A weaker Biden can be better for Canada
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Summary
The U.S. midterms are upon us, and some are calling it one of the most consequential elections in a generation. With Democrats and Republicans in a tight battle for control of the House and Senate, what implications are there for Canada as to who ultimately controls Congress? Dr. Michael Sands is a director of the Wilson Centre's Canada Institute and is an internationally renowned specialist on Canada and U-S. relations. He joins me to unpack this weighty question of who wins the midterms.
Transcript
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Thank you for joining us for the latest edition of Full Comment.
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The U.S. midterms are upon us, and some are calling it one of the most consequential elections
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With Democrats and Republicans in a tight battle for control of the House and the Senate, what
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implications are there for Canada as to who ultimately controls Congress?
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Professor Sands is a director of the Wilson Centre's Canada Institute, is an internationally
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renowned specialist on Canada and U.S.-Canadian relations, and he joins me to unpack this weighty
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Professor Sands, thank you very much for joining me.
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I'm glad to be here, Adrienne, and I'm a big fan of the podcast.
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I do listen to it, so that's the only thing you didn't mention in my bio, but it's true.
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Well, that is great to hear, and we look forward to having you again.
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As we know, the ongoing relationship between the Canadian government, the U.S. government,
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it is the friendliest, the largest undefended border, and often in Canada, we understand
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and appreciate that the decisions that are made in the United States have a far greater
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impact on what happens on this side of the border than perhaps most people appreciate.
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So I think it's timely that we have this discussion about the midterms, as it is, as I said, a very
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I'm wondering if we can start from the question of varying scenarios.
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It is expected that the Republicans will take the House.
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How is that going to have any implication on Canada?
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What is it that House Republicans want to push the Biden government to do that impacts Canada?
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Well, I think a couple of things are important to say at the outset.
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First is that the Congress is a reflection of the polarized politics in the country, and those
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polarized politics get all the news headlines, but beneath that, there's a generational transition
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between the sort of greatest generation baby boomers that have run the United States, really
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going back to Bill Clinton, the first baby boomer president.
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But we are starting to see the rise of Generation X, the millennials, and Generation Z or Zed, who
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are together now the majority of the electorate.
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And yet, when you look at senior leadership, Nancy Pelosi in the House, Steny Hoyer, her deputy,
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who's also important in the Democratic leadership, or in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the president
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himself, we have a set of leaders in the United States that really are leaders of the last
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In a lot of ways, their formative political years were during the 20th century, when we
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had a Cold War, and your listeners will remember all of the features of that period.
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But in light of the challenges we face today, the United States is really overdue for hearing
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some new political voices who maybe look at politics in a different way.
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And the congressional elections this year will give us a first taste of who some of the
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emerging leaders are among both Republicans and Democrats.
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And I think that's one of the reasons it's exciting, separate from the issue of who controls
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But I think that's such an important point, because the biggest accusation in politics is
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And it doesn't really give the opportunity for new, fresh voices, fresh faces, more diversity
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And I think with the two-party system, it's very difficult for any independent to break
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They often end up sitting with the Democrats, for example.
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But it is a desire by the American people to have very...
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It seems to me that just the very basic things, a government that protects them, security in
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their future, security in their border, energy security, energy independence, all basic,
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straightforward things that often governments overreach and try to control other aspects of
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And I note that in this particular midterm, and I say it's consequential, it's been dubbed
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one of the most consequentials, because a lot of Americans view that as the country, the
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United States, is going in the wrong direction.
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It is relying far too much on foreign oil, etc.
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So it brings me back to this idea of what's happening in Canada.
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One of President Joe Biden's first acts, as you know, was to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline.
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Look, we knew it was coming, he campaigned on it, but he did it.
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But now we have varying international forces at play with the war in Ukraine, with OPEX plus
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It's looking pretty good that Keystone XL would be a great opportunity, Professor Sands, to
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have the Republicans, have the House and the Senate push Joe Biden to revisit that decision.
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And I think this goes to the sort of broader point of trying to solve today's problems
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When we saw the emergence of Russia's invasion in Ukraine, and of course, China's all weather
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I think that for a lot of that older generation, it's Cold War II.
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When we started to see inflation and high gas prices, there was a flashback to some of the
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same policy ideas we had in the 1970s during the two oil price shocks.
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Oh, let's release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
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Let's reach out to Saudi Arabia and get them to pump more.
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Without recognizing that what's happened, what's different now, is that we have North
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We are, in the United States, capable of producing a lot of oil and gas ourselves, if we allow
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And we have a great partner in Canada whose production, while not enough to cover all of
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U.S. needs, certainly fills an important niche.
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And yet, President Biden has been asking Venezuela or other countries that really don't like the
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United States very much, or at least their governments don't, to solve the problem for
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And I think that really misses the technological development that allowed us to make, I think,
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some of the cleanest oil out there in Alberta through the way in which the oil is now produced
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and upgraded and carbon capture and storage, as well as fracking, which has really opened
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And nobody's saying that's the permanent solution for the 20th century.
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We all want to look at alternatives that are less damaging to the environment.
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But it's been pretty clear that we need something now.
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There's a statistic that we spent about $3.5 trillion over the last 10 years in order in
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the United States to try to get ourselves to a more green energy future.
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And we've gone from 82% reliance on fossil fuels to 81%.
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So we dropped a percent at the cost of $3.6 billion.
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So it's hard to argue that the fossil fuels we now depend on aren't part of the mix, at
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But our leadership is acting much more along the lines of, well, let's have a price on
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Let's see what we can't push out of the market.
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Can we declare no more fossil fuel vehicles in California and other places?
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I'm not sure that those are practical solutions, given the situation that we're in now.
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Canadians and Americans are feeling the pinch as well of those carbon prices.
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And the rate of inflation that Americans are facing over 8%.
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We know that President Biden did dip in again into the strategic petroleum reserve, which
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has drawn an incredible amount of criticism, not only from the other side of the political
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aisle, but certainly even from those within his own party, that ultimately, when those reserves
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have to be refilled, it's going to be at a much higher price and costing Americans even
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We have similar challenges here in Canada, of course, where there is a specific ideology
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within certain factions of certain wings of the Democratic Party and certainly in the Liberal
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Party here in Canada that doesn't take into consideration that our oil and gas industries on both sides
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of the border, so heavily regulated, so heavily scrutinized, and they themselves have been far more
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innovative, far more willing to take all of those environmental concerns into consideration and
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actually act upon ensuring that what is brought out of the ground is renewed and it is, as you
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mentioned that the carbon capturing, I find that, Professor Sands, it's far too vitriolic to recognize
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And I'm wondering, how does that temperature, how does that conversation change?
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Well, there are a couple of things that, great question, because you packed a lot in there.
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So first an observation, we are putting prices on carbon.
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Canada is further ahead and the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has talked about going from
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There are only about 11 jurisdictions in the United States that have any kind of price on
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So one of the things we've been worried about since the passage of the USMCA or KUSMA, as
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it's called in Canada, is that agreement allows for border carbon price adjustments.
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So this would be a tax applied on goods coming into Canada that didn't pay a carbon price during
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Now, theoretically, I can see how that would work.
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It is an allowable tariff or an allowable sort of charge, but it would add a lot to the
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And you think about the auto industry and the number of times that parts move back and forth.
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We haven't worked out how this system could potentially emerge, but with the US not pricing
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carbon universally and Canada moving in that direction, there's a huge trade fight that
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And I can tell you car makers and others will say, well, do I get a rebate every time I
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Now, that's pushing prices up at the same time that the US, and I'd say this was true
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for Donald Trump's administration as well as Joe Biden's, and with the strong support
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of Congress, we're trying to reduce our dependence on China, which has been very hostile.
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Now, China may not have the best of intentions towards North America, but they did provide
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cheap inputs that we all used in our daily lives.
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To forego that, which is probably the right thing to do morally, economically, and strategically,
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is going to mean that the things we rely on are going to be more expensive.
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So you see that driving inflation in a way that really calls on governments, and this
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is where I think the congressional picture matters so much, to find ways to reduce costs
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And so going to Congress, they're looking at how can we lower taxes?
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I think the Republicans would like to see the tax direction go to a lower level.
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They'd also like to rein in some of US government spending, which they argue is contributing to
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the inflation as well, especially spending on things that we may not need to have today.
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We could forego at least until the economy slows down.
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Think about big infrastructure projects, things like high-speed rail or investments in parks and
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other things that could be set to one side until we're in a better position.
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The other thing, and this is maybe the meta-argument around these congressional elections, is the hope
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that President Biden and the Democrats around him in his cabinet are, at their heart, closer
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to the center of the Democratic Party than the progressive wing.
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But given Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House, it was hard for
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President Biden to resist the pressure to continue to move governance in the United States
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He needed those progressive votes to make up his majorities.
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And his majorities in the House and the Senate were very, very thin, just one vote in the
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Senate and obviously very tight, not quite as tight in the House.
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If this shifts so that the House becomes Republican, even that one chamber, you get two very positive
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First, President Biden can say to the hard left of his party, I agree with you on some ideas,
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but we have to deal with the Republicans or we're not going to get anything done.
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And I think, given his track record, that's closer to where President Biden is in his heart
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Republican control of the House gives him something to push back against his left wing with.
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The second thing is that I think that's closer to where a lot of the voters are.
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And having to bring things closer to the center, building consensus is what we really need.
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So I don't know what that consensus will look like, but having divided government at this point
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when the country itself is so divided is a recipe for getting closer to a central point
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that may redefine how we deal with some of these big issues, particularly the dinner table issues
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of inflation, high energy prices, the things that are really hurting families now trying to cope
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with a lingering pandemic, a global mess in terms of geopolitics.
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It's a lot on our plates, and we've been responding to it with outdated solutions
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and, I think, too many extreme solutions rather than trying to find a way to the center.
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Let's stick to the points you were making with respect to the real domestic issues
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But specifically because you have this election on the horizon, the filibuster that remains
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And pick your president, be it Democrat or Republican.
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The Democratic president, the Republicans are holding it up.
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Very little is then ultimately accomplished for the American people.
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So those are the ongoing factors internally in the United States.
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I'm wondering if there is that room for compromise because the temperature is so high.
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And I put it to you in this context because the Democrats have focused so much on January 6th,
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and you have these hearings going on, and they are – it's basically painting the picture
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of anything the other guy or gal is proposing is wrong, and it's never going to work.
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First, I think that one of the problems when one party owns, controls both houses of Congress
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and the White House, is that the other party in opposition has really no incentive to cooperate.
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So President Biden started office with House and Senate under Democratic control,
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but so too did President Obama, and so too did Bill Clinton when they first came in.
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Now, for Obama and Clinton, it was a midterm election that gave Republicans a chamber of the Congress,
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whether it was House or Senate, that really triggered their most productive
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and popular policy initiatives because of the need to collaborate.
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And, you know, certainly we saw Bill Clinton try to nationalize health care in his early years.
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He got rebuked, but then he was saying, you know, the year of big government is over,
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And Bill Clinton with Newt Gingrich running the House, it was a bumpy ride,
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but tried to deal with a number of issues that were much more at the center of our economy.
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President Obama also tried a big health care initiative in his first couple of years
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while he was trying to recover from the 2008 financial crisis.
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His first midterms, he got, as he called it, a shellacking.
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It wasn't good, but it led to greater cooperation on economic policy.
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So I do, and I think that's partly because the president himself will make a change,
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but the other side of it is the responsibility.
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If Republicans don't own anything, they can sit on the sidelines and blame the Democrats for everything.
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And anything that isn't resolved, well, the Democrats need to do more.
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Rather than providing an incentive for the Republicans to own some of the responsibility
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for what happens in the country, which means that they come to the table and say,
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well, we have ideas and we're going to do something constructive.
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I think we've been missing that the last two years, and I hope that that brings about some change here.
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The second thing, which I'll come back to, you mentioned January 6th.
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I have to admit for your listeners who hopefully won't hold it against me
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that I've been living in Washington here in the swamp for a long time.
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I got my first job at CSIS back in 1993, the Center for Strategic International Studies.
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So I've been in and around the think tank community for a while.
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And while it didn't get the attention, I certainly remember that at the beginning of the Trump administration,
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the start of the Obama administration, protests and it was Occupy Washington or it was some other group.
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They didn't storm the Capitol Hill, but they certainly did a lot of damage and tried to stop inaugurations
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and discourage people from being in the streets to protest what they thought was an unfair election.
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So we've seen this before, but for some reason, January 6th has been elevated to a uniquely insurrectionist moment.
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And the more we find out about it, it does seem like maybe a riot that went too far with some irresponsible people,
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but hardly a unique moment in recent American history that suggests that our democracy is in trouble.
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Certainly, we need to start having conversations or less protest, but we've seen the movie before.
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People have expressed their frustration with elections in public for a long time now.
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And I'm thinking a little bit of Christopher Freeland's visit to Alberta, where I guess it's the cultural protest.
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Sometimes an ordinary citizen will disregard all decorum and get quite nasty.
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And we are seeing this in our politics in Canada and the United States.
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And so for me, I think that is the wrong route.
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I mean, it just doesn't get us anywhere to shout, scream, do vandalism, get very personal in attacks.
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Instead, what we need to be doing is finding the space for moderation.
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And I would say that a lot of what we've seen in terms of outbursts have been older people.
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And I think millennials and Generation Z, looking at what we've done in the last couple of years,
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I think they're hungry for a different way of doing politics, a politics that yields results.
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Now, they may disagree on what results they want, but this way of doing politics in the United States and Canada,
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perhaps particularly worse in the United States, is dysfunctional.
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And I think in the long run, it chases smart, good people away from public life.
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And we need good people to get back into government again and to try to make the world a better place.
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It's not easy, but it's something I think we've discouraged our best and brightest from doing
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because of the way in which we've let politics become so toxic.
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We will be back with more full comment in a moment.
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I think you've made some excellent observations there, Professor Sands,
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to the temperature of how we live in this current political climate.
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I think social media has had a significant impact on that.
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But I want to shift our gaze sort of to the international factors at play.
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Not only will they impact the midterms, but they will also impact what happens domestically,
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And I want to pick up on the comment with respect to China, OPEC plus, President Biden going to the Saudis.
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First, I want to start with Russia's illegal invasion in Ukraine.
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Europe is going to be in a massive and big, big trouble when it comes to their heating their homes
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because they rely so much on coming from Russia.
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Was it a miscalculation from President Biden to go to the Saudis to sort of have what he says is those conversations
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and then to see OPEC plus turn around within weeks of that visit, within just weeks, say they are going to lower production?
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Talk to me about how that perception out there is going to impact Biden's presidency for the next couple of years
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as the very practical reality for Americans, Canadians, Europeans needing to heat their home
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Well, I think this is something that even the Biden administration would admit was a stinging rebuke from the Saudi leaders.
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The United States, under President Biden, early on wanted to call out the Saudis.
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I think it was part of contrasting the Biden administration with the Trump administration.
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They wanted to criticize Mohammed bin Salman for his behavior, particularly the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi,
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Not things you shouldn't object to, but the older tradition of statecraft is you have your disagreements
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and you have your practical working agreements.
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And I think it was a mistake to personalize the relationship too soon.
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And then, of course, having done so, it made it very difficult for the U.S. to call in a favor later on.
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There's also a sense, given the invasion of Ukraine, given the saber rattling, if you want to call it that,
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We're in a situation where the U.S. is very much tied down by major global conflicts.
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And it affects the Europeans, it affects the Canadians, all of our allies who look to us for setting a tone
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or trying to set some leadership in motion here.
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And it is a time when countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran may feel that the U.S. is overloaded.
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We've got a little bit more liberty to maybe act out or do things that we want to.
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We've seen Turkey similarly sort of pushing back against the West
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and engaging with the Russians despite the Western embargo that we've had.
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I think there are a lot of those elements in play where U.S. leadership is not at its strongest
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because it's seen to be pinned down and also because it seemed to be run for domestic purposes.
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And I think that's underlying the connection between where we started the conversation about U.S. politics
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When a country is quite divided, it takes more effort to pull together majorities and get things done.
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And you've seen in the United States, and I would argue in Canada as well,
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as the global situation has worsened, our leaders have focused on what plays well politically at home
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as a way of building support for their governments
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rather than what in a strategic sense might be the most prudent course internationally.
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You have to watch your base. You have to pay attention to what matters.
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A group of some 30 Democrats in the House signed a letter calling on the Biden administration
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to begin negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine and pull back from it.
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And that letter had been out for a while, but it suddenly got attention this week
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because those same Democrats, looking at how the public reacted to the idea of doing a peace deal with Russia,
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given the way that Russia has behaved, they decided to withdraw the letter.
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But that's domestic politics against an international conflict.
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And it only got the attention it did because President Biden has to pay attention to those voices within his own party.
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If we see Congress change and we see stronger Republican voices, we won't stop the conflict.
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But I think we'll be pushing ourselves back to a traditional approach to American leadership,
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where I hope we can go back to what Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg used to say as his maxim,
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that we can approach the world with a sort of united front among Americans,
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who are fairly united in their disapproval of Russia's invasion,
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their contempt for Chinese authoritarianism and the bullying of Taiwan.
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There is a lot of unity in foreign policy, if we could pull ourselves together,
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that I think has been masked by the kind of, I don't know,
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gestures to the left, to some elements in the Democratic Party base that may make sense domestically,
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And it's very much a focus in Canada, particularly with Russia's aggression.
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Our former Prime Minister Stephen Harper once is known for saying to Putin's face,
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And, you know, when friendly Canadians were offering advice to President Joe Biden on how to deal with Putin,
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Of course, Prime Minister Harper was instrumental in making sure it became a G7 and not a G8.
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So we've had some strong leadership in that regard.
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But we focus on the actions of what they've done in Crimea,
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because we know that there are strategic resources and military strategy
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which is, of course, is very important to Canada.
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So this, I bring this up because the reality Canadians face
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our partner and our ally to defend whatever needs to be defended.
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And I think it's such an important point that you bring up,
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that there is a stretch of the U.S. military or what they can do.
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You know, Senator Rand Paul once infamously said,
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you know, the U.S. shouldn't be the world's police.
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and that they feel that they don't want to get drawn into a war against Russia with Ukraine
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But I know I'm throwing a lot into the mix here,
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because the United States is perceived as weaker right now in that regard.
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And that if there were far more strong voices pushing back against a Vladimir Putin,
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Training Ukrainians has been going very well.
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But at what point does it become real when you listen to a madman like Vladimir Putin,
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I've got nuclear weapons and I'm going to use them?
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If a perceived weak U.S. isn't able to stand up against that,
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And this is something that I think we also have to consider.
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talking about the importance of maybe spending less on Ukraine.
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he's reflecting the sentiment of a lot of Americans as well.
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In the years of the Trump administration and then the Biden administration,
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an important shift in American defense policy away from what Max Boot calls the savage wars of peace,
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the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in favor of a more traditional deterrent strategy,
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build up the U.S. military to deter the aggression of others.
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we failed to deter a Russian invasion in Ukraine.
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We still may have an ability to have a discussion of deterrence with regard to China.
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That's something that the Chinese have made a lot of advances technologically in their military.
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I think the U.S. with its allies is more than a match for that.
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But the perception that the U.S. is in this shift,
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it's caught at a bad time while it's domestically divided,
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I think does transmit a concerning message of weakness to those who want to take a poke at us,
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And you see that a little bit from the encounter Canada had over Meng Wanzhou and the two Michaels.
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This was something that I think really would not have happened in the old Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
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The idea of taking hostages and having this go on for quite a long time and not be resolved.
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oh, they're off limits because they're an American ally.
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They have no trouble poking at Canada, as we saw.
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And I think this is something of the new geopolitics that we have to learn to cope with.
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And the U.S., I think, there are a lot of smart people thinking about how do we adapt to this era.
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You can see voices in Congress trying to talk about what could we do differently?
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Nobody wants to see the U.S. necessarily weakened.
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But in the absence of a strong sort of foreign policy consensus in the U.S.,
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And there have been some areas where Canada, I think, has done a good job.
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For example, as we saw in the national security strategy that was released last week,
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the U.S. gave a call out to Canada's international effort on arbitrary detention,
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which was a direct response to the holding of the two Michaels,
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but one which has gotten a lot of international support.
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And the U.S. acknowledged there and gave a shout out to Canada's leadership on that
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for making an important contribution to the discussion of how the rules should be written
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in this new sort of tense era between the U.S. and China and others.
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And I think those are the kinds of initiatives that Canada's long been known for,
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trying to make a constructive difference, trying to bring a moral voice to the fore.
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The U.S. can't assume its allies are always there for us.
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We need to be conscious of the importance of tending those relationships.
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But there was a good example of where Canada made a difference,
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And we need to reciprocate by supporting Canada's initiatives like that
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to try to make sure that this conflict with Russia and China
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or this great power rivalry or however you characterize it
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I think that that is a very important aspect of what we're seeing unfolding.
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And your former president, George W. Bush, once infamously called it,
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And I know that there is a perception that we're seeing this emergence
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but certainly there are remnants of this partnership,
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you know, perceived or otherwise, of China and Russia.
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And it brings me to one of the things that you referred to earlier.
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And that was our global supply chain, so much reliance that we all have on China.
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You know, the goods are cheaper, costs us, you know,
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we're used to buying those things at the dollar store
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But we realized during the pandemic that if we don't have supply
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With Xi Jinping's basically now in the same position as Putin is,
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These are very concerning aspects to what we in the Western world
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And finding that balance of dealing with your midterms and your domestic issues
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versus these very real international conflicts that are at the forefront.
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I think that there is a very big concern from the citizenry on both sides of our border.
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because they're far more focused on lighter issues, you know.
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And I mean, all things can be equal at the same time.
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I just feel that there's often a perception that the gaze is not focused enough
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I'm kind of talking about it in a roundabout way,
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but China is the strength and that's the perception.
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And the U.S. and our allies are not perceived that way anymore.
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Well, and I would take it, I'm going to make your problem worse of pulling all these things together
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These big headlines have distracted us from what has been our reality for the last couple of years,
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And I think Canada and the U.S. have come through the pandemic,
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But there are a lot of countries, particularly in the developing world,
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Some countries are looking at 10, even 20 years of economic development
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that they've kind of regressed, gone backwards.
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You think about the way we worry about our school kids
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and what was the damage of masking them and making them do online classes.
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Well, what's the situation in Mexico, in Brazil, in Nigeria?
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And those countries are going to be looking to recover.
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After World War II, we were in the fortunate position in North America
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that our cities hadn't been bombed, and we had some industrial capacity
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And we were able to really, I think, found the Western Alliance
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on our ability to help feed the world, defend the world,
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And we helped the world to recover with things like the Marshall Plan
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and with Europe and other international development assistance
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that offered countries a vision of the West as a place where you got good things,
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and we were trying to build a more just, more equitable,
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and help those who are further behind economically to catch up.
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Where we are now, I think, is a similar challenge,
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but I don't know that we're as well positioned.
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We have so many challenges at home, so many costs at home,
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Well, what will we do when the countries who are our friends,
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who have been friendly to us in the past in the developing world,
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reach out and say, help, we need to recover too.
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Will we be the partner that countries in the Middle East need?
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Are we prepared to help them recover with development assistance
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giving them at least the chance to sell into our markets as we recover?
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but I think we need to think about more than ourselves,
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But I think Canada and the United States are on the horns
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which is how do we help the world across the board to recover,
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because otherwise we're going to miss something
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I really appreciate you speaking so plainly about this
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