00:01:30.760He's a former senior advisor to Jason Kenney, who was premier of Alberta.
00:01:34.240In that position, one of his main roles was to win back foreign investors to Alberta who had been scared off by the NDP and the socialists.
00:01:44.840Well, now he's observing another battle over trade, and he joins us via Zoom.
00:01:50.100David, thanks very much for taking the time.
00:01:51.960I really like your political take on things, but this time it feels a bit different.
00:01:56.120You actually have been in these kinds of negotiations before.
00:02:14.040Look, I think, Leser, I think one of the biggest problems is we don't know.
00:02:17.760And now in the last 48 hours, you have two completely different perspectives on what happened from Jameson Greer, Scott Besson and others who are, you know, pretty frank about the conditions that led to the walking away from the deal.
00:02:35.300And those descriptions from the U.S. side are at odds with what we heard from the prime minister and what we've heard from some of the others there.
00:02:43.420And so I think there's a concern. The gossip in D.C. is that Canada felt painted into a corner by the relationship to China and the fact that the U.S. is going after transshipment, which might not be something everyone's familiar with.
00:02:57.200But that's basically when you get Chinese dominant goods and you do light refining in Canada, put a Made in Canada sticker on them and send them across the border.
00:03:06.080And the U.S. actually published an important policy paper about a month ago saying calling the great transshipment scam one of the biggest challenges in U.S. trade and named Canada specifically in it.
00:03:20.900So I'm imagining that that did definitely come up at some point.
00:03:24.060But the question over the prime minister's comments on national sovereignty and the issue that the China, you know, that our relationship with China, with Canada and China being the only two countries that have imposed retaliatory tariffs means that that is, you know, playing in Washington right now.
00:03:43.340I think that's bad for Canada and I think it's bad for our profile as a country.
00:03:46.480You know, when I first heard Mark Carney say the United States demands a veto over who we can do other deals with, this is a violation of our sovereignty, I thought, oh, yikes, that is a violation of our sovereignty.
00:04:00.260But then I was reminded that that is actually an existing, longstanding part of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement.
00:04:12.100I think it's section, is it 3210 or 2310?
00:04:16.500I'm getting the numbers transposed in my head.
00:04:17.900That specifically says for non-market economies like China, if any of the three parties, Canada, Mexico, or the United States, do a deal with China, the others on six months notice can cancel and get out of the thing.
00:04:37.140It protects Canada more than it protects the United States, actually.
00:04:40.920And I never thought of that, but it does make sense.
00:04:43.520Otherwise, you could have China sort of sneak in to the free trade zone in the way you managed mentioned.
00:04:49.400But that felt like a bad faith excuse by Carney when I was reminded that that already exists in the trade deal.
00:04:57.540Now, maybe there was something else that we don't know about.
00:05:01.620And just why not release why not release the detail to to make it clear to Canadians that their interests are being protected.
00:05:07.760I mean, the strangest thing ever is to have a deal that was this advanced, that is this important to Canada.
00:05:13.860This deal is not important to the United States.
00:05:16.080It's a very hard thing to say, but, you know, there's a delusional quality to the way that some of the premiers are reacting to this in terms of how important Canada is to the United States.
00:05:27.700We, you know, they depend on us for about 15% of their export GDP.
00:05:31.700We depend on them for between 75 and 80%.
00:05:35.500And the relative value of the goods that are exchanged across the border, for us, there are no replacement or secondary markets for most of what we send to the Americans.
00:05:45.920The Americans have secondary replacement markets for almost everything they send to us.
00:05:51.400So the relative impact of retributive tariffs on Canadian households is really, really problematic for Canada.
00:05:58.140The relative impact of tariffs on Canadian goods into the U.S. is very light impact on American households.
00:06:05.220So we've got a really problematic, you know, functionally problematic negotiating position.
00:06:11.920We've got a very weak economy, five quarters in a row of declining business investment.
00:06:17.500We kicked the can down the road since October, and this was meant to be the pressure that Trump deployed using these 338 tariffs
00:06:26.380was meant to bring Canada to the table
00:06:27.820because Canada was avoiding any negotiation.
00:06:32.220It's been over 600 days since, you know,
00:06:35.840we first started talking about these things.
00:06:37.660In that time, and this is one of the things
00:07:30.380You know, and the point is the president of the United States doesn't get wrapped up in these deals.
00:07:35.560He trolls, you know, individuals like Trudeau and others.
00:07:40.400And he made it clear why he trolled Trudeau.
00:07:42.180And he made that point actually when he was in the Oval Office with Prime Minister Carney.
00:07:49.340And he's made the point that their strategy has been crystal clear.
00:07:52.260They're going to reshore manufacturing.
00:07:53.760They're going to make sure that there is a very kind of clear strategy and approach around how Americans will integrate security issues with trade issues with their border.
00:08:07.800And Canada and Mexico are critical parts of that.
00:08:11.320And all of those things kind of are woven together in the U.S. mind in terms of how they're going to address these issues.
00:08:17.640It's stunning to me that the content of this deal is being kept from Canadians.
00:08:23.760That the tone that's been taken has been passive aggressive at best and often just very aggressive.
00:08:30.140You saw that with Webb Kennew's comments and most recently with Premier Ford.
00:08:35.580And these are guys that have had economies, Webb Kennew in particular, he's got an economy that's completely falling apart.
00:08:41.740He has turned his province into a complete welfare state.
00:08:47.540And it's that kind of economic weakness by these premiers that has meant that Canada has such a weekend in dealing with the Americans at the negotiating table.
00:08:56.460And yet they want desperately to sort of dine out on, you know, dunking on Donald Trump is sort of the immediate response on these things.
00:09:04.680But we have over 100,000 Canadians whose jobs are hanging in the balance right now. And it seems like that task has been reduced to a bunch of name calling and sort of political point scoring in a way that I find really troubling because I don't think it gets us where we need to go.
00:09:22.160And I don't think it conveys strength. And I think that's one of the things you saw even post the Gordie Howe Bridge and the shutting down. I mean, I think the Americans watch all of this. They're very sort of acute, thoughtful, you know, they're playing for keeps and they've got a game plan and they watch every single person.
00:09:43.080And they've got the psychographics of who they're meeting with and how they're meeting.
00:09:46.120And I think they've kind of got our number.
00:09:48.580And I don't like the fact that Canadians are still in the dark.
00:09:52.260You're getting these numbers coming out saying that Canadians support, you know, Prime Minister Carney's hardball approach on these things.
00:09:58.960But how do they know why they support this?
00:11:40.720And we think that's a really valuable thing. And we encourage countries to really, you know, put their own country first and put their national identity first.
00:11:47.240That's that's actually quite consistent with. So what is that? So what is that about then, Ambassador?
00:11:52.560There was some reference to the idea that we wanted some of it to be either in English or that English had to be first or something like that.
00:12:00.620true, not true? That is not true. I can tell you that's not true. I think that's just, I don't
00:12:06.820know what that is about. I mean, it's what I said. There are countries like Australia and like
00:12:11.900Canada where they go to somebody like Netflix or other streamers and they say, okay, you make X
00:12:16.620money, you're going to take 5% of that and you have to give it to Canadian content producers
00:12:22.140or Quebecois content producers or Australian content producers. And that's what you have to
00:12:27.500do. And we think that's a tax, a discriminatory tax on American companies. But we have no problem
00:12:32.940with with with French language. We like it. We think it's great. So I thought that I thought it
00:12:38.540would have been the French, English, bilingual labeling labeling stuff. But it's if if the U.S.
00:12:45.120trade rep is to be believed and he he sounded pretty calm and credible about it. It was the
00:12:51.280Netflix tax that goes to subsidize Quebec TV stuff. And he's saying, well, that's a tax we
00:12:57.360don't want to pay for it mark carney translated that into a they're attacking our french fact
00:13:02.880this is an outrage i think that carney weaponized everything spun it almost beyond recognition
00:13:11.020so he could get the entire crowd of people with pitchforks saying yeah we hate the americans
00:13:16.980nobody has seen the real reason i don't know maybe uh ambassador greer is a liar maybe i don't know
00:13:23.660who he is but boy it sounded like a credible explanation to me as opposed to the extremely
00:13:28.640vague they're attacking our sovereignty and culture line by carney yeah look i i think they
00:13:35.440could solve all of this by just releasing the canadians a very clear readout of what the core
00:13:40.960issues are none of these things are secret uh none of them right i mean there are elements of
00:13:45.860practice and negotiation that are you know things you keep under wraps there are certain things that
00:13:51.700might come back in the next few months that you want to keep under wraps in terms of there being
00:13:56.700a strategic imperative that you don't want to show. But basically the broad contours of a debate
00:14:03.080like that one in particular really should be in the public square and that should be discussed
00:14:08.160and defended by the prime minister if he took the view that he saw what Jameson Greer was describing
00:14:13.760as the Netflix attack, as a subtle attack on Quebec identity or language. I'm concerned that just like
00:14:19.920we saw two years ago. We're in a political season where the prime minister is trying to secure a few
00:14:26.060extra seats and that he's willing to play hardball for the purposes of, you know, gaining support
00:14:32.580for his party, not only because they're ideologically opposed to Republicans and
00:14:38.000conservatives as a party, but that there's danger in playing up some of these dynamics
00:14:44.820with this florid language about attacks on sovereignty simply because those play politically
00:14:50.220in a moment where there's some election dynamics at play. And I think the problem that I see
00:14:56.700underlying all this, Ezra, is while other countries have just gotten on with it and acted like adults,
00:15:01.720we've sort of dined out, again, on trying to dunk on the U.S. president in ways the Americans can
00:15:06.900observe and see that are often, I find, just off-putting and juvenile. But, you know,
00:15:14.820More deeply, we've had five quarters of consecutive loss of business investment.
00:15:19.680It was just covered yesterday in the Wall Street Journal.
00:15:22.060A lot of the FDI, we've got the job story that the prime minister is referring to is principally an Alberta job story right now.
00:15:29.040And Alberta has gone the other direction on almost every aspect of the strategy around this trade agreement and around the relationship with the United States.
00:15:37.240Now, Alberta is interesting because, you know, I was there.
00:15:40.060We worked intensely on getting KXL revived after the Obama, you know, team killed it.
00:15:55.840We met with the governors of every state that it would cross.
00:16:00.200And there's just an enormous need for there to be a very strong North American partnership on energy security.
00:16:06.640We have long reserve life assets that they don't have, and they need our assets to refill the National Petroleum Reserve.
00:16:14.300And I think the reason the president mentioned KXL by name, it's now called something different, Southport Bridger, under the name of the new entity that will be the proponent of it.
00:16:35.060I think the premier did a great job being at the inauguration and meeting people. I was there,
00:16:39.700I saw the effort that she went to to build bridges with individuals across the cabinet,
00:16:45.860and I also saw that Canada was MIA compared to other countries, particularly Mexico,
00:16:51.700who knew that this issue was coming. Anyone that read Stephen Moran's paper in November 2024 knew
00:16:58.660exactly what was coming down the road, and a lot of countries got to work on it, like the UK,
00:17:03.460like Japan, like Mexico. And Canada has played this different strategy that I don't think is
00:17:10.020working. And I think now that guys like Jameson Greer are being asked very straightforward
00:17:14.140questions and answering those questions in straightforward ways, it begs the question,
00:17:18.040why are Canadians still in the dark of what the content of this is so that they can decide if
00:17:21.880they support it or not? I went down to Washington for the inauguration as well. I had a very quick
00:17:27.000meeting with the premier she had booked a conference room in the heart of washington dc in
00:17:33.920a nice hotel and she had a whole team there and she was just putting through meeting after meeting
00:17:38.620after meeting it was yeah it was incredible to see like it was a factory an assembly line and
00:17:44.760she didn't miss a minute i mean how she kept her head straight with like 20 meetings a day i don't
00:17:50.240know but she was there and and then at night i saw her at some social events and she she walked
00:17:57.860around like she was working it holy smokes and here's the thing she's been doing that for 18
00:18:03.940and then she went down to mar-a-lago and even when there were setbacks along the way she never allowed
00:18:08.720her tone to get angry or insulting it was always business like you know she kept in mind what is
00:18:15.420my outcome i want i want export markets i don't want tariffs i want jobs i like it was so clear
00:18:21.480she was thinking like a grown-up i can't you you talked about wab canoe and doug ford has been
00:18:27.000outdoing himself with the childishness i acknowledge that donald trump throws around
00:18:31.560the odd schoolyard taunt from time to time that's sort of his signature and every other country in
00:18:36.640the world has managed to work around that i mean you don't it's like i i whenever the new prime
00:18:42.940minister in the uk the new foreign minister they're always asked about their former mean
00:18:47.620comments about trump because they've all said mean things about him every one of them has enough
00:18:52.540self-discipline to say well that was before and or you know like they they handle it they don't
00:18:59.040revive it and rip off the scar and pick at it and doug ford has been there's no way to understand
00:19:06.680his behavior unless you think he doesn't actually want to deal like there's no even someone like him
00:19:15.480who i i have some criticisms of he must know that his conduct is counterproductive
00:19:21.960and mark carney must know it and carney hasn't stopped him from doing it so i ask you david
00:19:28.440does it make sense that carney and and doug ford does the theory make sense that they actually
00:19:35.960wanted to scupper the deal is it more a political win for them to be anti-trump anti-american
00:19:43.480and by the way if they went to an election today they'd get a super majority
00:19:47.000is that more important to them than getting a trade deal gosh i hope not as i really hope not i
00:19:53.960mean look the transience of this political moment the president will only be there for less than two
00:20:00.840two more years now right um we have a generational opportunity to create an extraordinary free trade
00:20:06.840zone that brian already dreamed of when he first started this process in 88 and actually fought
00:20:14.440an election in 89 do you remember this the shamrock summit and then he did the u.s canada free trade
00:20:19.720deal he led with that and then they brought mexico in later i mean that's led to 40 years of
00:20:24.840prosperity for canada in particular because we are the luckiest country on the planet we have
00:20:30.120so much natural wealth. We're right next to the world's largest economy, $32 trillion economy.
00:20:36.840They are our closest friends. We have full security integration.
00:20:41.320We have in front of us one of the most extraordinary generational opportunities to
00:20:45.480create unparalleled wealth and prosperity between these two countries. And what the president
00:20:51.880is doing is actually not personal. I mean, he throws taunts and of course he trolled.
00:20:59.340Trudeau came in and said, if you do this thing, you know, we won't even be a country.
00:21:02.840And that's why the president said, well, then you're the 51st state and called him Governor Trudeau.
00:21:08.540And he went through that narrative with Mark Carney sitting next to him in the White House to make it clear that there was a context around that taunt.
00:21:15.820Is it juvenile? Yeah. Is that part of the way that he rolls? Yeah, it is.
00:21:19.460But other countries are getting these deals done that actually closed their deals now with the United States.
00:21:24.160And we are still in this weird psychology of saying, we shouldn't do a deal because you can't trust them to keep the deal, etc.
00:21:30.980And I think that kind of self-defeating narrative has gone too far.
00:21:36.060We now have over 100,000 jobs, which, you know, call it 40,000 in Ontario specifically, maybe 25, 30 in Quebec, another sort of 15, 20 in BC.
00:21:49.660There'll be residual job losses, call it 5,000 in Alberta.
00:21:52.800But the problem, Ezra, right now with kicking the can down the road from here is that these 338 tariffs are devastating.
00:22:01.660And they were devastating for the purpose of bringing Canada back to the table.
00:22:05.620And by now walking away from this table at this point, you're going to see, you know, whole chunks of the garment industry based out of materials industry based out of Montreal closed down.
00:22:21.840We are going to lose key parts of the forestry industry to the United States now.
00:22:27.940This is not a moment to let the natural ideological differences between the Liberal Party of Canada and the Republican Party of the U.S.
00:22:37.000or the distaste that the Liberal Party guys have for the President of the United States take a front seat in the way that we're negotiating for the sake of key industries
00:22:46.800that need to be protected by, you know, really thoughtful negotiations.
00:22:52.040That's why it's so important, I think, to release the detail on what we walked away from
00:22:56.860and why we walked away from it, because there's just too much.
00:22:59.900It seems like it's just too tempting for a lot of these politicians to use this as an opportunity
00:23:04.180to grandstand or turn it into a grievance contest,
00:23:07.220because it is politically popular not to like the current president of the United States.
00:23:12.280But that's so superficial, and it's going to be pointless in six months
00:23:16.720when people have lost jobs permanently
00:23:18.600and the country has lost its momentum.
00:25:57.840The contrast between Wab Kanu and Doug Ford on the one hand and Daniel Smith and Scott
00:26:02.560Moe on the other is quite interesting.
00:26:05.120And I saw today that Doug Ford, I mean, Doug Ford for the last few weeks, when he's trying to say what he's going to, oh, I'm going to do things, I'm going to cut off the electricity.
00:26:15.060Okay, I don't think you are, but that's 1% of American electricity.
00:26:45.260But I see now that Ford says he wants to get Danielle Smith on the phone as if he is going to recruit her to shut down Alberta's oil industry.
00:26:59.040Well, Paul Vieira, who is with The Wall Street Journal, reported that he's going to call her to, I presume, try and get her solidarity, solidarity to destroy the economy, not to build the economy.
00:27:15.420And I hope that she stays far away from this because her strong reputation with America as being collegial and professional and not – that's what he actually wants to destroy.
00:27:29.040that and the thing about the two minutes of hate which is an orwellian concept where we all hate
00:27:35.440the external enemy together we try and outdo each other who hates them more that's what they're
00:27:40.220doing to trump you've had 10 years of priming the pump every regime media in canada is anti-trump
00:27:46.660and some of them have some reason to be but you cannot feed 40 million canadians a steady diet
00:27:53.100of trump is the new hitler trump is a pedophile which wap canoe actually said and then of of
00:27:59.620course when you then style yourself as the anti-trump you're going to get political wins
00:28:02.900off it danielle smith does not want to do that but the fact that she's not doing it is a kind
00:28:08.340of repudiation of doug ford and wap canoe the fact that alberta is still doing well while ontario
00:28:13.080i would hate to be an auto worker and that's the thing is all these you know keyboard warriors
00:28:19.580are saying, well, if there's a price to pay,
00:28:44.480it's so superficial to what the potential is.
00:28:47.820Ezra, I think this is the thing, you know, and I think Doug Ford is masterful at somehow reading the political tea leaves, so I wouldn't deign to comment on, you know, his choices in some respects.
00:29:00.340But the problem that I see is, I don't hear anybody articulating a positive vision for where Canada can be.
00:29:06.780We've had a decade of the worst decline in productivity rates in the OECD, right?
00:32:35.340you've got all these jobs on the line.
00:32:36.880And what he's already saying is, don't worry, we're going to print more debt and we're going to try and throw money around to favored industries and figure out how to do it.
00:32:44.300And again, this is not, that's not a real economy.
00:32:47.460Every time you do that, you just deepen the hole for the next generation to try and have to fill with real economy jobs they create.
00:32:54.240So I think the biggest issue behind everything is the opportunity that's in front of us right now is to create a nation that can be an opportunity society and attract the best and brightest from around the world and give our kids.
00:33:06.880the chance to build the best companies of the future and to build a great trans north american
00:33:15.040market economy that would be the greatest free trade zone on the planet and if if we let resentment
00:33:21.040and a grievance contest get in the way of building something that that rises to the occasion of what
00:33:26.400we wish for our kids and grandkids then all of it is going to everyone's going to forget all this
00:33:31.120all these current theatrics and all the name-calling you know what they're going to remember is is that
00:33:38.640there are there are jobs being built there are new mines being mined with new materials being
00:33:43.760put into new advanced materials that have created uh a massive structural competitive advantage for
00:33:50.160the west over adversarial countries and instead what we're seeing is the adversarial con countries
00:33:56.640seem to have us uh you know on on the uh on a short leash and we're turning all of our firepower
00:34:05.880against the americans our our allies and we're in bed with the chinese it's extraordinary to watch
00:34:11.820let me ask you about that because let me try and tell you four data points anecdotes really and you
00:34:19.420tell me if i'm seeing things i don't want to be like that that meme of the guy with all sorts of
00:34:25.140strings on the billboard on the on the court board trying to make a conspiracy work but
00:34:30.880let me let me tell you four things um number one is our prime minister mark carney going to china
00:34:38.500saying he wants to be part of a china-led new world order calling china a strategic partner
00:34:45.960and agreeing to accept 49 000 chinese-made vehicles a year as the starting point so that
00:36:07.120Someone sent me a reminder that in 2019, when he was the governor of the Bank of England,
00:36:12.340And Mark Carney gave a speech at Jackson Hole about replacing the U.S. dollar as the world currency of choice, the reserve currency.
00:36:21.920And I found the speech about 20 pages long, and he does.
00:36:24.880And he says the Chinese renminbi, the Chinese currency, is the leading contender.
00:36:29.640And we need to move away from American domineering, he said, to a multipolar world.
00:36:36.600And he sort of outlined the best ways to do that.
00:36:38.560So seven years ago, he's talking about changing the currency to stop America from being top dog.
00:36:44.660And then the final data point – so imagine I'm in front of a corkboard with strings and my hair is a mess.
00:36:52.740Just today, a Chinese government propaganda site had lavish praise for Carney walking away from the deal, calling it a China-style response, saying –
00:37:07.100Emphasizing that only China and Canada did this and calling Canada a former close ally of America.
00:37:15.760So I've just put to you my case that maybe Mark Carney actually is living out his World Economic Forum dream, his Davos dream of trying to remake the world into a multipolar world rather than an America-centric world.
00:37:34.520Am I just whipping myself up in a paranoid conspiracy theory?
00:37:39.440No, I don't. Look, I was saying to a couple of friends, I think everybody used to think conspiracy theories were, you know, too much to bear until COVID.
00:37:49.700And then you started finding out that everything you thought was a conspiracy theory was partly true.
00:37:55.720You know, how interesting to see Dr. Fauci start to be held to account for the extraordinary misleading quality of what took place in the U.S. that Canada borrowed heavily, unfortunately.
00:38:10.160But no, so I think there's three or four things that are really important.
00:38:15.500I think one thing is the foreign influence of China in Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. is extraordinary.
00:38:25.000And again, Canada has been on a vacation from history
00:38:27.520that the Australians had to deal with more directly.
00:38:31.220And the Americans have certainly been dealing with.
00:38:33.180In fact, they've just given an ultimatum
00:38:34.660to a lot of their top research universities
00:38:36.720because they've realized that a lot of these so-called grad students
00:38:52.980We've had, we had the Infectious Diseases Institute, you know, we had obvious, we just have extraordinary material security breaches all the time in Canada, with respect to China. But there's a lack of, there's a lack of attentiveness to it, the press doesn't seem that interested. And you have, especially in Vancouver, you know, real collusive problems with Chinese triads, Mexican cartels, money laundering that again, doesn't get much plays.
00:39:21.580So you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to worry about the effect of China on Canada, on Canadian security, and especially on the dissident community in Canada that is constantly fearful, much like the Persian dissident community is, because we allow horrible people into this country.
00:39:40.080The Jewish people, you know this, Ezra, are fearful because the lack of control on the borders and the lack of seriousness in the federal government with respect to letting in Hamas, Hezbollah, and IRGC agents by the hundreds.
00:39:53.000So, you know, if you look at China, China is not Hamas, Hezbollah.
00:39:56.440China is extremely sophisticated, very intentional, and they have a multi-vector strategy around influencing foreign nations.
00:40:04.900And Canada is an extremely important nation to influence on our own terms, but also because we are such a close ally of the United States and because we're part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing with the United States, which is one of the reasons we are so closely targeted, along with New Zealand, Australia and the UK by the Chinese.
00:40:23.920So there's a lot to what you're saying.
00:40:25.280I think one of the things that I've noticed about people that have done a lot of time in Davos or the United Nations or other multilateral organizations is they tend to want to treat all countries as one country, one vote.
00:40:39.620And with that kind of comes a certain sort of moral relativism or ambivalence about which country is which.
00:40:48.740And what that leads to is this almost clownish outcome where you've got human rights commissions that have a who's who of the world's worst terrorist countries on there.
00:40:59.480You know, it's almost it's it's an open mockery of the idea of human rights.
00:41:03.860When you look at who's on the United Nations Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court, something that Canada should absolutely walk away from.
00:41:14.080Unfortunately, it was helped. It was set up by somebody that is now in Carney's circle, inner circle.
00:41:21.340It's run by people that are intentionally trying to use their status to go after Western nations.
00:41:28.900And again, if you try and treat every country like it's one country, one vote, then you create one vote for a failed state like Somalia and one vote for the world's most important superpower.
00:41:41.280And in many ways, the country is doing its best to articulate Western supremacy in a value system like the United States.
00:41:48.740And so I think, oddly, there's a pride or an arrogance that slips in when you start spending your time in these multilateral institutions, that you see everybody through this sort of sense of moral clarity, and that the screening that you do is about who gets to call things from their perspective.
00:42:08.740And you've got all this kind of confusion around what actually makes countries work, what makes countries great.
00:42:14.300The reason that the Americans are laying down a line, a very clear line in the sand on China is because China has made it crystal clear that they are absolutely going after dominance in very specific areas and places.
00:42:29.300And they've also shown a tendency to operate with their own people. The Chinese Communist Party is a very small percentage of China. And as you know, I ran businesses in China with their own people.
00:42:42.760They show a heartlessness that is extraordinary when they're dealing with any sort of dissident ideas, any conventions, like every communist country, anyone that comes up with a faith convention or observance that they do not agree with because they're communist Chinese, they will have those people killed.
00:43:05.520And so what the Americans have done with China is they've said very specifically, we expect every country to abide by the rules that we're deploying against China.
00:43:15.940And that includes transshipment. You can't simply have China send things to you and then you become sort of the proxy that puts a Made in Canada sticker on it and sends it down to us.
00:43:24.020That's not going to work. So we want assurances on that.
00:43:26.140We also want absolute guaranteed assurances that any of the products that you bring in aren't made by slave labor, by the eagers, which includes, of course, EVs, which is one of the reasons, there are two reasons the Americans don't like the EVs.
00:43:41.200One, the source of the labor and the EVs and the fact that it's state-sponsored in a way that creates a playing field that's not leveled for companies that are sort of private market companies.
00:43:54.660But the second reason is because EVs are like huge iPhones on wheels.
00:43:58.320They're just huge data collection instruments that can be used for a lot of purposes by a foreign adversary if they're distributed in your country.
00:44:05.480Same reason they're concerned about consumer drones made in China.
00:44:08.520Canada can no longer take the view that that's just an American perspective and we have friends in China, too.
00:44:14.100That may feel good as sort of like we're wearing the referee's jersey and we're not in the game, but we are in the game.
00:44:19.920And we have to start to realize we're in the game.
00:44:22.140And to the extent that we don't realize that we're in the game, the Americans will have no problems just telling us EVs made in China are not going to cross the border or telling us that there are MPs that they will not permit to have in briefing sessions or they'll simply cut us off from key intelligence.
00:44:38.000I think that when you look at what we're doing, that the foolishness going on with what we're deciding to do with military procurement, the F-35s, there is a lot that China is intensely interested, so is Russia, in having a Canada that continues its current military decline.
00:44:57.060Only 40% of our air force is even serviceable.
00:44:59.940That means only 40% of it can even get in the air right now.
00:45:05.240And yet we've dithered on just core competencies and core equipment,
00:45:10.440almost all of which under our NORAD agreement should be American equipment.
00:45:14.660But again, this sort of grievance contest mentality is turning even the most important
00:45:21.500self-protective measures like our integration in the U.S. systems, data and otherwise, into a
00:45:27.740sort of, you know, we'll decide whether or not we want to be integrated in NORAD. I mean, it's
00:45:34.280just extraordinary to watch some of these things taking place and hearing people say out loud
00:45:40.460things that would have just been unconscionable only a few years ago, but because of Donald Trump
00:45:44.360suddenly become part of the storyline. You know, you mentioned the fact that one of the reasons
00:45:50.340China targets candidates, were part of the Five Eyes and sort of super friends of NATO, like the core allies that have a high trust level.
00:45:58.940And my theory on Sean Chen, the Chinese Canadian MP who announced his resignation saying, I had a terrible car accident and I can no longer travel.
00:46:08.900And then we see him in China yucking it up.
00:47:09.220And our integration, you know, Ezra, I think it's important to say, you know, I wrote an op-ed on why I believe that we should help China replace the heavy crude that they lost from Venezuela, the 500,000 barrels they lost from Venezuela with Canadian heavy crude.
00:47:27.300And some of my friends were a little confused, like, oh, I thought you didn't like the China thing, but that's not the point.
00:47:33.580You know, if we're in the great game, we are not on a vacation from history.
00:47:36.820We just felt like we were because we've always kind of hung on to America's coattails.
00:47:40.960But the fact is, America is not against Canada having a very strong energy trade with China.
00:47:47.900In fact, if anything, if you notice what happened in the Ukraine war, if you have cross-cutting energy commercial relationships between Canada and China, that's a point of leverage with China down the road.
00:47:58.600Because we will be, you know, up to 15% of their grid capacity will be fueled by Canadian fuel.
00:48:05.200it's a great trade. It's worth trillions to Canada. It's worth energy security to China
00:48:11.960that doesn't want to rely solely on Russia for their energy. You're displacing Iran and Venezuela.
00:48:18.700Yeah, and that Venezuelan crude now goes into U.S. refining. Why don't we refine it and send it
00:48:23.180here? Why don't we, well, that stuff has got to go into their teapot refineries. It's one of the
00:48:27.220reasons it's so important to them. But the point is, as Canadians, we don't have to sacrifice our
00:48:31.800sovereignty to the United States. We just have to have a game plan for our own prosperity.
00:48:35.920And Jameson Greer said something very interesting in that clip that you showed. He said very
00:48:40.420directly, look, we are for national identity. We are for the French speaking French in Canada
00:48:47.340and in Quebec. We like that, right? We support that. They're not expecting us to come and be
00:48:53.160subservient or servile in the way that we negotiate our trade or who we choose to trade with.
00:48:58.980But what they have to be clear on is transshipment, which is a violation of the rules and would affect us terribly if the U.S. did it to us.
00:49:07.640They have to be clear on the security issues around the way in which we interact with China and the kinds of deals we do.
00:49:15.040And they have to be crystal clear on the dynamics of us having a shared border with them and Arctic security.
00:49:21.100And so I think, you know, those that want to pretend that everything that the Americans are asking for is somehow an impediment to us showing sovereign kind of autonomy and being masters of our own house, I just say, what is the plan for Canada?
00:49:36.580Where's the positive economic, political, and military vision for this country to be great in the world?
00:49:48.2405 million people, trillions of dollars in core assets, all tradable, all rights sitting right
00:49:54.240next to the largest market for those assets, sitting just across the ocean from the largest
00:50:00.020market, other markets for those assets. That's just one province. And that one province is
00:50:05.680wealthy enough to carry the entire country of Canada, has been sort of through the shell game
00:50:10.720of federal transfers for the last 15, 20 years. But, you know, a vision for Canada that shows
00:50:17.000what we can do and become that would be exciting for your kids or grandkids to say of all the
00:50:21.960places in the world that I would want to set up a business or raise a family or build something
00:50:27.440great or dream. It should be Canada and it can be Canada. But as long as we're walking around
00:50:34.020with this grievance mentality about the current U.S. president and treating opportunities to do
00:50:39.260a great trans-continental free trade zone with them and a totally integrated air data and
00:50:46.820military and naval uh system with them then we're just kind of dithering and i think the sad thing
00:50:52.760is it's reactive it's passive aggressive and it's not worthy of what this nation was founded to be
00:50:58.160yeah you know if if mark carney was serious about finding other markets he would at the tail end of
00:51:07.080his speech the other day have announced that the west coast pipeline was hereby approved if he if
00:51:13.120was really treating this as a wartime moment to improve our economy he would have greenlit
00:51:18.480that pipeline along the trans mountain path to bc yeah i i i think that in some ways
00:51:25.120he's an unserious man he announced an end to interprovincial trade barriers what was that
00:51:30.000a year ago he made an announcement hasn't happened yet i i don't know i mean on the surface he comes
00:51:36.480across as very serious very learned very worldly yeah but um if you said to me point to an achievement
00:51:44.560he has well i don't think that what happened two days ago or three days ago was actually an
00:51:49.440achievement i mean if the goal was as he promised i will get a deal with trump i'm the trump
00:51:54.080whisperer i can make it happen i'll get i'm sorry he failed so making a big oh he did he did himself
00:52:00.960Well, Ezra, you really did it. I mean, you and I have both worked in politics.
00:52:05.920You know, when I was the premier's principal advisor, we'd have these moments where you'd sort of slap your forehead and think that wasn't a good choice.
00:52:12.840His decision to vacation in Tuscany in the middle of this moment where there's over 100,000 jobs in four core industries hanging in the balance was a terrible decision.
00:52:24.380And I don't know what his advisors were thinking. I think there might have been people he needed to meet.
00:52:30.100And by the way, I'm one of these guys that actually I support, you know, our prime minister.
00:52:37.800I want to see 24 Sussex rebuilt and become a great place to host people.
00:52:41.680I want to have a good wine list. I want to have great dinners.
00:52:44.200I don't begrudge prime ministers staying in big houses with security around them.
00:52:49.100They need that. I like them hosting world leaders.
00:52:52.260I don't care if they're liberal or conservative.
00:52:54.080They need to have great planes. They need to have great security personnel, close protection.
00:53:00.620They need to be looked after. I don't begrudge any of the money that gets spent on diplomacy or security or gives them a break when they need a break.
00:53:10.300Right. But there has to be some some coherence to just how extraordinary the economic moment we're in is.
00:53:18.240And I don't know if I'm just one of these guys. It's too much of a nerd that reads the economic numbers.
00:53:23.020But Canada is in a world of trouble right now. And the idea that you're going to go to Tuscany a week before this extraordinary trade deal closes and then come in and be sort of the PR guy for why you walked away, it's a terrible look for a guy who is, I think, very bright.
00:53:37.340And I think that, and again, this is the same problem I have with after the Gordie Howe Bridge debacle, with the temptation that he's got to try and want to play the political side of this for his own benefit, his party's benefit.
00:53:54.080At the same time, we've got all of this, you know, potential, you know, just complete decline of core industries.
00:54:03.620The longer that the scene drags on, it's not going to get easier to negotiate with the Americans two months from now, right?