The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Who To Believe -- Iran or the United States?

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

The question above seems almost ridiculous, that we would even consider believing the world's worst terrorist government before believing the country we once thought of as the leader of the free world. But that's where we are with the latest news from the Iran War. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Who to believe Iran or the United States on claims about the Iran war? That's our question today for Janice Stein, and it's coming right up. And hello, once again, welcome to Monday. Welcome to yet another new week here on the Bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge, glad to be with you. Lots to go over today with Janice Stein, but first a couple of,

of, as we always say on Mondays, housekeeping notes. One will be the question of the week. But first up, this is a big day. This is a big day for my good friend and co-author, Mark Bulgutch, and me. Because Simon and Schuster, our publisher, we've had a successful publishing career already.

We've written two books together. We've both written other books on our own. But together, we've written, written two books, both of them national bestsellers, and we're hoping this new one, which will come out in November. November will be a bestseller as well. I think it's got a very good chance of doing that, because it's a topic that I know many people always think about

for good reason, because we've all had teachers, and that's what this book's about. The cover is being unveiled today by Simon and Schuster, our publisher. The book is called A Noble Profession, inspiring stories of the teachers who shape our world. And they really are inspiring stories by a wide array of teachers. In various teaching areas, not only geographically, every province, all the territories,

they're all represented in this book, but also the different kinds of teachers. Now, I'm not going to go into all the detail on the book yet, but these are stories that are the stories of the teachers themselves. They tell us about their history in teaching, about the challenges, the good times, the difficult times. It's all in here. It's a remarkable book.

And as I said, I know many of you are really fixated about the teachers in your life. And you perhaps were a teacher. Well, some of your stories just may be in this book. So you can pre-order the book as of today, you know, through your favorite bookstore. It's called A Noble Profession, Simon & Shepard. Schuster is the publisher, and the authors are Peter Mansbridge and Mark Bulgutch. So obviously we hope you do exactly that in the weeks, months ahead. The book goes on sale in November, so it will be there.

Well, it's on sale now, but it will be in the stores in November, beginning of November, and we want to hit the pre-Christmas book sales, and so look forward to that. A noble profession. Keep it in mind. All right, question of the week. The question, of course, is for Thursday. Here's what we're going to try this week. I've got a lot of letters recently.

Remarkable, actually. A lot of letters about the planned high-speed rail link between Quebec City and Toronto. This is going to be extremely expensive, I think somewhere in the 60 to $90 billion. range. Talk about a big project. But the question is, do you think it's worthwhile? Quebec City to Toronto. It's a good idea, it's a bad idea, too ambitious, not ambitious enough. Would you rather spend the money to improve regular passenger rail across the country? Or maybe

you think rail travel isn't worth anything at all. Do you take the train? Would you, service was improved. Those are just many of the questions that you might want to consider for the answer to this question. What do you think of the plan to bring high-speed rail in a link between Quebec City and Toronto? And all the places in between, right? And there are lots of them. So think about that. Consider your answer.

You're not going to be able to answer all those questions in the 75 word link. limit, but pick the one that you're most interested in. We'd love to hear from you on this question. And the answer goes to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. 75 words or fewer, as we said. Include your name and the location you're writing from. Okay.

And you have to have it in by 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. Those are the conditions and they're hard. Okay. Don't forget your name. Don't forget your location. Keep it under 75 words. 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. All right. Time for our regular Monday feature that is incredibly popular with all of you. You love the discussions with Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School of the University. Steve Toronto. So we cover a number of topics today. But we start with this one, which I find incredibly challenging these days.

Enough for me, let's get to Dr. Janice Stein. So Janice, I've been trying to figure out the best question to ask you on the Iran situation. And here it is. I am at a loss. As to who to believe anymore. Do you believe the Iranians or do you believe the Americans? Now, you know, a couple of years ago, that would not have been a question. In Iran, the terrorist country, et cetera, et cetera, the Americans, the, you know, guardians of peace in the world.

But not so much anymore. And I really am at a loss, especially through this negotiation process or whatever, what they're calling negotiation process. I really don't know who to believe. So help me. That is such an interesting question, Peter, because it speaks to the loss of credibility by the Trump administration. And it's not only on this issue. You know, when he speaks and uses hyperbole, we're close to the best deal ever, the Iranians want to make a deal and he says that over and over and over for the last six weeks

and then the Iranians come back and they haven't moved in any way that anybody can see. You scratch your hat and you say what world is he living in. And it's really, really frankly difficult to know

it confounds even some of his advisors. So you could say that he's doing this to put pressure on Iran, right? And to put pressure on Iran one. And he does it most often on the weekends just the Sunday night or before the market's open.

So that at least would be strategic if you were doing it. But I don't think it is because he's doing it on so many issues that there's a huge problem now, nobody knows whether to believe this president and to what extent he shuts down all the people around him. You know, Marco Rubio doesn't

sound like that. The rare times that we, that he gives a press conference, he doesn't sound like Donald Trump. But it doesn't matter because Donald Trump over rules him when he's walking out of the White House on the way to a helicopter

and stops and talks. So I think you're putting your finger on a much bigger issue for this administration for the United States than the war with Iran. Well, you know, the points coming out of Washington are uncoordinated. I mean, they all talk differently and they all seem a different way in terms of which way the negotiations are going. So you tend to discount any of them, especially. Trump we know as a liar and so we you know we sort of accept that God forbid but um you know we sort of assume that he's lying or he's he's torquing the truth but what am i supposed to think on the Iranian side i mean a lot of um a lot of the expectation is around what the foreign

minister is going to say and then when he says it and this is a guy with a track record and a certain degree of acceptance on the part of a lot of a lot of the law. lot of other countries about him. But are they as liberal with the truth as the American side? Yeah. So I think they have different dynamics going on inside Iran than Washington. And just before we leave Donald Trump and go to the Iranians for a minute. You know, lying, if you lie, means you know the truth.

the issue with Donald Trump for a lot of people is does he know the truth can he actually distinguish between what he wants to happen and what is happening in that that's the bigger worry here Peter which is confounding so many people so in the realm the dynamic is very different there is a real struggle for who among the republic Guards, the Revolutionary Guards, emerges as the key center of power. You know, in the wake of the death of such a broad swath of senior leaders, people jockey for power. And so one of the reasons that we get this long wait for an answer.

The answer to Donald Trump was delayed almost 36 hours is that. they have to go through this arduous process of negotiation among the factions. And so the foreign minister doesn't speak for himself. He has to, he's not powerful. He's not one of the key decision makers. He's their spokesperson and because he's well spoken and he's liked and people know him. But he's not, he's not among the court decision makers. So it's apparently, Mostabha Khomeini, the new Supreme Leader, is a player.

There is a radical, really radical faction, hardliners who are more empowered by this war because they're able to say, look, what do the negotiations ever get you? Nothing. The United States is betrayed over and over every time they've made a deal. So they exercise a considerable amount of sway. And then there's a kind of middle faction in there that is aware of how precarious their economic situation is inside right now in Iran. And it really is bad, Peter.

You know, a million and a half to two million people lost their jobs. Industry shut down. Yes, they can export over land. But, you know, the petrochemical industry was taken out. So they can't make many of the exports that they were exporting before is really an economy-grave crisis. And that middle faction wants this war over. That doesn't mean they're willing to give away their nuclear weapons program, but they want this war over.

And so that's what you're seeing. So when he finally says something, it's a result of a, it's not dissimilar from what we saw with Hamas when there was a leadership in Gaza that was the more hard line. There was a leadership in Qatar and there would be these long waits while they reached the leadership in Gaza and built a consensus and came back. Most of Hamini is in some sort of secured bunker. doesn't use a cell phone. No electronics anywhere in the room. Paper notes given to couriers who relay it back and forth. So it's very different.

It's not that they don't know what they think. It's that powerful elements in that group think differently and the communication process is very slow. So, you know, it's hard to think of when the Iranians in the negotiations have lied. You know, they haven't said we destroyed five warships of the United States in the Gulf, in the street. They haven't said that kind of thing where we can catch them out on factual errors. But I guess it goes back to that old saying, I think there was some British general added in the First World War, where he said, I won't lie to you, but don't assume that means I'm telling you the truth.

That's right. That's right. And just again for the record here, because I said they haven't lied in these negotiations, they have repeatedly covered up their enrichment processes and hidden them away and distorted and created alternative sites. There's no question, Peter, about that. Let me go back to something you mentioned a few minutes ago, because I find that interesting,

that, you know, Trump's not necessarily lying because he doesn't know what the truth is. You know, I can't remember which article that I was reading last week, which the basic suggestion was they were afraid to tell him the truth. You know, so they work around it by not telling him what's really happening. Do you believe that? I mean, he's the president. You know, he's supposedly making big decisions.

Yeah, I absolutely can believe it. Look, that's a known problem with Vladimir Putin, right? People are afraid of him. They don't tell him the truth. He eventually finds it out, but that's after he's made a really bad decision. And that's in Putin's cases, because he's running a deeply authoritarian society.

and you challenge him. You know, if you live through it, you're lucky, but you go to jail for years and years and years. Well, think about the atmosphere that Donald Trump is created in Washington, which we probably don't talk enough about, Peter. You know, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the most senior military person, Dan Kane, who is, you know, to the best of everyone,

knowledge responsible officer owes his job to Donald Trump. His predecessor was fired. Donald Trump put him in this job. So, you know, they'll come a time when he'll risk his job in order to tell the president in the bluntest possible way when he thinks the president needs to know. But you structure things that way and people don't want to lose their jobs. they are not as direct as they would be. And because it's, it's, Trump controls all the levers, and he controls the Republican Party still.

He controls the levers in the cabinet. He could, he's made the key appointments as the military. In the Department of Justice, which is really, you know, stunning, he's fired the top third of the senior leadership and replaced it with his own personal lawyers. What does that look like, frankly? It's nothing like we've ever seen in the democracy before. Who's the player we should watch right now on the American side?

I mean, I know you give some credit to Rubio. I'm not there yet, quite frankly, because he doesn't have the background to deal with a war situation. but he's got more smarts than those who do, whether it's, you know, Hex-S, obviously, you know, the weekend weatherman who's running the Defense Department. You've got, you know, obviously Trump. And then you've got Kane, as you said,

who's probably gun-shy about being frank and honest with the president about what's happening. My guess is that that original meeting, he probably was not a hawk on doing this war thing. No. Nor was fans, apparently. No.

But he didn't push back. He didn't push back hard enough, Peter. Right. Right? Because, you know, we've had these leaks about what that conversation looked like. And when I read it, he said, well, you know,

they're likely to close the straits of poor moose. And Donald Trump says, well, that's not going to be. happen. How does he know that? But he says it. He had to go back in then and say, well, I'm not sure you're right, Mr. President. There's every reason to think that it might happen. He didn't go back in. So it's those kinds of subtle things that, you know, Millie, if you remember, the chairman of the chiefs of staff, and the first in Trump, one, talk back to the president. And the president, and wanted him fired and wanted him prosecuted.

So that's the other. Right. I saw a million New York a couple of weeks ago. He prosecuted. He said he could swing like the death penalty for what. They're all worried about being prosecuted by the Department of Justice. I know that there are senior, former, CIA officials who

serve their country, put themselves at risk and signed a letter criticizing the president in the procedures he was using, every one of them is worried they're going to be prosecuted and put in jail. That creates a kind of

Russian chill in Washington on the president getting a kind of advice he really needs. And it brings leaders down, Peter. Honestly, it's the kiss of death when your team is a prey to the leader. Well, getting back to that circle around him who are making decisions on the war, mentioned a few of them. And then there's, you know, the two guys from Century 21 or where they are the real estate agents, Whitkoff and Prushner.

You look at that list and you, it's easy to conclude, well, Rubio is the smartest guy. room. But really, having said that, he doesn't have this experience either. No. What you're really saying, Peter, there's no competition. It's an easy statement to make about him because there's no competition. Because frankly, with the exception of Dan King, nobody has experience, right? And we're seeing it. We're seeing it. I mean, you know, the United States finds itself in the position that it is now, which is. is not a good one at all, and it's going to have consequences for everything for the relationship with China, for the relationship with Europe. It spills over. You can't contain the damage.

It's because there's a group of inexperienced people who, except for Dan King, who fundamentally not even so much they trust Donald Trump, although they say they do. But it's because they owe their jobs to him. And they don't have those degrees of freedom that you need to talk back and say, these are hard jobs when you have to talk back to their... It's getting harder and harder to understand who does trust from the outside. Who does trust Trump anymore? I mean, the NATO allies are all upset.

Yeah. The Gulf allies are clearly upset about whether they'll ever trust Trump again. I can tell you that even in Israel, where the trust was the highest, as this gets more and more erratic, there are elements of the Israeli intelligence community,

of the senior military and of the opposition who feels the same way. How can you put your security in the hands of somebody who makes decisions this way, and he's so inept. Well, if there's one thing we can assume is likely to happen in the next couple of days, is there will be some kind of deal announced

because Trump has to go to China on Everettus later this week, Thursday or Friday. Right, right. And he can't go to China with this thing still going on. You know, what's it? And who knows there was a response yesterday from Iran. My hunch is we're going to get exactly what you said. We're going to get a framework agreement,

and it may be nothing more than an extension of the ceasefire while they continue to negotiate. And that would be enough for Donald Trump right now. It wouldn't solve. And they might agree to open up the strait on both sides while they're negotiating the ceasefire. the reason that neither side really wants to do it is this war has become an economic war where the leverage is who controls the price of energy in global markets and if you open up

it's hard to close again but that's i think the maximum that we're going to get and some maybe very vague high level abstract principle on what they're going to do about the nuclear program. But so loose that it could mean anything. So talk to me about the stakes for this China trip for Trump. Yeah. Oh, they're huge. So in many ways, what's happened, you know, in the straight and with Iran for the last

three months, it's a local crisis, but with really global economic consequences that have rippled through, you know, from. No fertilizer in large parts of the south, so we'll only feel the consequences of that in the late fall when the harvest comes. China is at the epicenter of for the United States. It's the only country. It's a pure country, Peter, in many ways. And what China and the United States decide to do together shapes everything for everybody,

absolutely everything. So he and Donald Trump is going. in by far the weakest position that a U.S. president has been in with respect to a Chinese leader. That I can even remember, frankly, he's weak because it's so clear that he has lost this war, along with Iran. I keep saying it's a lose-lose war. But the United States has lost. It's also clear that he, it was.

You know, I struggle for the right word, shambolic. I mean, Xi Jinping must be looking at this, the lack of discipline, the lack of coherence, the inability to execute those wild slings. And he must be saying to himself, you know, who's minding the store here? This is not the United States they've ever had to deal with. They are, they have already forced him to back down once in a big way. when they stopped the export of process critical minerals and Trump removed the tariffs right away.

And just to go back, it was Donald Trump who in 2018 and Trump won and said, oh my goodness, we have to put limits on the advanced computer chips that we sell to China because they are competing. And if they outcompete us, that's it because dominance in AI is the most important resource going forward. He's offered, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if he gives way on that too. And it turns in the trade deficit the United States has after all these tariffs

and a ruling by the court last week by the federal court that said that last round of 10% tariffs, not legal. The U.S. trade deficit rose, and the China trade surplus is at its highest level ever because China has this huge surplus of exports and it is the world player in the car market. If you're a Canadian, not something you're going to worry about because we won't have a car industry in this country

for very much longer. It's the world-dominant player in solar energy in renewables. And you have a weakened, wounded, erratic president going to a summit. Well, no matter how long that summit last, you know he will claim triumph

at the end of it. Of course. And say, incredible. We've made these fantastic deals. Best deal ever. Best deal ever. Never. That's right. Never seen one like this before.

That's right. What would have to happen for that to be true? Well, I think two or three things, and I think none of them will happen, right? The first thing is we probably need some agreement on climate change, which, you know, the data are getting worse and worse. And we're actually, and who knows if the forecasters are accurate. And I don't have any more confidence in weather forecasters than I do in stock market forecasters. But they are projecting a really unusually warm El Nino, which if it happens, is going to, this coming winter, is going to really increase the pace,

at least for next year. At a time when we've got a food crisis in the world because of the Iran War. There has to be some sort of framework agreement on climate change. Zero chance with Donald Trump. Zero. Not going to happen. There has to be some sort of framework agreement between the United States and China on regulating AI. We haven't talked much about this, but, you know, anthropic developed a model called mythos.

And a lot of people say, well, that's business. hype and that's why they didn't release it and how good for the company. That's all true, but it's also true that it is incredibly powerful in finding vulnerabilities in the software that's on your computer and my computer and can exploit them. And that's why they channeled the release. And in Canada, for example, we had to wait two weeks at least. to actually get mythos. It went first to the big American companies.

I think we're reaching a point that if there's not some sort of regulatory framework where people have to register these models and say, tell us what safeguards are in them and what they're going to do if there's a breakout, we're approaching really significant events. For one country to do it and the other not, is a risk.

So in a perfect world, there would have already been a memorandum of agreement worked out between these two countries, and we have some kind of agreement on AI. I'm dubious. Okay, trade would be the last one, and here's what he's probably going to get. He's probably going to get in another statement

by China of how much American products in whatever sector, they're going to buy. This is our fourth or fifth time around this. And he'll say that's the best deal ever. And they won't do it. They promised Obama. They promised him. They promised Biden. And they never meet their targets. But he's going to tell us the best deal ever.

And he might give away some of the real eat in exchange because he's, he's already suggested. You want me to go down a rabbit hole for a minute or two and tell you about this argument about these advanced computer chips? Sure. Okay. It's the C. Okay.

It really is a rabbit hole, but it really matters. It's the CEO of Invidia, who has said to Donald Trump, you are making a big mistake limiting exports of advanced computer chips to China. Why is that? because you're creating incentives inside China where they're going to throw everything they have at building up their own industry to make the most advanced computer chips

and you will be giving up the last bit of leverage you have on the Chinese economy. Far better, says the CEO of Nvidia to sell just below the most advanced Nvidia computer chips to China. He's gone to the White House repeatedly with that argument, and Trump is sympathetic to the argument, even though he was the first president to impose export restrictions. I think we will hear something like that at the summit. Okay.

Yeah. Well, that will definitely be something to watch out for. Yeah. you still get the impression, correct me if I'm Wong, that the Chinese, the Xi in particular, are looking at this is, well, here comes the mark. We can take him again. We can't make it look like we're taking him.

That's right. Here comes the mark. That's right. And for me, the interesting quote, because that's definitely their view of him at this point. They took him last year. when they had them by the throat over the process, critical minerals, and they remember, and they are disciplined and they are focused, right?

The really interesting question is, how far do they go, Peter? What do they want him to say about Taiwan at the summit, right? Because I don't think Donald Trump cares about Taiwan at all. you know, so what are they going to ask him to say and will he say it? Because that would send shivers down the spine, I think, of everybody in Asia, if he goes too far in any kind of statement. You know, I'm one of the ones who does not think that Xi Jinping is imminently got a plan for 2027, you know, next year to win by Taiwan.

and largely because he's purged as military. We talked about what it is like when you purchase the senior military in the Department of Justice in Washington. Holy cow. There are two members of the military commission out of nine that are either not in jail in China or being charged and investigated. Can you imagine what kind of military advice Shishiping is getting? Right.

And for an army that hasn't fought in 50 years. Right. Has no battlefield experience. And you know how important battlefield experiences. You don't know how great your planning is. It lasts one day until you actually get onto the battlefield, then that's where you learn. So I can't imagine that he would gamble like that with an army

where the leadership is in turmoil. And everybody three layers down is terrified and doesn't tell them what they think. Well, one thing the Chinese have done certainly since 1949 is they're not big on one-year plans. They're all five, ten, twenty-year plans. And G has done that. You know, his leadership has been marked by not short-term plans, but long-term plans. Yeah, that's right. I mean, they understand what strategy is.

Right? And they're not, they're not, you know, here's the difference between Donald Trump, his shipping. Donald Trump will tell you how many missile launchers he took out. How many ships are at the bottom of the strength. How many aircraft, you know, we're taking out. Those are all tactical issues. They're tactical issues. They're tactical successes and some of them were really, but they're tactical. they're not strategic. And in fact, he hasn't been able to convert any of that

to a strategic win. Geeping the opposite end of respect, focused on the strategic outcome. Now, he can because he's running authoritarian society. Peter, they don't have midterm elections in four months. They're meaningful, right? He's not distracted, and Vladimir Putin doesn't have that problem either, although he has others.

Well, we want to talk about those others with Vladimir Putin. We're going to take a break, though, and we'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Monday episode of The Bridge. That means Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School, the University of Toronto. You're listening on Series XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. And we're glad to have you with us, no matter where you are listening to us from. So I said we talk about Vladimir Putin, and here's what we're going to talk about.

There have been a lot of articles written in the last week or so, and they all have a similar theme to this one that I saw in the New Yorker, where the headline is, rumors of instability in Moscow, drone attacks, internet blackouts, a sudden downturn in the economy have marked one of the worst stretches for Vladimir Putin since the start of the war in Ukraine.

And as we know, that's into its fourth year now. what are we what should we make of this because basically this is kind of saying the same thing that some of the people around trump are saying which is they're saying to Putin and apparently he's the only one left in Moscow who believes that they're winning this war everybody else around him from the military to the diplomats to everyone believes they're not winning and they can't Wayne. Is he, I mean, he looks awful. The pictures that have come out of him of him in the last week or so. Looks bad. What are we saying here? Is he in serious trouble? So the news is even worse, Peter, than what you just reported, because he scaled back

the big Victory Day parade, which celebrates the victory of the Soviet Union over nasty Germany, Daugler's there. And you know those big parades in Red Square where the missiles run, no military equipment

of consequence in the parade because they feared a Ukrainian attack on the parade. He's back now. He's worried about a coup in addition to

everything else against his leadership. So he's back again in underground headquarters most of the time and the communication is slowed down again because the same thing. Won't your cell phones? Has couriers.

So that is a leader who is really worried about its own security. And when you get to that, that in a sense really demonstrates how bad the situation is. Russian economic growth is really slowing. They can't inflate their way out of this anymore. And you spoke earlier, I think, about what the critical thing is. The Ukrainians now make enough manufacture in Ukraine. They're not dependent on the United States to give them this stuff. They make enough long-range drones that they have shown.

They can literally hit anywhere in Russia. and inflict damage on Russia's energy infrastructure, but more important, bring the war home to the public. And Putin's public opinion, support in public opinion polls, because believe it or not, there's still a polling agency that's pretty good in Moscow, lowest effort since he's been elected. So this is a real low. Is he at risk of a coup?

You know, he was. There was an attempt. one. It failed. And if the army, it's always the army, if the army is discontented enough and feels they're

being asked to sacrifice, the numbers were out on that, on, there was an estimate on the number of dead, 350,000 Russians dead. So that must mean 2 million

wounded. They're trying to draft university students because they can't extract anymore from the prisons. It's a really difficult. It's the scenario that many people who are Ukraine to hold out argued for, the economy will crumble under the depression. Despite, by the way, the lift they got from the Iran War, where Trump eased some of the sanctions on Russian oil. in order to stabilize the price of oil and global markets, that was a gift. It's funny because from the appearance's sake, at least,

the only friend he's got is Trump. Yeah. And we still don't quite understand why. No. No. You know, look, this is, there's Trump, there's Xi Jinping, who does not want to see Russia defeat it.

He doesn't care how long it takes him to win. He doesn't care how weakened they are, but he doesn't want to see them defeated because he views that as a victory for the West. So, Jiji Pingu is another one. And then you saw, by the way, at the parade, instead of the 30 leaders that you always get, three, the president of Slovenia, the president of Belarus. I mean, yeah. So I think there's a crunch for him And that's why he looks as growing as he does You know, there are a lot of leaders in trouble

Or in different parts of the world Yeah, yeah And you know, I'm in the UK right now And, you know, Kier Starmour is in Big Tray He may not last the weekend Until the weekend It's amazing It really is.

You know, I don't think he's got a long political career ahead of him. Peter, he can't after defeat of the county. He was in trouble before the municipal elections, but that just put the icing on the cake for him. You know, in France, we have a president who lost functional control of his parliament and the polls predict that the far-right will win. You look anywhere. I mean, in Germany, Friedrich Merritt is struggling.

You know, interestingly, Canada is the one big exception where we have a prime minister who just got a majority in the most unequal way, but has a secure runway and who continues to be really popular with Canadians everywhere else. And what we're seeing, by the way, is this bounce. You vote against the government. what you're doing every single time. So when it's a moderate centrist government, you elect the government on the far right, which they did in the United States, and they just did it in Britain again at the municipal level, or you go far left, and then they disappoint you. And so you vote for the center because you're so infuriated by what the extremes did, but the center doesn't deliver. So this is,

in fact, it's a crisis of democracy all through the developed world. These systems are straining. Mainly it's benefiting the right or the far right. I mean, that's what's happening here in the UK. That's what we've seen happen in a number of different European countries. So, you know, it really is. And part of it, what is inevitable, Peter, and that's because, as I say all this time,

there are more people like me. in Canada right now, or we're getting very close to it, then there are people my grandchildren's age, right? And as is, it's true all over the developed world. It just is people are not having kids. And there's all kinds of explanations. We don't really know why, but they're not having kids. And when a society gets older, productivity drops.

Well, and people get mad because they're not getting services that they used to because the government can't afford to provide them. And then along comes a right with a microphone and says, you're the victim, you're the victim. Throw those guys out who betrayed you. And that's what's common across all these examples that we're talking. But it's really dangerous. It is.

There's so many things that are dangerous right now. I mean, you know, this week unfolds the way, excuse me, we tend to think it will. There'll be some kind of patchwork deal between Iran and the United States. Trump will go to China, claim all kinds of things that aren't true, but you'll claim them anyway. He'll get back, say, you know, pieces at hand. We've solved the war here.

We've got good friends in China. You know, Venezuela's all worked out. Let's move on Cuba. That's right. And that's what we'll talk about next week because there are all kinds of reports out that they're doing over flights and picking spots and doing a little thing.

There's already secret negotiations going on between the government of June and those two real estate guys. God. What a world. Yeah. What a world is right. And it's a changing world.

and we're lucky every week to be able to talk to Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School at the University of Toronto, as we have just done. I hope you enjoyed the program and be with us tomorrow. Tomorrow's a more butts conversation. They're always good too. So remember that. And remember the question of the week. It's about high-speed rail.

It was at the top of the program today with all kinds of possibilities. you can use as questions that I'd love to hear your answers on. High-speed rail, is that the future? Or is rail travel the past? You tell me, give me some thought on that and send your answers in before 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. But listen to the full scope of the question. It's all there at the beginning of today's program.

All right, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. It's been a treat as it always is. Talk to you again in 24 hours.