A lot has happened this year politically in Ontario and across the country.

Listing the major events just here in this province could take us a whole other year.

So let's cut through the noise and focus on some highlights and lowlights.

I sat down with Tonda Morales, bureau chief and senior reporter in the Toronto Star's Ottawa bureau, and John Michael McGrath, TVO Today columnist and co-host of the OnPoli podcast, to talk about the biggest moments of 2025.

Tonda, John Michael McGrath, welcome to the program.

Great. You guys can be here.

I'm going to start with you. What event had a bigger impact on the course of this year's political landscape? Is it Justin Trudeau's resignation or Trump's announcement on tariffs?

Well, I think Trump's announcement on tariffs. But in a way that was the backdrop for Justin Trudeau's resignation, because it was also the backdrop for when Chrystia Freeland resigned.

You recall saying that the Liberals didn't have a plan to deal with the coming tariffs.

But Trump's tariffs have affected globally. Everybody upended global trade economics, security, security discussions, everything. It's it is a seismic change in the way the world is working together. So I mean as one single event that's it.

But as a big political event in the Canadian calendar, Justin Trudeau's resignation was huge.

JMM, same question to you. It's hard to look back. It's been 12 months. But yeah.

I mean, if I had a time machine and I could rerun this past year, this is the question I most want to see answered, which is, you know, if Justin Trudeau had stayed on as prime minister and could run for re-election in the context of the Trump tariffs, which obviously played so heavily into Mark Carney's federal campaign about, you know, elbows up and all of the messaging around protecting Canadian jobs and protecting the Canadian economy. You know, could Justin Trudeau still be prime minister today? I'm skeptical, but it's just such a fascinating historical question that I would love to know. Like Tonda, I think you have to say that just globally speaking, Donald Trump's presidency has been the bigger, bigger issue.

And even in the context of Canadian politics. And obviously, I could talk a bit more about the effect it's had in Ontario. The tariffs really have just been so huge.

I want to pick up on what you said, Justin Trudeau's resignation. Why was it so big for us here?

Because right up until a couple of days before he made the decision, he resigned on January 6th. Maybe people will recall. But right up until the very end, he tried to tough it out. After Freeland's resignation, the resignation of his finance minister on a budget day or a fiscal economic update day. Big deal. And spent the whole of Christmas holidays huddling with advisors and talking to caucus.

And so really, when he took the decision to get out, it put everything in play. It brought in Mark Carney into Canadian politics. It suddenly challenged the conservatives to deal with a new Liberal leader who was putting attempting to put a new brand and face on the Liberal Party, which had had a decade in power. And, you know, it really challenged the conservatives in the last campaign to confront that reality. Mr. Poilievre continued to campaign against Justin Trudeau, and arguably some days he still does. Throughout that campaign, and many felt that he never did make the pivot to deal with the American threat the way the liberals did via the selection of Mark Carney as their leader.

John Mikal, let's talk provincial politics, captain Canada I know that's what we were talking provincial politics here. I don't have any props or any hats that say Canada's for sale here.

But foam glove with the finger.

Exactly. But what effect did that nickname have on Doug Ford during his campaign?

Well, you know, Tonda mentioned the inability or unwillingness by Pierre Poilievre to pivot to reflect the changing political circumstances. And, you know, as a columnist, sometimes you get things wrong. Sometimes you make predictions that don't pan out. And if I can be allowed a very small victory lap, I was pretty early on in calling that the moment Donald Trump won the election, that Doug Ford would have grounds to call an early Ontario election.

Of course, there had been speculation for months before that. And the big question was, you know, what would the excuse for an early election be? And the moment Trump's election was was final. And, you know, we knew that tariffs were coming. It was clear to me that we would be that was going to be the grounds for a new election. And and sure enough, that's what it was.

You know, it really cannot overstate what a seismic shift the tariffs are to Canadian policymakers. We really have spent a generation just assuming that the American market would always be open to us under the most favorable terms. And the change since January 20th, perhaps it should not have taken policymakers by surprise the way it did. I think there was a lot of sort of wishful thinking that somehow Trump didn't really mean us when he talked about tariffs on everybody, but he did. He meant us as well as everybody else. And everything since then has just been a form of adjusting, and that has been part of what worked so well for Doug Ford in that election campaign was really, you know, pivoting away from, frankly, almost anything except talking about protecting the Ontario economy and protecting Ontario jobs.

All right, Tom. So I would just say he also did so by seizing the moment in a visceral, emotional way. He appealed to Ontario voters as a defender on an emotional level in a way that neither, frankly, Mark Carney nor Pierre Poilievre did or still are able to capture, sort of the, the, the, the reactions of Canadians in the face of the Trump threats of 51st state and the defensive posture that Canadians adopted to, you know, stop traveling to the US for pleasure and stop buying American made products and go for Buy Canadian.

I mean, I think that was Doug Ford, I think gave voice to that even with the ad that later so angered Donald Trump into easing trade negotiations with this country. Doug Ford's government, Doug Ford himself, captured both on an emotional level and in a way, on an intellectual level, the anti-tariff argument and put it back in the face of Americans.

Remember how mad they got when he threatened to cut off Ontario's electricity? Ontario electrical electrical exports? So I think that was the secret of some of his success. And let's face it, since he's been Prime Minister, Mark Carney is quite happy to have Doug Ford play that role.

Well, let's stick with that, Tom. Let's throw these two in a room together. We've got Premier Doug Ford, Prime Minister Mark Carney. What do you make of their relationship?

I mean, they've got a good relationship. There's no question there is. There was a source of tension around the ad because the Canadians on the federal side were acutely aware that it was angering Trump and angering the US ambassador here and angering some of the Republicans in the US. But I think that aside from that tension, by and large, these two get along.

There's barely a federal policy that comes out that Doug Ford doesn't come out in public and defend. You know, he has backed Mark Carney on major projects. He has backed Mark Carney largely on his approach to tariffs. When Mark Carney rolled back Canada's counter-tariffs on the US and rolled back the digital services tax in an effort to, you know, woo Trump, Ford was with him every step of the way praising his efforts.

And look, they do have a good relationship. They talk frequently. And I think that's, you know, a bit of a success for both of them. You know, the good cop/bad cop playbook is working for them.

Well, I want to pick up on that as well. I should mention that Premier Ford said that Carney knew about the ad, allegedly, that Tonya had mentioned how much of this is a good cop/bad cop strategy here.

I'm not sure how much of it is premeditated in that sense, of them playing those those roles consciously, but they seem to have, at the very least, organically. They have arrived at this game where, you know, Ford takes out a bit more of an antagonistic, aggressive position, and then Carney can be the relatively more conciliatory one.

You know, it's fair to say that this act has not worked perfectly right. Like we don't have a deal with the Americans right now, and I don't know of anybody who would confidently say that there is a deal within sight. But obviously I don't place all of the blame for that on Canadian policymakers. The primary actor here is Donald Trump and his administration's refusal to to make a deal.

You know, the other point I would make is that I think Ford has been very, very active in a way that I think might have surprised people, maybe not not always familiar with this, you know, just how many levers there are at the provincial level to make international political moves.

Right. You know, Todd mentioned threatening electricity exports, which Ontario can do because Ontario owns most of its own electricity system and it certainly regulates electricity sales here.

Right. Things like pulling American liquor out of the LCBO shelves because Ontario has a provincially run liquor monopoly.

You know, there are all of these pressure points that the provincial government can, can, can push on when it wants to make a point to Americans, you know, and like the fact that both of Kentucky's senators have been very vocal about how American tariffs are hurting Kentucky bourbon exporters, because Ontario is the LCBO is one of the single largest liquor buyers in the world.

And at the moment, you can't sell Kentucky bourbon here in Ontario.

I want to stick on energy, but I want to talk nation building projects. The Darlington Small Modular Reactor is a project that's on the fast track list. This is just east of Oshawa. Significant. Explain.

So this has been a project that has been underway for actually a very long time. If you want to go back to the earliest incarnation of Ontario's power company, OPG first applied for an environmental assessment at the Darlington site back under the McGuinty government. And they got that assessment. And even after that generation of nuclear proposal was scrapped, OPG wisely kept the environmental assessment alive.

And in the last decade, as as the idea of small modular reactors, these are generally smaller, as the name implies, smaller nuclear reactors that the hope is will be faster and cheaper to build, as that has become sort of the the hot topic in nuclear policy. Ontario was able to go to global companies and say, hey, we've got this site ready to go, ready to build with an existing environmental approval. Now.

The significance of Mark Carney putting the Darlington SMR site on the the major projects list. It's not entirely clear to me because as I sort of already said, it already has all of its federal approvals. Now, there are other things that the federal government can do to support it, like make money available, which they've promised. But I think the harmony that we're now seeing between the provincial and the federal government on nuclear power is probably a foreshadowing of things to come, because the Ontario is not stopping with the Darlington site.

They this year began with the provincial government announcing a massive new nuclear station that they want to build in Port Hope, just a bit further east of Darlington. And that is only one of several locations they're talking about. So one of the sleeper stories this year, so to speak, has been Ontario really going even more enthusiastically into nuclear power. And they will need federal help to to execute that.

I want to pick up on I think.

Yeah, I think I was just going to say that the reason we see a project like that, which you're right, had so many approvals already in place, is less about, you know, what the federal government can actually do for that one particular project. But in the early days when this whole list, the first phase of projects that Mark Carney put on the on the table for potential designation as nation building, I think this was part of a greater signal to the country that the emphasis for major projects and fast tracked approvals is going to be on mines, critical minerals, energy and other related trade boosting infrastructure like ports and rail and say the Port of Churchill, the Port of Montreal. These are, you know, they're in different phases. Phase one, phase two. But none of them have actually so far gotten the title of nation in the national interest or been fast tracked. But there was a very clear signal to markets.

Look, you didn't see on that list a family doctor for every Canadian as a nation building project, you didn't see Pharmacare as a nation building project. You don't see. It was also interesting. They put on things like high speed rail for Ontario.

Right. So that is also a project that the proponents are saying we're already seeing benefits, even if we haven't been put into the process for fast track approvals yet. They are already seeing the benefit of going out to persuade investors to pour capital into the project. They're saying, look, this is a real thing. So I think that was a large part of what Carney is doing. He's got a very clear vision for what he wants to get priority. And it's all around trade, economy and potentially clean energy. Although it might not. It doesn't sound like that, I suppose, because now we're also talking about pipelines.

Well, let's let's follow up on that. Carney most recently signed the memorandum of understanding with Alberta, and he explained his approach as cooperative federalism. And I'm curious to know how much of that approach would will bode well for other provinces.

I mean, that's a signal that he's trying to honour a constitutional principle around the division of powers, and he wants to engage provinces on their areas of jurisdiction. It's a bit of a it's a bit of a cliche in a way. But he's he's preaching to the converted. I mean, Alberta wants to operate in its own areas of jurisdiction.

What it does, though, signal, is that Carney is willing to cut deals with provinces as long as everybody's aligned on the same goal. So, for example, he part of the agreement with Alberta, if they were to ever approve a pipeline, would be tougher industrial carbon pricing on Alberta's part on their own emitters.

And the feds would agree to lift, for example, the Clean Electricity Regulations, which are sort of aimed at making natural gas powered plants sort of less and less the the norm or requiring them to pay for emissions. The feds are prepared to lift that. Doug Ford wants that. Ontario wants that. You know, I think what you saw is Carney signaling to provinces. Then show me not the money, but show me the way. You're going to decarbonize. Show me the way you're going to get to net zero. Show me how you're going to cut your emissions, and we'll cut these kinds of deals.

All right. I've got 10 seconds each for our last question here. It's been a long year. Given all that's happened, what can we expect next year?

In terms of Ontario politics? I think the big fight that is coming is over the fate of school boards and elected trustees. We don't know yet which way the government is going to go, but that will be a big, loud fight.

Tom, do you get the last word?

10 seconds: Energy, politics and a potential election. Again, I hate to break the news to you, but we may be in another federal election campaign next year.

Here we go. All right, Tonda, really appreciate John Michael McGrath. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much.