How bad are things going right now? How badly, I should say, are things going right now?

They're not great, Joanne.

So there's lots of conflicting forces happening in the Canadian economic landscape at the moment.

Some are good, but most are bad.

And all of this is happening in the context of a Quebec election and the U.S. trade war.

I think former Prime Minister Kim Campbell famously said that an election is no time to discuss serious issues.

She was actually misquoted about that.

How does this all play out for you?

What are you expecting to see in the next few weeks?

Well, Sue, a bomb has just kind of dropped on this campaign.

And I don't think we can talk about the election without talking about the poll that just came out recently.

So there's a new synopsis poll that just got released on Friday showing a complete shifting sands in the Quebec electorate.

The PQ is at 28% and they are effectively tied with the CAQ at 27%.

The PLQ is down to 20%.

The PCQ holding at 14% and Quebec Solidaire around 10%.

And I'm wondering now with the way that the international order is changing and the Trump effect, if maybe voters are going against the Parti Québécois in the polls because they just don't even want to talk about the referendum.

What do you think about Canada walking away from the table?

Sue, this is fascinating.

I think this is a genuinely historic moment in Canada-US relations.

Let's recall that even a couple of days ago, we had Trump and a lot of the US contingent coming out and saying we had a deal, basically.

Then, of course, trade negotiations collapsed.

The US is now imposing 50% tariffs on roughly $28 billion of Canadian exports.

And Carney, as you said, is announcing dollar-for-dollar tariffs and retaliation.

It seems to be really a deliberate strategy on the part of the United States to just interfere in our democratic process.

Mm.

I'll paint a bit of a broader picture, then we'll dive into that hack.

So the markets are a bit schizophrenic about AI, whip-sawing from huge losses a few days ago to big rebounds.

Everyone's worried about regulation.

AI is getting cheaper, faster, more accessible, and the capability is becoming democratized.

The, this line sticks with me all the time, Joanne, that Putin, that Vladimir Putin said a few years ago-

It's still toothpaste.

Um, so the US, Joanne, is the Wild West.

Listen, where do you want to start? Are we starting with the tariffs? Are we starting with the bridge? Or, you know, right now, it's a pile on at this point.

Yeah, let's go with tariffs and then we'll talk about the bridge.

They're all a little bit intertwined.

So, Joanne, I'll give the breakdown on this tariff situation.

So Trump has officially signed.

Three, legally binding presidential proclamations to impose 10% and 50% tariffs using a bunch of different mechanisms on Canada.

And these all go into effect in less than 30 days.

Yeah.

still

remains kind of in a state of decline and disrepair.

So for a lot of Canadians, life is worse than when Carney took office about 18 months ago.

Groceries cost more, housing more unaffordable, housing construction is actually falling, debt is rising, insolvencies are rising.

And increasingly homeowners are going broke.

So this Carney vision of sort of future focused trickle down economics could work, but Canadians are waiting for the trickle.

So there's still this enormous, almost existential risk that a lot of what Carney's strategy is doing is heavily financed by debt, which means my tax dollars and your tax dollars and Canadians need to start seeing some materialization of that strategy and quite quickly.

Is the middle class at risk, do you think, in this country?

So how do you balance all this, or can we balance all this, Sandy? Yeah.

John, we can absolutely balance it.

And this has been a challenge for Canada for years.

Think back to the rupture that Canada had with China under Justin Trudeau and even with Saudi Arabia under Justin Trudeau.

Carney is trying to build those bridges right now.

And as you say, he's spending a lot of time overseas building trade alliances, defense partnerships.

But on the other hand, he's also trying to strengthen this league of global democracies.

So we're going to that will be Canada's role moving forward.

But what is actually going on numbers wise? What do we know?

Joanne, I think, number one, it's important not to just blame the women.

Of course, this is a Canadian problem by and large, and it's been a problem for about 40 years.

Canada has been well below replacement rate for a long time.

We have about 1.25 children per woman.

That puts Canada in the ultra-low fertility club.

But a report came out from Statistics Canada the other day looking at the different views between men and women about having children.

Is anything they're doing getting through?