Canada-US trade talks fell apart last week, and Matt Gurney says the government’s response reveals a much older problem than this one negotiation. He walks through why Ottawa treats information as something to protect rather than share, and why Canadians rarely get to see how these decisions actually get made.
He draws on years of asking Canadian officials for information most other democracies hand over freely, and describes the kind of response that request usually gets. The gap between that and how American officials handled the same week says something about who is actually equipped to win this fight.
The conversation turns to how a well-worn political habit, replying without answering, has become the default setting across Canadian governments, and why applying that same playbook to a trade war might be the biggest miscalculation Ottawa makes this year.
Topics: Canada-US trade talks, government transparency, political messaging, information war, talking points
GUEST: Matt Gurney | http://readtheline.ca | @mattgurney
Originally aired on2026-08-25
