Daniel Boardman and Spencer Fernando join me to talk about foreign policy, the most underrated area of Canadian politics, and why it's one of the most underappreciated areas of the country's political system. We talk about the India trip, the Calista movement, and more.
00:00:00.000Well, this has been a very interesting week. I remember when I first invited Spencer Fernando on to come and talk about foreign policy just a few days ago that I thought it was going to be a boring episode, not boring, but, you know, like very like focused episode talking about Justin Trudeau's attitudes and behavior on the world stage because of the India trip.
00:00:18.800But then when he got home, he absolutely shredded his own credibility and made the show far more interesting by randomly accusing the Indian government of potentially assassinating a Kalistani activist in Surrey, B.C.
00:00:32.860So I guess I have to thank Justin Trudeau for helping out the podcast.
00:00:36.820But it's great today to have both Daniel Boardman, another TNT contributor on this show, as well as Spencer Fernando guesting to talk about foreign policy, the most underrated area of Canadian politics.
00:00:49.300I don't think enough people talk about. But before we get into some of the issues this week, I just wanted to maybe give Spencer the opportunity to introduce himself.
00:00:57.240You know what you know, what's your website? What do you do? Maybe a little bit of your background.
00:01:01.220Yeah, well, I have a website, spencerfernando.com. I also write for the National Citizens Coalition and I used to be involved in party politics.
00:01:09.980You know, I got involved in a few different political parties. I was relatively outspoken, which unless you're right at the top of political parties, they tend to not be big fans of.
00:01:17.820So I got myself into trouble a few times. Then I thought, well, I may as well try to make a career out of, you know, sharing my opinions as opposed to getting fired for them.
00:01:25.140So I did that and it's worked out, you know, decently well. You're right.
00:01:29.040Well, you're you're you're just like me then, because I got fired from the post millennial for sharing my opinions in a way that was slightly better than a different than a different employee there.
00:01:39.060I can say whatever I want. The ownership is now changed to human events. So whatever.
00:01:43.700Oh, and then I just want to quickly like introduce Daniel, because Daniel has been on fire the last couple of days when it comes to Indian media,
00:01:50.800because since Justin Trudeau randomly decided to whack Modi in the nose and sort of, I guess, accuse like India of infiltrating Canada and just killing people because of like because like Daniel actually knows a thing or two about Indian politics and this Calistani movement.
00:02:09.420He's been invited on pretty much every single Indian news show over the past couple of days and basically become India's Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro at the same time.
00:02:18.860Anyways. Yeah. Maybe you want to introduce yourself, Daniel, because I haven't been uploading as many videos from you on the channel.
00:02:24.300Well, yes. Returning champion. Welcome back. I am currently going viral in India. My phone is buzzing in my pocket the last 48 hours.
00:02:30.660Yeah. I've been I've been rambling about a lot of things, but I've been yelling to avoid in the Calistani issue for years now.
00:02:38.320No one seemed to care. You know, I I kind of went viral the first time in India back in the Article 370 thing before the pandemic.
00:02:45.460So this isn't my first foray into, you know, Indian politics getting yelled at by Pakistan and the like.
00:02:52.020But I just like, you know, I made some tweets. They did well. And I just like woke up the one like yesterday morning pretty frustrated with how stupid this whole thing is.
00:03:00.200Like this is the worst foreign policy mistake. Like I've seen I said since 2015, the Iran deal is just ridiculous.
00:03:06.580But this is the second worst thing I've ever seen. And I just like grabbed a coffee and I was just like 15 minutes like, all right.
00:03:11.100And then like that went viral in India. It has a million views. And then like I got on all these Indian like spaces and TV shows.
00:03:19.520And then like I went on with like the Rachel Maddow of India. Apparently the first Indian TV interview I get is like with the most far left guy.
00:03:26.520I didn't know him. He didn't know me. He just brings me on. And then like, oh, he's from Canada.
00:03:30.740And I just like went hard and they're like, oh, strong words, commercial break.
00:03:35.100But then like that went viral. He's like everyone was like, it's like, you know, if someone came on the CBC and like an Indian guy just came on the CBC and like told Rosemary Barden, like, you know, what's India like?
00:03:45.480Like we hate Trudeau. We hate like me. And just like went super bass. And like Rosemary Barden was like deer in headlights.
00:03:50.300That was like the Indian version of what happened. So that's been my life.
00:03:53.720And I've been just ranting about Trudeau and trying to explain how silly Canada is to a billion people.
00:04:00.420And they're loving it or terrified. I'm not sure. Some of them like it.
00:04:03.580Some of them are more terrified. But needless to say, Canada's not in a good geopolitical situation and we can get we can get into that and and all that.
00:04:11.520But that that's my my origin story of the week is, yeah, I just I have producers of like every Indian TV show being like, this is the one white guy who knows what a calisthenia is.
00:04:21.260Let's let's bring him on. Yeah, I only I only know about it from being from being a proxy to you and then having you.
00:04:28.360It'd be one of the people on the phone who will listen when I be like, the calisthenia is this and they made a video trying to kill everyone.
00:04:33.540And why will no one take it down? Yeah, that was that's that's how I learned about the calisthenia is me just ranting about the videos they're making and why are we allowing this?
00:04:41.040So, yeah. Well, anyways, the reason I want to have Spencer on today, I want to kind of go back a little bit and start from Justin Trudeau's the initial trip at the G20,
00:04:51.860because that was kind of what the entire podcast was going to be about.
00:04:55.840But I just wanted to get your guys opinion as well as express my own opinion just about the way that Justin Trudeau has been kind of dealing with foreign policy and foreign affairs since he's taken office.
00:05:06.540Because although it's it's the it's the generic opinion to say he's silly, he's frivolous, he goes to he goes to India in 2018 and dresses up like a goof and then makes him like Canada look foolish.
00:05:17.680But a lot of people just don't understand the kind of very ideological, like the very ideological, I guess, approach Justin Trudeau actually has to foreign policy.
00:05:29.620He's not a frivolous person. He actually has a specific ideological love for underdog groups in a certain sense.
00:05:37.160So that's where I feel like he'll just bring just Paul Atwal to India and not think it's a second about it because he just thinks that the Sikhs must.
00:05:44.860You're right. I think this needs further explanation. For those who don't remember Jasper Atwal, this is the terrorist that Trudeau invited to India in 2018.
00:05:53.380This terrorist was convicted in a Canadian court of trying to assassinate an Indian political official who's convicted in our court system.
00:06:01.340And we invited him to India. So if you understand why the Indians were talking about the threat of government enabling a Calistani extremism,
00:06:08.040remember, if you think that's, oh, them just being right wing blustering, like, no, we literally invited a convicted Calistani extremist who tried to kill one of their officials on an official visit.
00:06:17.700He tried to kill one of our own officials, too. He tried to kill the premier of BC because he was an Indian who was or he was anti-Calistan.
00:06:25.160Yeah. Yeah. So it just so if you understand, like, where India's frustration builds up, you know, it's this where like we're enabling in India's view,
00:06:35.260we're enabling a hostile foreign movement in the Calistani movement, which is alive and well in Canada, but not in the Punjab region, which is where it's supposed to be.
00:06:43.840So, yeah, you have this ridiculous thing. And this is where India is so mad.
00:06:48.100And then and then you layer onto that, the all the other foreign interference and then trying to get out of it.
00:06:52.240The fact that Jagmeet Singh's in the coalition, he's banned from India. He's an ideological Calistani.
00:06:56.660He's met with some extremists before. He's already concluded the investigation.
00:07:00.220Jagmeet's figured out the culprit. Jagmeet's on a plane right now with handcuffs to bring Nadir Modi to a Canadian jail.
00:07:06.180Like he's got he's got to the bottom of this. No more investigation. Jagmeet's found the culprit.
00:07:09.940It's the entire Indian government. He's coming for you.
00:07:11.820So, yeah, I just want to I just want to jump over to you, Spencer.
00:07:15.840What would you say is maybe the kind of ideological frame that Justin Trudeau has when it comes to foreign policy?
00:07:22.700Or what is his kind of greatest weakness at the moment?
00:07:26.620In the sense, I don't think we could really point to any strengths other than trying to, I guess, make make Panda more friendly with people we shouldn't be friendly with.
00:07:34.440Yeah, well, I think the the big weakness in terms of the effect on the country is that he's somewhat anti-Western in his outlook and he leads a Western country.
00:07:46.420Right. So he leads a country that is, you know, should have values in common with the United States, with the United Kingdom, Australia, the Anglosphere.
00:07:54.720But he he doesn't see that as a good thing.
00:07:57.400You know, he thinks Canada is a genocidal colonial estate.
00:08:00.280He said that he accused the country of committing an ongoing genocide while he was in power, which he think would make him someone who's committed crimes.
00:08:07.480He called to crimes humanity publicly.
00:08:09.580Yeah. So he's basically accusing himself of being in charge of a genocidal state.
00:08:14.140And so, you know, as you say, he's a fan of underdog groups.
00:08:16.920But of course, his view of underdog is, you know, the Chinese Communist Party, which is the biggest political organization on Earth, a massive, ruthless, oppressive government.
00:08:24.740And so he has this this kind of problem where strategically he obviously needs to govern Canada in a way that keeps us close to the United States, close to our traditional allies.
00:08:33.400But that's not really where his heart and his mind is.
00:08:36.060And so you see this tension where, you know, I'm not a big fan of Chrystia Freeland, but you get the sense that she's at least kind of pro-American, right?
00:08:43.460She's a pro-American Democrat and somewhat reasonable in terms of her views.
00:08:48.080Trudeau's very he's not at all like that.
00:08:50.160Right. So there's a tension within the Liberal Party and the government itself.
00:08:53.360And again, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it.
00:08:54.820But you look at how quickly he was willing to jump on India.
00:08:57.920You know, the second he had anything he thought he could talk about, whom he makes says in a parliament makes it a huge international issue.
00:09:03.420Well, what about the the two Chinese nationals kicked out of the microbiology lab?
00:09:08.220How come we haven't heard anything about that?
00:09:11.300He doesn't want to talk about China at all.
00:09:12.900So I think people are noticing the discrepancy between how he handles, you know, Chinese foreign interference and then India.
00:09:20.260And maybe this is a good question for both of you to jump back and forth on.
00:09:24.060What do you think is more is more heavily motivating Justin Trudeau right now when it comes to his approach to just foreign policy and especially now this India issue?
00:09:33.800Is it political motives, domestic political motives, or is it just purely we're just seeing how how he would like to interact on the world stage of sort of picking winners and losers based on ideological favor and whatnot, not actual, you know, long term, you know, alliances and demonstrations that you're an actual good ally?
00:09:55.300Yeah, I mean, so I mean, I've tried to answer this question all day, everyone asked this, like, explain Justin Trudeau's decision making, essentially, you can't, you cannot explain Justin Trudeau's decision making here.
00:10:08.320There is no rhyme or reason to be doing what he's doing.
00:10:43.500When we accuse India of being a threat to Western democracies through extrajudicial assassinations, that's a big claim.
00:10:51.900And if you want other countries to take your side and, you know, back them and force the Indians to apologize and do a thing and maintain trade deals, you need to come with some evidence.
00:11:01.480If you're going to kick an Indian diplomat out, right, remember how hard it was for us to get him to kick the Chinese diplomat out who had threatened Michael Chong's family?
00:11:08.660So before the investigation concluded, we got a diplomat coming out and we got this.
00:11:12.600So logically, the Americans and the Australians asked, why?
00:11:33.080It's like no one's going to back Canada, a country of 40 million people, against a country of a billion people based on the word of Justin Trudeau and some intelligence report when he just spent the last month attacking the intelligence agencies for trying to report on the Chinese internet.
00:11:46.400So this is industrial level gaslighting by the liberal government.
00:12:00.140One thing I was going to quickly just say before I jump back over to Spencer is that it was funny on the first day when Trudeau announced this, that there was potentially an extra judicial killing.
00:12:10.160And like India is heavily suspected, Polyev and the conservatives were willing to come out on that day and say, well, this is awful.
00:12:17.500No Canadian should ever be killed on Canadian soil, even though he apparently isn't a Canadian.
00:12:21.700But then I've seen other reports that say he apparently is.
00:12:23.980So Miller came out and said he's been a Canadian since 2007 now.
00:12:27.300OK, well, anyways, but since since yeah, like but then yesterday, Polyev felt confident enough to come back out and say, well, where is the evidence?
00:12:35.780And I guarantee if you're the opposition leader and there was evidence, you would have been shown right away.
00:12:40.740Unless like, you know, Justin Trudeau, which I don't think he's capable of, is playing 3D chess and trying to bait out Polyev into saying it's not real and then giving all the evidence.
00:13:19.120And Trudeau himself, it's interesting, he toned down his rhetoric a lot the second day or if he had a few calls with the U.S. and the U.K. or somebody.
00:13:26.500But in terms of motivation, I think part of it is that it's it's Trudeau's own ideology and that it mixes with domestic politics.
00:13:32.260Right. I mean, there's a big, obviously, voter base in Canada of Chinese Canadians, many of whom, of course, are not fans of the Chinese Communist Party, but some, of course, who are.
00:13:41.200And so Trudeau has found that he could both be pro China, which is ideologically where he wants to be, and he could get some votes from it.
00:13:48.080And same with the issue of, you know, supporting, you know, he doesn't openly support the Calistan movement, but obviously very friendly towards it with his rhetoric and what happens in the country.
00:13:57.460And so that also works because there's a lot of people in the country who support that.
00:14:01.020So you can get votes that way. So it's a bit of that going on.
00:14:03.660But I think it's also just, you know, you look at his father.
00:14:05.820His father was a big fan of Fidel Castro.
00:14:08.060His father was a big fan of the Chinese Communist Party at the most ruthless moment.
00:14:11.700I mean, he was a fan of the Chinese Communist Party when Mao was in power and killing millions of people.
00:14:16.980And so I think that's just who Trudeau is.
00:14:36.080Yeah, I think one thing that this seems to be tracking very closely to is the way that Justin
00:14:41.520Trudeau, and this is where I'm going to go back to the G20 and why I think that even sans this whole accusation of murder thing.
00:14:48.280I think that what Trudeau messed up on when he went to India at the G20 is not just his previous trip in 2018 where he brings a convicted terrorist with him.
00:14:57.240But but what he really messed up on at this G20 event was that he thought he could do the same thing he did to the Polish prime minister,
00:15:05.360as well as the Italian prime minister, George Maloney, where he went in and basically, you know, pointed his finger at them, said, you guys aren't good enough on social issues.
00:15:15.400And he was thinking that he could maybe win some points with the Canadian media and the international press by being this very loud, outspoken, progressive leader who's going to take it to all these social conservatives.
00:15:26.360So I think in India, he was going to see if he could maybe bring up this idea that the Indian government might have killed a Sikh individual in Canada and like, you know,
00:15:37.300you put his finger in Modi's chest and said, well, you guys got to do better.
00:15:40.720See, all the things I've done to you aren't nearly as bad when I've thrown this little accusation at you.
00:15:46.120So I think it's a lot of what Justin Trudeau has been doing on the international stage feels like a reactionary response to the fact that he's losing popularity and that he needs to find some sort of external enemy that he can have a fight with
00:15:59.180and maybe accuse the conservatives of not properly backing up their own country if they don't end up backing him up.
00:16:04.820But maybe now we should sort of talk a little bit about sort of who this Hardeep Singh Nijjar guy is, as well as why the Calistani movement is such a big deal in Canada.
00:16:17.040Because I think a lot of people are probably thinking, why are we talking about international politics in Canada?
00:16:25.200They're like, why are we even discussing this?
00:16:27.340And a lot of people don't quite understand about how much of a hub that Canada has become for different extremist groups, including the Calistani movement.
00:16:37.800But I think that's probably a good thing for you to end up explaining, Daniel.
00:16:44.620You know, quick background, like this all kicked up in the 1980s, if you feel politics 101, India, Pakistan, not France.
00:16:51.600So in the 80s, the Pakistanis sort of funded this Calistani movement that was, you know, doing violence all over India.
00:16:58.960Now it's like, and the point of the, when we say Calistan, the Calistanis are advocating for a separate region, Sikh state carved out from India in the Punjab region.
00:17:08.680So that's on the India-Pakistan border.
00:17:10.860In 1984, there was like Operation Blue Star, where they took these terrorists out of a, but they held up in the Sikh holy site.
00:17:47.760The judge threw out the testimonies of people who testified against the group because they didn't testify in person because they were assassinated before they could testify.
00:18:46.600It's like, I don't, like, listen, I don't know anything about him and his family or whatever.
00:18:50.480But as equally likely, let's say, as this being a clandestine assassination by the Indian government to take out this one random guy in Canada, it could be equally as likely that this could be turf war gang violence between these different rival factions in Canada.
00:19:04.600Because the Calistanis have gotten into a lot of the organized crime here because, you know, you give a bunch of extremism men things to do, and it's not...
00:19:11.480The fact that they're also involved in organized crime tends to be a good piece of evidence that the vast majority of the Sikh community does not support them financially because they don't want to get involved.
00:19:21.940So, I mean, like, there's this myth I've seen a lot, especially in India, like, oh, this vote bank politics, that's true, trying to get all the Sikhs.
00:19:29.360It's like, if you actually look at, like, Stephen Harper did an excellent job growing the Sikh base in the Conservative Party, and he did it without the Calistanis.
00:19:35.400He just went to Sikh communities, talked to them like regular human beings, gave them the conservative spiel, which is individual rights, liberty, you came for a better thing, you know, lower taxes, families, whatever.
00:19:46.380And this worked on Sikh people because it works on a lot of people, and, you know, the involvement of Sikhs in Conservative politics really took off.
00:19:53.500So you can get the Sikh vote without going to these radical goudoirs.
00:20:21.360But these are problems, and if you leave them unaddressed for decades, as we've done, well, then you start to metastasize.
00:20:29.760And then you get more Calistanis in government.
00:20:31.120And then you get Jagmeet Singh, and then you get to this thing where you have the Prime Minister of Canada, who I think Spencer's right, listening to his own political ideology.
00:20:37.060I think there's a bunch of lefties, anti-India, anti-Western people in the Liberal Party as well.
00:20:41.260I think there's some adults, but I don't think Trudeau's the only Trudeau there.
00:20:44.280And then, you know, he just starts taking potshots in India without thinking of the consequences.
00:20:49.160And now Canada's in a major diplomatic spat.
00:20:52.260We might be on the outs with our allies because we've allowed this Calistani movement to fester and grow in our country.
00:20:58.600So, yeah, it didn't really affect any non-Hindu people for 30 years or so.
00:21:05.220And this is a failure of Canadian society to address serious issues.
00:21:09.880And so this is kind of from my perspective, but it almost kind of feels like, especially when you contrast it with the way that Justin Trudeau dealt with the CCP in Canada, with all the interference issues,
00:21:22.980that it almost feels as if he's almost trying to intentionally build up China, be soft on them and be harder on India because he wants to have this kind of, I guess, like either he wants China to be more powerful than India or he wants them to basically always be stuck in a deadlock because of his maybe crazy equity kind of a mindset.
00:21:44.220And maybe, Spencer, you'd want to answer that of what do you kind of think?
00:21:47.780Do you think he's trying to undermine India or is this more of like a specific just ideological thing?
00:21:54.040Again, I know you kind of already said it's mostly ideological, but in the context of India and trade issues, it felt like it's almost intentional of Trudeau nuking a trade deal.
00:22:05.100Yeah, well, I think it's also, you know, political survival for him and the liberals.
00:22:09.960I think, you know, you have to kind of read between the lines, you know, if the liberals, they've been getting absolutely just killed on, you know,
00:22:16.580blocking the inquiry and how they're obviously afraid of talking about Chinese, you know, foreign interference.
00:22:22.380If they had an easy answer to it, they could have eased the political pressure and held themselves to the polls by just saying, OK, we're going to have an inquiry, we're going to look into it.
00:22:28.680The fact that they don't want to do that tells you that there's a lot that they know.
00:22:31.700If people look into it, they're going to look pretty terrible.
00:22:34.340But now what they can say is, oh, well, we're just having a broad look at, you know, foreign interference.
00:22:38.780It's not just a China issue. Oh, it's India. It's really a big problem.
00:22:41.740I mean, Jagmeet Singh obviously wants to do that. He already sent a letter, you know, to the person leading the inquiry saying, oh, you have to look at India as well.
00:22:49.760And so he's just they're just going to muddy the waters and say, oh, well, it's not a China specific problem.
00:22:53.600You know, every country is interfering. India is interfering. It's an equal problem.
00:22:56.800And just hope that most people, you know, Canadians will look at it and say, well, it looks like every country is trying to screw with our elections or whatever.
00:23:03.840Because, you know, they'll say, oh, look, Harper's promoting the IDU, which has become kind of the left for the left, right?
00:23:09.500The IDU apparently controls every conservative party in the world, the conspiracy for the left.
00:23:14.700But they'll just muddy the waters, try to make the issue go away.
00:23:17.500And Jagmeet Singh obviously wants to help with that.
00:23:19.980Do you think they also just want to drag out an investigation into India and they don't actually want to get to the bottom of it?
00:23:24.980And this is going to be one of those kind of boogeymen that can always be behind the scenes, because I know there's already leftist media going after Shubha Jumdar, who just entered parliament because he happens to be decently supportive of, you know, Modi's more aggressive stance on extremist groups and whatnot.
00:23:41.460Yeah, they're going to play politics with it, obviously.
00:23:43.780And they're going to I mean, it's, you know, again, I think they're very scared of the links they have with China, having that investigated.
00:23:51.640And so I think if they can make it look like it's just a big problem with every country interfering, obviously, they'll talk about Russia, the United States.
00:23:57.760I mean, I've even seen liberals saying we have to talk about foreign interference from the United States is if there's some sort of, you know, ethical or moral link between America interfering in Canada and, you know, a country like China or Russia.
00:24:10.200But yeah, they're just going to they're just going to try to muddy the waters.
00:24:12.880It's just enough for their partisans to say that it's, you know, it's not a liberal problem.
00:24:17.480And that's what they've been trying to do from the beginning.
00:24:19.300And say it's a problem because conservatives are saying this is ridiculous.
00:24:24.280So we conservatives don't take foreign interference seriously.
00:24:27.320The liberals do because they're going hard.
00:24:29.420They're Justin Trudeau's been the most stringent and proactive on foreign interference.
00:24:33.560Look, he kicked out an Indian diplomat before even reading a piece of paper.
00:24:36.600I think this is I think this is a big part of what's going on here.
00:24:40.680I just want to break it down a little bit further, because if you read and you kind of read in between the lines of what's going on,
00:24:44.620especially the travel ban or the travel advisory to India, this reeks of this was written by radical extremist ideologues in this thing.
00:24:54.620And it was and I mean all of them lefties, Islamists, communists, calisthenes, because the travel advisory to India, like unless you know kind of what's going on here,
00:25:03.000it mentions a travel advisory for Kashmir and that region, not the Punjab.
00:25:07.620So if Harjip Sinatra was assassinated by India and it's unsafe to go to Canada and because of all this violence, that would be in the Punjab region.
00:25:23.680Like so to call it like this, this shot at Kashmiri sovereignty in India, this reeks of like Hezbollah Tahrir wrote this.
00:25:29.920So it's not even the right region and the area they're harping on is like a, it just reeks of Pakistani, you know, military press release about it's now unsafe undermining their claims to catch it.
00:25:43.840So it's not even the right region, which means even the person who wrote the travel advisory doesn't know where India is on a map.
00:25:51.580But the more likely thing is they know exactly where India is on a map.
00:25:56.040They know exactly what the problems are in India and misidentified the problem regions to give further political clout to, you know, the Pakistans, Hezbollah Tahrir's, you know, and Jamaati Islamis in the Kashmir region.
00:26:10.780So you read what they're even saying and it has nothing to do with really anything we're talking about.
00:26:15.220If you understand what they're saying, like they're talking about Kashmir now, the Canadian government, just throwing shots there.
00:26:20.300Like it's so clear that there are anti-India ideologues, like hard left ideologues, whether, I don't know, whether it's communist, Islamist, CCP, Calistani, whatever it is.
00:26:31.140It's so clear that, that they have some hand in what the liberals are doing here.
00:26:35.440Because if you know anything about India or if you have a decent understanding of Indian politics, it just, it's just make, none of it makes any sense.
00:26:45.300To throw, throw something into you, uh, for you again, like, or just go back to when Romnish Sangha basically blew the whistle on how many Calistanians were literally in the cabinet of the liberal party and in caucus.
00:26:56.520And he ended up being, literally having his life threatened and couldn't walk into a Tim Hortons without bodyguard walking in and checking it out before him.
00:27:06.480He was kicked out of the liberal party.
00:27:07.960He was kicked out of the liberal party for being, he's a Sikh guy who would raise the issue of Calistanis in the Canadian government.
00:27:14.400He even claimed, you know, that high ranking liberal cabinet official of Calistani.
00:27:18.140And I know which one he's talking about, but if you talk to Romnish Sangha, like this, there were stories like, yeah, he, he would have security go in, in like Brampton and Mississauga, like GTA area would go south, suss out, like anywhere he walked in, Tim Hortons, just to make sure that it was safe for him.
00:27:56.760And this is where I kind of want to bring this to a slightly different topic.
00:27:59.920And this is actually the original reason I've been really wanting Spencer on to do a podcast with us,
00:28:04.700because I think this all comes back to the idea that foreign policy does matter.
00:28:09.320And that by just sort of ignoring foreign policy and foreign affairs and thinking that everything outside of your own country is not your issue and just sort of locked down, don't really get, don't really care what's going on.
00:28:19.500You're, and you're going to end up hitting a lot of these land binds that Justin Trudeau is now running into because being ideological and being consistent with yourself is not always actually going to mesh with the rest of the world.
00:28:30.520Canada should always, of course, enforce its own interests.
00:28:32.780But right now you cannot just play ideological games on the world stage and you also can't ignore, you can also kind of ignore the world either.
00:28:40.960And so this is also something that's been really taking over the, both the populist left and populist, right?
00:28:45.600The idea that Canada shouldn't have anything to do with any other foreign country and that we can just sort of do our own thing.
00:28:51.980And that it's somehow a violation of, you know, Canada's interests to even discuss or support allies.
00:28:58.620And I think that we are now seeing that when you do not respect allies like India, you could have massive economic, like massive economic sort of like issues there because of trade deals being killed and then having to rely more heavily on China, which is, of course, a threat to our national security.
00:29:13.980But maybe if I can, you know, put this into a frame of a question like, Spencer, what do you think has been kind of the more toxic development in foreign policy?
00:29:25.560Has it been more of the kind of ideological leftism, internationalism, or has it been more of kind of like populist isolationism?
00:29:33.200Well, I mean, both have had their drawbacks, but I think isolationism has become the real problem.
00:29:39.100I mean, when you have, you have people who, unfortunately, are almost unable to, you know, see any nuance and issues, right?
00:29:46.380You know, is it a problem that, you know, the U.S. countries like Canada de-industrialized and shipped so much production manufacturing to China?
00:29:55.120Does that mean that we should have nothing to do with any other country and just let authoritarian states run rampant and do whatever they want?
00:30:00.300Obviously not, right? But that's a nuance that's lost, unfortunately, on a lot of people.
00:30:04.280And, you know, there's this weird, it's not just in Canada.
00:30:08.960But, you know, people, they're so almost insulated from the world or feel they're so insulated from the world that they think that whatever is happening has something to do completely with them or that they can just exempt themselves from it, right?
00:30:21.400So I see a lot of people be like, oh, well, you know, Russia, what Russia wants to do has nothing to do with me.
00:30:26.200You know, I don't want war. War's got nothing to do with me.
00:30:28.840It's like, well, that's not how the world works.
00:30:31.500You know, if an authoritarian state wants war, then you have war whether you want it or not.
00:30:35.080You know, I'm just going to opt out of this.
00:30:47.660And so it's just, it's this kind of attitude.
00:30:50.020And it's, I think some of it is a bit of a fear response, too.
00:30:52.840I think people think that if they somehow rhetorically ally with the scariest countries like China and Russia, that somehow they'll be saved from it, right?
00:31:00.280You see that with on the left and the right, you know, the people who are very pro-Russia or pro-China as if you think that's going to save you.
00:31:07.080You think, you know, Putin talks about how much he wants the West to fall, how much he hates the West.
00:31:11.160Russian officials are always saying how much he hates the West.
00:31:13.500Do the people who support him in Canada and the States think that he's going to exempt them from the supposed destruction of the West he wants to bring about?
00:31:41.300Oh, how come you guys don't have great social programs?
00:31:43.440Well, maybe because they're spending $800 billion a year on the military, much of which they have to spend because their allies don't choose to spend an equivalent amount as a percentage of U.D.
00:31:51.760But heavy air quotes around great social programs.
00:32:21.620And people have this, people almost take their, and it's not even like a Canadian context kind of a thing, because if you took the Canadian political context into account, you might have more nuanced take on it.
00:32:32.020But people apply foreign policy to like a Republican versus Democrat in the U.S. kind of a battle.
00:32:38.340This is the thing that me and Daniel have even gotten, and of course you have, because I always watch your Twitter feed, Spencer, that you always get flack for saying like, hey, I think Vladimir Zelensky is kind of a clown.
00:32:49.780I think he needs to put a suit back on.
00:32:51.520I think he needs to stop basically asking for money without actual goals to what they're going to achieve in Ukraine.
00:32:57.220Also, I don't support Russia, because Russia is an awful authoritarian state.
00:33:00.580It's not a trad Western state where everyone's, where everyone's thin reading the Bible and, you know, getting married at 25 and having 10 kids.
00:33:09.120It's a country where they stopped tracking alcoholism rates because it kept getting worse.
00:33:13.200That's not, it's not a fantastic place to live.
00:33:15.400But you get people who think that because I have issues with Ukraine, because I don't, and maybe they're getting too much money, maybe I don't like the military goals, maybe that they should be finding an off ramp to make peace in the region because they can't fight this war for 10 years because it's just not going to end in anything positive.
00:33:31.000That if you think that any of those thoughts, well, then you must think that somehow Putin's secretly the good guy.
00:33:37.240And this is always the thing that drives me up the wall whenever you end up talking about foreign policy.
00:33:41.960Because the funny thing, and I think you guys will agree, is the same sort of very populist right person or the person who's every populist in the Green Party, because, you know, don't, don't be fooled.
00:33:52.760The Green Party is actually very supportive of Russia when you actually talk to them individually.
00:33:56.780That Justin Trudeau's approach to foreign policy is actually the populist rights approach to foreign policy in slightly inversed, in the sense that instead of being pro-Russia or being kind of thinking that maybe Russia's secretly in the right, maybe they've been bullied.
00:34:13.680Justin Trudeau is the same guy thinking maybe China's been bullied by the United States and India and maybe we need to be doing some things to prop them up.
00:34:21.220It's incredibly low IQ ways of thinking about foreign policy.
00:34:25.880And this is why I think that needs to be way more education around the issue where people don't just say, you know, neocon, warmonger every single time.
00:35:08.320And then all of a sudden they take position A.
00:35:10.260So you're going to take position B, right, just to oppose them.
00:35:13.560And then it goes on the same thing, right?
00:35:14.760When Donald Trump was president and he supported or he said that murdering innocent Iranians was bad, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer stood up to him and said, no, we're not going to condemn the IRGC for openly admitting to murdering innocent civilians.