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What Canada’s main parties are running on in upcoming election
Canada’s 45th general election is less than two weeks away, and the nation faces a fraught political climate fueled by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats towards the country. The election's outcome could have far-reaching impacts on Canada’s future and position in a fragmenting world. In an exclusive interview, GZERO’s Tasha Kheiriddin sits down with Eurasia Group‘s senior advisor John Baird and Vice Chairman Gerald Butts to unpack what’s at stake in Canada’s election, including key political players and the strategies behind their campaigns.
Butts, former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a key Liberal strategist, says Carney is seeking a public mandate after taking over during Canada’s longest-running minority Parliament. Baird counters that Carney aims to ride early popularity and break from the Trudeau legacy.
Despite clear ideological divides, both Butts and Baird agree on one point: Canada needs a strong majority government. Baird warns that, “when you have such a small number of Members of Parliament, it’s like the tail wagging the dog,” expressing concern over the instability of minority rule. Butts echoes the sentiment, stating the country would be “far better served by a strong government of either political stripe.”
With Canadians heading to the polls, the world will be watching closely. The 2025 Canada election could determine not just the nation's economic path but its place on the global stage.
Watch full interview: Canadians head to the polls — and into the Trump vortex
Special interview: Canadians head to the polls — and into the Trump vortex
With just over a week until the Canadian election, GZERO’s Tasha Kheiriddin sat down with two senior advisors at Eurasia Group to get their take: Vice Chairman Gerald Butts, who is a former advisor to Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and John Baird, former Cabinet minister under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Here’s what they had to say:
Why is Canada in an election campaign? “The prime minister needed a mandate from the people, not just his party,” said Butts, referring to newly minted PM Mark Carney, who took over from Trudeau in March.
Baird was more blunt: “Carney wanted to separate himself from the NDP–Trudeau era.” Which he seems to be doing: Under his watch the Liberals have soared nearly 20 points in the polls and are currentlypredicted to form a government.
Who are the main players? Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, presents “a safe, fiscally responsible concept” in Butts’ view. His main rival, populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, brings “a fresh approach” according to Baird, who served with Poilievre in Parliament. He sees Poilievre as “best able to speak to US President Donald Trump and his administration.”
What’s really on the ballot? Themain issue is who can most effectively deal with Trump, whose tariffs and musings about making Canada the “51st state” have enraged Canadians. So far, voters givetop marks to Carney on that question. But whichever party wins, Butts and Baird agree that the next PM faces a hostile White House. “We’re starting from scratch,” warned Butts, citing the breakdown in what used to be one of the world’s closest bilateral relationships.
Minority or majority? Both men think that a minority government would be a bad outcome. “You don’t want to be checking in with a party leader with 8% in the polls before talking to the president of the United States,” said Butts, referring to Canada’s smaller parties, the NDP and Bloc Québécois. “It’s the tail wagging the dog,” added Baird.
Advice to the next PM for dealing with Trump? “Don’t get ‘Zelenskied’ — and be prepared,” they agreed. And to the victor go the spoils, even if that victor will take over at one of the most fraught moments in Canada’s history.
“The worst day in government,” Baird quipped, “is still better than the best day in opposition.”
Watch the full interview above.
Trudeau’s former right-hand man thinks Trump 2.0 ‘will be harder’
When Donald Trump shocked the world by getting himself elected in 2016, Gerald Butts was the principal secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He was also a key member of the Canadian team that managed the tumultuous but ultimately successful negotiation of the USMCA, sitting across the table from Trump, Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, and Robert Lighthizer. He is now vice chairman and a senior advisor at Eurasia Group, which is the parent company of GZERO Media.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You were in the Office of the Prime Minister the last time Trump was elected. How is this different?
Butts: On the positive side, it’s not as much of a shock. The most salient fact of the first Trump presidency was that it happened. So everybody had to have a plan for it happening again. That’s the upside. The downside is you’re going to be dealing with a much more emboldened Trump who’s got a broader electoral mandate and whose ambitions on the economy are much more comprehensive than they were the first go-round. He campaigned in 2016 basically saying to the Great Lakes blue-collar worker that he was going to bring their jobs back from Mexico, the jobs that the Clintons sold to Mexico. And this time he’s got a much more ambitious agenda. It’s rebalancing global trade and a mass deportation plan that will make labor more expensive in the United States.
If you add those two things together, along with probably increased defense spending on an already large deficit, it’s hard to see how those things don’t cause inflation.
It seems odd that inflation is what eroded Biden’s brand, but Trump’s two key promises are both inflationary.
They don’t see it that way, of course. I think that that’s the conventional economic view. And I do think that what will inevitably be an inflated defense budget beyond the PBO’s 3% estimate is also going to be part of this, part of the inflationary pressure that Trump brings to bear.
As policymakers have learned over the past couple of years, because most of them had never had to deal with it before, inflation is a government killer. It’s the grim reaper for incumbents, and it’s mowed down governments of all political stripes all over the world.
Speaking of which, the Trudeau government generally gets good marks for handling Trump the first time, which you had something to do with. A lot of people are worried that it’s going to be a little harder this time, in part because of the relationship between the president and the prime minister. Do you think that that’s important?
Its importance is overblown. I think you’re right that it will be harder. I think that has more to do with the relative political standing of the government and the time of the mandate. If you’re dealing with Trump at the end of your first year, when you’re in the 40s in the polls, with almost a 50% approval rating, that’s one thing, because those two things add up to political capital that you have to invest.
If you’re dealing with it in year 10, when you don’t enjoy those polling numbers, that means you have less political capital to invest. And by definition, Trump is a problem that requires political capital to solve.
They have a very difficult task ahead of them, don’t they?
They really do. I never like to tell my former colleagues how to do their job, because the truth is, when you don’t have all the information they have, it’s hard to make judicious calls. Only they know how prepared they are to deal with undocumented people showing up at a Canadian border point. I don’t know that. Unless you do, it’s hard to say how you would deal with that issue either in the public or in bilateral negotiations with the Trump administration.
I do think that’s potentially the biggest problem they’re going to have to deal with because I wouldn’t say the cross-partisan consensus on immigration in Canada is gone, but it has been weakened by recent events.
On trade, what’s the best guess on whether Trump is going to exempt Canada from a new tariff policy?
I think if the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, then he will only grant exemptions in return for something. The question is, what can the government offer that he wants that will get that exemption? And I have no idea.
Cross-border trade is high frequency and very large. We’d feel the impact of tariffs sooner, and they’d cover more of our economy than any country except maybe Mexico.
Traditionally in Canada, all governments are afraid — because of the strength of our dairy lobby — to do much about the supply-managed dairy industry. (Canada’s politically powerful dairy farmers have long exerted political pressure to protect their industry from American imports.) In this situation, do you think that that’s the kind of thing the politicians may have to think about in a new way?
That’s definitely possible. I mean, my view is if you’re going to take that kind of risk, get some bigger economic reward for it. We’ve been simultaneously having this conversation yet again about Canadian productivity. And one of the big problems with Canadian productivity is that our firms and sectors like digital services face no competition. So the companies are big, bloated bureaucracies that deliver some of the most expensive services in the world. I’d be tempted to use the crisis presented by the Trump administration to fix some things about the structure of the Canadian economy that badly need fixing.
On the energy transition, all of these big bets on battery plants in the United States are legislated tax credits that Trump cannot get rid of, but the whole managed auto manufacturing sector is losing an enthusiastic ally for EVs in Biden. What does that do to the enormous subsidies Trudeau and Champagne have put on the table for EV manufacturers?
I think that may be literally a trillion-dollar question. That’s going to be a super-challenging file to manage with Trump. It’s coming at a time where the global industry is electrifying, and that process is being led by the Chinese. The Americans think the proper response to that is to create large tariffs that will keep the Chinese out of the American market because they’re kind of running the 1970s playbook. I think the response from the Chinese is going to be: “We don’t need to be in the American market. China is twice the size of the United States auto market, and we’ll take the rest of the world while you guys double down on inferior technology that the rest of the world is turning away from.”
It’s a very complicated situation. They’re already losing out to Chinese and Korean producers, and this could just accelerate that process.
So I’d be very worried if I were working on this part of industrial policy in North America because the companies have a weaker hand to deal with than the government seems to think they do.
And for Canada, there’s an extra challenge in that the Canadian economy is so integrated with the American economy that it may not be possible to set a different course.
That’s right. It may be that the American automotive market, like the American economy itself, is so large that subnational economies like California and New York — which together are larger than Canada — can keep going the way they’ve been going, and the Canadian industry basically follows them. But I think that’s challenging. It’s super challenging for a small but important producer like Canada, especially on the parts side.
Let’s close with a little optimism. What do you see as an upside of this election for Canada?
I think it’s the persistent structural problems in the Canadian economy that are not going to be solved in the absence of a crisis. Maybe Trump is the crisis that the Canadian economy needs to solve those problems.
The world’s largest plastic waste pyramid is revealed in Egypt ahead of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.
What to expect from COP27: “It’s pretty grim”
Last year’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where central governments and the private sector worked together in unforeseen ways, gave us reason to hope for climate progress. Nearly 200 countries gathered to agree on details of the Paris Agreement with an eye toward limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C. This year was meant to be all about implementation.
But in the last 12 months, the world’s been rocked by war in Europe, soaring inflation, and deepening political and economic divides between rich and poor countries. As world leaders descend this weekend on the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh for the COP27 climate summit, climate warriors are wondering what can be done at this pivotal moment to save the planet.
We spoke with our very own climate expert, Eurasia Group’s Vice Chairman Gerald Butts, for a reality check on the goals and possibilities for this year’s COP27. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Last year's COP26 produced some highly ambitious goals. What kind of progress has been made thus far on those goals?
Not a lot, unfortunately. I think that most governments have been distracted by the economic fallout from the war, and those directly involved in the war have been distracted by that. So I think it's been a suboptimal year, to say the least, in climate progress, with the one notable bright spot of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, which is the first serious stab at tackling the US domestic emissions problem that we've seen. So one big bright spot, and a lot of backsliding
What are the broad goals for this year's conference? What would success look like?
The advanced billing was that it was going to be an attempt to knit together north and south. And, unfortunately, I think the fault line between northern wealthier countries that emit a lot and the developing world, which historically has not emitted a lot, is going to be bigger than ever in Egypt and that will probably feature prominently in the daily coverage. There will be a big focus on climate finance and greenwashing — expect a bunfight on this front.
To what extent has the war in Ukraine impacted global climate goals?
I think the war in Ukraine will ultimately expedite the energy transition from fossil-based energy to renewables. But in the short term, there's no doubt that it's leading to an increase in the use of fossil fuels to create energy, particularly in Europe. And the most pernicious aspect of climate change emissions is that they persist for a long time in the atmosphere. So you're seeing a lot of coverage where people are saying, “these are temporary increases in emissions in Europe,” but they're not temporary to the atmosphere. That's the key point. They may ramp back down in a couple of years, but the consequences will be there for a very long time.
Do you expect that to shift at all in the coming year? What is the outlook for Europe’s transition away from fossil-based energy?
I think that the geopolitics of Russia's energy leverage over Europe has brought into sharp relief for European governments how ill-advised that was in the first place. And given that Europe does not have a large domestic store of fossil-based energy, it's underscored how important the energy transition away from fossil is in Europe. And European policymakers have really latched onto it. They're going to spend a lot of money to execute it, and it's going to be an expensive fast transition as governments try to manage large increases in energy prices in the short term. There's no doubt that the energy transition is happening and that people underestimate how disruptive it's going to be. The countries that are trying to push fast forward on an energy transition will endure the price spikes. So in a nutshell, it's going to be a lot bumpier than people expect it to be, and it will eventually happen, but there will be a lot of political fallout and turmoil.
Last year, the US and China signed a joint declaration on Climate Action. Is that cooperation in jeopardy today? And what does that mean?
Oh yeah, big time. I think it's part and parcel to the larger structural change in the US-China relationship, where they both see each other primarily as competitors rather than as strategic partners. In the past, the climate as an issue had been set aside from that change, but it's inevitably been sucked into that maelstrom.
This means you don't have the top two emitters and two largest economies cooperating any longer on climate change. I think it's become, for both countries, a field of competition rather than cooperation, which is again something we've been saying was inevitable at Eurasia Group Asia for a long time, but you're seeing it in full force now.
One of the biggest-picture issues that'll be in the background of every conversation at COP27 is the global competition for the rare earth minerals that go into making up the battery supply chain for everything from electric vehicles to storage for electricity grids. The Chinese are way ahead, and the North Americans — including Canada and Mexico — have lately stepped up their efforts to catch up. But we see this as a resource race where large dominant economies are competing with one another to secure a long-term supply of critical minerals that they think will be of strategic economic and security value over the mid to long term.
What other contentious issues will COP27 participants face?
I think the big issue is — and this was brought into sharp relief with the floods in Nigeria and Pakistan — that the developing world is saying, "We didn't cause this problem, but we're dealing with its most severe consequences, and under the loss and damage provisions that the north has signed onto repeatedly, but failed to deliver on, it's time for you guys to pay up.” And the north is going to show up without a lot of money.
As a veteran of several COPs, that's a dynamic that you see all the time, and I think the patience is wearing thin in the south, especially as they see all of this investment get sucked into the United States because of the IRA.
What do you think of Egypt playing host? How will that go down?
There's going to be a lot of bad publicity for Egypt during the course of the COP, in particular on political freedom issues. There are organizations trying to highlight the prevalence of political prisoners in Egypt. And of course, Sharm El Sheikh itself is known as a playground for wealthy Europeans and Middle Easterners. In some ways, having it in an African country so close to Europe is inviting comments on the global divide between north and south.
And finally, where does the world stand on climate targets, and what is your biggest fear?
Everybody’s way off their targets and a lot of very hard heavy lifting is required to get us anywhere near keeping 1.5 degrees alive. And right now we're somewhere in the mid-2’s depending on which projection you look at. And you only need to look around the world to see the manifestations of 1.2 degrees of warming, which is where we are, to know that the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years are going to be really difficult ones, in particular for people who live near the equator, which is most of humanity.
What worries me most is that we're entering a world where even the wealthy countries that can, to a certain extent, use their wealth to insulate themselves from the most severe impacts of climate change, aren't really doing it. It requires us in democratic societies to do things that we're historically not very good at, which is to think long-term on things like infrastructure and to make investments accordingly.
What keeps me awake at night is the migration crisis. I think that a combination of adverse heat events, flooding, and sea level rise will create numerous migration problems over the next 20 years that we have shown ourselves as a global community singularly inept at dealing with.
Sorry to be a downer, but it's pretty grim out there.
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COVID's impact on education and its long-term geopolitical consequences: Gerald Butts
It's not just kids spending too much time on their screens because they got so used to doing everything remotely during the pandemic.
The impact of COVID-related educational disruption - and the growing inequality gap - could have big geopolitical fallout in the future. Why?
Because with diminished education comes fewer economic opportunities. That will likely exacerbate already deep divisions, says Eurasia Group Vice Chairman Gerald Butts.
As a result, he adds, watch out for more future disrupted politics around the world, both within countries and between countries.
Butts spoke during a Global Stage livestream on September 15, 2022: "Live from the UN General Assembly: Transforming Education"
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How to get students back on track after the Great Education Disruption
As the 77th UN General Assembly gets underway, much of the attention will go toward how to breathe new life into the Sustainable Development Goals. Why? Because the pandemic wiped out years of progress on meeting the 17 SDGs, especially No. 4: ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.
COVID disrupted the lives of some 1.6 billion students around the world. Almost 150 million missed about half of in-person classes in 2020, and 24 million will never return to school.
So, how can we get education back on track before it's too late? Several experts weighed in during the Global Stage livestream conversation "Transforming Education" hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft.
The data on the pandemic's crippling effect on education are not enough to get a real sense of the "picture of this time," said Leonardo Garnier, special adviser for the UN's Transforming Education Summit. Still, now we have an opportunity to invest in education like we've never done before — including in low-income countries where the government and businesses actually benefit from a cheap, uneducated labor force. Investing in education, Garnier added, is not only a moral imperative but a wise economic decision because it comes with big long-term payoffs like more educated women entering the workforce.
American Federation of Teachers Executive VP Evelyn DeJesus, for her part, explained how during the pandemic kids were walloped by multiple traumas, arguably the least of which was having to learn on Zoom. She believes it would have been a miracle if test scores hadn't dropped. While recognizing the failures of remote learning, DeJesus still thinks we need to spend big — no more belt-tightening — on broadband access for all, and resents how education has become a political football in America.
COVID's wrecking ball to education exacerbated divisions not only between but also within countries, which in the future will disrupt politics when people get angry from losing out on opportunities, said Eurasia Group Vice Chairman Gerald Butts. How can we stop this? With more global cooperation on education, which should be a "continuum" for everyone, everywhere.
Vickie Robinson, general manager of Microsoft's Airband Initiative to expand global broadband access, said that despite the disruptions caused by the abrupt switch to remote learning during the pandemic, we still need to invest in digital infrastructure because it might just happen again and we can't afford for our kids to lose any more school time. Who should do this? Robinson believes the responsibility for digital inclusion should be shared by governments and the private sector.
Finally, one silver lining from COVID on higher education is that for many workers it shifted the focus from going to the right school to having the right skills, noted Jonathan Rochelle, VP of Product Management, Learning Content & Instructor Experience at Linkedin. And it'll continue, since acquiring skills in lifelong learning must be "a moving target."
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Europe plans for Putin & Trump 2.0
Signal spoke with Eurasia Group Vice Chairman Gerry Butts about Europe’s future given the uncertainty created by both Russian aggression and America’s volatile politics. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Willis Sparks: The G7 and NATO summits this week have focused on threats from Russia and challenges from China. But based on your recent conversations with senior European officials, you’ve said they’re also worried about long-term threats to Europe’s alliances posed by America’s tough-to-predict political future. Say more about that.
Gerry Butts: Europeans are looking beyond the midterms to the 2024 US presidential election. And having experienced around the NATO table the kind of belligerence they experienced from [Donald] Trump the first go-round, they’ve got to be worried that they’re going to end up holding the bag in a fight with the Russians in Europe with no Americans at the table.
Sparks: So, on the security front, what can Europe realistically do to protect itself against big swings in the future US commitment to Europe’s defense?
Butts: In the short term, not a lot. They have to build up their own capacity, and they’re moving pretty quickly to do that – the Germans, in particular. But if I were in Ukraine, I would worry that the Europeans might have to cut a territorial deal with the Russians.
I think the Germans are going to be sorely tested by the energy situation this winter. It’s hard to draw conclusions about the political mood in Germany until the Russians cut off the gas in the dead of winter. The public mood is really unsettled. I can see a broad spectrum of possible outcomes here. I can see one where the Germans say, “Why do we care so much about the Ukrainians when we can’t heat our homes?” But I can also imagine almost an epochal hardening of opinion against Russia. Either is possible.
Sparks: Europeans, particularly the French, have talked for decades about a common European defense beyond NATO. Does the current fear of Russian presence and US absence intensify the debate?
Butts: I think that Americans underestimate the consequences of the Trump presidency and just how seriously it was taken in Europe. If you’re German, French, or even British, and you’re thinking about what continental security looks like in Europe when the US isn’t present, nothing concentrates the mind like the threat of Russian invasion. That will instigate more action than all the talk of the past 25 years.
Sparks: In a way, Putin is proving to the Germans that they can’t be complacent. They have to spend the money on defense, no?
Butts: That’s right. The only reference point in my life is, in 1990, history was going to turn out great, and it felt like nothing could go wrong. Of course, a lot went wrong. Most of what we thought was going to happen didn’t happen. Now, we’re overcome by blanket pessimism. The worst-case scenario very seldom develops, but the unexpected always happens.
Sparks: What about climate change? What can EU leaders do to advance their plans knowing the next US president could be Donald Trump or someone who agrees with Trump on climate deals?
Butts: I think this whole situation is putting steel in the spine of the Europeans to decarbonize as rapidly as possible. They don’t want to trade reliance on Putin’s fossil gas for reliance on Trump’s fossil gas. That’s the geopolitical pickle they’re in. The only way out of that is to accelerate decarbonization. That’s easy to say and really hard to do. They now have two energy transitions. They have to get off Russian gas and then off of [all] fossil fuel.
By the way, I think the energy dimensions of Putin’s calculation to [invade Ukraine] were material if not decisive. He knew his maximum leverage point over Europe was right now. The longer he waited, the less leverage he would have as Europe decarbonizes. Putin recognizes that Europe’s climate policy is a real thing, and the tool he wanted to use would only get duller and duller.
Sparks: How long will each of these energy transitions take?
Butts: Decarbonization will take 15-20 years, but I think Russian gas will be gone from Europe within the next couple of years. The assumptions in European reports and forecasts are all based on absolute best-case scenarios, but they know how difficult this is going to be.
Putin doesn’t believe the world can exist without fossil fuel. Modern economies can’t run on renewables. He wants to prove that. If we’re wrong, Putin will prove that after the sugar rush of Western unity wears off, he can win. But Europe still has to go through both these energy transitions. I think this will be deeply impoverishing for Russia for generations to come.
This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
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COP26 vibes so far: "What's it worth to save everything we have?"
What's the state of play so far at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow? Why is it so urgent to speed up climate action before it's too late? What does climate justice for developing nations really mean? And how can companies do their part without greenwashing? Several experts debated these and other questions during a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft during the opening week of COP26, moderated by Eurasia Group senior adviser Diana Fox Carney.
Gerald Butts, vice chairman of Eurasia Group, explained the difference between climate justice and just transition to clean energy, and how the political debate on climate has moved to who's responsible to what we're going to do about it.
Atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy and Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University., offered her thoughts on progress made since Paris 2015, why everything we do matters because climate is loading the dice against us, the need to set goals despite the human tendency to procrastinate, why we need to put value on climate because everything we have is worth saving, and why individuals should use their voices more than their actions to advocate for change on climate.
Naoko Ishii, Director of Center for Global Commons, and Executive Vice President of the University of Tokyo, detailed how we need to persuade the Japanese people to come up with a climate agenda they can own, and how to integrate the value of natural capital into economic decision-making by putting a price on carbon.
Microsoft chief environmental officer Lucas Joppa talked about why it's time for corporations to go from pledges to performance on climate action, why the private sector's role should be building climate solutions for the public sector, the importance of technology to move the needle on corporate sustainability, and why training the workforce in green skills should be a shared responsibility.
DRC member of parliament and former speaker Jeanine Mabunda Lioko discussed the paradox of a global green economy that'll still need a lot of raw materials from Africa, the facts and figures that illuminate the climate justice question, and why some climate goals are reachable for the continent — just not developing with only renewable energy.
Catherine McKenna, former Canadian minister of Infrastructure and Communities, spoke about the huge opportunity to scale up public-private partnerships on climate with blended finance, the need to track progress on top of disclosure to prevent greenwashing, and the right incentives for behavioral change on climate.- Viewpoint: What to watch at COP26 - GZERO Media ›
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