Juno News - March 21, 2022


Canada collapsed during Covid. Here’s how we fix it. (Ft. Irvin Studin)


Episode Stats

Length

32 minutes

Words per Minute

167.50339

Word Count

5,394

Sentence Count

335

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

11


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Canada needs to come up with a serious and credible plan to move past COVID, to end all
00:00:05.120 COVID-era mandates and restrictions, to get our economy back on track, but also to begin to
00:00:10.160 address the considerable harm done to the social fabric of our country by the unprecedented
00:00:15.280 government overreach. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:30.000 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. So it's become almost like a cliche lately to say
00:00:34.840 that we need to move past COVID. We need to get back to normal. The reality is that we cannot move
00:00:39.600 back in time. We'll never be able to get back to 2019. We need to move forward, yes, but we also
00:00:45.360 need to meticulously study what exactly happened over the past two years. We need to investigate
00:00:51.260 what happened and why. We need to cancel the overzealous government programs, yes, but we also
00:00:57.360 need to put in place safeguards to make sure that that power can never be abused again, that power
00:01:02.580 thirsty politicians, overbearing governments cannot undermine our rights and freedoms again in the
00:01:08.500 future. So today I'm very pleased to be joined by someone who is working on these very ideas, working
00:01:13.160 on a project to get us to move forward and to get our lives back on track. I'm very pleased today to be
00:01:19.440 joined by Irvin Studen. Irvin is the founder and editor-in-chief of Global Brief Magazine, one of the
00:01:24.720 leading international policy thinkers in Canada. Irvin has been a public policy professor and worked
00:01:29.900 for both the Canadian prime minister and an Australian prime minister in 2004. He was a
00:01:34.680 member of a small team who wrote Canada's first national security policy. In 2006, he did something
00:01:39.040 similar down in Australia. Irvin holds a bachelor's degree from York University, a master's from both
00:01:44.800 Oxford and the London School of Economics, and a PhD from Osgood Law School. Notably, this is really
00:01:50.300 interesting. Irvin has taught foreign policy, both at Ukraine's Higher School of Public Administration
00:01:55.060 in Kiev, as well as at Russia's Academy for National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow. So we're
00:02:01.720 going to talk a little bit about the Russia-Ukraine conflict as well. There are a few people in the
00:02:05.660 world who are more qualified to talk about what's going on than Irvin, and I'm really pleased to have
00:02:10.140 him on the show today. So Irvin, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
00:02:13.480 It's a real pleasure, Candice. Thanks for having me. I enjoy your work.
00:02:17.120 Well, I appreciate it. So you recently chaired and you wrote a national exit plan for COVID. So
00:02:23.120 first of all, take us through what led to this and why you decided to take on this project.
00:02:30.120 Well, we were not exiting. We were not exiting as a country. We were studying COVID. We were
00:02:35.700 living COVID. We were sentimentalizing. And in late 2021, I had a long conversation with the person
00:02:46.580 who is now the co-chair of this national, the Canada Science and Policy Committee to exit the
00:02:51.320 pandemic, Kwaadjo Khermantan. He said, we said we should bring together the leading scientists and
00:02:57.620 leading policy thinkers and do our own science table. And so I turned that on its head and we spoke for
00:03:05.500 for a while. And I said, Kwaadjo, let's actually call it the committee to exit the pandemic, because
00:03:11.580 I'm a policy person. You're a science and medical person. We'll bring together these solitudes,
00:03:16.780 the solitudes that really have not been talking to each other. The medical and science community
00:03:20.780 is clinically strong, but they stink at public policy. I mean, really, they stink because public
00:03:26.220 policy is a craft. It's not something that can be just made up through pure intelligence.
00:03:31.180 And the policy community, the political community is illiterate in science,
00:03:34.700 largely. So we bring together these solitudes, properly national, specialists across all the
00:03:41.020 disciplines, which is key, and I'm sure we'll get to that. And we choreograph and exit. So we're not
00:03:45.020 there to study or sentimentalize. It really is a policy lead informed by science. So Kwaadjo and I
00:03:52.700 and the committee have released the national exit plan. It is comprehensive, it is regionalized across the
00:04:00.060 second largest country in the world. And it speaks to a policy choreography of exit across eight
00:04:06.540 systems crises, which are important to understand, if you're really going to understand where we are,
00:04:11.180 what's happened, and how to properly get out as a country so that we have a good tomorrow.
00:04:16.380 It's excellent. Such a great initiative and so comprehensive. So I want to go through some of
00:04:20.700 the areas that you focused on. One of the things I thought was interesting that you had two different
00:04:24.060 categories, one COVID public health, and one non COVID public health. And I know that it's become
00:04:30.140 a big issue that everyone's talking about the fact that there's so many people have neglected
00:04:33.580 their health so many, so much of this early, early cancer prevention, so much mental health issues
00:04:39.100 have have come up. In some cases, they're far worse than COVID itself. So it could you walk us
00:04:44.620 through those two different public health areas and why you drew that distinction?
00:04:49.020 Well, there are actually eight systems, and those are two of the eight. So I'll walk through the eight
00:04:55.500 and then explain what those two mean and why we came to that divination. It's COVID public health,
00:05:02.780 non COVID public health. A couple of years ago, you might have said public health as a generality,
00:05:07.660 one system, but we divided it to be a little sharper. COVID public health, non COVID public health. Then
00:05:12.780 there's of course, the economy and business, education, institutions, national unity,
00:05:21.100 social fabric, then the and then the international, I might be missing one. I'm a systems thinker,
00:05:30.940 and the only proper way to have dealt with the COVID pandemic at the start, this is how the best
00:05:35.980 countries dealt with it. But certainly on exit is to think of the country and systems. At that point,
00:05:41.820 we would appreciate that while COVID was a shock to the country, it was not the only system going in
00:05:47.260 the second largest country in the world in a big society. We always have many balls in the air.
00:05:52.300 That's the appropriate way to think of a complex country. In the early pandemic, through some of the
00:05:59.500 solitudes we discussed, and also through social media, and the general inexperience in Canada in
00:06:04.300 dealing with crises of this scale, we reduced all of our reality to COVID counts, for better or worse.
00:06:13.020 And I'm not sentimentalizing, I'm just recounting what was. But then we began to think that COVID was
00:06:18.620 our only condition, and that solving COVID, whenever that meant, would bleed favorably into all these other
00:06:26.300 systems, which we neither appreciated nor understood. As a result of that reduction of all our reality to
00:06:35.420 the COVID public health pandemic, we collapsed the other systems, I mean, literally collapsed.
00:06:41.420 Education, which is near and dear to my heart, and which we've been working on separately through the
00:06:45.260 Worldwide Commission to Educate All Kids, was a total collapse. I mean, kids started being ousted from all
00:06:52.060 education in total. 200,000 kids plus across the country in the Oliver Twist condition, not in any
00:06:59.420 school at all. Businesses were being collapsed and bankrupted and ousted for no reason other than we
00:07:06.220 imagined that the only thing happening was the pandemic. Whereas other countries had an appreciation,
00:07:11.580 the pandemic is here, we put an accent on it, but there are other fish to fry. We have a big country,
00:07:17.340 we can't collapse the economy, kids should still be educated because tomorrow is going to be
00:07:21.740 difficult. We have to keep the country unified, we have to keep our international standing, we keep
00:07:26.700 diplomatic and intelligence activities, and we didn't. The government closed the society, and the
00:07:32.860 government itself retreated. And betwixt these two solitudes, in the de-energization of the society,
00:07:42.220 we had disintegration. And so the systems approach commends a reconstitution of these systems that were
00:07:48.220 collapsed. That's why when we say COVID public health, we're at an endemic stage. For all practical
00:07:54.300 intents and purposes, the pandemic is over. For Canada, it is endemic. That means it will be seasonal
00:07:59.420 in character. It will be managed seasonally as we do other maladies. And for comorbid or aged or
00:08:07.500 vulnerable populations, we project that much more energy. That's appropriate. That's how an intelligent
00:08:14.460 society thinks. But in non-COVID public health, which we collapsed, we must provide surplus energy.
00:08:21.180 So all the things that were not diagnosed, all the procedures and processes that were neglected or
00:08:26.940 marginalized, the new mental health conditions that were created over course dependent, the physical
00:08:32.940 health conditions, the general societal angst, children, all of this thing requires energy.
00:08:39.020 One of the working hypotheses of the exit plan is high energy, high energy at the front. So no
00:08:46.780 sentimentality, high energy, not because I have a fetish for energy or because I like high energy,
00:08:53.020 it's because we collapse the systems. So we need to reconstitute the systems even to 2019 levels,
00:08:59.500 2019. We have to provide that much more energy. So it is all the systems at once,
00:09:05.260 high energy at the front, including that vulnerable population COVID, but especially
00:09:10.620 in non-COVID public health, huge surge, reach out to the population who's not well, who hasn't been
00:09:16.700 diagnosed in the business area, in the business sector, business system as well, reach out to all
00:09:23.180 the companies who's in trouble, who hasn't been able to access working capital for whatever reason,
00:09:29.740 who's on the verge, who needs to be reconstituted. It's not because government has a central role in
00:09:36.140 business, but because government was responsible for the original ouster. And even if government
00:09:40.860 removes restrictions, tens of thousands of businesses are either on the edge or disappeared.
00:09:46.140 So it's not enough to just remove restrictions, even though that's a key first point in the strategy.
00:09:52.780 All things need to be worked in a simultaneous choreography.
00:09:56.780 But Irvin, we're left with this struggle. So the very people who were in charge, who failed to have
00:10:01.500 the foresight to understand all of these complicated systems, who let them all collapse and focused
00:10:06.620 entirely on COVID, I can kind of understand that in March, April 2020, when we just didn't know what
00:10:11.820 this was, we didn't know how bad it was going to be. But at some point, we realized the limited
00:10:16.300 scope of COVID, that there are certain populations that are very vulnerable, and the rest of society,
00:10:22.300 not so much the fact that little kids were punitively punished by COVID policies, even though
00:10:28.780 they're at such small risk. So the very people who let all that terrible things happened and led the
00:10:33.500 charge on that, are now the ones that we are going to expect to come up with this plan to sort of
00:10:39.980 move past it. How can we trust these institutions and these people who allowed this to happen in the
00:10:45.100 first place?
00:10:50.860 What I call thinking, we're at the core of their absence, the absence of leadership and thinking,
00:10:56.060 we're at the core of our collapse. And it was really a calamitous collapse for Canada, I've never
00:11:01.980 seen it. Some people will have difficulty accepting, once they see what's happened, that this could have
00:11:08.060 happened in our country. Now, obviously, many of those people are, are still in decision making roles.
00:11:14.140 At all levels of government, at all levels of public health across all parties,
00:11:18.140 and the professions. We did this plan for them. We did the thinking for them. And many of them,
00:11:24.780 I should say, I could now say the public, fed quietly into parts of the plan, because they said,
00:11:29.500 Irvin, you guys do the thinking, you do the structure, we don't exactly understand what the
00:11:33.900 problem is. What, by the way, many people don't understand what the problem is. They think our
00:11:38.220 problem is COVID and masks and vaccines. That is one widget of a larger systems collapse. You know,
00:11:46.540 it is the key original impulse for collapse. And we need to fix it, but we need to fix it in tandem with
00:11:52.540 all these other systems. So once we have that broad structure, structure, again, the, the exit matrix is
00:12:00.380 eight by 21. Across all the systems, several months out, across all regions of Canada, with an endpoint,
00:12:07.820 with a strategic endpoint. Once people understand that that is the choreography rather than mask on,
00:12:12.540 mask off. Obviously, it's mask off, I should just stress, but, but that's just a tweet.
00:12:17.260 Right. Once they understand that they can start to implement, we've done the thinking,
00:12:22.460 they fed their parts in, they felt it fed us intelligence across the country because the
00:12:26.140 country is very big. So the regional, the regional character of the exit is very important.
00:12:31.900 We have to trust that they will execute. And I see in bits now that they are co-opting or directly
00:12:39.180 using our, our elements, even though many of the systems collapses require really heroic energy in a
00:12:46.860 number of areas because of the depth of the collapse. So that we're talking really national
00:12:51.820 leadership, provincial leadership coordination amongst the leaderships. And I hope that that
00:12:58.380 happens. I'm certainly browbeating them quietly behind the scenes. And we've fed this to all the
00:13:02.780 medical office of health and deputy ministers and different political parties. But it is, it remains
00:13:08.620 a paradox of the time that we need better leadership for the times. It's not obvious that Canada will
00:13:16.540 survive 10 years out. It's just not obvious. We really have to up our game. Most countries,
00:13:23.180 given the performance of last two years, would not have a tomorrow. And we see this around the world,
00:13:29.020 different countries are in difficult straits. And we maybe have been forgiven by history,
00:13:34.860 maybe we do have a tomorrow. But God forbid, we should repeat this performance in the next calamity,
00:13:40.620 because it will be more, more dire. This was not a world historical pandemic
00:13:45.660 on the mortality count. I'm sorry to say it was not. It was a pandemic. It was global.
00:13:53.180 We survived it as a country won't survive the next one. We won't survive the next war,
00:13:57.900 the next international conflicts, we have to up our game and understand that
00:14:00.940 we have to draw the right conclusions, right? No feeling sorry for ourselves. And so the exit
00:14:07.180 is to prepare for tomorrow. And that is certainly part of our thinking in the choreography.
00:14:11.580 Okay, well, I have two questions that come from that. I'm not sure which to ask for. So I'll ask you
00:14:15.580 them both. And then you can you can decide which one goes first. So number one, you said that Canada
00:14:21.020 almost collapsed, and we might not survive. We're lucky to survive 10 years from now. So what is the
00:14:27.020 threat? What what might happen? Or what could have happened? You're talking about from a perspective of
00:14:30.780 national unity of separatist movements of vulnerability from foreign attacks. Can you
00:14:35.260 describe what you mean by the risk, the existential threat to Canada? And then the second thing is you
00:14:42.620 said that we have to make sure that governments can't do this again. So how can we guarantee how can
00:14:47.180 we protect our citizens? How can we ensure that future governments don't give themselves this power
00:14:51.820 to act in a way to just declare an emergency to say something's a bigger threat than it actually is.
00:14:57.340 And and be able to go through and destroy our institutions like that in the future.
00:15:01.020 Let me start with the latter question is a great question. The latter question is more difficult
00:15:06.620 to understand and to to to guarantee we can't guarantee that we'll have the right leadership
00:15:11.580 for the right for for the next calamity, although I suspect that becoming calamities will be much
00:15:17.660 more pressure for pressure full for for for Canada externally and domestically than this one.
00:15:24.460 We overreacted or underreacted, right? Leadership in many cases and leading leading provinces
00:15:30.780 pretended that they were just one of us rather than leading. When there were closures, whether
00:15:35.900 the closure were right or not, government took all the energy out of the society and didn't compensate
00:15:40.460 for the energy. Right. All of these things are lessons that a society that is serious about
00:15:46.300 non repetition of catastrophe draws. If we move on in 2022 and pretend the last two years don't exist.
00:15:54.300 And by the way, I worry about that greatly because in the language I hear, I hear that
00:15:59.260 that things are back to normal like nothing ever happened. Whereas a serious society, one that loses
00:16:07.820 a war or almost lose the war or that created or committed grave mistakes of public policy administration
00:16:15.740 does huge introspection, not self-flagellation, not sentimentality. What did we do wrong and what
00:16:22.300 must we never repeat? And that's part of our work. Although we're not there to punish or do
00:16:29.020 accountability that will come in time. Right. I've taken notes, but we need to exit in order to create
00:16:37.420 that intellectual space to draw conclusions. And hopefully the next set of leaders will draw that.
00:16:41.820 We need a higher set of leaders across the professions because that goes to your first
00:16:45.980 question. The circumstances around the bend will be wicked for our country. First of all, the world
00:16:50.460 is coming out of its most serious catastrophe since the Cold War, maybe since the end of the Second
00:16:58.140 World War. Huge economic drop, social conflict, collapse in a number of of public administration
00:17:05.820 systems in major countries, destitching of global structures. And we're the second largest country in
00:17:12.540 the world. So we can collapse because history suggests, as I've calculated, that countries last
00:17:19.580 about 60 years. Countries last about 60 years after which they collapse either through constitutional
00:17:25.340 domestic collapse or war. We're going on 150, 354 years plus means every year on top of that is good
00:17:36.860 luck and work, hard work. And we see many, it's very tragically around the world, many countries that are
00:17:43.340 on the verge of collapse, disintegration or fighting for their lives, some in war, some through COVID
00:17:50.060 collapse, thrown through domestic circumstances. And that is not foreign to the Canadian future.
00:17:57.740 We just imagine it. So the pandemic should bring to roost the idea that Canada is just as real as the
00:18:03.820 other countries. We're not exceptional. We've had exceptional good luck. We come out of the pandemic
00:18:09.100 with four major domestic pressures, any of which on its own could tear the country apart. The Quebec
00:18:15.660 question is still alive, whatever people realize structurally. If Quebec should ever go for whatever
00:18:20.540 reason, there's no rest of Canada, the country disintegrates. The Western question is very, very sharp.
00:18:26.140 It is much sharper than before the pandemic and is not understood by the rest of Canada.
00:18:30.060 The Indigenous question is massive and it has centrifugal pressures across the country that
00:18:38.140 could make it impossible for the country to be properly governed, even as we imagine ourselves
00:18:42.940 to be doing a national reconciliation, to which I'm sympathetic. And then finally, we've created borders
00:18:49.820 from jurisdiction into jurisdiction, province to province, province to territory, territory to territory,
00:18:56.140 city to city that have disunified a structure that took over a century and a half to make cohesive.
00:19:04.860 So there are real, both physical borders and also regulatory borders that have been created through
00:19:10.460 COVID restrictions, COVID borders, COVID thinking, COVID mental structures that need to be unwound
00:19:18.780 with great pace. And that's in the national exit plan as well. Within the next couple of months,
00:19:23.740 we need to bury all of those borders. It needs to be reunification of the national economic, social
00:19:30.380 and political space. That takes work though, however. If not, these borders become sticky.
00:19:35.020 And at any point in time, New Brunswick can say, you guys aren't New Brunswicker, not welcome here.
00:19:40.700 Or same with Alberta, same with Northwest Territories. And that's completely contrary to the original
00:19:46.780 ethic of federalism, of confederation. We create a unity across the second largest country in the world.
00:19:52.540 Now internationally, it's even more wicked because, as I described the post-pandemic world,
00:20:00.460 Canada now has four major borders, all of them populated by great powers. And we're not one of
00:20:08.140 them. We imagine everything is America, the A-axis. But we're close to China. You're from Vancouver,
00:20:15.660 colleagues from Vancouver, Victoria and Whitehorse up north will appreciate that they're closer to Beijing
00:20:21.420 than our Brisbane, Australia, Canberra and Sydney geographically. China's the major country of the
00:20:27.420 post-pandemic world. Whatever people think about China, it's just an objective fact and we're close
00:20:32.860 to them. So China is our Western border. Russia is our Arctic border. Russia's at war with Ukraine,
00:20:38.940 but we're, that means we're at, we're immediate neighbours with a country that is at full-on war,
00:20:45.820 with the final E-axis to the, to our east. So ACRE, that's our rectangle, ACRE, America, China,
00:20:52.940 Russia, Europe. At any point in time, these borders could crush us or pull us apart. And if one does the
00:20:59.580 math, it's 15 combinations of push and pull that could disintegrate us as fast as any of the countries
00:21:04.940 that are in trouble today are, are being pressured. And that could happen on any given Wednesday.
00:21:12.540 That's such an incredible way of thinking about Canada and looking at the situation. Irvin, I don't
00:21:17.340 think that many people, you keep it at the front of mind that we're, that we're so close to Russia,
00:21:21.820 that we're so close to China in the way you describe. And I know, I know you have a whole book
00:21:26.220 on this topic and I'm going to get you to come back and, and we can really dive into the strategic
00:21:31.740 importance that Canada plays in the world and how we can really grow to our full potential.
00:21:36.060 So we're going to save that topic for the next interview. But I do want to ask you while we're
00:21:39.740 on this topic of disintegration, and you mentioned how we are on the border with a, with two countries
00:21:46.380 at war. I have to ask you while you're here, you've lectured and taught in both cities, you're very
00:21:51.740 familiar with the sort of underlying issues of the conflict. So can, can you sort of give us
00:21:57.340 us an idea of what do you think Canada can do in this conflict to be a force for good in resolving
00:22:05.900 or helping to mitigate or helping to end this conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
00:22:11.180 Especially at the outset, it's a, it's a, it's a painful conflict to, to behold and watch.
00:22:16.460 It's a, it would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. But professionally speaking, I've been writing
00:22:26.220 about these tectonic plates of conflict for the last several years. So it's not completely
00:22:34.380 unanticipated. All of the scale is, is, is horrendous and inappropriate. The, there are two
00:22:41.180 questions that are implicit in your one question. Canada's force for good. Let's park that for a
00:22:46.940 second because my own thinking, and it's in the book, and it's also part of my own professional
00:22:51.740 work is first Canada must think for itself and about itself. Nobody owes Canada anything. There's
00:22:58.300 nobody around the world. And there are too few people in Canada saying, what does Canada need?
00:23:02.940 How does Canada survive? And no country has a suicide pact, meaning that no country must do anything
00:23:08.940 for any other country at its own expense. So we will help the world, but we will crumble while
00:23:14.620 we're at it. My thinking is the reverse is that if Canada thinks for itself at the right level,
00:23:21.180 we can by extension be a great force for good, for humanity, which is of course in historical
00:23:27.420 terms, the better condition. We're all human, but our vehicle for the goodness is a Canada that thinks
00:23:34.940 for itself, strong, big Canada that survives. So let's take them on in, in, in sequence. Canada
00:23:43.820 thinking for itself, vis-a-vis Russia, first and foremost, must understand our basic geography.
00:23:50.700 And I commend to all your distinguished listeners, as I do to my son, every second day, look at the map,
00:23:58.700 look at our geography. The Arctic is opening up. Everybody should go visit the Arctic, especially
00:24:06.220 our young. And then you will see that there are two Arctic giants this century.
00:24:13.180 One is Russia, which controls over 50% of the Arctic space. And one is Canada. The second is Canada,
00:24:19.580 which controls over 25% of the Arctic space. So the two giants, the United States, the European
00:24:25.980 countries are far behind. So what are we going to do? Our posture could be directly confrontational
00:24:32.780 with Russia. And I understand that at the moment it is such, right? And we owe ourselves the imperative
00:24:41.740 of defense. But for the remainder of the century, the more intelligent posture is that of embedding
00:24:50.620 these major countries at our borders, Russia, China to the West, but also increasingly to some extent
00:24:57.980 with the Northern interest. And of course the United States, which by the way, I look at as just another
00:25:03.980 country for in strategic terms, not our friend, not someone who will protect us. I think quite the
00:25:10.700 reverse in strategic terms. I look at them as just another major country that acts like a major country.
00:25:15.660 So what does a smaller country like us do with that wicked, now wicked geography?
00:25:22.700 We embed them, we embed them in a framework of peace and prosperity with defensive assets at the
00:25:28.620 plate, but not imagining as we do by Twitter, that we're going to war with them because they will
00:25:33.580 all crush us fast, all of them. And in any combination will crush us even faster. And God forbid,
00:25:40.700 they should fight war across our territory, right? Or play diplomatic or information space or
00:25:48.140 intelligence games across our territory. We need to up our game. And I guess this will be in a future
00:25:54.300 interview or in the book that I have, I've written about Canada creating the Singapore of the North that
00:25:59.340 embeds all these major countries, including Russia, including China, including United States, Northern
00:26:04.940 European countries in a framework whereby we're the center of an international market, a framework
00:26:10.940 connecting four continents of 2 billion people. That's seven, a seven to one ratio, I think, of the
00:26:18.780 continental North American market alone. And we're at the center of that because we've constructed it. So that's
00:26:23.900 a way of saying, yes, Arctic sovereignty, but Arctic sovereignty, vis-a-vis the Russians is not building up
00:26:29.660 basis. We can build up basis. But on top of that, we create markets, we create people to people
00:26:34.060 relationships and travel and all that's coming out of this terrible war. In respect of the war itself,
00:26:43.180 I do not see it as an ancient conflict between Ukrainians and Russians. We could talk about the
00:26:48.380 history. I see it as a post-Soviet conflict about territory and borders and critically,
00:26:56.460 the legitimacy of two very young post-Soviet states. I mean, both Russia and Ukraine are old
00:27:04.620 cultures and civilizations, but both of them, we forget, are very young countries. They're just over
00:27:11.740 30 years old. And each of them across huge geography is trying to secure legitimacy.
00:27:18.060 In the Russian case, they're trying to secure legitimacy across the biggest territory in the world
00:27:21.980 with 14 land borders and three maritime borders. It is the most complex country in the world,
00:27:27.100 and it is extremely difficult to govern. I'm convinced that the Russian governors
00:27:31.100 do not even have an appreciation of what's happening in their territory. It's just too big.
00:27:35.340 And they're all in Moscow. Ukraine is also huge. It is bigger than Germany. But it has a very,
00:27:43.740 very young self-government culture. And if I may be direct, very, very weak governors.
00:27:49.660 To this day, no great president has arrived, including with the greatest respect, the current
00:27:56.380 president, who was a very, very good comedian in Russian language. I would listen to him once in a
00:28:02.060 while. But until the war, he was a terrible president. And the one prior to him, even worse.
00:28:06.460 And, oh, he's heroic today and appropriately so. He loves his country. But the question is now,
00:28:15.180 for a proper exit, one that serves Canada and the world and these countries, the only exit can be one
00:28:20.700 that re-legitimizes or re-legitimates both the Ukrainian state and the Russian state side by side,
00:28:28.860 both strong, both living in peace. There is no other solution. Whatever we say on Twitter,
00:28:35.100 whatever our sentimentality, every other solution will conduce to disintegration of
00:28:40.700 Ukraine first. And if Russian goes second, then it takes Ukraine with it.
00:28:45.500 Repeat. If Russia disintegrates, it takes Ukraine with it. If Russia and Ukraine disintegrate,
00:28:51.340 they take Europe with it. If Europe disintegrates, the world is in trouble. We're back in the 20th
00:28:56.700 century. And that's bad for us because they're at our border. What is the exit? There must be immediate
00:29:03.900 mediation. The mediation must come from outside of NATO and it must come outside of the Soviet space.
00:29:11.900 I've recommended Asian countries, some West Asian, some East Asian, because they're neutral
00:29:17.180 and they're respected by both Kiev and Moscow. So Israel has stepped up. I don't know whether they
00:29:21.500 have the assets to do it. I am talking about India, China, maybe Singapore, but in a consortium,
00:29:29.820 they can help to negotiate two countries that are largely fraternal, that are fighting for different
00:29:35.500 teams, that are really are warrior nations. I mean, both the Ukrainians and the Russians know how to fight
00:29:42.060 and they will fight for a long time. And it is tragic. So Canada must push for that diplomatic
00:29:47.900 settlement. There need to be peacekeepers, in my view, in the end, I think I recommended Indian
00:29:55.260 peacekeepers, again, third force under the UN umbrella to provide a separation of the belligerence.
00:30:03.100 In terms of the Canadian play, I think the solution, one thing that has been mooted even today about
00:30:11.500 flights for refugees to Canada, we should have done that two weeks ago if we're a serious
00:30:15.660 country. We did it with other countries. Israel is looking at that. Poland has been heroic on refugees.
00:30:22.700 We must save maximum lives. In any conflict, we save lives and Canada has all the capacity to do that.
00:30:29.020 We're just slow. Much like in the pandemic, we were slow to mobilize. Internationally, we're even slower.
00:30:34.780 It's a couple of things on the future look of Ukraine. Obviously, it must be a sovereign state,
00:30:41.580 but it will be a neutral state if it survives. And it has to have a character that is, and I've
00:30:48.300 talked about this in the book, interstitial. It must be a segue between the European Union and the former
00:30:53.660 Soviet space. It cannot be part of a hard block because otherwise, these major blocks will be
00:30:59.100 fighting across this geography. Much like we wish to avoid the North American blocks and Chinese blocks
00:31:05.260 and Soviet blocks, post-Soviet blocks fighting across a weakly governed Canadian territory, which
00:31:11.260 will, again, tear us apart. Oh, wow. I mean, there's so much there. And I really appreciate
00:31:17.100 you breaking it down for us. I completely agree. Ukraine has always sort of been a buffer zone. And
00:31:21.500 even the population itself is a mix of Ukrainians and Russians. And for a long, long time, they lived
00:31:26.620 together in one country or one empire. And so it's such a shame to see them break out. But I really
00:31:35.020 appreciate your time, Irvin, your clear thinking on this. I hope that world leaders will take the
00:31:40.380 advice both on COVID and the geopolitics in Europe and the importance of coming to a resolution sooner
00:31:48.380 rather than later. So thank you for all your wisdom. And we'll certainly have you on again to talk
00:31:52.780 about building up Canada and the potential that we have here in our country. My great pleasure.
00:31:59.740 All right. That's Irvin Studen. I'm Candice Malcolm. This is The Candice Malcolm Show.