There's hope for Canada with U.S. midterm results, prof says

A major political shift this week in Washington is raising some hope of a better relationship between the U.S. and Canada. On Tuesday, a blue wave of Democrats seized control of both the House and Senate from Republicans. For more on this, we're joined by Robert Hewish, an associate dean of research and professor at Dalhousie University. Hi there. So Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says the results of this election give some hope of improved relations between Canada and the US. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, signs of hope. There's a lot of work that's left to be done. And now the political machinery inside the United States is really going to get worked up. For the last two years, we saw a Republican-controlled House and Senate. That allowed Mr. Trump to put forward a lot of executive orders, many of them that were catering to his own bombastic personality and his own ego. And that did a lot to harm relations with foreign allies like Canada and also with just the U.S.'s brand in the world. But more importantly, the very institutions of democracy sort of fought back in the U.S. last night or this week. And what's really important about that is that we can say that, OK, the American people have had Enough of what has been going on. It's been very, very clear that what you saw Trump put through the White House, what Congress did not try to challenge him on, were policies that made the cost of living higher in the U.S., the cost of fuel go up, and commitments to foreign wars. All things that Mr. Trump said he wouldn't do, and he did it. And so even though there may not be a lot of knowledge of Canadian geography or maybe even sympathy by many Americans, They know that since these tariffs have been in place, their lives have not gotten better. Now, Trump has said a great deal with Canada was imminent. Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two sides have made progress. Do you think it's the time now to make a deal or wait? I would say that right now, any sort of deal that has to come down has to be one that gives permanence to the equation. We've seen that. Mr. Carney said this himself. Trump, his signature is in pencil many times, right? The very agreements he put forward in his first term, he was ripping up enthusiastically in his second term. So it's hard to tell to say that there's going to be something permanent and in place. The second thing is that Canada's actually done very well in the past couple of years to say we need to have both domestic and foreign policy that protects our institutions and our values and the importance of not relying on a foreign country for any sort of assistance. We've seen how vulnerable democracies can be, how vulnerable allyships can be, and you need to have those guardrails in place in case one of your allies starts to flip out a little bit and not hold some of those values to their hearts. What we are also going to see is that with the policies that we've seen with tariffs in particular, not every Democrat is enthusiastically wanting tariffs removed. Some of them have spoken. about the value of tariffs so you might see some pushback from senators in Wisconsin when it comes to dairy. Michigan may have a few things to say about steel and there could be some more disputes with lumber as well but We're just seeing this as going to be a transitional process and one where it's going to be Congress challenging Trump's executive orders, Trump trying to challenge Congress with vetoes. So it's going to be a very vulnerable time for any country to make a longstanding deal with the U.S. Now, longtime senator in Maine, Susan Collins, well, she got defeated by a Democrat whose voters told him, you know, that these tariffs are hurting the local economy. So for the Democrats who are anti-tariff, what kind of mandate or even what kind of power do they have to get rid of them? Yeah, so Troy Jackson there, as you mentioned, who's now going to be the senator-elect in Maine, here's a fellow that comes from a logging family. He's got Acadian heritage, in fact. He speaks up about how his parents were French Catholics in Maine. And, you know, if there's anyone to really bring over across the border and have a really good conversation with, it would be him. And by doing that, you can find ways for both senators and governors to start to push back on some of these broad-stroke executive tariffs and say, no, we need an exception for the logging industry. We need exceptions for these materials to come in for fishing purposes, for pulp and paper. All of that needs to be dealt with at state or very local levels. And so persons like Jackson there would be excellent to start the conversation with. Now, prior to the election, some Trump officials were saying, you know, Canada, you better not meddle in these elections. Since the Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate, do you think there will be sort of a blame Canada movement? You know, there's always room for that. And we've seen it just how Trump was putting the tariffs in in the first place. One minute he's talking about fentanyl, the other minute he's talking about immigration, then security, and the list goes on. So the next fabrication along that line would have been Canadians interfering with American elections. And there is no... Evidence of that, that doesn't happen. If anything, there was a lot of conversations between Canadian political and business leaders and political leaders in the U.S. And that's just called open discussion. There's no interference with an electoral system. I'm going to stop. Going forward, it all depends if Trump's going to try to ramp up tariffs or try to make some sort of abusive action against Canada or Europe. You might hear more of those fabrications going forward. But what seems to be going on just in the last 72 hours It's a very upended, head-over-heels Trump trying to figure out which way is up at this point. And that sort of bombastic rhetoric, that sort of really inflammatory talk, that's backed off. And now we're seeing Republicans starting to blame Republicans. Even J.D. Vance saying, hey, this war on Iran sunk us. And Trump saying, yeah, it kind of did. So that's a very different tone. So do you think this is the end of make Canada the 51st state talk? Maybe the 51st state talk. I could see that there'd be a lot less enthusiasm amongst the House and even Trump himself to keep going on that, but I wouldn't hold past any sort of tension still about tariffs, trade relations or immigration. That's still very much an issue that Democrats may have to work through to try to make other gains. So if it's trying to get a tariff off in the state of Maine that would impact the state of Maine, what will they have to give in return? So we're going to see... As opposed to that sort of big Sharpie pens calling the shots, a lot more back and forth between the White House and the House. A lot to watch out for. Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you for your insight. We appreciate it, as always. Thanks, Amy.