Snap elections, that ad, verbal blowouts, what others are missing and about that standard of living...

Plus the Blue Jays are up in the World Series.

The Blue Jays are up 3-2 in the World Series, something I felt was possible - may have put a wager on them winning the whole thing at the start of the playoffs.

It’s going to be an exciting couple of days and with the prospect of them winning the whole thing Friday in Game 6, at home, there aren’t many political stories breaking through.

Which was why it was so good that my column about the blow-up between American Ambassador Pete Hoekstra and Ontario trade rep in Washington David Paterson received as much traffic as it did. It’s one of the only political stories to break through of late, well, that and election speculation. Skip down if that’s the story you want and not the verbal assault.

Yes, The Globe and Mail and later CBC ran with the story, CBC even gave the Globe credit for breaking the story but eventually corrected the record to admit it was the Toronto Sun.

While they matched the F-bomb outburst, they didn’t have the other nuggets and I’ll spill more on those in a few moments.

This was one of those stories that started with a simple text message showing up, which led to a phone call, more information, and then a whole afternoon spent talking to more than half a dozen people who were at this event.

It was a lot of work, but worth it.

About that blowout with the ambassador…

So here is what I know about the blow out between Paterson and Hoekstra, which took place out in the open at an event with several hundred people at it.

The Canadian American Business Council has held an event called The State of the Relationship for the last 31 years. It’s about celebrating what is normally a warm and friendly relationship but there is obviously strain especially with Trump breaking off trade talks and posting on social media that he didn’t want to see Prime Minister Mark Carney in Asia.

Paterson walked into the event, held at the National Gallery on Sussex Drive, and when he ran into Hoekstra, I am told that the ambassador let loose. This was a multi-minute, F-bomb laden tirade that has variously been described to me as either a verbal altercation, a hostile exchange and more.

After several minutes the two men parted ways. Others told me that Hoekstra was heard grumbling to others about how bad the Canada-U.S. relationship has become and wondered aloud how we could ever get past what has transpired.

What the others are missing…

So if you haven’t read the column yet, and I’d highly recommend you do read it, there was more to the story that the Globe and CBC missed that was equally delicious if you are trying to figure out all of this mess.

You’ve heard it reported that Carney and his team were close to a deal until Ford’s ad got in the way. That’s not how a top Carney cabinet minister explained it to a smaller, exclusive group.

Prior to that, a VIP reception for sponsors of the event was held in a small room featuring a fireside chat with Dominic LeBlanc, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s point man on the Canada-U.S. relationship. Attendees said LeBlanc was candid about the fact that negotiations with the Americans had been going nowhere for months up until the Oct. 7 visit to the White House when Trump gave his officials orders to get a deal done with Canada.

According to those in attendance, LeBlanc gave some details about the progress but said that a deal wasn’t fully ready before it was derailed last week, in particular, on the numbers. While he didn’t elaborate, numbers could include quotas or a global tariff rate, such as the 10% tariff idea that has floated in Washington for months.

So, not quite there with a deal is what LeBlanc said and he was hinting at there still being tariffs. If you remember back in the summer, Carney was saying we might not get rid of all tariffs.

Ever since my trip to Washington back in February, this has been my view. There is support for a global 10% tariff that spans both parties and could likely get congressional approval to make it permanent.

Now, I posted on the weekend about the ad not being the real reason Trump cut off trade talks. That didn’t come from me, it came from Kevin Hassett, Trump’s National Economic Council Director and a guy involved in the talks.

Hassett’s line about leftovers from Trudeau struck me as odd, but I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that. Then as I was making call after call to nail down the story about the ambassador, I found out something new that others were not reporting.

That cryptic mention of “Trudeau folks” appears to be a reference to Industry Minister Melanie Joly. In response to Stellantis and General Motors making changes to their production plans in Canada – GM dropping production of an EV vehicle that wasn’t selling and Stellantis choosing to produce the Jeep Compass in Illinois instead of Ontario – Joly threatened to sue both firms and then took away their tariff-free status for vehicles produced in the United States that are imported into Canada under CUSMA.

Both of those issues were raised by the companies with the White House between Trump’s Tuesday comments about the Ford ad and his Thursday comments.

Threatening to sue the companies in court is one thing, and Americans are used to lawsuits, they will sue you because it’s Thursday. Putting tariffs on the vehicles though was seen as an affront.

I’ve been saying for a while that we can be our own worst enemy and can really frustrate the Americans. I don’t like being right on this, but we keep getting the proof points, even Politico out of Washington is saying it wasn’t the ad, it was a growing frustration with us.

Snap election? Not likely…

As the election speculation has ramped up, my position has been that we won’t have an election because it doesn’t benefit any of the parties. Then I read Fred Delorey’s excellent column on his substack.

Fred was Erin O’Toole’s campaign manager in 2021, he’s been around the Harper government, the Ford government, he run successful and not-so-successful campaigns and he’s well respected. So when he said we are definitely heading for a snap election, I had to reconsider my position.

“The Bloc wants to prove Ottawa will never deliver for Quebec. The NDP wants distance. The Conservatives want blood. And the Liberals? They want a majority,” Delorey writes.

If you are a political geek, and since you are here I think you might be, then give him a read.

That said, I haven’t changed my position and still believe that we will only have an election if the Liberals want one. They are certainly the party talking about an election the most as I point out in my column in the Sun on this matter.

Boosting our standard of living…

You may have heard that Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada made some comments about our standard of living dropping. It seems some are taking them out of context, because he didn’t say we should accept that, he said if we don’t change some things that would happen.

He’s 100% right on that point, but what we have to change are many of the policies that the Liberals brought in over the last 10 years and I’m not sure Carney and his team have the appetite for that.

Anyway, I mused about that here if you are interested in more.