The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Moore-Butts Conversation #2 — Canada’s Position On The World Stage.

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

If there are two guys who can "bring it" in a non-partisan conversation about Canadian politics it’s these two. One Conservative, one Liberal.  Today's topic is Canada on the world stage - is there a common approach and should there be a common approach no matter who is in power? 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. They're back! James Moore, Jerry Butts, right here on The Bridge. And hello there once again. I know it's Monday. I know for most of the last couple of years, Mondays has been COVID Monday on the bridge. Not today. And not every Monday into the future. After listening to many of you over these past, well, really, weeks and last couple of months, you said, you know what

it's still out there i know it's still out there but as governments have moved away from restrictions you're kind of on your own to make your decisions about the kind of life you're going to lead and whether that's in canada or over here in the united kingdom where i am again this week that's pretty much the way it's been. People are making up their decisions on their own about how they want to see life go forward. As I said, COVID is still there. It's still a part of our lives.

But we're making decisions on an individual basis. And while we won't abandon this subject, we will stay with it on occasion. We're going to move away from the regular Mondays on this topic. And today, to kick start a new kind of era of Mondays, a special opportunity for us. It was a couple of months ago we put together the former Conservative Cabinet Minister James Moore and the former Liberal Principal Secretary to Justin Trudeau, Gerry Butts, to have a discussion about politics, really, about Canada, about politics, and about the possibilities of a non-partisan approach on some things towards the way our politics unfolds. It was very successful. A lot of you wrote in.

So we're going to try it again today on a particular subject. We're going to look at Canada's place on the world stage, how we're seen, how the different two main parties approach Canada's position on the world stage, and how that is seen, not at home but abroad. So that's coming up in a moment. Let me remind you who these two guys are. James Moore was a member of parliament for 15 years from 2000 to 2015. He was in the Stephen Harper cabinet in a number of key positions. He was Minister of Canadian Heritage at one point. He was the Secretary of State. He was the Minister of Industry. Currently, he's a Senior Business Advisor to the international law firm of Denton's

and a Public Policy Advisor to the global public relations firm Edelman's. Jerry Butts, 2015 to 2019, principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. From 2008 to 2012, he was the president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund of Canada. And 2003 to 2008, he was principal secretary to the premier of Ontario. Currently, he's the vice chairman of the Eurasia Group. So both of these guys have a lot of experience. They've known each other for some time. They've fought the political fight, obviously, coming from different sides of the parliamentary aisle,

if you wish, the liberals and the conservatives. But they have respect for each other, clearly, and their conversations show that. But the whole idea of these conversations is to try and be constructive about the world that's unfolding before us, the world of politics that's unfolding before us. So we're going to take a break and then we're going to go uninterrupted on this question of Canada's position on the world stage with Jerry Butts and James Moore right after this. And you're back listening to The Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on either SiriusXM Canada, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Here we go with our discussion then with James Moore moore and jerry butts let's get started with a pretty uh with a pretty

basic question really and jerry i'll throw it at you to to get things going we tend to consider ourselves a middle power is that an accurate reflection of how the world sees us and what does that actually mean uh no it's not an accurate reflection of how the world sees us i think that germany is middle power right and um we are more uh i'm not sure i would ascribe a hierarchical status to us but i think when we pick our spots and focus on our issues and stick with them over time we can make a real difference but the sense that we're a reservoir of latent power that's akin to a major european state i think is a artifact of the past james you agree with that yeah i think that's well it's hard to do hierarchical you know someone once described canada as you know the quiet

thoughtful person in the back of the room who when they speak, people listen to them. But you don't speak that often in order to reserve that capital. Maybe that's true in some some elements of our of our capacity and our sort of historic moral authority. But, you know, people also measuring sticks have been brought out in terms of what Canada and other countries are offering into the world. Donald Trump did this with the two% of GDP on defense spending. Other countries do this, and other institutions and NGOs do this in terms of your contribution to climate change or your contribution to other global interests.

And so when you think about Canada, we're at 1.4% of GDP on defense spending thereabouts, and that presumes that the current government is going to spend all of the $8 billion that they've booked now for defense spending thereabouts. And that presumes that the current government is going to spend all of the $8 billion that they booked now for defense spending. But as Andrew Leslie points out, there's 12 billion that disappeared off the books in the previous seven years. So, and also to conservatives who get strident about that,

Stephen Harper didn't spend 2% of GDP when we were in government and we were in Afghanistan at the time. So it's kind of a, you know, it's a number whose virtues still need to be defended. And then on the humanitarian aid side and the foreign aid side, Canada's, we're at the very bottom of the pack, I think the bottom, second from the bottom or third from the bottom of the 29 OECD countries when it comes to foreign aid spending. So is Canada middle power? Well,

you have that data set that says no no and then on top of that you have incidents like you know the trucker protest in downtown Ottawa where we can't secure Wellington Street in front of the prime minister's office for a month that's not exactly the reputational building exercise in terms of our capacity to contribute to the war in Afghanistan or other things in terms of our moral authority to be seen as a strong power in the world it's interesting you make the point about the um the failures or the the lack of hitting the numbers on on on both the last two governments and so let me phrase this next question in light of that you know in the past decade or so we've

seen both a liberal government and a conservative government has the world seen a dramatically different canada on in terms of its place not just on the world stage but in terms of its foreign policy the way it conducts foreign affairs are they fundamentally different the way those two governments operated jerry it's a good question it really depends on the issue, Peter. I think on climate change, certainly very different. I think in its approach to important multilateral institutions like NATO, not so different. I'm not sure there would have been much of a difference in the policies between

the Liberal and the Conservative Party had either one of them been in power in Afghanistan, for instance. So I think that there are really important areas where there is cross-partisan overlap in foreign policy and other areas where there's less overlap. All that said, I think that the foreign policy environment has changed dramatically from the one that we were accustomed to. You know, I often say to clients of Eurasia Group that the world that you all learned about in grad school and business school, where barriers to trade were inexorably and inevitably going to fall, we're going to see growing globalization and the progress that comes along with that. That world is dead, so we're in a very different re-regionalizing, de-globalizing world, and that's going to

call for a very different kind of foreign policy. James? Yeah, I think that's true. I think the differences between emphasis and priority, I suppose, between Prime Minister Trudeau and Harper. But those fundamental key key relationships like the United States, take President Trump, for example, you know, I don't I don't know that. Please, please. Prime Minister Harper and our government would have handled things significantly differently, which speaks to the NAFTA Council that Jerry was instrumental in building with Chrystia Freeland, that there's a Canadian consensus on those kinds of things. When you have one in four Canadian jobs dependent on trade access to the United States, I think there's of the Canada's back rhetoric, the welcoming parade at the Foreign Affairs Department when Prime Minister Trudeau went in there just after he was sworn in as prime minister, that Canada is going to take on the world and be this positive force of influence. I think in a lot of ways, Prime Minister Trudeau was mugged by reality, and it was mugged by China

and the two Michaels and the realities of that relationship. And we forget that, you know, I think this is relatively well known that Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, Foreign Affairs Minister, I think, or Trade Minister at the time, was set to announce the beginnings of formal free trade conversations with China along the lines of what had been done in Australia. It was going to be a longer burn, but we were actually in the doorstep of looking at a formal FTA or some kind of investment deal with China. Of course, that's all been scuttled because of the reality of things and then the reality of Donald Trump and the threats to our trade relationships. I think very quickly, sort of the

altruistic, aspirational tone of Justin Trudeau got squared very quickly with the realities of domestic politics and people who are a lot stronger than we are, who are a lot more assertive than we are, and who are a lot more strategic and cagey than we are in terms of how they approach foreign affairs. But, you know, no prime minister, you know, present candidates and future candidates should ever, you know, shrug away from having a robust understanding of foreign policy, but how important it is for Canada in terms of our security, our economy, our opportunities and obligations in the world, but also frankly, how few Canadians really care about it. You know, Canada,

we are a founding member of the UN. We're the only country in the world who can say this founding member of the UN founding member of NATO partners in NAFTA access to the CPTPP as a, as a full partner access to the Canada, Europe, free trade agreement, members of the five eyes. Like we are. And then you add on top of that that all the cultural associations and our cultural lineage and certainly in our multicultural large cities and the opportunities that presents us in india and china and all across asia in terms of our trade access and opportunities like canada is

truly a global country in every context more so i would argue than any other country in the world and yet when it comes to politics and how people cast their votes, you will knock on 500,000 doors before you find the first voter who will say, I was thinking about voting for you guys, but I want to hear about your commitment to 2% of GDP on defense spending. You will not find that person. You will find a lot of people in the prairie provinces who are anxious about whether or not we're meeting our commitment to Ukraine. But that's a cultural alignment that's a that's a family alignment but it's not a strategic alignment for canada in the world so our foreign policy is very much sort of small provincial cultural uh our cultural associations rather than a geopolitical strategic

imperative for canada so as a prime minister you have this massive obligation in terms of g20 and all those are all those engagements that i described but then on prime minister, you have this massive obligation in terms of G20 and all those engagements that I described. But then on top of that, you have to make engagements in the world, understanding that obligation and opportunity. But the engagements in the world in terms of your return and retail politics are very culturally significant, but very focused into communities largely along familial, ethnic and community and cultural and immigration lines. You were nodding away on that, Jerry. And do me a, do me a favor. When you expand on that now,

but move in a little closer to your microphone because we're for some, we're missing you a bit, but go ahead and expand on, on what James just said there. Yeah, sure. I think what James is describing is a well-accepted view that Canadian foreign policy is seen through the lens of the diaspora communities of people in Canada. And I think that that's certainly true, and it's probably

at the macro level to the detriment of the independence of the country's foreign policy. I think, though, that and this would, I think, expand on the point that James was making where the foreign policy context has changed most dramatically. I described that view of declobalization. But what that really means is a radically shifting view of China. And rightly so, that the answer to the growth problems that Western liberal democracies had in the 90s

was basically to access the Chinese market in the first decade of this century. And the theory was that as the Chinese middle class grew, it would demand political rights that were commensurate with its economic prosperity. And the truth is, almost everybody believed that in the 90s, right? That was a cross party bedrock belief, whether you compare the Labour and Conservative parties of Britain, the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, certainly across the spectrum in Germany, France, and I would say equally so Canada. And it turned out to be completely wrong that the China we're dealing with now is more repressive,

not less repressive. It's facilitated by unprecedented advancements in surveillance technology that allows it to be more autocratic rather than less so as the country gets wealthier and wealthier because a vicious cycle has developed where they're able to develop innovative technologies that allow the government to concentrate power and to stay in power and of course this is uh put in hyperdrive by the current leader uh xi jinping whose tendencies are all in that direction anyway so i think we're dealing with a very different beast of china than most people expected we would let's remember when we first started having these conversations about opening an economic relationship with China back in the

late 90s. The Canadian economy was larger than the economy of China. And it's truly remarkable how much that's changed in the last 20 years. So in the international context, I think that's been a big sea change, Peter. And then I'd be interested in how James approaches this. But I also think, you know, if you're a leader of a major democratic country on foreign policy, this is a bit reductive. But for the sake of brevity, I'll say it this way. There are kind of two groups of people you listen to in the government. One is the economic policy apparatus, your deputy minister of finance, your deputy minister of trade, your economic advisors, your ministers in those portfolios. And then on the other side, you're dealing with the national security people who are in our context in DND and

the national security advisor, all of the people who worry about the traditional threats to, and not so traditional on the cyber front, threats to Canadian national security. And for a very long time, the former group had been winning that argument, right? They'd been saying, if you want to expand the economy, you got to deal with China. And throughout that entire period, the national security people have been saying, you folks are chasing the filthy lucre and you're dreaming in technicolor about who these people are. They're going to steal our stuff. They want to take our place geopolitically. And they don't have the long term national interests of the country at heart. This is not a win win win situation. They see it as a zero-sum game,

and your economic advisors are naive about who they are. And I think that has changed dramatically in the United States. It's changed dramatically in the United Kingdom. And the national security people now have prevalence in that conversation, and that will have an impact on policy moving forward in every democratic country yeah i think that's right you know when we were in government i remember um being chastised by that was i might one of my former titles was secretary of state for the asia pacific gateway that doesn't exist anymore and asia pacific gateway is code for china because we already have a mature relationship with japan and south korea south korea we now we have a free trade agreement with and so on uh you know

and vietnam was not exactly the emerging economy at the time which now now strongly is so um you know I David Emerson was the minister for foreign affair or for international trade and the Asia Pacific gateway it was in his title I was the secretary of state and yada yada because we were being chastised people were putting up books like called Chindia about the importance of engagement in Asia and I remember in question period being you know when liberals would get up and say you know what yeah how can this government abandon the opportunities of china why isn't the prime minister going to china where isn't stephen harper in china where and then we would stand up and i remember the note that was prepared by the department bragging about how many times jerry ritz the agriculture minister had been there how

many times i had been there you know and super defensive. No, no, we get it, we get it. None of that would be said today because of the shift in the context, as I think Jerry rightly describes it. And it's not only because the politics has changed, but it's also because there have now been some high-profile private sectors, as Jerry talks about, the growth of the Chinese economy. And I think Uber is probably maybe the highest-profile example that we've had in at least recent years, certainly from tech sector is largely the tech sector has been so aggressive about the opportunities in china my god you've got 1.4 billion people and imagine what if this emerging middle class where you've got you know 400 million chinese who live along the coast who have middle class quality of life and lifestyles and the rest of the country and the and you know when you go

300 kilometers in and more into the Western part of China, that they have a lower quality of life. But when China becomes a truly middle-class country, my God, the first mover advantage when we get there in the tech sector is that we got to go to China. We got to go to China. So Uber goes to China and they get, again, as I say, get mugged by reality of things,

which is the Chinese government doesn't really want foreign companies coming into China, doing really well, supplanting domestic companies that might have the aspiration to do that, or making the Chinese government look weak because they couldn't provide this unless an American company or a Canadian company came in and provided this good, thereby sort of deflating the jingoistic, nationalistic aspirations of the Chinese government. So foreign companies could come into China and do well on textiles and lower profile things, but higher profile things like moving people around with Uber, Uber goes in, dumps hundreds of millions of dollars to try to establish themselves

in China. China was never going to let them succeed and certainly never going to allow them to succeed and then patriate that capital back to the United States as though they've conquered China economically and then taken their money back to the United States to disperse to their shareholders. It was never going to happen. And so because of those incidents, and Uber is a high profile one, but there have been others as well, that people then start getting cagey about exactly what does this Chinese government want? They want stability. They want to avoid conflict and rebellion internally. They have all of these geopolitical imperatives because of their border situation in the region that they operate in. And they want foreign capital to come into China, but not too much, not supplant the narrative that Xi Jinping

is trying to establish. So it's a very challenged relationship. And I think people have sort of woken up to the new reality of things that you do business with China, but recognize what you're dealing with in terms of an opportunity. It's very limited. It's going to have to be low profile. And the Chinese government is not going to allow countries and their high profile brands to come in and allow China and the Chinese government

to look weak to its own people. And they're very anxious about that. All right. I want to move the conversation a little bit here away from China now, but still on the international front and how we're seen in the discussion point at a time of high tension internationally. And obviously right now it's Ukraine.

But in a situation like that, how important is it that Canada is seen to be speaking with one voice um that you know i'm not talking about a coalition government anymore so then we're already seeing in the agreement with the the liberals and the ndp but in terms of how the country is seen at a time of high international tension should it be seen to be speaking with one voice and if so how does that play out um jerry you start i i think in most cases that is absolutely true peter and it was most recently and most vividly true in the nafta negotiations that it's funny we spent a lot of time talking about China but really the only foreign policy that matters to most communities is our relation bilateral relationship with the United States and I wish we spent as much time effort resources energy both within the government

in the business community and in civil society thinking about our relationship with the United States as we do thinking about our relationship with the United States as we do thinking about our relationship with the rest of the world, which relatively speaking is rounding error. Thus end of the sermon. Let me answer your question. I think when it comes to a direct apprehended threat to our national security, economic security, and otherwise, as the NAFTA negotiations were, it's vitally important, in particular when you're dealing with a country like the United States that is so close to us and knows us so well and is able to not manipulate but take advantage of fissures and Canadian domestic policy politics to further its own national interest. It's really, really important that the effort that James was a key part of

in the NAFTA Council deliberately set about creating a broad consensus that was, if not blind, almost allergic to partisan concerns around that table so that we could present ourselves as a unified country when it came to the economic and more than economic relationship with the United States. I think that was tremendously valuable in the NAFTA negotiations. With the Ukraine situation, with the Russia-Ukraine war, I think we have been a valuable

member of nato not in spite of uh our diaspora politics in canada but because of them and we certainly i don't think i'm betraying any state secrets when i say this we used to hear this repeatedly from chancellor merkel that canada was one of the only countries around the NATO and G20 tables that understood the Ukraine situation, how important it was that there was a partner around that table that had a depth of field on the topic, because we could talk to other NATO partners about it in a way that they didn't necessarily understand from a cultural perspective. And I think that remains a source of Canada's unique value in this current conflict that we, you know, 1.3 million Canadians of Ukrainian descent, including me, proudly on my mother's side uh we get this issue in a way that is easy to uh misdiagnose if you don't have those sorts of cultural sensitivities between russia and ukraine change yeah all that is true and and uh you know i'll give a hotter example as well um 9-11 happens you know um 2002 was mostly about afghanistan uh and and so on shifting to 2003 then of course was the shift towards iraq prime minister krechen decided for a number of reasons i think eddie goldenberg talks about it clearly in the first chapter of his book

about how it was it was effectively i would say there's a surrender of our independent foreign policy to say if the u.n security council didn't have a second vote on the authorization of force in Iraq, then Canada wouldn't go. But that was Prime Minister Khachat's choice. That was his foreign policy. And then Stephen Harper, official opposition leader of the Conservative Party, was in favor of joining our traditional coalition partners, certainly in the Anglosphere, in supporting the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Prime Minister Khrushchev stood up famously in that one moment in question period and said, there has not been a second resolution, therefore Canada will not go, will not participate in the Iraq War. And the Conservatives, I remember we sat there and it was what it was. There was standing ovation from Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois.

I can say there's probably some relief amongst Conservatives that that that was the case because we were probably going into a change election in 04 or sooner and you know you can imagine some of the thinking that was going on there but it was what it was and conservatives at that point shut up and as as the early sort of months of the iraq war went militarily in the americans in the coalition's favor a lot of conservatives sort of grumbled that you know we should have been part of this my god the americans in the coalition's favor a lot of conservatives sort of grumbled that you know we should have been part of this my god the americans are going to take it out on us that we're not there to help in case this goes bad in the rebuild but it was it was never publicly discussed you didn't have the foreign affairs critic for the for the conservative

party going into washington and going down to and talking to the to the bush cheney white house and saying just so you know if we come into government we'll help no no there was a canadian consensus and there was no public discussion and no public disagreement about and i think that's important and you know and when stephen harper when we were in government whether it was in libya or some other engagements or justin trudeau that's only a 250 person engagement in mali you know there's some early stages debate but but once canada's engaged canada's engaged and we stand by the make beliefbelieve, and we do so proudly. And I think that's very important. You know, we can have disagreements on the market.

Can you tell me why it is important? Because it's not important, clearly, on a number of domestic issues, where the disagreements take place, and sometimes they get out of hand, but sometimes they're quite constructive. But on the foreign side side the foreign policy side well the when the military is engaged the canadian military is small proud tough fierce um but morale is enormously important it keeps getting i remember multiple chiefs of defense staff are running us which is in part why you know the human resources challenges i'll put it diplomatically in the canadian forces is so important that it gets squared away and dealt with effectively. But certainly when Canadian soldiers' lives are on the line in the field of battle,

or possibly so, that there has to be an alignment. Because wars abroad are more often lost at home than they are lost abroad because of the collapse of domestic support. And even if something is relatively small, as our engagement in Mali, as I said, 250 Canadian soldiers soldiers or something as massive and longstanding as a decades long engagement in Afghanistan. You know, people over there know and they because they talk to their families constantly. They're not sort of isolated on a mission. They know what's being disagreement at home, that can certainly spread itself like wildfire amongst people who are serving in the forces, even though they're entirely professional and they are mission focused. You know, domestic alignment and solidarity behind troops when they're in theater and engaged in important missions is a known. Also, I would say as well, with those kind of riskier elements of foreign policy, Prime Minister Craig Chan did something that was very wise that I think other prime ministers should think about when we get into in the future and into some other conflicts,

which is after 9-11, Prime Minister Khrushchev swore Jack Layton and Stockwell Day into the Privy Council and made them Privy Councillors and made available to them documents surrounding the 9-11 attacks the engagement with the united states the decision whether or not to put air marshals on planes our approach to national security the establishment of the department of public safety what we were doing in terms of border security in alignment with the united states some of the stuff that was pretty touchy and sensitive at the time but like there's a lot of information that had to be fed in in order to create all this continental apparatus of security but jean-claude Pétain has said it's very important, actually, that Stockwell Day and as official opposition leader and Jack Layton as leader of the NDP and who are traditionally opposed to these kinds of things

and alignments with the United States, that it's not that they can't have a difference of opinion, but if they start asking questions publicly in question period or doing scrums on this, we can't quite have that question asked yet. The public has a right to know. It's important that the media ask these questions. We will get to it. It matters. But in this very sensitive and difficult time,

when you have over 2,000 dead Americans who have been attacked in their second Pearl Harbor, when we're trying to work cooperatively with the United States, when the President of the United States says we are for us, we are against us, we need to have those discussions within Canada. But we need to do so in a way that's actually responsible. So we need to inform the opposition leaders in a way that they otherwise wouldn't be. So we're going to swear them in as privy councillors and make available to them the documents and the intelligence reports that we have so that they can be better informed, so they can think about how they want to think about these issues. Because A, they may perform government one day, but B, they might ask questions that will put Canada at risk

in terms of our relationship with the United States, or worse, put us at risk in terms of our security obligations and keeping Canadians safe. So the swearing in of our relationship with the United States or worse put us at risk in terms of our security obligations and keeping Canadians safe. So the swearing in of the leaders of the opposition as privy counselors, I think was a very wise move by Prime Minister Cretien that probably paved the way to such solidarity of Canadian alignment after 9-11 before the Iraq war and that two year, year and a half window period, where we did have an alignment of national interests with the United States in terms of peace and security.

You've both been in government, albeit from different roles, but you've also both been engaged in the past couple of years in two big global strategic firms, if you will. What have you learned in your new vantage point about Canada's place in the world, which perhaps you didn't know when you were in government? Jerry? Well, I think I have had whatever illusions, positive illusions, and James alluded to some of those earlier about Canada's outsized importance in world affairs.

Those scales have dropped from my eyes. I think it's a bit shocking, frankly, how little Canada factors into the conversation, in particular in the American finance and business community. There are investors who have the interest in Canada, you would say, pay special attention to what's going on here. But for the most part, Canada is definitely another country in the United States. It's not the focus of concern whatsoever. I think that we have managed to end up on the periphery of some really important debates like the energy transition, for instance, which is something that I spent a lot of time on, largely that Canadians, I never like to say anything negative about our place in the world.

But I think most Canadians believe we occupy a larger place than we do. Do you think they do? Because usually, isn't it a kind of a common criticism of ourselves, really, that we talk a good game about how important we are, but really deep down we know nobody's listening to us, that we're not a player. But we do, Matt. I think part of what infects our rhetoric, right, is that we share a media market with the United States.

English language partner and American dialogue rhetoric and partisan affiliations drive this conversation. And so we're infected by the rhetoric and infected by the heat and the passion about these issues, but the scale of consequences isn't the same, nor the scale of obligation. To your question, though, what I've learned in the private sector versus being in government is just how transactional things are and the time focus. Like, you know, people sort of people do often look at in certain transactions, they look at governments as like, OK, well, who's the minister? Are they engaged? Are they smart? Is their office effective? Do they care about our issues? Do they matter? Is there likely to be a shuffle? Is the prime minister going to run again? Are they going to win again? Is it going to be a majority or minority okay if it's a minority so on average that's 18

months so we're going to close our agreement about then they'll probably be the same minister like it's a very transactional sort of look at the get the government it's it's it's not idealistic it's not ideological for the most part um it's just sort of you know if you're building a home you have a land assembly and you're going to you want to build some homes. And in Vancouver, it's like, who's the mayor? Who's the city council? What's the city planner, city manager? They good guy. Are they smart? Are they good? OK, are they helpful? Will they will they talk to us? Can we talk to me sort of, you know, can we engage with them? Will they will they be reasonable with us? And for a lot of large, certainly transactions, it's very much in that mode. Right.

OK, so, you know, this is going to expire. Are they going to renew that or how's their approach is the deputy minister are they engaged okay is there is there somebody in there who we can talk to and get so it's that's very much how i think um so the private sector looks at all governments they don't they see red they see blue people have their biases and assumptions about governments but i i think the the the um approach more than anything else is just a it's a very sort of matter of fact, transactional, uh, approach to things. And because firms have their obligation, they have a fiduciary obligation when it comes to return for investors and to manage things responsibly, uh,

be accountable to their boards of directors and drive to drive to mission. And, uh, you know, alignment with foreign policy is not always clear and simple. The big, uh, you know, caveat or asterisk I would slap next to that is when moments like the invasion of Ukraine happened, then steps in this massive alignment of the private sector. And if anything else, frankly, more than noises of the EU or the alignment to the EU,

but the private sector shift against Russia and the pulling out of Russia has been massively consequential because of the scale of the clarity of the right and wrong that's at play. I think that's a really interesting point, and it's something we could spend a whole show on, by the way. But just to add one thing, Peter, which I think is a really important thing, it might even supersede what I said initially and that is how technology is developed in a way that facilitates the participation in other countries politics right we think of it mostly as facebook groups and anonymous trolls on twitter and

shady cross-border fundraising for truckers or fake truckers depending on your perspective on things but i i think that we are have been slow to appreciate kind of the caricature was the russians participating in the american electoral process in 2015 but i'm way more concerned about um american participation in canadian electoral processes but i am about the russians and um the technology has facilitated in a way that it's very difficult to monitor and it's very difficult to regulate unless barack obama is endorsing justin trudeau well he didn't do that anonymously as a troll on twitter but are you suggesting that our i don't know whether it's CSIS or whoever it is, is behind the curve on being able to deal with stuff like this in terms of the way other companies are?

Oh, I'm not suggesting it, Peter. I'm not suggesting it. I'm saying it. Absolutely convincing it. And why is that? Because it's not their focus, and they're outmatched on the technology by private sector platforms that are facilitating it. Yeah, and also, it's pretty hard to stop these things, right? As we once described, it's porous, it's digital, it's everywhere, it's constant. It's sort of like somebody goes to the witness stand in a trial and they say and they say something and then the

judge turns the jury says pretend you didn't hear that he said that he saw it you know like the jury heard it you can't tell the jury to unhear something they've heard and so so administering these things when when it's digital it's constant is is is near damn near impossible right as some george will says it's like cobwebs trying to lasso a locomotive. It isn't going to work. If the energy of people want to engage in Canadian foreign policy, or sorry, if foreign actors want to engage in Canadian domestic policy, it's pretty easy to do so. It's pretty easy to set up websites and memes and structures that are fully engaged. Justin Trudeau, be blunt about

this, Justin Trudeau has know be blunt about this justin trudeau has become a meme and a target for people who who hate woke politics who think that he's a sort of a symbol of a shift to sort of the softening of america and the softening and the and the weakening of america and all that and um he's he he is a he's a he's a target rich environment when you look at the sweep of things that he's said over the course of his political career. It's not that Justin Trudeau has a long, sort of habitual, constant habit of getting himself in trouble for saying things that inflame his opponents. But it's just he's been in politics now for a long time. He's been a public national figure since 2008 in a leadership position now for almost a decade, a three term prime minister.

And just over the course of this week of time, you're going to accumulate enough evidence that people are going to think the worst of you. Stephen Harper, the same problem. I'm already in the same problem. It is what it is. And so, you know, with actors who want to sort of elevate you and, you know, he's, you know, people now just say Justin Trudeau. When you watch Sean Hannity and you listen to American talk shows in the United States that he has become a punching bag and people want to affect change and so it's pretty easy to throw up a social media account and spread memes and be pretty aggressive and nasty about it. It's pretty hard to stop. It gets back to a conversation we had the last time we spoke which is the

kind of rapid metastasization of tribal formation and politics. And the platform technology facilitates that. Trudeau has become, to the American right, another cultural indicator, right? That if you are in any way predisposed to be positive about Justin Trudeau, you don't belong in our community. And the repetition of that message, of course, bleeds across the border to the conservative community. And it's one of the reasons that symbiosis is one of the reasons why I think the conservative messaging on Trudeau has gotten ever more aggressive and hardened over time because it's all part of that.

It's all part of that media communications it's all part of that media and communications feedback ecosystem and the same thing is true by the way it was true by the way uh for steven harper on the left in canada but it's just that the technology wasn't as developed as it is now they split the atom facebook and google split the atom when it came to community formation through the delivery of advertising programs in 2013, 2014, 2015. And that has created a hyperactive community formation mechanism, if I can put it diplomatically, online, where in the United States, these two broad groups of people don't talk to each other and they don't really live in the same country uh psychologically which is something that i think we need to constantly vigilantly guard against happening here gentlemen it's been a good discussion we could go on um for a lot longer but i think we're going to let that sink into

the different things that you've given us here. And I think what I'd like to do with our next conversation, whenever we have it in another month or so, is to take a look at the whole leadership process in terms of how we pick our leaders, who becomes leadership potential, and how they become leadership potential in Canada. And whether the system is a good one or not.

I mean, in our lifetimes and more so in mine, we've seen a number of different ways that leaders have been picked. And I'm not sure what the right one is anymore. So I think we can have that conversation, especially in light of what we're witnessing already going on these days in the Conservative Party, and who knows, may witness it at some point in the next couple of years in the Liberal Party as well. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. Jerry in Ottawa, James in beautiful British Columbia,

thank you both so much and we'll talk again soon. Always a pleasure, Peter. Nice to see you both. Take care. Yeah. I loved listening to those two guys. I think they offer a lot in terms of food for thought for all of us.

Conservative James Moore, Liberal Jerry Butts. We've gone a little longer than normal today, but I think it was worth the conversation. I hope you do too. Tomorrow, we've got a good one tomorrow. We're going to talk about the media. We keep talking about that in terms of the changes that are taking place in the media marketplace, the impact it's having on the relationship between the media and the people it serves. That's you. We've got Bill Fox with us, the author of Trump, Trudeau, Tweets, Truth. What a title. Bill's an old friend, a very smart guy. Looking forward to having that conversation tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening to The Bridge today. We'll be back in 24 hours.