The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Why Hasn't Canada Condemned The US Boat Attacks On Venezuela?

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Canada says it hasn't taken part in the alleged drug boat attacks in the Caribbean, but why hasn't Canada condemned the US actions. That's the first question for Dr. Janice Stein of the Munk School at the University of Toronto this week.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday. Dr. Janice Stein is here. Here's the question for her today. Why hasn't Canada outright condemned the American attacks on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean? That's the question. The answer coming right up. And hello there, welcome to another Monday on the bridge and Monday's Mean, as you well know, Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School, the University of Toronto.

And today we're going to talk about a number of issues, but not the least of which is the Venezuelan boat attack story, which gained even more relevance last week when it became clear that there were people after the first attack who were still alive, who we're seemingly pleading for help. Help is not what they got. What they got was a second, third, and fourth attack to make sure they did not survive. So where's Canada on all this? We've heard Britain speak out.

We've heard a bit from France. We've heard nothing from Canada, or at least nothing publicly, other than we're not involved. Well, we're not involved, but are we condemning what's been happening? We'll talk to Dr. Stein about that. A couple of things, though, as we look ahead,

we're getting awfully close to the holiday break. So this year, we're going to soften the questions a bit. We've had some pretty hard-edged stuff lately, and you've been great with the answers. But the question for this week, this week's your turn on Thursday, will be pretty straightforward. Here it is.

Are you looking forward to winter? You know, there's lots of jokes about Canadian winters. I'm sitting here in Stratford, Ontario, and we have, I don't know, we've got at least 10 or 15 centimeters of snow, maybe more than that. And it's staying on the ground because it's cold. I think I woke up this morning was minus 15. So we're into it now, seemingly. We're seemingly in for a white Christmas,

unless we suddenly get warm and everything melts, which will create its own mess. So are you looking forward to winter? And if so, why? All right? So it's not the heavy-duty questions we've been asking. asking lately about pipelines and jet fighters. But it's about winter and whether or not you're looking forward to it.

Same rules apply. We're looking for your answers in 75 words or fewer. Okay? You send it to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. You have it in before 6 p.m. Wednesday, 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, and you've been really good on the time limit. People still trying to work their way around the 75 words or fewer, but that is the rule, and it's a hard rule.

So, you know, please acknowledge that in your responses. Include your name and the location, your full name, and the location you're writing from. and look forward to seeing what you have to say on that so Canadian topic of why are you looking forward to winter? We had a lot of new writers in the last couple of weeks, and we got as many of them on as we could. I'd like to keep that run going. Keep the new writers in mind, so if you haven't written before or if you've only written once or twice, please write again. are you looking forward to winter coming up through the rest of the week tomorrow more butts are by somebody wrote to me last week and said Peter will you cut them more butts conversation number whatever

because even you Mansbridge have been screwing up on that and yes I have been so getting the numbers wrong so I guess after you know 30 of these we really we don't need to use numbers anymore. It's just the Moore-Buts conversation. And tomorrow's more-butts conversation is going to be an interesting one. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the 30th anniversary

since the Quebec referendum. Well, one of the things about the Quebec referendum is that the federal government didn't really seem ready for it when they had it in 1995. and they almost blew it. So the question revolving around referenda

this time round is is Canada ready for not only one more referendum, the possibility in Quebec if a PQ government is elected but is Canada ready for

a referendum in Alberta. In other words, having two referenda going on at roughly the same time. Is the country prepared for that in the sense of do they have their arguments ready? Do they have their strategy ready to deal with something like that?

And more buts have that conversation tomorrow. I think you'll find it interesting. more than just a little bit interesting. Wednesday, not sure what I'm going to do yet, whether it's an encore or whether it's an N-Bits or whether it's whatever. We'll see. And Thursday, your turn, you heard the question, and the Random Ranter, and Friday is Good Talk,

with Chantelle and Bruce. So lots to look forward to in this week, which approaches the middle of December. But today, what's to look forward to, Dr. Janice Stein? Let's get that conversation going because it's a really interesting one on a lot of different fronts, as she always is interesting. So here we go, Dr. Janice Stein on the bridge. All right, Janice, I want to start with Venezuela. We have a lot of things to talk about today, but I want to start with Venezuela and the boat attacks and the fallout that we watched last week

and that the U.S. Secretary of Defense, who calls himself the Secretary of War, has found himself in. But I want to back up to Canada on this story, because what I haven't seen, I've seen Britain has come out very strongly against what's been going on in the Caribbean by the Americans. France is hinting the same thing. What is Canada saying, or are we saying anything about this? So, Canada said nothing, Peter, in public. absolutely nothing. And it's interesting because we have a long history of engagement on this issue.

The Lima process, which we co-chaired for five years, was an attempt to organize democratic nations to put pressure, non-military pressure, but to put real pressure on the Dura. But that collapsed and we're not saying a word in public. Prime Minister hasn't said anything. Foreign Minister hasn't said anything. What about, you know, our military exercises because we do them in the Caribbean and we have, you know, we're on the record about trying to deal with the drug issue. I don't know, I assume we're not a part of this military operation that's going on, but we're kind of there at the same time.

Yeah, we are absolutely not a part of the military operation that the U.S. is leading. But you're right. We're there. Look, I think this is just a very tough spot with very tough timing for the prime minister. You probably saw the same pictures I did of the FIFA ceremony. where Donald Trump was given a carefully crafted prize by the international president, gold, the statue, right? A peace prize of FIFA, which he invented for the occasion.

And our prayer, you know, next to the president was Claudia Scheinbaum and then Mark Carney. And you could see the prime minister smiling, leaned across Claudia Scheinbaum to talk to the president. there are such huge stakes on the table for us right now with the United States that I think the decision is don't say anything until you have to because there's probably going to be a cost to same something here Peter I can't I don't think any ally will join the United States in this

but the this is still up for debate inside the White House. So I think there's a precautionary principle going on here. Let's deal with what we have to deal with once we know what it is. Yeah. Hagsath, the Defense Secretary, is not the most popular person in Washington, and that's not just a sort of Republican Democrat thing. There's a lot of Republicans who are uneasy to say the least

in terms of what's happened. When you look at what we were told about what the different senators and congresspeople saw last week in terms of the second video, first video is pretty straightforward. There's a hit on a boat. They still haven't given any proof of who was in the boat. But they say they're narco-terrorists, whatever that means. Yeah. But the second video that they witnessed, and I think there was,

There's a third and a fourth attack as well that was made on this, what was left of this boat. It really does sound horrible, no matter who's trying to explain it. There were guys in the water waving. This is after the first attack. They were survivors. And there's supposed to be this kind of law of the sea in a sense that you help survivors, no matter what the occasion was.

What do you make of it in terms of what you've heard? there's a lot of discontent with hexat in the republican party frankly i'd be surprised if he's secretary of war for much much longer peter uh you know there was this this is really appalling video when you see people waving in the water and then you order a strike um i mean it doesn't give aside the whole question of legality, whether these strikes are legal or not, that just doesn't fit with anybody's conception of what's fair. You don't need an international lawyer to tell you this. And then he ducked too, which is about the most unprofessional kind of behavior when something, when you're under challenge for something that is done by people under you in your command, and you throw your own

people under the bus. And in this case, that's exactly what he did. He threw his own people under the bus and blamed the naval officer because he was allegedly out of the room. You know, there are Republicans who have regard for their armed forces and don't want to see their Navy degraded this way by a secretary of so-called war who is zero credibility. and no credentials himself. And I think the president,

you know, he has his ear to the ground in his own party. He hears. This was a terrible week for Pete Hags. Does that mean they're not going to do anything? I think there's an internal argument going on inside the administration. And that means five people. The regular officials don't get a voice here. Marco Rubio

once this government gone as prepared to use military forces a long-standing 10-year-old position and he's Secretary of State I think Trump and Stephen Miller too

is there this Eminol's Greece in the White House I think the president is worried about getting ensnared in a war. We all know these things don't end well. It's going to be a limited raid or a limited incursion against some military oil fields or some drug dealers headquarters.

It never turns out that way. It never turns out that way. And I think he knows that. And that would be such a disconnect from everything he's campaigned on with his base. I know we're going to come to this in a minute, but they also issued a national security strategy. And boy, that is a hawkish, hawkish line on Latin America.

So how this plays out, anybody's guess, and we're up, Christmas is coming. Yeah. Yeah, first of all, it was Thanksgiving, was seemingly delaying things that he said he was going to do, Trump in terms of Venezuela. Now, it may be Christmas and the various holiday times. Yeah.

You know, one of the thing, which we talked about the oil fields and how Venezuela's oil fields are so important to the United States. It's interesting, though, because Venezuelan oil is a lot like ours from Alberta. It's heavy. Right. Right. And the only place in the United States, that can really refine them,

that kind of oil is along what we used to call the Gulf of Mexico, now the Gulf of America. But they get our oil. We don't have to call it then. No, we don't. We don't. It's the Gulf of Mexico. But they get oil.

And they don't have a lot of spare capacity, Peter, those refineries. So, you know, how valuable you'd have to build refineries. that's not you know that's a longer play and then you're banking on the fact that Canadian oil will be around for long enough to justify that kind of investment all of which just say the gain the economic gain from that oil it would be far better to do a good deal with Canada is all I can say far cheaper well we'll see how that plays out the last one I want to make on on this the Venezuela story or at least the you know the the the murdering of the two survivors the seemingly two survivors um I just finished reading a book uh on the Ubold war and it was

written from the German perspective I mean they still lose but it gives you a much better sense of what was going on under the water for the Germans and in the in their headquarters but the early part of that U-boat war, this issue about survivors and what to do with them was a real big issue there. And a German U-boat commanders and crew were outraged at what was eventually expected of them to do. Because initially, if there were survivors and they weren't in a boat, and like if they were swimming as opposed to being in a dingy and survival, they were picked up and taken to neutral ports like in Portugal or Spain. by the U-boats. But then they were ordered from the top, known it's the head of the German submarine force or Hitler himself,

that they were to eliminate these. They were either to just leave them drowning or eliminate them, kill them. And that's basically what they did. But at the end of the war, some of those commanders who were pinpointed who survived the war, and not many of them did when the U-boat war turned. but some of them were put on trial for war crimes for doing exactly that and they were executed by Americans yeah you know yeah yeah I look uh there's no excuse under international law

for killing combatants who are in the water right you pick them up um you can put them in PLW camps, right? You can take them to the United States and interrogate them, which, by the way, you think they would want to do here because nobody actually knows who these people are. Are they cocaine drug runners? I mean, there's no fentanyl really coming from Venezuela or very little to the best of our knowledge. So you get two in the water, you send an American craft, you pick them up. so there's no question this is a war crime here there's no question and you know there's some disingenuous people who are arguing well that's not the war crime the war crime is these attacks against unarmed boats but that's not true they say because president trump has declared a national emergency and proclaimed that these combatants are a national security risk to the United States. And it turns out that particular, but wasn't even going to the U.S.

Well, there you go. And, you know, it doesn't pass the sniff test, frankly, in any way. It really does. And that's what was so contemptible about Pete Higgs's testimony. He said, instead of taking responsibility for it, is any commander, any, there was any commander of the armed forces says that you take responsibility for the behavior of the forces under your command it's so fundamental he just okay um you mentioned something a few minutes ago that i that i wanted to make our our second topic of the day and that was um the u.s national security strategy

this was a story that kind of developed midweek last week but kind of it didn't get much play because everybody was focused on those two guys struggling in the water in the Caribbean. So the U.S. national security strategy really is a paper that outlines what the plan is, what this administration's thinking is on U.S. national security. And I know that you feel strongly about this as a story we should be talking about. So give us the outline on it. Full disclosure, I emailed you and said, have you seen this document?

My eyes popped when I read it, frankly. So every administration issues one. And usually it's about a year into it, and it's a kind of guiding principles for what they do. I've never seen one like this, Peter. Never seen one like this. Let's ask the question first. Why do you care if you're Canada?

Not from a perspective of global order, but what do you care as a Canadian? Well, we have an explicit statement that the Western Hemisphere is a sphere of influence for the United States. And there is a Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which is 200 years old, which says that this part of the world in which we are, in which we Canada are, so this affects us, is going to be free of any hostile foreign incursion. And here's the four words or five words just jumped off the page of me or ownership of key assets. Oh, wow. Right. Yeah. Wow. Now, who's to know whether they were thinking about us and not. But if you take this in face value,

this administration has said there will be no foreign ownership other than U.S. of key Canadian assets. I haven't asked, but I can bet you that Ottawa is pouring over those five words and what they mean. You know, what's the key asset? our energy

is that a key asset oil water gas gold rare minerals you know you run the list you can run the list and let's just take one example that is being oddly debated

in Canada right now and our air force is up in arms but frankly what about were we to buy a Grip and fighter and say no to the US you know F-35 is that a key asset

in the Western hemisphere, which is, as they say it, theirs, they make the rules. We haven't lived this. Bill Roosevelt, I mean, Roosevelt, I think in the 1920s, earlier in the first decade of the 20th century, issued a corollary like this too but the language was not inflammatory and it was

it came from a wholly different place the Roosevelt one the Roseville Corralic this was as the empires the French the British were beginning to refocus their attention and they he was very worried that the Spanish the British the French would double down on assets in Latin America. And so he issued a corollary that no foreign empires will be allowed to, you know, to intervene in Latin America. But it was in the context of future independence for Latin American governments. Donald Trump's reversed all that. And it's probably the strongest statement of U.S. dominance in our hemisphere that with a very

heart that that's number one there there's another line in there that directly affects Canada too and that's on immigration yeah I mean this is this is astonishing I mean this is an immigrant you know this is to me um a national security strategy anchored in immigration Peter that's what it's all about it's not about what it was for Bush or Obama or frankly, anybody else ever since 1945. It's not about democracy. It's not about freedom. It's not about any of the things.

It's not about American values. Traditionally, it's about immigration and immigration as a national security threat to, frankly, a white Christian, United States. That's really what it is. and again, it's a hemispheric strategy. As you say, it affects us as well, Peter. You know, no matter how one feels about Trump personally,

I don't think anybody thinks that he sat down and wrote this. No, too well-written. So who did write it? Because we're talking about a, you know, I think he used this figure earlier four or five people who are really at the core of what this administration's all about and what Trump 2.0 was all about. So who are we talking about?

Is this a Stephen Miller thing? Yes. This is, so normally how do these things get in? And that's what they're terrible to read. They're written by a whole series of senior officials. And they usually cross the agencies. You know, the Pentagon, the State Department, they intelligence community

and then they haggle and they get you to this kind of lowest common denominator and it's full bureaucratic language and it's a real slog to read this. Just the shortest one is the easiest to read because there were no officials involved

which is what we see over and over again with this administration. I think the leads here were two Stephen Miller and Jenny Vance, the vice president, because all the language, and then there's a third part of this which talks about Europe in ways,

you know, hearing from my European friends over the weekend. They're using language like the relationships the United States is over after they read this. That's how fundamental they see the assault. I'll come back in a minute to why. But it's really like J.D. Vance's speech to the Munich Security Forum last February. So it's in their two voices with a kind of limping Marco Rubio. And, you know, who shapes the Latin American part of this.

And fundamentally, it's the three of them. It's the three of them's their vision. And it's not leavened by any expertise whatsoever. see what you said earlier when we were talking about Venezuela and Canada is what I know worries a lot of Canadians that Mark Carney is in a difficult spot there's a question about that because he's trying to juggle the future of the country the economics of the future of the company oil gas all of those stuff with the Americans and yet at the same time every time you turn around they're crapping on us you know and

And this strategy paper last week is certainly, as you've outlined, does exactly that. You know, last week on Thursdays, I run a question of the week. And last week the question was F-35 or Gripen. What do you think? Given the fact that the F-35 is probably a better plane, what do you think? What do you think? And the answers, you know, and people don't pretend to know the inside and out of. of aircraft. They know

that general assessment, but they also see what's going on in the bigger picture. And I would say 80% of the letters we got, and there were a lot of letters. Wow. People are, they've had it. They just have

had it. And it's kind of like more than angry. And they're basing, they're basing, you know, their feelings about that on emotion more than anything. Yeah. But it's like we've had it with the Americans don't want it, why would we buy a plane that we may end up having to use against them that's run by them? I mean, as I said, some of the stuff is, it shows a, you know,

a lack of knowledge of exactly how these things work, but you can't take the emotion out of the, out of the situation. And you can see why they're frustrated at a government that is trying to thread the needle here on this relationship. So I don't know. You know, I was watching the prime minister. And I just had so much empathy for him, Peter, you know the cameras are looking at you, right? You know everybody's watching. The president of Mexico is sitting next to the president, and she's smiling at him.

He has to make an effort. He has to make an effort. but he knows the people at home that he's accountable to feel exactly the way you described. He is walking the toughest line I think of any prime minister. Who's had a tougher

mandate than this prime minister in the last 50 years? Really, really hard. I mean, saying of the war in Iraq, that's a piece of take compared, frankly, compared to what Mark Carney faces. And, you know, our trade in the United States down now from 75% to 68. But these sanctions are biting in our economy.

The auto sector is a huge risk. That's half a million jobs in our largest province. How 500,000 people are employed directly or indirectly in the auto sector? and the review of NAFTA 2 is starting. They were holding hearings in the United States. By the way, those hearings were dominated by businesses that want NAFTA 2 to be renewed, frankly. But we are going to go through.

So the prime minister doesn't have many degrees of freedom here. And I think that's what explains the silence on Venezuela. Every decision is run through, do we need to say something, or can we let this ride for another week? What is your advice? You know, if Mark Carney called you up or Dominic Leblon or somebody who was involved in these direct negotiations and discussions called you up and said, okay, Janice, like, what's your advice? and you know what? Don't tell me

that we got to keep sucking up to me. Nobody wants to hear that. I know. I know nobody wants to hear that. Look, I, first of all, it's, you know, when people ask, I give the best advice that I think is the best,

even when I think they don't want to hear it because otherwise why bought her, right? Right. Yeah. And we're not, you know, so much just caught up, Peter, in whether we think there will be an election in Canada in the next year, too. And now I know nothing about it. I bring nothing to the table. But my read is that there are cracks in Donald Trump's support in the United States.

You see some Republicans putting up their hands. They, that hearing that on the shooting of those two people in the war, that never would have taken place even four months ago. You know, his numbers are dropping. The impressive thought is going up in the United States. And that's the big issue. I think you see a week or Donald Trump next year than you see this year. What's the right? I really do.

So I think time is in our favor. You know, rag the puck, as we say. Rag the puck here. It certainly looks like that's what they're trying to do now. As opposed to, you know, three months ago when they were trying to speed the game up. Yeah. Now they look like they're ragging the park. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's the right thing to do. Wait it out. There's going to be an agonizing review process for Kovko's smart enough to do. It's going to be agonizing. There's going to be all kinds of threats and people are going to have to keep calm. It'll probably be. Just imagine 18 months to two years is what the experts tell me to get to the end of that road.

So I think you just slow it down. It's December of 2025. I think he will be much weaker by next summer, by next fall. He faces midterms. He's going to have to go some way on this affordability issue if he's not going to lose the house, right? I think time is in Canada's favor and we stay calm. All right. We're going to take our break and we come back.

We'll talk about a really interesting meeting that took place last week that didn't get a lot of coverage because of all this other stuff that's going on. But it may be one of the biggest things that happened last week. We'll talk about that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge for this Monday. And Monday's mean, of course, Dr. Janice Stein from the Mug School at the University of Toronto. She's here with us, as she always is, on Mondays to give us a sense of what's happening in our always surprising world.

There's always something, and it's just been remarkable every week where we end up talking about something different that's affecting our world. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. All right, so last week, and it really didn't, you know, maybe I just missed it, but it didn't seem to get a lot of coverage, at least not in our part of the world, in our hemisphere. But in India, there was Vladimir Putin meeting again with the Indian Prime Minister Modi.

and, you know, all smiles, lots of handshakes, lots of slapping on the back. What's going on and what should we be thinking about this? You know, I was struck by the pictures when I saw at Peter because the meeting was in Delhi. And Vladimir Putin hasn't left Moscow all that much except to go to very friendly countries. And this, in fact, was his first visit in three years. And he got this warm, warm reception from Modi. And there were wonderful cartoons playing on the Indian media, but the two of them on a motorcycle together.

And they needed gas. And they pulled up to a gas station. There was an American pump and a Russian pump. And Modi drives right on by the American station and stops at the Russian pump. And it was sometimes when you see those kinds of things, that telegraphs a story. to you. Look, you know, Donald Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on India for two reasons. One reason is allegedly because they're buying so much Russian oil and they've actually

significantly reduced their purchases of Russian oil, surprisingly. But the other reason is because Modi bristled when Donald Trump spoke of himself in such glowing. terms that he had resolved the war between India and Pakistan and Pakistan nominated him for the Nobel Priests Prize and Modi wouldn't play along so 50% tariffs on any undone 10 years of you know strategic effort by two presidents to build a better relationship when India has China appears more menacing well all you can see it by the body language that went on. They spoke of their enduring friendship.

There's a really severe trade imbalance. Russia exports sophisticated defense equipment to India. Buys very little from India. It didn't matter. Growing talk of cooperation on defense, on energy, on technology. And Russia's building now, Rosstown, that same company that was sanctioned just a few months ago by the Trump administration. That company is building the largest civilian nuclear reactor in India. So you can see this as a deepening of a long, long friendship between India and Russia.

works for India because it's so frustrated with the Trump administration but it also works for Putin because he has made Russia so dependent on China

China's biggest customer of oil since technology everything but military technology and there's so much dual-use stuff now that it doesn't really matter So what better for Vladimir Putin than to have a reassertion of the friendship largest economy in the world, fastest growing economy in the world, because Donald Trump blows up things.

What does it mean for us? Because, I mean, let's face it, Carney was just there a couple of weeks ago with some kind of, you know, somewhat. similar kinds of meetings with Modi. Yes. Anon was there the week or two before, the foreign minister. Yes. For some of the same kind of reasons to try and reset the relationship. What does this do?

Does it have any impact on what clearly Carney is trying to do, which is open up new doors? You would think yes, but I think no, right? You could say, oh, gee, this is a real problem. We're trying to reestablish a real problem. relationship with India. And India, India is going to matter more and more in the world over the next 50 years. And also, Peter, we have a very large diaspora. There are rifts within that diaspora, but we still have a very, very large South Asian diaspora in Canada. So India is a country of real significance to us. And here Modi is hugging Vladimir Putin. Does that make it

harder for our government to deepen this relationship. You know, only if we believe that countries are going to be on one side or the other, I think that world is gone. No country wants to choose, and certainly nobody in Asia, or for that matter in Latin America, wants to choose among the United States, China, or Russia anymore. And so that old, you know, we are

the freedom-loving city on the hill with values that you should want to have. I think that conversation just over now. As sad as that is to say, I think it's over. It only exists

in North America and Europe, frankly. And for the it's what's in my interest if I are we settling into you know we've talked about this before but basically have we already

established a new world order or are we still in the process of trying to figure out what that order's going to be? I think there's glimmers that we're getting now which is that the the three big powers, and let's say it honestly, bully the smaller ones in their neighborhood. That's what they do.

That's what Vladimir Putin is about in Europe, and that's why the Poles and the Baltics and the Romanians and the Nordics are so worried beyond anything that we can communicate. I think that's why the Asians are so worried about China, and that's frankly why we're worried. and other land American countries are worried about the United States. So what do you do when you're worried you reach out beyond your region that the big powers tell you they run? You reach out beyond your region for friends and partners wherever you can find them to blunt the impact of how dependent any of us are on any one of the three big bullies.

That's what I'm seeing. Yeah. It is, I was going to say it's funny. It's not funny. It's revealing that, you know, you and I have talked world politics and, you know, the changes in the world since the 80s, right? Yeah. And yet we really seem to be at a page-turning moment.

More so than all the other ones, more so than the, you know, the end of the Cold War, all of that. This is like a real hinge moment. moment as the term keeps being used for various things these days. You know, I think you're absolutely right, Peter. You know, the end of the Cold War was a victory for the West, right? So it just reinforced. We won it.

We won it peacefully. We want it smartly. And we really believed that our message, I mean, that was, you know, Frank Fukuyama's famous argument, right? We've won the ideological argument and the rest of the world sees our way as what they want to become. That's what I think has fundamentally ended. And you see it all over the world

there are countries who used to depend on the United States for security, but their major trading partner is China. And if you tell them you choose, they won't. and there are enough of them that feel this way now to be able to absolutely resist that kind of pressure and say we're not going to make that choice. Okay. Another fascinating conversation.

It's every Monday. You're absolutely right. We've never seen this pace of change. No. No. All right. We'll see what the pace of change brings this next Monday when we talk next.

Thanks, Janice. Have a good week. There you go. Dr. Janice Stein for the Monk School, the University of Toronto, another fascinating conversation about our changing world. That's going to wrap it up for today.

Join us tomorrow. A Moore-Buts conversation. It's a good one. It's an important one. And we'll have it right here on the bridge tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. which thanks so much for listening today. We'll talk to you again in less than 24 hours.