Juno News - November 07, 2026


Peter MacKay： Could Canadian troops get caught in a Russian conflict？

Carney’s budget delivers another massive debt bomb

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Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

147.38

Word count

2,450

Sentence count

94

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Hate speech

6

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Canadian soldiers in Latvia are being deployed to the border of Russia and Belarus within range of Russian drone strikes.
00:00:13.000 Nearly the entirety of NATO's Canadian-led brigade will be taking part in exercises.
00:00:19.000 Troops, including infantry, medics, engineers and tanks, will leave their base in Adazi, Latvia, to build out defenses along NATO's Eastern Front.
00:00:29.000 The operation will involve a total of 3,000 soldiers from 14 NATO countries.
00:00:35.360 Given the already high tensions in the region, the war between Russia and Ukraine,
00:00:39.960 is there a risk our troops could get drawn into the conflict?
00:00:44.260 Our guest today is a former defense minister in the Harper government, Peter McKay.
00:00:49.240 Welcome, Peter.
00:00:50.520 Thank you, Mark. Good to be with you again.
00:00:52.520 Good to be with you as well.
00:00:53.660 Talk about the situation in Latvia, where you have been.
00:00:56.620 and now of course we have our soldiers and others stationed I think within 35 miles of the border
00:01:04.480 somewhere around there or kilometers. Anyway pretty close. Does this give you any concern
00:01:09.820 that our soldiers could end up drawn into a firefight with the Russians? Well look not to
00:01:16.240 sound alarmist this is part of an exercise let's call it but as you've outlined this is a large
00:01:23.080 number, the largest deployment into that region really in history. And, you know, roughly 3,000
00:01:33.140 soldiers participating, 14 NATO countries, but 2,000 of them are Canadians. And they've been
00:01:39.020 there for some five months taking part in training exercises. They're under very solid, experienced
00:01:44.620 leadership. But, you know, to answer your question, any time you're within proximity of the Russian
00:01:52.060 border at a time like this, where we know that they made an illegal unilateral attack
00:01:58.980 on a neighboring country, mainly Ukraine, and heightened tensions as they are could
00:02:06.020 lead to an accident.
00:02:08.080 It could lead to a misinterpretation of this exercise.
00:02:12.840 And with autonomous warfare, with drones already making excursions, they're documented
00:02:17.940 excursions into neighboring countries, including Latvia, including Finland, including obvious
00:02:24.920 border countries that are supportive of Ukraine, as Latvia is as a NATO country,
00:02:32.300 the Russians very often will try to position themselves as having been provoked. And asymmetrical
00:02:39.700 warfare doesn't necessarily mean just a full frontal confrontation. It can be the type of
00:02:46.820 uh cyber and uh and drone autonomous attacks that we've seen in the past including on an airport in
00:02:53.380 germany not that many months ago yeah i mean the russians are aware that we've spent what 26 billion
00:03:00.420 dollars or something like that yeah amazing amount of money in helping ukraine and its war effort the
00:03:07.620 russians know all of this they they know where our troops are stationed and to my knowledge maybe you
00:03:13.760 would know better we're not conversing with the putin regime very much at all there's very little
00:03:19.020 discussion between our two countries given the state of things so would that add to the possibility
00:03:25.300 to your point that we could stumble our way into some kind of conflict um or incident with the
00:03:31.760 russians you're right to point out there's really no diplomatic communications going on between
00:03:37.280 canada and russia at least not directly and as you know the same is true of iran the same is true
00:03:44.260 of north korea we're we're operating a bit in the dark if i can put it that way now having said that
00:03:50.900 it would be an audacious thing for russia to try to uh in any way confront this battle group
00:03:59.000 albeit within striking distance on their border they would know that this could very well invoke
00:04:05.480 the Article 5 provisions of the NATO charter that, you know, essentially says, as you know,
00:04:12.820 an attack on one country is an attack on all 32 with the addition of Sweden and Finland now.
00:04:18.740 But that doesn't seem to have been a deterrent. I come back to this reality of asymmetrical
00:04:24.660 warfare where the Russians are using all kinds of nefarious means beyond just obvious military. 0.54
00:04:31.520 They're, you know, messing with energy, misinformation, miscommunication, cyber.
00:04:38.360 All of this is very much aimed to destabilize NATO, to distract away from some of their other more obvious attempts to take territory from neighboring countries.
00:04:53.020 So it is, you know, alarming is too strong a word, but it's certainly concerning.
00:05:00.220 And I think it's fair to say that under the Canadian leadership, this battle group will be on high alert, not just going through routine exercises.
00:05:08.660 They're in, as described by the commander, a defend posture as opposed to simply the deterrence that, by definition, reassurance is all about.
00:05:21.760 Yeah, I mean, I could envision a scene where Russian warplanes might come very close to the border.
00:05:30.900 Was this, I mean, given everything you've said, was this a provocative move by Prime Minister Karni, or perhaps even reckless under the circumstances?
00:05:39.900 I don't think this can be fairly attributed to the Prime Minister, although he would certainly have been briefed and included in the decision.
00:05:46.100 but this would be taken by the NATO command, what they call the SAKUR, the Supreme Allied
00:05:52.260 Commander Europe, would really have made this decision. And obviously, the fact that they're
00:05:57.500 operating inside Latvia, the Latvian government would have, you know, blessed this particular
00:06:03.940 exercise. But, you know, again, it doesn't matter, truth, facts, hard truths on the ground,
00:06:10.320 not really the determining factor when it comes to Russia. They have been more than provocative,
00:06:16.420 more than unreasonable, and quite murderous, quite frankly, in what they've been doing 0.94
00:06:21.440 on the doorstep of Europe, inside Ukraine. You mentioned aircraft excursions. That's happened
00:06:28.320 numerous times. And of course, with the type of hypersonic missiles, the type of equipment that
00:06:35.640 they've been using, they have the ability to reach out and hit neighboring countries
00:06:41.560 with deadly force.
00:06:45.500 What about our overall policy as far as Ukraine is concerned?
00:06:49.460 I mean, we've made yet another commitment, huge amounts of money being funneled into
00:06:54.580 that conflict, which appear to possibly be extending the war rather than bringing it
00:07:02.460 to a close.
00:07:02.900 Now, given the number of people who have died, an estimated 3 million people, 3 million total casualties, I mean, staggering numbers of people, thousands dying every month, you know, should Canada be trying to play more of a peacemaker role, our traditional role, as you well know, in bringing this conflict to a close rather than trying to perpetuate it through our involvement one way or another?
00:07:28.420 Well, you've described it, you know, as a war that has claimed many lives.
00:07:34.420 It's also displaced many people.
00:07:37.160 It has caused catastrophic injury, trauma.
00:07:41.620 Thousands, tens of thousands of children have been abducted, Mark.
00:07:45.220 It's shocking.
00:07:46.800 And some of the battlefield scenes resemble the First World War, trench warfare, and the use of drones.
00:07:55.680 somebody said it's Star Wars meets First World War. This is really uncharted territory in terms
00:08:02.260 of conventional warfare. And so it's complex, as these conflicts always are. Diplomatic efforts
00:08:09.600 and Canada's involvement in diplomatic efforts are limited, as you would expect. This seems to
00:08:15.400 be down to discussions between the U.S. President Xi Jinping in China and Putin himself. Obviously,
00:08:23.520 there's a disdain when it comes to European and NATO involvement. And again, that was framed by
00:08:30.880 Putin at the outset as provocative. And I suspect strongly that factored into the decision to start
00:08:39.160 the invasion in the first place, going back to 2014, because it really began then in Crimea.
00:08:46.700 And so they have expanded and of course done dastardly things across that country and tried 0.95
00:08:53.240 to enlist other countries like North Korea, Belarus, and to some degree China and Iran in 0.78
00:08:59.140 terms of the weapons that have been used. So the diplomatic efforts, I think, are really beyond the
00:09:05.980 reach of Canada and most other countries that would consider themselves Western countries
00:09:11.940 supportive of Ukraine. Prolonging the conflict, it really becomes extremely difficult
00:09:20.100 even to counsel President Zelensky to give up, you know, vast swaths of the sovereign territory
00:09:30.660 of Ukraine, not to mention the, you know, frankly, crimes against humanity that have been committed 0.71
00:09:38.320 by the Russians. I mean, I will say it, you know, President Putin should be sitting in a dock in 0.98
00:09:44.160 Geneva facing war crimes. And I don't know if Will lived to see that. I don't know if he'll
00:09:52.440 live to see that, quite frankly. Russian dictators normally don't walk away from that position.
00:10:01.820 I want to shift gears a little bit to what happened with the midterms. We saw the shellacking
00:10:07.440 that the GOP took. So far, there's been very little put out there by our own government. I
00:10:14.000 mean, sometimes you'll see some talk by people like Doug Ford, for instance. You might see some
00:10:20.260 gloating. I would hope that that does not happen because Trump is still president. But what do you
00:10:26.000 suppose, if any, the impact will be on Canada and our hopes for a trade agreement with the United
00:10:32.900 States? Great question. You know, this president, famously mercurial and unpredictable. Does he feel
00:10:41.280 chastened by this it's not really in his nature uh and you know we haven't heard it yet although
00:10:48.400 it was the table was set to blame canada uh particularly in some of the the red states that
00:10:55.440 went blue close to the border and so you know i'm i'm like everybody else anxious anxiously
00:11:03.280 awaiting to see what if any signals come from the white house it it could go a number of ways
00:11:10.640 to uh to frame it that way we could see perhaps a renewed interest in trying to resolve some of the
00:11:18.400 trade and tariff issues and get back to the bargaining table that seemed to be some of
00:11:22.480 the signal that was coming from both our government and theirs prior to these midterm results um or
00:11:30.720 you know and this is the worst case scenario the president now seizes upon this as a reason to
00:11:38.560 punish canada even further and i don't know frankly which way this could go or anywhere in between
00:11:47.280 um the allegations that we've all heard about canada interfering and and using certain tariffs
00:11:54.080 in certain states to maybe shape the outcome uh whether that is or isn't true there is some
00:12:00.320 evidence and some statements from people like minister jolie that gave the americans something
00:12:06.640 to to use the republicans i should say so none of that bodes well for a quick resolution but
00:12:14.380 when it happens it'll happen it could uh it could accelerate the desire to to try to take this off
00:12:21.880 the table given that things in iran are also going badly he he's into other the president is into
00:12:28.700 other trade disputes with other countries but we seem to be still very firmly in his sights canada
00:12:34.500 and mexico close allies that have huge advantages for all countries involved to continue this
00:12:41.380 historic trade relationship and yet um you know that that certainly is one takeaway among others
00:12:48.980 for the president's thumping or shellacking as you put it uh that was meted out last night so
00:12:56.100 we we should know in a relatively short time i mean the president is also not known to sort of
00:13:01.700 keep his own counsel he'll be putting something out on true social i suspect within hours in the
00:13:07.940 meantime i would probably resist doing a happy dance publicly if i was any cabinet minister
00:13:15.460 you know in ottawa or premier i mean i completely agree mark we we do not want to uh revel in this
00:13:22.580 moment as if we are now you know firmly in in some sort of a control or upper hand position we're not
00:13:29.300 and again not to prognosticate too much but the economic fallout of these tariffs is catastrophic
00:13:37.840 look at the job numbers look at our growth and our productivity and our GDP all of these have
00:13:44.720 taken a pretty significant hit just in the short time that our Prime Minister promised that he was
00:13:51.460 going to get a deal that seemed to be the the one abiding uh word that that he ran on and uh that
00:13:59.400 that has not come to fruition but our economy is certainly much more vulnerable and and much you
00:14:05.220 know of the relationship we are more reliant on them let's be sure going to europe uh diversifying
00:14:11.160 with other other markets that's all great we've been doing that for years and it will continue
00:14:16.700 to take years, if ever, to mirror or even come close to the trading relationship and volume that
00:14:25.480 we have with the United States. Yeah, I believe we had a free trade agreement when you were in
00:14:31.160 government. I mean, with the Europeans, yeah. That's right. The Comprehensive Economic Trade
00:14:36.200 Agreement was negotiated by Ed Fast and, of course, Prime Minister Harper. And interestingly,
00:14:41.880 Mark with all of this talk about you know an associate membership in the European Union which
00:14:47.960 I don't recall being discussed before the last election or really since until quite recently I
00:14:55.160 mean we the the conservatives uh fought an entire election on the subject of free trade with with
00:15:02.040 America and then of course it was expanded to include Mexico but back to your point about free
00:15:07.120 trade with the European Union of the 27 member countries in the European Union nine are yet
00:15:14.160 to ratify that that trade agreement so what are we talking about here if we want to have
00:15:20.200 you know unfettered and uh and greater access to the European market that to me seems to be the
00:15:26.660 principal focus of you know sitting down with the Europeans we we just had a uh hosted a meeting
00:15:33.420 here in Montreal last week, I would have thought that that would have been first and foremost
00:15:38.920 on the agenda. You know, it was a nice, feel-good, kissy-feely kind of
00:15:44.780 meeting in Montreal, but I don't know anything substantial that came from it. Student exchanges,
00:15:53.080 digital discussions, all of that is fine, but what does that do for the Canadian economy,
00:16:00.180 frankly. And we already have some of those type of agreements in place. Safe, further expansion
00:16:06.080 of our ability to trade military equipment. All replicated and dressed up in new language,
00:16:12.900 really is what I took away from it. Peter McKay, thank you so much for coming on the show. We
00:16:17.980 really appreciate it. Happy to do so, Mark. All the best. All the best to you and your family.
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00:16:34.380 do here. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.