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"What's the Big Idea" is a new podcast featuring University of Manitoba President and Vice-Chancellor Michael Benarroch in conversation with some of today's big thinkers. Together, they’ll unpack “the big idea” their work explores. A series featuring an exciting and diverse array of voices from the UM community contributing to the cultural, social, and economic well-being of the people of Manitoba, Canada, and the world.
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Welcome to What's the Big Idea, the University of Manitoba's award-winning podcast. I'm your host, Michael Benrash, and together we explore ideas that shape our lives, communities, and futures. This episode tackles one of the biggest questions on our minds right now, how the results of the US election could impact Canada and the world. America has elected Donald Trump for a second term, a president.
who said he's committed to drill baby drill, border walls, and beautiful tariffs. What will a shift toward isolationist policies mean for trade? How might Canada respond on issues from energy policy to border security? Will we see defunding of research? And how will Trump approach diplomacy and global conflicts? The implications are massive. Our guest, Amanda Lange, is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author,
and proud alum. She has spent her career dissecting the forces that drive North American economies and is a sought after voice on the intersection of business, policy and social change. We sat down with a live audience earlier this month to unpack what Canadians should expect as our closest neighbor undergoes this significant political shift.
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Okay, I made it. Hello everybody, it's great to see so many people here. Can't hear me? Microphone on? There you go, okay. I'm getting this, one step at a time. So I'm Michael Benarosh, President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Manitoba, and it's really a great pleasure to welcome everybody here for tonight's conversation with renowned journalist, author and alum, Amanda Lang.
I'd like to remind everybody that we will be recording this. It's part of my podcast series, What's the Big Idea? So if you could please make sure that your phones are on silent, that would be greatly appreciated. The program tonight's gonna take about 40 minutes of discussion with our featured guest, after which we'll take questions from the audience.
It's been a long time since we have welcomed Amanda back to this campus. And so, on behalf of the U of I'm honored to welcome her and all of you to our stunning, I think you'll agree, De Soquel Concert Hall.
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which is located on Treaty One land of the Anishinaabeg, Anishinaabeg, Dakota Oyate, and the national homeland of the Red River Métis. On a personal level, I find the land acknowledgement grounds me and reminds me of the commitments to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. And it lets me reflect back and thank our elders and knowledge keepers and teachers both on and off campus.
And the Honorable Murray Sinclair, who I had opportunities to speak to.
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really help educate me and this community on how we can be in the right relationships with the people across Turtle Island. This evening we're discussing our relationship with our closest neighbor, the United States, and the impact of a second Trump administration.
Decisions made south of the border can have far-reaching implications for Canada, impacting everything from trade to economic policy to climate action to research funding to cross-border collaborations. President Trump has said that he's committed to drill, baby drill, quote, border walls, mass deportations and beautiful tariffs.
So I'm thankful that today we have the brilliant Amanda Lang here to help us consider what this means for our country. And in her line of work,
You should know, I never get to ask journalist questions. They're always asking me questions. you'll, excuse me if I relish this a bit. So I'm excited to be interviewing one of the most well-known and celebrated political financial reporters in that country. But I don't know if she hears this, but I'm a little bit leery because I'm interviewing somebody who won the Gemini Award for best interviewer. Something I'll never win.
So I'll do my best and try to keep the conversation going and keep us engaged today. So just a little bit by way of introduction, Amanda Lang is an award-winning business journalist with over 25 years of experience covering North America's top business stories.
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Currently she hosts Taking Stock, a national news program on CTV and serves as a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Many of you will recognize Amanda from her time as anchor of Bloomberg North and as a senior business correspondent for CBC's The National. She also hosted The Exchange with Amanda Lange on CBC News Network and the Lang and O'Leary.
exchange with Kevin O'Leary before the pair co-hosted Squeeze Play on BNN for six years. She's the author of two best-selling books, The Power of Why, which explores the link between curiosity and success, while The Beauty of Discomfort provides insights for navigating difficult change. And before she became a celebrated journalist and author,
Amanda studied architecture, guess where? Right here on our campus. She truly is a bison at the center of it all. Please join me in welcoming our esteemed alum, Amanda Lang, to the stage.
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Thank you so much.
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That was very kind. Thank you and welcome. It's really great to have you here again. It's a pleasure to sit down with you this evening. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. And let's get right into it. So Republicans won the Senate, they won the House, and they won the popular vote by a pretty healthy margin.
So this wasn't the close race that many of us expected. Were you surprised by this? I was surprised. think like a lot of people, I wasn't all convinced of the outcome falling one way or the other, but I anticipated that there would be uncertainty. That we talked about not knowing the results for days. We worried about conflict in the very real possibility that one side or the other would reject the outcome.
And it wasn't really that far into election night when we knew that there was going to be a certain result and it would happen that night. And that surprised me in a good way. That actually is what should happen in a democracy. And so there was some peace in that, that we knew what was going to happen and it wasn't going to happen with any kind of conflict that would last beyond that. It was a good thing.
I mean, we were talking backstage, you told me that in some ways you felt a calm happen. I did. I mean, you know, there's a, it's funny when you're covering an election and I was covering it for CTV, it's a real horse race feeling. So you're kind of in the moment and it's, you know, you're watching and if you're watching CNN, you're watching like the counties and you know, who did what in 2020 and it all gets very.
And there was this moment where you realize this isn't going to be close. We see a lot of close elections these days. It's true in this country as well, where sometimes the majority of the popular vote doesn't elect your government. It's just a funny world we live in. And the US, because of that electoral college, that relic of theirs, it's often true that the majority vote does not elect the president. And so this time when not only was there going to be a clear majority, a clear winner in the electoral college, but that the majority of Americans were
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voting for that. got, there was a weird feeling of Zen. And again, it was partly because we'd been so braced for conflict, literal conflict, and that's so terrible, that I, sort of think this is democracy. If people want something, then that is the outcome that should happen. That's, you know, you don't have to like it one way or the other, but you can certainly applaud the fact that most Americans wanted an outcome, and that's what's going to happen.
And so, you know, with elections comes pretty high expectations. Trump has set kind of an America first approach in which he's saying he will bring the US back to the golden age. Clearly, many people believed him when he says he'll improve the economy and make their lives better. And I think a lot of this election was about how people were feeling about their lives. So...
So, and we saw, I mean, not just a majority of Americans, but a lot of Canadians. That message was resonating with Canadians. And so can you speak a little bit about Trump's record on the economy? I he did serve four years in the Oval Office. Do you see evidence that this golden age will return? Yeah, and it's interesting because before this election, I was just digging into, this is a very journalistic thing to do, so forgive me, but whether,
economies do better under Democrats or Republicans and whether markets do better. And the truth is there is a clear answer and it might surprise you and it's that Democrats are by far the better stewards of the US economy and are actually materially better for the market by about 2%. And that's over the course of 100 years. And that don't trust me, this comes from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
make this up. But then I also looked at was Trump a good president for the economy? And he was by almost every measure that you can look at, including the creation of jobs, the unemployment rate, which was, of course, at an all time low. The GDP was kind of meh, a two and a half percent for them, but not bad, up until the point when the global pandemic marred his record somewhat. He was doing okay. The thing I think that that obscures
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is the extent to which his policies have short-term benefit and really long-term pain. And some of the trade and protectionism that he introduced but that Biden continued, he set a new tone for all of us, have longer-term consequences that are still playing out.
And the thing that I find interesting about this is globalization, you can argue, was a little bit about picking one job over another. It's not that there are no jobs lost. There are jobs lost. We just decided that it was worth it because the payoff was greater. In the Trump world ethos, the job he's picking is a different one. And there will be jobs lost.
Economists are universally in agreement that it's overall, as you know, worse for the economy and therefore for the aggregate person and all of the jobs, but it takes a while to shake out. So in the short term, yeah, we're going to an increase in, and Biden's presidency saw an increase in manufacturing jobs that we haven't seen in decades. And that's probably protectionism at work. Well, and one of those was microchips. They really have focused on microchips. The chips for America,
America Act is a kind of, it's an amazing thing. I don't, mean, if you watch what's happening to Intel, Intel is one of the primary beneficiaries of this, what's now amounting to billions of dollars of spending to try to build computer chips in America. And Intel's in real trouble. Intel, was once, you know, the great beacon of the chip industry, is in danger of
I don't want to say it's falling apart, but...
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You could see a situation where somebody acquires Intel. You could see a situation where it's not growing anymore. And that's kind of shocking. But that's the horse they're riding on. Well, the economists, to me, would say, you know, forcing something on the market, that the market's moving against that, Other countries have had such a big time to lead in this, they're so much more efficient. It really makes it difficult. so this leads me, I mean, and you spoke about tariffs and the impact. So, you know, Trump has mentioned Canada a few times.
during the campaign. So let's talk about his love of tariffs. Now I'm a trade economist so this I still have trouble getting my head around this one but he hasn't been subtle in saying that he'll impose a 10 % minimum tariff on all imported goods. As I said calling tariffs the most beautiful word in the dictionary. You know we economists try to expunge tariff from our textbooks but do you expect he'll follow through on
this? I expect there will be some tariffs of some kind. one of the questions that I guess we can stay optimistic about is that Canada will be, there'll be exceptions made because of our trade agreement, because of our special relationship, but then we remember that he slapped our very arbitrary tariffs on us in his last presidency on steel and aluminum. They were shocking, they were terrible, they were terrible for his own key sectors and so anything's possible.
This is not somebody who is predictable. And as everybody now likes to talk about, they talk about how Trump is very transactional. Everything's a negotiation. And so it could be that he says 10 % because he has something in mind. It could be it's just a way to start the negotiation around our North American free trade agreement, which we're going to have to negotiate again in a year and a half.
that he could do it, I guess is possible, but I think, let's agree, it's unlikely that he would impose across the board 10 % tariffs, because it would close down his economy. It would close down the auto sector almost immediately, unless you carved it out. He seems to be very focused on trade deficits, and he looks at them at a country level, as opposed to, and we have a trade surplus with the United States. from that logic, it would make us a target. So it's interesting,
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his obsession with trade deficits, which is, you know, you're an economist, you know, that's just a description. It's really an accounting description. It's not a state of health. It doesn't mean you're doing well or you're doing, because you have to balance it against your current account. There's a whole bunch of reasons why the trade deficit, but to be fair, it's not just Trump who focuses on that. Robert Lighthizer, who is the architect of Donald Trump's trade view and therefore of Biden.
because again, Biden didn't really back off much of what Donald Trump put in place. Lighthizer wrote a book, and it's worth reading if you haven't read it, and it really, he's the true believer, and he also kind of focuses not so much on trade deficits, but on jobs. This notion that if your trade agreements aren't creating jobs in your country, then it's a failure. And there's something interesting in that, and something not wrong. I mean, it's an interesting kind of...
We should all sit in that for a minute because I don't know about you, but we, think you and I are of the globalization era. We were brought up to think more is better and more free trade must be better and a more globalized world is better. And the question we can now ask is, are there limits to that? Should we be more focused on industrial policy? Should we be more protectionist? These are not things we were brought up, this was not kind of the economics that we were raised with, but maybe it's time to think about these.
things. And it may be that it's, you we're moving a bit off Trump, but it may be that, you know, trade went too far, openness went too far, and there, you know, there is an argument for national interests. So we saw it with vaccines, right? There's an argument that there's some things we should manufacture at home. I think Trump's taken that to the extreme, though. Absolutely. And of course, the problem with, if we kind of play this out, the problem with everybody focusing on their own national interests is then it just becomes nobody's thinking about anybody else's
We never have comparative advantage, never have efficiencies, we're all just wanting to protect our own industries and we're back in the 17th century. globalization can go too far but it's probably the right direction.
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Let's switch focus a little on Trump. So he's promised to use law enforcement to find and deport illegal immigrants also. And there's speculation that this could lead to a surge of asylum seekers trying to enter Canada. But we also heard today they have concerns about, you know...
crossing the border from Canada. And in the first term, we actually did see an increase in asylum seekers coming to Canada. How prepared do you think Canada is for that potential influx? And what could it mean also for our immigration policies if we're trying to also stem the flow into the United States, so kind of in both directions? So two kind of separate tracks there. The concern, and it was expressed again today, I want to say, or yesterday,
that the Canadian border is a source of alarm, a security risk to the United States. That's something I've actually heard separately from security experts in previous administrations who are working in the field today. The Canadian border is a source of terrorist risk to America, so we're letting people in whose whole aim is to get to the U.S. and do harm. That's not good. So the fact that that's true is nothing to do with Trump or anybody else. We should do something about that, and we should do something about it today.
What that is is above my pay grade, but we should probably screen better who we're letting in and we should probably do a better job of not letting people across that border if they're causing a risk to our biggest neighbor. That all seems obvious. On the illegal immigrant in the U.S., it's unfortunate that it's hitting our country at a time when we're also kind of grappling with immigrants and that we've gone through this sort of period where some Canadians are saying too much and our government is dialing back.
because there's an opportunity here. You know, we, I don't know if we'll do it or not, but our government could actually right now be creating policies to say let's screen everybody that the US wants to kick out, all those poor Haitians that fled Haiti and are living in, you know, Pennsylvania. Why don't we bring them here? Why don't we screen them? I'm not, and I'm certainly not saying bring terrorists and convicted criminals here. There's an awful lot of people that will be deemed illegal immigrants in the US and turfed that we could welcome to Canada.
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They might not want to come. They'll see a Winnipeg winter and turn the other way. That's another problem. But there is an opportunity for us once again to be the sensible country that people can live in happily with Canadians. And I think that could be greatly to our benefit.
We don't seem ready to be able to do that. mean, the way the landscape has played out in the last six months to a year with the liberal policy and really dialing it back. It would be difficult in some ways because the liberal government has just said, we're going to dial it back. On the other hand, we've just dialed it back quite dramatically. So you could say we have some capacity there to be a safe harbor. The idea, and again, we are all kind of just waiting and seeing
Is this going to happen? Are we going to see in modern-day America detainment camps for what are essentially American permanent residents? It's a horrifying thought. And as Canadians, I hope we put our hands up and say, no, we don't. We're not doing that. And so if you want to send them here, send them here. I don't know how that's going to play out. My hope really, if I'm honest, is that that doesn't happen. They don't go down that path.
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The other thing Trump's criticized Canada.
is that in a sense we're too reliant on the US for trade, but in particular, defense spending. And he's talked a lot about the 2 % mark that we have to hit. when it comes to NATO, he's been fairly hawkish, fairly aggressive. And that kind of narrative that Canada benefits economically from the United States benefits militarily from the United States. Do you feel that's a fair critique?
respond to this? I think it is fair in the sense that we have not in recent memory lived up to our NATO commitments. And I think even from the point of view of our own domestic policy, defense spending is a worthy thing to engage in. It creates jobs and opportunity and the fringe benefits of innovation are well documented. It's an area of spending that we could all get behind. There's plenty of companies in Canada. We don't have to send them
money to McDonald-Deck-Wiler, we can spend it right here on Canadian companies and meet our NATO targets. And that's a beautiful thing. And I do think there's something to be said. Canada is a kind of irrelevant player in all of these things, but there's something to be said to the European group of NATO members that they should be a little bit more active and present. The United States shouldn't have to fund the world's activities. And they've put us all on notice that they're not interested in it. So whether we like it or not.
We do want to play in the same neighborhood. We want NATO to continue to exist. So and there is the north That's a really good point the opportunity to partner in the Arctic rather than fight over the Arctic, which is the other alternative I think that's one place where we could become much tighter with the United States We could offer them something because they're very interested in keeping Russia and China Amazingly China is even making claims on the Arctic, right?
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the best claim, so we should be partnering with the US there. around that, Trump has kind of been talking about, in terms of the economy of the United States, he hasn't just been focusing on growth. In fact, doesn't, I he talks about growth, but it's not the primary focus. But he's talking about cutting energy prices in half within six months, I mean, I'm finding...
difficult to imagine how that can be. Let's start with that one. Where do we go with that? Yeah, I mean, think we can probably assume that's going to be a campaign promise he can't deliver on. But it's the kind of sort of semi-childish rhetoric that we hear these days, and I think most people don't expect it to be lived up to. But will he?
be drilling, will he be approving pipelines, will he absolutely... Now, does that favour Canadian energy or does it put us at a disadvantage? I think probably on balance, it still favours us. We're still their best source of supply, so it's probably good for us. And as we go to negotiate that bigger trade agreement...
Our energy and by the way our fresh water are things that we that we do have in our back pocket forever as long as he's as long as we care about these things which presumably we will for a while more Well, and when I looked at the trade data, I mean a quarter of our exports our energy exports. They certainly wouldn't want to tell I mean if he's going to
cut energy prices in half, he's not gonna be able to tax our exports. I agree that even if there's an across the board tariff, it's not gonna happen on oil or natural gas, no way. And around environmental policies, mean there might be opportunities, because they're talking about technological solutions, which by the way the conservative governments in Canada moving from the tax is a...
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technological solution. again, mean, Biden invested heavily in this, but there's opportunities there around environmental.
opportunities. think that's right. mean, the uncertainty that we will now be dealing with, Trump will pull out of Paris, presumably, given that he did before, it seems likely he will again. Although you may have seen the CEO of ExxonMobil today asking him not to pull out of the Paris accord, which tells you about the world we live in, that the CEO of one of the world's biggest oil and gas companies probably doesn't like the direction that our climate change goals take him, but at least he knows that that's the
roadmap. At least he knows what he's dealing with. This constant, you're in, you're out, is terrible for him. And so it would be interesting to see whether that changes, whether they shift. One thing, of course, that would be fascinating is what Trump does with the Inflation Reduction Act, which has disadvantaged Canada. There's a whole bunch of tax credits and incentives for companies to invest in the US in green technology. Maybe we'll take advantage of that. Maybe that frees up some capital to
North, which would be good thing. does he like the CEO of Exxon? It usually drives his decision. I don't think he likes anybody. He tells him what to do. That's a good question. Was the CEO flattering enough is really the question. But you you had talked about kind of investment and the CEO of Exxon is really talking about not creating an uncertain environment. That's what investors hate. That's what businesses don't want. They want
a more secure environment so that they can plan long-term investments. Absolutely. It was interesting actually, I know this isn't what you talking about, but the recent change, the capital gains change in the tax code here, probably the biggest problem with that is not whether it was right or wrong, it's that a change is so hard. So whether you're a state planning or whether you're a small business, in fact a friend of mine who founded a business 15 years ago feels as though
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So he founded it on a premise that has now changed out from under him. Of course the tax code will change and a government is entitled to do it. But the change is hard. So let's talk about Trump's view of the media.
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criticizes the media openly. We've all come to know the words fake news. He's called journalist enemy of the people. He's accused major news outlets of dishonesty and bias and promised, if reelected, to bring regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission under the direct presidential control.
Amanda, what impact could this have on press freedom and on a rarely stressed media landscape?
I don't think he'll try to muzzle the media or change the regulatory environment in a dramatic way. And I think that because it would, I think it would awaken a sleeping beast. I mean, I think everybody who's kind of complacent about what's happening to journalism, including in Congress, wouldn't allow that. Because for whatever we think about journalism today, I think most people know it needs to exist in some form and that the healthiest
form of it is one where it's free and it's diverse. There's lots of different voices and they're not feathered by anything. He's been critical of the media in ways that I think a lot of people are critical of the media these days. I mean, that's the thing about Donald Trump. It's like my old friend Kevin O'Leary. He'll often say the thing that somebody else wouldn't say, but it doesn't make it untrue.
And Trump has a bit of a genius with that. On some subjects, he says things and most people agree with him. And media is one of them. And media has to own that. We've lost the trust of our audiences.
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We don't have a working business model, and partly that's because we don't have consumers willing to buy our products. The funder of journalism was advertisers. They've gone away, and we haven't persuaded you guys to pay for it. And that's on us. That's on us. I think, though, that most of us will agree that democracies require this sort of reporting, this kind of independent view of business and government.
most importantly, but also our collective selves in society, and that it's not going to disappear, but we're in a reckoning. So my hope is that he leaves it alone because you could do damage. He talks about killing the funding for NPR and for PBS. The argument there is that those are two organizations that are supposed to be public broadcasters that don't speak to a whole swath of the population. It's hard to argue that that's not true.
PBS is not a right-wing, there's nowhere you can find on PBS something that would speak to a conservative listener. And so if media is not going to be neutral, it's not going to be truly centrist, then you need both sides represented. And if only one side is represented and you're public broadcaster, that's a problem. Well, you could fund a...
I mean, we've governments. could fund a right wing public broadcaster. Absolutely. I mean, they did this with universities in Florida, right? That's right. over a university and they funded a right wing supposed university. That would be the other way to go, for sure. But I think your point is right. mean, in Yuval Harari's new book, he talks about self-correcting mechanisms.
in democracy and freedom of the press is one of those critical self-correcting mechanisms that are required in democracies. That's right. And we're in a dangerous territory because, of course, we now have government support in Canada. mean, government support for media, which in some ways feels right because that's tax dollars and it's supposed to benefit all of us. So, of course, we should support it. But government is one of the entities that media should be checking. And so it gets
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complicated. We haven't found our way to the thing that's going to help media survive. But I'm optimistic we'll get there.
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has very much criticized universities for being overly woke and restricting free speech. And we've seen some of this in Canada also. He signed an executive order in 2019 requiring colleges to uphold free speech standards in order to continue to receive federal funding. Doug Ford did a similar thing in 2018. And I think...
You know, we've heard as the Conservative government in Canada is thinking along the same lines. How do you think this is going to impact higher education? I think, well, I think you'll know better than I will. My hope is that it doesn't. My hope is that...
that our universities, our colleges remain insulated because we need them to be from political forces. And that ideas can flourish there, which is what they're for. Even if the ideas are...
complicated or repellent to some. It doesn't matter. That's where they belong. So my hope is that this is the kind of thing. One of the things, of course, as you know, as well as anybody, that Donald Trump has helped along, but he's not alone in it, is in the past few years, a kind of a degradation in the respect for knowledge, for experts. And there's a...
I hate to say genius, but there is a wiliness to that because once, of course, you say nobody's opinion is valuable, there's nobody whose knowledge makes them more...
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worthy of respect on a subject, then everything goes. And everything you say is equal to everybody else. So I think that's partly what he's doing is undermining these centers of knowledge. You guys can't possibly know more than anyone else. And in fact, you're kind of elitist, snobby, woke, in your ivory towers, right? So we don't have to listen to anything you say. Nothing that comes out of a university needs to be credible at all because you don't relate to the ordinary man. And the ordinary man...
has nothing to learn from you. That's not me, by the way. I'm glad. But I do think that that's the truth. But it's a pattern, right? It's a pattern of how he has not listened to, you know...
hasn't looked at history and economics and the media. it's again, it's a pattern of constructing and there is a brilliance to it because it's become so popular and he's able to convince people even though we might sit back and go, what? People actually believe that, right? But he's discredited all the critics around him. But it comes back to a point you made earlier, very early in this conversation, which
which is that that might work in the short run, but it has major long-term negative consequences. Yes. Which is where, and I've been...
I've been determinately optimistic in the last week or so about what's going to happen, partly because we don't know. And so there's not a lot of point in being anxious about things until they actually happen. Now we're starting to get cabinet appointments over the last couple of days. So that is something happening, and it's awful. If you haven't seen them, go enjoy.
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But some of them actually are really seriously terrible and possibly consequential for the world. And so it's harder to be optimistic in the face of that. But still you can say, well, no, nothing's happened yet. Maybe, and I am, I'm a big believer in the power of institutions. Congress and the roles people take on, I think when somebody becomes Secretary of State and they get briefed by the Pentagon,
they actually start to take it more seriously than when they were just some yokel running around shooting their mouth off. I hope that's true. But there are some pretty serious consequences that could come our way. And I think to the point you're making, that could play out over decades, not over a four-year term of a presidency. Okay, so then what's the solution to that? The solution to that is to know what we stand for.
The solution to that is, this is, you can be the most conservative person in the world. You can be the staunchest Republican in America, but you should know what you stand for. And if it's not what's playing out, understand what you're going to do about it and how you fit in. And I hope those Republicans are in Congress and at home and paying attention, because they do have a role to play in the next four years. Yeah, I hope so too. Before we go to the audience for questions, I wanted to kind of focus a little back on Canada.
and ask you how you think this might impact the next federal election here in Canada. We know there'll be one within a year. It's a year now, right? And the polls suggest that there's a real chance of a change in government and not only just a change in government, possibly a majority government. Do you think the results of the US election will impact the campaign strategies here in Canada?
It's so interesting and one of things that I always remember is how...
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those six weeks or so of a campaign is a real crucible. A lot can happen. So even what you thought was going to happen the day before the election is called, it can all change. So it's tough and probably wrong to make predictions. But as long as we're being armchair experts, you could see it going two ways, right? You could see events in the US playing out. It sort of does depend on when our election is, let's say that.
If it's held today, if for some reason we have an election in the next two months, before January 20th, when this new presidency starts, I think probably it's in the favor of a conservative movement. I think there's probably a kind of a sense of good feeling and nothing too untoward has happened and there wouldn't be any kind of blowback. The alternate universe is it's some time into a Trump presidency and White House and there's sort of pushback to
too much.
of his extremism. So anything that smells like that will be repellent. But we don't really get that in Canada. We don't get, mean, boy, there's reason to be proud of being Canadian, it's to look at how our political parties operate and how our system functions and the things that get said and the things we all believe in. They're just not as extreme. They're just not hateful. They're not as angry. They're not, you know, we have diverging views and people, of course, say things in opposition
opposition to be oppositional, but our governments tend to be reasonable. I, you know, there's no reason to fear anything else in this country anytime soon.
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But do think any of the, I mean, do think the Liberals will use it to say we need a balance, right? I mean, it seems likely that this will be their campaign. Whereas the Conservatives might say, we can speak to him better, we can work better. Yeah, maybe. And lessen the impact on Canada. And Canadian voters are gonna have to choose that. Yeah, I think Canadian voters will be less inclined to worry about the interaction across the border and more inclined to think about our own. It's exactly the lesson of the US election.
actually, I think. People care about our economy and our well-being and what's happening in this country. And I think that'll be very much the focus of the next election, which probably isn't great for the incumbents. I mean, we were talking about that around the world. It's been a really tough time. Affordability issues are real. They're continuing. And sitting governments have to wear that. Whether it's fair or not, they wear it. And they mostly are being turfed out. As you said, incumbents are falling across the world.
and so it's not completely surprising that it also happened in the United States. It's not. What's actually kind of surprising is that more people didn't see that coming. know, people really thought that democracy was the ballot box issue. It's not. It's people's own pocketbook. It tends to be that, right? We care about how we're doing and how our kids are doing and maybe how our neighbor's doing. As Clinton would say, it's about the economy, stupid. Don't call me stupid.
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So we've come to the end. I mean, there's a lot more I can ask you about.
Project 2025. you read it? I've read parts of it. I just read it. Okay. So I'll ask you about it. was reassured by it. Okay. Tell me more. It's not crazy. There are elements that The Guardian pulled out and made a headline out of that are crazy. But it's actually what a conservative think tank should do. And what I mostly thought when I was finished was where is the left leaning think tank coming up with its own Project 2030? Because this is what they should do. They should say
in our world, this is how things look. And it's actually, to me, I could summarize it as they think government and bureaucracy has gotten in the way of democracy and that democracy should be constitutionally for the people, by the people, and they want to return it to the people. That seems reasonable. It seemed reasonable to me. I was reassured when I read it. It's not the scary document that I thought it was. I'll finish reading it. It's 900 pages. I know. I've kind of selectively taken I skimmed some it.
But I've often gone to the parts that I've read in the media about and then go, well, let's see what they're saying. So I'm selectively reading the scary The scary parts, that's what we do. So given the size of the audience today, what we're going to do is we're going to take questions through Menti. It's an online tool. And so on your phone,
think we're gonna put it up here somewhere. You can go to menti.com. There's gonna be a QR code, I believe, on the screen and then an access code. And if you open it.
EP Production Team (42:41.159)
to submit your questions and then somebody has a microphone who's going to read out some of those questions.
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So while we're waiting, you did mention about the appointments. Yes. So.
You know, he also made appointments in 2016. What's the difference? What do you think is going to be the difference between 2016 and 2024 in terms of all of these appointments and what it will mean for the actions that they take? So the biggest differences, of course, the obvious ones in terms of what's different for his presidency is he has the House, he has the Senate. And he has a clear majority. That's different.
in every demographic, a marginal difference in every demographic. So a real mandate. He has a plan.
So this whole conversion of career bureaucrats into political appointees that can happen on day one, which means nobody's job is safe, that's a real plan. He's going in with a plan, a playbook of how to make sure what he learned last, so guess the biggest difference is he learned how this works and that the president has a lot of directional power, but there's a whole apparatus of people that
and if they don't agree, they won't do it. I know about that. Right? So you got to be persuasive. Well, maybe you should take a page out of this playbook. You could turn all those tenured professors into political appointments. But he'll fire a lot of people. He'll fire a lot of people.
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And then secondly, we remember last time that we used to talk about the adults in the room, the Rex Tillerson's and the McMasters who were there who would say, Mr. President, I really don't think we should do that. And then he fired them. It caused turbulence. He doesn't have any of that. He has all yes men and women in the room, true believers. And some of them are kind of heinous. Like Mike Gates is heinous, right? He may or may not be a pedophile. I don't know, we're just not sure yet.
But he's stacked his cabinet, if they get confirmed, with people who won't challenge him at all, who may not know how to challenge him, who don't have the wherewithal to challenge him. So that's new. That's not my most optimistic line of thought. First question? First question.
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So yeah, Dogecoin, which is one of Donald Trump's favorites and certainly Elon Musk's favorite, is now more valuable than the Ford Motor Company. So cryptocurrencies have done well. I actually make a distinction between Bitcoin and all the other ones, and it's not favorable, because Bitcoin is a really weird animal.
And because as you know, I think the person who asked this question knows a lot about cryptocurrencies. So I'm not going to tell you stuff you already know. But Bitcoin is not a currency in the sense that it can be created by central governments, central banks if we ever needed it to be. It can't be managed. It's mined by people around the world. It's very weird. There's a fixed amount of it. So Bitcoin is never going to be the currency we all use. Full stop, end of story. It's a fun thing. If you want to invest in it, it might go up.
down, knock yourself out. Cryptocurrencies are interesting, of course, and may well gain traction in the world. I'm still of the view that we will want our central banks to manage currencies and that digital currencies that are outside the central banking system are not going to take over. And so for that reason, I'm not a believer in them. I'm not a believer in investing in them and I don't think they'll...
I don't think any of the ones we know today will be ultimately sort of a universal coin. If the Federal Reserve or the Bank of Canada ever wanted to create a digital currency, that would get interesting. But I don't think we're... And believers in these things like that, they're outside the purview of central banks. That's part of the reason they exist. People don't want to be part of the system that's managed by governments. But...
we do need that stability in the world. But they really haven't played the role of, they haven't disrupted domestic currencies. Next question.
EP Production Team (47:54.377)
So we have a housing affordability problem in Canada because we've created a market for housing that lends itself to an affordability problem. We've financialized housing and so it's not a case of the market not working the way it should or failing us. The market is working exactly as we've designed it, which is those of us who own houses want their value to be high and therefore the people we elect
want to keep the value of our houses high and the way to do that is restrict supply. We've financialized every single part of housing. We've financialized the building of homes. We've financialized the construction of homes. And until we unwind that, this is not a popular view, but until we unwind that, we're going to have a problem. We're trying to build more homes. We're trying to introduce more supply. But until you hear a politician in this country get up and say the solution to housing affordability is that the value
of your homes goes down, they're lying to you because that's the solution. The solution is the value of our collective homes and by the way 60 % of us own our homes.
We're homeowners in this country. We need to pay a price in order to create affordability for others. I have not heard a politician say that. So we're gonna nibble around the edges and we're gonna build supply and maybe there'll be some event, a cataclysmic recession, I don't know. But we're not building the kinds of houses we need. We're not building at the pace we need. And the real problem is there's too many impediments. Too many of us don't want it to happen. Well, it's unlikely to have that.
effect, like the cataclysmic effect. We talked about a bubble in, I don't know.
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after 2008, especially in Ontario, but it never materialized. No, that's right. And demographics are such that we did talk for a long time in this country about the fact that the demographic bubble would mean there would be this huge housing collapse because nobody could afford all the big houses that all the boomers were in. But then we have this whole immigration. Again, what does that do except prop up the value of houses?
by politicians who want to get elected by homeowners. So we've kind of solved that little, the bubble that was gonna burst when all the boomers eventually sold their homes. They're not, they're sitting in them as we know. And monetizing them and helping their kids buy houses, because that's what has to happen now. It's unpopular to say, I don't know, we could probably debate this. I don't know what you think about the financialization of housing, but I don't get a lot of solid agreement
from people, participants in the market on this because they don't like the outcome. Well, no politician would get elected on that. But it's the same as inflation. mean, unless we get deflation, which is going to have real repercussions on the economy.
mean, your pound of oranges is still going to cost $3, and that's expensive, right? Yes. And those prices aren't coming And still 12 % more than three years ago. Exactly. Right? So the prices aren't coming down. We controlled inflation, but the market...
You know, there has to be a market factor that causes that to happen, right? It be an artificial factor. mean, governments have tried it. Here in Manitoba, they've taken the provincial gas tax off or a portion of it. And then they renewed it because voters like it. It's bad public policy, but voters like it. In Ontario, we're all about bad policy being good retail politics. I mean, it's... But you never got Buckebeer because you couldn't sell it for less.
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It's Next question.
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I don't know is the answer. I'm terrified. one of the, in fact, one of the problems with some of the cabinet appointees is that there are real Russia apologists in cabinet, including in defense and state. So I'm fearful about what will happen, but can't predict.
And also, we are a couple of months away, and there's time. Everybody involved, especially Zelensky, knows that this is happening, and it may well be, maybe it forces Zelensky in a direction that he has been unwilling to go, which is a negotiated peace, i.e. giving up territory, which he really has been unwilling to do and even contemplate. But there are people inside the Biden administration who have been pushing in that direction for a long time now, and maybe this is enough.
of a catalyst to force those conversations. It's scary though, and it's particularly, by the way, we didn't even talk about Elon Musk. We did not. Which, you know, and he is a terrifying factor in all of this, and a bit of an unknown. So when President-elect Trump had a meeting with Zelensky, Musk was in the room.
Which is, that's a bit chilling. And so I don't know what message that sends, but maybe it does force talks before January 20th. Well, Trump loves a deal. Right, he'll probably try to push not just Ukraine, but other warring parts of the world to settle. Next question.
EP Production Team (53:49.119)
Do the questions get easier as we go along? Can we go back to Ukraine?
I mean, of course I don't know. And I don't really have a view except to say I'm sympathetic to President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau that they were elected to do a job. And I dislike personally when people call for people to be fired or to quit because that's their livelihood. And in this case, I think it's very understandable that he wants to see the next election out.
Biden is slightly different. think in retrospect, we now know he was actually kind of in physical decline and there might have been some moral reason to speak up about that. I don't know, maybe history will tell us if that's true. For Prime Minister Trudeau, I think it's his call and if he wants to see the electorate in the face at the next election, that's what democracy is made of.
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Well, I think probably everything oil and gas related will do well in the short term. I do think things like cryptos will do well because the regulatory environment will change dramatically. So if you are a crypto fan, it's crypto summer for sure. Otherwise, it's interesting if we think through what are the policies.
probably industrial policy, we will see more manufacturing come back to the US. We are, I think, going to see a chilling of the Mexico-US relationship. So there's some opportunity for Canada as well, incidentally, unfortunately, but to step in to avoid a business being done in and by Mexico. So there may well be some opportunity in the US. It's something for us to think about. You heard probably
Premier Ford talk about maybe we should just strike a bilateral agreement with the US and cut Mexico out. That's not coming out of nowhere. There's a lot of talk about that.
by people in the US. taking a very hard line with Mexico, and it probably does suit Canadian interests to distance ourselves, which is sad for those of us that watched NAFTA come into being with great excitement. It's sad to think that that might all fall apart. But if we're focused on Canadian interests, there's opportunity there. So Canadian businesses that will benefit from that void might be paying attention right now. I mean, at one time,
NAFTA was touted as the future for Mexico. if you can get enough economic growth, then you can create the jobs in Mexico and you wouldn't see the people coming across the border.
EP Production Team (56:51.091)
but other countries have been coming through Mexico to come across the border. it's quite... And now so complicated by China, mean, to the Chinese interest in Mexico, unfortunately might now have reached this tipping point where it's almost impossible for Mexico to extricate and the US is drawing a hard line about it. And that's real threat to That's a threat. Yeah, that's a really good point. Maybe one more question.
EP Production Team (57:35.315)
Well, we write the history books. What do we think? I think this will be remembered as a...
a pretty tumultuous time, if I can put it that way. But I think things happen for a reason. And I think that was sort of when I got a little zen on election night. And this may be the product of having the advantage of being Canadian and living in our big tent politics where we don't really have to fear any outcome of any federal election.
There is a reason why people are feeling populist. There's a reason why people are looking to governments that are pushing back against the perception of elite, overly educated, white collar, a class that's benefiting at the expense of good quality working jobs.
And that's because there's some truth in all of that and people feel it. in fact, know, there's good Roger Martin wrote a great book about this. As I'm sure you know, more is not better. There is we are living in a time that's not benefiting everybody equally. And it's it does it's on us to make sure that that stops happening. And so this is the wake up call. I think it's worth paying attention to. And maybe this is the beginning of a
chapter in the history book about how we course corrected a democratic capitalism in a way that made it more inclusive and made it work for people and helped us rethink some of the institutions that we kind of blindly follow. I think that sums up the challenge that we're facing. We've left some people behind.
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and the world has changed. And so that's what I meant by maybe trade went too far because it purely was driven by maximizing gross domestic product and whatever that meant. And comparative advantage does mean leaving behind. And trade economists often blur what's happening. We look at national and we blur what's on the ground and I think we...
we may have missed that. I think that's right. And how important it is to the person's psyche. Yeah. And if there's one message from that election and maybe our next election, it's ignore people at your peril. know, people are speaking and they're saying something important. it's, you know, everybody needs, not just politicians need to listen, we need to listen to one another. So we're out of time.
I want to thank you for a fascinating conversation. For everybody who asked such thoughtful questions, and I'm sorry we didn't have time to get to all your questions. I'm sure you had many of them. Just a couple of kind of...
housekeeping notes. We're going to give away four copies of your books. And so I'm not sure how that's going to work, but I have a note here that you can wave if you want one. And if you have bison horns and you've got them on your head, you have a really good chance of getting them. Given that we're trying to reward bisons these days. So I want to thank everybody for coming.
EP Production Team (01:01:22.373)
It's always good to leave people wanting more. There is a reception following and so we invite you to.
continue to come. We are going to stay behind for a couple of minutes. We're just a couple of things that we need to record here just to end the recording. But Amanda, once again, thanks for an insightful evening and thanks for being part of What's the Big Idea. It's a pleasure. Thanks.
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fun. you. Great. It flies by. It does fly by. I'm gonna do my little selfie. Okay. What else do need to do? I don't know. think that's all we need to do. Usually she comes over and does it for us. Okay. Just to promote it a little bit. So okay. I'm sure this one will get...
interest and then we had a great crowd. was great, yeah. Where is the reception? Just right outside? I think it's just outside. Okay, let me, I'm just gonna say hi to my family here. Hey family. hi. How are you?
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Does treatment work when you take something? it go away? I'll give it to her. Bye!
yeah? Yeah.
EP Production Team (01:03:20.671)
happening yeah yeah okay well I wanted to say hi because I don't know if you're gonna hang around so I just want to say hi okay okay Marcus I love it okay chamber is a city counselor and he wanted to give you a Winnipeg 150 amazing I didn't
Did I end too early? I thought we were supposed to end at eight. I thought it eight, eight and fifteen. sorry. We've got enough for the show, that's for sure.