Juno News - Trudeau says cost of living would have been worse without him

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.600 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lotten show

00:01:29.460 on true north july 10th it is wednesday hump day hope you're having a fantastic week so far

00:01:36.360 i i totally have been so focused on political news as of late i don't pay attention to weather

00:01:43.120 reports and it was only like to be honest way way too late it was only like last night that

00:01:49.080 I started paying attention to this thing called Hurricane Beryl, which is apparently ravaging its

00:01:54.140 way through Southern Ontario right now. And then I sort of forgot about it. It was something I

00:01:59.840 would have noticed and heard about. And then I was wondering why it was raining so hard. And then I

00:02:03.980 was, oh yeah, that must be that hurricane thing. But anyway, hopefully you are staying dry in the

00:02:09.140 midst of the remnants of Hurricane Beryl. I don't even know if it has a name, because it's not really

00:02:14.820 a hurricane anymore. It's just rain. It's just heavy rain. But anyway, that's the closest you're

00:02:21.700 getting to a weather report on the Andrew Lawton show. It's like the most idle chit-chat talking

00:02:26.420 about the weather. But anyway, good to have you aboard. We are going to be talking very excited

00:02:30.860 about this in 15 minutes or so with former Vice Admiral Mark Norman. Comes at a very useful time

00:02:37.380 as Canada is just getting flogged in the United States for not spending enough on defense. This is

00:02:43.500 a long-standing issue in Canada, really trying to ride the coattails of the United States'

00:02:48.380 defense spending when it comes to NATO. So we'll talk to Vice Admiral Mark Norman just

00:02:53.860 very shortly. And later on in the program, Philip Cross on why Canada has just willingly decided to

00:03:01.100 decarbonize this electricity grid into a more vulnerable state. We are now for the first time

00:03:06.840 a net importer of electricity, which he says is an entirely preventable problem. So that's going

00:03:13.800 to be something we'll get into very shortly. But, you know, we've been trying to take on the bigger

00:03:18.500 picture discussions this week, especially as there hasn't been as much in the way of hard,

00:03:23.380 hot, fresh news. And I'd be remiss to not point out just the utter ignorance that Justin Trudeau 0.77

00:03:30.140 has about how unpopular his own government is right now. He's in D.C. He's doing the rounds

00:03:36.020 while he's down in the United States for the NATO summit. And while he's in the United States,

00:03:41.480 he's of course talking to media as well, because right now he gets booed and heckled and things

00:03:46.860 are thrown at him anytime he goes somewhere in Canada. Not that I support doing that,

00:03:50.860 but that's what happens when he goes places in Canada. So in the US, he hopes that he's able to

00:03:55.220 perhaps just find a little bit in the way of support there. And that's why when he's doing

00:04:00.760 this weird reinvention it's always seems to involve like podcasts hosted by americans or

00:04:07.080 something like that because they're the only people that are willing to talk to him and not

00:04:11.400 just give him an absolute uh an absolute rough ride but anyway all of that notwithstanding he

00:04:16.140 was doing a sit down with generation squeeze and he does this weird intergenerational class

00:04:21.980 warfare type of thing take a look the biggest reason that i used to you know lean on young

00:04:28.320 people so much is because young people are naturally both more comfortable with

00:04:32.640 change and more naturally long-term thinkers. When adults reach a certain

00:04:37.200 point in their life they think of the long term as a linear extension of

00:04:41.880 whatever moment they're in right now. If you set aside a certain percentage of

00:04:46.260 your of your income, if you you know pay off the mortgage in a while, if you you

00:04:50.640 go through your career path in a certain way that you can predict what

00:04:54.780 your retirement's going to look like. Young people are leaping from living at home to 1.00

00:05:00.100 high school to university to living out on their own to starting a family. Everything

00:05:05.540 is such deeply transformational that it's easier to draw on young people for a longer

00:05:10.960 term thinking than the four year political cycle usually allows to. So for me, leaning

00:05:17.160 on young people and bringing them in in 2015 was a hugely important part of what shaped

00:05:24.260 my entry into politics and the irony is now 10 years later I look at those young

00:05:29.900 people who got involved me the first time they're now in their late 20s and

00:05:34.140 they're saying I I can't afford a home like I thought you were supposed to be

00:05:38.720 fixing this and instead the world has gone in the wrong direction and I you

00:05:42.440 know you can say look it would have been way worse had we not made the

00:05:45.800 investments we did but that's really the thing that fed into me to the need in

00:05:51.020 in this budget to say, okay, there's something fundamentally shifted in our economy that young

00:05:58.520 people don't have the kinds of opportunities they had before. And that's, that's what we're trying

00:06:03.200 to go at. He says the quiet part out loud, which is that, oh, all of these young people that joined

00:06:12.180 with me in 2015 are now in their late twenties. And they're saying, I can't afford a house.

00:06:16.380 and I'm like yeah that's kind of an important detail there and he kind of glosses over it he

00:06:22.140 glosses over it and makes it a point about how baby boomers are the problem at another point in 0.92

00:06:26.440 that discussion he talks about how baby boomers are basically all living in houses too big and

00:06:31.760 they should downsize and he's again trying to pit young against old here but this is Justin Trudeau

00:06:38.360 trying to basically say that I am not the problem young people no you young folks that can't afford 0.98

00:06:43.100 your homes i'm not the problem it's the baby boomers who are the problem it's the baby boomers 1.00

00:06:48.280 you have to blame uh perhaps justin trudeau has found some kinship in elizabeth may what say you

00:06:54.120 elizabeth may i've got another grand baby coming at the end of october and i feel very very committed

00:07:02.260 as i think everybody my age should baby boomers have this planet and we can't walk away and leave 1.00

00:07:11.360 it for our kids to fix it. And I'm sorry I just used the F word out loud, but I think kids

00:07:15.520 understand what I'm saying. I'm a 70-year-old, angry, cranky version of Greta Thunberg. And am

00:07:22.820 I ready? You bet. There is a dilemma for you. What would you rather have, the original Greta

00:07:31.820 Thunberg or the angry, cranky, 70-year-old grandma with a trucker mouth Greta Thunberg? 1.00

00:07:38.640 You get two, you get a day with one of them, and you have to pick it, and you can't choose 0.97

00:07:43.420 just killing yourself. I think I'd probably take the Swedish Greta Thunberg. But anyway,

00:07:47.780 that's Elizabeth May's approach. But in a weird way, she and Justin Trudeau are in alignment

00:07:51.940 on that. They're both trying to blame the baby boomers. They're trying to blame a lot of the

00:07:56.340 people that are tuning into this show for the perils of the world. Now, let me say first and

00:08:02.060 foremost that there are obviously demographic realities that factor into the homeownership

00:08:07.380 dilemma. But it's only when boomers have been able to afford houses that they have something 0.62

00:08:12.380 to give their kids who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford one, which is a part of the problem

00:08:16.040 that often does not get discussed here. And just to give you the other side of it,

00:08:21.580 this is how I suspect the boomers are probably feeling about Justin Trudeau. Now, I don't know

00:08:26.260 the total audience of a Rolling Stones concert. I assume there are some young people there,

00:08:32.020 but I would assume based on the age of the Rolling Stones themselves, their audience

00:08:36.380 skews in a particular direction. Boy, did Mick Jagger misjudge that audience.

00:08:42.380 Anyway, I mean, we love your Mr. Trudeau. I mean, his family's always been such big fans of our

00:08:49.020 fans. Oh, it cut off early. But anyway, so what happens then is he pivots to a soccer discussion

00:09:05.520 because he realizes how much he's misjudged the audience and then he just decides to go uh how

00:09:10.900 about how about that Canadian soccer team and then everyone cheers for that so he he gets them on that

00:09:16.500 at least but I think he assumed that again his because his knowledge like he used to party with

00:09:20.720 Margaret Trudeau so I think his knowledge of Trudeau's popularity is still somewhere stuck in

00:09:25.900 like you know 1978 with Pierre Trudeau and that was what happened and that was Vancouver like I

00:09:31.720 I mean, if you're at a Vancouver rock concert and you can't get a, you know, even like one person

00:09:36.060 cheering for Justin Trudeau's name, I think that tells you something. But I will tell you,

00:09:39.980 no one is cheering for Justin Trudeau in Washington, D.C. this week, where the NATO

00:09:45.320 summit is convening and Canada has nowhere to hide for its refusal to increase its defense

00:09:52.500 spending to 2% of its GDP. This is the commitment that NATO allies have made. It's something that

00:09:58.720 the U.S. has always had to bear a disproportionate share of. And to be clear, this is not paying

00:10:04.300 money to NATO. This is paying money to your own national defense so that you can do what is

00:10:10.740 expected of you as a member of NATO, so that you have the investments in your armed forces

00:10:15.300 that are required. So it's possible to reach that 2% by just blowing money. That wouldn't

00:10:21.340 be efficient, but on paper, it would satisfy the criteria. But we're seeing now a tremendous

00:10:26.320 amount of criticism that I've not recalled from recent years, even when that number that Canada

00:10:31.940 is spending has been low from Americans. This is a clip from Mike Johnson, who's the U.S. Speaker

00:10:37.440 of the House. Sir, I have noticed, too, in your press releases and your remarks, you're always,

00:10:43.240 you were often very careful to mention the countries who are doing their part. And I've

00:10:48.220 noticed those are the ones that are on the front end of where the danger is. So you want to talk

00:10:52.100 a little bit about just the Baltic countries and what you've observed from meeting with them and

00:10:56.040 seeing their troubles? Yeah. When the grenades are close to your own backyard, it gives you

00:11:01.280 a renewed sense of priority and commitment. I mean, by contrast, shamefully, Canada announced

00:11:08.600 in the last few days or the last couple of days that they won't be ponying up. They're not going

00:11:13.640 to do their 2%. Why? Talk about writing on America's coattails. They have the safety and

00:11:19.100 security of being on our border and not having to worry about that. I think that's shameful.

00:11:22.820 I think if you're going to be a member nation and participant, you need to do your part.

00:11:28.340 Some have a greater sense of urgency about that, clearly, because the threat is at their own back door.

00:11:32.740 But here's the reality.

00:11:34.560 If we don't stop it there, it will come here.

00:11:37.140 There's no guarantee.

00:11:37.840 We live under this false assumption or, you know, false sense of security that we would never have a war on our own shores.

00:11:44.460 But guess what?

00:11:45.700 The enemy is here.

00:11:46.960 The border's been wide open for three and a half years.

00:11:48.880 By some estimates, 16 million illegals have come across.

00:11:51.600 and they're not all good people. And then we also had his counterpart in the Senate,

00:11:58.380 well not his direct counterpart, but the Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch

00:12:01.900 McConnell with a very similar sentiment. We need to step up and a good time to emphasize that is

00:12:08.480 while NATO is celebrating its 75th anniversary right here in Washington. We need to make it

00:12:14.500 clear that we're behind NATO. There are allies in Indo-Pacific who are here as well. Every

00:12:25.540 democratic country in the world is together against this coterie of authoritarians. And

00:12:34.180 what a great time to emphasize that we're all together. I had a similar conversation

00:12:41.420 yesterday with the president of latvia i mean they're right up next to the russians

00:12:46.220 and then the majority leader and i and some others met with the canadian prime minister with all due

00:12:52.860 respect to our canadian friends they're a long way from hitting the two percent mark

00:12:58.700 but a whole lot of the rest of the nato members have

00:13:03.180 that was mitch mcconnell and when he talks about a long way the latest figures from this week that

00:13:07.820 that Canada will only be spending 1.42% of its GDP on military by 2030.

00:13:14.540 That comes from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

00:13:17.400 I wanted to discuss this and related aspects with former Vice Chief of the Defence Staff,

00:13:22.520 retired Vice Admiral Mark Norman, who it's a pleasure to have on the show.

00:13:26.240 Admiral, thank you for coming on. Good to speak to you.

00:13:28.980 Well, good afternoon, Andrew, to you and your viewers.

00:13:31.800 And thanks for taking a serious interest in this really important topic.

00:13:37.820 for people that have not been as familiar with this discussion over the years and i'll be clear

00:13:44.360 this is not a discussion that just began with justin trudeau it's long-standing where does

00:13:49.260 that two percent number come from and why has it been determined to matter to nato allies

00:13:54.780 yeah so without dragging your viewers through the decades-long history of nato you know basically

00:14:02.880 During the height of the Cold War, everybody was seized with the urgency and need, and it was a smaller community.

00:14:13.240 And then, you know, as NATO evolved, the member nations grew with the collapse of the former Soviet Union, etc., etc.

00:14:23.880 We find ourselves in about the last decade or so, as NATO was transitioning out of its enormous contribution to Afghanistan and looking into an unknown future, it was becoming obvious that there was an enormous discrepancy across the member nations with respect to defense spending.

00:14:48.060 And this was agreed roughly a decade ago, in fact, under Prime Minister Harper initially, that this was the right metric to define sort of a fair and reasonable playing field, if you will, for defense contributions.

00:15:07.060 contributions, recognizing, of course, that there were some incredibly small and relatively

00:15:14.620 poor nations, and there were some large and relatively wealthy nations, and that across

00:15:21.000 the board, this was a good way of measuring contribution in a way which was commensurate

00:15:28.820 with your relative wealth and your capacity to pay.

00:15:31.800 And so that's kind of the background that got us to the last couple of years.

00:15:37.140 And then we can discuss where the wheels have come off the wagon, to put it bluntly.

00:15:42.380 And just on that note, I mean, there are some countries that are incredibly disproportionate in what they're providing.

00:15:49.260 The United States being a notable example.

00:15:51.080 They're up, I think, at about 3.5% of their GDP.

00:15:53.760 I think Poland is somewhere near 4%, if I recall correctly, or has been.

00:15:58.300 but spending money there isn't really a guideline for how you're spending it i alluded to this

00:16:04.300 earlier i mean the government could just you know hire you know a bajillion consultants and you know

00:16:08.860 say great we've spent this much on defense it doesn't mean they're providing something better

00:16:13.620 than other countries so has that actually been an issue where you have countries that are spending

00:16:19.220 money but they're not really getting anything for it yeah so yeah and i i heard your comments

00:16:23.800 earlier and i think you you know you hit on a valid point so it there's there's sort of two

00:16:29.000 perspectives on this one um you know ultimately as as taxpayers money here this it needs to be

00:16:35.800 a responsible use of those funds um i will add that in the last few years a number of things

00:16:42.040 which were previously not included in canada's calculation have been included including support

00:16:47.480 to veterans coast guard those kinds of things so uh in theory those should those should um

00:16:54.680 make us look better but it speaks to the gravity of the problem across the board

00:16:59.080 that that that there is a significant underspend here in canada but the other part of it is that

00:17:04.200 you know it's a bit of an imperfect metric and uh you know i i've spoken previously about the fact

00:17:11.000 that it is it is not an ideal metric but it is the agreed metric and you know to your point

00:17:20.540 NATO doesn't care how you spend the money they want you to spend the money efficiently and

00:17:26.580 ultimately the taxpayers of Canada should insist that the money be spent responsibly and efficiently

00:17:31.440 but the reality is that in the Canadian context there are so many things which are

00:17:38.380 grossly underfunded that we could and should hit the 2% target. One of the concerns I have

00:17:47.160 is that our internal mechanisms and processes are so dysfunctional for a variety of reasons

00:17:53.520 that it would really be difficult to spend that money efficiently, responsibly in the period of

00:18:04.220 time that our allies are looking for us to spend so i'm not making excuses for anybody but um you

00:18:11.180 know this has been a problem that's been decades in the making uh it has become uh an acute problem

00:18:18.300 in the last several years for obvious reasons and um you know that we can't spend our way out of

00:18:25.740 this um just by throwing money at it but that's what they want us to do but you know what there

00:18:32.060 There is a legitimate shopping list of things that are required that are not currently funded.

00:18:38.900 So that's kind of my circular reaction.

00:18:43.580 Well, and you obviously came up through the Navy in terms of your service to the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:18:48.780 And as I understand it, that's always been one of the most just notoriously underfunded aspects of the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:18:55.940 Yeah, well, all of the elements of the Armed Forces have their own problems.

00:19:01.320 And yes, to your point, one of the challenges with, you know, the Navy tends to be what we describe as the most capital intensive.

00:19:11.620 Everything is, it's big, it's shiny, it's very expensive to buy, it's very expensive to operate.

00:19:19.380 You need very sophisticated facilities to support it.

00:19:24.860 But it's a relatively small, from a people perspective, the Army is kind of the opposite.

00:19:31.320 It doesn't mean it's not a high tech organization because it is, but it tends not to have the magnitude of equipment. And then the Air Force is kind of in the middle where, you know, the fleets all need to be moderated and the staffing needs to be appropriate.

00:19:48.080 And what we've got at the moment is we've got a bit of a perfect storm playing out here.

00:19:55.040 The chronic underfunding of the last couple of decades, in the last few years in particular, means that the capital fleets that should have been replaced, and by fleets I mean everything from trucks to destroyers, need to be replaced.

00:20:09.720 They're long overdue. That's causing enormous problems in terms of maintaining the current capabilities, which are in many cases, if they're not obsolete, they're rusted out.

00:20:23.160 And then that has an impact on morale because, you know, a lot of people, if they are inclined to join, don't want to join to operate equipment that's older than them.

00:20:34.420 And the people that are in and have been in for decades are growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that they can't do what they know they need to do on behalf of Canadians because they don't have the support, both in terms of material support, i.e. funding.

00:20:50.340 And you know what? There's a significant lack of what I would call moral support, particularly with this government, who, although they're saying the right things, I'm not convinced they actually believe that this is important.

00:21:05.520 And I think this is part of the reason why this 2% issue has been such a problem for them, because I really don't think they believe in the need for strong defense. They play along, they say the right things, they've got all the right slogans, but deep down in their core, I don't think they genuinely think it's that important.

00:21:25.780 And, you know, ultimately, all of the things that Canadians love and enjoy and are struggling with on a day-to-day basis, from economics to everything else, are all premised on a secure environment.

00:21:40.160 And that goes beyond our borders.

00:21:42.800 The reason why the issue in Ukraine is so troubling is because it's representative of a far bigger problem with respect to a clash, not just a political ideology, but a clash of geopolitical systems.

00:21:59.960 And if we want to continue to try and rebuild the kind of Canada that we all love, we can't let other external forces determine what kind of global systems we're going to operate under.

00:22:18.240 I wanted to go back to that clip I played earlier of Speaker Johnson in the U.S. accusing Canada, he said the word shamefully, of riding on the U.S. military's coattails and the U.S. government's coattails on defense.

00:22:31.640 Because, I mean, the Canadian and American armed forces have longstanding ties and connections. NORAD, one of the most, I'd say, incredible success stories in the world, not just in North America.

00:22:42.900 that attitude is that reflective of an attitude that exists in the u.s military itself or is that

00:22:50.400 just an attitude in the u.s political class because i know you would have had a number of

00:22:54.000 dealings over the years with your counterparts in the united states and i'm curious if that's

00:22:58.040 just a political posture or if that's something that was a very real sentiment from the americans

00:23:03.300 yeah no i it's an excellent an excellent question so let me let me preface my comments by saying to

00:23:11.500 you that historically, and I speak from a historical perspective because I'm no longer

00:23:17.360 serving, but traditionally throughout my career, there was a heartfelt, genuine acknowledgement

00:23:26.220 of the caliber of Canadians, be they at sea, in the air, or on the battlefield.

00:23:33.760 and and uh it was it was um enormous respect and uh you know it was kind of one of these things

00:23:42.500 uh we love you Canadians we just we just wish there were more of you um was the sentiment and

00:23:48.780 more not just in terms of the numbers of people themselves but more armed forces uh in essence

00:23:54.840 and um uh I genuinely believe that that is the undertone I know that on a individual peer for

00:24:03.240 pure basis that that that level of respect is still is still there however i also know that

00:24:10.200 in the last couple of years in particular for for a variety of reasons including what i would

00:24:15.400 describe as the relative if not absence let's just say uh the infrequency or or lack of depth

00:24:23.480 of canada's presence around the world um has caused a number of allies to start questioning

00:24:30.680 our commitment, not the competency of the individual, but our commitment. And then

00:24:37.000 there's also been some issues with respect to some of the recent experiments around

00:24:42.920 dress deportment and appearance, which have caused some of our allies to kind of shake their heads

00:24:48.400 and ask what the hell we're thinking. But that level of concern, I believe, is entirely,

00:24:58.960 um it's transitional it's episodic and and i believe that there's a substance there the bigger

00:25:04.980 concern is exactly what you characterize which is at the political and national level and um you know

00:25:12.160 there there's a notwithstanding the politics of this in the current um time frame there's also a

00:25:19.640 bit of a societal issue here we have enjoyed um living under the umbrella of the united states

00:25:26.500 for decades um we have enjoyed an incredible degree um at least until recently of of national

00:25:34.820 prosperity and um all of these have you know allowed us to kind of invest in ourselves if you

00:25:43.620 want to put it that way as opposed to looking at our responsibilities um more continentally first

00:25:52.180 and then globally as it relates to defense and security is your sense and this is i guess getting

00:25:59.540 outside of your military experience and more to your your think tank and analytical roles that

00:26:04.420 you have now do you think that the public calculation on this changed with russia invading

00:26:10.820 ukraine because all of a sudden you have a type of war that had seemed very abstract and very

00:26:16.900 anachronistic for you know basically 80 years that's how happening in in europe and i i don't

00:26:22.580 know if that sentiment has necessarily translated to north america certainly colleagues of mine i

00:26:27.700 know in in sweden and estonia it's very real for them and i think that for canadians i'm wondering

00:26:35.380 if you think that has changed anything at all or if the idea of needing to have defense the idea

00:26:40.180 of needing to protect against a war is still just a very abstract concept for people so i think the

00:26:46.180 needle has moved but i don't think it's moved significantly um so the good news is that i

00:26:52.180 genuinely believe and and certainly polling has shown that there is a heightened sense of awareness

00:26:59.300 and and concern um and whether that's translating into a belief or a commitment that more needs to

00:27:08.340 be done um the polling would say yes i'm not really sure that there's a couple of challenges

00:27:16.020 with this one of them is what you just alluded to in your question is that um you know and the

00:27:22.660 speaker kind of joked well he didn't joke about it but you know there's the saying the farther you

00:27:26.840 are from the sound of the guns the less the less the stuff matters so if you're in latvia or estonia

00:27:33.200 where and by the way we have a battle group canada has a battle group in latvia and then this is a

00:27:37.800 very real problem for you this this is not a theoretical issue that this this is real um and

00:27:43.880 And the same goes for, you know, Sweden and Finland, who, by the way, for your viewers, are the latest joiners in NATO in the last few months.

00:27:51.580 It's a huge step forward.

00:27:53.580 But when you're far away and you're living under the umbrella of the most powerful nation on the planet and you've lived for maybe a few years or certainly like some of us for our entire adult lives in a system whereby you never really had to worry about it because you just assumed that it was all going to be looked after, it has created a sense of apathy.

00:28:21.660 So there's there's a fair bit of inertia associated with that apathy. But the reality is that the global security situation is incredibly troubling. And yes, I mean, we've talked about Ukraine. We haven't talked about China. We haven't talked about the real genuine concerns about the growth of China's military and its expansionist philosophies and behaviors.

00:28:49.660 And, you know, I said this the other day in another conversation. Do I believe that somebody in the next few years is actually going to invade the territory of Canada? It's possible, but I don't think it's very likely.

00:29:04.160 But there's the problem. If that's the limit of somebody's willingness to accept or understand the scale of the problem, then you can't have the kind of conversation we have to have.

00:29:17.800 This is about our way of life. This is about how our economies function internationally.

00:29:24.840 This is about trade. This is about all those things that we hold near and dear. This is about our freedoms. This is about the rule of law. This is about all these things.

00:29:34.480 And China and Russia and other mal-actors are looking to reset a system that they have watched, observed, and bluntly not liked for the better part of the 20th and 21st centuries. 0.88

00:29:54.420 And they want to reset the rules of the game.

00:29:57.860 Now, if people want to live under those new rules, okay, fine.

00:30:02.520 But this is why this is such a big problem for our peers, our allies, and those like-minded nations that we like to cuddle up to and befriend.

00:30:15.660 But we're not showing them that we actually care.

00:30:21.980 You might say we do, but what they're looking for is, okay, come on, Canada, take your own defense seriously.

00:30:28.600 And that goes back to your question about how you spend the money.

00:30:32.520 Everybody talks about Article 5 and NATO and, you know, the all for one and one for all kind of philosophy here.

00:30:39.120 Everybody forgets about Article 4, which basically says you will do everything you can to defend yourself.

00:30:47.920 And if something happens and you can't, then we will come to your aid under Article 5.

00:30:54.260 So where's Canada on Article 4?

00:30:57.680 That's kind of what we're being reminded of, is our obligations, because we're not doing everything we can and everything we should to look after our own territorial integrity and, more importantly, our ability to do what we need to do in the continent in cooperation with the United States.

00:31:18.380 it's the old airplane safety announcement of put your own mask on before you help your neighbor if

00:31:23.600 you can't protect yourself and aren't protecting yourself you certainly don't have anything left

00:31:27.560 to help anything else so uh the fascinating discussion so many other areas we could go with

00:31:31.780 it i hope we can get you back on admiral mark norman retired vice admiral and also fellow at

00:31:36.780 the canadian global affairs institute it's been a pleasure sir thank you for your service and for

00:31:40.600 your time thank you andrew to you and your viewers and you know where to find me take care all right

00:31:45.300 Thank you so much. Delight to have him on. And I was actually planning, and we still are a bit of a deep dive into the state of Canada's military that we're hoping to do later this summer. So we'll have some more on that as we proceed. But a fascinating topic. And again, a lot of people, even in the comments I was looking at very briefly in the lead up to the show today, people saying, well, why does Canada need to pay to defend Europe? No.

00:32:08.000 And I'm glad that Admiral Norman talked about the Article 4 section there, because when you spend money on defense, you're first and foremost spending money on your own defense.

00:32:17.580 You're basically saying to the allies in NATO that you're doing what you can to protect yourself so that they won't have to come in.

00:32:24.880 There are a couple of countries in the world, I think Costa Rica or El Salvador.

00:32:29.480 I think it's Costa Rica that just doesn't have a military.

00:32:32.060 And, you know, again, they're not really able to do all that much for themselves.

00:32:35.100 So if anything happens, someone decides they want to take over, they have to rely on a benevolent other state to protect them.

00:32:42.880 And it's easy to see how the free-riding dilemma that Speaker Johnson was talking about of Canada just expecting and Canadians just expecting, well, the United States will save us.

00:32:53.280 The United States will protect us.

00:32:55.240 When I was in university, I did a diplomatic simulation with a professor who had actually been a diplomat.

00:33:01.300 And our simulation was the United States had invaded Canada.

00:33:05.780 And it was actually a fascinating, fascinating experiment.

00:33:08.680 Of course, a silly premise, but I can't remember the reason.

00:33:11.580 I think the reason was that the U.S. had a water shortage and had invaded Canada for fresh water. 0.96

00:33:16.720 It was something ridiculous like that.

00:33:18.420 But the whole point is, like, you know, theoretically, Canada and the U.S. might not always be friends.

00:33:23.060 So the idea that we're expecting them to cover our defense, well, what if they're the ones against whom we need to defend?

00:33:28.420 I think a lot of Canadians might think we're just throwing in the towel at that point.

00:33:31.620 But the whole aspect here, and I'm glad that Admiral Norma was talking about this, is about perspective.

00:33:37.120 It's not about saying we're going to be facing some massive invasion in the next couple of years.

00:33:41.660 It's about being able to protect ourselves, being able to prepare, and so on.

00:33:46.460 But it was interesting.

00:33:47.820 Chrystia Freeland was criticized for this, as most people in the government have been. 0.68

00:33:52.520 And she just says, oh, everything's fine.

00:33:54.180 But she kind of makes it out as though it's Harper's fault somehow.

00:33:56.580 Take a look.

00:33:57.000 In light of the letter from U.S. lawmakers and warnings from the Business Council of Canada,

00:34:02.540 was it felt that these meetings the Prime Minister is having today and yesterday in D.C. necessary to reassure Americans?

00:34:10.620 Thanks for the question.

00:34:12.520 The Prime Minister is in Washington right now working very hard.

00:34:17.440 I think it's important for Canadians to recognize that Canada is the seventh biggest defense spender in the entire NATO alliance of 32 countries.

00:34:31.580 We are a major contributor to our defense and to the defense of our allies.

00:34:37.700 It's also the case that under Stephen Harper's Conservatives, Canada's defense spending fell to less than 1% to 0.9% of GDP.

00:34:50.080 Our government has been steadily increasing our investments in defense because we recognize the threats in the world.

00:35:01.940 and in the budget that I tabled in April we put forward a fully costed plan to get our defense

00:35:11.660 spending up to nearly 1.8 percent in 2029. That's a long way of saying we're not doing it from

00:35:21.220 Chrystia Freeland there and again if you don't want to do it own up to it if you don't want to

00:35:25.520 do it say we think it's unreasonable instead it's just this weird baffle gab that goes every

00:35:30.560 direction but where anyone asking the question is expecting or hoping it will go we will move

00:35:36.160 from defense to a different form of territorial independence which is our electricity market now

00:35:42.060 this is a i also i'll warn you it's a bit in the weeds in some ways but i think it's understandable

00:35:46.800 because we see rising electricity rates in many places across the country i mean i'm from ontario

00:35:52.480 which used to have like among the most expensive electricity anywhere in north america except for

00:35:57.140 I think it was like Hawaii back when Kathleen Wynne was in office.

00:36:00.640 But we have now seen ourselves become a net importer of electricity as a country.

00:36:07.380 For the first time, this is quite significant.

00:36:09.120 We are now importing more electricity than we are producing and exporting.

00:36:14.080 And this is coming because there is a vulnerability that my next guest believes has been created in large part due to policy here.

00:36:22.560 A decarbonization-focused energy strategy has allowed this to happen.

00:36:26.680 Philip Cross is a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and had a great piece in the Financial Post about this.

00:36:32.340 Philip, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:36:35.280 My pleasure. Thanks for having me back so soon, Andrew.

00:36:37.840 So why does this matter that we are now a net importer? Why is that relevant?

00:36:42.820 It's relevant because we think of ourselves as a country of almost inexhaustible supplies of electricity.

00:36:49.480 particularly you know whole a great part of Quebec's self-image is that it's this massive

00:36:57.040 source of hydro. Newfoundland obviously has a huge hydro development. Ontario has an extensive

00:37:04.440 network of nuclear plants. Manitoba and British Columbia also have large electricity power

00:37:11.740 sources and have been adding to them recently. So the fact that you know we have this self-image

00:37:17.600 that we have all its electricity. And then suddenly this year we had to import more from the US.

00:37:23.120 Normally we're exporting to the US for the first time ever at the beginning of this year,

00:37:28.320 we were importing electricity unbalanced from the US. This shows that our supplies of electricity

00:37:35.840 are not keeping up with demand. You could look at the shortfall this year and blame it on some

00:37:41.520 temporary factors. You can say it's drought and it's maintenance at nuclear plants, but it risks

00:37:46.480 because of the fact we are not building up our electrical capacity, this temporary situation

00:37:52.200 risks becoming permanent if this country doesn't get serious about building out its electricity

00:37:57.720 supplies. And why do you believe this has been really a problem created by policy in a lot of

00:38:03.900 ways? Because it's been openly the goal of policy to electrify our energy demand. For example,

00:38:16.140 the most extreme example is, of course, that we're supposed to not drive gasoline-powered

00:38:20.460 internal combustion engines in our cars anymore. We're supposed to be driving electric vehicles.

00:38:26.240 Well, if we're all going to drive electric vehicles, and if we're all going to heat our

00:38:31.120 homes with electricity and not natural gas or in oil.

00:38:35.180 And if we're all going to use, um, all kinds of, uh, new technologies

00:38:41.180 that are powered by the grid, you know, it was predictable.

00:38:44.840 We were going to need a vast increase in our electricity demand.

00:38:48.560 Uh, you know, environmentalists say, well, we're supposed to cut back

00:38:52.540 on our investments in fossil fuels.

00:38:54.640 The counterpart of that though, is you're supposed to be increasing

00:38:58.000 your investment in electricity sources and we haven't been doing so one of the things that i

00:39:04.600 found interesting in your piece is that the government knows it doesn't have the capacity

00:39:11.300 to create all of this energy through the means they want to i mean that's the thing is that

00:39:16.600 there's this fatwa against energy that we're using without a viable alternative there but we're so

00:39:22.680 we're definitely putting the cart before the horse and we're seeing this i think yeah well on the

00:39:27.740 heels of this op-ed I wrote in the post, there's an interesting article in The Globe today,

00:39:32.340 Wednesday, that is, that highlights in Quebec, for example. Quebec brought out the trumpets and

00:39:39.560 announced a great fanfare over the last couple of months that they were going to substantially

00:39:44.580 build out both their hydro and their wind capacity. It turns out even with this vast expansion,

00:39:51.340 it's not going to meet even half of the projected increase. Hydro-Quebec admitted a couple of years

00:39:56.220 ago that its projections about where electricity demand was going was completely wrong. It was

00:40:01.020 very slow to react. The former head of Hydro-Quebec said, oh, well, this is a great opportunity to

00:40:07.160 conserve demand and we don't need to build capacity. They replaced her with Michael Savia,

00:40:12.420 who was formerly the deputy minister of finance here in Ottawa. And Savia is pursuing a program

00:40:18.580 of aggressively increasing supply, but it's not going to be enough. And that's the frightening

00:40:25.600 thing is, you know, for BC, for example, to meet its projected hydro electricity demand,

00:40:32.240 they're not going to have to just build finished Site C, they're going to have to build at least

00:40:36.080 five more dams the size of Site C. Well, imagine all the problems and delays and arguments about

00:40:42.900 Site C, multiply that by five. And you can see, you know, this is something that we're going to

00:40:48.700 have to start tackling right now. I mean, electricity generating plants are built with

00:40:53.960 the horizon of 10 years from beginning to end. So this isn't something you just go out and throw

00:41:02.540 up in a couple of years. And I think the concern has to be that, you know, we're going to in the

00:41:09.120 short run over the next five, 10 years, we're probably going to run chronically short of

00:41:13.060 electricity. And we're going to be reliant on the Americans to supply our electricity,

00:41:17.080 which is going to be quite a role reversal for this country.

00:41:21.560 it was it didn't intentionally come out this way but you're coming on the heels of my discussion

00:41:26.560 with admiral mark norman in which that's basically defense policy in canada now which is to

00:41:30.580 ride the coattails of america and now we're doing the same thing on electricity too it seems

00:41:35.200 one of the things i want to ask you about was alberta now they had a i don't know if mini is

00:41:39.820 the right word but they had a a relatively short-lived thankfully electricity crisis

00:41:44.260 in the last few months and is there any lesson to be taken from that that is being taken

00:41:50.020 Oh, there's two. I mean, we had a couple of near misses in Texas a couple of years ago and in Alberta this year, where the electrical grid almost collapsed. We just didn't have the capacity to meet demand. People don't seem to realize this isn't going to be a three-hour blackout. If your electrical grid goes down, it takes months to come back on stream.

00:42:13.660 Imagine if a major state like Texas or a province like Alberta goes offline from electricity for weeks or months at a time.

00:42:24.460 I mean, this would be catastrophic.

00:42:27.520 I mean, I was aware during my tenure at Sissies Canada that if you want to shut down our society, cut off the juice. 1.00

00:42:35.660 Every time there's a major power outage.

00:42:39.080 For example, Ontario had a major one in 2003.

00:42:43.440 economic activity just grinds to a halt our society cannot function without electricity

00:42:49.360 and because of the decarbonization move and the desire to get away from fossil fuels we're more

00:42:55.840 dependent on electricity for energy than ever and yet we are not taking adequate steps to ensure

00:43:04.960 both the security of supply in the sense of that it can be counted on that it's reliable and it

00:43:10.480 it won't be interrupted and with security comes affordability we can't increase the price of

00:43:16.560 electricity by five times we will bankrupt ourselves and especially the poorest members

00:43:21.040 of our society so we need to make sure that adequate cheap sources of supply are coming on

00:43:28.240 stream over the next years 10 years to meet projected demand and it seems to be something

00:43:33.600 that this country is just waking up to and we're we're behind the ball on this one the piece in

00:43:41.560 the financial post which you should take a look at canada's energy blindness must end written by

00:43:46.140 philip cross philip always good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thank you all right

00:43:51.040 and that does it for us for today we'll be back tomorrow with more of canada's most irreverent

00:43:55.560 talk show close things out for the week thank you god bless and good day to you all thanks for

00:44:01.020 listening to the Andrew Vaughn Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:44:31.020 We'll be right back.

00:45:01.020 We'll be right back.

Juno News - July 10, 2024

Trudeau says cost of living would have been worse without him

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