Canada Day with Carney's elbows down, hope for the country and more...

If you flap your elbows up and down that often, don't you start to look like a chicken?

Happy Canada Day! Dominion Day for those who celebrate the old way.

I was asked an interesting question on the radio on Monday by Gene Valaitis, “Are you hopeful for Canada?” he asked. I wasn’t expecting it, we had been talking about Mark Carney’s disastrous handling of the Digital Services Tax and other political matters.

My answer though was yes; I am hopeful for Canada.

I love this country and I’m an optimist by nature. We have an incredible geography, abundant resources, talented people and if we would just stop getting in our own way we could be thriving.

Our country is great, sometimes our political leadership leaves something to be desired.

BTW, Gene, who some of you might remember from various iterations of the Jesse and Gene Show, now hosts from 9-noon on 610 CKTB in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Politics doesn’t affect me...

I sometimes hear from people who say they aren’t interested in politics, and it doesn’t have any impact on their lives. People who think that couldn’t be further from the truth.

At the municipal, provincial and federal level, politics impacts all aspects of our lives, some of us just don’t see it.

Is the street you live on paved properly? Is it safe?

Those are both political choices.

Can you get a visit with your family doctor or have surgery in a timely manner? Those are impacted by politics.

Can your teenage kids or grandkids get a summer job or are they getting crowded out by temporary foreign workers or international students given an increased capacity to work? Again, political decisions that impact your daily life.

You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.

Which direction are Carney’s elbows pointing...

As I wrote in a very well-read piece on Monday – thank you all for your support – Mark Carney blew it this past weekend. Carney was all about elbows being up during the election campaign but has been keeping them firmly at his side any time he deals with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Look, the Digital Services Tax was a disaster; it never should have seen the light of day, but it is now a case study in how not to conduct negotiations.

The Americans have been opposed to this tax, which they say unfairly targets American companies and violates CUSMA, since it was first proposed in 2020. The Biden administration started a trade panel dispute against us after the tax was passed into law a year ago.

The Trump administration asked for a 30 day pause on the tax being implemented while negotiations on a new trade deal, including lifting American tariffs were ongoing.

Rather than take the win, announce that he was suspending the DST coming into force while trade talks continued, Carney took a loss. Instead of looking like a statesmen, he looks like a loser, and that isn’t cheering against Canada, it’s reality.

This, by the way, is his current pinned post on X, it claims that “This is Canada — and we decide what happens here.” Can he really say that after repealing a tax he had been defending after a scolding from Donald Trump.

The Liberal internet plan is a disaster...

The DST is just one of many problematic bills and policies that Carney inherited from the Trudeau Liberals, and he bizarrely clings to. The Online Streaming Act which passed, the Online Harms Act which thankfully didn’t but may come back, are extremely problematic.

Even the Online News Act is a big problem, and if the Liberals hadn’t been so ham-fisted, there would have been a commercial agreement between Canadian news publishers and Facebook, as there was with Google, and news content on Facebook in Canada would not have been banned.

But lurking in the shadows is another stupid showdown that could invoke the wrath of the Trump administration and scupper trade talks. It’s a requirement for major streamers like Spotify, Amazon, YouTube and others to pay millions of dollars per year to support local broadcast newsrooms.

Look, I started my career in local radio, I hosted a national TV show for five years, I understand the system well, but this is lunacy.

When traditional broadcasting started, radio and then TV, the deal was that they were making money by using public airwaves and therefore should provide a public service by providing a public good – mainly news. Streamers are not using public airwaves; they are sending us their signals over privately owned and built internet and mobile connections.

Telling them that they need to fund local TV and radio newsrooms is utter insanity.

The CRTC is also trying to force streamers to pay into the Canadian Media Fund to support Canadian made movies and TV shows. As someone who lives in downtown Toronto, let me assure you that I am regularly tripping over movie and TV shoots that are funded by the American streamers and employing an almost entirely Canadian crew.

We should loosen the rules on Canadian firms to boost production, not tighten them on American firms. If we stay on the path laid out by the Trudeau Liberals, the Carney Liberals risk chasing away even more investment.

Trying to get a deal done...

So, will we get a deal done with the Trump administration? It’s tough to say, he is incredibly difficult to read, he can change his mind on a dime, but he says he wants a deal as long certain conditions are met, like scrapping the Digital Services Tax.

In an exclusive interview with National Post, the American ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra – who was on Full Comment a few weeks ago- said that a deal is possible and likely.

“We will get to an agreement. The only question is how long will it take,” he said in an interview. “I’m confident we will have an agreement.”

Does that mean a deal before the July 21date that Carney and Trump agreed to when they met in Kananaskis? We will see, but as someone told me about their meeting with an American official, it should be easy.

“We got a deal with China over a weekend, Canada should take half a day,” the official said.

Instead, it’s been dragged out and the name that keeps coming up as being central to a deal not being done is Ambassador Kristen Hillman. I don't know the Ambassador and offer no ill will to her, several conservative minded people I know speak highly of her as well, but the refrain I hear is that she is too much in the weeds.

The Americans want a high-level deal with details to be worked out later and what I hear is that Hillman is all about detail. Well, if that is true, and I hope it’s not, then she’s getting in the way of a deal.

The problem is, Mark Carney just extended her term and made her the lead in trade talks.

So about the future of Iran…

We all saw the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities and for a time there was hope for a peaceful regime change. That doesn’t appear to be on the table now, but I did speak with Kaveh Shahrooz, a lawyer and human rights activist and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about the American bombing, the 12 day war and the future of Iran for the Full Comment podcast.