The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Do We Even Matter Anymore?

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

A provocative weekend column co-written by our Dr Janice Stein looks at Canada's impact in the United States and asks, Do We Even Matter Anymore? Also today, our regular check-in on Ukraine and the Middle East. Plus we ask our "question of the week" as part of this Thursday's Your Turn.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Does Canada even matter anymore? It's a provocative new question. We're going to talk about it. Coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to our regular conversation with Dr. Janice Stein from the University of Toronto, the Munk School. And things are a little different here. We're going to start as we always do and have been for the last couple of years, talking about two situations. One, the war in Ukraine with Russia, and two, the situation in the Middle East. We'll talk about those as we do every Monday with Dr. Stein,

but also in the second half of our conversation today, Dr. Stein was one of the co-authors of a provocative piece in the Global Mail over the weekend, which basically boils down to this. With the Americans facing an election campaign this year, does Canada even matter anymore? Now, obviously, it's not the primary issue in the U.S. election. But there are issues that confront both the U.S. and Canada in terms of the relationship between the two countries. And we're going to talk about that with Dr. Stein during our conversation.

But first, as we also always do now on Mondays and have since the beginning of January, we give you the question of the week, where you have a chance to weigh in for the Thursday episode of Your Turn. Here's the question this week. And one of the reasons I ask this is because, you know, in the letters that pour in every week to the bridge, and there are lots and lots of them,

there are some regulars, and we love regulars, but we also really, really like new writers who haven't written to us before. But something about the question of the week often strikes them going, I want to be a part of that conversation. So don't be shy, please. I'll tell you how to get in touch in a second.

Here's the question. Name the one teacher that you remember making a difference in your life. Got it? Name the one teacher you remember making a difference in your life. Now, I know some of the people who write into this program are, in fact, teachers themselves or retired teachers. And they're not shy about making that point. Most people just sort of kind of write in, talk about where they're from. They don't necessarily tell me what their occupation is or what their occupation was.

Teachers, not so shy. We heard about them big time during the pandemic. They were confronted with, you know, really difficult situations. But we've heard from teachers on a lot of different issues, and we continue to do so. So this time, it's a little different. It's about teachers, but it's name the teacher that perhaps had the most influence on your life,

made a real difference in your life. Okay, here are the, as, some people call them the rules, the rules of the bridge, you know, with a certain degree of disdain saying you can't limit me. I want to keep talking. Anyway. Um, here are the conditions is what we like to say. First of all, you write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Have your entry in by 6 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern Time. Okay?

And you're really good on that, on the time question these days. I think it was only one came in after the fact last week, but lots and lots before the time. Keep it relatively short, please. Not looking for the essay, looking for the paragraph, the short paragraph. But here we want to name the teacher, what grade it was, if you can remember,

and why that teacher made a difference in your life. Include your name and the place you're writing from. That gives us kind of a national reflection. Okay? Those are the conditions. Pretty straightforward. Question once again. Name the teacher that made a difference in your life.

The one teacher. Just looking for one. Not looking for half a dozen. Looking for one teacher that made a difference in your life. You know, I had a few. I'm not good on remembering names, I'm afraid, but I do remember a few of my teachers who were great. But they weren't very happy with me

because I didn't do very well at school, but I was happy with them, most of them. Okay, that's it. Giving you the indication of what's coming on Thursday and looking forward to your participation. Now let's get to this week's conversation with Dr. Janice Stein. And we start with the situation in the Middle East. So let's get at it.

Dr. Stein coming right up. Janice, we talked a little bit about Qatar last week, saying it was getting a little itchy about whether or not it could continue in its role as a mediator, trying to get a ceasefire. Interesting soundings out of Qatar over the weekend, basically saying, you know what, we're getting frustrated. Israel and Hamas are not taking this seriously. I can't, or we can't, as Qatar, get a real commitment out of them.

What do you make of that? They sure are frustrated, Peter. It was interestingly enough, the principal spokesman for the country prime minister gave a long interview to two Israeli news outlets, which they don't normally do expressing their frustration. And it was pretty even handed. It was on both sides. And the detail matters a little bit here because what he said, and he's entirely correct, that Qatar got involved because the U.S. asked in 2006. This was at the request of the United States. Secondly, almost all Qatar's engagement with Gaza over the last several years has been at the request of the government of Israel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu asked for it. So, so much of the sniping that has gone on by Netanyahu himself over the last several weeks is really deeply frustrating to them. And in my view, he correctly expressed that frustration. You know, this is, in a sense, criticism of somebody who had stepped up, did not intrude, but actually stepped up at the request, both of the government of the United States and the government of Israel. The second thing he said, of course, is Hamas is not taking this seriously enough. And so it's very even handed criticism, but there was a clear message here.

We're going to step back. Now, this is an excellent way to pressure both sides, because two things happened over the last 72 hours. One, Hamas said, oh, no, no, no, no. We don't want to move our people anywhere. We don't want to go to Istanbul. We don't want to go to Oman. And if Qatar steps out of the mediating role, these talks are in jeopardy. So something must have gotten through on the Hamas side. At the same time, the head of intelligence, the Egyptian intelligence, Kamal, flew to Tel Aviv for detailed discussions with the Israelis about one more proposal. That's a sign of how at risk Egypt feels now that they have taken over in part from Qatar.

Why do they feel at risk? They are trying desperately to forestall that operation, military operation against Rafah. No matter how limited, no matter all the precautions, there will be hundreds of thousands of people yet displaced again. The Egyptian nightmare, they spill across the border, the Egyptian border into Sinai. There's a tiny, narrow little strip of land on the western side of Gaza that just joins up with Egypt

called the Philadelphia Corridor. Nobody in Philadelphia would know where it is, but that's what it's called. And under, you know, we're going back to Camp David now. That's demilitarized territory. And the only military that can come in are a small contingent of Egyptian soldiers. Any operation against Rafah would violate that condition. Okay.

So the Egyptians have a huge amount at stake here, and Egypt moving in is pressure on Israel. There's no question. All right. I'm going to get to the Rafah situation in a minute, but I want to back up still on the Qataris. Because as you said, they put a lot of their credit into this over time. They even allowed the Hamas leaders to move into Doha. They've been living there for some time now.

Some of the deals that have been cut to keep Hamas alive were cut through Doha. All of it. So their frustration is interesting. And the question I have from it is, was Hamas and Israel ever serious about trying to get a ceasefire? I mean, it has been seven months now, almost seven months. We've been off and on in these talks all through that period, and now the Qataris are saying they're not being serious, there's no commitment on either side. Has there ever been? It's entirely credible, Peter,

that both sides were using these negotiations as a way to delay, frankly. And it's politics all the way down in both sides. I would explain that. For Netanyahu, it's easy because in order to get a deal on the remaining hostages, what's the price? Well, it's two things. It's allowing Palestinians to come back to northern Gaza and its commitment to a permanent ceasefire and an eventual withdrawal. What does that mean for Netanyahu? He's failed to achieve any of the strategic objectives that he started the war with.

And then secondly, it would be a strong signal. Well, the war is over. In everything but the formalities, time to get all these commissions of inquiry going inside Israel. So if his goal is to stay in office, which it's hard for me to believe that it's not, frankly, then you use these talks, you keep them going, you keep them going, you stretch them out as long as you can.

Is that right? And the really important question now, is he running out of running room now to do it? Well, I think the pressure is really growing. Now, I've been saying that for a month. And, you know, sooner or later, I'm going to be right, which doesn't make me right every week. But why is it growing? First of all, you know, these three pictures of live hostages

that were released this week by Hamas, these are gaunt people. You can see the toll. Time is running out for some of these hostages. They're older. They're going to die if this process extends much longer. And there was just ferocious opposition inside Israel to allowing that to happen. So the leader of one of the opposition parties, not the biggest, not Benny Gantz, but Yair Lapid, who is outside the coalition. He's the leader of the second largest opposition party. He came out with a statement this weekend.

Get the hostages home. Accept a permanent ceasefire. It's worth the price. Talk about a day after plan. That represents a minority of Israeli public opinion, but they get the hostages home part, I would say 75 or 80% of Israelis. That is what they are seeing every night on television. Second pressure, and there was a leak in the New York Times, but we call him the whisperer, Thomas Friedman, because the Biden team whispers to him and he writes the piece that in private, the United States has told Netanyahu, if he goes ahead with any operation in Rafah, they're going to cut off some of the military equipment that they supply. Now, if that's true, Netanyahu finds himself increasingly

in a vice. Add to that Egyptian concerns, time may be running out for a delay strategy. Now, is time running out on the Hamas side? That's harder, right? That's harder. I think Simar, and who knows, that's really the truth, because who has access to him in a tunnel somewhere? Nobody knows exactly where he is. Very few people get to talk to him directly. But when he gives up those hostages, Peter,

he has no other asset that he brings to the table, frankly. And we are hearing reports out of Gaza again this week that Palestinians are beginning to express real anger against Hamas. They are pushing for a ceasefire. This comes out of journalists who are well connected to Palestinians. It's coming out of some surveys. They're furious at Israel, but they're really angry um at hamas so can the political wing of hamas now put enough pressure on seymour um very few people really know the answer to that question you know it's a it's a really an awkward situation because on the one hand, Hamas, who are up against it, and the one thing they have are the hostages, but it's very unclear now how many hostages are left,

what kind of condition they're in. You know, it is a bargaining chip that is getting more difficult to express all the time. On the Israeli side, you've got a situation where, you know, Netanyahu may want to go into Rafah, but the consequences are going to be enormous. Horrific. Horrific. Let's just say they are terrible, the consequences, Peter. They're terrible for the civilian population. And we're talking about a million people.

They are terrible. They are terrible with the U.S. administration. Terrible. And they're terrible with their most important strategic partner in the region, Egypt. There's no way in hell. And there's no guarantee, by the way, and I'm in a minority here. Let me make it clear why I'm in a minority.

But there's no guarantee that going in we'll get some more. Right. Or the hostages. Yeah. There's no guarantee. And they would face an insurgency for months and months and months afterwards, frankly. So I think time is running out on Netanyahu here. The real question is, is it running out for Seymour?

Because he knows, too. I mean, he's done the same analysis you and I have done, right? I hope he's got more than I've got. But you know, the strategy is always to bounce the tough political choice to the other side. It's making the other side go first. Do you buy into this line that the Americans are putting out over the weekend that they have a deal with Netanyahu that Netanyahu won't go into Rafah until he's gone through the battle plan with the Americans to let them know what that would look like?

No. No. There's a long history here of discussions and discussions and discussions and discussions. And then the United States gets half an hour's notice, right? So the United States got half an hour's notice of that strike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus. There's a pattern here that when Netanyahu makes a decision to do something

that he knows is going to infuriate the United States, he tells them 30 minutes before. I think we're in the same situation. It's token. It's token. So he can say, I told you. I told you before we did it. The United States has, I think that's why that leaked this weekend, because that's what it is.

I mean, Thomas Friedman is being used. And he's happy to be used that way. Let me make it clear. This is not somebody, he's a very sophisticated player in this part of the world. And he's been used to send a message that he himself wants to send, which is, we're not kidding. What we're saying in public is one thing, but what we're saying in private, you do this for the first time, we will impose limits on offensive military equipment that we will sell you. That's a very, very, very high price. I want to move on to Ukraine before I do that.

What is the possible upside for Netanyahu to do Rafa? It's really hard. Given what I just said, it's really hard for me to see it what he can conceivably could claim if he got very lucky is the remaining four battalions of Hamas will be destroyed

so the official fighting force of Hamas will be destroyed he can't say that now because that is the remnants of the force. So, that is one claim. So, he achieved his strategic goal. And I did it, by the way, by standing up to the United States. That's how you could see the campaign, right?

That's the campaign platform that he would use. I stood up when they wanted to stop me and I've destroyed the strategic fighting force of Hamas that's the claim and then secondly and this is to me very unlikely frankly were they to find CIMAR that would be a game changer

with Israeli public opinion. But it's so unlikely because again, think about this, you've got 400 miles of tunnels, right? He will know, and the people

around him will know. So I think that it's... I wouldn't count on that in any meaningful way that that will happen. But he's been lifting his back to the wall. Let's all understand this at this point. Okay, let's move to Ukraine, Russia, and the wider possibilities in Europe and Eastern Europe especially. Let me, you know, this weekend Vasily Kapelis at CTV

did an extended interview and covered a lot of ground with the Polish president. Yep. And among other things, he said to her, in answer to a question from her, that he could see Poland entertaining the possibility of hosting nuclear weapons on their territory. Now, I thought that's going to make a number of people perk up and say, wait a minute, what will this do to the balance of the situation in Europe?

And what will Russia think of this? What do you make of it? Do you think it's just posturing or is there more to it? No, I don't. You know, it's consistent with something Macron said a couple of weeks ago, Peter. We can't depend on the United States anymore. We can't depend on the nuclear umbrella that the United States has provided over the years. This has been a theme that Macron has been hammering on.

We need strategic autonomy and we're going to have to step up and provide for our own defense. For the Polish president to say it, though, I think is evidence of how worried Russia's former, you know, the East European community, let me put it to you that way, is about Vladimir Putin and whether he will stop or not. So who's most worried? Who's most afraid in Europe right now? It's Poland, it's Romania, it's Moldova, it's the Baltic states. Given their history, they all feel themselves literally within the sight lines. They have a view of Russia, which no West European can understand because nobody in Western Europe was ever part of the Soviet Union. And it's extended empire that stretched into Eastern Europe. The big exception here is Viktor Orban. Everybody else has this almost gut fear of what Russia would do.

And so you get that kind of statement. Now, that should worry everybody, frankly, a Poland with nuclear weapons. You know, if you think about U.S. strategy from 48 on, it was to stop nuclear proliferation. That's what it really was, to persuade people that the United States would be there if you needed it, and the deal was,

and you don't develop nuclear weapons. And frankly, that's why we have only nine official nuclear weapon states plus two others in the world today, because that was the bargain. If that bargain openly fractures, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty blows. It's entirely conceivable to imagine a world with many more nuclear powers and fingers on a nuclear trigger by countries who, as I said, it's almost a visceral

reaction, the fear they have of a revanchist Russia. Do I think that fear is justified right now? No. As I said, the Russian army is having trouble

getting up to the borders of Donetsk under optimal strategic conditions when Ukraine has literally dug to the bottom of the barrel of what it can use to hold off the Russian army. And the strategic advance has been very limited. I think it would be a huge task to swallow all of Ukraine, much less move further than that. But you can get reactions out of fear, which would be very, very, very destabilizing. So I think he said that. And, you know, interesting that he would choose Canadian TV to say it on. That message is aimed squarely at Washington. It's aimed at some of the Trump team, not at Trump himself, because I don't think he processes in quite the same way, but the people who will be the national security team are around Trump if he wins. The stakes are rising here. This is getting very dangerous.

And he'd just been, the Polish president, just been down to visit Trump in Mar-a-Lago. So it may well have been on his mind. I think it was. I don't think it's a coincidence, Peter, that he came from Mar-a-Lago. Probably discouraged by what he heard and then makes that kind of statement. You know, they were really scared. That's the easiest way I can describe it. They are really scared. This combination of a Putin that appears to be gaining ground.

You know, very small, but that's not what they're focused on. A paralyzed Congress that is paralyzed as a result of Trump supporters and Trump who says, I'm going to make a deal on day one. Okay. I've got one other thing on Ukraine-Russia. Nothing to do with that one. Okay. I've got one other thing on Ukraine-Russia. Nothing to do with that one. About a, I guess about a year and a half ago, when Brian was doing this and not off writing

and you've been good enough to come in and rescue our Mondays, giving us a sense of both these two conflicts. But one of the last things Brian talked about, and he was kind of at the leading edge of this theory back then, was that if there was one thing the Ukraine-Russia war was proving, it was the tanks were basically, you know, they weren't really part of conflict anymore.

They weren't a successful part of it. Now, the discussion about it has sort of gone up and down since then. But this week, you have Ukraine, after much valuing, That's the successful part of it. Now, the discussion about it has sort of gone up and down since then. Yeah. But this week, you have Ukraine, after much valuing a year ago, getting the Americans to send over some Abrams M1A1 tanks, the battle tanks, Ukraine's sidelined them, saying that basically, you know what? These are a great tank in its day, but it can't handle drones.

Drones knock them out. That's an interesting page turn in modern conflict. It sure is. And so I think two points are worth making about tanks. If you can knock out a multi-million dollar lumbering big piece of steel with a drone that costs $100,000 or $150,000, you have a big problem, right? And we've always seen this in the history of warfare. There's always this alternation between the offense gets the advantage and roars ahead, and somebody smart then comes up with a defensive innovation, shifts the balance back. And it never ends. It's a constant. Everybody learns all the time. But I think it's also very interesting that they sidelined the Abrams right now. And why would that be, Peter? They know they have a year at least of defensive warfare

in front of them now. They've started to dig trenches. You know, there's about, last time I looked at the maps, there's about 25 to 30 miles of dug-in defensive trenches just over the line of battle on the Ukrainian side. They have to hold the line now. They know a counteroffensive is off the table for at least a year. That works as long as you're in defensive formation. But if the Ukrainians want to make one more big push to get any territory back,

you don't get territory back with drones. Right. Get it back with tanks and armored vehicles that fall behind. The drones are out in front, and they're taking out the other guys' tanks. But if you don't have armor, you can't push back an army. So I think they've sidelined it because they understand now it's defense for a year and our big job is to hold the line. That's a tough swallow boy for Zelensky, but that's where it's at. So I would agree with Brian. There's a rhythm here, but I wouldn't agree that we're seeing the end of tanks. You know, look, people said we've seen the end of jet fighters, because that relies on,

you know, we still have pilots. They're not pilots yet. And why not use drones, which are so cheap and can confuse the radar system? Well, we saw a vivid demonstration of that just a few weeks ago when the Iranians lobbed all those missiles. And what did people use to shoot them down? Jet fighters. Right. Okay.

We have a second segment to the program today and it's, we're going to put it under the guise of, you know, what are we missing? But it's a good story. And it's based on a column that appeared over the weekend and you'll never guess who wrote it. Um, we'll talk about that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Bridge, the Monday episode. It's a day we talk about foreign affairs.

And I know you enjoy it because it really racks up the numbers. And a lot of that goes to our good friend Janice Stein from the Mug School, the University of Toronto. Janice is with us again today, as she always is. But she's been busy. She's always busy. She's always up to something, writing something, appearing somewhere, doing a broadcast here or there,

traveling to a conference. Over the weekend in the Globe and Mail, there was an article written by three distinguished people, of which Janice was one. So was Ed Greenspawn, good friend, former editor-in-chief of Globe and Mail. He's now the president and CEO of the Public Policy Forum. And Drew Fagan, a professor at the Munk School,

where Janice also resides. He's the former assistant deputy minister for foreign policy. Their article is headlined in the Globe, Canada needs to have a plan for the United States no matter who becomes President. That starts with making us matter more. And I'll just read you the first line of the poem, because it's great. It's not just about Donald Trump.

It's about us, the indispensable ally that has allowed ourselves to dwindle into dispensability. Tell me about this column, which I direct everybody to read it because it's fascinating. But what are you trying to get across here? So you're right, Peter, in that first line, the two key messages. You pulled them both out. The first is so many of us are focused on who wins the presidential election in the United States

several months from now. And there is a feeling among Canadians, you know it as well as I do, well, Biden pulls it out, we're all okay. We wanted to say no. If you actually look at what Biden's economic policy has been. It's been more protectionist than any other U.S. administration recent memory. Buy America first. You know, massive investments in industrial policy, which privileges Americans.

So we've got a big problem here, given how dependent we are, even if Biden wins the election. So let's not get distracted by who the winner is. And let's take a step back and think about the plan, as we called it. But what we really asked ourselves, when you're this dependent

as Canada is on one economy, there is no major economy in the world, let's just put it this way, that is as dependent on one single market as Canadians are on the US. Even Germany in the EU is less dependent on its partners inside the European Union than we are on the United States. So we need a strategy. And I think the way we put it, there's a real challenge here. Because the United States is becoming more inward-looking, more protectionist, more focused on turbocharging its own economy and putting a boss at the same time as the world, is retracting. And so we are more than ever dependent on the United States. Whether we like their president or we don't like their president doesn't change anything for us.

We need a strategy. When you say... Tough message to Canadians, huh? Yeah. When you say that any strategy has to start with making us matter more to them yes to them how do we do that so yes we were determined in this piece to actually tell some stories about how we do that because Because I'm tired of reading articles that say we must, we should, and then doesn't go to that next stage.

Well, how do you do it? So, you know, I'm out of patience with those. So actually we spent a fair time in this piece telling Canadians a story about a Canadian company, Comico, that they didn't know a lot about. Amazing, Peter. Inside the government, they didn't really know a lot about this story. So Comico is a Canadian uranium company. Right after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you know, Zelensky people approached Comicon and said, we need uranium because it is

Russian uranium that is fueling all our nuclear reactors. Well, a really nimble, flexible, entrepreneurial CEO with a great company stood up. And here's the really great story about this company. First of all, it is now supplying all of Ukraine's nuclear reactors. So when we ask what Canadians do for Ukraine, it's not enough to count what the government is doing. That is a hugely important asset for Ukraine. But we didn't just pull it out of the ground, which there's always a tendency in Canada to do. It is refined for the first time. It's the uranium was pulled out of Saskatchewan.

It's refined in Ontario. And then, oh, by the way, Brookfield Asset Management, another big Canadian company, bought the next plant in the supply chain and completes the reprocessing. And that's how they managed to do it. Well, six European countries have now come to Canada, took note of this. The company has doubled its size and its value. And all of a sudden, Canada is helping the United States with a big strategic problem that the United States had. It's mattered more, both directly and indirectly.

Now, how directly? Believe it or not, I was stunned as we were doing this, as we were digging up the story. The United States depends on Russia and Kazakhstan for its uranium. We can substitute for that. We are mattering more to the United States. And the clincher for me was this story. And stories really matter.

Sure. Was they really matter. When Donald Trump imposed those, and we all remember this in Canada, steel and aluminum tariffs under, frankly, fraudulent national security grounds. He exempted uranium because he knew how much we mattered to the United States on that one. You know, it's interesting how it always comes back to what we've got, you know, either under the ground or above the ground. It's our natural resources, right? Whether it's water or lumber above or minerals and oil, et cetera, below.

Critical minerals now were really going to matter. and could make the difference in this discussion you're trying to launch into as a result of this piece in the Globe on the weekend. Absolutely. And again, why I like this story so much was, as I said to you just a minute ago, we didn't just pull it out of the ground. We processed it, and then we reprocessed it. So Canadians, Canadian companies got the advantage of the value add. We just didn't export it and let somebody do the additional processing, which creates so much additional value. Now, if you think about that as a strategy, you put the right pieces in place.

Now, look, there's an irony here, Peter. Chemical had one idle plant. Shut down. Because, you know, markets, market demand goes up and down. I think the story would have been really different if they had to start from scratch and go through the average 12 years of permitting and approval that it takes in Canada right now, we need to do something about speeding up the permitting processes. We need to do something about a federal table that takes umpteen years, and then you start with the province afterwards. That kind of, I'm just

going to say complacent behavior is not good enough for this country as we move into a much tougher world. We have to put the pieces together and understand that speed matters. That's why we talked about accelerating in the piece. Well, I suggest everyone read it. If you're interested at all in what we've just discussed in the last few minutes, then you're really going to enjoy the piece. It's in the Globe and Mail. It was on Saturday.

So you can track down fairly, fairly quickly. One quick question on the process. Three of you write this piece. How do you do that? I mean, when I when I wrote a my last book with my friend Mark Boguch, we, you know, we kind of chopped up the chapters, you said, you do these and I'll do these. No way. You know, I'm laughing. Let me just say we are good friends, right? And we came out of it good friends, which is amazing. That's a major accomplishment then.

That's the major accomplishment. We agreed. We were completely agreed that this was a tough message to tell Canadians because Canadians just want to turn away if it's Trump and manufacture some nostalgic option, which is going to fail. And we knew we needed stories, and we needed to show what the strategy would look like. So there were no problems. Well, I won't tell you who wrote the first draft,

but the other two went nuts. Nuts. And we went through, I can tell you, we must have gone through it five or six times. And, you know, we submitted it to the Globe because we thought we had an earlier deadline. And when they pushed back the deadline again, two of us said, oh, great, we can have at this yet one more time. But we said, look, every time we did it, it got cleaner and better and sharper. And we come out as friends. But it

was an exercise in self-discipline, I can tell you. You know, it's funny how that works sometimes because you always resist doing, you know, you do a draft and you think, oh, this is pretty good. I'm going to leave it at this. And then somebody says, well, why don't you, you know, your editor or somebody says, why don't you change this to that? Or, you know, why don't you flush this out a little bit? And you get really defensive.

And then you do it anyway, as you've been instructed to. And then you look at it afterwards, you go, wow, this actually is much better. That's right. That's exactly right. Okay. Thanks, Janice. Great conversation.

And we'll do it all again in seven days. See you next week, Peter. Dr. Janice Stein., meaningful Mondays, right? With Janice Stein. I, you know, great conversations always. Okay. Quick reminder, question of the week is this. Name the one teacher that you think made a real difference in your life. Name, location, keep it to a paragraph or less. Send it to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, and have it in before 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday.

That's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We will talk to you again in 24 hours.