David Knight-Legg is a strategic advisor to the Alberta Government, Energy and Financial Services firms, and is no stranger to The Western Standard. He's also a regular contributor to CBC Radio and the Globe and Mail.
00:02:12.000Like there's a series of things that I think we aspire to as a nation, which are good things.
00:02:16.940And what I sense is that the nation wants to move out of the malaise and the decline of the last decade that they feel and see every day. And I think they are also frustrated by feeling like we're under the thumb of the United States as it goes through a more assertive positioning on defense, energy security and trade security.
00:02:37.460And I think that the government has has sort of fueled, you know, sadly, I think a sense of insecurity in people that is now being tapped when you're asked, do you want to be part of the European Union?
00:02:50.820Do you want to be part of look, if you ask people, do you want to be part of the largest free trade corridor in the planet with the lowest taxes?
00:02:57.020I think the vast majority would say yes. All of these things have costs. And I prefer and I think our natural geography, history, legal system, economy, politics, structure, culture, educational backgrounds, integration of military and logistical assets.
00:03:17.820There's only one country we have to be integrated with. There's only one country we can be integrated with in any functional way.
00:03:23.000the United States. The problem is you need a philosophy of governance and you need a philosophy
00:03:27.760of personal and cultural identity as a nation and as citizens that will lead to a sense that that
00:03:34.160can be done on positive, healthy, you know, peer-to-peer terms. And I think that the dialogue
00:03:40.980needs to be raised on that front. And I think, you know, President Trump has thrown down the
00:03:47.580gauntlet in ways that have turned off Canadians. And I think the reaction has been one that I
00:03:52.020to have disagreed with. And frankly, one that I see changing now, I thought Mark Carney's speech
00:03:56.680to the Economic Club of New York and his interview with Nader Moussavizadeh there was a smart change.
00:04:06.320I thought Mark Carney's recent comments on the Iran war just today out of the G7 meeting in
00:04:12.380France were a welcome change. I think that the prime minister's office is getting a smarter team
00:04:19.280together and i think they're doing a better job of defending canadian interests in in bringing us
00:04:24.160to a place where hopefully we can achieve a much better economic and energy security and military
00:04:28.760deal with the americans well let's hope that's the case he certainly has paid a tremendous amount
00:04:33.720amount of attention to europe in the um in the 15 months he's been in office he's been there nine
00:04:39.740times he's been to great britain a couple of times and as you mentioned he was just there in france
00:05:35.440Is this actually a smart place for Canada to be anyway?
00:05:38.260Look, I think there are places and ways that we do deals with everyone in the world. I think there are places and ways we do deals with China without wanting to be like China. I think we do deals with Europe where it benefits Canadians.0.92
00:05:53.040I think that the problem with the prime minister's trips to Europe is not that Europe isn't an important partner or set of partners. It's that it's disproportionate to the biggest economic opportunity, which is, you know, if you look at the numbers, depending on how you count them, between sort of 77 and 80 percent of, and sometimes it's up and down a little bit,
00:06:21.760But marginally, 80% of all of our trade is with the United States.
00:06:25.800The next largest trading partner we have is China, and that's 4.5%.
00:07:12.860and it's very clear where Canada can fit into that agenda.
00:07:15.700And there are a dozen things that we can do positively and constructively to prepare for a game-changing generational opportunity for a freer trade relationship with the United States.
00:07:27.380So I don't begrudge the prime minister making the choices that he and his team make of where he spends his time.
00:07:32.740I think the most important thing is, what is the strategy for building the best generational opportunity for economic progress in Canada's history with the Americans?
00:07:42.560And, you know, I, as you know, I live in DC part of the time, the reputation of the Canadians there is very poor. I think it will improve under Ambassador Wiseman and under the person they brought in now to do the, to do the, you know, some of the negotiation strategy, but we're late to the game, very late to the game.
00:08:00.540The Mexicans have been at it. They have big teams in multiple places. They're working very hard.
00:08:06.460The Canadians have been known for being missing in action. And that sort of gossip in D.C. is
00:08:11.680also reflected in conversations that you see in editorial pages as well. So I think the biggest
00:08:19.140thing, Nigel, is not whether or not the prime minister loves and wants to be in Europe and
00:08:23.640have good conversations with the Europeans about a variety of things. I just think that it
00:08:28.000represents the potential for there to be a disproportionate focus on a place uh that happens
00:08:33.940to have most of the countries are poorer than the poorest state mississippi canada is as poor as the
00:08:39.040poorest state mississippi if you take alberta out of the equation right like we have a fundamental
00:08:44.200problem of a welfare state uh society that's built itself up for 20 years on deep deeper and deeper
00:08:53.000debt commitments and just unparalleled immigration levels, offering people benefits that have become
00:09:04.000so attractive that there's deep amounts of fraud connected to the benefits process. You see this
00:09:08.400in Canada, you see it in the UK, you see it in Italy, you see it in France, Germany, Holland,
00:09:12.460Sweden. Sweden is now starting to reverse it. But I think that the prime minister and his team have
00:09:18.300got to focus on the most important game. And the most important game is what is going to happen to
00:09:22.800the world's largest integrated economy of canada in the united states and how will that be
00:09:26.860prosecuted over the next sort of several months and nothing that we do in europe is going to make
00:09:33.760a difference uh to this economy of any substance at all nothing so we had a and during the harbor
00:09:40.540era we've signed a free trade agreement with the european union and you know the terms were good
00:09:46.800and i don't see that it is that in itself has made much difference either no it's okay these
00:09:52.400things are all good. There's nothing wrong with them. And, you know, you don't want to get snarky
00:09:56.100about good accomplishments by people that are trying to make the country work. And I think
00:10:00.840when you get a win, you take a win. You know, if there are plausible ways for Canada to be
00:10:06.220integrated in a variety of ways with Europeans. I think the most important integration, you know,
00:10:10.620there are five or six things that I think are obvious. One of them obviously would be Canada
00:10:15.780should become a member of AUKUS, the Australian-UK-U.S. Submarine Warfare Integrated Strategy.
00:10:23.140We have the largest coastline. We have the one that's most exposed to both China and Russia.
00:10:28.860We have said that we're going to make an increasing commitment to a defense strategy
00:10:32.940and funding of it. And yet we sit on the outside of something that's got the three most important
00:10:40.120members of the Five Eyes, and we're missing an action with the largest coastline. It makes no
00:10:44.000sense at all we are having conversations about you know gripping jets which is fine those are1.00
00:10:50.000good patrol jets but they are easily taken out of the sky by the fifth generation chinese and0.67
00:10:55.380russian fighters that would be the ones that our pilots would be facing uh in in an air-to-air
00:11:00.500combat scenario so the question is what why are these conversations happening uh about
00:11:06.540moving away from an already existing f-35 commitment instead of saying in addition to
00:11:12.500F-35 commitment, we may have a series of patrol jets. In the UAE, they have a few different sets
00:11:19.100of military equipment suppliers that are interoperable with the states that they have to
00:11:25.760have aligned interests with. That makes a lot of sense. Canada can do these things,
00:11:30.880but somehow the temptation to have an anti-American wrapper or veneer on some of
00:11:37.020these conversations has become really problematic because it's conveyed a deep sort of cultural
00:11:42.040political and economic insecurity that i think it dominates on the left in canada and it's created
00:11:47.940an antagonism that that generates votes uh because uh you know president trump is a very divisive
00:11:54.780figure so it works quote unquote politically but when you're creating a strategy a generational
00:12:00.900strategy for a country you can't reduce that strategy to the optics or pr elements of an
00:12:08.120anti-Trump dynamic in your base well let's just let's just say david that uh like i think i agree
00:12:14.880with you 100 here but clearly there is a sentiment in canada especially in eastern canada you don't
00:12:20.740find it out west so much which they they don't they don't understand the big picture all they
00:12:26.820know is that uh they don't like trump very much in fact they really despise him in many cases
00:12:32.380And Mr. Carney can hold on to his base by simply echoing that point of view.0.99
00:12:39.280So it could be a cynical, stupid little exercise in Canadian politics.0.99
00:12:46.200The other is, and I think you may have an observation on this,
00:12:50.520that Mr. Carney actually feels intellectually more at home among European leaders.
00:12:58.160And so he's got this default to lean in that direction.
00:13:01.660The problem is between the, you know, the pulling of the eastern base that doesn't like Trump and the pushing of Mr. Carney's own intellectual preferences, we're ending up going down a wrong path and ignoring the main game, which I think is what you're saying.
00:13:18.560But do you want to just sort of go into, does Mr. Carney actually feel happier talking to macro?
00:13:23.380look i think i draw a distinction um first first of all i you know you have to be careful i think
00:13:32.600especially when you're i'm a conservative and obviously prime minister carney is the liberal
00:13:36.460and so it's easy to sort of uh for me to sit back and and have a perspective that is obviously
00:13:43.160politically oppositional to his perspective uh but i think the more important question
00:13:48.740would be if Prime Minister Carney said, David, I want you on the team helping do a trade deal
00:13:54.500for Canada because, you know, I'm going to be in office for another few years until you guys get
00:14:01.980better at your own messaging and PR in the conservative side. And President Trump is
00:14:08.380only going to be in office for a short period of time. And, you know, we are going to be
00:14:16.620negotiating a trade deal that has the potential to completely change the dynamics of a generation
00:14:23.640in terms of a more open free trade, integrated energy, integrated military, integrated data
00:14:31.320system, more closely aligned legal cultural dynamics, greater agreement on creating the
00:14:39.400largest free trade zone in the planet. That to me is the most exciting single opportunity
00:14:44.300and anywhere. And to waste that opportunity for small vol political gains or to waste it by being
00:14:51.380focused on deeply secondary economies that are involved with less than a single percent of our
00:14:58.140trade is such a lost opportunity for a generational moment. And it's a generational moment that has to
00:15:05.360be above the specific politics. You have to be a political realist when you're in office. Of course,
00:15:11.180you have to maintain the support of your base. You have to maintain the integration of your
00:15:14.960caucus. You have to maintain a tight, smart cabinet. He's got a lot of work to do, I think,
00:15:19.900in sort of holding his red jersey team together. But at the end of the day, the opportunity that
00:15:25.720he will look back on in his life, and I think the country will look back on in the moment, is
00:15:30.300what did you do with the opportunity we had in front of us to negotiate something that could
00:15:34.380have been generational for Canada and Canadians? And the only place that you could focus on that
00:15:40.000matters in that respect is the United States. Nothing else is even close. Nothing is close.
00:15:46.060And so, you know, it's sort of making an argument from proportionality, Nigel. It's saying,
00:15:53.560if you have a business and 80% of your client base is in one place in dealing with one set
00:16:01.660of issues, you want to address that. The 4% in China is another crew, but after that,
00:16:07.740It's very, very fractional. So to answer your question from the outside, you know, I think probably Prime Minister Carney does have a better natural affinity, both ideologically and politically with with people that are part of the center left, you know, crowd that he knows very well.
00:16:28.040Keir Starmer probably fits that group. Some of the Scandinavian leaders fit that mold. Macron obviously fits that mold. But I think that that's neither here nor there. They don't matter. France is almost irrelevant to Canada, apart from very specific trading issues, if you look at how you're going to spend the next several months negotiating a trade deal for the future.
00:16:51.240so what are you expecting to see out of the prime minister's office
00:16:55.660in terms of messaging during the next six months now to christmas
00:16:59.420i i think there's been an important shift in the prime minister's office i think that
00:17:08.240there was a there was a i don't know if you saw this but there was a moment i i reacted and posted
00:17:14.140something on it taking the post down in order to sort of be more focused on what's helpful but
00:17:19.560I just really don't like the elbows up theme at all. I didn't like the War of 1812 theme with
00:17:25.780the little figurine that Mike Myers had given the prime minister. I thought it made us look
00:17:31.500feckless and weak. I thought it conveyed deep, deep cultural and political insecurity. I thought
00:17:36.760it played to the worst instincts of the center left and leftist base in Canada at the expense of
00:17:43.640getting things done with a party that is dominant in the House, the Senate, the White House in the
00:17:50.560United States. And so when you look at those things, you want to say tactically, what does
00:17:55.660the moment require? And I think that the speech at the Economic Club of New York showed that the
00:18:01.600Prime Minister and his office, and by the way, I thought it was exceptional speech, has taken
00:18:07.980seriously the need to focus very directly on the generational opportunity of a great treaty
00:18:14.140agreement with the united states i think that's happening the prime minister is very good at
00:18:18.480speaking to the audience he was in new york he was the economic club his interlocutor was uh was a
00:18:23.840great guy named nadar musivizadeh who i know uh who's a friend and uh and he's a very close friend
00:18:30.600of the prime ministers and and i thought he asked exceptionally good questions and i thought the
00:18:34.860the themes and the messages were very strong. The thing is, you've got to translate that from
00:18:40.520sentiment to terms of a deal. And I think Canada is an incredible opportunity right now to do
00:18:46.460really good deal, a really good deal with the United States. But it's going to involve energy
00:18:50.940security, which will obviously involve Alberta. It's going to involve military security, which I
00:18:55.940think is going to require us to stop revisiting already signed contracts and actually expand some
00:19:02.900contracts. I think it's going to involve AUKUS at some point and should. I think it's going to
00:19:07.240involve data. I think it's going to involve quantum systems. I think it's going to involve
00:19:10.760a lot more integration, operational integration. And through all of that sort of core functional
00:19:17.820focused military integration, which you don't want to play around with,
00:19:23.620having an elbows up mentality is the last thing we need. There's not a chance that we can defend
00:19:28.860this country without the full support of the united states our our armed forces are probably
00:19:32.960in the worst state they've ever been in the history of the country um we currently have less
00:19:37.620than less than uh you know 50 force readiness our air force is down to 40 force readiness
00:19:43.960we're missing absolutely critical parts of our core supply chain you cannot have any of these
00:19:49.920conversations with the united states of an integrated trade military and energy security
00:19:55.200strategy without addressing the massive, deep structural problem of a military that's completely
00:20:01.360falling apart. Same problem that the UK is facing in terms of their contribution right now.
00:20:06.880So Nigel, I think it's a question of priorities. I think this prime minister is very smart.
00:20:11.780I understand his affinity for Europe. I think that there's a reason why Canadians like the
00:20:16.620idea of doing a deal with Europe, but I don't think it's an either or deal. I think if you
00:20:20.860ask most Canadians, would you like to do a deal, a great open deal with Mexico? Probably a majority
00:20:25.860would say yes, absolutely. But I think the focus right now has got to be on what we do with the
00:20:31.440United States. And it's tricky. How does a center left government and someone who is part of sort of
00:20:39.620the Dallas community do a deal with Donald Trump credibly when there's the deep antithesis around
00:20:49.100the operating assumptions and some of the governance assumptions
00:21:21.920I think there's five or six very obvious quick wins.
00:21:25.120I posted an op-ed on the National Post recently saying, you know, China lost over 500,000 barrels of heavy Venezuelan crude.
00:21:32.960It just so happens that Alberta's heavy crude is the chemically identical cousin of that Venezuelan crude.
00:21:39.460We have already blueprinted and know the 565,000 barrel pipeline that was called Northern Gateway.
00:21:46.360We know exactly where it would go.0.99
00:21:47.520we can expedite that and do a hard power soft power deal with the Chinese it makes a lot of0.99
00:21:52.520sense for Canada makes a lot of sense for the Chinese they're desperate for it especially0.97
00:21:56.580because their other alternative is Iranian cruise which is in a totally different category now and
00:22:02.540it's closest it's lowest cost landed and it and it puts Canada position of having you know an
00:22:09.200important part in the in the Chinese energy security story which the Americans can appreciate
00:22:13.940And that's what sovereign countries do. We do a deal that we can do with the Chinese for a specific thing that the Americans have taken away from them with what they did by renditioning Maduro and taking over the assets in Venezuela.
00:22:25.860And I think that, you know, so that's one positive thing that we can move on right away. But what I don't see is I still see the federal liberal party being addicted to the PR sentimentalism of an environmental movement that has done absolutely nothing for global emissions or the planet, but continues to insist on economy devastating moves like C48, C69, and a whole host of sort of consultative ideas.
00:22:55.860that are effectively blank checks to very, very small minorities that are easily led or bought
00:23:01.760off by people that are oppositional to the building of global energy infrastructure. And so as a
00:23:08.740nation, I think we have to get serious about the fact that we are one of the world's largest,
00:23:13.820most important energy superpowers. Alberta is. Under the Constitution of Canada, Alberta owns
00:23:19.220the oil and the gas. It does. It is the largest, single, and wealthiest democracy in the planet.
00:23:26.700Four and a half million people, $12 to $15 trillion worth of these assets. It is wealthier
00:23:32.580than Qatar. It has as much gas to start. It's got more oil than the United States and Russia
00:23:37.440combined. It is the single most, it's six times the size of Great Britain. It has a massive,
00:23:45.340massive deposit every every everything that you can give a country alberta has and it's right
00:23:52.120next door to the world's largest consuming economy the united states it's literally it's
00:23:57.040a place that instantly would become ireland with 10 times the cash so david we're out of time
00:24:04.360last last question just a short shot here will you be surprised if albertans vote in october
00:24:39.620I think the direct democracy as a process
00:24:42.040is an important consideration and commitment.
00:24:44.660And I think Alberta is doing a great job doing it. I think the vote to have a referendum is going to be very close to a 50-50. I think that events will determine whether it becomes a 60-40 in one direction or the other. But I think you've definitely got a third that will say no, no matter what. You've got a third that will say yes, no matter what. And you've got a third in the middle that are going to be very sort of considerate.
00:25:09.460I think there are a lot of people that are federalists that are certainly going to vote to have the referendum.
00:25:17.460And I think the prime minister's office is aware of that.
00:25:19.800And I think they're trying to figure out who the right voices are to have that conversation and talk about it without creating the sort of dynamics that you've seen in some of the other independence movements recently.
00:25:32.980Well, David, I know it's hot in Abu Dhabi.
00:25:35.460It's going to be a long, hot summer here in Alberta as well.
00:25:38.000I want to thank you for taking the time