Left East to West
Weekly check-in on top political stories across Canada, interviews for people building this country
Left East to West
Creating jobs and industries to Trump-proof Canada
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Guio Jacinto, Steelworkers union economic and trade analyst, talks about the impact of Trump's "economic force" against Canada and how adding industrial policy to existing strategies can create jobs and industries.
Nikki and Tom talk about MP Lori Idlout's floor-crossing and the wild -- and wildly false -- accusations of drug dealing by Vancouver's mayor.
Welcome to Left, East to West with me, Nikki Hill.
SPEAKER_03And me, Tom Parkin. Thanks for joining. And if you can, tell us others about our show, the audience is building, and your word of mouth really does help. Now, we usually like to start the show by talking about a couple of interesting and important items that aren't national news headlines. But this week we're going to touch on one that definitely did hit the national headlines of MP Laurie Idlow crossing the floor from the NDP to the Liberals. So then Nikki's going to help us understand some really fascinating weird dynamics in the Vancouver mayor's race. I know you're going to this is going to be good stuff.
SPEAKER_00BC politics in some ways are always weird. Yeah, October.
SPEAKER_03October, yes.
SPEAKER_00Great. And then we have our feature interview today with Guille DeCinto, who is the economic and trade policy analyst for the Canadian National Office of the United Steel Workers Union. We're going to talk to Gio about how major job sectors are holding up against tariffs and how Canada's economic strength can be boosted.
SPEAKER_03Okay, but before we get to Gill, let's take a look at this week below the fold and some above. Okay, Nikki, well, given who we are uh and the the kind of interest that I think people come to this show because of, uh I didn't think we could just skip over MP Laurie Idlet's floor crossing from the uh NTP to the Liberals. Lots to unpack in that. Uh first, floor crossing. Um we saw an Angus Reed poll last week showing only 26% supported floor crossing. Uh 22% say it would be okay for an MP to leave the party on whose ticket they got elected and go sit at as independent, but 41 said no. If you leave your party, you need to go to a by-election. So it's not a popular position. So while Mr. Carney is creeping closer to my to a majority using floor crossing, is he also maybe eroding his brand as a honest player, somebody with um, you know, who was above board Nikki.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it's been a wild week in Canadian politics, but I think, you know, some of these floor crossings have been in in discussion for months, obviously. And I think it's like the goal of the floor crossing. I'm actually fascinated that so many Canadians care about floor crossing. I gotta be honest. Sometimes it feels like inside baseball for those of us in politics. And obviously you have the personal pain when it happens in in your own party. But I I think the other thing like I'd want to see here in terms of how the public talks about floor crossing is also I think what we're seeing Carney try to do, which is get that stable majority government at these strange times. So, you know, it's hard to say, I think at this stage, if the public uh punish penalizes him for having encouraged all of this floor crossing to get to that majority in a time when I actually think people are looking for some some certainty and stability.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that that is kind of an interesting contrast economy contradiction in a way. Um but and I don't think my own opinion is I don't think he's gonna get immediately published uh uh punished for it. But I would just wonder whether it becomes part of a way they see Mr. Kearney as a bit of a you know private boardroom operator, and uh can uh then other other ideas can get tied to that. We had Don Davies on the show talking about, you know, lack of principles on Trump and Iran's, for example. So it just becomes kind of a shiftiness, a pattern that gets established. Anyway, the the the second the second thing I uh Polyev. So where does this leave Mr. Polyev if Mr. Kearney can achieve uh a majority? Uh some polls are putting them in the low thirties, um, and these these by-elections are coming, three of them. Uh the conservatives are not particularly players in them. But uh of course, it's public record uh how they did last time and how they will do this time. So people will be looking for any vote slips. Um Carney gaining majority gives Polyev time to change how Canadians view him and and it relieves him of the embarrassment of propping up the liberals' on confidence votes. But on the flip side, um does a liberal majority now weaken his ability to suppress any conservative party caucus insurrection that might arise against him because the threat of we can't we can't afford that right now, guys, because there could be an election any day, that that argument's disappeared.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think we see like their caucus has not been hesitant to remove other leaders when there's that sign where they are maybe not going to win the election. Like obviously Paliyev's got the basis of support to hold on longer than his some of his predecessors here. But I I think what's kind of fascinating on this this front too is you we can see Polyev trying to change the way he interacts with the public, what his sort of image is here on issues. And and I sort of think it's like we it's an interesting case in seeing when you spent so much time building into a particular brand, which has been that kind of punchy populist, like slogans, kind of a little bit of into that leaning into that clickbait sort of style. Can you actually recreate yourself as a politician into being what I think people are are looking at? I was reading something in a progressive publication about Carney Mania. I mean, you know, I'm I'm not certainly in that category, but it's such a dis difference in leadership styles that it could be really hard for Holly Ebb to come back in in comparison to a R.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. He's never been anything but that populous for his entire career, and he's been there for, you know, a thousand years since he was twenty two.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Something like that. And so ask you know, anyway, it just seems uh yeah, like a very tough task to now convince people you're somebody else. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Completely someone else. And I think it's very serious times. So I think the public's looking, you know, Carnemania in Alberta is a wild thing to consider too, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_03And and here's just uh one other thought along this line is uh he was brought to the leadership as a uh convoy conservative.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh there is a strong you can still see it. Conservative election race, right? The leadership race. Very strong streak of that in uh sections of the Conservative Party. Yeah. Um if he goes to Mr. Nuance, you know, Mr. International Travels, uh and and and and thoughtful intellectual of the center right, w what happens to those people?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um do they stick around and say, well, listen, I thought we were here to, you know, uh uh attack attack attack trans kids um and to talk about wokeism and and blah blah blah. I mean Do they stay with the project?
SPEAKER_00You know what's I I think like the timing of the BC conservative leadership race too, because I think you know, we're in about 85% of the nine candidates are leaning into that far-right rage baiting sort of polyev populist. And sometimes become what because they've got some of Polyev's advisors and campaigners coming into BC, driving some of you know the clickbait here. So but I'm fascinated to watch as this as this leadership race goes by in the sort of the same timing as we can test out Polyev's popularity to see if the public's still there with these types of tactics. Because it is um, you know, it really is leaving out a big portion, I think, of voters who are more in that center right to lean into. But also, you know, I don't know, the public is so inundated right now with with negativity, with uncertainty. I'm not sure that politicians who drive that message with them are going to have the longtime rewards and support here.
SPEAKER_03Okay, let's and let's let's finally touch here on you know what this means to the federal NDP, who is the party that lost the member here. So Nikki, feel free. My my analysis here is going to be a little bit not very happy. Uh so feel free to tell me that I'm being overly pessimistic, okay? Please do, in fact. Um but maybe I'm not. I mean, you just it seems to me this departure should be ringing aloud, loud alarm bells for NDP members who are in the middle of a leadership vote right now, uh, about what is at risk here. Uh I I don't know why Lori left. Uh, not gonna kind of try and speculate what's in her mind, but I do believe 100% that if the NDP was united uh and was at 18 or 20 percent, uh the likelihood of her leaving would have been a lot lower. And Jack took over a party in a similar state to the one today. Uh the federal NDP is a f is a fragile coalition, I would argue. It's a it's a it's a coalition of some very successful provincial sections, uh the labor movement, uh, and various ideological hues along the left, uh from center left to left. Um Jack was kind of a master at stitching those pieces together um and and and delivering, ultimately ho holding that coalition together, tightening it up and delivering results. But since him the stitching has come a c come apart again. That's what my tenure experience has been. So the leadership balloting is open now, and those uh with the strong ranking commitments have probably already put their ballot in.
SPEAKER_00According to social media, they are like wow, never seen it.
SPEAKER_03But for those still mulling it, you know, it seems to me that they should be screaming for candidates to demonstrate that they can stitch this coalition back together again. Um and and and even with Lori leaving, I am not sure that party members and again, maybe I'm being just, you know, uh Debbie Downer here or whatever, Tom the you know, the terrible, I don't know. Um I'm not sure that party members see the serious situation that the federal NDP faces and therefore the horr it the horrendous turn this country could take, given the historic importance of Social Democrat uh uh democratic party and federal parliament has had on this country, even though it's never governed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I'm gonna come in a a little more Pollyanna here, and it's not just because you toss me that space. Um it's because I think I I really dig into I've been thinking about this in the leadership race and also thinking about this as a member myself and how how I what I'm looking for from candidates and and what they're talking about. And partly because I, you know, I I do tend to focus my my own uh candidate support around people who are going to be able to do some of this and and have organizing background and can think about this this coalition space. So my Pollyanna actually, though, comes from the very immense uh uh privilege I had of being one of you know the 10 people left in BC with a job still after the BC government left uh folded in 2001 and went down to two seats uh with 77 uh liberals in government.
SPEAKER_03So I think like Yeah, well that was quite the privilege, Nikki.
SPEAKER_00I quite the privilege to still have a job and a little tiny team with two MLAs. But I think you know, if we think about that time, I I think that actually gives me the experience insane because you know, by 2003 we elected Carol James's leader. We had spent a lot of time in the rebuilding phase. It was an extremely painful experience to rebuild. People hated us. We had, you know, we go to events and table and try to sign up members and have people throwing things at us, like no lie. So I think like I dig into the fact that if we can rebuild after 2001 when we lost the BC election, and then in 2004, Jack Leighton was elected leader. I often say Jack wasn't Jack when we got him. He had a really strong background in organizing. I got to work with him really closely in that rebuild of the party as well. And so I think where Jack leaned in and what we, you know, came to see as Jack Leighton as a leader, but also in that rebuilding of the party nationally, it was elbow grease and it was doing the work and it was constant. And he made us all work really hard for those wins, but because he was leading from there. So that's kind of what I'm looking for in a leadership candidate is they can't do it themselves, but they need to bring together across across the country people who are going to lean in with them and and bring back, I think, some of what we've lost, which is that that local capacity and people who are in the mission.
SPEAKER_03I I like your ha a little slightly happier mood than than my dourness on this one.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Maybe because I've been through so much pain, Tom.
SPEAKER_03But uh but i I would argue um the federal party is a little bit more difficult machine because of provinces and provincial sections. That adds a layer of complexity that uh doesn't exist within any particular province. It just becomes more difficult. But I would say, and I would very much agree with you about Jack, he did grow into that. Yeah but I think then the essence, and I being someone from Toronto where he was a city councillor or once ran for mayor, what I always thought about Jack was he always was trying to get at points of agreement, not points of disagreement, trying to find points of agreement. So he, as we saw as I when he became the leader, he kind of was a a moderate social mainstream social democratic party leader. But he always had uh feelers and friends in the left of the party uh and who supported him and he trusted him. He had um pe folks in the labor movement who knew him well. Uh and and he had built a network across the country, of course, through his uh leadership of the Federation of Canadian municipalities, so that was a benefit as well. He had those contexts. So i it just strikes me that it's that piece of getting uh reaching those pieces of the coalition and finding the points of agreement where we can go forward. And I and if I could ask, you know, if I could ask uh the leadership candidates to do one thing, it would be in these last weeks to show me that you can do that or that you're committed to doing that and can uh carry out that mission. Yeah. I'd love to show that.
SPEAKER_00I'm just gonna throw in there though, as a BC person, I think um and who supported Jack for a leader. I did so on the the the basis of like the three people in BC who knew who he was from SDM. So I there's a lot of space to grow here, I think. As a non-Toronto person.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00There's back to my positive.
SPEAKER_03All right. Well we've we've taken up too much time on on this negativity and positivity debate. Um but what we what we should talk about is you're you're gonna um uh you want to take us a little bit be below the fold on the craziness of uh apparently drug dealing Christmas Day drug dealing city councillors. Tell us about this nut so thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I wanna I want to start this from also I was thinking this morning, because this song is just like an earworm that you know politicians need to be paying attention to AI and what is real and what's not. And I say if you're a BC politician, we have this add-on repeat like on every radio, every TV show from our securities commission about AI being the demise of us all. And it is like you can't get away from it. It's a total earworm. So I want to pass that, like I think I'm I'm you know, social media connected to all the folks we're gonna talk about. Pass on that lesson to politicians, check your sources before you go out, because you may end up in lawsuits. So, you know, it's interesting watching the Vancouver mayoral and and council debates uh going on right now and coalitions and parties forming right now. It's more interesting for me because this is the really the first one that I'm totally sitting at out after, you know, a couple decades of trying to bring together progressives in Vancouver because we moved to the suburbs uh just before the last one. So I get to take a pause and just judge everything everyone's doing. Um, there is a lot going on here still in Vancouver, being you know, one of our biggest, one of our, because Surrey and Vancouver are getting pretty close inside, biggest municipalities, and and we will have multiple progressive parties on the slate, multiple mayoral candidates. So we'll have to get into those things in a different show. But back to our the AI being the demise of politicians, particularly, I would say what we're seeing here is we have a sitting mayor, Ken Sim, and his parties uh called ABC. They only have been in power since 2022. So this is their first re-election campaign. Yeah, and they've had a bunch of uh, they've had a couple people leave their party, they've had a lot of changes. We've had by-elections uh here where a couple more progressives got seats in Vancouver. So, you know, there's a lot of shifting dynamics. And I think we've seen some polling lately that say that people want to see more progressive uh voters, more progressives on council in Vancouver. Um, and you know, Ken Sim came in from this heavy business supported sort of this approach we we sometimes see from politicians from the business community saying, you know, they want to run the city like a business. And and again, back to where you've had that material, but he was regularly. Ken thin we can say is really a businessman. So he is running in October again, which I think there was a lot of question about whether he would go into that, um, knowing that his you know his party has had changes. One of his former council members from his party is running for mayor as well. His former chief of staff is running for mayor against him. Oh, um it's gonna be yeah, I know this Vancouver, as I said, will be spicy, maybe spicier than Toronto this time. Maybe not spicier than Surrey. Um, but it came to light a couple of weeks ago where Ken Sims maybe his you if he might decide not to run again, depending on the outcome of this. But one of his council members, Lenny Joe, who's with Sim Sims Party, he claimed in a five-minute video, so a long video, he put on WeChat, with a really popular uh social media platform for the Chinese-Canadian community, which is an important voting block in Vancouver and in different places in BC. So he did claim here that four, not just a couple, four opposition Vancouver counselors are drug users and distributors. So these are big issues in the Chinese Canadian community. So, you know, you're you're accusing your colleagues on council, four of them. Um, and it was very widely shared because that's how this platform works. These counselors called for an integrity commissioner review. And then it turned out, as the media dug into us, that it was actually Ken Sim who was around uh behind the initial allegation here. Um, and he had told a group of Chinese businessmen that a particular counselor, he had Shawn Or had that he'd seen a photo of him handing out illegal drugs on Christmas Day. He's saying now, the mayor's saying now that this was, you know, a mistake. He he should have looked at the photo source, it was AI generated. So, you know, back to our lessons here for politicians. But now Shaun Or, of course, has a civil claim alleging defamation, which I think we can all agree is is has happened here. Um, well, I'm not a lawyer, but I think you know, public signs are you know, so when they come to sue you, that can be your excuse.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry, not a lawyer, just play one sometimes. Um and so this is gonna be playing out now. Of course, this has only happened in the last week or so. The mayor's gone quite quiet on it. We'll see what he decides and how it plays out. But, you know, just back to that, you know, heated political times here that you you have to actually be accountable. And I think that's what we're seeing right now play out here. Is, you know, you can't be going forth and making these sort of allegations about anyone, your colleagues in in in particular. Uh, and this is going to be a really heated uh uh election coming up here in Vancouver in October. It's not the only lawsuit that's been involved around Ken Sim. He's actually, he actually last summer filed a defamation uh suit against that former chief of staff, Karim Alam. Karim's now running for mayor on a different banner against Ken Sim. So we have no shortage of dynamics going on in Vancouver for the upcoming election.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's that's wild. That is wild. Okay, well, we we're gonna have to come back to that story because it sounds like there's a lot more in it. But let's take a break now. Uh we're gonna come back with our interview uh with uh Guillo Jacinta from the Steelworkers Union to talk about trade and Trump and building jobs and stronger economy.
SPEAKER_00Donald Trump's war on Canada's economy continues, and our businesses with political assistance are scrambling to find new markets for our export goods. Some see a solution in a rapid increase in defense spending, some are focused on major projects. There's been less discussion on how industrial policy can create jobs in new sectors or build out sectors where we're already strong in Canada. We're lucky to be joined today by Guill DeSinto, an economist who spends a lot of time thinking about these issues in his role as the economic and trade policy policy analysis for the Canadian National Office of the United Steel Workers. Prior to joining USW staff in 2017, Gill was a production worker in the Bull Moose Tube, a steel tube producer in Burlington, Ontario, and a member of USW Local 1416. Thanks for joining us on this important topic today.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for having me. Yeah, great to have you. Thanks. Uh the steel workers members play a key role in a whole bunch of uh important sectors in the Canadian economy. Uh a couple of these, like forestry and steel, are under particular attack from the uh US President Donald Trump and his campaign of economic force against our country. Can you just let's just start by can you give us a sketch of how workers in the sector are holding up in those in those especially in those two key sectors uh against the pressure that's being put on their companies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, certainly. Yeah, so it's it's 2025 was a a very difficult year, as you can imagine, uh, for those sectors and and aluminum included, I would include aluminum with uh with the steel sector there. Um yeah, I mean just to give you a sense of of uh of the shock, the trade shock in the steel sector and aluminum sector, uh in 2025 uh exports to the United States uh from Canada steel exports declined by by about 31% or so um year over year, right, comparing 2025 to 2024, that that's actually slightly overstates uh or understates the the loss uh partly because there was a sort of a pulling forward of demand uh in the earlier part of the year as right US steel consumers tried to uh get ahead of the tariffs so uh when you look at like the last few months and the last quarter of of 2025, uh exports were down nearly 50 percent. December was 55%. Uh and the trend in the steel sector, for example, there hasn't hit a bottom yet. So we're seeing uh we're still seeing continuous declines uh month over month uh in in exports to the United States. Um on the aluminum side I think it's been a bit more uh a bit more resilient. We haven't we've seen pretty large declines year over year as well about uh 25% uh or so in terms of exports to the States. Uh but there's certainly been a plateauing uh in terms of export volumes. Like we haven't there you know I never want to be the person that calls a bottom but uh exports have been has sort of flatlined uh since the Canada has maybe a yeah Canada has maybe a more commanding demand in the marketplace, does it not?
SPEAKER_03In steel rather than aluminum rather than steel?
SPEAKER_01Yeah no it does. And the US is quite dependent on on our semi-finished aluminum and and one of the differences with the aluminum sector and the steel sector is that um there's much more sort of uh diversification possibilities uh with aluminum other which is not the case with steel and you have seen that uh aluminum suppliers in Canada have been able to uh diversify away from the U.S. Uh I think the the export share going to the US at the beginning of 2025 was something like 97% of all exports was going to the US by the end of the year it was around 67, 70 percent. So there was some uh we I mean in terms of like diversification of exports that's clearly happened in in the aluminum sector. Uh forestry's you know uh forestry's been in an ongoing crisis for some time now so um and you know that forestry sector has been facing uh anti-dumping counterfeiting duties for for some time now about 35 percent and and the Section 232 tariff on softwood at the end of the year adds another 10 percent to that um in terms of export volumes we saw a decline I think it was about nine percent of of wood products to to the US um and there's also some evidence of diversification um as well uh away from the US so um it's been a tough year in terms of employment uh you know uh I I think the average employment numbers in the steel industry uh from stats can mark that employment's declined about 1.4% approximately uh aluminum's been pretty stable forestry uh about about 1% as well uh we've seen losses in in the steel sector we've lost three uh three steel mills uh not in the primary sector but sort of to further down the the value chain um my plant that I came from unfortunately uh uh closed uh last year uh and in total that's about you know if if those plants were operating at full capacity that's about 400 400 jobs or so uh and then we also had the accelerated job losses at at Algoma um and again that's not just sort of mentioned the that we have thousands of members that are on work sharing agreements with their employers and and and the federal government through the EI program. Aluminum like I said it's been a bit more resilient um but forestry um I had some employment losses there. I think we have about 1700 members uh laid off in that sector.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah thanks for that and I I'm in BC I don't know if we said that so yeah the forestry sector dynamic is is a hot topic here and how to deal with some of those losses. So um on the jobs front so expanding on that so Stats Canada reported on Friday we had the February employment rate rising 0.2 percentage points. So that's over 110,000 fewer jobs than December for the February stats. The majority of that job loss is actually in Ontario where there's 6000 fewer jobs in February than December. So of course you know unemployment does weaken our country it's as we sort of still continue focusing on fighting Trump it's that doing so with one arm tied behind our back here. But a lot of where we're seeing the federal economic agenda it won't show up as paychecks for months even you know major projects and and provinces as well can be counted in too many months away if not years. So can we be moving faster? What's the cost of not really centering this this battle for in our economic gains on creating jobs and full employment in your mind?
SPEAKER_01Yeah those are two good questions. In terms of the job numbers like we have been seeing a a progressively deteriorating labor market. I think that's two months in a row now of uh of employment losses so employers are shedding uh labor, right? Um and I believe the labor force contracted um as well. Uh in terms of the costs uh you know the costs of unemployment are are are myriad uh but primarily right I mean uh higher unemployment less output we could produce less uh but there's also long-term effects of un of unemployment right I mean um the longer folks are out with without jobs uh you know their skills get eroded um they become less employable there's a you know uh a professor down in the US her name is Pavlina Traneva um who's a labor economics uh professor uh she has a quote that says uh you know unemployment breeds unemployability uh and and that's very much true uh and what we've seen in progressing you know if you compare 2025 with 2024 uh you've seen the share of those that are in long-term employment over 27 weeks uh grow uh quite significantly uh year over year. So uh definitely a concern um and and something that that we don't want to see. I think on the on your first question of of whether we could go faster, um I think this is a an interesting question. It's it's a pointed one in that I think it really touches at the heart of the federal government's strategy to stimulate the economy, which is very much premised on crowding in private investment, right? So the function of how fast we go really depends upon how how fast private capital and the private sector um crowd in all the, you know, crowd in and add on to to all the uh the money that the government's investing in uh in the economy. And my my my concern with that or at least my question isn't necessarily questioning whether or not crowding in is is real. I I I I I I believe it is I I think it's a it's a core premise of heterodox uh economists so I I certainly uh believe with that so that's not my my concern. Uh my concern really is whether or not whether what the government has done so far, whether it's whether it's enough uh and whether we need whether we need more and whether the medium through which they've done it uh is sufficient, right? And I and to give you an example um and and and just to sort of focus that a little a little bit more the question really is whether or not um the private sector feels uh what the government is doing has you know materially lowered the level of uncertainty uh whether or not it's it's it's uh you know incentivizing uh private investors, animal spirits to invest, right? And when when you look at the data, for example, in 2025, like we had three consecutive quarters of uh declining core business investment in in nonmachinery, in non-residential investment, uh machinery, intellectual property products, right? We hadn't had that since you know the pandemic and just right before the pandemic and before that it was um the oil price crash in 2014, 2015, right? And so and all those produced uh had recessionary outcomes. So um you know really the question is um is private or private investors, does the private sector feel comfortable enough that what the federal government is doing uh is enough for them to, you know, uh engage in in private investment. Um so far I I don't think that's the case. There's a little bit of a rebound in in Q4 of 2025. That that's certainly true it particularly on that core core business investment. Uh we'll see if that that that remains the case in in the first quarter of 2026. But I I'm just I'm not convinced. I I mean my perspective really comes from the steel sector, right? And uh you know the government has made five billion dollars available to uh through the strategic strategic uh response fund which is the the former strategic innovation fund a billion of those root was carved out for the steel sector um to uh to make investments and retooling and and focusing in different product markets um which they had done to now and and so far I mean we we've heard a lot of chatter and uh in the public but so far no no private sector proponent has taken up any of those uh those funds or used those funds right so there remains a lot of uncertainty right at the end of the day there remains a lot of uncertainty and there likely will remain a lot of uncertainty uh and really the question is you know is what the Carney government done enough uh and whether or not they need more sort of serious or stronger state-led action or public entrepreneurship to uh to really change the the direction here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah and and we're gonna dive into that a little bit bit bit down here. We uh I don't know who if if these folks are unionized or if it might be still workers, but I didn't see the newspaper story that made me think about some folks in coastal BC working in a sawmill. The sawmill uh sorry it's not a sawmill it's a it's a it's a pulp mill. And uh the pulp mill closes and now the the raw logs are getting shipped loaded onto boats instead of cross to somewhere else to be turned into I guess pulp because that's probably what the kind of trees that's what they're good for. It seems to me that a kind of a premise of the Trump plan is um to have Canada ship raw logs or to ship rather than ship lumber or to have Canada ship metal ingots rather than ship steel. So how how do we have pressure points, leverage points where we can push back to do the exact opposite to try and ensure that value adding jobs are getting uh that that this you know we we all know that we are we were blessed with the resources in this country. But are we are we doing the manufacturing part here? And how how do we pressure that and and and keep these chains in Canada um because as Mr Cardi and many others, everybody else has pointed out when these chains now loop through the United States, it it increases our exposure to foreign pressure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Oh that's a good question. There's a few points there. I think in the immediate context of the trade war well well first of all I I I just want to take your analysis there. I I verbally agree with your analysis and agnosis there of of Trump's trade policy. I that's how we've view it at at the steelworkers and I and uh you know when when we present to our members we we sort of take a phrase from um that was popular amongst certain Canadian economic nationalists in the 1960s when they're in the 70s when they were dealing with with the Nixon uh 10% tariff which was uh Nixonomics equals the deindustrialization of Canada. Similarly Trumpenomics equals the the deindustrialization of Canada. So I completely agree with that with that with that framing. In terms of the immediate context of the trade war I think the leverage points that we do have and again looking at it from primarily the the Section 232 sectors steel and and auto particularly the the countertariff strategy um that the federal government uh embarked on under Trudeau was continued in a certain way by by Mark Carney I think has been really important. It's been um there's a bit of a pause there and and a large sort of horizontal remission in the steel sector where uh U.S. steel was allowed to come in tariff free for for a while there. And it and I think there are legitimate reasons there for for that, however, but in large part um those tariffs, we did see a decline in imports coming in from the United States of uh U.S. steel and and that opened up uh some tonnage for Canadian bills to to repatriate. Uh similar, I think in the auto sector the countertariff strategy there in conjunction with the um um the the import uh production import sort of scheme that they have that operates there, I think has been a really important factor in the in the tug of war uh over the the sort of continental uh auto industry. So uh I think in the short term that those measures have have been super important in just defending our productive capacity and defending our our our product capabilities. But but but clearly they're they're insufficient, right? Like we do need other uh additional industrial policy uh interventions and tools um to to expand our our our productive capacity further downstream uh in these sectors at steel I I would say in in particular. Um again the strategic run uh response fund I think is a good is a is a good tool uh that could be used. Um and I think sort of broadly I guess stepping back from the immediate context of the trade where I think um I gotta sort of going back to to your framing I I do think the the Trump administration does want to you know lower Canada's industrial structure uh to a lower value added base, right? I think that's definitely part of the strategy. And we've never really done uh I I don't think we've ever really fully exploited very well our our natural resources.
SPEAKER_03Uh maybe never done a great job to begin with. And it's left us in the situation we're in. And now it's maybe going to get worse.
SPEAKER_01Yeah no definitely definitely we've really missed a a sort of conscious sort of state led whether provincial or federal strategy that that really seeks to maximize you know the the forward linkages beyond the the the raw material extraction um and further develops in the processing whether that's the smelting and refining um refining capacity um right if if anything we've actually quite lost quite a bit in the last decade um in that space uh as well so we've we've gone backwards.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and and so I think the other thing that's been a hot topic we're only on episode eight of of our show and we I think you know every episode we're talking defense because I would say everything now is centered on defense policy for where we're at we hear you know things like wartime acceleration on policy from not only Prime Minister but across provinces. So you know it is logical that uh there's a the reason that we're rapidly adding into the defense sector here. Um but of course really complex issues in terms of um what we're adding in, who we're working with because Canada is not currently preventing products that are being built here being re-exported to do for war crimes and genocide elsewhere. So we actually we're going to dig into that in a future show and not going back. But what we wanted to talk a little bit on on this with you is about that massive injection of public investment into spurring jobs around the defect center and it's defect sector and here um with uh if investment is ending up more with US companies, US jobs, where's the benefit there around our sovereignty or is it continuing to subordinate us to America like we just talked about, is how can I go on some of the other natural resource factors yeah no definitely I think in the in the immediate short term I I I think there's inevitably going to be um a leakage of of public funds going to supporting foreign imports and foreign arms makers that are largely originating from the United States, right?
SPEAKER_01And I think that that has a long historical reason uh our defense production sharing agreements that we signed in the media post-war period, but also uh I think it's fair to say that that there's been a sort of generational underinvestment in in our defense industrial base um for for a long time, right? So I think it's a kind of a function of of those two things. I I do think the the defense industrial strategy uh that the federal government outlined does strike a pretty fair balance between um try to maximize industrial benefits and defending uh Canadian sovereignty. I think the strategic procurement uh philosophy that that's outlined in uh build, partner or buy um does a fairly good job of of uh of ensuring and maximizing uh domestic industrial benefits while defending our sovereignty. I mean in the in the and I just want to point to a few cases like in the the build portion like there is an emphasis of uh sort of picking capabilities where we have already some domestic capacity, right? Uh investing in scaling up those measures, whether that's in uh munitions or uh landed armored vehicles, uh naval ships that's right yeah uh aerospace systems as uh as well, right? So there's a clear sort of industrial policy uh objective there to create national champions. I think they they even use the phrase uh explicitly of national champions, right?
SPEAKER_00The provinces are leaning into that too. Exactly right.
SPEAKER_01Which which anyway you'll see a lot of I mean particularly coming from the steel and aluminum sectors, that'll that'll generate a lot of demand for for those sectors if they pivot towards the metals in those sectors. So I I think in that portion is it's very clear. Even in the partner portion where in the section where for for for military products that we can't produce or have insufficient capacity, or the rather that we have insufficient capacity, the the objective there is to partner with like-minded allies uh under the form of joint ventures uh and joint production, right? And I think the the example of the the grip in here with with Saab is probably falls under that category and it's probably one that I'm I'm looking at pretty closely because I think there you have uh kind of the benefits of of both sides, right? You get strategic autonomy from a military perspective. You get strategic autonomy with your own endogenous fighter, right? And on the industrial policy side, uh you get an advanced manufacturing a so-called what we call India industrial policy space in a an advantageous industry uh that is high RD, high technology, as well as creates a lot of manufacturing jobs, right? So I I I I think that that that's a good sort of uh model. And even in and I think the the real clincher for me was even in the buy portion, and I think the submarine RFP that's out right now is a good example of this. Even in some instances where we can't produce, we just don't have the domestic capability to produce like like submarines, there's been an explicit attempt by by the Ministry of of Industry to tie um any any funds that are, you know, if we're buying from South Korea or we're buying from Germany, there's an explicit attempt to to capture industrial benefits, whether it's leveraging Germany to create an auto plant here, right? And we saw that that's we saw that Korea, right? We saw that last year Well with Korea with Korea we saw the agreement between Hanwa, who's the project proponent and Algoma, right? And if that deal fault happens then Algoma gets a um a structural mill financed by by Hanwa, right? Or and also uh producing elements for for the uh the steel that's going into the submarines. So uh like on the whole in terms of like if we're looking at uh you know the industrial benefits of the defense industrial strategy and and whether it you know builds our sovereignty and our capability, I I do think it does a good job on that front. It is really a case of I mean there's nothing new here, right? This is military Keynesianism 101 uh but it is military Keynesianism uh with Canadian characteristics, right? Like the Carney's Carney's announcement yesterday in in uh in northern Canada, right? There's 40 billion dollars going up there largely to secure uh the Arc by building bases, but it's also going to build uh transportation infrastructure, hydroelectric uh power, right? So uh we're seeing military Keynesianism with some developmental uh effects there as well uh which uh you know I I think in in in are positive uh to a large degree.
SPEAKER_00And as you say sort of starting from behind on a number of things. I mean I'm in as you would know too labor movement's been really active in BC on not being able to meet some of the the shipbuilding contracts that were coming up from the BC government, right? Like we're um that's been shell for a while there's the space to to build there but it is that how do you get those industries now up and running when they couldn't even feed into some of that domestic demand and RFPs.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Yeah for sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03We had uh NDP interim leader Don Davies on uh last week and one of the points that he made was that Canada often loses control of the outcomes of the research that has done here uh either privately universities or of that sort of uh and it ends up uh uh being owned by businesses where the innovation gets applied somewhere else uh so when we look at our RD number it's just it's it's never been strong and um we complain about it but but we keep losing our our intellectual properties. Do you see a similar pattern? Do you agree with that analysis? Um what do you think is at the root of it? Uh what do you think needs to change so that we get the full advantage full benefit of the um incredible intellectual power that Canadians have and inventiveness that we have uh to power our uh the innovation uh the productivity of our own workplaces yeah uh yeah don't definitely I think I I would certainly agree with that with that that assessment I I do think the the issues aren't sort of at the innovation spear uh innovation sort of side of the equation like uh
SPEAKER_01We do have a a pretty strong record of innovating new products and processes and et cetera. It's always been on the sort of the other side of the equation, which is uh scaling up these these sort of you know startups, uh the commercialization of of whatever the innovation is, right? And I think that's really where the gap is. And and really that gap in between the two is the question of of financing and and risk, right? And who's going to take the risk? And um the reality is that in in the US, uh, you know, venture capital pools and risk capital pools uh or capital that's that's more prone to engaging in risky investments uh is much bigger than than ours, right? And so uh I think that for me is is probably the the key ingredient here. I I think the defense industrial strategy touches a little bit on this, but more on the the defense industrial side of the question. Um so we could do a much better job uh providing public financing. Uh, you know, the Business Development Bank of Canada would be the probably the best institution to to to to to operate in this space and and to support you know small, medium uh and even startups uh to scale up their operations um uh you know and and really fill that gap that that's missing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I remember a little period, maybe 15-ish. I guess it would be around the maybe even the dot-com bubble era, where uh Kitchener and Guelph and Ontario was a real hotspot of tech innovation and an incredible number of new patents coming out. Um and big US tech companies bought them. In some places they just fired everybody, took the tech and used it in, you know, uh Silicon Valley. Uh and we kind of weren't any further ahead than, you know, I mean, I guess we are. I I'm being overly grim, but it it it certainly felt like uh you know, some great Canadian inventions were taken away. Um but how but I guess the the the question is like it's about money, right? If somebody sees a great innovation and they are in the they they and they are Microsoft, they got you know uh fifty billion dollars in innovation purchasing power every year, say, I don't know. Um how do we try and have companies or companies aligned with private sector, uh sorry, public sector, to to even challenge that buying capacity, that capacity to to take and uh repatriate the tech to uh their own country country?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean that like in this in addition to sort of beneficial or or uh um you know, on the financing side that the public could could sort of engage in. I mean uh government procurement is also a very good way of sizing up and scaling up uh these smaller firms and providing them with the revenue that they need to reinvest into their into their firms, right? And so uh I think that's so far been a very very much an uh uh an untapped source of of growing domestic uh domiciled like Canadian companies. Um, you know, I I'm hoping that the buy Canadian uh procurement policy, you know, definitely assists with with that process. Uh but I I do think your sort of larger question of ownership is also uh also important, right? I mean I again not not from sort of the sort of tech innovation space, but from the steel sector. Um, I could tell you that the Canadian steel sector, primarily when it was largely Canadian owned, was a site was a site of both product and process innovation, right? It was like the Stelco and Hamilton and inve invented the the coil box, which uh just a uh innovative way of of of coiling uh steel coil that comes off line. Um right. And and once we saw a lot of these firms um sort of being opened up to foreign ownership, what we saw was not process or product innovation. What we saw was uh essential essentially you know uh the stripping of assets and the stealing of order books, right? Um from a number of uh foreign-owned uh companies. So uh I do think the the domestic ownership piece is is also important um uh in in this conversation.
SPEAKER_03Good point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks for all of this. This I think we could probably spend hours obviously on these topics and we appreciate you coming in with your your knowledge. Um and and I would say too, like we're continuing to see, of course, that uh the in polls and public opinion that we are like the public's still very dialed into jobs in the economy is as the top pressures right now for them. So we probably will need to keep diving into these and may need to bring you back on to talk a bit more.
SPEAKER_01Certainly, for sure. Yeah, I'd be happy any time.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_01Thanks a lot, Gil. All right. Appreciate your time. Take care. Nice to meet you folks. Thank you. Yeah, bye.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so interesting interview. Um I can imagine that they're uh the steel workers super challenged with these problems and uh uh worried about how their industries um succeed in the future. The questions uh that really uh resonated for me were though about the future and and and how do we try to protect this country of ours, our economy, to make sure that uh we can generate the jobs that we're that we're not gonna turn into uh the you know, the drawers of the hewers of wood and drawers of water that it seems like Mr. Trump wants to turn us into.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's interesting too. I think for me it was actually some of the the the thinking about the past and how we get here, right? The that not having that history and industrial strategies of of the value added and making sure that you know we've built out into those sectors. I think I I think about it heavily uh in BC and and I come from a resource sector family as well, and that's that's crashed over the years. So I think as we look at we'll have to bring someone on to talk BC forestry soon, too, because I think that's a great example of where some of you know the harm from the past means that the sector can't meet the jobs goals and what we talked about in terms of those mill closures.
SPEAKER_03Aaron Powell I remember if I'm correct, Nikki, at one point uh the uh allocating rights to timber was tied to having an on-site sawmill, and the liberal BC liberals took that away. So this is a way of you know, this is a way of killing our our manufacturing base. Um some people don't think of of sawmills as as manufacturing because they're from Ontario and you think cars and steel.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But it very much is. In Northern Ontario, in Quebec, uh, and in in BC.
SPEAKER_00Just doesn't seem like um, those long-term strategies aren't in in place and we're suffering from them now. Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Anyway, we were getting these debates too around you know conservation and used to trees, and it's like I think everyone agrees that if we're harvesting trees and you know you you hit some of those conservation targets too, if we're actually using the products in a way that that could be a lot of things.
SPEAKER_03Well, I know I know for a fact that here in Ontario, we're well, well, well behind uh in uh the the amount of lumber that could be taken while meeting the conservation goals. So because the industry is is is in a lull. And it's never been a it's like BC has got a very, very strong industry. Ontario is relatively small despite the massive size of this province. But anyway, we got to do a whole show. The lumberites will be after us.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, anyway.
SPEAKER_03Let's take a break and we'll come back um with uh Love It or Heave It. Okay, before we wrap up, we're at that part of the show we like to call Love It Or Heave It about something we love and want to keep, or something we'd like to heave and forever forget. Unpopular opinion maybe, but I am heaving the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto this week. Uh I went for the first time in many years recently and did not see a museum with a sense of purpose or that made any attempt to bring us the artifacts that tell us our our own story. Um there's a small exhibition about China, there's a one about gems and metals around the world, there's uh furniture and silverware of British aristocrats. It's all beautiful stuff. I mean, it's very lovely, very interesting, but what's the connection to Ontario? Um I I don't understand it. There's a single room about indigenous people, but it barely tells a story. Uh it's a mishmash of artifacts from the Niska in the West to the Mi'kmaq in the East, but nothing about indigenous villages in the Great Lakes region, no artifacts about their contact with the earliest Canadians, um, no artifacts about how that contact played into the other contacts between French and British colonials and how that led to a a global war, uh, or how the American Revolution uh and uh indigenous nations, French and British, all played together for the loss of the Ohio Valley, the gain of the Ohio Valley to the United States. Uh it didn't mention people with big names like Isaac Brock or Tecumseh or Brandt or Pontiac or Blue Jacket. I mean, these are um people who you know are are supposed to be icons of our history, but we don't know who they are, and they aren't represented in our museum. How can that be? There wasn't anything about the invasion of Upper Canada in 1812. Well, there I there actually there was a very, very small exhibit on that. Um and I mean this isn't it was an invasion uh which Toronto, then York, was attacked, captured, looted, and our Parliament buildings burnt to the ground. Um kind of significant. Uh might have an artifact around for that, I don't know. Or it doesn't touch on the rebellions of 1837, where three or four hundred people died in shootouts. I mean, this is, you know, kind of warfare. Um not mentioned. And that's I mean, just that's just a beginning. Um I just think when tourists visit this city, they don't want to learn how culture uh they're not c they're not gonna learn how our culture developed. And it's not a place where I can go or anybody can really go to uh to learn about it. So I hate to do it. Uh, but I gotta say, uh we der we deserve a lot better uh than the uh than what I saw at the Royal Interior Museum last weekend.
SPEAKER_00Uh this week we're we're giving love, and I think a lot of people are giving love to what is being called the perfect press release. Some may call it the goat of all press releases from last week. So as we've talked about on this show, you know, rage baiting on reconciliation is so high on some social media platforms, particularly in BC. And I think some of the players are losing up the plot here in their attempts to get views, including conservative MP Aaron Gunn. So he posted on social media tying land acknowledgments to private property rights, private property rights being a huge debate right now in BC, particularly with the BC conservative leadership race going on and with a number of new agreements and decisions being brought into this discussion. So I just want to read out, though, this fabulous, I think, press release that people across the country have been sharing from the First Nations who are uh sitting on the territory, or who's who, sorry, who Aaron Gunn's uh sits on the territory of his writing here of these First Nations. So after that, after that tweet, uh the press release says chiefs from four First Nations communities are urging the public to please approach Aaron Gunn with no caution whatsoever. He is completely harmless, though, momentarily unsettled by the alarming possibility that someone might acknowledge the land before a meeting. Yesterday on social media, the MP appeared to crash out and demand to speak to the manager of land acknowledgments, a position that observers confirm does not exist. Okay. Chillax, bud. Land acknowledgments have never seized private property, canceled a mortgage, repossessed a pickup truck, or altered a single title deed anywhere in Canada. They are simply people recognizing the history of the place where they are standing. No one's going anywhere. And I love this part.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00Canada will survive the brief moment of honesty until then chiefs across the region continue to reassure the public that land acknowledgements have not to date resulted in any land back. So there we go. You know, I think it's hard sometimes to keep light of issues around reconciliation, generally hard to keep at light because they are so serious and they are, as we've talked about, resulting in anti-indigenous rhetoric and hate. But I think these folks did a great job, and everyone is dying to know now. I think anyone who works in communications, who wrote this brilliant press release. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, um well, that is really uh that's really funny. And in a way, what I gave a heave to and what you're loving here, there's a connection because uh it's this idea uh that there's a culture of not knowing our past, uh, and it allows this, it creates a space for disinformation and distortion because we don't have the facts. We can't know the difference, but it also creates the possibility of like breakthrough moments like a press release like that that gives you sudden clarity and of course is is funny at the same time. And anyway, it reminds me of uh one of you know our villain here, Steve Bannon's beliefs that politics is downstream for culture. So to change politics, you have to break the culture, and certainly Meg is working on that one. Uh but it makes me, Nikki makes me wonder whether the opposite is also true, uh, or something like the opposite. That that breakthroughs in clarity that deepen a culture or put the culture more in touch with its true history um anchors Canadian politics. Anyway, just a thought. Um thanks for joining uh Left East to West this week. We'll be back next week.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for joining Left East to West with hosts Nikki Hill and Tom Harkin. We'd love to hear your comments, ratings, follows, and shares. It helps people find us. To become a Left East to West community member and to help us reach even more Canadians. Subscribe using the link in the show notes. You can watch us on YouTube or lesson wherever you get your favorite podcast. Just search for Left East to West and subscribe. I'm Doug Hamilton signing off for Left East to West. See you next week.
