Fumble.

Yeah, that's a surprising result to me as well.

Um, but I, I mean, when you look at it, the, the PM continues to walk a really tight, fine line on this stuff, and I, I think he has to.

Uh, when the trade talks collapsed a couple of weeks ago, he was saying, "We were attacked by the US." He said, "They asked for far more than we could give.

Our sovereignty was at stake, and the signature of the US on a treaty or an agreement was too often written in pencil." So that was the tough stuff.

Since then, I've noticed he's dialing it back.

He still says he believes that a mutually beneficial deal to facilitate trade across the border both ways is something we can still achieve.

S- you wanna talk about Poilievre, uh, staying on the high road?

But just in case President Trump or anyone else forgets, we've set up this sign to remind them it's Lake Ontario now and forever.

Great stunt, got great mileage out of it, and coming on the heels of the whole he can kiss my butt thing, all this renewed Captain Canada stuff did give Ford a bump up in the polls, which hadn't been going well for him lately.

And so, you know, yeah, that's why I can totally see why many called it a touchdown.

But my reaction, Jerry, was in agreement actually with our own Jim Richards.

And my take was, despite all the check marks that I just rattled off, I do think there's a time just to, you know, stay on the porch because many were calling Trump's gambit asinine and petty and laughable.

And the best way to minimize something is not to engage on it.

Don't add to it.

Let's go to the other side of the aisle, Pauliev's communication strategy.

Yes.

[laughs] And this was his Dougness in full flight right here on the new Bero- Bill Carroll Show on News Talk 1010.

That's 9:00 to 10:00 every weekday now.

And some people do feel Ford should've been more genteel in his language while making the same point.

But I say smart politicians know both when to lead and when to follow the people they lead.

And Doug Ford knows how to articulate exactly what so many people are thinking and wishing they could say or are saying themselves over the back fence to the neighbors.

So this was a time he would not be pulling any punches.

dealAnd support the American people, support the Canadians

Yeah

... because that's generally true, and it's [laughs] often where we find ourselves.

And, and, and right now it's kind of a tale of two communicators.

Trump is crowing- Hands up if you're surprised.

He's the great deal maker, and guess what, Gerry? He's got a deal.

So he's, he's posturing and being very on brand about it, because of course he's gonna crow that he's the deal maker who got the deal with nasty Canada.

So i- that's Trump's usual communications play, and no surprise there at all.

Mm-hmm.

But then they were built, and we were able to see and feel the real-world feedback, and it became clear that council, including me, got this one wrong.

This is just plain smart communications.

Bradford knows this is the elephant in his room, so he's not gonna ignore it.

He's grabbing it right by the tusks.

Yes, I reversed my position, but here's why.

Not because I can't make up my mind or because I don't know which way the wind's blowing, but it was sold as a good idea that turned out to be a bad one, and I'm gonna fix it.

Tough to argue with that.

You know something, it's politics.

Oh, my.

And now, in fairness, I got that notice before we got the word of the tentative agreement and WestJet's going back into operations.

It's going to take a while to get the planes and crews in the air.

Everybody understands that, but they're back in business.

So...

I went to the airport because I had to return my rental car anyway.

And I stood in the very long line to speak to an agent there, two and a half hours.

Anyway, keep going.

I mean, how do you see the music scene today? Are we still losing those little spots?

We are, is the sad truth of it.

And I think Toronto as a music city has actually been declining, certainly in recent years.

And you're right.

I mean, the pandemic was a hammer blow to so many hospitality sector businesses writ large.

But live performance venues... are increasingly endangered.

I can think of a number of them.

But do you see it now mostly as moving into condos and other forms of development that are taking away these spots, or are there other things going on?

Uh, and, uh, I explained it better, uh, in London, Ontario at GDLS, uh, but I appreciate the opportunity and-

Okay, I don't care if you're wearing a cowboy hat.

You knew the deal, and you deliberately misled us on the details.

That's not a bad explanation.

That's just plain evasion.

What he should have done was come clean and say, "Look, I am not the least bit happy about this, but we've been forced to agree to splitting tolls to get the bridge open, and that has to be job one.

We had no choice, but we're not gonna have a $6.4 billion investment sitting idle.

Right

So it's manning the toll booths, it's, uh, it's maintenance, it's, uh, snow removal, uh, a series of other operational costs.

Okay.

That was better.

It sounds a little more clear.

So the tolls aren't split, only the toll money that's left over after the operational costs are paid, and by the way, that won't be much of anything in the early going anyway.

So he's, he's trying to position it as a minor tweak to the original agreement, and there's the problem because if that's the case, that should have been his message right out of the gate.

At his first opportunity, and he shouldn't have gotten out, out there a lot faster than he did, so he wouldn't have been back on defense so much, uh, he should have made the f- a, a couple of key points right at the outset.

Uh-huh.

[upbeat music]

I was really interested to see if this would be a close vote or what, um, because, you know, big, bold announcements like this can really go either way.

They can be exceptionally strong communications plays.

They can really build your brand, reinforce it, uh, your positioning, your messaging.

... can be very effective.

But if they're not well done, not well delivered, well framed, things can go south, and I'm gonna go the other way.

I think that's what happened in this case.

Do you think that Brian Lilley had a good point in his column in the Toronto Sun about that, then why don't you apply it then to Donald Trump as well?

[laughs]

[laughs] Well, and as you also said, shades of Dalton McGuinty and it's never too late to do the right thing.

Uh, I, I don't think the flip-flop will be an issue for Brad Bradford because I think he's really tapping into something with this Toronto Square name change idea, and it, it does a number of things.

It reminds people of something that his competitor, Olivia Chow, did that wasn't hugely popular, 'cause a lot of people were not happy with the sudden name change.

No discussion, no public consultation.

It was like a bang, zoom, done deal.

Nobody knows what the name means, even though it is kind of a nice thing if you take the time to read the history of the expression from Ghana that it's based on.

All right

What could be a greater priority to this country?

Now, we can only speculate here, Gerry, so let me go ahead and do just that.

Uh, I think it's clear the Americans, anyway, didn't wanna talk trade on this call.

They wanted to talk about military stuff, which is why Pete Hegseth, Trump's secretary of war, was on the line as well.

And that's fine, but Carney's people should have ensured there was at least a smidge of discussion on this.

They could have had, you know, at the top advisor level in setting the agenda, have a discussion where Canada would say, "Look, we don't wanna get into the weeds on this, but we absolutely need to have at least a token discussion to say that it was on the agenda." And Carney could say to Trump he's been advised that significant discussions are going well.

The talks are positive.

You had some thoughts on that.

The truth of the matter is we'd form a massive majority if the election was held today for the fourth time.

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

That reaction made what would have been a minor story.

I mean, it would have been a story when a poll comes out, and especially a negative poll.

But he gave it color.

He gave it zing.

He put a new top on it.

and across the border still comes across the border tariff-free? You have the second best trading relationship with anybody of any country that the United States has trade relationships with? We are fighting on fentanyl, on crime, and all of these kinds of things, and you're gonna boo the American flag?

Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, good for him.

[laughs]But, uh, ho- ho- hold the glasses until after a trade deal gets done, not before.

Because Doug Ford knows how strongly that move has resonated, not only in American states like Kentucky and California who aren't selling any product in Ontario for 15 months now, but he knows it's also a winner here at home.

People consistently like this stance.

It's something that Ontario can do in the midst of all this uncertainty and all this back and forth between Washington and Ottawa.

People know this is a strong bit of leverage for us.

At the request of the United States, we agreed to, uh, uh, to delay the opening and, um, take the necessary time, uh, to resolve outstanding issues.

Yeah.

So, uh, yeah, Trump was at it again with the 51st state thing, uh, posting that in response to the recent economic news that Canada has technically dipped into a recession.

And then his ambassador reposted it.

And Pete Hoekstra says, "Hey, that's just standard practice.

Anytime the president says anything about Canada, uh, we repost it.

He does or his staff do.

So business as usual," he was saying.

Right

Touchdown! [upbeat music]

Well, we heard in that clip right there how he invoked the MAGA slogan and, and that was obviously by design.

Uh, Carney or his people or both knew that that would be the headline on the story of his New York speech, and they also knew it would probably have traction among Trump Republicans, uh, probably get heard by Trump himself.

Uh, so there were a lot of good reasons for doing that.

Um, on the flip side, uh, among those who didn't like it was Pierre Poilievre.

He's doing his job as opposition leader, but he said, "The speech was filled with more of his seemingly sophisticated but highly contradictory buzzwords.

On the one hand," he says, "we're in the middle of a rupture with the United States, while on the other, he wants to make America," in his words, "great again." And Poilievre says his elbows were, were flapping up and down in a rhetorical chicken dance, as he can't seem to decide which way he wants to play it.

With America's growing energy needs because of the incredible transformation here, does it really make sense to build the gigawatts here needed to replace Canada?

Yep.

He, he, he has this kind of, I don't know, entitled vibe.

Like, he's, he's a bit of a political mercenary.

The, the presumptive front-runner in a leadership race that he hasn't even officially entered yet.

And actually, he told Vassy Kapelos this week that now he's not sure if he even wants to run.

Uh, so you know, [laughs] yeah, right.

Uh, he was in the federal cabinet for about 15 minutes and then, uh, got, uh, turfed when Mark Carney came in, and he was very bitter about that, did a lot of public griping, and then quickly made it clear that he was gunning to be the next leader of the provincial Liberals.

the Toronto Police.

If you have nothing to hide, why are you working so hard to hide things?

So she doubled down, and that signals pretty clearly that it's a deliberate strategy in her communications i- in the media.

And I, I think she's gonna keep pushing this something stinks, they've got something to hide messaging.

I mean, there is still, uh, an RCMP probe underway into the whole Greenbelt thing, and now the changes of freedom of information have been pushed through.

Uh, so the, the whole thing, it's kinda like a political attack ad that you see during election campaigns, and usually the sort of thing as a party leader you wanna keep out of personally, but absolutely have one of your lieutenants wade into it.

Now, I can't really think of another member of the Ontario New D- New Democrats, [laughs] so maybe that's why she's taking it on.

But regardless, political attacks, whether it's ads or rhetoric like this, only work if there's something that...

It's not like he isn't aware of the things that Simmons brought up.

[laughs]

But I think it was kind of a wait and see, like see if this works out and while, while Vern's in retreat.

Um, but then so I did that, and then in 2000, um, '99, 2000, became Khenchung, and then shortly after that, head Khenchung.

And then in 2022, uh, um, became head Dorje Lopon, which is really synonymous with being Khenchung.

It's just more of a lifelong commitment.

But still like a lot of the same responsibilities as Khenchung.

Um, although Susie definitely [laughs] takes a lot more responsibility than me as far as getting things done with the courses and the SPRs and the Lopon.

[laughs]

It gets those returns alongside the private sector.

Not a bad clip, I thought, but Jerry, I really had to hunt for that one because overall, this whole thing was not well articulated, not clearly spelled out at all.

The communications didn't have that keen nugget that sums it all up in a digestible message.

how's this going to work? Where's the money coming from? Well, actually, we know that one.

It's borrowed money, $25 billion worth of borrowed money that the government doesn't have.

That's what's going into it.

But how do I, as an individual citizen, put some of my own money into this thing, as is being touted? How risky is that? Oh, wait, I hear my investment will be guaranteed.

You want to talk about the King's speech, and I suspect it's not that excellent movie.