How should Canada prepare for U.S. election outcome? | Power Play with Vassy Kapelos

chiefly the Americans trading relationships and Trump's record imposing and now threatening additional tariffs the Canadian government says it's preparing for a possible Trump win with one of the ministers leading that charge telling me on this program yesterday that he thinks Canada's message is punching through if you want a growth agenda for North America Canada has to be at the center so that's kind of the argument we're putting and I would say this is well received by the people who worked around him so we're going to continue to obviously State our case let's bring back the front bench to talk about what that might mean Christy Clark Gary Maher and Gary deer are here uh Gary derer I'll start with you you of course served pre uh previously in the capacity of of Canada's ambassador to the US what do you think that job would be like at this juncture well I think uh the our present Ambassador is an excellent Ambassador and of course uh we we were involved uh with elections that were very uh you know hard hard fought elections when uh Barack Obama was campaigning against Mitt Romney and we made a point to go all the to all the conventions and you get invited as a Canadian Ambassador and you meet not only the uh the transition teams for the various uh competitors you also meet the Senators the Congressional representatives and of course Canada's uh very very important card with the United States is we their biggest customer and so you look at all those swings states that are so important everybody's talking about they're actually all almost all of them on the Canadian border you know Minnesota Wisconsin Illinois Ohio uh Pennsylvania and uh those are uh their biggest customers are Canada so you you want to make sure that they are aware of that many of them are you just had Philipe champagne on the on the show I he's all over the place he's in the Energizer money in terms of representing Cada in the United States I even heard from from some of my sources in in Nebraska he was I guess he was chasing down Warren Buffett but he was in Omaha Nebraska so you hear him all over the place and I wore credit to him because his energy and his enthusiasm is good for our country but we've got an excellent Ambassador an excellent team there and uh we're gonna have some challenges whether it's Trump or Harris one on Harris she actually has come out with a platform of a 28% capital gain tax lower than Biden's High slightly higher than Trump's Canada's Got A 65% a capital games tax so they some of this competition and the economy is part partly in our backyard and so I think we got got to be very aware of that U but uh it's uh I I I'm not I think Trump made the right decision not having a third debate based on what happened on Tuesday night that was a wise decision I don't think uh he did that well that evening but one of thing the last thing I want to mention we have to deal with and Gary marer is very aware of this I know chrisy is one of the biggest asks for the United States whether it's a democratic government or a Republican government is going to be uh any change in the trade agreement the north americ Trade Agreement we're going to be expected to side with the United States against the increased number of state-owned Enterprises in Mexico so that's a big big issue uh we took the right position on energy with me meico and the United States but that's going to be a big big task for Canada to be aware of and prepared for no matter what happens at the election time let me ask you chrisy about a few of those things first of all do you think Trump made the right call with no second debate well I made the right call for him yeah I mean there should be a second debate I really I thought that in the first debate he looked it was it was weird because I don't watch a lot of his his um his rallies it was really weird to see him rambling like that and I I don't think he got he landed very many punches I just he wasn't he wasn't impressive and she really I think people had low expectations she really overperformed so I'm not surprised he said no if you have the choice and you lose the first debate and you don't think you're going to be very good in the second one you probably make the right decision for yourself at least not to do it but I would say on the trade stuff first of all Gary derer was a fantastic ambassador from Canada to the United States and one of the reasons he was so good is he built a huge network of people amongst Governors and state people who were putting tons of pressure on their congressmen and Senators to follow the right path and he was very very influential in creating relationships for Canada I don't know if that network has you know is still quite as strong down there but in terms of the question of which one would be better I don't think either of them will be better necessarily because both of them are really Pro protectionist and you know she was there when Biden was bringing in by America she was there when they sat on their hands and we wanted to solve Dairy and softwood lumber and a bunch of other stuff but um they do need Canada's critical minerals they need to secure the the supply chain in North America there are some things they need from us and I think the big difference between Trump and Harris with respect to Canada's relationship is going to be we all well we understand that President Trump really does not like our prime minister and that personal relationship when it's not working can really get in the way of finding our trade of solving a trade uh problem I think camea Harris does have a pretty good relationship with our current prime minister so from that perspective it doesn't sound like it should mean a lot but it will yeah that's a good point I think all three of you will know of course that those personal relationships are important in in the broader relationship Gary what would you be watching for over the next six weeks if you were still serving in Your Capacity representing Alberta in the US well I had the uh the great opportunity to work under two Great Canadian ambassadors the first one being Michael Wilson and then Gary derer and I think that um you know the kind of Outreach that was done before the election was really important and with Gary we had sort of come up with a list of some 20 people that thought could be appointed to Cabinet we managed to get meetings with a number of them before they were appointed to Cabinet positions which helped solidify our ability to get meetings with them after they were put in place by Barack Obama and I I just want to go back to the the debate for a bit I I'd say this you know there are still voters that are undecided and that means that undecided people still think that Donald Trump may be a viable person um as president and no doubt in the debate uh Miss Harris really did a fantastic job of making him look frankly foolish but having said that um she didn't go far enough to outline what her program was going to be on how she was going to deal with things like affordability she did talk about the importance of the middle class but was really lacking on some areas that undecided voters are concerned about be it immigration being affordability and so on and the reason why I think that she doesn't have you know granular uh policy detail on this is because she didn't have to go through the bruising uh impact of going through a primary so she didn't have to have the time to to devote to that um and she just comes in as uh candidate uh following the uh the announcement by President Biden so I think she's still got a ways to go should there be another debate uh I don't think so I can understand why both of them would want to but I'd be looking in the next sort of four to six weeks uh exactly what kamla Harris is going to put out as messaging uh to bring over those undecided voters to her side it's so fascinating Gary dur to think that about the idea that in a contest that is as you know that there are such diametrically opposing options like such polarizing options that there are people who think either they might go either way but there are a few hundred thousand of them and ultimately they will determine the election what kind of message do you think will get through to them well it's it's uh it's a very personal decision for all of them uh number one the first decision they're going to make if they're undecided is are they going to turn out and that's why sometimes the polls are so uh very accurate but sometimes they miss when they can't get the turnout numbers uh properly because uh it's much harder to to gauge that and predict that H so that's why you had a number of pollsters thinking that Hillary was going to beat uh Donald Trump and of course that didn't happen and it was based on turnout and uh it's still uh the undecided uh May turnout or may not turn out but they will you know State like Pennsylvania uh 19 electoral votes uh it could you know it as Pennsylvania goes the whole election usually goes and it'll be those 10,000 undecided voters maybe even less than that in that state that may determine uh what the course of the future of a country over 350 million people so uh electoral politics is totally different than parliamentary Politics as everybody knows listening to the show and watching it uh but uh but it is so it is so sensitive in just one or two% for what it means for 350 million people and by definition the free world so it's h you're going to have a lot of fun on your power play shows vasia in the next seven weeks predicting that I look forward to your predictions yeah no I oh no I I would never make one but I I think the only one is the safe one that you said it will it will be fascinating to see I got just 30 seconds left last word to you Christie well I think let's not forget Tim Waltz is there uh coach dad is there and he's from a state that does a lot of trade with Canada he understands very very well the impact that Canada can have on the American economy and if there's no free trade deal or there isn't one that works for both countries it's not good for the United States either