‘The government is floundering’: Hub Politics on Carney’s bail reform pivot and Canada’s auto manufacturing future

In this episode of Hub Politics, host Sean Speer is joined by Amanda Galbraith, co-founder and president of Oyster Group, and David Coletto, founder and CEO of Abacus Data, to discuss Prime Minister Carney’s recent announcement on bail reform and increased police funding. They examine how this policy shift represents a significant departure from the previous Liberal government’s positions and mirrors Conservative policy proposals. They also discuss the political fallout from Stellantis’s decision to move Jeep production from Brampton, Ontario, to the United States, exploring how Trump’s tariff threats are creating incentives for companies to relocate and the broader implications for Canada’s manufacturing sector. You can listen to this episode on Amazon, Apple, and Spotify. Program Transcript This is an automated transcript. Please check against delivery. SEAN SPEER: Bail reform, autos and Ronald Reagan. We’re going to try to cover all three of those issues in this week’s episode of Hub Politics. Of course I’m always joined by Amanda Galbraith, the co founder and president of Oyster Group, as well as David Coletto, the co founder and, pardon me, the founder and CEO of Abacus Data. Amanda, David, it’s always great to connect with both of you. DAVID COLETTO: Hello. Hello everybody. AMANDA GALBRAITH: Hello. SEAN SPEER: We’re speaking on the 16th of October at 1:30 and we just had an announcement from Prime Minister Carney on bail reform as well as increasing the number of police officers which to be honest Amanda, if you didn’t have the sound on or you didn’t have the picture on, you know, one might have thought that Stephen Harper made it includes amongst other things, reverse onus when it comes to, to bail, consecutive sentencing, something of course Liberals have historically opposed restricting conditional sentences for sex related offenses. And as I alluded, more RCMP officers expected in next week’s budget or next month’s budget. Help us make sense of this announcement, which on the face of it seems to buck up against what we’ve come to expect over the past decade from the Liberal government in Ottawa. AMANDA GALBRAITH: Yeah, I would say it’s about, it’s about damn time for them to actually get this thing out there. I think politically they had to. It is crime and this, you know, safety is a major issue in Canadian urban centers and I think across the country. And the Prime Minister, as we’ve talked on this podcast, has been spending an inordinate amount of time and like you could argue rightly, but he’s been international. Right. He hasn’t been focusing on these domestic kitchen table issues and conservatives have been eating his lunch and frankly if the NDP were around in any sort of prevalent way, they’d be doing the same thing. So this to me was something they should have done two months ago. You know, he got out today. Yeah. To your point, it’s very interesting. You could have ripped this out of the Stephen Harper government playbook. But I think that tells you how far the Canadian public has gone that they feel with their voter coalition they’re able to put this forward and make this happen so long past due. Whether they can actually execute again remains to be seen. We had the public safety minister at committee in a clip he was asked, have we hired the border guards? Nope. I don’t know. Right. So I think again maybe on the execution side they have not the most capable spokesperson in their roster. But I think this is an important thing for them to do, if nothing else, just to protect the government who will be at significant risk every time there’s a major crime in this country. SEAN SPEER: David, talk about two things that Amanda raised. The first is the rising salience of crime and what you might characterize as disorder. And then secondly, the dynamics within Mark Carney’s own coalition when it comes to, I think what it’s fair to characterize is shifting to the right on these issues. DAVID COLETTO: Well, I think we have talked about this on a past episode. That salience of crime and public safety has risen pretty rapidly. In our last survey, 21% of Canadians put it in their top three issues. So that’s one in five people, more likely among older Canadians, more likely among women. So it is an issue that speaks to your point, your second point about key parts of that liberal coalition, urban suburban baby boomer women and men, frankly, who live in around the Greater Toronto area, lower mainland of Vancouver, parts of Montreal, who feel that whether rightly or wrongly, their perception is that some of these crime related issues, whether it be auto theft, violent crime, break ins, are a problem. Look, I was visiting my family in Richmond Hill, Ontario and the doorbell rang. We were at dinner and my father’s like my father, who is a former home builder, big man, not weak at all, in his 70s, said let’s not answer the door. We’re not answering the door anymore. Like I’m like what? Like we don’t answer the door. When it rings. We check our little app and it’s usually an Amazon delivery, but still. So that’s the feeling that I think is increasingly widespread, that people don’t even have enough confidence to answer their door. Which by the way, where my parents live is an entirely safe and well to do part, middle class, upper middle class, part of the Greater Toronto area. And so this is the group that Mark Carney needs to reassure that he’s got. He’s getting control, he’s putting the tools in place to allow the police to do their job and giving them the resources to do it. SEAN SPEER: Now, we won’t know the precise details of this legislation until it’s tabled in the coming week, but at least based on what the prime minister said, it speaks to a lot of issues that the Conservatives have championed, not just in the current parliament but for some time. We talked last week about the inherent challenge for the Conservatives to essentially make the case we told you so. But this is another example where ostensibly that’ll be part of the argument that Pierre Poliev and his colleagues make, particularly of course, because Some members of Mark Carty’s cabinet were mere months ago defending the government’s position on these issues. Just talk about the challenge that this poses for the Conservatives. How do they prosecute the case if I can use that phrase on these issues of crime and disorder when the Cardi government is now essentially matching them when it comes to bail reform, police officers, et cetera. AMANDA GALBRAITH: I think there’s opportunity still for the Conservatives to push on this one is they can push them to go farther because I think inherently crime and safety is an issue that the Conservatives and David could speak to this. But my gut instinct is they can and could credibly lead on being more aggressive in this area. So you know, the Liberals being good at this isn’t, isn’t a given and they haven’t been good at it over the last decade, even if this isn’t, you know, a new government and Lord knows they call themselves Canada’s new government which we got in all kinds of trouble for when we were in. We were in, I remember control effing government of Canada as a staffer for Canada’s new government in all capitals when I was there. And we got all kinds of trouble with the bureaucracy. But everyone just accepts that this is done under the Carney government. But if the Conservatives have decided to prosecute a campaign of hey we were right and they finally came to our position, that’s a losing argument for them. A winning argument to me is we were right and they know this isn’t good enough, this isn’t far enough and this will still allow this kind of criminal to stand out. This crime happened here and under these regulations that person doesn’t. They can prosecute it that way. The other thing I’m not confident on is this government’s ability to actually effectively communicate that they’re doing this. They seem to do as the Prime Minister stands up, makes a grand announcement and then nobody does any kind of echoes or follow ups. There is no evidence that there’s any. There’s either value for that sort of follow through either seen by the Prime Minister himself or there’s a lack of trust in the individuals that have to carry the water on that. And I think in particular the water on this is the Justice Minister and the Public Safety Minister and the Public Safety Minister as we’ve. I think it’s not long for this world in that job. The Justice Minister seems to have the confidence of the government but has had a history of missteps on other files. So one, I don’t think they’re actually going to be able to communicate this terribly effectively because the prime minister is not going to be the one doing it. And two, I think the Conservatives have lots of room to play the go further. Why aren’t you doing enough? DAVID COLETTO: And Sean, if I could just go ahead, please add back to my little family in Richmond Hill. My sister also lives there and she’s know late 30s, has three boys. And I think to, to Amanda, not just yes, God bless her Uncle Dave spoils them, but that’s about it. And I can disappear after. Look, I think Mark Carney’s announcement today will be seen by my parents because they’ll watch CTV or CBC and they’ll see that press conference. My sister will not know that this happened. And so I think this government not only needs more spokespeople for its message, but it needs to find a way to get that message to more than a third of the country, frankly. And I think that’s its biggest liability. Doug Ford, A lot of other provincial governments don’t have that problem because they spend the money to put it in front of the right people, which I know we’ll come to that. SEAN SPEER: But I just want to stay with you, David, because in a way, this issue that we’re discussing speaks to a broader trend with respect to the Carney government that I know frustrates a lot of Conservatives, by which I mean the Trudeau government had particular positions on different issues that one can agree with or disagree with. The point is not to litigate it here, but over the past several months, we’ve seen the Carney government essentially pull a 180. And of course, a lot of the cabinet ministers in the Trudeau era still comprise the Carney cabinet. A lot of parliamentarians belong to the Carney caucus. And I think for Conservatives it’s frustrating because it’s perceived as hypocrisy or cynicism or whatever. Put yourself in the shoes maybe of your dad or your sister or other Canadians. Are they seeing these types of announcements that look like about faces through that lens or are they seeing them straight up as they are? DAVID COLETTO: Oh, look, I, I don’t think they are. I don’t think people pay that close attention to this stuff and aren’t looking at politics as a sport like I think all of sometimes we do. And a lot of probably your listeners and watchers right now do because they’re watching a podcast about politics as opposed to one about the Blue Jays. Right. Like, so the point is that, that not everybody looks at it that way. And, and I, and I continue to come back to the data point that we track on every survey is that do you think this government is like the last one? And if you do, you don’t like it. And if you don’t, you do. And almost everybody who voted for Mark Carney continues to say he is not Justin Trudeau. He, his government is not. And so I don’t think they are at least yet connecting the dots between, well, what do you mean? You now are opposed to the carbon tax and you are bringing in bail reform and you’re doing basically a lot of the things that Pierre Poliev has said to he would do if he was Prime Minister. Because Justin Trudeau just a few months ago would have been completely opposed to all of this. They don’t see it that way. Right. I think in a way they do see this not as an entirely new government, but one that’s led by somebody who is very different. And it shows you just how presidential our politics really still is from the voter’s perspective. Right? SEAN SPEER: Yes. DAVID COLETTO: And so they, for Conservatives, they can get away with it. For Liberal supporters, they can do this because that public perception exists for their own supporters. SEAN SPEER: Do you want to weigh in on those insights, Amanda, in particular, what you think it means for conservatives? Do they need to abandon this sense of sour grapes that I know, run through a lot of conservative politics these days and instead of, as we talked about last week, saying I told you so, start to prosecute new and different cases against the government or, or indeed start to advance their own ideas on what they would do differently, I told. AMANDA GALBRAITH: You so is the campaign of losers, in my mind, I told you so gets us nowhere. Gets them nowhere. They won. They won fair and square. They beat us at the game. We all knew the rules and we need to move on as a political movement and understand that it’s a whole new playing ground before us. Right. And I think the Conservatives, as I’ve just even laid out on crime, I think there’s tons of vulnerability there. The Conservatives have inherent credibility on speaking to this issue in a way that I think the liberal liberals as a brand do not. Even if maybe Prime Minister Carney has a bit more space to drag the party credibility upwards. So prosecuting those in a smart, effective way is important and they’re able to do it. But the more we all circle around and cry ourselves to sleep at night, like, that’s loser stuff, man. We’re not going to get anywhere on that. SEAN SPEER: Well said. Let’s transition. I can’t think of a clever way to segue from loser talk to. To this week’s disappointing announcement that Stellantis is planning to move production of their Jeep product from Ontario to the United States, ostensibly partly motivated by the Trump tariffs and various other factors, it’s fair to say that this issue is dominating our politics. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Industry, federally, the Federal Conservatives, and indeed the Provincial Conservatives have spent a lot of time litigating this decision and contesting the company’s withdrawal, at least of this particular line of production from Canada. David, help our audience understand, particularly those outside of central Canada, why this issue is looming so large over our politics. DAVID COLETTO: Well, I mean, to understand how important. And Amanda’s from Windsor, so she will get it even more personally, like, just how important auto manufacturing is to southern Ontario, both as an industry that directly employs people, but as one that that doesn’t. And, you know, I think we are starting to see the exact effect of what Donald Trump is wanting to do, which is to lure back all of these jobs. I was with a colleague of mine in our office in Toronto the other day, and he said to me, david, do you know what the number three spot sold vehicle is in the United States? And I was like, I have no idea. And he’s like, it’s the RAV4. And you know where they’re all made? They’re made in Cambridge and Woodstock, Ontario. All 400,000 of them that are sold into the United States are there. So I think, on the one hand, you know, it makes complete sense why the US President is asking, why aren’t those jobs here and why aren’t we making those cars for Americans in our country? And so I think what we’re seeing is that we have so little leverage over this and the cost calculus. I’m not an economist. I’m not a. I don’t know the business case behind making cars, but I think the politics and a 25 tariff makes it almost impossible for us to convince Toyota and, and Stellantis and others. And now we’re going to go around threatening to sue them. Seems to me to make the, you know, the environment to want to do business here even less appealing. So I think we are really, we’re really in deep trouble, and public opinion is starting to recognize it. One in five Canadians think that the outcome of whatever trade negotiations we end up having is going to be cataclysmically bad for Canada. And then a third recognize that it’s going to end, not horribly, but certain sectors are going to be hit. And that, I think, is going to have different political consequences in other parts of the country. SEAN SPEER: We’ll talk about the trade issue and how it may shape the ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration. But Amanda, why don’t you just take up the topic of the immediate politics. I’ve been struck that no one has really challenged the underlying assumption, for instance, of providing significant subsidies to Stellantis for EV production. The principal argument from the Conservatives and the New Democrats is essentially that the government didn’t impose enough conditions on the public dollars such that it would protect Stellantis employment footprint in the province. How are you understanding the political moment here? AMANDA GALBRAITH: I think, as David mentioned, for me it’s particularly personal. Just growing up where I grew up in the Windsor area in Orsburg, Ontario, which is also home to the bottling plant that got is being closed too, because of tariffs. You know, 12 million people live in southern Ontario. That’s 12 million people that may not be directly employed by the auto sector, but are tertiary or secondary implications of that. It is kind of the heartbeat of a lot of that region. And I think that’s why the political stakes are so high. Because it is a quarter of the Canadian population. People care about it. And even though I’ve never directly worked in the auto sector, my dad worked in a tool and die, planted, manufactured, you know, injection molds that were part of it. So I think the politics are significant. I think the way the government is responding feels hollow to me. And you know, suing, like to what end? Right. You know, and I also, even to be honest with you, I know a lot of people like the pouring out of the Crown Royal bottle. It felt like a cheap stunt to me in the light of the fact that I know friends of mine are husband and wife and are losing their drops and pouring out the bottle sounds nice, but they’ going to get a job out of that. And I get that Melanie Jolie can’t take a bat to a Jeep Grand Cherokee, but she, she can sue them. Right? So. And I think the government’s floundering for relevance, candidly, and trying to say, hey, you know what, we tried it. We gave all the carrots in the world and they’re not staying. Now we’re going to try with sticks, but our sticks are shitty and they’re actually not going to be very effective. And to David’s point, it actually makes the economics of doing business here even worse. So. And the business case for it. I do think, though, to your point, Sean, around the. This is kind of one of the interesting issues where like, like some elements of the right and the left political spectrum converge around like you call it corporate welfare or you know, whether or not that should be happening. I do actually think that will be part of the national conversation over the next six months and I think in particular that will be part of the national conversation because we are going to have an NDP leadership campaign that will, should surface this as a, as a, do we want to be in the business of supporting this stuff because it’s so intertwined and a lot of the economics of the auto sector, for example, like subsidies from government are sort of baked into the process and if you don’t do it here in Canada, they will just go to the states who are able to do it dollar for dollar in a much more efficient way. So, you know, but to me at the my heart of hearts, I’m just pissed and I’m broadly pissed and I think the government’s response is sort of writ large or hollow in comparison to the effect on the 3,000 people that are losing their jobs. SEAN SPEER: Plus Plus plus yeah, well said. Thanks for those personal thoughts. I think they do, they do enable our listeners, viewers to understand how visceral this is for a lot of people in a core part of our province and indeed the country. David, I want to take up something you raised though, which is people are increasingly turning their mind to the fact that for the Trump administration, pulling capital and production from Canada to the United States isn’t a bug of the tariffs, it’s a feature. And that this may be the first of many instances where we see high profile announcements of investors and businesses shifting into the US in order to jump over the tariff wall. And I would just say in parentheses, one concern that I’ve had precisely because of the nature of the Trump administration, when these companies do it, they won’t do it quietly. They will do it in the most high profile way possible in order to curry favorite with the President, which itself may create something of a vicious cycle where other industries or other companies feel some pressure to effectively match their competitors. That can lead in the direction of a conversation about the negotiations themselves, but can also lead to a conversation about what Canada does to try to future proof itself from those incentive effects. I’ve been struck as we head into next month’s budget that we’re not hearing more radical ideas about how to make Canada’s economy more competitive and try to offset the incentives for companies to, to shift the United States. What do you think explains that? DAVID COLETTO: Well, I, I think one first, I agree with you 100%. I mean one of the One of the consequences of this is, and you see it in public opinion, is you are seeing much more openness to things that people would not be supporting in the past. Pipelines, for example, are one of them where people are saying, well, let’s just build it, because literally we know we can, that can be a generator of wealth and let’s get on with it. Because right now we’re losing so much of the things we, we took for granted in other ways, I think more broadly to the question of, like, why aren’t we hearing it? I don’t know. I think it’s perhaps one reason is they can only do one or two things at a time. And right now they are trying to salvage as much from the Canada U.S. trade situation as they can. And they’re focused immensely on trying to reduce harm before they can figure out how do you cure the patient. And I think that is something that very quickly the public will move on because if increasingly people are of the view, look, this is normal now, we can no longer rely on the United States to, to, to allow us, and I think Trump is basically framing it that way, to have all these industries we’ve allowed you up until now, that’s not going to happen anymore. So the question then the public is asking is, so what’s next? And I am seeing indicators that, you know, even something as that was as deeply unpopular not long ago, cutting business taxes, you know, you could not find, you know, a handful of people anywhere who would, other than maybe on Bay street and in certain think tanks who thought that was a good idea. That’s growing because people are under the view now, well, we aren’t competitive. We cannot compete in this world if certain systems are in place. So I do think it’s an outcome of that perspective that this is the norm now. SEAN SPEER: Amanda, one more question before we get to Doug Ford’s Ronald Reagan ad campaign, which is launched with a lot of attention in the United States. And it is on the subject of what you might characterize as Team Canada. One of the interesting aspects of the set of issues that we’ve been just discussing is we’re starting to see growing tensions or trade offs between different parts of the economy and the country rooted in geography. So you have, for instance, major subsidies for EVs in parts of Ontario, as well as the tariffs on Chinese EV imports, ostensibly to protect production at those places. That’s precipitated Chinese retaliation on canola exports. And you’re seeing even premiers from Western Canada start to debate, in effect, that policy with Doug Ford, to what extent do you think there’s a risk here that this whole debate about Team Canada starts to create fissures within, within the country itself? AMANDA GALBRAITH: Think that the Team Canada joining together, holding hands and singing Kumbaya was always going to break. I think it was remarkable that it lasted as long as it did. Like, when on earth did the prime, like the premier of Ontario and the prime minister get along in the way that they have for the length that they have. Right. It’s just. It’s very rare. Right. The whole point is that they fight with each other a little bit. Like they work together. But we here in this province, like, when they do a little bit of, like, a little bit of this, you know, the premier of Alberta is broadly getting along with the Liberal Prime Minister. That is highly unusual. But, you know, at the end of the day, all of these parties are incentivized to protect their own voter base. And now that the, like, the initial stress around the crisis of Trump has shifted to a, okay, this is our new normal and how are we going to deal with the impacts of that? You know, David kind of talked about the, like, how do you stop the bleeding? And then we kind of cure the patient. The cure for each of our regions is very different. And I think we’re going to increasingly see the premiers as they should vocalize and fight on behalf of their own constituencies. And that is not going to be a broad, across the board, Team Canada approach. And I think the one kind of really shifting remarkably and perhaps because for a while he’s definitely stepped into that national void around sort of the Canada is not for sale kind of guy is the premier of Ontario who has been pulling back from his. Everything Prime Minister Carney says is correct now arguing about the EV stuff, saying we need to be firmer. And I do sense a difference between the bad cop stuff and the. I actually think this is the right. This is a different. I would take a different approach. I think there’s a distinction between how he’s communicating. Now, obviously, we know we’re recording this early in the day that the premier of Ontario and the premise are meeting today. So I’m sure out of that we’ll have some nice friendly moments between the two of them. But my guess is next week that shifts right back to move faster on bail reform. Lift the, you know, keep the, like, EV stuff. Like, there’ll be shifts there. DAVID COLETTO: And Sean, like, if I was the principal secretary to the prime minister, and I am not, and I’m nowhere near close to that I would implore him that he has to tell Canadians in clear terms what the vision is to build that economy. He said he would, right? SEAN SPEER: Yes. DAVID COLETTO: Because the fraying of, you know, you’re defending auto, what about forestry and you’re defending forestry, what about oil and gas is going to get worse the more people actually start losing their jobs. Because everything we were talking about to now was theoretical, right? Was theoretical pain. We are now starting to see what happens when Trump doesn’t change his mind and no amount of pressure maybe is going to change it. And I think Mark Carney has to move away from is the idea that he can just competently manage his way out of this problem as opposed to inspire and bring people with him. And I’m not sure the government can do it. I’m not sure they have the levers. But like, when’s the last time a prime minister has said, I’m going to make a national broadcast at 7:30pm Eastern or 8:00pm Eastern so folks out west can see it when they’re home from work. That tells the story about where we’re going because we are increasingly feeling like we’re in a crisis and yet all we get is a press conference here and there and nothing that signals to us what the strategy is going to be. And this budget is not going to be the document that does it because people are going to be focused on what gets cut instead of what we’re trying to build. And I think that is the real risk that then unravels this one economy and Kumbaya moment that we’ve seen for the, the last six months. SEAN SPEER: Yeah, great, great information. AMANDA GALBRAITH: Not to mention the budget is a mess too, as we all know. We’re all hearing. I’m sure the budget is a mess. SEAN SPEER: Yes. I was going to say, guys, that one person in my mind who had that capacity to inspire was Ronald Reagan. And I mentioned earlier that we would try to cover Doug Ford’s large scale ad campaign where he’s invoking the Gipper to try to persuade Republicans to reverse their support for the Trump administration’s tariffs. But I’m afraid we won’t have time to cover that. So maybe we can pick it up another time. Amanda, before we wrap up, we’ve been experimenting with having each of you talk about something you’ve seen, read or heard that might be of interest to our audience, particularly in such a fraught moment. Why don’t we start with you? AMANDA GALBRAITH: I guess I’ll just take from the topic that we didn’t get to see. I think you should listen to the Gipper ad when I think everyone needs a little more Ronald Reagan in their life. I also think it’s another sample of. Well, one, it’s just a conservatism that I wish we could get back to, and I miss it very deeply. But also it’s an interesting use of as. As David mentioned, you know, the way the provinces are spending ad dollars that the federal government is not. And yes, there’s a US Audience, but like, let’s be clear, the. The audience for this ad is domestic. And it is. And it’s an effective thing that the for government has rolled out consistently. And I think it’s smart. DAVID COLETTO: David, for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to echo what Amanda said, because first I was like, I’m not going to watch this thing. This is just. And it actually was a very good ad, I thought. And that story that Ronald Reagan tells is one we should probably be telling to everybody. And so I encourage everybody to watch it and think about the moment we’re in and the moment we were in the 70s, right before Ronald Reagan gave that speech. The time feels very similar. So it means we can actually get out of this hole if we figure out how to do it together. SEAN SPEER: Well said. Amanda mentioned that there were aspects of Reagan’s politics that she admires and misses. In that vein, I’d encourage people to check out a podcast that I recorded back in August 2023 with David Frum, where we took up why particularly young men were being drawn to the far right online. It seems particularly timely and relevant in light of reports this week of this extraordinary group chat amongst young Republicans where there was the invocation of Hitler and Nazism and some really dark stuff. As you say, Amanda, there’s a lot to miss about Reagan and his mourning in America. Form of conservatism. AMANDA GALBRAITH: Yeah. SEAN SPEER: And why don’t we wrap up there? On a positive note, I want to thank you for covering some big issues with us, and I look forward to catching up next week rather for our weekly episode of Hub Politics. DAVID COLETTO: Thanks, Sean.