How potential changes to Canada’s foreign policy will affect you
Episode Stats
Words per minute
215.08472
Harmful content
Hate speech
1
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I talk about the key foreign policy issues affecting Canada and how they affect the everyday lives of citizens across the country. I cover the policies being debated at the recent policy convention of the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) and other major parties, as well as some of the issues that have been on the agenda for the upcoming election.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
so we've been looking at a lot of foreign policy news and how that affects canada domestically but
00:00:10.660
i want to switch it up and talk about what's going on in canada and how that will affect our
00:00:14.980
foreign policy our international relations and what the everyday effects on canadians will be
00:00:19.620
now to do that i'm going to look at some of the political parties and what they've been talking
00:00:23.140
about but i do want to start specifically with the ndp because they have a policy convention this
00:00:27.160
week now policy resolutions that are debated at the convention don't always pass and even if they do
00:00:31.900
pass it doesn't mean that they're going to make it into an election platform but there's a lot of
00:00:36.320
really interesting resolutions that i think are important for canadians to understand now the
00:00:40.400
first one i want to start off with is one the jagmeet singh has personally come out against but it's
00:00:44.040
apparently still on the docket and it is the defunding of the canadian military so basically
00:00:48.700
defunding and disbanding the canadian military it's unclear what domestic force if any there is going
00:00:52.900
to be left but defunding the military would obviously mean that we cannot take part in
00:00:56.860
international peacekeeping operations we can't really even defend ourselves we can't maybe
00:01:01.680
enforce arctic sovereignty again it's not clear what that's going to look like but this is a very
00:01:06.240
large one because hard power compared to soft power the diplomatic or financial power hard power
00:01:10.860
military power is obviously something that is in the diplomatic toolbox if you suddenly get rid of
00:01:15.660
that you have less options and therefore you have less ways to advance your strategic interests as a
00:01:20.560
nation they're also very against for example free trade deals that they view as bad such as
00:01:25.560
ceta and tppa now this one is again quite interesting because compared to justin trudeau
00:01:30.640
which is very big on international agreements international organizations they are very against
00:01:37.140
this and so they will not support anything that they view as harming canadian workers but again if
00:01:43.280
we're in another situation where the ndp holds the balance of power if we would have just had an
00:01:47.560
election or maybe you know if there's they're threatening an election will the ndp actually go and pull the
00:01:52.620
trigger and end the government that's a very big question so far they haven't and so that's why the
00:01:58.440
liberal government has stayed in power but it's again something that is on their platform and
00:02:03.560
something that could change should the ndp once again hold the balance of power or even get elected
00:02:08.060
again if there is an election the other big one for the ndp is re-engaging with iran and that is
00:02:14.320
obviously going to be led by the biden administration that is ongoing right now but the effects for canada
00:02:19.840
could be large we basically don't have the level of diplomatic relations you might think we close
00:02:25.580
down the embassy and so there's i think just some low level things going on through the british embassy
00:02:30.760
in iran you can still get some consular services there but that is not the level which you can
00:02:37.180
expect to see especially if the biden administration biden administration chooses to re-engage with them
00:02:42.000
you can obviously see canada following suit and that is something that is supported by the ndp
00:02:45.680
and would most likely be supported by the liberals as well again going along with the sort of
00:02:50.420
international view international focus that they have when it comes to the liberals specifically one
00:02:55.780
of the things you can imagine would be again if there's some international agreements or international
00:02:59.940
accords like the migration compact or the paris climate change accords there might be something new
00:03:05.440
on the horizon might be something about the you know the uh the global reset again there was a lot of
00:03:10.880
controversy about that so not getting into that but talk of this global reset or the new global economy
00:03:16.060
universal basic income or agreements with other countries about some sort of basic corporate tax
00:03:20.840
these obviously would have a very huge effect on canada because if we're going to institute some
00:03:25.760
minimum corporate tax or we're going to agree to some other agreement that is going to maybe institute
00:03:30.760
a carbon tax or you know banning plastics or any of these type of things that could be on the horizon
00:03:35.540
that is going to have a huge effect now this is again critically important because 53 percent of
00:03:40.920
canadians are very close to insolvency and so if you're going to rock and shake the economy it could
00:03:45.940
push people into insolvency that is going to have a domino effect and that 53 percent could very quickly
00:03:51.200
turn into you know 60 70 80 90 percent who knows because people in the economy are obviously dependent
00:03:57.000
on another people are dependent on the customers dependent on the suppliers and so that is going to have
00:04:01.580
huge effects now the last one that i want to sort of touch on before i briefly touch on some of the
00:04:06.880
minor parties is the conservative party and their big issue was tough talk on china now this is
00:04:12.900
complicated by the fact that they're not in power so they can talk tough on china but if the government
00:04:18.380
is going to take a tough stance it really puts them in a bind because there's only a limit of how tough
00:04:23.580
you can push to be on china if if the you know for example the two michaels get released because the
00:04:29.040
government took a tough stance it's really going to put them out of talking points there might be
00:04:32.800
still something about trade but it's it's really going to make things more difficult now china has
1.00
00:04:36.880
obviously been issuing statements that are increasingly tougher on canada as well and so
00:04:41.180
that is something that they will have to find a balance on between pushing for a tough stance on
00:04:45.340
china or perhaps continuing to or you know maybe not maybe they'll give it up but pushing for a tougher
00:04:49.060
stance on china while balancing out the fact that the liberals may have to do that as well because
00:04:53.460
they're simply going to be forced to the other big one for them is going to be again opposite for
00:04:58.600
from the liberals will be um or an aid they have said that they're not going to cut foreign aid
00:05:04.200
and this is something that was on the docket for andrew sheer it is apparently not for andrew um
00:05:09.100
for anna tool and so this is something that you might expect to see should the conservatives come
00:05:14.200
into power you know how they're going to handle the foreign aid situation again especially in light
00:05:19.040
of the economic situation here at home canadians might be very upset and people might really um
00:05:25.040
choose to to be not supported with the conservatives because of promises like this it might make it a
00:05:30.160
very difficult task for them uh so you know again remains to be seen the other parties the green
00:05:35.380
party had interestingly enough a big focus on the military that they wanted to provide them with the
00:05:40.160
appropriate equipment and training that that was quite interesting the block doesn't have all too
00:05:43.880
much except for clamping down on roxham road but that that's more covid related uh so keeping uh the
00:05:49.440
spread out from you know from the united states where there were previously high cases uh that may change
00:05:53.280
again once the united states is more fully vaccinated reaches herd immunity um the people's
00:05:58.840
party a lot of stuff on their website foreign policy wise but they don't have any seats so that
00:06:03.840
again you know they have a lot of maybe interesting ideas interesting ideas that you might support even
00:06:07.740
but if they're not in power they don't really have a way to uh influence that and they're having a lot
00:06:13.140
of difficulties uh affecting the conversation simply because a lot of the mainstream media is ignoring
00:06:17.880
them so that is obviously a challenge for the people's party so where does that leave us again
00:06:22.500
it really gives us some insight into what might happen if there is an election i think that if
00:06:27.780
there is another minority and one of the other parties or the ndp again holds the balance of power
00:06:32.320
they could vote for a number of interesting things the most important uh sort of idea or or thing that is
00:06:40.480
going on right now is the economy and i think a lot of canadians are rightfully concerned so i think
00:06:44.540
that should remain the focus but uh again we'll see what happens and what the election is going to look
00:06:50.220
like what the next few weeks will hold for us following these policy conventions will you know
00:06:54.420
i'm sure keep you guys updated so fortune earth i am sam ashkenazi thank you so much for watching