Juno News - Why Canada must think for itself

00:00:00.000 Welcome back to the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:00:12.200 We often talk about the internal dynamics and divides in Canada,

00:00:17.160 the political fault lines, the cultural fault lines,

00:00:19.880 and these are very important subjects and they can't be discounted

00:00:22.920 even in what I'd like to discuss now.

00:00:24.720 But I do want to take a much, much bigger picture,

00:00:27.480 a global picture here of this country and where it fits into the world

00:00:32.320 and how the domestic and the international, the domestic and the global,

00:00:36.260 how they tend to intersect.

00:00:37.620 And there have been a lot of things I've been reflecting on

00:00:39.580 as I read a book by a great friend of this program,

00:00:43.560 which is Urban Student,

00:00:45.020 Canada Must Think for Itself, Ten Theses for Our Country's Survival and Success in the 21st Century.

00:00:51.940 So the title right there suggests a level of optimism.

00:00:54.740 But if you look through the books, there are some very clear issues,

00:00:57.340 I don't want to say problems, but certainly challenges and issues

00:01:00.020 that are identified that I want to dig into.

00:01:02.780 Urban Student joins me on the program again.

00:01:05.600 Urban, good to talk to you, sir. Thanks for coming on today.

00:01:08.260 Great to be back. Thanks for all your work, Andrew.

00:01:10.220 I want to skip ahead here to one particular thesis that you put forward,

00:01:14.580 and then we can talk about the bigger picture,

00:01:16.800 because I think this one captures what's at stake here.

00:01:19.160 You say, if Canada survives the century, it will be either a great power or a deep vassal state.

00:01:25.340 And when I read through that, what you're saying it sounds like is that,

00:01:28.180 you know, we're on the cusp of something here, but we could go in either direction,

00:01:31.560 and very real challenges facing our lawmakers, our citizens, civil society right now,

00:01:37.820 really affect in a dramatic way what things are going to look like in 2100.

00:01:42.720 That's right. And I should say at the outset, first of all,

00:01:46.780 thanks for your deep curiosity about that thesis.

00:01:50.740 And one ought not to take offense when I say we have a potentially deeply vassalized country

00:01:56.520 in front of us. We're all in the common scenario.

00:01:59.780 But we're coming out of a pandemic that has presented the country with,

00:02:02.880 as I mentioned on your show, seven or eight systems crises.

00:02:06.080 And we're coming into a world in which there's obvious conflict,

00:02:08.920 but more tightly, if you look at our borders, we've got America to the south,

00:02:13.120 China to the west, Russia to the north across the Arctic, and Europe to the east.

00:02:17.960 All told, ACRE, ACRE, is the four-point game.

00:02:21.920 And if you do the math, it's 15 combinations of push, pull, and pressure on our territory

00:02:26.840 by these great powers at our doorstep, and literally at our doorstep.

00:02:30.920 And I say, if we wish to survive, we either have to up our game hugely,

00:02:36.400 in which case we'll become amongst, we'll be among the great powers at our doorstep,

00:02:40.960 and these are at our doorstep, literally, or we have to say it's just too big for us.

00:02:45.740 And we vassalized even further into the country we know best,

00:02:49.960 the United States, which is the most probable scenario,

00:02:54.020 and it could be a good bet still.

00:02:56.180 But because the United States is far weaker in the world of tomorrow,

00:02:59.480 in my view, far less wise, and could even be predatory on us

00:03:02.940 and really push us around in their own interest,

00:03:06.240 it could be very painful indeed.

00:03:08.060 So those are the two scenarios, and also suggests, as I mentioned in the book,

00:03:12.040 that we should never again call ourselves a middle power.

00:03:15.020 It is structurally impossible.

00:03:16.440 We either are a deeply vassalized state, in which case, let's not pretend

00:03:19.780 we are an extension of American power, for better or worse,

00:03:22.260 or we are a great power amongst the great powers at our doorstep,

00:03:26.220 which requires a huge upping of the level of thinking, resources, and ambition.

00:03:32.140 You know, a line from a movie jumps out when you say that, though.

00:03:35.940 You know, and I'm just envisioning Justin Trudeau saying,

00:03:38.560 you know, we're a great power, we're just having trouble getting the word out.

00:03:41.420 You know, because in order to be a great power and to wield that power,

00:03:44.880 you have to have that power respected and accepted and acknowledged elsewhere.

00:03:49.460 And I don't think Canada is there yet.

00:03:51.220 So if we say that point A is where we are now, and point C is Canada being a great power,

00:03:58.520 what's point B?

00:04:01.840 Well, we're tending towards A and A-, and A-, and A-, minus.

00:04:06.880 I mean, the trajectory has increased vassalization,

00:04:10.240 and with these major powers at our doorstep playing across our territory,

00:04:13.580 and the conflict between the United States and China over Meng Wanzhou and even the USMCA,

00:04:20.680 it's just a small symptom of the great cuts that can happen once these powers start to play across our territory,

00:04:25.880 with us unable to play.

00:04:27.260 So we go increasingly vassalized.

00:04:29.580 I don't like to do Twitter feed or rhetoric about power.

00:04:34.140 That's why I say we cannot call ourselves a great power on the structure I present.

00:04:37.600 We're either vassalized or a major power.

00:04:40.320 I want to disabuse also your distinguished listeners of even the idea of a great power,

00:04:44.920 because it has a moral connotation.

00:04:47.060 We're either a term-setting country or a term, deeply term-taking.

00:04:50.600 I would like us to be a term-setting country in our own interests and indeed for the world,

00:04:55.520 and that requires well beyond the respect of others or before the respect of others,

00:05:00.000 and this is your point B, resources.

00:05:02.540 And the resources they underpin power and thinking, the thinking of a term-setting country,

00:05:08.960 we're not even there, are much more than education.

00:05:11.540 Of course they are education, but they are economic resources,

00:05:14.880 diplomatic relationships richly around the world,

00:05:17.360 military resources, territorial resources, natural resources,

00:05:22.720 population, demography, the mix of demography, the commercial product,

00:05:27.880 and many other things besides, including transportation.

00:05:30.980 And all of this needs to be choreographed in the service of a term-taking future,

00:05:35.580 term-setting future.

00:05:37.020 And if not, then we ought not to pretend.

00:05:39.040 That means we might make a great bet that the United States will yet win this century.

00:05:44.000 Good on us.

00:05:44.780 But we may not survive that century.

00:05:47.360 We may become very miserable and divided indeed.

00:05:50.540 The reverse is a huge investment doubling down on what we need to survive

00:05:54.540 in a century that doesn't promise us anything,

00:05:57.080 in which no country is thinking about Canada.

00:05:59.060 We have to think for ourselves.

00:06:01.020 The preface to thinking for ourselves, all those material resources,

00:06:04.660 which will allow us to think at a higher level.

00:06:06.620 When you look at the global landscape,

00:06:09.800 I mean, including the countries that you've just acknowledged there,

00:06:13.160 obviously size, population size, and GDP are very significant determining factors

00:06:19.440 in overall influence.

00:06:22.240 Government style, it doesn't appear is as much.

00:06:24.980 You've got China, an authoritarian dictatorship.

00:06:27.300 You've got Russia. 0.67

00:06:28.560 You've got the United States.

00:06:29.980 I mean, three vastly different approaches to government,

00:06:32.020 but they all have been in that top echelon as far as powerful nations are concerned.

00:06:36.580 So, I mean, if you are looking at a country like Canada,

00:06:39.440 and you're trying, and I know you have a chapter on the challenge of planning,

00:06:41.980 but if you were to plan Canada's future and really ensure that Canada is,

00:06:46.880 as you mentioned, that term-setting country,

00:06:48.900 you can't overnight control the GDP issue.

00:06:51.740 Population size takes time,

00:06:53.420 and other countries' populations are going to be growing as well.

00:06:56.580 So, the relative advantage might not be there.

00:06:59.400 What is it that you can leverage to become a term-setter?

00:07:03.920 It's a great question, and it's central to the book.

00:07:06.960 And by the way, for your listeners, again,

00:07:08.720 when we say planning, we ought not to be Twitter-ish about it.

00:07:13.460 Every country plans, and Canada better plan properly in a democratic context

00:07:17.840 if we're going to survive beyond tomorrow.

00:07:20.080 You're not talking about a command economy.

00:07:22.020 Not a command economy.

00:07:22.980 I'm talking about thinking and resources,

00:07:25.300 which every country needs, and we've had historically.

00:07:27.460 The problem in the 21st century is how do great democracies,

00:07:30.500 federal democracies, no less, plan?

00:07:32.580 How do we think beyond the tweet, beyond our nose,

00:07:35.240 beyond the current crises?

00:07:36.880 Now, what's our big move?

00:07:37.840 The big move I commend in the book,

00:07:39.400 and I think I articulated it in part at a keynote

00:07:42.120 at which you were present and colleagues in Calgary a few weeks ago,

00:07:48.360 is that the North is melting.

00:07:50.500 The North is opening up.

00:07:52.480 Our big move in response to climate change

00:07:54.500 is not to imagine from the South or from Toronto or Vancouver

00:07:57.680 or St. John, New Brunswick,

00:08:00.160 they're going to physically somehow transform the climate

00:08:03.860 through domestic action.

00:08:05.600 Nay, our responsible move is that the Arctic is opening up.

00:08:10.280 We ought to push our imagination northward.

00:08:13.300 Our Arctic, Canadian alone, is the size of the European Union.

00:08:17.000 The population in Canada of that European Union-sized territory,

00:08:20.840 which is 40% of our territory in total, is 115,000.

00:08:25.440 That's the size of Red Deer, Alberta, or Ajax, Ontario.

00:08:31.120 That's not enough to do anything, with a great respect to all my Arctic colleagues.

00:08:35.620 And at that Arctic space, we have the Russians pushing on us, 0.95

00:08:38.800 the Americans, the Chinese in Greece and the Europeans.

00:08:41.580 We're surrounded by great powers.

00:08:43.880 How do we embed them in a peaceful framework that makes us rich and saves the world?

00:08:48.560 And the idea is to make our North, through cities like Whitehorse, Inuvik, and Yellowknife,

00:08:53.660 the center of the world.

00:08:55.620 And we are the center of the world geographically, just not through the South,

00:08:59.240 where we're an appendix to the bigger empires.

00:09:01.840 Through the North, we are the center of four continents,

00:09:05.280 which provide us with a market size, seven to one in ratio,

00:09:10.000 greater than the American continental market alone,

00:09:13.500 including the American continental market.

00:09:15.480 So it's an economic vision through the North.

00:09:18.160 It's a geopolitical vision of peace.

00:09:20.860 And it is one of national sovereignty,

00:09:23.040 where we assert ourselves in a territory that we would be negligent to ignore.

00:09:28.240 We can't ignore it because then the country will collapse.

00:09:30.640 That requires a shift in our resources and our imagination,

00:09:34.700 our political pressure to the North,

00:09:37.180 where we imagine that everything happens along the American borders.

00:09:40.160 So push it up.

00:09:41.480 And that's our big exit from all the multiple crises coming out of the pandemic as well.

00:09:46.560 It is interesting because going back to, I mean, John A. MacDonald's national policy,

00:09:50.300 the greatest challenge in Canada and building a nation was uniting the country east to west,

00:09:55.840 from British Columbia to the Maritimes.

00:09:58.340 And that did, I mean, the Maritimes were a little bit later on,

00:10:01.360 but obviously they did happen through rail.

00:10:03.460 We live in an era in which we don't rely on rail travel to get around.

00:10:07.460 Why, I mean, when, I guess, would you say that that fundamental axis

00:10:10.920 shifted from an east-west one to a north-south one?

00:10:15.300 When the book came out.

00:10:17.780 Good answer.

00:10:18.720 It remains the case that our...

00:10:21.320 It's theoretical at this point.

00:10:22.440 Like there needs to be an attitude shift to recognize this.

00:10:25.580 Absolutely.

00:10:25.980 And unfortunately, the last two years have shown that Canada does not respond at the leadership

00:10:32.960 level, at all levels of government, indeed across the parties, to crisis and to my chagrin.

00:10:40.380 So we don't respond with mobilization to crisis.

00:10:44.040 A la différence with the Americans, the Chinese, the Russians, many Europeans,

00:10:48.280 they know how to mobilize.

00:10:49.660 The Israelis, the Persians, the Turks, they've got a mobilization capacity.

00:10:54.360 We don't have that.

00:10:56.100 So that means that in this great four-point or 15-combination game that I present,

00:11:02.100 we could be crippled very quickly at a strategic level without even moving.

00:11:06.040 So we better seize the moment while we can before it closes or before other...

00:11:10.920 These other more mobilizable countries do it for us in their name.

00:11:15.280 So the part of the book is to change what I call the mental map of our country.

00:11:21.060 Basically, for all Canadians who love our country, educated and less educated doesn't matter.

00:11:26.020 Look at the map.

00:11:27.460 Look at what happens through the south.

00:11:29.500 And as I suggest, as the north opens up, because the melting of the Arctic is a new phenomenon,

00:11:34.840 the rise of China in modern Canada is a new phenomenon.

00:11:39.400 So the axis of activity will be increasingly in the north and the west,

00:11:44.820 which also begins to solve the western problem or the national unity tension in Canada.

00:11:50.900 Through the north, we are closer to Asia and China in particular than are the Australians.

00:11:56.760 Through the north, we are closer to St. Petersburg and the former Soviet space, including Ukraine,

00:12:02.600 than is Western Europe.

00:12:04.520 Through the north, we are closer to the Nordic states of the European Union than we are from Toronto.

00:12:11.480 And we are close to the United States through Alaska and several other northern states.

00:12:16.600 All told, a market of 2 billion, which is seven times larger than the 330 million or so in the United States today.

00:12:26.040 So it requires a huge change in the imagination.

00:12:29.000 It is exciting for our young people who have suffered most during the pandemic.

00:12:34.120 And it is sufficiently large and urgent to command our resources such that we're able to

00:12:39.000 get out of our deep crises.

00:12:40.360 And there are seven or eight crises that require much more than just road building, tax cuts,

00:12:44.840 or rhetoric.

00:12:45.480 We really need to mobilize.

00:12:46.760 And I think that is sufficiently large to give us an exit and an exciting tomorrow.

00:12:51.800 I, it's difficult to do anything globally when you have the internal unity challenges.

00:12:58.360 And I know national unity is a very important chapter in this book.

00:13:01.800 And I wanted to ask you about this because you have a lot of countries in the world,

00:13:05.080 like Australia and New Zealand, that have indigenous populations.

00:13:08.840 You've got countries in the world that have, you know, that are bilingual, Belgium,

00:13:13.480 trilingual, quadrilingual, like Switzerland.

00:13:16.040 I mean, these are not dynamics that are unique to Canada, although Canada does seem to have

00:13:20.680 more of them because we have the indigenous issue.

00:13:23.800 We have the bilingualism.

00:13:25.480 And if you take into account indigenous languages, of which there are many, you've got countless

00:13:30.840 language groups that exist in this country.

00:13:33.160 And then you also have very fundamentally different cultures between French culture and English

00:13:38.600 culture in Canada, and even in English Canada.

00:13:41.240 An Ontarian and a British Columbian and an Albertan, I think, have very different, perhaps less different

00:13:46.680 than a Francophone and an Anglophone.

00:13:48.680 So there are a lot of different things that need to work to keep Canada united.

00:13:53.640 And I think we tend to take for granted that we're all committed to Canada in the same way.

00:13:58.600 How do you solve, if you can, that unity challenge?

00:14:02.680 It's a central question because we must solve our external challenges just as we solve the domestic ones.

00:14:07.880 And you're right, I do treat national unity centrally in the book.

00:14:11.240 We have four national unity crises coming out of the pandemic.

00:14:15.400 The first one is basic borders dividing the country in regulatory terms, sometimes in physical

00:14:20.120 terms across the jurisdictions.

00:14:22.600 The second one is the Western question, which is still wicked and maybe growing in profile. 0.70

00:14:28.840 The third is the Quebec question is still alive.

00:14:31.640 And if it ever does explode, whatever people think on Twitter, it would compromise the entire

00:14:39.000 country quite quickly.

00:14:39.960 And the fourth one, as you articulate, is the indigenous challenge. 1.00

00:14:44.120 The Western challenge, I articulate, can in part be solved through the North. 0.64

00:14:48.440 The North is the fix to exit, as I argue. 0.95

00:14:52.040 Rather than being pedantic, say we just redistribute or give more resources, more power to the West,

00:14:57.400 the opening of the North to huge markets is psychologically very seductive to the West,

00:15:02.520 which is very attached to at least Yukon and Northwest Territories.

00:15:07.880 The Quebec question, I argue, is one to be managed.

00:15:11.800 And I do talk about language in there.

00:15:13.720 I talk about a national languages strategy, which will get us beyond what I think is a very, very

00:15:18.360 low standard hump that we've allowed to occupy our political imagination.

00:15:25.560 You talk about bilingual, trilingual, quadrilingual countries in Europe.

00:15:29.480 And the same is true in Asia and the Middle East and Africa.

00:15:32.440 We're too obsessed with bilingualism.

00:15:34.040 So I tried to break the logic and say that tomorrow, as we plan education post pandemic,

00:15:40.440 we ought to imagine that everyone will simply speak English and French without blinking.

00:15:44.360 And then they choose a third language because we need a third language for the Indigenous cause 0.69

00:15:49.560 domestically, which helps to address that, but also for our wicked international circumstance,

00:15:55.400 which I described.

00:15:56.680 I talk about taking lessons from Northern Aboriginal Indigenous self-government treaties.

00:16:03.400 There are something like 26 self-government arrangements in all of Canada, mostly in the North,

00:16:08.680 and they're very, very practical and so far have been productive.

00:16:12.280 And they're much, they're outside of the Indian act.

00:16:14.280 And I think these are huge examples that we ought to multiply if only we understood how the North

00:16:19.480 operates.

00:16:20.440 And finally, on the, the, the borders to our country that have been erected domestically,

00:16:25.800 that needs to be unwound yesterday.

00:16:27.800 And there must be a commission that, that assiduously unwinds all of the regulations that were

00:16:33.800 improvised and unfurled on, on the territory, militating against national unity immediately.

00:16:39.720 Uh, we don't have time to, to go through the book page by page.

00:16:43.480 And I don't think we'd want to because then people don't have a reason to buy it.

00:16:46.200 So, uh, do have a look at Canada must think for itself for yourself.

00:16:50.840 So you can think for yourself about how Canada can think for itself.

00:16:53.880 But I guess if we want to tie what we have covered up in a bow here, Irvin, let me ask you where the

00:16:59.320 responsibility ultimately lies.

00:17:01.240 Because government has to be, uh, just as a matter of, not just as a matter of law, but

00:17:05.480 I think as a matter of, of the, the law of nature as well, responsive to the people it represents.

00:17:10.440 It needs the consent of the governed.

00:17:11.800 So the government cannot start centrally planning in a way that is unhealthy in a democratic society.

00:17:17.320 Uh, but government can certainly guide and, and government can shepherd, but, but individual

00:17:21.400 people are the ones that need to decide what they want the future of their country to be.

00:17:25.400 So you've put out the roadmap here.

00:17:27.800 Who do you think it is that is best suited or can take this up and move on these things?

00:17:34.040 History suggests that it will take just a small group of leaders who have bathed in this type 0.99

00:17:41.000 of thinking to move the country.

00:17:42.920 And it can happen very fast.

00:17:44.200 Now when you say leaders, intellectuals, political leaders, media figures, or.

00:17:48.200 All of it, even if you look at the Quebec revolution, the quiet revolution in the 60s

00:17:53.800 and then in practice in the seventies and eighties, it was executed by a small group of people who

00:17:58.680 were debating and thinking and that unfurled ambition at all levels of society.

00:18:03.640 Politics, obviously to begin with politics is central in a good way.

00:18:07.400 So leadership is central and the, the converse scenario is devastating for the country in the

00:18:12.760 absence of such leadership.

00:18:14.280 And unfortunately that's been the case throughout the pandemic, uh, the country could collapse.

00:18:18.280 And I mentioned the 60 year rule there, the countries tend to last an average of 60

00:18:22.440 years in the modern sense, after which they collapse through domestic or external circumstances.

00:18:27.800 And we're well past due.

00:18:29.080 That means we have to work that much harder to keep our country of going and vital concern.

00:18:34.360 Irvin student would encourage people to check out his book.

00:18:37.080 Canada must think for itself.

00:18:39.240 Uh, Irvin, always a pleasure.

00:18:40.520 Thanks for coming on.

00:18:41.400 Pleasure is mine.

00:18:42.280 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:18:44.520 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:18:52.440 6514.

00:18:54.400 الTown.

00:18:57.960 Common State, Iowa Hall, I know,'s a great one.

00:18:59.080 VAго廓

00:19:02.120 I know.

00:19:18.920 The value is yours.

Juno News - May 29, 2022

Why Canada must think for itself

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