Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2025

Front Burner Transcript for June 5, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

SOUNDCLIP

DOUG FORD: I described him today as Santa Claus. He's coming, and his sled was full of all sorts of stuff. Now he's taken off back to the North Pole. He's gonna sort it out and then he's gonna call us.

[Music: Theme]

JAYME POISSON: Hi everybody, I'm Jayme Poisson. We've got a Canadian politics episode for you today. We're going to split it into two parts with a guest on each topic. Althia Raj is here, Toronto Star political columnist and At Issue panelist. And we're going to discuss a sweeping border bill tabled Tuesday by the Liberals that immediately started raising alarm bells around Canadians' privacy rights and the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. And then CBC Senior Parliamentary Reporter Aaron Wherry will be here. We're going to talk about the seemingly very successful meeting between Mark Carney and the premiers earlier this week and the nation-building projects that may or may not materialize from that. All right, let's get to it.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Althia, thank you so much for coming on.

ALTHIA RAJ: Thanks for having me.

JP: Uh, this bill is called the Strong [Borders] Act. It is quite sweeping; 16 parts.

SOUNDCLIP

PUBLIC SAFETY MINISTER ANANDASANGAREE: The bill updates existing laws to bolster our response to national and economic security threats, while enhancing the integrity and fairness of our immigration system.

JP: You wrote about it yesterday, and you wrote that it tries to appease the Trump White House and put Canadians' privacy rights and those of asylum seekers on the chopping block. So, why don't we pull that apart here. First, why do you think it tries to appease the Trump White House?

ALTHIA RAJ: Uh, well, I don't think that. I-- We were all told that, because the minister of public safety said that this was basically in response to concerns that the White House had expressed.

SOUNDCLIP

PUBLIC SAFETY MINISTER ANANDASANGAREE: Uh, there's elements that does, uh, that will strengthen the relationship with the United States. There are a number of elements in the bill, um, that have been irritants for the U.S. So we are addressing some of those issues. But it's not exclusively about the United States. It's also about ensuring...

ALTHIA RAJ: So, you're right. It's a sweeping bill -- it's 140 pages -- and some of the measures deal with giving border enforcement agencies more tools to allow them to do their work, to allow them to crack down on organized crimes. You know, they will argue that they're operating in like a 20th century framework and that the laws need to be updated to allow them to do their work in a more efficient manner. And so that bill does address that.

SOUNDCLIP

PUBLIC SAFETY MINISTER ANANDASANGAREE: Among some of the key changes are new powers for border officers to examine goods destined for export, to prevent the transport of illegal goods such as stolen vehicles. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies will also have some new tools to stop the flow of fentanyl and its precursors.

JP: But there also were immediate concerns about privacy rights, right? Canadian privacy rights on the chopping block. And just, um, elaborate on that for me.

ALTHIA RAJ: Yeah, there's a number of concerns. So this bill has 16 parts and amends more than a dozen laws. And some of the measures don't seem to be justified. And I say that because we had a technical briefing with the public servants who drafted this bill for the government, and they could not give a reason as to why they were lowering the threshold, for example, for information sharing with the United States when it comes -- I'm going to give you a specific example -- to people who were on the sexual offender registry. So if they go to the United States, Canadian authorities have lowered the bar for what they can share, are willing to share with the Americans. But is there a case that we know of that they needed this information? It's not -- that's not clear. I think for everyday Canadians, there are issues about privacy that raise some alarms. And of course, some people will say, well, if you abide by the law and you're not doing anything wrong, you don't need to worry. But there is I think a slippery slope some would argue, that if you allow the government to act in this way and to amass these powers, then, you know, your own Charter rights are being infringed. I'll give you a few examples. Um, so, the government is acting on two court cases that found that law enforcement agencies and Canada Post had breached the law, Canadians' privacy rights and their Charter rights, um, with regards to opening the mail and sharing IP addresses. So they're changing the law so that Canada Post can open letters. Now, in the past, letters were kind of considered like your emails, like you have a right to know and disclose your own information as you choose. Now, Canada Posts can read your letters. Um, your IP address can get obtained without a warrant, but in order to get your personal information, the government will still need to get a warrant, but the threshold to obtain that warrant has been lowered. More concerning to me, I would say, is that they're changing the law to allow, let's say, Rogers or Bell or TELUS, to share information that they hold legally about you voluntarily. And why I say this is concerning is because the telecom industry in Canada is heavily regulated. And if the government is saying, well, I could go get a warrant to get this information, but you could also just give it to me voluntarily. Oh, and in the law, I will protect you from being sued either civilly or criminally if you give it me. That, to me, is really interesting, and I don't know that a ton of people would be comfortable with that.

JP: And what are civil liberties groups saying about it?

ALTHIA RAJ: I spoke to the BC Civil Liberties Association yesterday, and the woman I spoke with, Aislin Jackson, said she was alarmed and she's really concerned that people's privacy rights are going to be affected by this bill. The NDP and the Green Party came out and said what concerns-- I mean, they're alarmed by what's in the bill, but they were also concerned that the government, by citing that they're responding to Trump's concerns, and the public safety minister said yesterday that he was actually briefing his counterparts on the content of the bill, that it will create this impetus to rush through the bill quickly, and that it will not get the proper scrutiny that it deserves. 'Cause it should be sent to a bunch of different committees to study. You know, like it includes big changes to the way asylum seekers and immigrants, um, and poss-- would-be, um, immigrants to Canada get their cases-- or the powers that the immigration department and the minister and cabinet are giving themselves, that should go to the immigration committee. The stuff with criminal cases should go to the justice committee. You know, there are measures in the bill that make, to me, absolutely no sense, like why you are creating a law that says that service providers are not just not supposed to tell people about, basically, like security vulnerabilities in their system, but they're not allowed to. Like it makes me feel like this bill was rushed through so quickly that nobody kind-- like, is there a 'not' that should not be there? [laughs]

JP: Yeah. I mean also, um, I know neither of us are lawyers, and I'm sure that there will be more people in the coming days that have more to say about this, but I was kind of under the assumption that a lot of this stuff was already decided in the courts. That the Supreme Court had already kind of come down on stuff like IP addresses. So I am a little bit confused about, about some of these.

ALTHIA RAJ: I think that you're talking about the case in 2024. This is in a-- addressing that. Basically, law enforcement was saying, well, we can't get a warrant because we don't know what the IP address is. So we need to be able to verify the IP address and then I will go get the warrant. So in some ways, there's like housekeeping [inaudible]. And you can see the government is protecting itself from spending money -- like on the CBSA, for example. At the border, they're saying, we're allowed to go to the border, and we're allowed to, like, check all the containers that are leaving. But also, we're not going to pay the Port Authority to have CBSA officers at the port. So there's a lot of, I would say, housekeeping measures that are kind of protecting liability and costs, um, from the federal government.

[music]

JP: On the asylum stuff, can you just explain to me what it is that they're trying to accomplish in this bill, like around refugees and asylum seekers?

ALTHIA RAJ: The biggest change-- well, I guess there's two parts that are quite interesting. On asylum seekers: so last year you'll probably remember that the federal government changed a lot of the ways that permanent residents and students basically could apply to become citizens. And they made it hard-- like they closed down an avenue that was being used to get Canadian citizenship. And now the government is saying if you came as a student, if you're a temporary foreign worker, if you're here and you haven't made a claim within a year, you can no longer make a claim at the Immigration Refugee Board. So a lot of people who came here legally through the channels that they thought might get them permanent residency and Canadian citizenship, won't be able anymore to have their case heard at the IRB. If you come in as an asylum seeker between land crossings, like at Roxham Road, like um, you-- and you've been here for more than 14 days, you can no longer get your case heard at the Immigration Refugee Board. It means that that individual will not be able to plead their case in front of basically a human and make their case for why they face persecution if they go back home. The government says in this bill, well, they will be able to apply for a review that basically-- to determine whether or not they face persecution back home. But the removal order might happen before that case is determined. So they'll probably go to the federal court to say, can I please stay in Canada longer? And the court is facing a backlog. So it's not clear whether they're actually going to have that chance. And they won't have a chance to physically plead their case. It'll be like they'll hand over papers, and somebody will determine based on the papers that were handed over whether or not they can remain in the country. So a lot of people who might face persecution back home will probably be deported and face persecution back home. Um, and so that's why refugee and immigration activists are really concerned about that.

JP: Right, and I know there were also some concerns that they could push people underground, right? Um, could actually--

ALTHIA RAJ: I think that's what's most likely [JP: Yeah.] to happen.

JP: That it would encourage them to stay here without legal papers.

ALTHIA RAJ: Exactly. If you're-- If you signal that you're here, and if you've made your life here and have been here for like three or four years and you want to stay here, and you're pretty sure that you will be deported back to your home country, you are incentivized to remain here. And so all those concerns that Canadians have voiced about, you know, the housing market and long wait times at the hospital and crunches on social services, that might still happen. But we just won't know exactly where people are, so we won't be able to service them. We won't be able to give them the things that they need and adjust government resources in a way that adjusts for the populations that we're actually counting.

[music]

JP: I think also this bill, it also is doing some stuff that's similar to what's happening in the U.S. with student visas, right?

ALTHIA RAJ: Yeah, so one of the things that the government is giving itself the ability to do is to kind of suspend, nullify, cancel a whole bunch of immigration documents en masse. So like we have seen in the United States where Donald Trump's administration is trying to cancel student visas, the government is basically giving its ability to do very similar things here. Now, that could be for similar reasons as the United States, or it could be like, oh, we think there's a fraudulent immigration consultant that has put in all these cases from India, and we're just going to cancel them in a sweep of a hand. But, you know, when you give cabinet broad sweeping powers and you don't define what the public interest is -- because it's undefined in this legislation -- then I think it also raises a bunch of concerns and questions need to be asked.

JP: What's gonna happen to this bill now? Like obviously it's not a... it's not a done deal at the moment.

ALTHIA RAJ: Absolutely not. [laughs] So the minister actually said on Wednesday that the bill will get a full committee review.

SOUNDCLIP

PUBLIC SAFETY MINISTER ANANDASANGAREE: As part of the bill, as it goes through the system, as it goes through Parliament, as it goes through the committee process, we look forward to perspectives, um, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis perspectives.

ALTHIA RAJ: Their committees have not been struck on Parliament Hill yet, so that probably means that nothing's going to happen for, uh, several months, which is probably a really good thing. That being said, the government could find a willing partner, let's say, in the Conservative Party, because at the moment there's no NDP in committees. There would only be the Bloc and the Conservatives. And then depending on whether or not, you know, that party supports some of the things in this bill, it may not get, you know, the scrutiny that, you know, had the NDP been there, 'cause they're the ones that have voiced a lot of criticisms about this bill, um, would be demanding. So I don't know exactly what the scope of review will be, but the government has committed to review. I think they may have been caught a little off guard by some of the comments on the bill.

JP: Okay. Um, Althia, thank you so much for this, something we definitely are gonna keep on top of. Appreciate it.

ALTHIA RAJ: No problem. Thank you, Jayme.

[music]

JP: All right, on to act two. On Monday, Canada's premiers met with Prime Minister Mark Carney in Saskatoon for the first time since he took office. And the vibes from the premiers coming out of the meeting seem to have been pretty fantastic. To talk a bit more about that, I am here now with Aaron Wherry. Hi, Aaron.

AARON WHERRY: Hey, Jayme.

JP: By all accounts, this seems to have been a really great meeting, hey? What do you make of uh, the way we've heard the various premiers talk about the conversations that they had with Mark Carney this week?

AARON WHERRY: Uh, yeah. Look, uh, it was pretty positive after that meeting. Uh, I think Doug Ford referred to Mark Carney as being like Santa Claus, and talked about it being, you know, the best meeting the premiers and the prime minister had had in 10 years.

SOUNDCLIP

DOUG FORD: Best meeting I've had in seven years. And there was no expectations that the prime minister was going to come out and say, 'You get that project, you get the project.' It was a great discussion. Now, uh, we were all talking. Now it's time to put it into action. All of us are responsible. But I, I thought it was an incredible meeting. Great communication...

AARON WHERRY: Uh, a time frame that may or may not apply to one specific former prime minister in particular. [Jayme chuckles] And, uh, everybody seemed to be on the same page and enthusiastic about the possibilities.

SOUNDCLIP

WAB KINEW: So I think that this meeting here today of the first ministers representing Canadians from different walks of life is an important step forward for us being able to have that showdown with China, have that showdown with the Trump administration, and make sure that you and your jobs come out on top.

DANIELLE SMITH: He's not afraid to mention the word pipeline, and -- uh, in conjunction with oil and gas. And all of that is a dramatic improvement over what we were witnessing from even just six months ago. I think that there's a...

AARON WHERRY: You know, you don't want to make too much out of it. It's the first meeting since the election and, you know, prime ministers and premiers tend to get along better at the start of the relationship than necessarily after. But at the same time, it is... you know, I think a couple things. One, it looks like a victory politically for Mark Carney coming out of it. Just that everybody seems positive and encouraged and, you know, more or less on the same page. And I think, you know, broadly speaking, in a moment of crisis for the country, it's nice to see, you know, politicians from different party stripes agreeing and being able to sit around the same table and get along, which is [JP: Yep.] not something you necessarily see to the south of us.

JP: Yeah, I mean, even Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta, came out with some very pleasant things to say about what went on.

SOUNDCLIP

DANIELLE SMITH: Well, I think what we've seen is that he's not afraid to talk about being an energy superpower. He's not afraid to define that as being both conventional as well as new and clean energy.

JP: I know that the meeting was really largely about these nation-building infrastructure projects that Carney wanted to discuss. That could mean a lot of things, right? You can build lots of things -- railways, ports. But uh, in this case, it seemed to specifically mean a pipeline. Do you think that's fair?

AARON WHERRY: Uh, yeah. Look, I think, you know, at one point, the questions from reporters afterwards kept coming back to pipelines. And at one point, Mark Carney, you know, seemed to feel it necessary to point out that there are other kinds of infrastructure under discussion.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK CARNEY: There is a long list of projects that bring the country together, diversify our markets, make us more resilient, create good jobs and growth, have very good prospects of, of Indigenous partnerships, um, and beyond.

AARON WHERRY: But a pipeline -- for decades, really -- has been a point of friction. It's always kind of a consistent point of friction. And so discussion sort of naturally gravitates back to, is it going to be possible to build one? How would it be built? Who is going to build it? And, you know, that was the, that was the question that sort of plagued Justin Trudeau at times. And it does seem to be the big question that Mark Carney's gonna face.

JP: Yeah. Do we have answers or possible answers to any of those questions right now?

AARON WHERRY: Uh, we have -- I think you could say we have sort of broad agreement about the possibility of building a pipeline across the Western provinces... potentially in, in two directions to the West, and then to the East, at least as far as, you know, James Bay or Churchill in Manitoba.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK CARNEY: The Western premiers and the premiers of uh, the Territories met, and uh, supported an approach. Uh, the Western corridor, the Western and Arctic corridor, effectively...

AARON WHERRY: I don't know, though, that we have much in the way of consensus or answers on all of the very specific questions that need to be asked about who will build this thing, how it will be built and under what conditions. And those of course are the big, big questions. And so, you know, is there openness, I guess? Is there an opportunity for a pipeline? Mark Carney seemed to say there was. Uh, but that leaves, you know, all of the actual important questions that still have to be answered.

JP: Maybe worth noting, B.C. Premier David Eby was not actually at the meeting Monday. He's -- Well, he was on a trade mission in Asia. Do we have any sense of where he is on this right now? Because I don't think this has been a, a really popular thing for him in the past, right?

AARON WHERRY: Yeah, I think we know from, you know, recent and not so recent history that when it comes right down to an actual proposal to build a pipeline -- you know, Northern Gateway, which would have gone across the Pacific Northwest or or Trans, the Trans Mountain expansion that went south -- when it comes right down it, B.C. premiers, of all stripes really, have not been super enthusiastic about the idea. And so I don't, I don't think B.C. has closed the door on the discussion, but I think we still have to wait to see exactly where they come down on it.

[music]

JP: Obviously, I know Danielle Smith wants this pipeline. Who else wants this pipeline?

AARON WHERRY: I think that is a big question. Uh, I think there's sort of this general idea that, you know, more pipeline access for the oil industry would be an economic benefit for them. You know, in the sort of age of Trump, there is an argument that we... you know, Canada as a country needs to have more economic sovereignty and needs to diversify its trading partners. And a pipeline could fit into that argument. But, you know, there is no one at this very moment saying, "I would like to build a pipeline." In particular, no private investor saying, "I would like to build a pipeline. And here's what that would look like." And that, I think, you know, was one of the more interesting moments in the news conference after the meeting. Was, you know, the idea, the fact that there is no proponent for this pipeline was raised. And Danielle Smith said:

SOUNDCLIP

DANIELLE SMITH: I mean, it's up to us to find the proponent, I think. I think if there's some certainty that a process is going to be successful in a reasonable period of time, a two-year window, I think that there will be a proponent that will step forward. My view would be that we'll have failed at the assignment if government has to build another pipeline.

AARON WHERRY: And I think that sets up a pretty interesting test of like, oh, okay, so let's see what the actual private sector appetite is for this.

JP: Yeah. She talked about this grand bargain with Ottawa. Is that what she's talking about or?

AARON WHERRY: Yeah, she's sort of -- she, uh, put this phrase on the table.

SOUNDCLIP

DANIELLE SMITH: Well, we're -- let's call it the grand bargain. That we know that there is a group of pipeline-- of oil sands companies that have been advocating for some time for what they call the Pathways project, that would decarbonize...

AARON WHERRY: Basically, the idea being that there is this proposal by a number of major oil companies operating in Alberta called the Pathways Alliance, which is largely premised on the idea that they would use carbon capture utilization and storage technology to essentially capture or prevent the emissions that would come from the oil sands. And they're willing to build it, though they are asking for a significant amount of public funding. And her argument is a pipeline would, in creating greater capacity to export oil, would make the economics of that project easier for these companies to proceed with. And so the grand bargain in her idea is, you know, this pipeline gets built, and because the pipeline gets built, the Pathways Alliance, this decarbonization project, goes ahead.

JP: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just say that whole thing with carbon capture, you know, no one's really totally figured that out yet. So it -- there's still a real question mark on whether you could even do that.

[music]

JP: Aaron, you wrote this really interesting piece where you compared this meeting and the rhetoric around it to what we saw under the last prime minister, under Justin Trudeau. And I just wanted to talk to you about that because there are some pretty interesting parallels. And can you just give me a bit of a refresher on how Trudeau approached the pipeline question when he took office, and also having these sorts of discussions with the provinces?

AARON WHERRY: Yeah, so Justin Trudeau... It's funny, I think, to remember -- because he has been portrayed by his Conservative opponents as this sort of anti-oil zealot, climate radical -- that he came into office saying, you know, he supported pipeline development, but he viewed it in terms of social licence. That you needed to get social licence to build one. And I don't know that he ever used the phrase 'grand bargain,' but that is essentially what he presented, which was: we're going to get a pipeline built to the West Coast, to Tidewater, but that is going to come along with a serious climate policy, in particular a price on carbon emissions. And that, you know, that came to be viewed as his grand bargain. And so I think, you know, part of what was interesting this week is, you know, Danielle Smith says, oh, we need a grand bargain on oil and climate policy. And I think a lot of people fairly would look at that and say, 'I thought we already had a grand bargain on climate and oil policy. What happened to that one?' And my first question would be, what does a grand bargain look like now, and how is it going to be more durable than the last one?

JP: So given all that, how long do you think that these positive vibes will continue? Are we really in this kind of new era of intergovernmental relations or is this just kind of a honeymoon phase?

AARON WHERRY: So, I mean, the cynical take would be it's not going to last very long. You know, it is possible that Mark Carney is sitting and talking to these premiers in a way that is reasonable and that they appreciate, and he has managed to find points of common interest and he's going to be able to pursue those points of common interest. And he'll do it in a way that, you know, keeps everyone more or less on the same page. So I don't want to completely shut the door on that possibility. But the question becomes, I think, what happens when actual projects get, you know, put on the table? When the federal government starts saying, we want to go forward with these, you know, four or five projects. You know, first of all, do some projects get left off the list, and does that frustrate premiers? Does that lead to resentments? And then second of all, what happens when, you know, if he moves forward with a pipeline, or really any other kind of major project that could raise either environmental or concerns about Indigenous rights, what happens when one of those gets put on the table and there's backlash? There's, there's there's complaints about it? There's, you know, people raising concerns about how it's actually going to work in practice. I think -- You know, one of the things we're running up against is, you know, at the end of the Trudeau government's time in office, the idea, the argument was, oh, Justin Trudeau is the problem here. Once you remove Justin Trudeau from the equation, a hundred pipelines will bloom. And the, you know, the evidence, the pre-Trudeau evidence suggests that's just not the case. You know, part of the reason Trudeau was pushing social licence and this sort of grand bargain on oil and climate is because it had become so-- it had gotten so hard to move forward with pipelines because there were environmental concerns. Because there were concerns about Indigenous rights. [JP: Mm-hmm.] You know, the Northern Gateway proposal to build a pipeline across the Pacific Northwest had-- it didn't seem like it had much hope of moving forward. Keystone XL very famously in the United States had stalled out. And so, you know, I think we are potentially going to run up into a bit of a wake-up call that actually, you know, Justin Trudeau wasn't the reason pipelines weren't being built. There were a lot of other questions that had to be answered.

JP: Right. And even in this new political climate, even if there's an appetite for more nation-building projects, all those underlying issues are very much still present today.

AARON WHERRY: Yeah. Exactly.

JP: Yeah, a classic case of easier said than done.

AARON WHERRY: Exactly. Like I do think there is -- you know, Trump has changed the equation in many ways, and there are lots of arguments for going forward with things and there might even be more public buy in. But, you know, as soon as there's a pipeline project on the table, the first question is going to be, okay, well, what does that mean for Canada's emissions? You know, what does that means for Indigenous rights and Indigenous communities across the route? So, you know, these questions didn't disappear, and they're not going to disappear unless, you know, they're actually dealt with.

JP: Okay. Aaron Wherry, thank you very much.

AARON WHERRY: Any time.

[Music: Theme]

JP: That is all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

For more Front Burner transcripts, please click here.

Politics! Border bill blowback and 'Santa' Carney - Transcript

Social Sharing