The Candice Malcolm Show - Canada collapsed during Covid. Here’s how we fix it. (Ft. Irvin Studin)

00:00:00.000 Canada needs to come up with a serious and credible plan to move past COVID, to end all

00:00:05.140 COVID-era mandates and restrictions, to get our economy back on track, but also to begin to

00:00:10.200 address the considerable harm done to the social fabric of our country by the unprecedented

00:00:15.300 government overreach. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:30.000 Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. So it's become almost like a cliche lately to say

00:00:34.880 that we need to move past COVID. We need to get back to normal. The reality is that we cannot move

00:00:39.640 back in time. We'll never be able to get back to 2019. We need to move forward, yes, but we also

00:00:45.380 need to meticulously study what exactly happened over the past two years. We need to investigate

00:00:51.280 what happened and why. We need to cancel the overzealous government programs, yes, but we also 0.84

00:00:57.380 need to put in place safeguards to make sure that that power can never be abused again, that power

00:01:02.600 thirsty politicians, overbearing governments cannot undermine our rights and freedoms again in the

00:01:08.520 future. So today I'm very pleased to be joined by someone who is working on these very ideas, working

00:01:13.200 on a project to get us to move forward and to get our lives back on track. I'm very pleased today to be

00:01:19.460 joined by Irvin Studen. Irvin is the founder and editor-in-chief of Global Brief Magazine, one of the

00:01:24.740 leading international policy thinkers in Canada. Irvin has been a public policy professor and worked

00:01:29.920 for both the Canadian Prime Minister and an Australian Prime Minister in 2004. He was a member

00:01:34.820 of a small team who wrote Canada's first national security policy. In 2006, he did something similar

00:01:39.500 down in Australia. Irvin holds a bachelor's degree from York University, a master's from both Oxford and

00:01:45.520 London School of Economics, and a PhD from Osgood Law School. Notably, this is really interesting,

00:01:50.740 Irvin has taught foreign policy, both at Ukraine's Higher School of Public Administration in Kiev,

00:01:56.200 as well as at Russia's Academy for National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow. So we're going

00:02:01.820 to talk a little bit about the Russia-Ukraine conflict as well. There are a few people in the

00:02:05.680 world who are more qualified to talk about what's going on than Irvin, and I'm really pleased to have

00:02:10.160 him on the show today. So Irvin, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

00:02:13.960 It's a real pleasure, Candice. Thanks for having me. I enjoy your work.

00:02:16.320 Well, I appreciate it. So you recently chaired and you wrote a national exit plan for COVID. So

00:02:23.140 first of all, take us through what led to this and why you decided to take on this project.

00:02:30.060 Well, we were not exiting. We were not exiting as a country. We were studying COVID. We were

00:02:35.720 living COVID. We were sentimentalizing. And in late 2021, I had a long conversation with

00:02:45.860 the person who is now the co-chair of this national, the Canada Science and Policy Committee

00:02:50.820 to exit the pandemic, Kouadjo Keremantan. He said, we said, we should bring together the leading

00:02:56.740 scientists and leading policy thinkers and do our own science table. And so I turned that on its head

00:03:04.220 and we spoke for a while. And I said, Kouadjo, let's actually call it the committee to exit the pandemic

00:03:10.680 because I'm a policy person. You're a science and medical person. We'll bring together these

00:03:16.180 solitudes, the solitudes that really have not been talking to each other. The medical and science

00:03:20.160 community is clinically strong, but they stink at public policy. I mean, really, they stink because

00:03:25.760 public policy is a craft. It's not something that can be just made up through pure intelligence.

00:03:31.120 And the policy community, the political community is illiterate in science, largely. So we bring

00:03:35.800 together these solitudes, properly national, specialists across all the disciplines, which

00:03:41.740 is key, and I'm sure we'll get to that. And we choreograph and exit. So we're not there to study

00:03:45.900 or sentimentalize. It really is a policy lead informed by science. So Kouadjo and I and the

00:03:53.120 committee have released the national exit plan. It is comprehensive. It is regionalized across the

00:04:00.200 second largest country in the world. And it speaks to a policy choreography of exit across eight

00:04:05.500 systems crises, which are important to understand, if you're really going to understand where we are,

00:04:11.420 what's happened, and how to properly get out as a country so that we have a good tomorrow.

00:04:16.780 It's excellent. Such a great initiative and so comprehensive. So I want to go through some of

00:04:20.860 the areas that you focused on. One of the things I thought was interesting that you had two different

00:04:24.100 categories, one COVID public health and one non-COVID public health. And I know that it's become

00:04:30.080 a big issue that everyone's talking about, the fact that there's so many people have neglected

00:04:33.600 their health. So much of this early cancer prevention, so much mental health issues have

00:04:39.460 come up. In some cases, they're far worse than COVID itself. So could you walk us through those

00:04:45.120 two different public health areas and why you drew that distinction? Well, there are actually eight

00:04:51.520 systems, and those are two of the eight. So I'll walk through the eight and then explain what those two

00:04:57.120 mean and why we came to that divination. It's COVID public health, non-COVID public health.

00:05:04.920 A couple of years ago, you might have said public health as a generality, one system, but we divided

00:05:09.100 it to be a little sharper. COVID public health, non-COVID public health. Then there's, of course,

00:05:13.800 the economy and business. Education, institutions, national unity, social fabric,

00:05:22.160 and then the international. I might be missing one. I'm a systems thinker, and the only proper way to

00:05:32.700 have dealt with the COVID pandemic at the start, this is how the best countries dealt with it, 0.93

00:05:37.600 but certainly on exit is to think of the country and systems. At that point, we would appreciate that

00:05:42.860 while COVID was a shock to the country, it was not the only system going in the second largest country

00:05:48.400 in the world in a big society. We always have many balls in the air. That's the appropriate way to

00:05:53.600 think of a complex country. In the early pandemic, through some of the solitudes we discussed, and

00:06:00.900 also through social media, and the general inexperience in Canada in dealing with crises of this scale,

00:06:06.420 we reduced all of our reality to COVID counts, for better or worse. And I'm not sentimentalizing,

00:06:14.380 I'm just recounting what was. But then we began to think that COVID was our only condition,

00:06:19.580 and that solving COVID, whenever that meant, would bleed favorably into all these other systems,

00:06:27.080 which we neither appreciated nor understood. As a result of that reduction of all our reality

00:06:35.100 to the COVID public health pandemic, we collapsed the other systems. I mean, literally collapsed.

00:06:40.480 Education, which is near and dear to my heart, and which we've been working on separately through

00:06:45.300 the Worldwide Commission to Educate All Kids, was a total collapse. I mean, kids started being ousted

00:06:51.560 from all education in total, 200,000 kids plus across the country in the Oliver Twist condition,

00:06:58.900 not in any school at all. Businesses were being collapsed and bankrupted and ousted for no reason other

00:07:05.940 than we imagined that the only thing happening was the pandemic. Whereas other countries had an

00:07:11.120 appreciation, the pandemic is here, put an accent on it. But there are other fish to fry, we have a big

00:07:16.980 country, we can't collapse the economy, kids should still be educated, because tomorrow is going to be

00:07:21.860 difficult. We have to keep the country unified, we have to keep our international standing, we keep diplomatic

00:07:27.260 and intelligence activities. And we didn't. The government closed the society, and the government

00:07:33.320 itself retreated. And betwixt these two solitudes, we, in the de-energization of the society, we had

00:07:42.700 disintegration. And so the systems approach commends a reconstitution of these systems that were

00:07:48.320 collapsed. That's why when we say COVID public health, we're at an endemic stage. For all practical

00:07:54.360 intense purpose, the pandemic is over. For Canada, it is endemic. That means it will be seasonal in

00:07:59.700 character. It will be managed seasonally, as we do other maladies. And for comorbid, or aged or

00:08:07.580 vulnerable populations, we project that much more energy. That's appropriate. That's how an 1.00

00:08:14.200 intelligent society thinks. But in non-COVID public health, which we collapsed, we must provide surplus

00:08:20.380 energy. So all the things that were not diagnosed, all the procedures and processes that were

00:08:25.480 neglected, or marginalized, the new mental health conditions that that that that were created over

00:08:31.920 course the pandemic, physical health conditions, the general societal angst, children, all of this

00:08:37.540 thing requires energy. One of the working hypotheses of the exit plan is high energy, high energy at the

00:08:45.340 front. So no sentimentality, high energy, not because I have a fetish for energy, or because I like high

00:08:52.540 energy, it's because we collapse the systems. So we need to reconstitute the systems even to 2019 levels

00:08:59.340 2019. We have to provide that much more energy. So it is all the systems at once, high energy at the

00:09:06.280 front, including that vulnerable population COVID, but especially in non-COVID public health, huge surge,

00:09:13.220 reach out to the population, who's not well, who hasn't been diagnosed in the business area, in the

00:09:19.920 business sector, business system as well, reach out to all the companies, who's in trouble, who hasn't

00:09:26.160 been able to access working capital for whatever reason, who's on the on the verge, who needs to be

00:09:31.720 reconstituted. It's not because government has a central role in business, but because government was

00:09:37.500 responsible for the original ouster. And even if government removes restrictions, tens of thousands of

00:09:42.860 businesses are either on the on the on the edge or disappeared. So it's not enough to just remove

00:09:47.600 restrictions, even though that's a that's a key first point in the in the strategy, all things need

00:09:53.620 to be worked in a simultaneous choreography. But Irvin, we're left with this struggle. So the very

00:09:59.160 people who were in charge who failed to have the foresight to understand all of these complicated

00:10:03.900 systems, who let them all collapse and focus entirely on COVID, I can kind of understand that

00:10:08.800 in March, April 2020, when we just didn't know what this was, we didn't know how bad it was going

00:10:13.500 to be. But at some point, we realized the limited scope of COVID, that there are certain populations

00:10:19.840 that are very vulnerable, and the rest of society, not so much the fact that little kids were

00:10:25.180 punitively punished by COVID policies, even though they're at such small risk. So the very people who

00:10:30.660 let all that terrible things happened and led the charge on that are now the ones that we are going to

00:10:36.580 expect to come up with this plan to sort of move past it. How can we trust these, these institutions

00:10:43.620 and these people who allow this to happen in the first place?

00:10:50.800 What I call thinking, we're at the core of their absence, the absence of leadership and thinking

00:10:56.060 we're at the core of our collapse. And it was really a calamitous collapse for Canada, I've never

00:11:02.000 seen it. Some people will have difficulty accepting, once they see what's happened, that this could have

00:11:08.180 happened in our country. Now, obviously, many of those people are, are still in decision making

00:11:13.060 roles, at all levels of government, at all levels of public health across all parties, and the

00:11:18.580 professions. We did this plan for them. We did the thinking for them. And many of them, I should say,

00:11:25.540 I could now say the public fed quietly into parts of the plan, because they said, Irvin, you guys do the

00:11:30.680 thinking, you do the structure, we don't exactly understand what the problem is, what, by the way,

00:11:35.200 many people don't understand what the problem is, they think our problem is COVID and masks and

00:11:40.340 vaccines. That is one widget of a larger systems collapse. You know, it is the key original impulse

00:11:49.140 for collapse. And we need to fix it, but we need to fix it in tandem with all these other systems.

00:11:53.600 So once we have that broad structure, again, the exit matrix is eight by 21, across all the systems,

00:12:04.040 several months out, across all regions of Canada, with an endpoint, with a strategic endpoint. Once

00:12:09.740 people understand that that is the choreography, rather than mask on, mask off, obviously, it's mask

00:12:14.540 off, I should just stress, but that's just a tweet, right? Once they understand that, they can start to

00:12:20.940 implement. We've done the thinking, they fed their parts in, they fed us intelligence across the

00:12:25.680 country, because the country is very big. So the regional, the regional character of the exit is

00:12:30.040 very important. We have to trust that they will execute. And I see in bits now, that they are co-opting

00:12:38.700 or directly using our, our elements, even though many of the systems collapses require really heroic

00:12:45.900 energy in a number of areas, because of the depth of the collapse. So that we're talking really

00:12:50.980 national leadership, provincial leadership, coordination amongst the leaderships. And

00:12:56.580 I hope that that happens. I'm certainly browbeating them quietly behind the scenes. And we've fed this

00:13:02.520 to all the medical office of health and deputy ministers and different political parties. But it is,

00:13:07.740 it remains a paradox of the time that we need better leadership for the times. It's not obvious

00:13:15.980 that Canada will survive 10 years out. It's just not obvious. We really have to up our game. Most

00:13:22.360 countries, given the performance of the last two years, would not have a tomorrow. And we see this

00:13:28.400 around the world, different countries are in difficult straits. And we maybe have been forgiven by

00:13:34.640 history. Maybe we do have a tomorrow. But God forbid, we should repeat this performance in the next

00:13:40.260 calamity, because it will be more, more dire. This was not a world historical pandemic on the mortality

00:13:46.580 count. I'm sorry to say it was not. It was a pandemic. It was global. We survived it as a country won't

00:13:54.940 survive the next one. We won't survive the next war, the next international conflicts, we have to up our game

00:14:00.240 and understand that we have to draw the right conclusions, right? No feeling sorry for ourselves.

00:14:06.560 And so the exit is to prepare for tomorrow. And that is certainly part of our thinking in the

00:14:11.100 choreography. Okay, well, I have two questions that come from that. I'm not sure which to ask for. So

00:14:15.300 I'll ask you them both. And then you can you can decide which one goes first. So number one, you said

00:14:20.020 that Canada almost collapsed, and we might not survive. We're lucky to survive 10 years from now. So

00:14:26.360 so what is the threat? What what might happen? Or what could have happened? You're talking about

00:14:29.780 from a perspective of national unity of separatist movements of vulnerability from

00:14:33.800 foreign attacks. Can you describe what you mean by the risk, the existential threat to Canada?

00:14:40.340 And then the second thing is, you said that we have to make sure that governments can't do this

00:14:45.720 again. So how can we guarantee how can we protect our citizens? How can we ensure that future

00:14:49.840 governments don't give themselves this power to act in a way to just declare an emergency to say

00:14:54.920 something's a bigger threat than it actually is, and be able to go through and destroy our

00:14:59.580 institutions like that in the future? Let me start with the latter question is a great question. The

00:15:03.960 latter question is more difficult to understand and to to to guarantee we can't guarantee that we'll

00:15:10.860 have the right leadership for the right for for the next calamity, although I suspect that becoming

00:15:15.420 calamities will be much more pressure for pressure full for for for Canada externally and domestically

00:15:23.100 than this one. We overreacted or underreacted, right? Leadership in many cases in leading leading

00:15:29.840 provinces pretended that they were just one of us rather than leading. When there were closures,

00:15:35.860 whether the closure were right or not, government took all the energy out of the society and didn't

00:15:39.940 compensate for the energy, right? All of these things are lessons that a society that is serious

00:15:46.140 about non repetition of catastrophe draws. If we move on in 2022 and pretend the last two years don't

00:15:54.100 exist. And by the way, I worry about that greatly, because in the language I hear, I hear that

00:15:59.380 things are back to normal, like nothing ever happened. Whereas a serious society, one that loses a war,

00:16:08.420 or almost loses a war, or that created or committed grave mistakes of public policy administration does

00:16:16.080 huge introspection, not self-flagellation, not sentimentality. What did we do wrong? And what

00:16:22.180 must we never repeat? And that's part of our work. Although we're not there to punish or do

00:16:29.100 accountability, that will come in time, right? I've taken notes, but we need to exit in order to

00:16:37.060 create that intellectual space to draw conclusions. And hopefully the next set of leaders will draw

00:16:41.800 that. We need a higher set of leaders across the professions, because that goes to your first

00:16:46.080 question, the circumstances around the bend will be wicked for our country. First of all, the world

00:16:50.500 is coming out of its most serious catastrophe since the Cold War, maybe since the end of the Second

00:16:58.200 World War. Huge economic drop, social conflict, collapse in a number of public administration

00:17:05.640 systems in major countries, destitching of global structures. And we're the second largest country

00:17:12.520 in the world. So we can collapse, because history suggests, as I've calculated, that countries last

00:17:19.700 about 60 years. Countries last about 60 years after which they collapse either through constitutional

00:17:25.320 domestic collapse or war. We're going on 153, 154 years plus. Means every year on top of that is good 1.00

00:17:36.980 luck and work, hard work. And we see many, it's very tragically around the world, many countries that are

00:17:43.020 on the verge of collapse, disintegration, or fighting for their lives. Some in war, some through COVID

00:17:50.140 collapse through domestic circumstances. And that is not foreign to the Canadian future.

00:17:57.740 We just imagine it. So the pandemic should bring to roost the idea that Canada is just as real as the

00:18:03.940 other countries. We're not exceptional. We've had exceptional good luck. We come out of the pandemic

00:18:09.120 with four major domestic pressures, any of which on its own could tear the country apart. The Quebec

00:18:15.620 question is still alive, whatever people realize structurally. If Quebec should ever go for whatever

00:18:20.540 reason, there's no rest of Canada, the country disintegrates. The Western question is very, very

00:18:25.680 sharp. It is much sharper than before the pandemic and is not understood by the rest of Canada.

00:18:31.900 The Indigenous question is massive, and it has centrifugal pressures across the country that could 0.99

00:18:38.480 make it impossible for the country to be properly governed, even as we imagine ourselves as being a

00:18:43.760 national reconciliation, to which I'm sympathetic. And then finally, we've created borders from

00:18:50.320 jurisdiction to jurisdiction, province to province, province to territory, territory to territory,

00:18:56.300 territory to territory, city to city, that have disunified a structure that took over a century

00:19:02.680 and a half to make cohesive. So there are real, both physical borders, and also regulatory borders

00:19:09.340 that have been created through COVID restrictions, COVID borders, COVID thinking, COVID mental

00:19:15.680 structures that need to be unwound with great pace. And that's in the national exit plan as well.

00:19:22.840 Within the next couple of months, we need to bury all of those borders. It needs to be reunification of

00:19:27.980 the national economic, social, and political space. That takes work though, however. If not, these borders

00:19:34.060 become sticky. And at any point in time, New Brunswick can say, you guys aren't New Brunswickers,

00:19:39.340 not welcome here. Or same with Alberta, same with Northwest Territories. And that's completely

00:19:45.820 contrary to the original ethic of federalism, of confederation. We create a unity across the

00:19:51.560 second largest country in the world. Now internationally, it's even more wicked because

00:19:56.020 as I described the post-pandemic world, Canada now has four major borders, all of them populated by

00:20:06.060 great powers. And we're not one of them. We imagine everything is America, the A-axis. 0.95

00:20:11.580 But we're close to China. You're from Vancouver. Colleagues from Vancouver, Victoria, and Whitehorse

00:20:18.920 up north will appreciate that they're closer to Beijing than our Brisbane, Australia, Canberra,

00:20:24.180 and Sydney, geographically. China is the major country of the post-pandemic world. Whatever

00:20:29.940 people think about China, it's just an objective fact. And we're close to them. So China is our western

00:20:34.480 border. Russia is our Arctic border. Russia is at war with Ukraine. But that means we're immediate 0.81

00:20:42.340 neighbors with a country that is at full-on war, with final E-axis to our east. So ACRE,

00:20:49.820 that's our rectangle, ACRE. America, China, Russia, Europe. At any point in time, these borders could

00:20:56.220 crush us or pull us apart. And if one does the math, it's 15 combinations of push and pull that could

00:21:02.840 disintegrate us as fast as any of the countries that are in trouble today are being pressured. And

00:21:08.960 that could happen on any given Wednesday. That's such an incredible way of thinking about Canada

00:21:15.260 and looking at the situation. Irvin, I don't think that many people keep it at the front of mind that

00:21:20.660 we're so close to Russia, that we're so close to China in the way you describe. And I know you have a

00:21:26.020 whole book on this topic, and I'm going to get you to come back and we can really dive into the

00:21:31.320 strategic importance that Canada plays in the world and how we can really grow to our full

00:21:35.760 potential. So we're going to save that topic for the next interview. But I do want to ask you while

00:21:39.700 we're on this topic of disintegration, and you mentioned how we are on the border with two

00:21:45.840 countries at war. I have to ask you while you're here, you've lectured and taught in both cities,

00:21:51.380 you're very familiar with the sort of underlying issues of the conflict. So can you sort of give us

00:21:57.680 an idea of what do you think Canada can do in this conflict to be a force for good in resolving or

00:22:06.160 helping to mitigate or helping to end this conflict between Russia and Ukraine?

00:22:11.120 Actually, at the outset, it's a painful conflict to behold and watch. It would have been unthinkable

00:22:21.060 10 years ago. But professionally speaking, I've been writing about these tectonic plates of conflict

00:22:30.020 for the last several years. So it's not completely unanticipated. All of the scale is horrendous and

00:22:37.540 inappropriate. There are two questions that are implicit in your one question. Canada is forced for

00:22:44.900 good. Let's park that for a second, because my own thinking, and it's in the book, and it's also part

00:22:51.140 of my own professional work is first, Canada must think for itself, and about itself. Nobody owes

00:22:56.740 Canada anything. There's nobody around the world. And there are too few people in Canada saying,

00:23:01.460 what does Canada need? How does Canada survive? And no country has a suicide pact, meaning that no

00:23:07.820 country must do anything for any other country at its own expense, that we will help the world,

00:23:13.520 but we will crumble while we're at it. My thinking is the reverse, is that if Canada thinks for itself

00:23:19.760 at the right level, we can, by extension, be a great force for good for humanity, which is,

00:23:26.480 of course, in historical terms, the better condition. We're all human. But our vehicle for the goodness is

00:23:33.680 a Canada that thinks for itself, a strong, big Canada that survives. So let's take them on in sequence.

00:23:43.520 Canada thinking for itself, vis-a-vis Russia, first and foremost, must understand our basic geography.

00:23:50.720 And I commend to all your distinguished listeners, as I do to my son, every second day, look at the map,

00:23:58.000 look at our geography. The Arctic is opening up. Everybody should go visit the Arctic, especially our

00:24:06.320 young. And then you will see that there are two Arctic giants this century. One is Russia, which

00:24:14.240 controls over 50% of the Arctic space. And one is Canada. The second is Canada, which controls

00:24:20.240 over 25% of the Arctic space. So the two giants, the United States, the European countries are far

00:24:26.640 behind. So what are we going to do? Our posture could be directly confrontational with Russia.

00:24:33.440 Russia. And I understand that at the moment, it is such, right? And we owe ourselves the imperative 0.98

00:24:41.760 of defense. But for the remainder of the century, the more intelligent posture is that of embedding

00:24:50.640 these major countries at our borders, Russia, China to the West, but also increasingly, to some extent,

00:24:58.080 with the Northern interest. And of course, the United States, which, by the way, I look at as

00:25:03.360 just another country in strategic terms. Not our friend, not someone who will protect us. I think

00:25:10.400 quite the reverse. In strategic terms, I look at them as just another major country that acts like

00:25:14.640 a major country. So what does a smaller country like us do with that wicked, now wicked geography?

00:25:22.720 We embed them. We embed them in a framework of peace and prosperity with defensive assets at the

00:25:28.720 plate, but not imagining, as we do by Twitter, that we're going to war with them because they

00:25:33.200 will all crush us fast, all of them. And in any combination will crush us even faster. And God

00:25:40.400 forbid they should fight war across our territory, right? Or play diplomatic or information space or

00:25:48.160 intelligence games across our territory. We need to up our game. And I guess this will be in a future

00:25:54.240 interview or in the book that I have, I've written about Canada creating the Singapore of the North that

00:25:59.360 embeds all these major countries, including Russia, including China, including the United States,

00:26:04.720 Northern European countries, in a framework whereby we're the center of an international market,

00:26:10.240 a framework connecting four continents of two billion people. That's a seven to one ratio,

00:26:17.920 I think, of the continental North American market alone. And we're at the center of that because we

00:26:22.640 constructed it. So that's a way of saying, yes, Arctic sovereignty, but Arctic sovereignty,

00:26:27.680 vis-a-vis the Russians is not building up basis, we can build a basis. But on top of that, we create 0.72

00:26:32.080 markets, we create people to people relationships, and travel and all that's coming out of this

00:26:39.200 terrible war. In respect of the war itself, I do not see it as an ancient conflict between Ukrainians

00:26:46.480 and Russians. We can talk about the history, I see it as a post Soviet conflict about territory and

00:26:54.400 borders, and critically, the legitimacy of two very young post Soviet states. I mean,

00:27:01.840 both Russia and Ukraine are old cultures and civilizations. But both of them, we forget, 0.98

00:27:08.560 are very young countries. They're just over 30 years old. And each of them across huge geography

00:27:15.120 is trying to secure legitimacy. In the Russian case, they're trying to secure legitimacy across the

00:27:20.720 biggest territory in the world with 14 land borders, three maritime borders. It is the most complex

00:27:26.400 country in the world. And it is extremely difficult to govern. I'm convinced that the Russian governors

00:27:31.120 do not even have an appreciation of what's happening in their territory. It's just too big. And they're all

00:27:35.840 in Moscow. Ukraine is also huge. It is bigger than Germany. But it has a very, very young self-government

00:27:45.440 culture. And if I may be direct, very, very weak governors. To this day, no great president has

00:27:53.040 arrived. Now, including with the greatest respect, the current president, who was a very, very good

00:27:58.560 comedian in Russian language. I would listen to him once in a while. But until the war, he was a terrible

00:28:04.480 president. And the one prior to him, even worse. And oh, he's heroic today. And appropriately so, he loves

00:28:11.920 this country. But the question is now, for a proper exit, one that serves Canada and the world and these

00:28:18.560 countries, the only exit can be one that re-legitimizes or re-legitimates both the Ukrainian

00:28:25.600 state and the Russian state side by side, both strong, both living in peace. There is no other solution.

00:28:33.840 Whatever we say on Twitter, whatever our sentimentality, every other solution will

00:28:37.920 conduce to disintegration of Ukraine first. And if Russia goes second, then it takes Ukraine with it. 0.82

00:28:45.520 Repeat. If Russia disintegrates, it takes Ukraine with it. If Russia and Ukraine disintegrate, they 0.72

00:28:51.520 take Europe with it. If Europe disintegrates, the world is in trouble. We're back in the 20th century,

00:28:57.040 and that's bad for us because they're at our border. What is the exit? There must be immediate

00:29:03.920 mediation. The mediation must come from outside of NATO and it must come outside of the Soviet space.

00:29:11.920 I've recommended Asian countries, some West Asian, some East Asian, because they're neutral 1.00

00:29:17.200 and they're respected by both Kyiv and Moscow. So Israel has stepped up. I don't know whether they

00:29:21.520 have the assets to do it. I am talking about India, China, maybe Singapore. But in a consortium,

00:29:29.840 they can help to negotiate two countries that are largely fraternal, that are fighting for different

00:29:35.520 teams, that really are warrior nations. I mean, both the Ukrainians and the Russians know how to fight.

00:29:42.080 And they will fight for a long time. And it is tragic. So Canada must push for that diplomatic

00:29:49.920 settlement. There need to be peacekeepers, in my view, in the end. I think I've recommended Indian 1.00

00:29:55.040 peacekeepers, again, third force under the UN umbrella to provide a separation of the belligerents.

00:30:03.040 In terms of the Canadian play, I think the solution, one thing that has been mooted even today about

00:30:11.520 flights for refugees to Canada, we should have done that two weeks ago if we're a serious

00:30:16.320 country. We did it with other countries. Israel is looking at that. Poland has been heroic on refugees.

00:30:22.720 We must save maximum lives. In any conflict, we save lives. And Canada has all the capacity to do

00:30:28.960 that. We're just slow. Much like in the pandemic, we were slow to mobilize. Internationally, we're even

00:30:33.760 slower. There's a couple of things on the future look of Ukraine. Obviously, it must be a sovereign

00:30:40.720 state, but it will be a neutral state if it survives. And it has to have a character that is,

00:30:47.840 and I talk about this in the book, interstitial. It must be a segue between the European Union and

00:30:53.200 the former Soviet space. It cannot be part of a hard block because otherwise these major blocks will

00:30:58.880 be fighting across this geography. Much like we wish to avoid the North American blocks and Chinese 1.00

00:31:04.960 blocks and Soviet blocks, post-Soviet blocks fighting across a weakly governed Canadian territory,

00:31:11.120 which will, again, tear us apart.

00:31:14.080 Oh, wow. I mean, there's so much there. And I really appreciate you breaking it down for us. I

00:31:18.640 completely agree. Ukraine has always sort of been a buffer zone. And even the population itself is a 0.89

00:31:22.880 mix of Ukrainians and Russians. And for a long, long time, they lived together in one country or one

00:31:29.680 empire. And so it's such a shame to see them break out. But I really appreciate your time,

00:31:35.920 Irvin. You're clear thinking on this. I hope that world leaders will take the advice both on COVID

00:31:41.760 and the geopolitics in Europe and the importance of coming to a resolution sooner rather than later.

00:31:48.960 So thank you for all your wisdom. And we'll certainly have you on again to talk

00:31:52.800 about building up Canada and the potential that we have here in our country.

00:31:57.520 My great pleasure.

00:31:58.640 All right. That's Irvin Studen. I'm Candice Malcolm. This is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:32:05.920 Thanks.

00:32:09.680 Yeah.

The Candice Malcolm Show - March 21, 2022

Canada collapsed during Covid. Here’s how we fix it. (Ft. Irvin Studin)

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