Can Poilievre survive another floor crossing as Jeneroux jumps ship...

Plus defence spending, Carney's fake anti-Trump trading bloc and more.

We’ll get to floor crossers and what this means for Poilievre in a minute - can he survive and what do the prediction markets say - but first, let me say a few words about defence and trade because that’s what Mark Carney is trying to sell us all on this week.

He announced his Defence Industrial Strategy on Tuesday and to be fair, it’s an industrial strategy more than a defence strategy. There are some good parts in it, including helping to build and sustain a homegrown defence industry.

That part may irk some who want to see a pure market based approach to everything. That appears to be where John Ivison is coming from when I read his column in National Post, but in my view, on defence, you can’t just leave it to the market, you need to have homegrown supply.

I did a two page spread in Wednesday’s print edition, which you can read here, or squint at the image below.

Today I followed up with another piece on the F-35 and why Canada should buy it now and move on.

It truly is the better plane, don’t let anyone fool you. It won a head-to-head competition against the Gripen scoring 57 out of 60 points and meeting 95% of requirements to the 19 out of 60 for the Gripen and just 33% of requirement.

Don’t take my word for it, that was a CBC report last fall where they got their hands on the government score card.

While we argue about whether to buy a 4th or 5th generation fighter jet to replace the CF-18s that went into service in the early 80s, our allies are starting to build 6th generation jets. They’d like us to join them, which would be great for our aerospace industry, but we’re stuck in the past.

Give the column a read, I explain what is at stake, including jobs. If you can share it, that would be great.

Carney’s anti-Trump trade pact…

A piece from Politico’s European bureau started making the rounds over the weekend that had Democrats in the United States cheering and Republicans daring Canada to go it alone without the United States.

Here’s the thing, I’m just not buying it.

There is no mega-alliance against Trump, and even if it did materialize, Canada would see little benefit. That doesn’t mean I think the idea of getting the European Union and the CPTPP trading blocs to further expand trade and co-operation is a bad thing.

We desperately need to expand our trade with other countries, but we already have a trade with the EU and we are part of the TPP and yet we see very little in terms of exports to those countries compared to our trade with the United States. The simple fact is, these countries are unlikely to buy our heavy oil, our autos or auto parts, they aren’t going to buy our lumber or our livestock in any meaningful way and those are some of our biggest goods in trade.

I pulled our export figures from our top trading partners and had Yoshio on our design team put together this graphic.

You can add up the annual exports to our second, third, fourth and fifth biggest markets and that annual input at $57.3 billion doesn’t match two months of exports to the United States. The point here is, we need to expand trade, but don’t pretend we are going to quickly replace the United States without a lot of pain.

With Carney embracing this idea that he’s leading an anti-Trump mega alliance, he runs the risk of doing harm to trade the existing export market we rely on.

Incompetence in Toronto…

I know, I know, most of you hate Toronto and aren’t surprised about incompetence at City Hall. I’d argue you could find this at any major City Hall in the country.

Hey Calgary, how’s your water pipes holding up?

Anyway, this story involves the city deciding it needed a new shelter for women. So they rent a building from the Kielburger family, yes of WE Charity fame, spend a fortune renovating it, six years into the lease it’s still not finished and they haven’t offered a single service to a single woman in need.

Read the full insanity here.

Now, about that latest floor crossing…

Matt Jeneroux finally came out of hiding to announce that he’s a Liberal. He went into hiding back in November after Chris D’Entremont crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals and the rumours said Jeneroux was next.

He famously put out a weird statement saying to leave his family alone, that he would resign his seat to spend more time with them and then he wasn’t heard from. Jeneroux hasn’t spoken a word in the House of Commons since November 3, the day before all the floor crossing drama.

Well, he spent time with his family and then became a Liberal. Several people said the headline on my Sun column was funny, so I share it here with you.

Due to the Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the election result from the Montreal riding of Terrbonne, the Carney Liberals still don’t have a majority.

At least not yet.

There will be a by-election in Terrebonne as well as by-elections in Toronto’s University-Rosedale and Scarborough-Southwest. The Liberals will win those last two in Toronto handily but Terrebonne will be a fight.

Can Poilievre stay on as leader…

Sure, he just got 87% in his leadership review in Calgary, but that was before he lost yet another MP. He’s had the benefit of no one in the party organizing against him, but that may change now.

Jeneroux’s crossing and Carney getting an effective majority may see someone decide it’s time to force Poilievre out and make their own run.

The thing with people pulling knives on a leader is you don’t see them right away. You don’t necessarily see the backroom organizing until it becomes apparent.

Erin O’Toole was ousted as Conservative leader because Poilievre and his supporters decided to make the move. Now, Poilievre had nothing to do with the actual knifing of O’Toole, but those that did were all Poilievre people.

I’d start watching for someone to organize inside the party, which so far hasn’t happened.

The Polymarket prediction market had the likelihood of Poilievre being out as leader by the end of this year at 15% at the end of January. By the end of today it was 27%.

Watch this trend.

Meanwhile, the likelihood of Mark Carney getting a majority government went up on Polymarkets even as the likelihood of an election before the summer went down.

Things have changed today.

By how much?

That’s the part we don’t know. Keep watching here for trends.