Canada Land. Funded by you. I'm Noor Azri and today we're talking shit about the news and trying not to shit ourselves over the news. We'll be talking about why Sarah Hagee's interview for Variety magazine deserves... An Oscar, we'll talk about local news in Canada. It's a growth industry. But mostly we'll talk about a trade war.
on pause and what it will take to win the coveted role of Canada's first fentanyl czar. A lot of people don't like to play the game because they don't have a threshold of pain. Wait for that. This is a message from Canada's federal workers. They want you to know something, that the way we work is changing.
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purchase today. Visit douglas.ca slash Canada Land to claim this offer. Reporter for the Taiyi, Jen St. Dennis, welcome to the show. Hello, happy to be here. A Canada-U.S. trade battle has begun and the gloves are off. Sweeping 25% tariffs on imports from Canada will be in place this Tuesday. Canada is hitting back.
We don't want to be here. Canada is very tough. We didn't ask for this. We're not treated well by Canada. We will not back down. We have to be treated well. Strawberries, eggs, milk, butter, margarine, you mentioned mayonnaise. And could tip our economy into a recession. threaten the global economy. Uncertainty, fear and even anger from Canadians. We have to buckle up. It'll devastate us and it'll impact quickly. And then this happened.
We can now report that the Trump administration will be delaying. Canada has also secured a pause on the terrorists for 30 days. For those who are fans of American booze, I can tell you we'll be putting those back on the shelves in response to the news today. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that finding a doctor in Ontario right now is impossible, I think I would have been diagnosed with whiplash. Holy hell, Jen, how are you? How was your weekend? Are you recovering from the news cycle?
No, I'm exhausted. And we're only halfway through the week. I was supposed to not be working on the weekend, but I was pretty much on for most of the Saturday and Sunday. glued to the news like I think many Canadians were. We criticize American media for being so reactive to Trump. And then our media went completely nuts over the weekend and early this week. Let's just see in US President Donald Trump saying. Here's what he had to say just a short time ago.
Trump posted online. Posted on true social. What I'm being told by sources. Relatively few details we can confirm through sources. US President Donald Trump's motorcade pulled into his Florida golf club. There will be another phone call happening this afternoon. Trump has just spoken. from the Oval Office. This is in a post on X by the prime minister. I opened up a CTV news article that's like a live updates page. It's giving us updates in like almost 30 minute intervals.
Like 10, 10 a.m. EST, Trump posts on social media, like unrelated to the tariffs. 11.32, Trump motorcade arrives at the Florida Golf Club. It's... Super intense. And I worry about this, like, overreaction from the Canadian media. I know that you and the TAI have been covering the tariffs. How have you been trying to navigate this balance between being overly reactionary and doing the 30-minute play-by-plays?
So I think when we're seeing that play by play, what we're really in is this really intense breaking news cycle and it can get really exhausting and really intense. That's just kind of the nature of like breaking television news and the way that. television news is set up to cover it and it can feel like a little bit much so if people are glued to the tv and are feeling exhausted my advice would just be like step away for a bit
You don't need to like hang on every word. You know, our whole thing is that at the TIE, we're a news magazine focused on British Columbia and Alberta. And so we don't do breaking news. And that's a luxury. Is it ever? It really is. You know, sometimes it can be a little bit challenging because you want to do a story about something that a lot of readers want to read about. It maybe takes you a few days when other publications have stuff out.
much earlier because we're always going more in depth, but we see our readers really loving that and that's what we're providing to them. So that's kind of where we're situating ourselves. And yeah, we do advocate for slower journalism. That's what we practice. And we do find that it really resonates with readers. And that's what I would say to like other media organizations. You know, we have seen a hollowing out of investigative.
Just the resources that people have at their disposal is like always less and less and less. And what you always continue to do is breaking news if you're like a broadcaster. And maybe what you're cutting is the slower analysis and investigations, especially. And so that's unfortunate because I think that's where we're kind of seeing this disconnect between like, okay, this breathless coverage, but can we all slow down and take a break and just like.
Calm down, like calm down our beating Canadian hearts. Our strong beating Canadian hearts. I mean, if you open the CBC page right now. It is intense. It is plastered with headlines feeling disrespected by U.S. tariffs. Canadians are spending elsewhere with vengeance.
From grocery lists to grad school, families say they're changing their plans, how Trump's tariffs might land in Alberta. It's like one article after the next, what alcohol to buy. Is Tim Hortons Canadian? Why the fuck is Tim Hortons not Canadian? What about the ketchup? Is the ketchup Canadian? The other thing that I've really been noticing is that this has really just showed
And I'm talking about not just the breaking news coverage on the weekend, but the lead up. There's been like a month and a half of coverage, you know, a lot of analysis, which is good. But there's a really huge difference in terms of.
where people are getting their media sources what they're going to be reading so i think this whole news cycle has also really illustrated how polarized our media environment is right now and my example for that is how danielle smith's actions were being interpreted If you're reading the Calgary Herald or the Western Standard, which are fairly centrist media organizations, I'd say, you're going to get this view of Daniel Smith as being this amazing, great negotiator who's doing diplomacy.
If you're reading, you know, the Globe and Mail, if you're reading the Thai, you're going to read a different story. You're going to read a lot of criticism of her approach and contrasting it a lot with what Doug Ford has been doing in Ontario, which is leading Team Canada. And I think what we're seeing in Canada is two different visions of conservative politics. And that's fascinating to watch because I think Pierre Polyev, the federal leader, who's kind of.
according to polling, is poised to become prime minister. We've seen him make a lot of like comments and echo a lot of the mega language, but kind of like dance around it a little bit sometimes too. Like he tries to play both sides and we've seen him have to. switch and change course recently. There is no justification whatsoever for these tariffs or this treatment. Canada will never be the 51st state. You have a trade surplus with us.
when energy is excluded. So that's been really, really interesting to watch just on Canadian politics scene. It's an intense moment. I would argue it warrants the slew of coverage. It reminds me of the early days of COVID when I remember I was working at a broadcast. news outlet i was working at ctv's vancouver bureau and it was just
Like every morning you'd come in and you'd be working, just setting up live press conferences all day. And it feels like being just rushed along on this river of news and updates. And it is overwhelming. personally looking for and trying to do as a reporter, trying to like step back and help the readers think about this issue, interview experts, interview people who can slow down and help us understand.
But I don't actually fault Breaking News for doing Breaking News at this point, because I do think Canadians are really interested. I was actually really impressed with CBC's coverage on Saturday. I thought they did a really good job. Anything in particular that, like, stood out to you? Yeah, I loved Rosie Barton.
The CBC anchor, I love that she was reading out emails and talking about how she's getting hundreds and hundreds of emails from viewers, which really showed, and this is the point I want to make, I think we really need to be connecting with our viewers and readers at this point and delivering to them what they want. answering the questions that they're posing that they have in their heads that they don't know and want to know about. I think we have to really remember to stay connected with them.
I've been getting this conversation happening on some emails to me, Adrian. People saying, surely there are other places where we can either create alliances and allyship. Yeah, I'm getting very similar emails, Rosie. I mean, I wish I could sort of turn my computer around and show you because there's now pages and pages of people writing. That was a highlight for me. I read something over the...
The weekend that caught my eye, Brian Stelter, he's a chief media analyst at CNN, and he posted something really interesting. Not media criticism, but media praise. It says... Okay, that's a pretty rare Canadian media. shout-out. But he also had an image attached with his post that listed a bunch of headlines, like Canadian headlines.
There is a CBC banner headline that says Trump has ruptured the Canada-US relationship. To what end and what comes next? The Globe and Mail's homepage has a layout with full coverage. He's essentially like praising how well Canada's been covering the trade war. I wonder if this is about Canadian media really successfully covering...
What's going on or the fact that the U.S. media right now is so inundated with things to cover, like from the ice raids to the plane crashes to the millions of executive orders and. whatever the hell Elon Musk is doing that day. Yeah, I mean, for American media, that's totally understandable. There's an enormous amount of things going on. And I would think that the Elon Musk story of somebody who's not elected.
and is like the richest man in the world taking over key government agencies and controlling. federal money is probably the number one story that you want to focus on. That's completely understandable. And I saw a comment on Blue Sky that was like, for us, the tariff war is the number one story, obviously. But in the US, there's like...
five or six other huge things that happened that weekend. So that's understandable. I would like to urge American media to, if they're listening. If they listen to Canadian news, American media, are you here? Yeah. I think some of them are listening.
The thing that has been sidelined in this conversation, we're so fixated on the tariff war. Well, for me, the story is actually Trump's repeated threats to our sovereignty. That's actually, for me, that's kind of the bigger story here. And I know there's different points of view. on how serious he is, but man, he keeps on repeating that and repeating that. And I do think American media should pay a little bit more attention to that.
It's not just about the economic impact of potential tariffs or like what's the gamesmanship here. This is a real aggressive stance against an ally. And I do think that is worth much more attention in American media. On Monday this week, after ignoring Trudeau since he got into the office, Trump finally picked up the phone, and this is what he said. I also spoke with Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada.
And we had a good talk in the morning. Canada is very tough. A lot of things have been very unfair with Canada. As a state, it's different. And there are no tariffs. So I'd love to see that. But some people say that would be... If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that they'd become a state.
But a lot of people don't like to play the game because they don't have a threshold of pain and there would be some pain But not a lot the pain would be really there. So we're gonna meet Again, by phone at three o'clock and we'll let you know. I mean, what a clip. Yeah, he's basically saying become a state and the tariff threat will go away. I don't want to. Super criticize any one Canadian reporter, but I was listening to Alex Panetta's interview with FrontBurner this morning. It was great.
But he was kind of listing off a bunch of different issues to do with tariffs and then kind of at the end talking about the 51st state comment. You'd have some of Trump's defenders saying all he wants is for you to do some simple common sense stuff and stopping fentanyl. Just get that done.
But then Trump would keep saying stuff like Canada's trade deficit's unfair. I don't like what their farmers do. I don't like what, you know, like on dairy. I don't like the, hey, also, by the way, they should become a state. It was really hard to disentangle all those things. Personally, I would like put that kind of more at the beginning. That's OK, though. He was doing like a very comprehensive breakdown of tariffs, which is I learned a lot.
But I would just like to see like a little bit more focus on that. I think there's been reluctance to go crazy with it because you don't want to freak people out unnecessarily. It's about that balance, right? Reacting, but then not overreacting and then not underreacting. It's like how. How do you cover this guy? Yeah. And I think that we're kind of learning in Canada. We're learning what American media went through. And I think news readers and news.
Consumers should be criticizing us. If they're seeing something that's not being covered, there's tons of stuff that's not being covered. Let us know, please. I really welcome input. Yeah, please, please criticize us. Please let us know what you'd like. Reach out to us both. You see sometimes on social media, people saying is like, I want you to say that so and so is a traitor. And, you know.
I'm right and they're wrong. And it's like, OK, well, we're not going to do that. But I think what they're what they're wanting is like really hard hitting investigative reporting that really reveals the players behind these pretty alarming geopolitical moves.
And so I think the contrast between, for instance, the New York Times, which has been like incredibly milquetoast when we talk about like reactionary headlines, man, they have been doing the opposite of that. And it's bizarre when we're criticizing.
newspapers were being like too crazy with their headlines there is a opposite that's you can go in that's not good and then when i'm seeing like people really praising wired this week and saying let's subscribe to wired because they're doing lots of hard-hitting stories Getting behind, like, who are these guys going into these American agencies at the behest of Elon Musk? They're like these 19 to 25 year olds. That's what I see, like people really responding to those investigative stories.
And I'd like to suggest that in Canadian media, let's all put a little bit more investigative effort into digging up that information because our readers are really responding to it. After the break, we'll talk about how the hell Canada ended up with a fentanyl czar and why it isn't as big of a win as Trump is saying it is. This episode is brought to you by Article. People have been checking the labels lately. What's Canadian? What isn't? Well, a lot of people don't realize this.
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Oh, hell yeah. Even more Canadian. It's wood that the beaver chopped down with its teeth. Oh, hell yeah. That's pretty Canadian. I think my answer is a Muskoka chair. Oh, that's a good one too. Look, I know we're not exactly in Muskoka chair season, so let me recommend the Odeo lounge chair that we have in the office by article. They are my favorite. They're really sleek. They've got a mid-century modern look, but they don't sacrifice.
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We learned very little from that initial call other than the fact that... Trump supposedly says that there may be pains over a potential annexation, but we also learned that there would be another call coming later in the afternoon. And shortly after that call, we got the news via a Justin Trudeau tweet. Jen, do you want to read JT's tweet for us? Okay, so here is the tweet.
He said, I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan, reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners and increased resources to stop the.
of fentanyl. Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border in addition canada is making new commitments to appoint a fentanyl czar we will list cartels as terrorists ensure 24 7 eyes on the border launch a canada u.s joint strike force to combat organized crime fentanyl and phew! 30 days. We have 30 days to breathe. Nothing says Canada like appointing a czar. No, actually, nothing says Canada like appointing a fentanyl czar.
That's the most un-Canadian thing I've ever heard of. We don't appoint czars in Canada. That's very American. It literally sounds like Trump. It sounds like he wrote this tweet for Trump, like, here, man, I'm doing exactly what you say. I'm even appointing a fentanyl czar. This tweet was interesting, to say the least.
What was your reaction? Well, I'm sure there's a lot of intention behind this language. I'm sure that there is some sort of calculation here that echoing language that Trump has said is kind of the way to communicate this, whether that's a message to Trump or. So I'm sure there's a lot of intention behind the wording of this tweet. It was very carefully worded.
I also have to think that maybe Canada took a bit of a page from Mexico. Mexico has been dealing with Trump's demands on border stuff for a long time. Like in 2019, Mexico was like, OK, we'll put 12,000 National Guard at the border. And again, they're kind of like promising the same types of things. So it seems like Mexico kind of knows how to satisfy Trump on these things. And I don't know, perhaps we're taking a page from them.
I don't know. It just confuses me because I wonder if anyone briefed Trump about the $1.3 billion border plan in December. What about the videos? Did he see the videos of the helicopters being deployed? There's even a time lapse that was supposedly shared with the U.S. Commerce Secretary sent over by our... finance minister, according to an unnamed source of the BBC. Even Alberta Premier Daniel Smith invited Fox News to film and monitor the Alberta-Montana border. Did he not see this?
It's surprising that we got away with something that we were already doing. I don't know. It seems like a lot of political theater. And you could write it off as like, oh, I guess Trump is just blustering again. You know, we've seen him do this in the past, right? He was like, we had to renegotiate NAFTA based on his wants and demands. And we did that in his first time around in his first term.
negotiated and now we have Kuzma instead of NAFTA. What was different back then was that he was not threatening our sovereignty. True. So I think that whatever political theater we're seeing here, it's not over now. He's sort of like, okay, border.
done I guess now we're going to do like economic negotiations and it's like okay well what else are you going to ask for is and when is it going to stop it's just kind of like an endless shakedown with the threat of our sovereignty hanging over our heads yeah it makes me question if this is really about the borderer at all. The former U.S. Secretary of Treasury was on CBC recently, and he literally called this whole thing theatrics, performance art. This is all surreal performance art.
This is letting the president off the hook on a set of threats that had done significant damage in our financial markets and undermined confidence. but I don't believe you've made a real and significant concession. You wanted to cooperate with us before on fentanyl. You're not an important source of... illegal border crossings. This is all just theatrics, it seems to me, of a rather depraved sort. And I'm sorry that a U.S. president is resorting.
to this kind of tactic. Yeah, I mean, to quote Pierre Polyev, there's like absolutely no justification whatsoever. That's the analysis from most people that this is really not a thing. Obviously, there's problems. There's always going to be things you can improve with border security. There's a fentanyl lab in BC that the police busted. Like, yeah, that's a problem. Is it justification for putting in place economy?
devastating tariffs is that worth it no no that's not a justification for tariffs that's like a thing where you get together and do a task force and make an agreement about border security between your two nations It is political theater, obviously. Yeah, it feels like Trump is going to be using this threat of tariffs to kind of get...
whatever he wants and then frame it somehow as a win for the U.S. and is willing to just wait out the 30 days and hang it over our heads again. I think he got a little win that he can deliver to his supporters who, as we know... are maybe like not doing the most critical thinking right now. They're like absorbing a lot of media that's very friendly to Trump. Oh, your president is strengthening the border might be enough for his supporters.
So and I do think that we might see an escalation in provocations. There might be like another excuse for something else. This is not over by a long shot. Yeah, I mean, we thought it would be. A done deal when he was inaugurated and we all freaked out and waited and then nothing happened. And then he told us that February 1st, folks, that's the date. We waited for February 1st, and then we were told February 4th. And here we are, like, again, waiting in the next 30 days to figure out.
What is actually going to happen? It feels like we're on this never-ending hamster wheel of, like, reacting to Trump. And part of me wonders if that's intentional. Oh, it's very intentional. Yeah, it's extremely intentional. I think he was determined to wreck our Saturday. That's what struck me about the February 1st deadline. He said, I don't want you to enjoy your weekend. Nobody can enjoy the weekend in Canada.
When we're talking about media, I think we are going to have to take a step back now and go, OK, we have a 30 day pause. Like, let's think about how we're going to cover this. Let's think about what's important. Let's put ourselves on a footing to really do some deep.
look that's that's what i would like sort of suggest for canadian media is like sure we've been given 30 days let's read some history books let's like you know let's get some deep stuff going let's talk about the smooth holly tariffs let's really give canadians the really deep education and information that they're craving right now. Our page views are...
going crazy on this stuff. People really, really want to read it. So yes, keep going, keep covering it, but let's take a little step back, take a breather and then make sure to do human interest stories too. Like make sure to show. Canadians in our natural habitat doing stuff that we love to do because we do also see this resurgence of helping each other out, being a community, doing stuff in real life, trying to cut through the social media toxicity that we're in because we are seeing this.
This moment where, you know, we have been really polarized. We have been like very online and it's been bad. And we see this like little resurgence in belief in Canadian society and Canadian pride. And maybe this is a nice opportunity to kind of. delve into that also a little bit. Okay, Jen, we like to duly note stories on this show so they don't get overlooked. What would you like to duly note?
I would like to duly note The Walrus, a Canadian magazine. Yay! The Walrus just announced this week that they are opening six... reporting bureaus across Canada. And I think that's awesome. Canada needs more local reporters. And what I'm really excited about is that they're focusing on, you know, they have a person in Western Canada, that's understandable, but they're also focusing on places like the
Yukon and Atlantic Canada. So I just think that's fabulous that they are dedicating reporting resources and giving these parts of Canada the national magazine treatment. I think that's super positive and we should cheer. People are adding reporting resources. Duly noted. I want to duly note that Sarah Hagee is her.
She's the co-host of the podcast Scamfluencers, and she's been on the show before. But on January 30th, she tweeted out all these really horrific Islamophobic tweets by Carla Sofia Gascon, the first. openly trans woman nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars. A day after she published these tweets that she found, Variety, this huge entertainment magazine in the U.S., they picked up the story. And I'll read you a bit from the article.
With Sarah Hagee. While visiting family in Southeast Asia, she followed her journalist's instinct, researching Gascon's political leanings after noticing what she described as a dog whistle in a post. There was like an interview portion. of the article. And I found one of the questions really funny. The question was, some might argue that digging up old tweets is an example of cancel culture looking to cancel the next person. And Sarah responded with...
I entirely disregard those people intellectually on every level. She goes on to say a lot of other things. I love that. It's so good. It's just so good. I was like, oh, yes. Like, yeah. Kill it. And then in perfect Sarah Hagee fashion, they asked her, what would you say directly to her? And she goes, nothing. She's just another racist. Sarah, thank you for your service. One Islamophobe down. Many. Many, many more to go. Duly noted.
That's our show for today. Thank you for joining me. You can email me about the show at noor at canadaland.com. I read everything you send. You can also find me on Blue Sky and Twitter. Jen, where can people find you? So you can also find me on Blue Sky and Twitter. I'm using Blue Sky more often these days. Just search for my name because the handles are kind of complicated. Jen St. Dennis. St. Dennis, like the street in Montreal. And you can also find my work at the Tailly.
thetaye.ca and if you just visit our website you can feel good about supporting local media we have no paywall at all Perfect. That'll enrage all your friend Capone people because I say my name wrong. They don't take a lot to be enraged. Don't worry. This episode is produced by James Nicholson. Mixing and mastering is by Caleb Thompson.
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Bring some figs. But this was the last time my brother saw her. Three decades later, French investigators finally identified a suspect in the case. A Lebanese-Canadian sociology professor... living a quiet life on the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada. Can you introduce yourself? Hassan Diab. Is Hassan Diab guilty? Or is he a scapegoat? From Canadaland, this is the Copernic Affair. It is... A surrealistic story, put it this way. Listen to The Kopernick Affair wherever you get your podcasts.