Wilkinson just spent his time in the back of his taxpayer funded limo serving word salad while Cochrane played pretend journalist Canada’s EU ambassador-designate would not say how far “deepening the relationship” actually goes. Labor mobility. Energy. Critical minerals. AI. Supercomputing. Defence procurement. Erasmus so Canadian kids can study “borderless.” Money into EU programs. Access to Brussels procurement. All of it “short of membership,” of course When Cochrane raised the obvious — CETA still unratified by ten EU countries after a decade, rules written in Brussels with no Canadian vote, cash flowing to Eurocrats — Wilkinson’s answer was: wait until the October summit, don’t listen to critics, Canadian firms already won some contracts, and besides Europe is a bigger market That’s not an answer. That’s “trust us, the details come later” evasion. Cochrane treated it like a serious briefing instead of the obfuscaion it was CETA was the trade deal. This is something else: incremental association without the vote, the veto, or the honesty to say so now. If the case is strong, make it. If it isn’t, stop dressing it up as historic ambition and daring Parliament to rubber-stamp it after the fact. Carney needs to divulge the facts not BS word-salad. CBC needs to stop being his personal pr firm @JonathanWNV @DavidWCochrane