CTV Question Period with Vassy Kapelos Podcast · CTV News

CTV QP Podcast #511: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May speaks out on pipeline deal

December 7, 2025·46 min·20 clips

Question Period starts with a blunt industrial-policy problem: a major steel producer gets a $400 million federal loan and then announces a thousand job cuts. The company’s CEO says the layoffs were always part of the plan, which only sharpens the obvious question about whether the government protected Canadian jobs or just funded the delay. Jobs minister Patty Hajdu comes on to answer for the decision and its fallout. The conversation keeps coming back to the same issue: what public money can realistically buy, and what it cannot. It asks which kinds of support preserve jobs and which ones simply soften the landing. From there, the episode shifts to the U.S. front. Donald Trump signals that he is not committing to the future of North American free trade. He says the current arrangement expires in about a year and leaves open whether a new deal will emerge. That lands right after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s meeting with Trump in Washington, so the show uses the timing to ask what leverage Canada actually has. The Sunday strategy session with Kathleen Monk, Cory, and Scott Reid gives the episode a wider political read. The panel treats trade as a live negotiation with real consequences for Canada and looks at what comes next, and how much room Canada has to push back. The episode also makes space for a May Day segment as the discussion widens beyond trade. The structure is classic Question Period: a major event, a minister on the spot, then a strategist-heavy pass at what it all means. It moves quickly, but not lightly. The focus stays on accountability, costs, and the gap between the promise and the outcome. Even when the conversation widens, it keeps circling back to the practical question of who pays and what changes now. By the end, the hour has tied together jobs, trade, and the uncertainty around what comes next into one fairly clear political thread. The show treats those files as connected, not separate. The tone stays sober throughout. The questions are pointed without turning theatrical. It is political radio that wants listeners to follow the chain from cabinet decisions to boardroom choices to cross-border diplomacy.

As heard by us

A steady trade-and-jobs hour that turns policy brinkmanship into concrete stakes.

This hour stays on Canada trade and industrial policy under pressure. A steel producer cuts a thousand jobs after a $400 million federal loan, and Washington still hangs over the conversation.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a Sunday politics panel that links steel layoffs, federal support, and North American trade talks to jobs and leverage.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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