Canadian Dollar at Risk of Losing 60% (Uncut) 03-15-2025

Kevin O’Leary: Mark Carney Would Wreck the Economy – Canadian Dollar at Risk of Losing 60%

Trudeau is out, Mark Carney is in for now. So what does the future of Canada-U.S. look like and how will Mark Carney do in his negotiations with Donald Trump? Kevin O’Leary joins us now. Kevin, first and foremost, if you had asked Canadians a few months ago who would win the country’s next general election, most would have predicted a decisive victory for the Conservative Party.

That outcome does not look so certain now. The Liberals are closing the gap. Your thoughts? No, obviously, when you get closer to the election itself, in almost any contest, it gets very tight.

I think what’s going to happen now is Carney, in a very short period of time, is going to try and distance himself from Trudeau while Pierre makes sure that everybody realizes it’s Trudeau 2.0, more carbon tax, more green agenda. He’s going to paint it with that brush and that’s going to be the fight. As far as negotiating NAFTA, if you want to call it NAFTA 3.0, yesterday at around this time, Howard Lutnick said, look, I know we have a new prime minister, but we also know that there’s going to be an election called in three weeks.

And so in terms of negotiating the pan-Canadian deal, which is effectively NAFTA 3.0, we’re going to wait until the country chooses a new leader. And so Ford is down here today with his staffers. They’re trying to turn the heat down.

Lutnick talked about lowering the rhetoric because obviously he doesn’t want this cutoff of electricity happening. And so we’re in limbo, but we’re closing in on a time when we won’t be. The idiot king is gone, and that’s important, very important.

And just to show you how bad it was for their party, Freeland got less than double digits. So she was tossed out under the bus by her own party. That’s extraordinary.

And they basically hired someone who’s never gone through a leadership contest at all. Someone off the street, his name is Carney, and everybody hopes they know him. At least people know him internationally.

I’m not sure Canadians know him that well, but he is backed by Gerald Butts, who is the Antichrist of Canada. Everybody knows that. And Trudeau’s old chief of staff, who is, I just don’t have any words for her.

She’s horrific. And so I think it’s going to be very important to make sure that he gets painted as Trudeau on steroids. And so that’s how he’ll lose.

It’ll be tight, but I think he’s going to lose. And it’s unfortunate because I would have much preferred Freeland. It would have been easier contest.

And you’re right, the polls are closing. But I think Freeland deserves to be in purgatory after what you did to the country. Because being in an opposition in a parliamentary system, including Canada or England’s, when you are facing a majority mandate, which I think will happen with the Conservatives, that is the definition of hell on earth.

And I wish that for her. Yeah. To the Conservatives winning, I would have said that, Kevin.

I just came back from Toronto. And you can feel the pendulum has swung. I think Canadians now see a vote for Paulieff is a vote for Donald Trump.

And Mark Carney’s speech the other day, Canadians see him as polished. He’s a statesman. He says all the right things.

Canada will never be America. So it looks like Paulieff will have a big fight. I think it’ll be a tight election.

You watch what’s going to happen in the rhetoric. Remember, this happened in the United States as well. The spread was less than 200 basis points.

And yet Trump won a sweep of all seven swing states. And I kind of anticipate the same thing in Canada. The key to make sure, and I’ll be working hard on it along with others, is to paint Carney in the paint that he is, the color he is.

He is Trudeau 2.0. There’s no question about it. His policies will be bone crushing for Canada. He’s doubling down on carbon tax, shifting it away from the consumer, and killing business.

His policies of regulating infrastructure, investment, same thing. When you have Gerald Butts involved, who is hell bent on changing Canada into a green utopia, you know that we’ll continue to decline in the G7. We’re already at the bottom.

We can’t get worse. But if we elect Carney, we could probably do better than just losing 41% of the dollar. We could lose 50, 60% of the value of the dollar.

And that’s the key, to paint him for what he is. He’s dangerous. He’s risky.

And he’s Trudeau all over again. Let’s get in the mind of Donald Trump a second. He knows that this is playing to the Liberals’ favor.

Does he want the Liberals in power? Is it to his advantage to keep Canada as a punching bag? Trudeau disliked Trump. Trump disliked Trudeau. And most Americans actually think that a new prime minister has been elected and his name is Mark Carney.

So they don’t understand the election coming. Ludwig just figured that out yesterday. It’s not on the top of the agenda right now.

Canada is not right now in the focus of the administration in the US. It’s been parked aside now because they’re going to wait for the election. But there’s so many other issues.

Ukraine, for example, tariffs being negotiated now with Ireland. The prime minister was here yesterday. He’s still here today.

The same thing with India. All the tariff schedules around sugar and other things being negotiated. There’s a reset going on on trade.

Canada’s just one situation. Trump can’t stop with the let’s buy Canada and make the 51st state. That’s just his nature, but you’ve got to differentiate the signal from the noise.

Yesterday, for the first time in the Ludwig interview around 10 o’clock, he started the narrative about the economic union for the first time. So for those of us focusing on the signal, not the noise, some interesting things are starting to happen. But the next stop on the journey into the negotiations with the US is the Canadian election.

I hope it gets called in the next two weeks. I hope after six weeks, there’s a sweep of the conservatives. In all fairness to Carney, he has the baggage of a party that destroyed the country over 10 years.

And there’s a lot of people who just want change for the sake of change sake. He’s not a bad guy. It’s just the policies he represents and the brand liberal is tainted meat.

And that happens in politics. It just happens. And what can you do? Now, it would be a remarkable thing if he could convince Canadians, look, I’m not Trudeau 2.0. Yeah, I ran the Bank of England.

Yeah, I’m not an elitist from Davos. And yeah, I don’t care about climate change if it’s going to affect your life. And no, I’m not going to put any carbon taxes on anybody because I know we got to be competitive with the United States.

That’s not going to happen, though. He’s going to he’s going to try and string that thread or thread that needle. And I think he’ll fail.

I also don’t find him. Look, great. I don’t want to bash him.

Just I know the guy. I mean, I think he’s an OK guy. And I know some of his family.

I just hate his policies. And so my job is to make sure that we focus on policy, not individual. I’ve never shilled for politicians.

I always show up for policy. But in Carney’s case, it’s important to realize it’s just more Trudeau. He may not be as an empty suit as much as Trudeau was, but he is Trudeau 2.0 and he’s dangerous.

Going back to your point about separating signal from noise. There is a fear that Trump is serious about annexing Canada. You don’t buy it? No, no, I don’t buy it.

Unfortunately, I know the guy or fortunately, I know the guy, depending on which side of the bench you’re on. He’s bombastic. He’s outrageous.

He says stuff without a filter and he does it every day over and over and over again. You watch the whipsawing of the policy on Canada in the last 48 hours. And it’s a remarkable situation.

But it’s the hangover effect of how much he hated Trudeau and he really, really disliked Freeland. I mean, if Carney puts her in the cabinet, that would be bad for Canada. She needs to take a break.

She needs to go back and do whatever she did before politics. And I have no idea what that was because she certainly wasn’t involved in finance. She was the worst finance minister the country’s ever had combined with the idiot King.

It was a powerful cocktail of destruction. I believe her background is Russian history. But getting back to the point of annexation.

You need Russian history to run a G7 country as finance minister. Everybody must study Russian history. Forget about running a bank or anything.

You don’t need that. What a disaster she was. I think it really raises this point is that if, let’s just say faced with annexation or more threats from the U.S., is that Canada has no one to turn to because we’ve always turned to the U.S. So if we can’t turn to the U.S., who the heck does Canada turn to for help? Economics.

What happens is people figure out, no, we can’t build 16 aluminum smelters in the U.S. in less than 15 years, so we’re going to have to do a deal on aluminum. We can’t grow wheat in North Dakota without potash, and 100% of it comes from Canada. We don’t want to cut off $13-barrel discount oil out of Alberta.

All of that will happen with calmer moments after a prime minister is elected and is down in Washington with a four-year majority mandate, because that’s what it’s going to take. Right now, it’s chaos as each premier goes from one province to another. It’s Danielle Smith.

She’s down in Texas this week. It’s Doug Ford. He’s here in Washington.

That’s not how you run a negotiation. You need a federal mandate. You need a leader, and we don’t have one.

It’s a bad situation, but I wouldn’t fret about it too much. Canada is not for sale. It’s never going to be.

Everybody knows that, but the economic opportunity is huge, and so combining the economies is the goal. Was Doug Ford a hero or a zero for you this week with the threat of cutting the electricity? Look, it’s no different than what Trump was doing. I think Ford did what he had to do, and I think he did a great job in promoting his own brand and showing he’s a tough guy, but as Ludnick said about him, look, we don’t need to do this to each other anymore.

We know we’re going to bring down the rhetoric because we need the electricity, but he also needs a deal. I want him to come and meet me, which he’s doing as we speak, and this is the beginning of a negotiation. Look, I think Ford is a masterful politician.

I support him because I support his policy. He’s pro-business. That’s what I care about.

What he did is also noise. It’s just noise. We know we’re not cutting off electricity to Americans for a long time.

That’s not a good strategy for getting a deal done, and look, it’s great to be blustery and have the rhetoric, and I get all that, but I’m focused on the goal. The goal is three or four months from now to have no tariffs. Remember, April 2nd, all the reciprocal tariffs go on, so Quebec charging 243% tariffs on dairy from Vermont.

We’re doing that to Vermont. They’re pissed. We don’t want that.

We’ve got to get rid of that. We’ve got to get rid of all tariffs, all tariffs. That’s the strategy, so let’s not forget we’re not guiltless.

It’s been doing some stuff to American partners in various states, and they want to fight back. They’re done with it. They’re just saying, look, let’s look at the entire schedule and stop the rhetoric, and let’s go down product by product by product by product and say, look, if you want to keep 243% tariffs on dairy from Vermont into Quebec, the reciprocal is going to be in place.

That’s the nature of a reset of all these tariff schedules. You know it’s bad when Canada has turned its back on Wayne Gretzky. Hopefully, like I’ve seen you say, this is just a rift in the Canada-US marriage.

Before we move on, just one more thought since I guess we’re saying our final goodbye to Justin Trudeau. You obviously saw that photo that went viral of him, tongue out, holding the House of Commons chair. I felt many emotions looking at that photo, Kevin.

It’s elation I have. Celebration. Success.

The idiot king is gone. That’s how I feel. Kevin, just final thoughts.

New and exciting stuff happening at Wonderphi. Yes, I’m very excited about what’s going on. This is very important.

The Gillibrand and Haggerty bill, it’s called a genius bill, is being marked up this week. It may be the first piece of crypto legislation passed in the United States around stablecoins. That will be a breakthrough on digital payment systems.

My whole investment thesis around staying long Wonderphi was that at some point, and I’ve waited years for this now, the US would start to regulate crypto and digital payment systems. USDC is the one I use. It’s backed by the dollar.

Others will be licensed, but the point is that will be huge for Wonderphi because Wonderphi is now the largest in Canada of all the exchanges that’s regulated by the OSC. As these new technologies get approved by US regulators, the assumption, and it’s always been the case, the OSC will follow in the footsteps of the SEC. We will have a whole new reason for Canadians to start setting up their stablecoins on Wonderphi, in addition to using it as a digital payment platform, in addition to hedging against inflation with some holdings in Bitcoin or maybe other approved cryptos.

The next act that will be moved on will be the Market Structure Act. We’re starting with the Stablecoin Act in the US, then the Market Structure, which approves and decides, is Ethereum a commodity or is it a security? Once we make these decisions, the OSC will adopt the same policy and that will further bolster the use and the platform of Wonderphi. That’s why I stayed long this long.

I’m glad I did. It was a rocky road during the period of the crypto cowboys and all that. Those days are behind us.

We’re now getting into an integration in both the Canadian and US system of crypto into existing financial services across all sectors of the economy. This is fantastic. Well, keep us updated.

Kevin O’Leary, thank you so much for joining us today. Take care. Thank you all for watching.

We’ll have more content coming your way. Be sure to stay tuned to the Daniela Kambonis show. Thanks for watching.