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On Monday's live stream, Sheila Gunn Reid and Tamara Lich reacted to Mark Carney's remarkable admission to the New York Times that he has planned for the possibility of American military action against Canada.

Asked whether he had ever seriously worried that President Donald Trump would use military force against Canada, the prime minister paused for nine seconds before answering. "I think you have a responsibility in these roles to look at extreme tail risk," he told the paper, calling it "risk management" and adding it would be irresponsible not to. Pressed on what steps he had taken, Carney declined to elaborate.

Sheila and Tamara questioned what Carney could possibly be preparing for. Canada's lone F-35 is still on test flights in Texas, the Canadian Armed Forces face a recruitment and retention crisis, and military infrastructure is crumbling, Sheila noted. "If the Americans wanted to come take us, they could do it with their National Guard and not their military," she said.

Both hosts saw the comment as calculated rather than off-the-cuff, a way to rally Liberal supporters, particularly older voters in Eastern Canada, behind a shared dislike of the president. "This is just anti-American hate," Sheila said, adding the Liberals face no real consequences beyond tariffs. "They're just playing with other people's jobs."

The strategy appears to be working: a new Liaison Strategies poll gives the Liberals a 17-point lead, with the Conservatives below 30 per cent and the NDP under Avi Lewis at 15. "We can't vote Conservative any harder," Sheila said of Western voters.

She also pointed to generational data showing young Canadians leaning heavily Conservative while older voters drift Liberal, a reversal she attributed to a country of broken housing, rising crime and heavy taxes.