve got to double down on fighting climate change and growing the economy at the same time. We got to step up in supporting the most vulnerable. We got to move forward on reconciliation. We got to, we got to figure out how we navigate through a much more challenging world that has impacts on us.

Those are all things that the Harper government wasn’t doing, and those were all the things that drove me to saying, “Yeah, Canadians need that choice to be able to make,” well, that’s sort of the same choice they’re going to make in the next election. Choice whether you’re moving forward on the fight against climate change or whether we just basically throw up our hands and go back to leaning heavily on fossil fuels with the kind of short term thinking that is going to end up being so costly for Canadians just a few years down the road, not just with, with the, the, the costs of climate impacts and wildfires, but also, with the missed opportunities to participate in where the global economy is going. That question of, okay, at this time of backlash against progressive policies of inclusion and diversity, you know, are we going to double down on making sure that everyone gets to participate, or are we going to continue to drive wedges into people and, and, you know, group Canadians into, into subgroups that are angry at each other?

I think all those questions are just as important now, if not even more important, because back in the run up to 2015, I think everyone got a sense of, okay, yeah, we just need to find an alternative to Stephen Harper and whether it’s Mulcair or whether it’s Trudeau, the winds were turning in that sense. Yeah, this is going to be harder on a lot of levels, because it’s, it’s, a time where people are frustrated.

But the choice to make a deliberate choice to say, no, we’re going to continue and even double down on the things we know are going to get us better, which is more protection of the environment, more inclusion of people, more understanding how you have to build the economy from the bottom up, from the center out, instead of from the top down, which Poilievre is still proposing. Like, this is going to be a much harder election in 2015. It always was going to be.

Nate: Set up, but set up that choice. So I agree, I want to protect the progress. Right. So we, leading into 2015, there were over 100 communities without clean water, Indigenous communities. And there’s imperfect progress, unquestionably imperfect progress, that there’s still communities. It’s still a failure of any community that doesn’t have clean water, but we have massive progress. Over 80% of those advisories have been lifted, any new advisory that’s come on has been treated with seriousness. There’s water projects in most communities already underway, and many short term advisories have been addressed as well to avoid them becoming long term advisories. So I care about progress on climate change. We’re finally bending the curve on emissions, there’s a comprehensive, serious climate plan.

We can fight pricing pollution. We should defend pricing pollution. But it’s about much more than that. you look at poverty reduction, you look at addressing the opioid crisis. I run down the list of issues and I care about protecting that progress. Now, I’m gonna, you know, if you’re speaking to, a Canadian who’s sitting at home and saying, yeah, I agree, I don’t, I don’t want Pierre Poilievre.

I don’t, I don’t want to move in that direction, but we, we need to protect that progress, and we need to put our best foot forward. And you’ve probably had some reflections, because I’m sure this is not the first time someone said, well, look at what’s happening south of the border. Obviously your brain didn’t melt on national television the way the Biden’s did, but, Kamala has obviously put that party in a better position to win, although still a struggle, but a better position to win.

Why do you think when you take a step outside of yourself and look and say, I still think I’m the best person to, to fight that fight?

Justin: Well, first of all, let’s, let’s look at, you know, people who are saying, oh, I’m not sure. Would they be saying that if I was ten points ahead in the polls right now?

Nate: No.

Justin: Right. I mean, are there a lot of Liberals who who are thinking, that, you know, Justin’s priorities aren’t in the right place or Justin doesn’t have the fight in him, or Justin, you know, is wrong to be continuing to believe in protecting the environment and growing the economy and protecting women’s rights and stuff. In terms of the substance of what we’re doing, I think that’s pretty much the fight.

There’s a question on whether or not, I still have the drive, the fight or the ability to win this fight. And I sort of say that that’s obviously a question that I have to ask as well. Do I still have the drive to do this?

Nate: You’ve got the drive, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not dismissive of that.

Justin: And do I still have the- okay, but do I still have the understanding of what this is going to take to win the next election? Yeah, absolutely. Better than just about anyone else, because I have been fighting through crises and fighting against Conservative opponents who are trying to undo this and bring Canadians, you know, backwards, and polarize them.

Like, I know exactly how hard this fight is going to be. And I also know that I am absolutely roaring to go, because this kind of fight that is so fundamental to, you know, how Canadians come out or come through what have been really, really difficult years, I think, is exactly why I got into politics to make sure that we are delivering the absolute best future for Canadians.

Poilievre and Choices Within the Upcoming Election

Justin: And I think one of the interesting questions that, even as people ask me why I want to do this all the time, nobody’s asking Poilievre why he wants to do this, what is it that he is being driven to fight for? We know what he’s fighting against, what is he fighting for? And he hasn’t even come, and we’ve been watching him and debating him, and trying to counter him for years now, 20 years in the House, he’s been we know what he’s been all about fighting against. He hasn’t even begun to articulate what he’s fighting for. And I think and I’m happy for people to be asking me the question as you are, I think more Canadians need to be asking Poilievre who and what he’s fighting for, other than himself and his desire to be in power.

Nate: I mean, there is, obviously in that choice, the choice matters, it’s not just a referendum on you. I’ve told the story before, but there is, senior in a legion in Sioux Lookout who said, you know, I don’t like your boss, too much spending, too many apologies. But I know what I’m getting with Justin. I don’t know what I’m getting with the other guy. And I’m still going to vote for you. 

And so there is a bit of, there is a choice there that really matters. I mean, he’s obviously walking away from some of that 20 year record. He’s got a 20 year record of anti-labor advocacy, and now he’s trying to, you know, more boots, less suits, and he’s wearing- wearing a suit while he says it, but regardless, he’s he’s trying to, you know, win over labor in the Monty McNaughton kind of style. Whether that works or not is an open question. But he does articulate, relentlessly to the point that it’s now seared in my brain, the “axe the tax”, “build the homes”, “fix the budget”, “stop the crime”.

And, you know, I want to build the homes, too. And I don’t think his plan stacks up particularly well as against our more recent ones, certainly. Axe the tax is a silly slogan and belies the fact he doesn’t have a plan on climate change. And the carbon rebate makes most people better off. And we can run down the list. I’m less interested in, for the purpose of this, at least combating that absurdity, however you want to frame his, his arguments. 

But for you, you know, I’ve said this to you before, I think I said it in January. I said it again more recently. But when your father ran that final time, he articulated five things that mattered to him that he wanted his final term to be about. And it was international peace, it was economy, energy, fighting Quebec sovereignty and delivering the charter. Whatever one thinks of his success, obviously the charter got delivered and that is part of who we are as Canadians and and rightly so. How would you articulate the two, three, four – what do you want to see through in your final term?

Justin: Even before we get into that, though, I think in your very first story, there was something really, really telling in that, you know, someone may disagree with me on this or that and the other things, but they know. They know the frame that I’m working from. They know what drives me. They know what matters to me.

And that is not something to simply shrug off, because what we’ve seen over the past number of years is crises that nobody ran on. Nobody asked me in 2019 how I was going to handle an eventual pandemic that was going to hit the next year. Nobody talks about, well, how would you react if Russia were to invade Ukraine.

Whatever this next election is going to be about, I think the pattern of crises that we’ve hit, whether they’ve been economic or military or geopolitical or health, have not been something that was on the ballot or even discussed in the debate. And that idea of knowing someone’s values, knowing the frame with which they approach challenges is not just important, it’s ultimately sort of the only thing when you are picking your representatives, whether it’s, picking you to, to, to represent them, in Beaches-East York, or, whether it’s picking a prime minister, having confidence that the person both sees you and is going to make decisions with you in mind that align with what you are most preoccupied about is what democracies and elections are supposed to be all about. And often we get pulled away from that. So for me, you ask me about the things that drive me more than anything else right now is understanding that we are in a moment in this world where everything’s changing. People are saying, oh, it’s going to be a change election.

Yeah, it’s going to be a change election. Everything is change. Not just climate change, but the way we work, the way AI works, the way, the way the geopolitics happens, the pressures on everything. The world is in a massive pivot moment right now, and we don’t know what the biggest issue is going to be. For the past year and a half, Poilievre has been screaming his head off about, you know, inflation, and it’s all my fault on inflation. Well, inflation is now down, because we’ve got “justinflation”.

Nate: We’ve got inflation down to 2%, to where it’s supposed to be, and that’s the whole thing. But, yeah.

Justin: Who knows if whatever issue we’re picking is actually going to be it. And it was, it’s sort of lovely to look back on my dad’s last term and say that was what he was saying. We don’t know what crises are going to hit the world. We only know there are going to be. And the question on who has the capacity.

Successes and Failures in Governance

Nate: Not a question on crises, I’ll push back a little bit though. So I think that’s fair. And I think actually, if I were to articulate some of the successes, I want to get to successes and failures. And if I were to articulate some successes, chief among them is actually the Covid response, imperfect as it was, people could see you in front of that cottage every morning, and you were there, and we, you know, we could point to emergency benefits, we could point to, we could point to vaccine rollouts.

Justin: The fact that we bounced back faster than other countries.

Nate: Yeah, and overwhelmingly, I think Canadians do feel that. We just did a survey over the summer, and the number one thing people feel strongly about that the government’s done well was the Covid response. Dental care came a close second. But, but having said all that, there are still things, and I’ll use an example.

You’re a dad. You’ve got kids that you love and Canadians can see that. And if I were in your shoes, I’ve got kids, too. And the Canada Child Benefit childcare has made a massive difference in so many people’s lives. And now we’re promising healthy school food, for the, to set kids up for success to an even greater degree.

To me, and I could add, we’re protecting kids online. So let’s take that package of delivering for families with kids. Poilievre doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t want to talk about it, because there are successes there that he doesn’t want to point to. But you could talk about it and you could say, we have delivered for families with kids in a serious way, and you could point to progress, but people don’t just want to vote for your record, they want to vote for what comes next.

And you can say credibly, because people know you care, they know you care. And especially about families and delivering for families with kids. And here’s what comes next. If I, I’m in this again, this is what I’m in it for. And I do think there needs to be more of, yes, it could be, It’s change and it’s high level, but it sounds a lot like when Biden talks about defending democracy and it’s, it’s important and I, and I, believe in that but it’s a little bit disconnected from people’s day to day. 

And if instead it’s, you know, I think, protecting the environment where people have seen flood risks, people see insurance premiums going up, they see the forest fires, they feel the forest fires. But when we’re connecting issues like that, and there’s another issue that I, you know, you’ve already talked about, but that is, I think, central to what you want to do next.

I do think it doesn’t have to be so like, it doesn’t have to be so, you know, cartoonish. But I think telling that story. Stories matter in our politics and you telling the stories of what you’re in it for, I think is, is crucial.

Justin: Yeah. No, I entirely agree. And that’s very much what we’re, what we’re putting together and building on. I mean, part of, but part of before we can properly pitch the next step, we, as you pointed out, we have to sort of highlight some of the things that we have done and that, quite frankly, are at risk. I mean, the Canada Child Benefit, the last time there was a vote on that, Poilievre voted against it.

Is even that at risk, let alone everything else you mentioned that he has actively opposed, from dental for kids to, to school foods to, to child care. We know he’s nowhere on child care. These are things that have concretely helped, but also concretely improved our economic performance, improved the jobs, improved the opportunities. As a country, that is always the thing we’re doing.

But if Canadians don’t understand the things that we’ve done and that we’ve delivered, then there’s, there’s a real challenge in saying, oh, we’re going to do this. Go, why should I believe you did this? You haven’t done anything else. I mean, what are you talking about that we didn’t do anything else. I mean, that’s, and that’s something that you’ve, you’re, you’re in caucus every week.

I mean, this is what we struggle with Nate. I mean, we. we’re really trying to, trying to dig into how we both have Canadians understand what it is we’ve done and what it is at risk in the next election, because Poilievre has basically said he’s going to undo everything that we, we did. The only thing we do know is he’s going to continue to, to give tax breaks to the rich, he’s going to reverse some of our tax breaks, that ask the wealthiest to do a little bit more. I mean, these are things that are really tangible. And we also have to have that positive ambition of this is what we’re going to do together, in the next mandate. This is the next step of what we’re going. And that’s something we’re busy putting together with, with caucus and everyone right now.

Nate: I think there’s a lot. So there are certain issues like build the homes where we have to win that fight that matters too much to so many people, especially young Canadians, into our economy when you think of productivity. There are other issues, axe the tax is a powerful political message because especially when it’s not tied to anything environment related. and it’s just a broad, sweeping promise to axe some tax. Those who know us about the carbon tax and care a lot. Okay, it motivates a certain base. Just like how gutting the CBC motivates a certain Conservative base. But on some issues, we just have to fight them to a draw, right? We have to articulate the things we’ve done on auto theft.

We have to articulate the things we’ve done on climate. We just fight some of those things to a draw, axe the tax, stop the crime and fix the budget. And we hopefully win build the homes. But there are other issues that we need to, on fixing health care, we did deliver dental care and 6 million Canadians don’t have access to a family doctor, on delivering for families, as I mentioned, on protecting the environment. There’s other issues that we have strength on, that we have credibility on, that we have a record on, and there are other things we want to do next. Taking the fight to Pierre doesn’t just mean pointing out his inadequacies and his 20 year record. It also is to push him on issues the same way we did say gun control and environment with Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, taking the fight to him, we’ve given him a little more of a free pass, I think since he was, since he was elected leader than I would maybe have if I could go back and do it again.

Justin: I’ve heard that a lot. And, and for sure to a certain extent, there absolutely was a theoretical path or was a path where we came out of the gate, greeted him when he became leader, the same way I was greeted by Stephen Harper.

Nate: You did a bit of it with Bitcoin, right? You did a bit of it.

Justin: Yeah, a little bit of that. But, but I mean, he actually did that to himself as much as anything else.

Nate: He mostly does it to himself. He can’t help himself.

Justin: Yeah, the thing that happened when I first came out, with, when I became leader, Stephen Harper, you know, attacked me out of the gate, greeted me with a, millions of dollars of ads. 

Nate: Just not ready.

Justin: No, that was, that was the last. That was the last one.

Nate: What was the first one?

Justin: The first one was oh, he’s just not serious. He’s, you can’t, can you imagine him as prime minister? They had, they sorts of little. None of that really worked, but they came out and greeted me with that right away. Did it define me? Not particularly because Canadians sort of had an idea who I was. 

Canadians don’t have much of an idea who Poilievre, he’s been in the house for 20 years. Nobody knows who he is. There would have been an opportunity. At the same time, one of the things that gave me real pause on whether I would come out and start defining him right now is, we were busy governing through a really tough time, and we were fighting for Canadians and for me to come out and pick a fight with Poilievre right out of the gate. He’s the new sort of leader, and I’m suddenly so worried about him that I’m going to put a millions of dollars of ad buy to try and tell Canadians how scary or reckless or dangerous he is. It could have worked, it might have worked. We might, you know, be sitting on couches ten years from now saying, oh, man, I was right, Nate. I wish we’d done.

But at the same time, there was something that didn’t feel true to me, in terms of, now I’m going to pick a fight with him when I should be fighting for Canadians, when I should be trying to tackle inflation. That was a big challenge then, which we successfully tackled. So there’s also part of the sequencing too, right. If if I’m going to, you know, drive someone down in the polls a year or two before an election or even 3 or 4 years before an election, is that the best time to knock them down and lift myself up, or do I want that to happen a little more organically, closer to the actual day when people choose?

Nate: Well, I won’t dwell on it, but in Toronto–Saint Paul’s I would have liked to have seen as an example some kind of paid ad, I would say, that is Pierre Poilievre, you have stood with the convoy in a public health crisis. He doesn’t believe in serious climate action and he wants to gut the public broadcaster. Does he represent Toronto–Saint Paul’s, and some version of that like I do think.

Justin: I like that. I can’t argue against that, particularly knowing the, the result in Toronto–Saint Paul’s, it certainly wasn’t what we wanted. So I would have said, yeah, I wish we did something.

Nate: Yeah, because you want to set it up as a choice, but it was going to require work to set up as a choice, because there’s a lot of work on the other end to set it up as a referendum on just you and your socks. And if that’s the case, then it’s, I don’t even know if we have.

Justin: They’re not even that bad today.

Youth, Long-term Thinking and Politics Today

Nate: But okay, so, I mentioned we’re getting to successes. I got a little ahead of it and that we, at least in my community, I can say there’s certain obvious successes that people would point to, to, not only Covid response, navigating through the first Trump presidency. God, God help us if there’s a second one, looking at social programs in general, Canada Child Benefit, child care, dental care, there’s a lot of hope around pharmacare, although I know we’re at the beginnings of it, but people would point to, I think, navigating through crises and delivering social programs as, I think, these successes in some ways, when you reflect though, like not listening to my constituents, not listening to a survey, when you think back, you know, you’ve done this for now, nine years elected and you’ve been in this for much longer as leader, what do you look back on and say, if I hadn’t been there, this wouldn’t have happened, and I’m so glad I was there to make this happen.

Justin: I think a part of that frame for me is, well, what you did earlier Nate, which is go back to my dad. When we think of what my dad did, it’s the things that still have an impact today. And that, fairly or unfairly, is the frame I tend to put on the things we did. So, you know, a particularly good policy that was right in the right moment, okay. But is it something that is going to make a material difference for my kids, two of whom are teenagers right now, ten years from now, and they’re trying to buy a home? You know, 20 years from now when they’re dealing with, you know, their kids in childcare or whatever it is, these are the things that is the frame for me.

So everything from the first moment when I was welcoming in that very first Syrian family in the airport in Toronto, in an evening in December, where I’m like, okay, decisions we made as a government have changed this family’s life for the better forever. That’s meaningful. Things like the Canada Child Benefit where part of the benefit is, yeah, putting more money in families pockets every month. Hundreds of dollars a month, tax free. That makes a huge difference. But the real impact of that is the adults that will have had that extra money in their pockets, in their families, all the way through childhood, having better outcomes, you know, having had more opportunities as kids, having been lifted out of poverty, being able to contribute even better.

Same thing on childcare. Yes, big difference right now in the workforce, certainly in the lives of moms who can choose. But you think of that, that leveling and that opportunity for early childhood education, that you don’t actually feel the response to until 20 years from now. Same thing on climate change, like the things that we’re doing now. Yeah, as Poilievre loves to point out, didn’t prevent, you know, your, your price on pollution didn’t prevent Jasper from burning. What a failure that is, let’s just stop doing it. I mean, even a ten year old can see through the logic, the logic holes in that. But for me, I know that maybe what we’re doing now means Jasper doesn’t burn again 25 years from now, when everything is so much worse. Maybe we’ve actually managed to, to bend the curve in a way that is going to have a material impact.

Justin Trudeau

So one of my challenges, I know in retail politics, that’s all short term, is I do tend to get wrapped up in the long term, and I think it’s probably a product of having spent so many time with, so much time with young people. I came into teaching.

Nate: Yeah, you were the youth minister, you made yourself the youth minister.

Justin: I was. I made myself the youth minister as prime minister at the same time, but, but I came in as a teacher. I came as an environmental advocate, and I saw that young people were frustrated because we were making long term decisions in government, successive governments that we’re not, we’re not putting them and their future at the center of it. So bringing in long term thinkers, because that’s what young people are, they’re imagining, okay, what’s my life going to be like 40 years from now, not just four years from now?

Harnessing that and keeping that in mind has been, I think, a real guide to how to think about and reflect on our successes. And that maybe, is why I don’t wander around saying, we just did this really big thing, because people won’t really feel the impact of it for another ten years, and maybe that’s part of why I am so incredibly motivated that we’ve got all these things set up to ensure real success for Canada over the coming decades.

The danger of, of squandering that, that lead we have over so many of our competitors around the world, whether it’s on the environment and the green economy, whether it’s on child care and a responsible safety net, whether it’s on all sorts of different things. These are the things that, that, oh my God, we have worked so hard for so many years to get Canada to a position where the coming decades are going to be so good for us, that the idea that a short term, you know, mistake, like electing a Conservative government that wants to bring us back to some past that never actually existed, and give up on climate change and give up on, like, all these things. It just would be so devastating to everything that, that we have been able to build that’s going to make the future better for so many.

Nate: So you talk, I mean, that was a lot of different issues you point to as successes. But I take the overall point that you would say it’s hard to judge in some ways, the things you you care about the most, the things that matter most to you are the longer is the longer term vision for the country, whether it’s helping families but with a longer term view for long, long term outcomes, or whether it’s climate change.

Electoral Reform

Governing wears on governance, as I’ve said. And there have, there have been challenges and, and mistakes made over nine years. You reflect on some of your successes there and, and what you see is what you want to leave and make an impact on the country for your decision making. Well, what do you see as, if I, if I could have that one back, I would do it differently the next time.

Justin: Electoral reform.

Nate: Ah, yeah. Music to my ears. You said that just for me, right?

Justin: I don’t say that just for you. Actually, in one sense, I do say it just for you, because I know in just about any other interview.

Nate: I was going to raise it. 

Justin: Any other interview, the interviewer’s eyes glaze over.

Go, okay, yeah, but give me something real that you regret, right?

I said, no, no, no, this is real for me. I look at where the world is going and where polarization has happened, and where excesses of populism have been able to come in. And the winner take all version of first past the post that we have right now, where you can get elected as the MP for 100% of people in your riding with 30, you know, 32% of the vote if it’s properly divided, if it’s divided amongst other parties, is not just devaluing the votes of so many others, but it’s giving you a false sense of, you know, being the only legitimate voice for your community.

Justin: And I, if I could do things differently, I don’t know exactly how I would have, but I certainly would have done things differently around electoral reform to try and make sure that we are not going to be fighting this next election under first past the post again.

Nate: Yeah, this, easily in nine years, the worst day I had, as a Liberal caucus member, was the day we broke that promise. it looked, I mean, there’s there’s, it looked a little bit cynical to say, oh, we couldn’t we can’t figure out a path. And so we’re going to, you know, just burn it to the ground, never talk about it again. That’s probably not how you would feel about it.

Justin: I made two, two big mistakes on this one. The first one, because of some very strong voices in my caucus who were very, very clear that they wanted to, at least be able to make an argument for proportional representation, which, which I, I feel very, very strongly would be a mistake for Canada. I left the door open to proportional representation instead of ranked ballot, even within my own team.

And that made, made, a whole bunch of people who heard me say “last election as first past the post”, translate that into he’s going to bring in proportional representation, which I was not, which I never was going to, and I wasn’t clear enough on that. We can have the argument about making it.

Nate: But it wasn’t, so it wasn’t last election on our first past the post, it was make every vote count. Make your vote count. 

Justin: No, no, the vote was.

The vote.

Nate: Yeah, I know the language. You know, I know, but make every vote count was in our, was in our platform. Make every vote count was language lifted a little bit from FairVote so that it was like a few different ways that it was, it was like, oh yeah.

Justin: Oh yeah, no, no, no. And that was, and that was deliberately that people wanted to, to make sure that we were bringing in the FairVote people. And I, even though I had been very clear with caucus and at the Liberal convention in 2012 how much I am opposed to the idea of proportional representation, I couldn’t, I it was something that I had to leave a little bit of a door open to, and unfortunately, because of that, it got further. And when people realized that, no, I was not going to let that move forward.

Nate: Yeah, you were never going to go there from the get go.

Justin: I could have been clearer on that because, I mean, we could talk about why, why, why I think proportional representation is, is dangerous for the country, and it doesn’t have to do with as much with sort of, augmenting fringe voices, although that is is one of the arguments I think is interesting. The big one is I am really worried about decoupling members of Parliament in the House from a community of people who both voted for them and didn’t vote for them, that they have to serve, you know?

Nate: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t think anyone, I don’t think any advocate in Canada is arguing for doing away with, anyone who advocates for more proportional systems, advocates for doing away with local representation.

Justin: But, but then you also give people who got elected because they were on a party list, and you have MPs who owe their existence as MPs to a political party, as opposed to specific Canadians. So anyway, but that’s not the point.

Nate: Yeah, but you could do open lists. 

Justin: I said two things on that.

Nate: What was the second one?

Justin: The first one was I wasn’t clear enough that I had real concerns.

Nate: And he turns into a nerd on electoral reform, I guess. 

Justin: Yeah, we knew this was going here because we’re both total nerds about it. Right?

The second one is, me not using my majority to bring in, to bring in the model that I wanted, right, right. Because I could, I believe in ranked ballot. I think that if you give people choices to rank one, two, three, parties will try to pitch to be people’s second or even third choice. and that brings in more cooperation and overlap between political parties in a way that counters anyone who is aggressively trying to polarize.

That’s why I love ranked ballot, I think. I think it’s also an easy switch where people get to write one, two, three, because it doesn’t change the ridings, doesn’t change anything, doesn’t even change the ballots. You just, you know, instead of an X, you put one, two, three or four or five or whatever. 

But the consequences of changing our electoral system are so significant. It’s not like bringing in a budget or a policy that you don’t like, that you can then vote out the next election. When you change the way people are elected, it becomes really hard to change it because by definition, whoever won under that new system likes that system a lot. And, and that idea of needing consensus across, and not having it was why I chose to say, okay, I’m not going to risk an irreversible change just to fulfill a promise I made to, to change that.

So that was it was, it was a difficult day for you. It was a gut wrenching day for me to decide that I couldn’t move forward on something that might hurt Canada in the long term and be irreversible without having a broader level of support in the House.

Nate: Without turning it into a proper debate on electoral reform, I think there are probably a few paths to, having moved forward without burning it to the ground the way that we did. And, and, you know, I was saying we should, we could have had a referendum at the same time, a 2019 election and save the money, and, but, I don’t want to go down, I don’t want to go down that route.

Justin: I, and I take all those. And that’s part of the whole regret. I wish there could have been a different way, that I could have done it.

Immigration and Housing Challenges

Nate: Here’s one, though that is worth reflecting on because, we are right now grappling with getting nonpermanent resident numbers under control. Mark Miller is doing, I think, a good job. He’s doing a good job on immigration. Sean’s doing his utmost on housing, but there, you know, again, the feedback we’ve gotten overwhelmingly even, you know, strong proponents of immigration say, but it’s got to be sustainable. 

And if we want this to work in the long term, we’ve got to make sure that sustainable, in keeping with, making sure we can look after people who get here and do you reflect on, you’ve said before and then, you know, I think you were kicking yourself afterwards when you said, that’s not a primary federal responsibility. It’s true. It’s not. But it’s a political message. Yeah, housing is not. But, you were probably kicking yourself afterwards, because it got politicized in a negative way.

Justin: Well, it’s not something we can do alone.

Nate: We can’t do it alone.

Justin: I mean the municipalities, provinces. 

Nate: If we can’t do it alone, having said that, we’ve obviously leaned in in a significant way in the last, I would say, two plus years. If you were looking back at the nine, do you wish we had gotten ahold of that sooner?

Justin: I mean, we put forward a really ambitious national housing strategy in 2017, that was, you know, $70 billion. And it really did create a number of successes that we’ve seen over the past years. I mean, most of the things that most of the announcements we’ve made now about our latest housing initiatives, we’re doing, in almost completed things that we, we invested in years before.

So we have seen successes. But I, I think that we were on a decent path where, yes, we should have leaned in even harder on provinces and municipalities to push back against NIMBYism sooner. But the pandemic came and changed everything so aggressively in terms of numbers of people, because we came out of the pandemic with a massive labour shortage, and provinces and business communities were screaming at us to bring in more temporary foreign workers because, you know, the economy was, we were bouncing back. People had money in their pockets, and we couldn’t spend it on anything. 

Nate: Yeah, and to allow international students to work more.

Justin: Exactly. All these sorts of things. What that did was it shot up the numbers of international students, of temporary workers, and the global context, context pushed up asylum seekers as well. And that created more pressures and brought even more imbalance to the housing immigration thing.

So if you just look at, can Canada welcome foreign 450 or even 500,000 permanent residents a year? Absolutely. We can. It was the 2 million temporary residents on top of that that post-pandemic were asked, yeah needed that. We couldn’t quite get, get under, under, to the right pace that we needed to that is requiring us to dial things in.

But overall, the most important thing, and the biggest advantage Canada, one of the biggest advantages Canada has over so many of our peers is, Canadians remain positive towards immigration. Even when you talk about building the homes and the services, you know, new Canadians who are working in our healthcare system, new Canadians who are in the construction industry are going to be essential for us to even meet our own needs, let alone the needs of, of, of a growing population.

So getting that right requires a level of clear eyed thoughtfulness that the pandemic certainly threw a wrench into. But as I look back, could we have made the shift, or should we have made the shift to integrate temporary immigration into our levels plan? Because we have that sort of, we talk about permanent residents as a levels plan, and then it’s sort of a little more province driven, business driven for the temporary workers and the students, that we, we should have said no, no, years ago, okay, let’s put it all in a cohesive thing and and take a careful look at housing starts. But we’re doing that now in a very real way.

By-Election Losses and Relationships in Politics

Nate: I have two more questions. One is, you’ve got two by-election, tough by-election losses. And we, you know, there, Karina and others rightly are articulating, you know, we’re listening and and we recognize that there’s a need for change. And you even said, you know, people, if it’s a change election. What change to you, if you’re self-reflecting for our party, for, for cabinet, for the way you govern, for the way you individually approach communicating and delivering for people, or managing your own caucus or managing your colleagues, what change are you reflecting on?

Justin: Well, there’s a lot of a lot of things that were particular to those byelections. There’s lots of factors that maybe.

Nate: Yeah, let’s not get into that, maybe just like if there’s a message of change.

Justin: One of the things, one of the things that I know that I would have liked to have been able to do, earlier is get the candidate in place and working the ground for longer. I mean, you benefited in your riding, right? Which was not a, not an easy riding. 

Nate: Excruciatingly long nomination, and then knocking doors in the snow.

Justin: And then time to fight. Exactly. No, no. But, and I did that too. I had a whole year, to, to be a nominated candidate before I won my first time in Papineau in 2008. And in taking the riding away from a really strong Bloc MP, and it was the work on the ground that did it. 

I, in both of these byelections, we didn’t give Leslie enough time on the ground, we didn’t give Laura enough time on the ground. And that, that’s something that in this, in this age of information overload.

Nate: Yeah, yeah, I agree with you on that, but that’s more tactical. Like I think that and that’s sort of like, same as it ever was. Like, we always need more, more time on the ground. I, you know, you’ll hear Brian May talk for years about early nominations. I agree with all that. But do you think there’s something, larger like, here’s one example. Yeah. and then I’ll leave you with, an opportunity with my last question to, to, do your own kind of rant, but, I, you know, just on a on a interpersonal side, like, I am, I’m nothing if not persistent. And I’ve had no issue with face time and building a relationship. And we don’t always see eye to eye. But I when people are like, oh, when was the last time you said the Prime Minister, and I was like, if I want to bother him, I’ll bother him and he will allow me to bother him. At the same time.

Justin: It’s a nice break in the day, actually, usually.

Nate: No one else says that, but, but, but regardless, not all of my colleagues feel that way, and, you know, I’m not going to get into, you know, the SNC stuff. I’m not going to read Jody’s book, but there is an excerpt in there that, where she didn’t have your cell phone number. I found that kind of astounding.

And I don’t know if Jagmeet Singh had your cell phone number, but if you were, you know, part of me thinks if he did and if you were regularly texting, if he felt like he was more attached and involved and connected, maybe he doesn’t aggressively, you know, I know there’s shameless politics at play there regardless, so maybe he does, but maybe he doesn’t, like because politics, like life.

Justin: Maybe he doesn’t walk away from SACA, you mean? Maybe he doesn’t campaign as hard.

Nate: Maybe not in quite the same way, maybe not in quite the same way, because maybe he does. I’m not saying maybe, but I’m just saying everything depends on relationships. Like, Charlie’s not going to, Charlie Angus isn’t going to screw me the same way as some other NDP members are, because I have a relationship with him. I’m not going to I’m not going to go after Michelle Rempel in the same way, because I have a relationship with her, everything’s relationships. And when you think of, you know, changing things, in some way, does that enter the conversation?

Justin: Well, listen, I mean, the example of Jagmeet is, is an interesting one because we we created SACA together. Yeah, because he just had a baby, and, and we just come through a brutal, brutal, brutal, grueling election, where the NDP went around saying that we’ve done nothing.

Nate: That’s right. I mean, I was there enough. I ran against the NDP

Justin: That we didn’t do anything was a really cynical ploy that undermines any faith that progressives have in what we elected this progressive government.

Nate: It was easy to run against.

Justin: But yeah, it was, but, but no, but it, it, it hurt us. And I said, you know what Jagmeet, we’ve got to get past this. We got it too. And I sat down with him and I actually developed a really good working relationship with him, and we’d have great conversations about a whole bunch of things, and we’d get into policy and we’d get like, and I’d meet with him and talk with him in person, or on the phone, every, every few months for the entire duration of SACA.

Nate: Okay, okay.

Justin: And then when he decided to, to end SACA, he didn’t even call me right, there was like, so. So the relationship obviously wasn’t what I thought it was. Yeah. where I know that if I had chosen to end it, it would have started with a call to him or I would have said, you know what?

Jagmeet, tt’s not going to work. I’m, you know, you make those tough calls. I don’t know why he didn’t reach out to me, because I know. I know what he cares about. I know the things that matter to him. I know he is genuine in wanting to see this country move forward in more progressive ways.

For him to do that that way, it, it bugged me, and it bugged me because I know these things matter to him, but having politics sort of kick in and him having to deal with pressures from his caucus or his base or whatever.

Nate: And the by-election.

Justin: And then in the by-election, like, all those things just sort of emphasize for me, okay. I wouldn’t do that. And I, I still believe and I, there’s no hard feelings on it, we’ll be, we’ll be engaging those and listen, I know that Jagmeet really cares about the environment. I also know he doesn’t know what to do about the environment. I’m happy to say that and argue with that. But I’m like, I know what we can do about the environment. I’m demonstrating how to reduce emissions and grow the economy and put money back in people’s pockets. So come on board. And for him to say, oh, maybe we’re not in favour of carbon pricing. It’s like, oh, come on, really? This is, what, this is why you wanted to step out of SACA? Because you’re going to try and, you know, cozy up with Poilievre, or get away from the difficult conversation about how we continue to fight climate change? I mean, hard things are hard sometimes. and it just sort of disappointed me that he didn’t, he didn’t, you know, pick up the phone and say, okay, this is time.

Mobilizing Youth and the Liberal Party

Nate: All right. So this is my last question, and I hope.

Justin: I hope it’s about all the times you voted against me in the House.

Nate: Not, no, I wasn’t I mean, like, people know that, but what are we going to, you know, I could go down a rabbit hole and talk about, you know, drug policy. We go down a rabbit hole and talk about animal welfare.

Justin: What I would talk about is, is why it matters and why I think it’s the strength of the Liberal Party that people can vote against, the party, on a whole bunch of different things. And so nobody, I guess we don’t ever disagree on this.

Nate: You don’t have to debate it, because I agree. And, but this is a bit of a preface to the last question because, I was a young lawyer and I left that. I left a more lucrative career. I didn’t have kids at the time, but, I love my wife a great deal and spent less time with her. And, and I left all that to make a difference in politics.

I believe it’s the most important way to make a difference. I was able to represent my home community. Nobody knew who I was in the broader political picture, you’re probably anyone looking at Beaches-East York at the time is going like, who is this kid? And, like, well, you know, maybe he wins, maybe he doesn’t. But he’s not really he’s not going to help us win, when you look at the ledger of name recognition and, but you had open nominations and now I know people will complain about different nominations, in my nomination, I wouldn’t be doing this but for that commitment that you made in that leadership of doing things differently and more bottom up democracy, I wouldn’t have run for you if it weren’t for your commitment and your leadership to empowering parliamentarians, which I think is critical. And it’s not just better for our politics. It is, of course, better for our party. So I don’t think we have to, I don’t think we have to debate it.

I think it’s I think it’s, you’ve already said it’s a feature, not a bug. In the course of, when we started this conversation. I do think, though, that I would, I was deeply motivated to, to make a difference and to leave in part because of, you know, this idea of doing things differently and building something, something new.

Nine years in, it’s different, right? It’s, and, I’m still, you know, I might not be the person on the ballot in Beaches-East York, but I’m going to help no matter what. And I’m not walking away from the cause. But you have a lot of people who aren’t like me, who are still in the thick of it, who are on the sidelines.

People who have volunteered in the past and what is your message to people who, who were just so excited heading into 2015? And, you know, not everything’s been, I forget what you said. It’s not everything’s unicorns and whatever in Canada. Well, not everything’s unicorns when everyone you’re when you’re governing either. What do you say to them to motivate those in many cases, Liberal volunteers, what do you want to leave them with? To say, I need you now, and this is why I’m in it, and I need you to be in it to know.

Justin: First of all, to go on the specific examples, then to, to, to get larger, the same things that drove us then to make sure that people were strong voices for their communities in Ottawa as opposed to being, well, I, as we were first running Stephen Harper’s voice in their communities, which was what most conservative MPs now they’re Pierre Poilievre’s voice in their communities, but that’s what it is. 

Saying something like, okay, it’s going to be free votes for members of the Liberal Party, except for things that are explicitly in the platform, because that’s what you get elected on. Things that are confidence, because we’re a team that needs to stay in power, and things that go to the heart of the Charter, because that’s what a Liberal is.

Nate: And that was a thoughtful way of articulating it.

Justin: And we’ve been consistent on that. And that’s still very much our place. And it’s still very much in contrast with the approach that the Conservatives have. All right. And that, that’s still an active choice. Open nominations, same thing. It was really important in 2015 that everyone have open nominations, partially because we were trying to build an entire new team, we were down to 35 seats. And I said, you know what? Each of you, 35 who are still here, you should be able to take on and win any challengers. And we’re going to do it right. Because it was a full reset.

Nate: I thought about this a lot, running for leadership last year. I was, and very much of the same comments I was making in that, on the democratic reform side was consistent, because that’s what motivated me to get involved.

Justin: Yeah. and that’s something I still believe in. I mean, now we don’t need the same level of reset in people. We perhaps need it in policy and a few different things. But, so, we have appointed people from time to time in very rare exceptions. But, the leaning in on open nominations is still a huge priority for me because it’s so great, I agree.

Now, how do you motivate people who’ve been perhaps sitting on the sidelines? First of all, there’s sort of a negative way of. and that, that’s an important driver as well. People look at Pierre Poilievre and they imagine the damage that he’ll do we’ll, we’ll, Canada cannot, you know, go down that road. People who do remember, Stephen Harper do remember all the negatives out there and say, oh, my God, this will be even worse.

So this is a challenge, and that motivates some people. But Liberals don’t get out of bed to fight against something. We tend to fight for things. We want to know what that vision is, what that ambition is, what the excitement is about the future. And that’s really what I’ve been focused on articulating and what we will be articulating over the coming months, over the coming year, hopefully we get to October of next year because my, my son, my eldest, who was, in utero while I was running for the nomination, Sophie was pregnant with him when I was running for the nomination in Papineau, will be old enough to vote in, for the very first time in the next election. So that, for me, is a beautiful bookend. And it’s something I’m.

Nate: Axe the tax.

Justin: He’s not voting that, although he did ask me why he didn’t get the Canada carbon rebate, that, that I said, no, I get that cheque at home. That’s, I, I think you’re a lightweight because some of my friends got it, because. Yeah, well, your friends live on their own, that’s a different thing. So it’s, yeah, it’s a, that’s a good line.

But what is, what is the positive, ambitious vision of this country that we’re putting forward. And the challenge is because everyone says, okay, what’s the new vision? The things we’ve been fighting for for eight years: environment and economy, inclusion, progressive values, defense of individual rights, respect for everyone. Non polarized politics that focus on bringing people together. All those things that we’ve been fighting for are not just still important, they’re more important in this upcoming election than they ever have been.

That’s on the line. Canada has built, actually an edge, an advantage over so many other countries in the world because we’ve been leaning in the right way and the retrograde forces that are pulling back and saying, oh, no, this is, this is why we’re doing badly. This is fighting against climate change is why Canadians can’t afford their groceries, which is a massive oversimplification, and has has been shown by many experts, just wrong, but certainly bodes poorly for the future. 

All those things remain at the heart of what we’re fighting for, how we wrap that up into a compelling, ambitious vision that gets people out into the streets to be a movement like we were in 2015, that is going to be tackle, tackling, Pierre Poilievre with that same enthusiasm that we did at nine years ago. That is the single minded focus that I have over the next few months. As a party leader, even as I continue as Prime Minister, with a single minded focus on actually delivering the things that are going to get Canadians back to a place of positivity and ambition, because that’s what we need, and that’s, that’s the place where Canadians naturally sit in. Right now, they look at me and, and they’re not feeling it as strongly as I think we need them to when the election rolls around. And I’m very much focused on tackling that.

Nate: Well, and the ideas you’re for, I’m glad you emphasize that. So, serious, ambitious plans. And I think that is what, it’s those two ideas that have to be married, that there’s a serious credibility to what we do that oftentimes, sets us apart from the NDP, who might have shared 

So it’s ambition that we need as well on housing, I think protecting the environment, delivering for families with kids, and fixing health care. I think that, that’s the ground that we have to stake out in a serious way, point to progress and articulate what we’re going to deliver next. The one thing I’ll leave you with, you obviously have the drive, you said to me back in New Brunswick, when we had the caucus meeting there, you play to your competition, and I think you were referencing your pool playing, and I don’t know if it’s good or not, but you referenced your pool playing, and you are so keen. 

Justin: I’m very erratic. I can be brilliant.

Nate: And you were keen to rise to the competition because you, you recognize, I think we all recognize it here, Pierre Poilievre is a better communicator than past Conservative leaders that we’ve faced. I think the only thing to reflect on is just a timing question, because, you want your ace to, to have that drive and think that they’ve got, they want they, they have to want the ball in their hand and they’ve got to feel like they’ve got gas in the tank.

You also want a coach who goes, you know, are we in a position to win with this guy on the mound at this moment in time? And this is just a timing question, like I want you to, I want you to fight the fight, have the drive that you’ve got and, and take it to Poilievre. Yeah, and turn things around.

I think you have, you’re capable of doing that. And I want you to give it your go. I do think you have to also, both you and your team be looking at and going, it’s a timing question too, if we throw everything at the wall and it’s not working, then we also have to consider, you know, what’s in the best interests of the country and at that moment in time.

And so I think you just have to carry both of those ideas in your mind. You have to have the drive. You can’t ever turn that off. But you also have to say, you know, if, if Canadians are tuning me out at some point, then I got to recognize that too. And that’s not a today conversation that’s, you know, continue to have that, that reflection over the coming months. But I really appreciate it, I really appreciate you joining me.

Justin: You know, always great to see you. Always great to chat with you.

Nate: Yeah. It’s great. I’m glad you joined, I’m glad we made this happen. 

Outro

Nate: Thanks for joining me on this episode of Uncommons. I really appreciate the Prime Minister’s time, of course, he could be doing lots of other things, and we don’t have quite the same audience as Colbert, although we’re growing, thanks to you.

The second thing we’re doing, we’ve got future episodes coming up with Mark Carney, we’re scheduling Chrystia Freeland, if you have suggestions for future guests or topics, you can always reach us at [email protected] and otherwise, until next time.

—

Keywords: Justin Trudeau, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Canadian politics, Liberal Party, leadership, governance, climate change, public service, elections, democracy, governance, climate change, electoral reform, immigration, housing, by-elections, Liberal Party, political relationships, leadership, Canada

On this podcast, Nate is joined by Lisa Raitt, former cabinet minister, CPC deputy leader and Conservative MP for Milton from 2008 to 2019.

On this episode Lisa Raitt joins Nate on the podcast to discuss the complexities of political life, the challenges of balancing political and personal life, and the importance of fostering collaboration across party lines. They reflect upon the challenges that Canada faces, including changes in Economic growth and productivity, the role of corporations within this change, and how housing affordability impacts Canadians.

Lisa’s background includes service as a Member of Parliament for eleven years, working in the ministries of natural resources, labour, and transport. Lisa also shadowed former finance minister Bill Morneau before serving as the deputy leader of the Federal Conservatives under Andrew Scheer.

She now works for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) as the Vice-Chair and Managing Director of Global Investment Banking.

Lisa and Nate explore the pressures that are placed upon politicians in their day to day lives and the increasing importance of co-operation across Canadian politics. 

A rundown of what to expect this session, a look at the results of our summer survey, and a review of our regular weekly video updates.

Parliament is back and I’m looking forward to getting as much done as I can in this final year. And I’m still hopeful there’ll be runway until at least the spring, even without the stability of the supply deal.

Back in June, my team and I started doing weekly video round-ups – we call it Uncommons Weekly – and we’re back at it this fall. The idea is to complement the more policy-focused podcast with some commentary on the week that was in Parliament.

This past week, it was nuclear winter vs the carbon rebate, Poilievre vs Singh, and election speculation vs reality.

You can watch all past Uncommons Weekly episodes here. We’re also posting clips individually by topic on social media, including my thoughts on defence spending, immigration reform, the tough by-election loss in Toronto St. Paul’s, and how we should approach this parliamentary session.

If there’s a topic or idea you’d like me to touch on in these weekly rants, email me at [email protected]. And remember to subscribe.

Subscribe here for Uncommons Weekly updates

Summer review

For the first time in over a decade, I wasn’t campaigning over the summer. It meant I had the chance to coach Mack’s baseball team in East York and to spend more time with my family and also in our constituency office.

Of course, I was still present at events, from bigger ones like the Canada Day and Labour Day parades and the Beaches Jazz Fest, to smaller community-minded ones like the send-off for the Balmy Beach Canoe Olympic paddlers and the Pegasus picnic (this weekend we also celebrated 30 years of Pegasus serving our community, can’t say enough about the good work they do here).

Survey letter and common themes

And we did still knock on doors across our entire riding, with a survey letter asking for feedback on what’s gone well / poorly, thoughts on the direction of the government today, and what issues I should be an advocate for in this final year. We’ve done a number of survey letters over the years, and they do help to inform my advocacy.

Based on the responses, there are certainly some common themes.

Overwhelmingly, the government is seen to have successfully managed the first Trump presidency and NAFTA, responded forcefully to the pandemic, and delivered important social programs, from family benefits and child care, to dental care.

Many pointed to frustration with unsustainable immigration in the international student program (which I’ve written about before) and the temporary foreign worker program (you can watch my thoughts on that here). Housing unaffordability was also understandably a regular frustration as well.

In terms of priorities for the year, common themes included affordable housing and tackling homelessness, fixing healthcare (with a focus on mental health), support for Toronto (especially transit), online harms, meeting our NATO obligations, international peace (most wrote about Gaza), and continued action to address climate change and advance reconciliation.

The need for a strong economic agenda came up in a number of ways, including fiscal sustainability, revamped competition policy, stronger wage growth, and action to tackle wealth inequality.

If you missed filling out the survey over the summer, you can still add your ideas here.

Representing Canada on the world stage

In early August, I joined Don Davies and Charlie Angus (both NDP MPs) to represent Canada at a PanAmerican Congress hosted in Colombia, with representation from the US, Mexico, Brazil and a number of other countries across South America. The conversation focused on how progressive politics can and should defend democracy, advance serious climate action, and work towards international peace.

My presentation on defending democracy focused on three pillars: 1) the basics (anti-corruption measures, independence of institutions, campaign finance reform etc.), 2) the information eco-system (strong civic media and free speech protections, action to respond to foreign interference and disinformation on social media platforms etc.) and 3) delivering for people (if we can’t make it work for people, why would we expect people to defend it?).

Earlier this month, I also represented Canada at an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in Armenia, together with about 150 MPs from 60 countries.

I stressed the importance of quality public education, spoke to Canada’s successful graduation rates, and recognized our history of discrimination against First Nations and the need to improve education opportunities for Indigenous communities.

I also spoke to rising youth employment in Canada, and the need to prioritize outcomes over announcements when we look at our employment and skills strategy. It presented an interesting opportunity for others to share practices in their home countries to support youth employment (and offered some ideas to take back with me).

Uncommons podcast and local events

The podcast took a bit of a hiatus over the summer, apart from this conversation with Matthew Mendelsohn focused on wealth inequality, inclusive growth, and the ability of this government (and governments in general) to tackle big challenges.

It’s taken forever to schedule the Prime Minister, but it looks like we may have him as a guest sooner than later now. And you can also expect to hear conversations in the coming weeks with former MP Lisa Raitt, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, and new economic advisor to the Liberal Party, Mark Carney.

As always, if you have suggestions for guests or topics, send them my way at [email protected].

Locally, we’ll likely host an in-person podcast recording (or two) this fall. And we’re working on a session for those who are interested in green retrofits, as there’s still a $40,000 interest-free federal loan available for home owners to reduce emissions.

We’re open to other ideas for hosting events this fall and spring, so be in touch.

What comes next?

Many people have asked me what comes next. And I really don’t know, except that I’m going to make the most of the time that I have left in Parliament.

For example, I’m working on a submission for the Fall Economic Statement (with a heavy emphasis on community housing), my pandemic prevention/preparedness bill will soon be debated in the Senate, and I’ll likely take the lead on some of the work to address foreign interference at the public safety committee.

With an election coming within the year, my advocacy will be focused on advancing ideas both in this parliament and into the platform. And, of course, I’ll continue to push the government on the issues that matter at the same time as I call out the conservative opposition for its many falsehoods.

All of that’s to say, we’re still here to help. And I will do my best to keep you updated over the course of this parliamentary session.

Nate

A look back at the first week back in the house

Parliament is back in session and it’s nuclear winter vs the carbon rebate, Poilievre vs Singh, and election speculation vs reality. Hard to believe it’s only been one week.

As always, send questions and topics you want us to cover at [email protected] and we’ll see you next week.

—

Welcome to Uncommons Weekly. Parliament is back in session, and winter is coming.

Nuclear winter that is.

In a bizarre speech to start the parliamentary session, Poilievre told his caucus that the price on pollution will cause mass hunger, malnutrition, and shut down our entire economy.

Yes, it sounds like I’m making that up. I know it sounds like that as I say the words out loud. 

But it’s true. See for yourself.

That’s the leader of the official opposition and possibly/likely Canada’s next prime minister

Now, I know you’re not a sucker. So do me a favour.

The federal price and rebate system applies in most of Canada, everywhere that isn’t BC, Quebec and the Northwest Territories.

If you live in a province or territory where it applies, go log in to your bank account, and look at your deposit for July 15: the line item is the Canada Carbon Rebate. Go look. I received $280. $140 for me, $70 for my spouse, and $35 per kid. 

The next payment is October 15, then January, then April.

The payment is quarterly. Yes, that is times 4. So over $1,000 for a family of four in Ontario.

There’s a 20% increase in the base amount for people in rural areas. And the base amount is even higher in other provinces – because the revenue from the price stays within each province – so the money collected in Alberta doesn’t get redistributed to Ontario, it stays in Alberta, rebated to Albertan families.

 A rural family of four in Alberta, by the way, will receive over $2,100  in the Canada Carbon Rebate this year. 

Now, some people ask: How does it even help if you just pay the money back. 

Well you don’t just get paid back the amount that you pollute. That system wouldn’t work.

No, you get the same rebate no matter what you do, to make it fair. And you pay more or less depending on how much you pollute, meaning businesses and consumers look for ways to pollute less. 

The fact is that most people will be a little better off on a direct cash transfer basis after these 4 rebates. The poorest Canadians will be much better off.

So no, Jagmeet, the price doesn’t put the burden on the backs of working people. 

And no, Skippy, people aren’t sent to the food bank because of a price/rebate system that offers hundreds or thousands of dollars back in people’s pockets at the end of the day. The idea that 25% of kids are going hungry and 2 million people are at the food bank because of the price on pollution is on the same plane of reality as blaming immigrants for eating pets. 

Of course, some people, the people who spend the most on fossil fuels and pollute the most as a result (you know, the people with big cars, big houses), will be a little worse off. But we’re all better off with serious climate action in the long run, given the costs of extreme weather and the costs of our insurance premiums.

If you prefer more costly subsidies or regulations to reduce emissions, then have at it. If you just don’t care about climate change, so be it. If you live in BC, and you want Eby to send the money back in rebates the way the feds do, vote accordingly.

But don’t tell me nuclear winter is coming because of a price/rebate system that ensures the poorest Canadians are better off. 

I much preferred the opposition leader who talked about housing unaffordability and railed against gatekeepers, even if he ignored that those gatekeepers are mostly provincial conservatives. 

Mortgage payments have jumped for millions of people, rent payments are running away from incomes too. And while inflation is now thankfully down to 2% – and while the Bank of Canada is on pace to keep cutting rates throughout the year after 3 rate cuts already so far, the record high inflation of the last few years is still baked into grocery store shelves.

And you want to tell me that nuclear winter is coming because of a price/rebate system that pays me and my family over $1,000 a year, with those rebates rising each year alongside the price on pollution. Okay, and the Jays are going to play in October too. Can’t wait. 

I’m happy to have a carbon tax election if it means this is the nonsense we’re up against.

Of course we’re not going to have an election any time soon. With parliament back, the conservatives immediately tried to jam the Bloc and NDP with a vote of non-confidence in the government.

And it was met rightly with a shrug. 

As I said to the media on my way into caucus, if there’s an issue before the House that seriously divides the NDP, Bloc, and Liberals in a serious way, then we might expect an election. But why in the world would the NDP and Bloc give in to Poilievre’s grandstanding?

And grandstanding is generous. Because it’s actually much nastier than that. 

While the Bloc was the first to dismiss Poilievre’s gimmicky non-confidence vote, Poilievre instead went after the NDP’s Singh, contrary to all rules in the House. 

*Video insert*

“He is a fake, a phony and a fraud. How can anyone ever believe what this sell-out NDP leader says in the future?”

*End of insert*

In response, Singh left his seat in the House, apparently saying “I’m right here bro” 

And I’ve got to be honest, it felt a lot like when Singh confronted the protesters earlier in the week, telling the cowardly hecklers to “say it to my face.”

You could almost imagine Singh getting up in Poilievre’s face to confront him, and Pierre weakly telling him “I don’t know who called you a fraud, it must have been the person behind me.” And you look behind Pierre to see Michael Cooper who looks around at his Conservative colleagues and says  “I just got here, I’ve never met these people, they just wanted a picture with me.”

Now, I want to leave you with three things this week.

First, and unfortunately, we can expect much more of these theatrics over the course of the fall session. Poilievre has shown us there’s little he won’t do or say, however nasty, in order to get ahead. And so it begins.

The government should stay above the fray where it can. Let Poilievre show his nasty side, while we focus on delivering. 

Moving forward with additional reforms to ensure immigration is sustainable.

Contributing to the global effort to address Mpox.

Expanding dental care before Conservatives have a chance to cut a program that has helped hundreds of thousands of people.

Responding to a court striking down Harper’s unconstitutional laws.

Changing mortgage rules to address access to housing. And while these recent changes will help first-time home buyers enter the market, let’s stop overselling fairly marginal changes as the boldest in decades. I hope we see a more serious focus on community housing supply in the coming months. It’s not acceptable for Canada to spend half of the OECD average on social housing, especially in the face of an obvious affordability crisis. 

And with Anand, Leblanc, Freeland, and Carney all now focused on productivity – I have no issue with reducing barriers to internal trade and expanding regulatory sandboxes. But let’s confront the real challenge: we are a country of oligopolies, from airlines, to banks, to grocery stores, to telecoms. We need a consumer rights and protection agenda, and to demand more competition.

Second, with another by-election loss, it’s time for a serious overhaul. Everything I’ve said in the past stands. The need for competence, contrast, a clear agenda and narrative. We also need fresh faces. It’s time for a cabinet shuffle – more Millers and Frasers are just waiting on the bench. It’s September – time to show the fans who’s going to be in the big leagues next year. 

Third, Terry Fox is a Canadian hero. The man dipped his artificial leg in the Atlantic Ocean on April 12 1980, and proceeded to run over 5,000 kilometres before cancer cut his run short on September 1. He inspired so many – helped to raise incredible sums of money in the process – to fight an awful disease.

Convoy supporters may never have understood that many of us were outraged at the way the Terry Fox memorial was disrespected.

And now we see convoy adjacent protesters disrupt a ceremony commemorating Terry Fox at the new location of the Fox monument on Sparks Street in Ottawa.

So let me just say, if you’re going to disrespect Terry Fox, you don’t get to call yourself a god damn patriot.

A look back at this week’s drama and a look ahead to the parliamentary session

A look back at the drama of the last week and a look ahead at what we will hopefully see in this fall parliamentary session, from immigration reform to action on healthcare and housing.

We’re looking to keep doing these weekly video updates throughout the fall, so if you have questions you’d like answered or issues you’d like addressed, reply in the comments or send me an email at [email protected]

—

Welcome to Uncommons Weekly. 

Parliament is set to resume shortly and Jagmeet Singh made sure to bring some drama to our return.

Earlier this week, he announced that he’s ripping up the supply and confidence agreement.

The video announcement accused Liberals of being weak, selfish, and beholden to corporate greed. And bizarrely, tried to cast the NDP as the alternative to Poilievre’s cuts.

For all of the silly theatrics, I still think the best approach is to embrace cooperation in our politics if it means getting things done that improve people’s lives.

Since the supply deal was struck, we’ve seen continued progress on climate action and reconciliation, a new disability benefit, a new dental care program, a new and serious federal housing plan, the beginnings of pharmacare, and more. 

Yes, the progress has been imperfect. And yes, there are many reasons to criticize different decisions.

But I didn’t see any substantive criticism to warrant ripping up the supply deal.

I also didn’t see Singh use his announcement to advance anything new. If I’d been in his position, I’d have put a few big ideas on the table this fall (electoral reform, restoring the per-vote subsidy) and made a continued deal conditional on seeing them through. Seems like a real missed opportunity.

Of course, cooperation can come in many forms. It can mean a formal supply deal or a less stable case-by-case negotiation. Hopefully we see a continued but different kind of cooperation on shared priorities this fall. 

Polievre supporters will, no doubt, keep demanding an election to kill effective carbon pricing, dental care, and the CBC. But most people just want the government to focus on governing – to address the serious issues that affect them personally and the challenges we face as a country – and they get tired pretty quick of the Ottawa-bubble posturing.

Which brings me to the Liberal government’s approach this fall, and everything depends on competence. Put aside the “historic” announcements, drop the ribbon cutting, and focus on the big challenges.

We need serious immigration reform, for example. Immigration remains essential to the well-being of our economy and to our humanitarian responsibilities. And it needs to be sustainable. Temporary immigration has grown unsustainably, especially since the pandemic. 

International student numbers have exploded – and you’ll often hear the blame pinned on private colleges. But that’s only a partial telling. It starts with provincial austerity in post-secondary spending, fueled further by provinces like Ontario actively promoting public college-private partnerships, while the feds welcomed the new labour force even if valued education was an afterthought. 

The provinces bear most of the blame, especially here in Ontario, but the feds could also have acted more quickly. Which we are now doing, with Minister Miller capping student visas, no longer granting post-grad work permits to international students who complete public college degrees outsourced to private colleges, and rolling back the number of hours international students can work in a given week.

Some problems are no one’s fault and we shouldn’t pretend that all challenges are easy to solve – asylum seekers have grown from 10,000 people to almost 150,000 people per year in the last decade, for example. We need action there too, and we should also ensure people are treated with dignity as we act. Faster claims processing is required across the board – and there’s been some funding on this front – and faster deportations are necessary in cases where people have illegitimately claimed asylum.

We also need to ensure people who are here are adequately housed, and where people have been here for more than 5 years and they are contributing to their communities in a positive way, we are all better off if they receive permanent status, insteading of working under the table, and living too often on the margins.

Other problems are the feds fault entirely. Now, including the expansion of the temporary foreign work program, which creates long-standing conditions for exploitation and has served to drive down low-income wages and upend entry level jobs for young Canadians.

As professor Skuterud has asked: “We expect workers to compete for scarce jobs when labour markets are slack. Why don’t we expect businesses to compete for scarce workers when markets are tight?”

And yes, then Minister Hajdu made some useful changes more than 5 years ago to step up monitoring, increase on-site inspection, and penalize abusive employers. 

But when a UN special rapporteur calls the program a breeding ground for modern slavery, and when government officers are told to skip fraud prevention steps when vetting applications, a serious overhaul is long overdue.

The government has rightly reversed its 2022 deregulation of the program – ensuring a firm is capped at using up to 10% of its workforce with TFWs and that firms in urban areas can’t apply if the local unemployment rate is above 6%. Not nothing.

In the words of Mike Moffatt: these changes are a good first step but do not go nearly far enough in addressing the harms caused by the program. He calls for open work permits, greater worker protections, and a real overhaul.

Or we could take these comments seriously: “The temporary foreign worker program needs to be scaled back dramatically over time, and refocused on its original purpose: to fill jobs on a limited basis when no Canadian workers can be found. I believe it is wrong for Canada to follow the path of countries who exploit large numbers of guest workers, who have no realistic prospect of citizenship. It is bad for our economy in that it depresses wages for all Canadians, but it’s even worse for our country. It puts pressure on our commitment to diversity, and creates more opportunities for division.” That’s from an op-ed written by none other than Justin Trudeau,  back in 2014.

All of that’s to say, we need the government to remain seized with serious reforms to ensure sustainable immigration, and showing a little humility is important too. 

And some problems aren’t the federal government’s primary responsibility, but the problems have become so acute that we need more serious federal leadership. 

Too many people don’t have access to a family doctor or health team. I heard it all the time last year in my provincial travels, and it costs us all in the long run. If primary care is the door to our healthcare system, we have closed that door for millions of Canadians.

And encampments, homelessness, and related mental health and addiction challenges come to mind too. I was at a Queen’s baseball alumni tournament over the labour day weekend, where I played very badly, and my old coach raised the issue with me in a friendly way. It’s visible to everyone. 

And some politicians will weaponize that to play on people’s fears. To make people struggling with homelessness and addictions into the other. To cancel health services and cost lives. 

And some politicians will say the right things, but fail to appreciate that the scale of our public health efforts is woefully insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge in our communities.

We need a more ambitious and comprehensive public health approach that expands treatment and harm reduction, but that also takes the social determinants of health seriously, including most importantly – income, housing, and opportunity.

Or, we could just spend hundreds of millions of dollars and expand alcohol access instead. I don’t know what I was thinking, actually, that would be way more popular.

I was asked by Metro Morning’s David Common recently what my message will be for caucus this fall. I can tell you what I said in Sudbury, at that swanky retreat at the Holiday Inn:

First, it’s all about competence in governing this fall. As I’ve ranted at length about already here.

Second, we need to educate Canadians about who Pierre Poilievre is and what he has stood for over a 20 year career in Parliament. Erin O’Toole may not have been conservative enough for their base, but Poilievre’s reform party brand of politics will be a harder sell for people when they get to know him as many of us have in parliament. And with a new campaign director, I expect that to happen in earnest.

Third and finally, with a more positive message, if Trudeau is going to be our guy in the next race, he needs to tell Canadians why he’s in it. What does he want to accomplish and how does he hope to improve people’s lives with another term. When his dad ran a final time, he identified five priorities.

Trudeau should tell us his.

He’s a dad, and has credibly delivered for kids. The Canada Child Benefit has lifted hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty, and national child care has put thousands of dollars into the pockets of young families. Next up: a national school healthy food program to help kids succeed.

Trudeau cares, and has credibly expanded healthcare for millions. The dental care program is an early success and the beginnings of pharmcare will hopefully be in place soon. Next up: a family health team for everyone.

Or you could axe serious carbon action and kill the CBC. The choice is yours.

A real missed opportunity for the NDP to advance new ideas and for Jagmeet Singh to show substance in his leadership.

Despite the silly theatrics on display yesterday, I still think the best approach is to embrace cooperation in our politics if it means getting things done that improve people’s lives.

Since the supply deal was struck, we’ve seen continued progress on climate action and reconciliation, a new disability benefit, a new dental care program, a new and serious federal housing plan, the beginnings of pharmacare, and more (don’t take my word for it, though, read this rundown of what got done).

Yes, the progress has been imperfect. And yes, there are many reasons to criticize different decisions.

But I didn’t see any substantive criticism from Singh to warrant “ripping up” the supply deal.

I also didn’t see Singh use his announcement to advance anything new. If I’d been in his position, I’d have put a few big ideas on the table this fall and made a continued deal conditional on seeing them through. Seems like a real missed opportunity.

Of course, cooperation can come in many forms. It can mean a formal supply deal or a less stable case-by-case negotiation. Hopefully we see a continued but different kind of cooperation on shared priorities this fall.

Poilievre supporters will, no doubt, keep demanding an election to kill effective carbon pricing, dental care, and the CBC. But most people just want the government to focus on governing, and get tired pretty quick of the Ottawa-bubble posturing.

I also spoke to David Common/Metro Morning (not yet posted) and to Greg Brady/AM640 this morning about what this means for our politics going forward, and we’ll touch on this in our next Uncommons Weekly episode.