WASHINGTON — A new poll suggests one in three Canadians have been keeping close tabs on the Jan. 6 hearings in the United States — and that nearly three in four blame Donald Trump for the riots.
Leger’s online poll, conducted in August for the Association for Canadian Studies, found 37 per cent of respondents in Canada and 44 per cent in the U.S. were watching the hearings closely.
Just over half the American respondents, 54 per cent, said the former president is responsible for the Capitol Hill riots, compared with 72 per cent in Canada.
The select committee investigating Jan. 6 is set to hold its next hearing Wednesday, likely the last before the midterms in November.
The poll, which surveyed 1,509 respondents in Canada and 1,002 in the U.S. shortly after the hearing in July, does not carry a margin of error because online surveys are not based on random samples.
A final report on the committee’s findings is expected before the end of the year, but it’s unclear if it will be released before election day Nov. 8.
The level of Canadian interest in the hearings is likely more to do with a persistent fascination with Trump and his ever-evolving legacy than anything else, said association president and CEO Jack Jedwab.
The former president “has left a lingering bad feeling for most Canadians,” who were by and large not supportive of his presidency or its impact on Canada-U.S. relations, Jedwab said.
“Trump is seen as someone who soured relations between the two countries and as the object of considerable mistrust.”
The poll, which was conducted before Pierre Poilievre claimed the leadership of the Conservative party, also broke down the Canadian participants by party affiliation.
Maxime Bernier’s hard-right People’s Party of Canada was the only party where a majority — 57 per cent — said they want to see Trump run for president again in 2024, with 25 per cent opposed and 18 per cent refusing to say.
Among Conservatives, 28 per cent said they would support Trump for the nomination, compared with 64 per cent who disagreed. Opposition to a Trump candidacy ran close to 90 per cent among Liberal, NDP and Green Party supporters, and reached 95 per cent among backers of the Bloc Québécois.
Ever since the hearings began in June, the committee — led by Mississippi Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson and Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney — has unspooled a narrative tying the riots to the Trump White House.
That link got a boost Sunday when former committee staffer Denver Riggleman told “60 Minutes” of a phone call on Jan. 6 between one of the rioters and someone in the White House.
“You get a real ‘Aha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening,” Riggleman said. The identity of who was on the phone in the White House remains a mystery, he added.
“The American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.”
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin acknowledged that evidence Sunday, calling it just one of many clear links between the White House and the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“We’re interested in telling the big story, which is this was an organized, premeditated, deliberate hit against the vice-president and the Congress to overthrow the 2020 presidential election,” Raskin told “Meet the Press.”
“What we’re going to do on Wednesday is fill in those details that have come to the attention of the committee over the last five or six weeks.”
The committee could also spell out what, if anything, it has learned from former Republican speaker Newt Gingrich and his role in promoting the defeated president’s persistent claims of election fraud.
Thompson wrote to Gingrich earlier this month about evidence that he said shows Gingrich “was involved in various other aspects of the scheme to overturn the 2020 election and block the transfer of power,” including after Jan. 6.
The riots, which grew out of a sprawling protest among Trump supporters on the very day Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s election win, provided a dramatic and deadly exclamation point for the most turbulent presidency in modern history.
And the hearings, having exploded the notion that the chaos was simply a protest that got out of hand, have proven an unlikely summer blockbuster, thanks to the help of former ABC News president James Goldston.
The committee heard how Pence averted a constitutional crisis by ignoring Trump’s demands to reject the election results, and remained on the congressional grounds even as protesters cried out for his violent ouster.
Members listened to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s account of a chaotic meeting of Trump’s fringe advisers, who were desperate for a way to keep the president in power, the night before.
That meeting included a draft executive order that would have made Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell a special counsel with the power to order the U.S. military to seize voting machines from across the country.
After the meeting dissolved into frustration, the president issued his fateful late-night tweet luring supporters to D.C.: “Will be wild,” he wrote.
And Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the committee how the president urged the Secret Service to stop screening protesters for weapons, saying, “They’re not here to hurt me.”
And she described hearing of an infuriated Trump lunging for the steering wheel of his SUV when members of his Secret Service detail refused to take him to the Capitol.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2022.
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31. The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
