THE EZRA LEVANT SHOW | Tariff deadline hits following Carney’s luxury holiday in Tuscany – plus Joe Warmington on the state of journalism in Canada
Tonight, on The Ezra Levant Show: the U.S.-Canada tariff deadline arrives after Mark Carney’s luxury holiday in Tuscany, and the regime media is already softening the ground for failure. Plus, a long-form sit-down with Toronto Sun journalist Joe Warmington on the state of journalism in Canada.
Mark Carney sold himself as the 'Trump whisperer', the only man with the clout to charm the White House and spare Canada a punishing tariff war. He campaigned on it. He told Parliament he would not only renew the trade deal but improve it. Tonight is the self-imposed deadline. The threat of high tariffs is real. And during the final days leading up to it, Carney was nowhere to be seen.
How did the Prime Minister spend that decisive moment for Canadian jobs and industry? On a luxury holiday in Tuscany. No one knows where he stayed, who he met or who paid. Canadians have come to expect exactly this level of transparency from their elites: none.
The same incurious press that never pressed Justin Trudeau on his $300,000 Aga Khan island vacation is equally incurious about Carney’s European trip. Carney has always preferred Europe. He has never seemed to treat Canada as a place worth vacationing in.
Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and CBC are already lowering expectations. Some pieces absurdly claim Canada is the stronger party in the negotiations. Others suggest losing free trade with the United States will not matter much. Both claims are ridiculous on their face. The United States is five times more important to Canada than all other trading partners combined. There is no geographic or cultural substitute.
The Americans have made reasonable requests, chief among them opening the dairy cartel that restricts competition and forces Canadians to pay roughly twice the world price for Quebec milk. No Canadian politician dares touch it.
Add the provincial liquor bans and other tit-for-tat moves from David Eby and Doug Ford, and it is not hard to see why Trump may decide the relationship is not worth protecting.
Carney’s recent trip to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping only reinforces the impression. Canada now finds itself alongside China as one of the few countries that have been unable to work with the United States.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that Carney may not actually want a deal. A trade war gives him someone else to blame for the recession the media is already rebranding as merely “technical.”
Ontario auto workers should be terrified. Unifor has already warned that plants could shut once current models are finished. Alberta oil and Saskatchewan potash cannot be replaced as easily as American cars made in Ontario can.
The pattern is consistent: a vacation in Tuscany, media managing expectations and real economic vulnerability left unaddressed.
Canadians are left asking the only question that matters: who, if anyone, is actually fighting for them?
That same failure of scrutiny is the focus of a long-form studio conversation with veteran Toronto Sun reporter Joe Warmington, who is set to receive the Independent Press Gallery’s first Lifetime Achievement Award.
The discussion covers how journalism has changed, why the mainstream media no longer covers stories like Carney’s secretive European trip, the locked-out reality of Parliament Hill, and what real shoe-leather reporting still looks like in Canada.
GUEST: Joe Warmington (Toronto Sun journalist) on the state of journalism in Canada
