The News Rundown

Carney says a U.S. trade deal without some tariffs is unlikely

This week the discussion around Canada’s trade relationship with the US changed yet again.
When asked in French the Prime Minister said that a US trade deal without tariffs is unlikely.
Upon being pressed further he said, “there’s not a lot of evidence right now” that the US is willing to go down this path.
In the past as recently as the G7 summit in Kananaskis that was the goal, no tariffs.
However, the recent UK-US free trade deal includes a 10% baseline tariff.
Now, most of the discussion has been around the level of impending doom this brings but right now Canadian goods that are compliant with CUSMA are tariff exempt.
When Trump took office 62% of Canadian exports were not compliant with the trade deal according to the Americans.
According to RBC 79% of Canadian goods were compliant and now that number is up to 89%.
As it stands now with the differences reported in measurements there is a disagreement upon the basic facts governing our trade negotiations.
This distortion of basic facts is what Trump has used so effectively to gain political power.
It doesn’t matter who is right, that’s what the media tends to focus on, what matters is the disagreement. That disagreement lets the US administration open the door to their perspective.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre brought us back to the election, “The Prime Minister is now conceding that American tariffs on Canada will be part of an eventual deal. Another unilateral concession from a man who said he would never back down to the U.S. President.”
This was the entirety of the Liberal campaign, the fear campaign primarily targeted at those 50+ that earned the Liberal votes, and the whole discussion of “the Americans want to break us so they can own us.”
It sounds now as though the new government will be giving in albeit slightly.
Slightly because they are adopting the exact same tariff approach as the Americans which is unironically Canada First.
In the wake of the trade relations souring from the US the federal government announced that they will be cracking down on cheap foreign steel.
Steel from non-free trade partners such as China and Turkey will have their quotas tightened and a 50% tariff will be imposed on anything beyond those tariff levels.
Imports presently supply 2/3rds of Canadian steel, the Americans import 1/3rd while Europe imports about 1/6th.
Through tariffs, making the industry more competitive, and domestic purchasing plans the government hopes this number will change in Canada.
Many people have long lamented the Trump style of focusing on tariffs. Our currently accepted ideal of liberalized trade policies began in the 1980s.
In the 1980s the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Brian Mulroney all followed the path of trade liberalization.
Prior to the 1980s Keynesian policies reigned supreme advocating for government intervention to manage demand to stabilize the economy.
Fast forward though to the 1990s and 2000s free trade was the norm and the economists of the day questioned its wisdom.
Much like today where economists are questioning the validity of tariffs.
The US posted an unexpected treasury surplus this June of $27b following a $316b deficit in May. Customs duties otherwise known as tariffs totalled about $27b for the month up from $23b, an increase of 301% from the previous year.
The point is that while Trump is pushing for tariffs and has been painted as the bad guy by the media, our government is doing that too, others will likely start.
The economic outlook of the next 18 months will determine if this methodology is here to stay and if tariffs become a part of day to day life but it sounds like the Carney government has already made that calculation and is working it into any future trade deal.
Supplementals:

The BC NDP government has been under the microscope over the past month since the Health Ministry's decision in late June to discontinue coverage of an expensive drug for a nine-year-old Langford girl with a rare fatal neurodegenerative condition called Batten's disease. Charleigh Pollock was to have her last publicly funded infusion of the drug Brineura on Thursday.
Brineura, is the only available drug for staving off the severe seizures associated with the disease. Coverage was denied by British Columbia’s Expensive Drugs for Rare Diseases Committee after they said it no longer met the standards of effectiveness.
The decision, reiterated last week, relegated Charleigh’s family to fundraising on the internet, a daunting prospect considering that the drug costs $800,000 for a full year of treatment.
That led Brad West, the Port Coquitlam mayor and longtime NDP supporter, to accuse the Eby government of taking the party from Tommy Douglas health care to GoFundMe health care.
Health Minister Josie Osborne had originally said that Canada’s Drug Agency has completed its review and there is no new evidence to change its 2019 recommendation to discontinue coverage of the drug, given the advanced stage of Charleigh’s condition.
Charleigh's mother Jori Fales has said that two weeks after discontinuation of the drug, Charleigh likely faces “rapid deterioration, irreversible loss of function and ultimately death.” Before Charleigh started taking Brineura she had more than 100 seizures a day, and since taking the medication she has been seizure-free for many years, Fales said.
Charleigh’s parents earlier said their daughter had seen benefits from biweekly treatments with Brineura, the only drug approved to treat the form of the disease that Charleigh has. She is the only child in B.C. and one of fewer than 20 in Canada with Batten disease, which began to affect her at age three, when she suffered seizures and began to lose her ability to walk and talk.
After funding was initially cut, a crowdfunding effort raised $69,892 for Pollock, allowing her to receive her first infusion on Thursday at Victoria General Hospital. Osborne said the province would be reimbursing the cost of that crowdfunded dose. It’s unclear whether the donated money would be returned to donors or how it would be handled.
Pressure quickly mounted on the provincial government as it was revealed the Langford native was the lone child in Canada to be denied coverage for the drug. And after a dozen experts of the disease in the U.S. signed a letter to Premier Eby and Minister Osborne, the government reversed course Thursday and the B.C. Ministry of Health said it will reinstate the drug coverage.
On Friday, Osborne apologized for the pain and suffering of the family. She said the government reversed the decision as more information came to light on a disagreement in the medical community about the suitability of Brineura to treat Batten disease.
“All along, we have made decisions based on the information that’s been available to us with the advice of health professionals and experts. I absolutely regret how this has played out and that’s why we are taking action to ensure that no family with Batten disease goes through this again.”
Postmedia columnist Vaughn Palmer asked Osborne whether anyone on the panel of experts resigned in protest over this decision and she responded by saying that she understands it has been very difficult for members. Asked again, she responded that she had not received any letters of resignation. But the ministry later confirmed to Palmer that four out of 58 panel members had resigned.
Palmer asked Premier Eby about the case of a little boy in Alberta, the same age as Charleigh with the same disease, whose treatment was being funded by the Alberta government. Was Eby embarrassed that if Charleigh lived one province to the east, she would be fully funded instead of her family being forced to fundraise on the internet?
Eby sidestepped the question. Then he dropped the news that set the stage for the government to reverse itself on funding the girl’s treatment. Eby said: “We received a letter this morning from more than a dozen experts on Batten disease from the U.S., expressing their perspective on this medication — that it would continue to provide benefit for patients, including for Charleigh, that are at the stage that she’s at.”
The outside experts expressed “very serious concerns” about the outdated criteria that were applied here in Canada in judging the efficacy of the drug. They called for “a review of the criteria” and “strongly opposed the decision to withdraw funding for life-sustaining Brineura from Charleigh Pollock.”
Osborne has commissioned a review of all the evidence for and against Brineura. She said the province will also approach the Canada Drug Agency about its procedures. The BC NDP should also be asking how they dug themselves into this hole in political terms.
It’s not every day that a self-styled “progressive government” picks a fight it can’t win with an ailing 10-year-old over the one drug that can stave off the worst ravages of her disease in the time that she has left.
It's also not every day that the party of Tommy Douglas denies healthcare to children who need it the most. The fact that Charleigh's family was subjected to daunting US-style healthcare costs and yet were saved by the intervention of US health experts, is another dose of irony that shows the NDP, and in fact all Canadians, that our healthcare system is sometimes not better than the US system after all.
Supplementals:

Danielle Smith says pulling Alberta out of supply management is worth considering

Among other irritants in the Canada US relationship aside from steel, fentanyl, and other things is our dairy system of supply management.
This week in Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith is considering having Alberta exit the supply management system.
Supply management at its core is a textbook cartel where the producers are limited to a fixed national production level.
This was said at one of the Alberta Next town halls in Red Deer.
She said, “Creating our own Alberta version of supply management, maybe as a pathway to a market system and maybe just because it would stick our finger in the eye of Quebec … might be (something) we want to do a little consultation on.”
Alberta is part of the national system that sees quotas on dairy and egg production.
We know this because earlier this year we talked about a southern Alberta egg farmer who was farming outside the system. A handful of RCMP officers came to visit him. As the case progressed it got to a point where he was arrested.
The farmer in question spent time in jail.
The idea came when a local resident proposed an idea, Lee Eddy said, “If we really want to make the eastern politicians (have to) change their underwear, we should remove our supply management from the Canadian system.” You can imagine the kind of editorializing the media went to on this comment.
Quebec holds 37% of Canada’s milk quota, Ontario holds 32%, and Alberta holds just under 9% despite representing 11% of the population.
Supply management is firmly entrenched in Canada. A Bill protecting it from forthcoming trade negotiations received unanimous support in the House of Commons.
Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Foods Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, said that Alberta’s small quota share makes it able to take a freer stand on supply management.
He also said that right now Alberta farmers hardly benefit from the scheme paying twice as much as farmers in Quebec and Ontario for the same quotas!
This is before we get to all the other issues like arrests.
One might believe that it is only the Trump administration pushing Canada on supply management but New Zealand has been successful in a large way.
Canada and New Zealand settled a trade dispute this week over dairy protections related to the trans-pacific partnership.
Following the resolution, New Zealand importers will be able to access quota faster and more efficiently making it easier to trade more dairy under Canada’s quotas.
The resolution is expected to deliver the equivalent of $129m CAD in export value for New Zealand dairy farmers.
Supply management is often confused with food safety and animal welfare. Both food safety and animal welfare are handled by the Canada Food Inspection Agency and animal welfare is regulated at the provincial level.
The lobbyists present in Canada that defend supply management have made the system ironclad.
No federal political party wants to touch the issue.
The question after this week is: will Alberta move on the issue of supply management?
The idea of Alberta independence is an interesting one that it poses an inherent business investment risk. This doesn’t mean that an independent Alberta couldn’t be successful in drawing business investment, it means that businesses would be concerned while the process was ongoing.
That is one of the largest areas of concern and begs the question: what about bringing Canada closer to Alberta on key issues?
The key issues being resources development, equalization, immigration, and this week supply management among other things.
This might be the one way to stave off Alberta independence and quiet the discussions.
For how they’ve been maligned by the media as being propaganda events, the Alberta Next panel may yet become instrumental in the province reacting to Albertans demands paving the way for an off ramp of the independence discussions.
If that happens Canadians as a whole would stand to benefit.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Controversy after two newcomers to Canada receive no jail for GTA sex offences

Canada's weak justice system is under the microscope again after controversy raged online about two criminal cases involving newcomers to Canada being found guilty of sexual offences yet being sentenced to no jail time.
In one case, the permanent resident was spared jail time, despite aggravating circumstances, so that his ability to sponsor relatives to come to Canada would not be impacted. It involves Samarpreet Singh, a Bell technician working inside a woman’s home to install her Wi-Fi router. He had a lot more to show her than just how to connect to the internet, exposing himself for some 20 minutes while asking inappropriate questions about the victim’s physical attractiveness, including telling her she was “beautiful” and asking if she had a boyfriend.
Singh, a resident of India on a work permit, was handed 90-days house arrest, followed by probation for 12 months. The victim in the case said she feels “tethered” to the incident and moved out of the area entirely due to the trauma. She’s shut herself off from other people and experiences anxiety going to the gym or running outside. “She has stopped caring about her physical appearance because she does not want to attract attention.”
Justice Sean Gaudet said of the case: “Given the aggravating factors in the case before me, I find a conditional discharge would be contrary to the public interest and would fail to suitably address the principles of general deterrence and denunciation. A discharge allows for an offender to avoid a criminal conviction. Future employers of Mr. Singh should be aware that he committed this offence in the course of his employment. A custodial sentence is required.”
Gaudet found Singh was a youthful first offender who won’t pose a danger to the community if allowed to serve his 90 days under house arrest, followed by a year’s probation.
In the wake of the ruling, Conservative politician Michelle Rempel Garner suggested the man should be deported for his behaviour. She called the ruling 'unreal' and suggested the judge went easy on him due to his immigration status.
In the other case, a foreign national in Canada on a student visa was given no jail time, yet his crimes might still result in his removal from Canada. Akashkumar Khant was convicted of trying to hire a 15-year-old as a prostitute during a sting operation where Peel police posed as a minor online. Khant was sentenced to 12-months probation.
Despite his conviction, Khant, originally from India, but now a permanent resident of Canada, argued his status should not be changed by the sentencing as he wants to bring his wife to Canada.
Originally from India’s Gujarat state, Khant came to Canada in 2019 for school, specifically, a master’s of engineering. He finished in 2021 and obtained permanent residency in 2023. Also, in 2023, he married his wife, who is currently here on a work visa set to expire in September. This was an important consideration for Justice Paul Thomas O’Marra, who joined the Ontario Court of Justice in the Kathleen Wynne era.
O'Marra said: “Mr. Khant is a permanent resident seeking Canadian citizenship and professional licensing. A conviction would not only delay his citizenship by four years but could also prevent him from sponsoring his wife and obtaining his engineering licence. These immigration and professional consequences are far more severe than those faced by (an offender in a similar previous case), who was a Canadian citizen with no such vulnerabilities. Courts have recognized that such consequences can justify a more lenient sentence, including a discharge.”
O’Marra also found a lot of good in the accused, noting his above-average IQ, his first-time offender status, his lack of mental illness or criminal record, his “modest and reserved” nature, and his low likelihood of reoffending (he did show “some response to younger females” in testing, but he agreed to take therapy in light of the finding). In the judge’s eyes, these overcame Khant’s flaws, such as his apparent intention to see the fictitious 15-year-old on a regular basis.
Veteran criminal lawyer Michael Spratt said both the Supreme Court as well as appeal courts have consistently said that sex crimes should achieve higher sentences than they have historically attracted: “The Supreme Court has said recently that for sexually based offences, especially if it’s involving offences against minors or children or the person is in a position of trust and authority, that sentences in the past have been too low.”
Contrarily, Spratt also says the Supreme Court has also ruled on Justices’ abilities to rule in favour of lower sentences for immigration purposes: “A sentence of more than six months incarceration would result in a removal order that would be not appealable. The Supreme Court said it is appropriate to sentence on the lower end of the scale to avoid some of those collateral consequences.”
At the top end, Canadian law requires that judges take immigration consequences into account in sentencing “provided that the sentence that is ultimately imposed is proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.” At no point did we explicitly legislate this: rather, in 2013, it was decided by the Supreme Court, in a judgment authored by now-Chief Justice Richard Wagner.
Lower down, we have to contend with courts that set soft precedents that later justify even softer decisions. Aside from Ontario’s mandatory minimum strikedown for underage solicitation, Khant was assisted by a 2018 case in which a man was conditionally discharged for breaking his wife’s arm on one occasion and, years later, threatening to kill her while pushing her head into a pillow.
This is happening all around Canada. In Calgary last year, a man on a study visa was found guilty of groping a woman’s genitals at a club; he was given a conditional discharge to lessen his chances of deportation.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has supported the idea of deporting non-citizens who commit violence and hate crimes in Canada. That mentality should be extended to the rest of the Criminal Code — in particular, crimes related to sex and crimes with underage victims — not just as a matter of public safety and immigration integrity, but as a matter of basic justice.
It's ridiculous that cases like these are being heard around Canada and the criminals that aren't even Canadian citizens are getting slaps on the wrist for their heinous actions. No wonder crime is on the rise in Canada, there's simply no consequences.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“If we really want to make the eastern politicians (have to) change their underwear, we should remove our supply management from the Canadian system.” - Red Deer County resident Lee Eddy on removing Alberta from supply management (heavily editorialized).

Word of the Week

Coverage - the financial protection that is provided by an insurance policy

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Show Data

Episode Title: Balancing Coverage
Teaser: Carney admits a US trade deal may include tariffs, the BC government restores drug funding for a young girl, and Danielle Smith muses pulling out of supply management. Also, Canada’s justice system gives more lenient sentences to non-Canadians.
Production Code: WC-427-2025-07-19
Recorded Date: July 19, 2025
Release Date: July 20, 2025
Duration: 1:02:08
Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX