The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - "War Matters" - How Change Happens.

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

The fallout from the Syria story, to both Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, and Mondays mean Janus Stein, and this Monday is no different. That's coming right up. And hello there. Monday of the week before the week before Christmas. The holiday season is upon us. And you know that from all the parties that are taking place. And what a party on Parliament Hill this week. Oh boy.

You know, on Friday I called it crazy town. And it is crazy town. I mean, the things that are going on there, the rumors that are flying, the shuffles that are about to happen, supposedly, the who gets what in terms of finance and foreign affairs and who gets shuffled out and who's packing it in. Sean Fraser was the story last night from David Cochran of the CBC. That Sean Fraser, the housing minister,

the former immigration minister, the man who's not had a perfect record, we'll concede that immigration was by his own judgment. There were some questionable things done. But housing, he's looked pretty good. And there was great hope for Sean Fraser in terms of the future. But depending on who you believe, things look bleak in his writing.

And he wants to spend more family time. So he's not going to run again. So there was a young liberal who seemed to have a future in the party who won't be around. All that happening at the same time as all these stories of shuffles. And today is the fall economic statement. Chrystia Freeland, the finance minister. Will this be the last thing she does as finance

minister? You know. Depends which rumor you want to believe. Is Mark Carney finally going to get into the cabinet room? Depends who you want to

believe. Depends which rumors you want to subscribe to. So it's going to be an interesting day and it's going to be an interesting week before everybody takes some time off. And it would seem they need some time, all of them. No matter which party they're with. They could use a break. Anyway. We will be dealing with those stories all week, I'm assuming, because we're here all this week, right up until

Friday. When Good Talk will close out the weekend, close out the year for us. We're going to take a little bit of time off over the holiday season. And hopefully you'll be able to take a little bit of time off as well. Now, there will be a program every day. We're going to do the best of some encore editions. Some of the best of the year gone by will be highlighted on the bridge

over the holidays. All right. Thursday, your turn. What's the question of the week this week? Well, I'm going to steal from Time magazine. You know, Time has this thing every year where it's the person of the year. It used to be called man of the year. That changed quite some time ago to person of the year. And you have to remember what their qualifications are for the Person of the Year award,

which went this year to Donald Trump from Time magazine. This doesn't mean it's necessarily the best person of the year or the worst person of the year. It could be anything that qualifies that person to be the Person of the year. They may have accomplished great things. They may have done terrible things. I mean, when you look back at the history of the person of the year for time,

some of the names in there aren't quite the names that one tends to glorify. Adolf Hitler was Time's Person of the Year in, what year was that, 38? Joseph Stalin was Person of the Year twice. Now, the majority of people who end up being the time person of the year are people who are you know heralded by different people around the world

as great people but once again it's not necessarily that case so what am I getting to? Well, we're looking for the Canadian person of the year. All right? So we'd like you to think of that with the same kind of qualifications that time places. It doesn't have to be a wonderful, terrific, best person of the year. It could

be something very different. But the idea is this person has had some impact on your life, maybe direct, maybe indirect. So I'm looking for the Canadian person of the year. All right? So in other words, this person has to be a Canadian. Or at least live in Canada. And impact Canada. I'm not looking for somebody from outside our boundaries. Okay? So name the person, Canadian person of the year, as far as you're concerned, make the case of why in a sentence or two,

and send it to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Have it in by 6 p.m. this Wednesday at the absolute latest. Earlier is better. Remember to include your name and the location you're writing from. Okay? Those are the rules. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward.

Canada's Person of the Year, on your turn this week, along with the Random Ranter on Thursday. All right, let's get to today's show. Tana Stein is, of course, the director of the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And she has been such a fabulous asset for this program for more than the last year. And we basically tried to focus in on two main areas,

Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas. Last week we included Syria, and we needed an update on that as well today so let's get to our conversation right now for this week last one of the year with Dr. Janice Stein Janice it's been a week now since the Syria thing happened and I'm wondering what your take is a week later in terms of how the Middle East has reacted, how the world, in fact, has reacted, and how the new power group within Syria is reacting. What's your take after a week? Better than everybody expected, by and large, Peter, so it's been a good week, but a lot of sober voices now saying this is a really tough hill to climb.

You know, in Syria itself, this is they are the group. They are disciplined, which is really encouraging. They're disciplined. You know, discipline can cover up some pretty tough methods of governance. And we're getting a lot more information, Peter, and interestingly enough, from humanitarian organizations that worked with them from 2017 on when they governed in England. And the picture that comes out, pragmatic toughness. No longer global jihadists. I think that's the big takeaway.

Islamic nationalists is a better way to put it. Really focused on Syria. They are not exporters of revolution like the Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State we knew, but they are Islamic. And that's where the toughness comes in. And we see it from organizations that were providing assistance in Idlib. There were lines you didn't cross. If you crossed, you were in jail. So I think that's an important point to make. These ecstatic scenes with Syria coming out of Syria and the horror that we're seeing

as people try to find their families, their family members in jails. I think it's important that we not confuse this new group with Democrats. This is not a democratic revolution. That is not what it's about. So cautious optimism would be the right way to approach it then? Yes. And, you know, I am cautiously optimistic, even though, and I think it's interesting for Canadians to think about this for a minute.

This is a really multicultural society, Syria, more so than Egypt or Jordan, you know, different religious traditions, Kurds, Alawites, which is the small, tiny sect that Assad belonged to and which ruled the country for 53 years. These differences really matter, and people take their religious and ethnic identification very, very seriously. This group didn't really have to worry too much about that in Idlib province where they were. You know, there were originally a million people living there, Peter. And then as people moved northwest to escape the Assad regime, two million refugees poured in. So that's what they had to govern, 3 million people. And there were differences, but people were uprooted. Very different challenge to govern 14 million Syrians.

Damascus, which is a complicated city, complicated economy. So this is going to be much more challenging than anything they've ever faced. But they are doing and saying all the right things in this first week. They get it that this is a multicultural country. They are reassuring all their neighbors, we do not want war, we are not going to export jihadism to our neighbors. But those are the commitments. There's no flirting at all with what we in the West might think accountability or transparency or democracy. So it's really important we not project those on this group. Just a last point on this.

As expected, Assad went to Russia and he's now living in some exotic place, I'm sure, such as there is in Moscow. Should we assume that we're never going to hear from him again until the day he dies? Yeah, well, we may, you know, it's really interesting because as the stories start to come out of how he left Syria, and by the way, how he didn't tell anybody, even his closest advisors in his own office.

He told the senior officers to prepare to fight to defend him as he was leaving to get on a plane that would fly him to the Russian airbase and then fly him out of the country. He is not going to leave anybody behind who will be loyal to him in the future. But what did he take? Apparently $30 million in dollars, in cash. And he owns very valuable real estate in Moscow. So what does this tell us? He's been getting ready for quite a while. This was a thought through escape valve that he had built for himself. His wife and kids were already there. Peter, there's planning here. He will live in great luxury in Moscow

for as long as he lives, but I don't think there is any way back for him to Syria. Or anywhere else, I assume. Or anywhere else. No. Okay, let me move to the two stories that we've focused on for the last couple of years now. And we'll start this week with Russia-Ukraine. I want to try and understand because I've been reading about it, but I still don't fully grasp the importance,

or the potential importance of it, this issue of Russia and the ruble. Now, the reason I raise it is because, you know, those of us who remember the fall of the Soviet Union in 89, 90, 91, so much of that happened because the Soviet economy was crushed. They overspent trying to play war games with the Americans in the Cold War, and their system just collapsed as a result of it.

The ruble is in trouble. Is Russia in trouble in the same way the Soviet Union was? Russia's in bad economic trouble. I think that all the reports that we've been seeing coming out for the last six months suggest that the Russian economy is on borrowed time allow. Now, what do we mean by that? That's why I'm actually hedging when I say,

is this the same as the Soviet Union? So let's talk for a minute about what we mean by this. Putin's managed to fight this war by inflating, allowing inflation just to run in Russia. And so he has a very overheated economy. Inflation is between 10 and 12 percent. No, it's not 80, which it's been in Iran, but it's 10 to 12. Secondly, he's next year's budget, Peter, 40 percent of the GDP, 40 percent on defense.

We we can't get to two. He's spending 40. I mean, it's mind blowing. And that doesn't include all the hidden expenditures, you know, on security services and and all the other things, intelligence agencies that are not accommodated for in that 40%. One other data point, as they say, that's stuck in my mind as I was reading about it and I really sat up. Putin is paying signing bonuses to Russians who are signing

the equivalent of $65,000 to the package. Now, that's more, first of all, than anybody in the U.S. Army gets when they sign even the most sought after people. But it's more than a regular Russian private would get paid in four years. So he is literally running this war on borrowed money. That's fundamentally what he's doing. That's not sustainable over the long time. When you inflate your economy and you borrow and you borrow and you borrow and you hit

the debt ceiling and then you hit it again and you hit it again. And that's fundamentally the best description about the Russian economy. How long can this continue, right, is the question. Not a single expert on the Russian economy that I know predicts that it will crash completely next year. Now, are they right? I don't know if they're right because they use regular, you know, it's economists speak.

They do that way. They think, well, how long can the economy go like this? He'll have to cut spending. He'll have to raise interest rates even further. And there is a governor of the central bank, a Western-trained Russian economist, a woman who's extremely capable. She follows that playbook.

But that may not be the playbook that somebody like Putin follows as things get tougher and tougher. You know, inflation could go to 20% or 30%. This is a long-suffering population in Russia. My sense is this economy, it's not like the last days of the Soviet Union yet. The economy is really, really in trouble, and it's going to constrain his capacity to fight this war in very meaningful ways. But I don't think the Russian economy is about to collapse in the next 12 months. But it would only seem to indicate more reasons why he should get to the table.

I mean, we've dealt with this a couple of times in the last few weeks. They both should get to the table and have reason to get there. But at the same time, Putin looks like he's going all out to win it on the battlefield. So this is the paradox that we see again and again when you get to what could be the end states of fighting.

Anticipating that Donald Trump is going to push very hard, and they are, they do have a plan. Right? And, you know, my eyebrows are going up when I say plan, but they do have it, and they're putting incentives in place, by the way, which is really interesting.

They're saying to the Ukrainians, if you don't come to the table, we're going to cut off military assistance. And they're saying to Putin, if you don't come to the table, we're going to triple military assistance to Ukraine. So this is hard-nosed, tough bargaining that the Trump people are using. And they're letting both sides know in advance of January 20th that that's what's going to happen. So they're putting enormous pressure on both sides. And it's actually very helpful, Peter, because it's in the interest of both sides right now to get to the table and make what I think is a temporary agreement, that's all. But what do we also see all the time?

The fiercest fighting is in that period when you know you're going to the table, but you're not there yet. And that's when you scramble and go all out to improve the position on the ground. And that's what we're seeing. We are seeing Russian advance that is faster than almost anything that's happened since the original invasion. There's a strategic city in southern Donetsk.

Of course, they have surrounded it. It is a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian army to supply the forces that are still behind that line. If they capture that city in the next two weeks or so and they quit, that is just a huge problem for Ukraine. So I think they will go all out. The one area where Ukraine has made its mark in the last two months, roughly, is around Kursk, where they've actually gone in and taken some Russian territory. Now, they're under significant pressure to give that up now. And I see that for the first time, the Russians are using the North Koreans as assault troops

in that area to try and get Kursk back, get the Kursk region back. Talk to me about the significance of that again so important because let's think about this as I do as well I call it pre-negotiation fighting which is the easiest way to describe what's going on here you're trying to get to I know I think about the soldiers right on both sides who die in this fighting and understanding that the leaders on both sides are, all about having a bargaining chip at the table so that there would be a trade of territory.

And it was also about humiliating Putin. They've actually been invaded. We don't talk about this, but they've actually been invaded, Peter, for the first time since Hitler. He invaded the Soviet Union. But what does it tell us, Peter, for the first time since Hitler. He invaded the Soviet Union. But what does it tell us? Again, that Russian forces can't do it on their own.

He doesn't have enough men. He's had to hire, because that's really what he's doing, 10,000 North Koreans. That is not a sign of strength or a sign of capacity to keep this war going. It's a sign of weakness, frankly. And I think that's what's important to take away. He probably will make some advances. Who knows how long the Ukrainians can hold out. They are really in a desperate situation.

And they don't have any forces to throw at Kursk. So it's not impossible that Russia succeeds. We have, what, now five weeks until January the 20th, something like that. That's a long time in a small piece of territory. So it's entirely possible that they'll succeed. But it shouldn't obscure the weakness here of Putin. He's hiring guns because he doesn't have any guns at home. And he's using every last breath of life in the Russian economy

to pay exorbitant amounts of money to hire those guns. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is a remarkable picture on both sides of this war. Yeah. Has been in many ways since the beginning. But, you know, each couple of months, you get a new snapshot that kind of focuses your

mind. And you've greatly explained the situation on the Russian side. You know, I looked at that picture last week of Zelensky standing there in his black military outfit, his T-shirt and pants, standing next to Macron and Trump in their suits at the Notre Dame reopening. And I'm looking at that picture thinking, man, that's an odd triple. Yeah. That group is an odd group.

And what they're saying to each other about this conflict at this point and how best to end it. It would have been great to be in a fly on the wall there. Sure would have. Peter, you know, we know just a little bit about it. You know, Zelensky and his team went to Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral with no assurance that they would be able to meet with Trump. It was so important to them that he did that. The meeting was confirmed just an hour before by Macron. It was Macron himself who did it. And Zelensky is saying to Trump at every possible

opportunity, look, we are ready to come to the table. It's Vladimir Putin who won't come to the table. So your deal of the century, we are going to play. You have to get Vladimir Putin to the table. But oh, by the way, there's a small price we want. We want admission to NATO. And a really interesting story came out of Keith this week. So Zelensky and his team, they have a good read.

They're literate about the United States. They understand, they know the Trump team. One of their, you know, not inner circle, but outer circle, nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, you know, I just stuffed over that one because these are clearly people who understand Donald Trump's endless ego needs and his receptivity to flattery has sophisticated Ukrainian team, much more so than the Putin people. Yeah, let's face it.

If Trump could get excited about being named Times Man of the Year on a magazine that's sort of like passé now, just imagine how excited he'd be. Oh, my goodness. Right. The other thing about that picture and I guess it says something about diplomacy in our world and it always has. You put those three guys together and when you think about it, the things that Trump and Zelensky have said about each other, brutal stuff they've said about each other over time.

And Trump on Macronron i mean trump was floating all those rumors based on stuff he'd seen from his you know his intelligence sources about what macron may be up to in his uh you know non-working hours i mean but you look at the three of them there and they they kind of have the fate of certainly a section of the world in their hands in terms of what happens in these next few weeks. And it does say something about what diplomacy is all about, even at a time when people don't like or respect each other. Yeah.

You know, it's very interesting, Peter. Maybe we're at a period where the soft diplomatic skills are not that relevant. And it's what you and I might call hard diplomacy or diplomacy backed by a gun. We're seeing it in Ukraine where these are not nice negotiations that are going to happen. Empathy is not an asset in any of this. These are hard nose, very tough negotiations. Trump's team are going to coerce, they're going to threaten,

and they're going to drive to get any kind of arrangement to stop the fighting, because that's what he campaigned on. And you have two, you know, tough leaders in Ukraine by now. Zelensky's a war-hardened leader, and Putin is

Putin, who understand this kind of power politics and tough diplomacy very well, already playing the game. You know, we're seeing the same thing in the Middle East. Power grew out of the barrel of a gun, right? And all of a sudden, where was Anthony Blinken last week? You know, he was in Turkey. He was in Turkey. He was in Jordan.

He was meeting with all the old power brokers who pull the levers of power when the battlefield changes on the ground. We didn't see Antonio Guterres anywhere near either of those two, the Secretary General of the United Nations. Exactly. But I guess I got to say, you do have to wonder

what some of those countries think when Blinken gets off the plane now, you know, four or five weeks left in the job. I mean, do they care? Not much, frankly. Not much. It's all about everybody. You know, in both these conflicts, Peter,

everybody is holding everything back for Donald Trump, frankly. So when Donald Trump says, I want those hostages released before January 20th, before my inauguration. People in Qatar and the UAE and even in Hamas sit up, take notice. And so we see the acceleration of these negotiations. But that's being driven by what's happening in Mar-a-Lago, not by Anthony Blinken's visits, frankly. Okay, we're going to take our break and then we are going to talk a little bit about the Israel-Hamas situation.

But we'll take our break first. Back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge for this Monday. That means Dr. Janice Stein for the Munk School, the University of Toronto. We've talked Russia, Ukraine. We've talked Syria. Now we're going to talk Israel and Hamas. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. Where are we? I mean, you know, on this, you know, when I scan the headlines, every headline has some form of we're close, you know, we're close to a deal. And, you know, we've heard versions of this for, you know, more than a year now. Are we any closer? I'm hesitating because I have said to you, Peter,

so many times we're close and I was wrong, right? We should be closer. Let me put it to you this way. We should be closer than we've been. And why is that? Because Israel changed the strategic balance in the region. You know, Hezbollah is not a factor. And what happened in Syria is a disaster for Hezbollah. It can't be resupplied. Its fundamental resupply lines have been cut off as a result of this. And one of the interesting things we found out over the last week, Peter, is there were, in Syria, as many munitions centers and arms supply depots where the army who was guarding them fled.

There are lots and lots of crates marked for delivery with Russian language on them. Not Iranian, not Farsi. Russian language crates marked for delivery through Syria to Israelzbollah. Russia was a much bigger player there than I think anybody understood. So Hezbollah, you know, out of the game for now. So if you're Hamas, out of the game.

Iran, definitely out of the game for now. Lost its biggest asset. And by the way, a raucous public conversation happening in Tehran. A familiar one to Americans, who lost Syria? It's the way I would describe it, just like Americans. What about who lost China? That's what's going on. It's broken through the barriers and people are taking risks. And the criticism of the government for spending billions and billions of dollars in Syria and in Lebanon and Hezbollah as the Iranian economy.

Manifestation rates of 40, 50 percent just cascading. So the Iranians are no longer a player. That leaves Hamas completely isolated now. And so that's why I believe we are closer. From everything I understand, they're not there yet. They are not there yet. But there's two areas where there have been breakthroughs. One, it's a 60-day ceasefire coming.

So Hamas had said, no permanent, unless we get a permanent ceasefire, we're not coming to the table. They've backed down on that. It's a 60-day ceasefire. And it's been called a humanitarian ceasefire. Who gets released among the hostages? 30. Now, again, there are hundreds. My assumption is more than half are dead, frankly.

And a fair number have died recently. So that tells you that there may be 50 left and 30 will be released. So that's not a small number. Elderly people, women, people who are sick, and all the remaining American hostages. So what Hamas is saying is we're doing this for Donald Trump. We're not doing it for the Biden administration. We're certainly not doing it for Israel.

We're doing this for Donald Trump. And they made one other concession that the Rafa border can be handed over to somebody from the Palestinian Authority. They're no longer demanding that they have a presence there. And that quarter that cuts Gaza in half, the road that the Israelis built called the Nitzarim Quarter, they are allowing Israeli forces to stay there during this first 60 days. So that is, those are very, very significant concessions from Hamas because those were the two issues that were holding up the negotiations before. I think the Israelis know this is their best chance to get these people back.

And, you know, they have good intelligence about who's dying and who's not. There's no question, even in the last four weeks, hostages have died. So this is, I think, their chance to. Hamas, like Hezbollah, has taken serious hits in its leadership over these last couple of months. How unified is Hamas leadership now that we're aware of? So there's a five-man council. And who knows, right? The fact that they haven't been able to agree on a single leader tells me they're factions. That's why they have a five-man council to represent the factions.

Secondly, there are rumors that they have been forced out of Qatar, that they have been moved to Istanbul. Not confirmed, but they are clearly more isolated in the sympathetic Sunni world. And they've lost all their Shia allies. So they have to be thinking about the day after, about January 21st, 22nd, 23rd. Who's going to support, right? You know, let me connect up these conversations, Peter, in a way, because Hamas was, again, an Islamist movement,

connected in many ways to the broader axis of resistance, which was overwhelmingly Shia, but in which Iran had the voice. And Iran is about exporting revolution still. It's never abandoned its revolutionary credentials. I think that moment is over for now in the Middle East. And we're going to get Syrian Islamists. And we've always had Egyptian Islamists, and we've always had Jordanian Islamists.

So we're going to have national Islamist movements. If a mosque can't connect to those, it will lose all its support. So it has to be looking now, how do I get the best deal I can for now as I try to reorient and find alternative sources of support? Because it's not going to come from the groups that supported them in the past. So we really could be looking at a very different kind of Middle East. Yes. Emerging out of all this, which is fascinating because we didn't look at it that way a year ago.

No. So this has been a year of like potentially huge fundamental change. Huge change that comes as a result of the unintended consequences of war, Peter. I mean, war matters. It matters beyond the immediate battlefield. It has consequences, political consequences, way beyond what happens on the battlefield. Well, let me ask you this one then as a final question. How stable is the Tehran government now? I mean, you've given us a couple of hints as to how difficult the situation is there for them. But stability, are they stable? Everyone is asking that question, Peter, which shows you that they are far less stable.

And they're asking the question, you know, in, I think, very interesting ways. Did the United States overestimate the strength of Syria? Going back to the Obama administration, did they really get it wrong? Did they overestimate? Did Israel overestimate the strength of Hezbollah?

Yes, they did. There's no question. They did. Did they underestimate the strength of Hamas? Yes, they did that too. Right. And so there's now a conversation going on. Are we overestimating the strength of the Iranians

they are a deeply unpopular regime at home deeply unpopular regime it's difficult to exaggerate how unpopular they are the Ayatollah Khamenei is in power because of the Revolutionary Guards and the Al-Quds Force that is what is keeping him in power. Not even the regular Iranian army, but the Revolutionary Guards. He doesn't trust the Iranian army.

Well, the Revolutionary Guards have just suffered the most stinging series of defeats from Haniyeh's assassination in their safe house in the heart of Tehran. So humiliating. To the fact that their vulnerability was exposed by the Israeli counterattacks, that their ballistic missile threat is not as effective as they thought, to the fact that they'd lost everything. And that Syrians, you know, it's really interesting when the Assad government fell and people took to the streets to celebrate. They did not attack the U.S. embassy,

which is closed, by the way, has no ambassador there. They attacked the Iranian embassy, which really tells you something so the conversation is going on all the time now and here's a red flag if the Israelis

think that they overestimated and they think that there are now really strong incentives for the Iranians to break out and build a nuclear weapon because they've lost all their other assets. We could see an unprecedented situation in the new year. They came there. We forget this, they came very close in 2012

to launching an attack to preempt. And there are all kinds of discussions now. In fact, the head of the International Atomic Energy, Rafael Grossi, said they are enriching at a furious pace. It is an unstable regime, but they don't fall they're unstable but let's not forget the syrian regime did not collapse from inside it collapsed because a highly trained small but effective militia poured out of one corner of syria and took them on And just to tie the knot on that nuclear question about Iran, Israel,

a number of elements inside Israel just in the last couple of days suggested they need to be prepared to take out whatever nuclear facilities there are in Iran. Yeah. So. Let's just understand for our listeners, they can't do it without U.S. assistance because so many of them are buried so deep underground in mountains. You need the deepest, what are called?

Penetrating bombs. Right, large, you know, bomb busting equipment and these guys don't have it. All right. We're going to call it a day and a year. Wow. equipment and these things don't happen. All right. We're going to call it a day and a year. Wow. We'll see what happens in the next couple of weeks. The plan is for you and I to take the next couple of weeks off.

I'll tell you this, Peter. If you'd asked me last New Year's Day what my New Year's predictions were, I never would have said that a sun would fall in the way that he fell. So, you know, we... You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone next week or the week after. But we'll, you know, let's try and see whether the holidays present us with a few days off. But our listeners can know that if something huge happens,

we'll be back, Janice and I, to talk about it. Happy holidays to you, Peter, and to everyone. And you too. Well, there we have it. Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. You know, there are students who pay hefty dues to sit through a lecture like that because they come off so much better informed

and with a better understanding of the issues of the day on that international front. We're so lucky to have Janice with us, as we have had almost every Monday for the last year and a half. And it's, you know, I feel richer for the experience. And I know many of you do too, because you write every week about Dr. Stein and how much you enjoy their conversations. All right, that's going to wrap it up for today. A reminder that tomorrow,

actually, I don't know what we're going to deal with tomorrow. Let's wait and see. It may be some version of NBITS. It may be some version of the fallout from whatever happens in Ottawa today. There are any number of possibilities. Wednesday will be our encore edition for this week. Thursday is your turn and your answers to the question of the week. Who is the Canadian of the year?

All right, the Canadian of the year. Who is it for 2024? Send your answers to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Keep them short. Include your name and the location you're writing from. Have them in by 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening. All right. That's it for today.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you again tomorrow.