The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is Canada Ready, If It Had To Be, To Go To War?

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

With the Ukraine war, the emergence of drones as a major weapon & the demand for new defence spending in the Western alliance, there's a lot to talk about.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday. That means Dr. Janice Stein, who will be along on this topic. Is Canada ready if it had to be to go to war? Big question. We'll hear what Janice has to say.

Coming right up. And hello there, yes, the beginning of yet another week. It's Monday, means Janis Stein is with us. We're going to talk defense today and you'll find out as the day progresses here today why there's good reason to talk about defense. Is the government and the prime minister are going to give some sense of where he wants Canada to go on the defense situation in terms of new ideas, new planning and new money being spent to bolster Canada's defense. So that leads us to this question of, and it's not being just asked in Canada, it's being asked in a lot of other countries as well on their part, but here in Canada the

question is, is Canada ready, if it had to be, to go to war? Big question. So Janice will be by as I said to talk about that, director of the Munk School at the University of Toronto. But a couple of things first of all before we get there. I'd like to thank so many of you who sent messages about Friday's Good Talk program. Thanking us for spending the time we did talking about Mark Garneau, a true Canadian hero, astronaut, politician, specialist in so many things and a specialist in life. He was a friend to many and including to me,

I knew Mark Garneau since 1984 when I first covered him heading into space as Canada's first Canadian in space. We lost him last week, as you know. So thank you for those who wrote in to an appreciation of the things that Chantel and Rob and I had to say about the loss of Mark Garnot. Also thank you to one person who wrote in and said, you know, he really got it wrong about Mark Garnot. He wasn't a pilot. I think Rob had let that into his comments. He was mainly talking about what a dashing naval officer Mark Garno was and looked like. But he wasn't a pilot, he didn't have pilot swings. He was more of a science guy. He graduated RMC, the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. He graduated there with a Bachelor of Science

in Engineering Physics, I think it was, as he began his career with the Canadian forces. He served as a naval combat systems engineer aboard one of the Canadian naval vessels. But that's what he was not best known for. Mark Arnott was best known as the first Canadian in space and you know as a result of that he became a national hero. Not just because of his deeds on that mission on the shuttle but because he carried himself off as a humble man, as a hero and somebody who so many Canadians looked up to.

So thank you for about those comments about Mark Garneau. Secondly, I got to give you our question of the week. This is going to be different. As we approach the summer holidays, I wanted to get something that was a little different than the heavy duty stuff we've been dealing with for the past three or four months. So next weekend is Father's Day.

And so I wanted to do a kind of Father's Day question. So here's the question. What about your father? What do you remember about your father? Was there a special moment? Tell me one thing about your father. Now I know some of us are luckier than others in the sense that we saw our father a lot. We have great memories. Some people have difficult memories about fathers, and I understand and appreciate that. But the question is, and will try to be, as Father's Day approaches, what do you think in terms of your father? Was there a special moment? Was there something he taught you? Was there something you'll always remember? Is there something about him that you would like to express to your own kids and their kids?

So think about that. Some of you will say, well, you didn't do this on Mother's Day. Oh, I didn't, but we will next year. Why don't we put it that way? So we'll start with this one this time. See how it works out. See whether you're interested in doing something on that.

But the normal rules apply, 75 words or less. And we're strict on that, please. We're also strict on the time in which you've got to get this in. Noon Eastern time on Wednesday. We have to have it in by then. If it's out later than that, it's not going to stand a chance. Include the name and location you're writing from and send it to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Father's Day. What's your lasting memory of your father?

Let us know. We'll see how this one works out. As we get closer to the holidays, we kind of lighten the load in terms of the question of the week. So we'll try that one. See where we end up on that. Okay, let's get to these questions for Janice Stein, because a lot of things lead up to this question about

is Canada ready at a time when the face of war is changing, has changed. What are the lessons there? Okay, you ready for this? Because I'm ready. Here she is, Dr. Janice Stein, from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. All right, Janice, I'm probably gonna surprise you here a little bit

because we've probably been more or less in sync over these last couple of years about what we thought the eventual outcome of the Ukraine-Russia war was gonna be. But in the last week I've kind of changed my mind as a result of the whole drone thing. But I my feeling now is I don't know who's going to win, but I don't think Ukraine's going to lose. That was a surprise to seemingly everyone and it just shows how deep they are into planning and organizing for a whole new world of war that's out there. So tell me why I'm wrong. I don't think you're wrong. I don't think you can win with drones. Anybody in the world cannot win a war with drones. You visited every major battlefield in Europe, Peter, in the course of your career.

And you know that to take and hold territory, you need ground forces. And those ground forces usually advance with some kind of protection in land vehicles, you know, everywhere from like the armored cars to tanks. And that hasn't changed. And when you actually look at that agonizing front between Russia and Ukraine, this has been Russia's best. This is their summer offensive. This is their best performance. They're taking 100 square meters, but the cost in soldiers,

I just saw it, 1112 soldiers. For every 100 square meters? Yeah. Killed or wounded. No. Right? That tells you, I thought that statistic just tells us all how awful this grinding war is. Ukraine can't compete because it's one third the size and it's an older population. One of the things we don't talk enough about in Ukraine, there's a shortage of young men and those young men are critical to the future. This sounds a little bit like science fiction, but the Zelensky government understands those young men don't have partners

and don't father kids. This is a losing battle long term for Ukraine, and that's why they're not drafting the young men. So they have an old army and it's one third of the size of Russia. Now what has Ukraine done absolutely brilliantly and here's what I bring with you. First of all at the beginning it's war they had zero capacity to manufacture drones. They innovated with off-the-shelf, Walmart-like type drones, frankly, and learned to adapt them to serve the battlefield. They went from there to manufacturing them, so they're not dependent on any European ally. Some of those drones, by the way, have Chinese parts, which is a whole other sort

when you think about the map of Europe. But they are manufacturing up to a million drones a year. And they've enabled, and this is an astonishing, this was astonishing in so many ways. This is, to me, absolutely astonishing. Russia has never had air superiority in this war. From the Ichev, it never has. And the raid that you're talking about, I think will go down in the history books as one of the most brilliant.

The emphasis is on not only on the technology they had, because actually that's the easy part, the surprise, the capacity to deceive. It was a very elaborate plan. You know, you had operators across the border. They then buried these in crates. Those crates were configured in a way that you could remotely send a signal and the roofs would retract. So the operators were no longer on the ground and at risk. They were back outside of Russia. And they went after six of the most strategic airfields for Russia. In some sense, it's scary because some of those strategic bombers

are there to deliver nuclear weapons. That has to be a very chilling message to Vladimir Putin. So you have this Ukraine is the largest army in Europe. a very chilling message to Vladimir Putin. So you have this Ukraine is the largest army in Europe, the strongest army in Europe. And I think from our perspective, what's so interesting, the most innovative army in the world. It's rebuilt its own defense industrial base, frankly, over the course of these four years. So I think

you're right, they will not lose, but they cannot win. Which just means a longer and longer war. Let me back up a little bit here, because I try to imagine in my mind where did this idea come from? You know, I picture Zelensky after the news of the Israeli raid that used the beepers and surprised everybody. Nobody in the world could believe that this had happened. And Zelensky calling his people in saying, what can we do? How can we surprise? Well, I don't know whether there was any connection in terms of the thinking,

but it is that same kind of element in terms of total surprise. Who would have thought that they could, you know, control these things, send them in trucks, have the roof open up in trucks, and these things fly out on site at the other end of the country, have the roof open up in trucks and these things fly out on site at the other end of the country, at the other end of Russia, like thousands of kilometers away. All the way on the Asian coast of Russia, right on the edge of Siberia. A drone, a drone. Well, you know, I agree with you that you can't ignore history and you look to the lessons of history in terms of what's possible or not possible. But when I look at these things that are happening now and who knows what they're working on

for next time round, it just seems to me that the face of war has changed considerably and as a result of that, old theories don't necessarily hold. You're right that the face of war is changing, but it's changing in a way that's very familiar to people who look at military history. There's a kind of balance. We call it the the offense defense balance. What's more expensive to do offense or defense? And because human beings are so innovative, the offense has the advantage

for a while and then the people have to defend against it, figure it out. And then they, so you know, when they built the first moats in Europe around castles, well, all of a sudden the defense had the advantage. What the Ukrainians have done with drones, and this was coming for a while, but none of us imagined but none of us imagined it would go at this pace. They have given the offensive phenomenal advantage because it costs $20,000 to take out a $75 million aircraft. There's no country in the world that's rich enough to sustain that over time, right?

And Peter, if you don't think the Pentagon, there's so many parts to this story, it's such an important part of this story, because the Russian planes were exposed, they were parked on the tarmacs. Yes, who else's Air Force is not buried? Then the United States has an Air Force that is largely unburied. The one country in the world that buries its Air Force are the Chinese. They have spent billions of dollars to do this and all of a sudden US aircraft are vulnerable because of the distance these drones travel. It changes everything. So right now, you know, I think about our country as we embark on a period of defense spending. What should we be spending on?

Really expensive, you know, frigates or warships or submarines under the water, which you can still see because they make it all, they're not silent or you leave Prague ahead like the Ukrainians did and go right to that. We missed this generation, go right to the next generation technology, which is cheap, nimble, flexible. You must produce it.

And right now that's where the advantage is, is with this kind of technology. That must be a fascinating discussion and debate that's going on inside, because the easy knock on the generals and the admirals and the leaders on the Air Force side is they all want better, big stuff. You know, bigger ships, bigger planes, bigger,

you know, tanks, all of that. Submarines. Submarines. And all of that is like incredibly expensive. And you know, and some of it is clearly warranted. Icebreakers for sure. Yes. But when there's another world out there

and you know, I go back, you remember the, how could you forget the Trump Zelensky White House meeting? One of the things Trump yelled at Zelensky looking at him was, you don't have a plan. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know how to deal with this. You don't have any cards. Remember he said that? You don't have a plan. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know how to deal with this. You don't have any cards. Remember he said that?

You don't have any cards. The cards. And meanwhile, the guy in the black t-shirt is sitting there going, if you only knew what we've got planned, then I'm not gonna tell you. Nobody's gonna know this until it happens. Because no wonder he got so mad in that meeting.

You look brilliant, Peter. This is brilliant military planning and execution. Absolutely brilliant. And if you take that away alone, let's say there was some sort of imposed ceasefire because we could all imagine a scenario where Trump and Putin get together and the pressure is just irresistible. The Ukrainians are not going to stop fighting.

They're not. They're not going to stop fighting because they've developed now an indigenous capacity to innovate and wreck damage on a much more powerful country thousands of miles away, even if they can't take a kilometer of territory. They'll take it to the hills, they'll go underground. I mean, they'll do whatever they have to do to keep it going. Yeah. You know, just imagine, I mean, there's a second big story here.

I think we're at the end of any kind of war where civilians are not on the front lines. We're going back to that, right? There's no safe haven way behind the front lines. You can be 2000 miles behind the front lines and you can be the victim of a drone attack. So that's a very frightening picture of the future of warfare. Because this is a technology that is so easy to diffuse, Peter. Everybody's going to have drones.

We are going to start to manufacture drones. Everybody's going to have drones. You know, we have drones. Yes. And you know, nowhere near the numbers that we're talking about that Ukraine has and has managed to, as you said, basically take it off the shelf at Walmart and turn it into, you know, a lethal weapon. The thing about drones that is, you know, different than what we, I guess, started witnessing, well, I guess in the Spanish Civil

War, but then in the Second World War, where the bombers took out whole cities and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process because it was indiscriminate and you know it was area bombing by design by the RAF and by the you know the latter half of the Second World War but the Germans too at the beginning of the Second World War. The Americans were a little more attempting to be pinpointing and specific but still hundreds of thousands of civilians died as a result of bombing. The drones seem to be more in terms of pinpoint accuracy. Well, they're not as lethal. They don't carry the same payload. Let me put it to you that way.

And so the damage they can do is restricted to a smaller radius. How long do you think that's going to be true? Well, look what they did though to the aircraft that carry the nuclear weapons. What did they take out? Half of them? The Russian fleet? I mean, Russia has lost half its strategic bombers in one attack. Half of its strategic bombers. I mean, that's close to a catastrophe for any major power.

If that happened to the United States, heads would roll. So it's been a week, and as the moment we're recording this, the Russians have, you know, they've had a retaliation, but it's been pretty conventional. Yes. And not causing much of a ripple. You know, it's really interesting. I'm not sure that they've got the capacity to do much more. They don't have their superiority over that battlefield. They've never, it's hard to remember back, but in that first day when Russian tanks

crossed the border into Ukraine, and as that column went down, there was an attack, a Russian attack on an airport. And they briefly occupied it and Ukrainian forces took a dock. That was probably the single most strategic moment in the whole war because they're controlling that area, prevented Russia from deploying aircraft. And ultimately Russia has never ever been able to achieve air superiority. You can't win on the ground Peter if you don't have superiority in the air to cover the battlefield

and that's a big part of the explanation for what for why this has been so terrible for them. So when you think you've taken out half the strategic bombers of Russia. And you know, in terms of the retaliation, one of the lessons that we learned in the Second World War, both in Britain and in Germany and then in Vietnam, in North Vietnam, that bombing is, it's destructive and it kills people, but it doesn't do what you're trying to do, which is break the back of the enemy or the opposition. If anything, it's the reverse.

Yeah. And that seems to be what's happened in Ukraine. Both ways, both ways. I mean, that's why we still have this horror I mean Donald Trump said one thing which is true. It's It's a bloodbath, right that it is. So yes, Ukraine cities have been bombed every night People go into bomb shelters repeatedly against missiles and drones because the drones are at the front of the attack to cause

panic and right behind are the missiles and the ballistic missiles behind the missiles. So they're now doing these layered attacks, very similar to what we saw Iran try to do in the Middle East. seven, eight, 15 people killed. That is not, first of all, a game changer. And if anything, those attacks strengthen the morale of the population, and they have done that in Ukraine. But with those six attacks against Russia's air force, I can put no double down.

It's not gonna break the will of the Russian people any more than it will break the will of the Ukrainian people. And that's why we come back to what we both said, drones are changing everything, except they're not. You still need to be able to take and hold ground. And there's no way you do that without trained armed forces still need to be able to take and hold grant. And there's no way you do that without trained armed forces who can take shelter in some kind of a vehicle.

You know, just one, let me correct myself for one moment because what's so remarkable about what's happening on the battlefield is no armed vehicle can survive a drone attack. So you get these satellite pictures, you see a laugh of the kind that we make in Canada and are a light armored vehicle. You see it, some captain, that patron gets, you know, fed to a captain who's standing a kilometer

or two kilometers away. He takes out his first person view drone, squints it at that vehicle and blows up. So the infantry that would normally shelter there are actually now no longer in them because they're targets. You know, I think about this all the time, Peter, because I think about our country, right? This is going to be the biggest defense span we've had. the biggest defense spend we've had.

I'll go at no end since World War II because we did not spend heavily during the Cold War for a whole variety of reasons. And what an agonizing set of questions for the defense planners because we are in the midst of this fundamental change right now, generational change, the nature of warfare. My fear is the, and I guess this happens, has happened before, but the planners,

whether the defense planners or political planners, are way ahead of the people here, at least in our country. Yeah. Not so much in Europe. No. At least in our country. Not so much in Europe. Because they've seen this movie on their land before. But I want to get at that. Let me take a break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about that.

But first, this. Welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here. This is the Monday episode of The Bridge. That means Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, Janice, we kind of touched on this last week, but I want to go into

it a little deeper. I was in the UK last weekend. I was in Scotland and on whatever day it was, I left. I've lost track of time with all the back and forth lately. But whatever day it was, I was driving to the airport in Northern Scotland to Inverness, it was a drive about an hour. And listening to the BBC World Service, it was an early morning show when they had an interview with the chief of the German defence staff, a fellow by the name of General Carsten Breuer, I believe his name is. Yeah.

And he was fascinating to listen to. He was really engaging, clearly knew, you know, and knows his stuff as a chief of defense staff, obviously would. But a couple of lines he used really struck me. And this is on this issue of preparedness. He said, we have to be ready to go to war tonight.

He paused and then he said, we are ready to go to war tonight. Now, I don't think I've in my lifetime heard a German military officer, especially a general that high ranking say anything remotely like that. But he did, and he sounded calm, and he sounded confident, and he sounded like he had to say that. Now, I don't hear anybody saying that here. I hear people saying that increasingly in the UK. Keir Starmer. Absolutely.

And defense minister, both. But what does that tell you? Because whenever the Germans speak, everybody looks at it differently, right? Because of the past, because of history. What does that tell you when you hear that? It tells us so much, Peter, two really fundamental things.

The first thing it tells us is Germans have crossed a psychological line now. They came out of World War II in 1945, ashamed, and buried it for the first 20 years, and really didn't talk about it, but needed to convince all their neighbors that they were gonna be a peaceful country in Europe and never threaten Europe again,

and functionally disarmed in order to do that. And there was a prohibition against military spending and standing up any kind of big army. And so a dress up whatever they did in peacekeeping, you know, the kind of language that we're so good at. They were very, very good at it too. And they did that because, one, they had no public support whatsoever within West Germany and certainly none in East Germany to support any kind of rearmament, none given the past, and secondly because they were worried they would frighten their neighbors. And that there was no willingness to see any kind of German rearmament, not even the slightest.

Well where are we today in 2025? First of all, German public opinion now supports this, which is astonishing. You know, Tastorius, who's their defense minister, sounds very much like General Breuer. They have just broken their restrictions on spending, taken defense spending out of the budget ceiling. Now, for Germans, that's just astonishing. They are the most conservative fiscally of any country in the developed world.

They balance their budgets like any of the rest of us, but they've removed defense spending from that constraint to meet the moment. And they have authorized half a trillion dollars to be spent on defense. They're going to grow their army from 180,000 to 205,000 men, much larger than the UK army, much larger than the French army. What did we hear? No opposition from the United Kingdom, no opposition from the French, and no opposition from within Germany itself. Friedrich Merz, the new Chancellor, has pushed

this openly. Olaf Scholz tried, but he's a social democrat and he didn't have the muscle in his own party. But the story is the defense minister who's a former social Democrat, he's absolutely immense. That Germany needs to be ready to fight. Now, are they ready to fight tonight? No, no, they're not frankly, but that wasn't the point of the message. The point of the message is we veered. We are now going to fully rearm at scale.

And the Germans have a capacity. They want to do it. They have both an industrial capacity, which nobody else in Europe has, and they're innovative. They build good machines. They've never lost that capacity as we have in North America. Well, think ahead, five years, 10 years, Germany will have the largest army in Europe

and the most sophisticated, followed by Ukraine. And how do you feel about that? Does that bother you? Or do you think these times demanded? No, no, you know, it doesn't bother me. That's partly because I've been to Germany so many times and Germany, more than any other country in the world, has taken responsibility for what it did during World War II.

Now, is it perfect? No, but it's been far more willing to look inward. It's far more willing to acknowledge the atrocities that it did commit, they were horrendous. And far more willing to actually take responsibility and do something about it, both towards the peoples that they victimized, you know, towards Jews, towards Roma, unlike any other European country, much better than the French, frankly, or other Europeans. And secondly, because of the weight that Russia has and because of how small the British Army is,

British Army is 100,000, Peter. You know, well, they're three times our sauce, 100,000. It's committed to a small army. And Britain historically, you know, history changes, but it doesn't. Britain never had large land armies. It had a strong navy and a strong air force, but it never had a large land army. Small. The French are aging. So the only So the only ballpark to the Russians in Europe on the ground in close proximity ultimately will be Germany. And Poland? It's too small.

Okay. They're good. But you know, again, the Poles, if they had to go to work tonight, they could go to work tonight. Just like they could go to war. And two questions I'm left with. The first one, I guess, you know, like part of the fear with the current Germany is we do see this kind of rise of the right in Germany. Yes, yeah. That's the wild card here. And you know, I could say it didn't bother me when it was 3%

or 5%. In this last election, depending on how you count 20 to 25%, That's a significant political force. This is, you know, these are right wing populist movements. And the German one is, I have to say, different from the other right wing populist movement, it explicitly and openly makes reference to Nazi symbols, uses Nazi salutes, uses Nazi language, doesn't hide it. And so that is troubling. So it doesn't bother me as long as they don't go anywhere near government.

If they go anywhere near government, it's catastrophe. Okay, let me bring it home. You know, I'm not gonna ask you if we're ready to go to war tonight because we both know the answer to that question. But we are sounding increasingly like at least government and the forces themselves, we're sounding increasingly like we got to get there. Yes. There is a consensus.

You know, there's a consensus among the senior army people. There's a consensus in the government. Here's, I think, one of the most remarkable changes between the Trudeau liberals and the Carney liberals, because people say, well, hold over ministers. A very, very different approach to defense. Very different approach. Full recognition, first of all, that the world has changed, that there are real threats. And that Canada has to

play. And then the second big change is Canada, to be blunt, can't free ride under the American umbrella. Not that it wasn't a really smart strategy as long as we could get away with it. And the Americans were really unfriendly and completely trustworthy. But the shock of this second Trump administration makes it a very risky policy to put our security entirely in the hands of the United States. We'll always be partly in their hands, but there's no willingness

to give up our sovereign right to make autonomous decisions about our own defense. I think the government's right. Where do we land on this? I mean, you know, for years we've fought against the idea of getting to 2% of GDP on defense spending. That fight's over. That fight's been lost. And others are moving much further ahead than 2%. Yeah. So what do we do, especially as a country that doesn't have any money? That's our issue, isn't it? That we're up against the debt ceiling.

That is no small issue in this country. I mean, justice had this scene on the 24th, there's a series of summits coming down. First is Canada's case, the G7, which the prime minister will host. That's always a big deal when you're the host of the G7. But after that is the European meeting. And then there's NATO on the 24th and the 25th of June, just around the corner.

There's, you know, Margaret, who's the secretary general, and they're very, very, very capable. You know, former prime minister in the Netherlands been a really good, smart politician, which is a real asset in that job. He's moving the whole alliance to agree to 5%, 5%. Even the United States doesn't spend, it's 5%. I think it's 4.2 or something like that. Now it's gonna be 1.5% on infrastructure. Well, we won't have trouble with that

because no country needs infrastructure spending more than we do. So effectively it's 3.5%. That is a huge leap for us Pete. Anywhere between 30 and 50 billion dollars more to put numbers around this year. So we will not be able to get to 3.5% in a year or two years, but we'll get to two as quickly as we can.

I think we'll get there very quickly. Well, it's gonna be fascinating to see where all this money is coming from because there's the military spending. It's a spending that he's promising on, you know, nation building projects, whatever they may be. And so they're going to get labeled infrastructure and they're going to chant. Okay. As the 1.5% that's what you're going to do.

Pipelines are going to be infrastructure, transfer crucial energy that you would need. That's how it's going to happen. But it still leaves you with that hard core. So it leaves you with two big questions that are going to shape this country and its economy over the next, over the term of this government. First is how do you manage that? And he's a fiscally responsible banker in his previous life. So he's well aware. The other big issue is why do we spend it on? And I think there's going to be intense debates on that. There's you know, there. There's a race here, Peter. Do you buy some of that big expensive technology that we talked

about at the beginning of our conversation? Well, that'll get you there really fast. Right. Right? Or do you do as little of that as you can and invest in space, and satellite to satellite communication where Canada is so good and underwater sensors and next generation technology and advanced encryption. All the things that over this next decade are yet again going to

transform our warfare. And you know, that's why I always have empathy. If you had to make that decision, you're making a big bet about the security of this country. And when we're actually, when and if we're going to be called upon to fight, if you believe it's minutes, two, three years, you buy that big equipment now. If you think we have a decade, you're probably going to buy less of it and take a bigger risk and invest in the next generation technologies,

which would be very good for our economy. It would help with our productivity. We would build the next generation economy. We're not gonna do that by buying off the shelf submarines. Okay, we're out of time here, but this whole conversation, and we've kind of hinted at this in the last few weeks, but this is tying us much closer to Europe than it is to the US. Well, they're a gonna auto correct, okay? I think, I think,

60, 70% of what we do in defense, without our saying it, is gonna be done in a way so that we are completely interoperable with the United States because ultimately if this continent is attacked, we have to work with the United States. So we have some degree of flexibility and we will be doing much more with Europe but the much more we're doing with Europe is still going to be a small

proportion of what we're doing. Okay, I'll hold you to that. Okay, that's why that geography is not destiny, but it's very close to it. Okay, a fascinating conversation. I mean, they always are. These Mondays are so special, not just to me, but to our audience. They love listening and engaging. As you know and I know, they don't always agree. That's great. But they're thinking. That's right.

That's the good part of it all, and we love it. Okay. We'll leave it that way for today, and we'll talk again in a week. Have a good week, Peter. You're going to be a West. I will be. I'll again in a week. Have a good week Peter. You're gonna be a West. I will be. I'll be in Cali. That's great. Okay, take care.

Dr. Janet Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. As always, great to have us on her agenda that she joins us every Monday. Appreciate that. Okay, that brings us us every Monday. Appreciate that. Okay, that brings us to the end of this week tomorrow. Well, tomorrow's Tuesday and we're juggling agendas around here. Not sure what's gonna be around tomorrow, but whatever it is, it'll be good, I promise.

Wednesday's Encore, Thursday's your turn. You heard the question earlier. If you didn't hear it, dial it back on the, uh, on the podcast and, um, and check it out. It's basically, tell us a story about your father. We're heading on towards father's day next weekend. And so we're going to, we're going to lessen the temperature we think this week from the heavy-duty political stories and questions that we've been asking to this one. Tell us your Father's Day story, a memory of your father.

And I know that for some that can be difficult, but let's see what you come up with this week on our question of the week. That'll be Thursday along with the random ranter. Friday of course is good talk with Rob and Chantel. That's it for this day, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again in almost 24 hours.

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