The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Where In The World Is Dr Janice Stein?

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Dr Stein has been at conferences in London & Abu Dhabi & is also about to be at one in Riyadh.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. So where in the world is Dr. Janice Stein will tell you coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Yes, it's Tuesday, which is an odd day for Dr. Janice Stein, but we switched the days around. Yesterday was Smoked Mirrors and the Truth.

And today, because of her world travels, partly because of those, we're having Dr. Stein on today instead. So that's our Tuesday for this week and our Monday yesterday was smoke. It's a one week only change in the normal lineup. However, this is a special show. There's no question about it. Dr. Stein, as you know, travels quite a bit. She's a popular attendee at various conferences in different parts of the world and she's been around the globe already at least once or twice this year.

So I don't know how they get along at the University of Toronto at the Monk School without her, but somehow they do. And somehow we do because we're able to reach out no matter where she is to be able to talk to her and that's what we're doing today. A little later I will remind you of this week's question of the week, but first of all, let's get to our conversation with Dr. Janis Stein because it's an important one, and one I think you will very much find fascinating. Here we go. So that question we used to ask, where in the world is Janis Stein?

In the world today, Janis Stein is in Abu Dhabi, but she started this latest world tour in London. And Janis, that's where I want you to start is because, I mean, you've learned a lot in the last week in a lot of different places, but tell us about the London experience. The London, the time I had in London, Peter, what you know, painted a picture in my head of first of all of Britain and the United Kingdom, anybody who writes off the United Kingdom is making a big mistake, frankly. This was a defense conference organized by journalists, but, and we had Stammer come

and we had the Secretary of Defense come and we could talk about that after. But what stood out for me was, it was the week of VE Day in London. At 12 o'clock on VE Day, everybody in the streets, on the tube, nothing. Nobody moved. Everybody stood still for two minutes, wherever they were. And that evening, there was a dinner for the conference.

And where was it? It was, and when I saw the dinner, I thought, why there? It was in the Royal Chelsea Hospital, right next to the Chelsea Flower Show for people who go to England and know the location. It's the oldest veterans hospital in the United Kingdom. It was set up to serve the veterans. And all hanging in all beautiful building with the cathedral ceiling and hanging from the beams were the colors of the British regiments that had captured flags. So there was one to commemorate Crimea. There was one to commemorate the Boer War. There were colors of regiments from World War I. And at the beginning of the dinner,

a military historian got up and simply walked people through the flags that were hanging over their heads, which in a sense was this five minute history, Britain's military and where it had been and what it had done. He was followed by Rupert Soames, Winston Churchill's grandson, who by the way has that same stentorian voice as his grandfather.

As you close your eyes. And he recalled his grandfather's career, but then took us to the present and said to everyone, history, if it doesn't rhyme, it certainly repeats itself. Were my grandfather alive today, he would say, what I am going to say, we are all called again to service. Oh, that's eerie. Yeah. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. And he was followed by George Robertson, who along with an American one, may be familiar to our listeners, Fiona Hill. Fiona Hill was on the National Security Council when Trump first became president. And she challenged him over his interpretation of what had happened in Ukraine. She stood up to him over that whole issue. And she was asked by the Bretts on American to co chair with George

Robinson, their big national defense review. What have these people, what have the Bretts gotten done in the last 18 months? First of all, a national security strategy. We haven't done ours yet. It's been 10 years. We haven't renewed ours. They've got their new one out. It's done. George Robertson talked and he said, I can't reveal what's in the national defense strategy, which follows on, but it'll be out in a month or six weeks at the latest. We are committing to two and a half percent defense spending immediately, but the goal is three percent defense spending immediately, but the goal is 3% defense spending. And that's remarkable in the sense

that it's a labor government, right? This is a weird, yeah. It's unbelievable, really. But he went on in the same vein, as Rupert Sorensen was. He said, we have an aggressor in Europe and our friends in the United States, and this, you know, typical British language are not seized adequately of the issue.

Were there Americans in the room? Yes, there were. And you could just see, you could just see the American squirm. And he, you know, he went further and he said, this is not the first time that the Americans did not arrive on time. Yeah, right. Right? WW1, WW2. WW2, exactly. But that for them, that's all recent history. They live that history. People genuinely know and remember in London. And he said, And he said, you are being warned.

That's the word he used to everybody. Okay. I want to talk about this. I just want to go back to one of the first things you said, first of all, because it's, it struck me right away. It brought back memories to me, this idea of on VE day, standing still, no matter where you are. That's right. We were one of those years, we were in London, we were doing special programming and we were getting ready for the program in the bureau with some British technicians who worked for the CBC.

with some British technicians who worked for the CBC. And the time came and boom, they stood still in the room, in the bureau for two minutes and we had no idea this was coming. And it was suddenly, we suddenly realized what was happening. But that kind of respect still decades, almost a century later, still holds true. They all know they had parents, grandparents, great grandparents who served, stepped up, volunteers in that war,

as we did, as Canadians did. But they don't forget. They remember in the most, you know, solid of ways standing there still. So that struck me immediately when you said it. Getting back to the, I guess, the theme of those discussions in the veterans hospital or next to it. in the veterans hospital or next to it. The fear is Russia, right? The immediate fear is Russia. The bigger worry is that the United States is decoupling itself from Europe. And they all know what hill to climb Peter. You got two cents in the three

days that I was there because a lot of the meetings were how do we rebuild our defense capacity in Britain, in Europe? How do we do this? Because they're basically, we cannot afford the luxury of getting this wrong about the United States. If the United States does pull back from Europe, because it wants to take on China or because it's going to pull back, it could be either. We have to get ready now. We can't afford to wait this out. So there's a sense of vigilance of rising to the occasion And almost a feeling that

Europe could have to confront this challenge Without the full backing of the United States, which should be who would have said that? You know, it's not the first time we've seen decoupling from the US in our history. And you know, the second world war is an example of that. And if it hadn't been for FDR, that decoupling may well have continued right through that. Absolutely. And the Japanese, I mean, the Jap, I mean, what forced the United States

into that war was an attack on Pearl Harbor up till then, even if the art was struggling to take the American Congress and the American people with him. And Britain stood alone. It got financial help from the United States through Lend-Lease, but it fundamentally stood alone. You know, it's so interesting, Peter, because if you think about Winston Churchill as a leader, you could say he was not rational. It was not rational to take that gamble that Britain could resist the German army alone if the Germans had decided to pass the channel in attack.

He did it against all odds. Damn. You have a lifetime of going to these conferences now and you still are going to them in different parts of the world. You've been to a couple already this year in the United States. When you're in Washington at something like this, the difference in the vibe in the room compared with what you saw in London. Talk to us about that. I have to say, Peter, it's night and day now. It is night and day. You mentioned it's a Labour government in Britain right now, which should not be leading the charge on this. Well, their secretary of state for defense came and talked and made it absolutely clear that the United Kingdom is all in now. It must rebuild its defense industrial base

and it's got to do it on an accelerated timeline. And there were detailed discussions, which we can learn a lot from it, frankly, because we have the same challenge, only worse, because we let ours go even more about how they do it and how they work together with the private sector to get this done. Even more astonishing in a way was the prime minister who came and opened the conference the first day and made clear as a labor prime minister that he is completely committed to this, that he is completely committed to this, but framed it for his audience as, and we are going to use our defense expenditures to create jobs for working class families in the United Kingdom. That's how he joined those two together. But there's no daylight between the Tories and labor

in Britain right now on the necessity and the urgency of getting this done. Now, if you want that direct contrast that it couldn't have been more dramatic, the last evening, quite a large number of Congress people came over from Washington to join. And here we had had two days of Europeans, I mean, Britons, Swedes, Swedes. Wow.

Swedes are all in on conscripting everybody so that they are ready in real time for any incursion across their border. And so the discussions were nitty-gritty. How do we do this? How do we prepare young people to be at the front within two or three hours? What kind of equipment do they need to have? How do we explain this to young people? The Swede and the Finns are in a completely a different world than those of us who are further backed, frankly. And in each one of these discussions, the accelerator was this worry about an America that would no longer be there for Europe. Well, the Congress people came and in the discussions with them, it was, everything's fine. Everything's fine. Don't worry about us. We're fine. We're going to get through this.

There's congressional elections coming. Just hang on. It'll all be OK. And the gap between the way the United Kingdom and the way Britain thought about them and Europe thought about the world and the way the Americans and the Americans only want to talk domestic politics. They weren't talking about Ukraine or Russia.

They were talking about internal US politics. That's all. You know, you spend a good amount of time to talking to people in Ottawa and going to conferences in Ottawa. Is there any indication in this new world that exists in Ottawa, perhaps I haven't given enough time to consider this, but is there any indication yet that any of this same kind of thing is going on, like a serious attempt to move up past 2%, a serious attempt to kind of rearm, a serious attempt to include in the thinking about rearming

and boosting defense spending, the idea of worker involvement in a sense of new jobs. Is there even a whisper of the C word given everything around the world and you know what I mean by the C word. The conscription word. Yes. So is there any, there's three questions there. First one, is there any inspiration of accelerating the 2%? Yes. I believe this government will, you know, it was originally when Prime Minister Trudeau went to the NATO anniversary conference in Washington just in July.

I mean, that's months ago, whatever it is, and it's another world. And that was something like 2032 or something like that. Then the target moved up to two years to three years. I think the Carney government is going to come out and say, we are going to get there within 12 months. Twelve months. Yeah months? They are, yeah. Wow. Yeah, so there is a sense of, they know there's a sense of urgency

to move that target up because look where our allies are going, right? Look where the Poles are going, look where the Swedes and the Finns are going. And even the Germanses and the Finns are going. And even the Germans, finally the Germans passed, broke through the barrier in Germany, which limits the amount of debt you can have as a proportion of the German budget, which has been a fixation of Germany, right? They are conservative. Ever since that great inflation in Germany in the 1930s,

they are the most conservative of spenders. And this is a German chancellor who's a Christian Democrat. He got legislation through that says that barrier is removed. And the story is that they will authorize almost a trillion dollars of defense spending over the next two years in Germany. So we are truly an outlier among our NATO allies. We are truly an outlier. And I think that's clear. Prime Minister Carney was in London talking to this very same prime minister who spoke to us. He must have heard the same message. So I think there's a sense of urgency. The bigger questions for me is the how. How do we do it? And I think thinking is not yet advanced enough on that.

These are big, big choices. And you know, Peter, ultimately, there's a question here for country our size. Do we try to duplicate what our bigger allies have and then join, send two frigates, send 15 fighter jets? Do we buy everything but in small amounts of them? Or do we say, hey, no, we're going to excel in two or three areas. And NATO members will know that we excel in two or three areas. And NATO members will know that we excel in two or three areas. And that's where we're gonna put our finger on the scale.

That's a big debate and it has, it will have a huge impact on the Canadian economy, which way we go. Yeah, that must be an area that the Carnegie government looks at as a major side benefit in terms of the impact you have on the economy, job creation, all of that. I like your idea about Excel in some areas. You can't do everything. No, we can't.

There are some areas on a smaller level that we excel. We excel in special forces. Other countries come to us to learn. You guys are great. We are great in space, believe it or not. Yeah, exactly. We don't tell Canadians often enough what we're really good at. We are great in space.

We are leaders in satellite to satellite communication. Our satellites talk underwater sensors. We have some first-class companies that are competitive. We're always talking about national champions in this country in the private sector. We have one in space in this country that Canadians don't know enough about frankly, MDA. That's an area where we could really make a difference, Peter, because if you think about it, space is where all the communication is going to be space to land, space to water, space to underwater. And that happens to be where we're really good.

And the allies know that. So that's one. You know where else we're really good? Cyber. We are really good in cybersecurity. A little known agency to Canadians called the CSE, the Canadian Securities Establishment. It's all the spooks who listen. They are expert at electronic listening and surveillance, but they are regarded among the five eyes who are. The tough is the five eyes are five countries that collaborate on intelligence, the United Kingdom, the United

States, Australia, New Zealand, and us. They tell me CSE is among the best. Well let's double down. Let's know we're really excellent and double down. You know, it's funny, whenever I hear the five I's mentioned and the list of the countries comes out, and this is no slight at New Zealand, but it just kind of jumps out at you. You know, of all the countries in the world, those five, and New Zealand's one of them, they must have their special area of expertise, just like we do. Okay, I hesitate to raise the C word question

because of our history on this front. But is it something, is it even discussed? Is it ever mentioned? Because we have a terrible record right now in recruitment. Yeah, yeah, terrible, terrible record on recruitment. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible, terrible record on recruitment frankly. And that's by the way, that's going to be a big issue too. How do we recruit and retain really great young people? You know, yes, it's about salaries. Yeah. It's about those kinds of things for sure. of things for sure. But in Sweden, let me tell you, they are not going to pay people.

There's no bonuses. It's conscription. It's every able-bodied young person, women as well as men. That's what they're talking about right now. Because they have no confidence that Russia will not go on from Ukraine once that gets resolved. They're open about it. It may take a few years, but they have no confidence that won't happen. And they know they have to be the one to put their own thumb in the deck. There's no discussion of conscription in Canada. We can't fill our regular, we can't stuff up our regular army. But you know what I have heard people talking informally about a form of national service for Canadians, right? For young people. Not a terrible idea. Not a terrible idea as we knit this country together again.

We transcend some of the regional differences. We become, we have to become more self-reliant in the world into which we're moving. The easy days of co-sing are gone. The so-called peace that is gone. So thinking about national service. Well, you know, it's a good suggestion because I mean, all the bold talk and patriotic talk of the past couple of months and elbows up and all that stuff,

you know, at some point, personally, you got to deliver too, right? Yes, we do. And whether it's some form of national service or whether it's a much more energetic way of approaching young Canadians about service inside the military. I mean, there are exciting elements to the military. It isn't all standing in a field and firing a gun. There's all kinds of other stuff going on which can set you up for a lifetime. Yeah. Outside of-

You join the intelligence services. You become expert in cryptography. Those are skills, Peter, that translate into great futures in the civilian economy when you're out. So there are so many things that we could do. I hope the new government thinks about this, the new government thinks about this? Because ultimately, if you know, two things struck me. One, how young, because we had young people in the room, because we had students from King's College in the room with us, how young people in Britain know history. It frankly drives me wild that Canadians know as little about our own history as we do. It's living history for somebody in London. That's just not true in this country.

And if it's not true, well, then how do you call people to serve if you don't have a sense of where you've come from and what you've done and why this world as new as it is, you know, as technologically advanced as it is, as full of AI as it is, is still not all that different from what's going on in the last hundred years. Okay, we gotta take our break and then come back and talk about the current part of your journey overseas. Because let me ask you this before we get into the break.

As you were taking off from London Heathrow, I guess, or wherever you were taking off from. London Heathrow I guess or wherever you were taking off from. London Heathrow it is. And you pull up into those skies that saw the blitz, they saw the battle of Britain, they saw everything that happened in the years following that and the constant raids from Nazi fighters and bombers and their own fighters and bombers heading off to Europe as you flew through those skies after what you just heard for a couple of days. What were you thinking? It felt very personal, Peter. I felt it very personally. I have a good friend who was at that conference. His name is Sergey Vachenko. He won the Gelber Prize for his book on Russia during the Cold War. It's just a wonderful, wonderful history. And it's such an interesting personal story. His mother is Ukrainian, his father is Russian,

and he was born on Saikaland Island, which is far east as you can go, and it's in Russian, way, way at the end. And I watched him when Rupert Somers was speaking, and his face was so grave. His head was down and his face was great. I think for anybody who has really active memories, which not because I was there, but because I've read about it and read about it from so many different perspectives of World War II, to hear Churchill's grandson say,

you are being called again. And so when I think about it, I thought, what are the costs of ignoring that warning? What are the costs of dismissing it or being too slow to get ready or not to respond at all. If you think about the cost to the people in Europe who didn't take it seriously in the 30s, they were astronomical. Okay. We'll be back right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School at the University

of Toronto with us. You're listening on Series XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Okay. So, um, you go from London to where you are now, Abu Dhabi. Right. Um, that's a different world. Totally different world. What are they talking about?

Totally different world. What are they talking about there? What are they? So, you know, they ha- it's a federation of seven different Shia activists and the president of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, has to manage a federation just like the prime minister of Canada has to manage a federation. And they're all cousins or related. It doesn't make it any easier. But, and you're not dissimilar

to a country like Japan and Asia. They have a very long strategic view, Peter. They're not distracted by what's happening. So the most striking thing here, one of the reasons I'm here, is the massive investment they are making in artificial intelligence. And not only investment in companies to commercialize, both at home and abroad, they have a $100 billion investment fund that is focused on AI and they will invest anywhere in the world where they see opportunities.

But I was with a friend who has an eight-year-old son and he told me that next year they are going to roll out in their elementary schools, much less their high schools. They're going to teach AI to young people so that young people understand it, can use it, can start to be familiar with it, because they understand that that's the route to continuing to diversify their economy. They're an oil-based economy. They know the shelf life is limited. And so there's a singularity of purpose, which you just don't see. They have a university here named after the ruling family. It's a university of AI. And I'm here because they're interested in what we're doing at the Munk School in trying to make civil servants better informed and more literate so they can make some of the

big decisions. That's what we're going to be talking about. But there is, one of them said to me, there's a lot of noise in the world, but that's not going to deflect us from our purpose. We're thinking about 10 years from now, not about next year. There are days, there are days I wish we could have that kind of focus. Well, you know, it's interesting, you know, listening to the way you put it because you've given us two examples. One is more or less of the short view, what you were getting in London, and one is the long view or the longer view strategy versus the shorter view strategy. And I mean, you've seen a

lot in your time. You've been to a lot of conferences. You know your history better than anybody. Does one have the advantage over the other? Look, I would say that if you're having a 10 year strategy and being able to execute on it, is the best luxury in the world, right? Because you actually, and Abu Dhabi is amazing, Peter. It's a country of a million people with 8 million others who've come to work in Abu Dhabi,

sometimes not under very good conditions, let me say. But what happened in this economy in a short period of 20 years is absolutely transformative. They've got a really good system of higher education. They trained scientists and engineers. What they're able to build. And let me just say in parentheses, because I think some of our listeners would be interested. I went with some government officials to what's called the Museum of the Abrahamic Face. And what

was there? First was the church. And when we came into the church, there was a mass that was being celebrated in honor of the new pope and the room was full of people. That was on Sunday that we were there. After that was a synagogue within a stone's throw. Just beautiful. Just a beautiful synagogue. Just beautiful, just a beautiful synagogue. And all designed by the same architect who created the shared envelope. And then the last was a mosque. And we got there just in time for one of the five daily prayers in the Muslim day. But what was so interesting is you could see that the Christians who had been praying

in the church had moved over to the mosque to see it. And there were Muslim families that were in the synagogue. So there is, they are doing something really right in this country. And that's again the family that is investing. It builds cultural institutions. It's sending messages to its young people about what it thinks the future should look like in Abu Dhabi and in the Emirates. That's very different from other parts of the Middle East. Yeah, very different, certainly from some parts. Now, Saudi Arabia, where I'm going next, we should just say, I don't know how to put this to you, but I'm gonna be there on the same day that Donald Trump

is gonna be there. And you've been in cities where an American president shows up. You know what that does to the traffic and to all the meetings. It really messes you up. But to return to something that you and I talk about, this could be a really significant visit.

Donald Trump has done two things to get ready for this visit with Saudi Arabia. One he's totally Israelis, humanitarian aid is going in into Gaza. If you don't do it, we're going to do it. But humanitarian aid is going in. So much for Bibi Netanyahu's big bet on Donald Trump. And the other, we are going to go ahead, in our relationship with Saudi Arabia, we are going to go ahead on providing civilian nuclear technology.

There are some issues around what the safeguards are. If you can't find a way to give the Palestinians a pathway to some sort of political future. That's okay. You're out of this deal. But we're going to hit. That's why he's there on Wednesday, along with a Trump Tower. Yeah, exactly. There had to be a Trump hotel or something in there somewhere. Yeah. Oh yeah. And a big crypto fund, um, which the sons are running in, which is making hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. No, they surprised at Donald Trump. This is his first foreign visit.

He starts in Riyadh and then he's going to Abu Ghraib afterwards. Tells you about this part of the world, right? The second thing that's really interesting and here's the other angle is the India-Pakistan story that we talked about last week blew up, which is what we thought would happen. And JD Vance said, oh no, that's your problem, guys. I just said, we don't have any stake in this one. You figure it out yourself. Which is of course the new neo-isolationist tendency

within the Trump presidency. That's what JD Vance represents. That lasted 48 hours. As it go, and who would intervene to try to stop the Indians and the Pakistanis, two countries that have good relationships with both, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Both of them failed.

It took the United States, it took Marco Rubio to weigh in and put myself and call the Indians and call the Pakistanis and really work out it and invoke Donald Trump's name and they got a ceasefire in name even if there are ongoing violations. So you look at these countries, these three countries, United States, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, all three powerful beyond what you would think for very, very different reasons. But we get back to where we've been for the last 75 years. There's one indispensable country when the going really gets tough. Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt that the Trump and his crowd are claiming credit for the

ceasefire. I mean, there were a lot of countries involved. As you said, the Saudis were definitely involved. The Emiratis. The UK was involved. Yeah. In fact, I read something from one Pakistani official said there in total there were 30 countries involved.

But that won't stop Trump from claiming, claiming credit in his bid for Nobel Peace Prize. At least that's one out of three ceasefires that seems to be working. We'll see. It seems to be working. Yeah. Right. We'll see where it all ends up. Fascinating conversation as always, Janice see where it all ends up. A fascinating conversation as always, Janice. Safe travels on your trip. Enjoy the time in Saudi Arabia and we'll catch up and

figure out what happened when we talk next. See you next week when I'm home. Dr. Janice Stein with another fascinating, remarkable at times conversation based on her travels this week and the different things she's hearing as she goes to different world capitals, attends conferences and picks up a lot of information that her students benefit by and I kind of include us now as some of Dr. Stein's students, because you are a loyal following. Usually on Mondays, this week on a special Tuesday edition with Dr. Stein. And as I said, fascinating, some of the things that she picks up in a normal week's work for her. Okay, before we sign off for this day, we got to give you a reminder of the question of

the week. The deadline is 12 noon tomorrow, Wednesday of this week, 12 noon Eastern time to get your answers into the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Include your name, the location you're writing from, and keep your answer to under 75 words. Here's the question of the week. What Canadian history lesson should every Canadian kid know before leaving high school? I think it's a great question, because if there's one thing that we challenge ourselves on at times is do we know enough about our own history? It's one thing for us to be whining and moaning about others not knowing enough about us. Do we know enough about us?

So the question once again, what Canadian history lesson should every Canadian kid know before leaving high school? I'm just looking for one lesson. I'm not looking for a bunch of lessons. I'm just looking for one. And let's see the kind of things you think about that are appropriate as an answer for this question. Because there are lots of different parts of Canadian history. What's the one lesson you think kids should know before they leave high school? All right, look forward to your answer and we'll put together a program on Thursday of your turn, but also Thursday is the the random ranter. Tomorrow is our encore edition of the bridge.

Look forward to having you there for us on that show. That's it for this day. I'm Peter Bansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in less than 24 hours.