00:01:16.780And likewise, David, like everybody else who listened to Mr. Carney's speech at Davos,
00:01:21.220I was impressed with the remarks as a piece of prose.
00:01:24.660Aristotle applauds from the grave, and perhaps Thucydides too. And yet I have that feeling
00:01:30.340there's something off here, that I'm missing. I'm being conned. And as I thought about it,
00:01:35.300it occurred to me that Mr. Carney is lamenting something, that is, the international rules-based
00:01:41.060order, that never really was. He even says so in a kind of way later. So when he remarks that we
00:01:48.900knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false,
00:01:52.820So his basic takeaway was that Trump, we didn't actually name, had ended this apocryphal international rules-based order, and the new reality was a multipolar world in which the big powers did what they wanted.
00:02:06.960To me, that sounds very much like the world before the Second World War.
00:02:10.080So first question, isn't Mr. Carney's multipolar world actually just business as usual?
00:08:04.020So I think that the problem with the speech is not the quality of the speech. The delivery of the speech was exceptional. Aspects of the speech were very, very appealing in that it described the current moment in the way that a great political science professor would describe it.
00:08:19.640But for Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, to have given that speech in light of the deep confusion around his interpretation of what the shopkeeper with the sign in the window in Vassal Havel's book, Power of the Powerless, was intended to address, Mark Carney himself represented in his op-ed against the Freedom Convoy, complete totalitarianism in the name of natural political dissent.
00:08:46.220But in the current moment, that Václav Avel comment is all about the political correctness that is dominant in a place like Davos and has been dominant in the rhetoric and the positioning that Mark Carney has had on green issues and finance and things like GFADS.
00:09:04.160So it's very awkward for someone like Mark Carney to be the one giving a Václav Avel quote.
00:09:11.700The Thucydides quote on strength is fascinating,
00:09:15.460but Thucydides, but he seemed to draw an unusual parallel.
00:09:18.820Thucydides' arguments on strength weren't Nietzschean.
00:09:21.900Thucydides' arguments and strengths were descriptive,
00:09:24.400and they were descriptive in a way that was compelling courage
00:13:43.240I mean, I think that's the point and that's the purpose of most people that engage.
00:13:47.640I think that what happens is the first order sort of instincts of anyone in politics is to win elections, hold the power so that you can then exercise it in the manner in which you think can secure the future for our kids and create a better society.
00:14:03.860I think one of the things that I was hopeful about with Prime Minister Carney is that when he ran for the election, coming from outside the country, as he did, I was actually hopeful that that was a strength and that he would see that certain things about his party's ideological positioning, particularly with respect to energy and energy security, had gone way beyond any sort of rational rapprochement between the environment, energy, and economy.
00:14:29.620and it had become completely dogmatic in ways that were just ridiculous.
00:20:48.140Yeah, and there's others that have done that too,
00:20:50.520But I think he's exceptional. And so I think that for Canada to do any kind of business with China, we've got to not be seen as weak and naive. And unfortunately, I think we are seen that way. And I think we're seen that way with respect to their secret police stations. We're seen that way with respect to the way that they have been able to override any kind of common sense on some of the people that are put out for parliament. And, you know, CSIS has talked about this. So that's in the background. I understand why you would say you're cynical.
00:21:20.520I think that as a nation, we've got to be able to do deals with all countries.
00:21:27.380You know, I think Canada should be working very hard at creating global market infrastructure.
00:21:31.560I think that, for instance, when China, when the U.S. took over Venezuela, and I wrote an op-ed on this defending it as illegal, that what they did was legal when they renditioned Marduro.
00:21:45.620You know, China lost around 550,000 barrels a day.
00:21:50.520from that uh incident from venezuela venezuela heavy crude um alberta can actually provide all
00:21:58.120of that if we reinstate the northern gateway uh we could provide all of that back to china it would
00:22:03.640be a 16 billion dollar a year trade for us it would give us additional leverage in china would
00:22:09.400go as 15 more of our output uh going in the direction of a uh another uh superpower other
00:22:17.000than the United States. It would give us diplomatic leverage in China that actually matters to the
00:22:21.640Chinese. And it would have been something that I would have loved to have seen come out of the
00:22:25.760China conversation. So I don't want to be hypocritical in saying there are things that
00:22:30.280I would love to see us do deals with China on. I think the Americans would have expect us
00:22:33.800to do that. The President Trump was asked about this in Seattle. I'm glad they're doing deals to
00:22:38.140China. People are realists and Canada needs to be realistic. But I didn't see us do a massive
00:22:44.580energy deal with China. I saw us allow EVs into our country. The problem with EVs, by the way,
00:22:50.360for those who think that the Americans are simply trying to be economic bullies, EVs are like
00:22:56.200iPhones on wheels. They are extraordinary data collection machines. All of the BYD EVs have been
00:23:05.040kicked out of one country in particular because of the security risks in the metadata that gets
00:23:10.260transferred back to china uh there's a lot that i think canada has just been on a vacation from
00:23:15.540history and and is therefore naive about china and the reason for that is because we're completely
00:23:22.160protected by the united states from the geopolitical realities that they take on and so i
00:23:27.820would go ahead i would love to see us just understand what the americans have told us
00:23:35.120several times, which is they're integrating energy security with military national security with
00:23:42.440trade security. And Canada continues to make a series of steps that I think are just naive to
00:23:49.460the point of reckless with respect to all three. And so we've got to finish our F-35 purchase
00:23:55.900instead of holding it up for yet another, after 20 years, you know, internal, you know,
00:24:04.400able-gazing around what we're going to do on this. I think we have to expand NORAD to include
00:24:08.440naval security in AUKUS. I think we have to integrate what we're doing in the Arctic with
00:24:13.300what the Americans are going to be doing with Greenland. I think we have to get on with a
00:24:17.640proper trade negotiation that acknowledges some of the risks that the Americans want us to address.
00:24:23.220And I think we have to get rid of this decade-long experiment with green alarmism and get on with just building Canada's global energy infrastructure.
00:24:34.500And if we don't, we're going to start to see the country fragment.
00:24:37.920Well, I think that's what a lot of people are speculating about right now for all the reasons you've given.