The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Will New Defence Spending Boost an Economy?

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Canada hasn't been able to reach 2% of GDP in the past, but now the talk is to get to 3.5 or even 5 percent. What would that do, and how realistic is it?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. Will increase defense spending boost an economy. Janice Stein on that coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to another week. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to another week. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. Janice will be

with us in just a few minutes time. It's been a big week on the international front, all kinds of meetings taking place and attempts at peace talks and attempts at negotiations in a number of areas. And just yesterday, an amazing attack by drones and it's still piecing together exactly what happened and how extensive it was. But clearly, Ukraine moved some drones deep into Russian space and knocked out a number of strategic Russian bombers. So still a debate as to how many. So that's going on and you know clearly that'll have some impact on the way that ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine unfoldold in the next little while

So that's at the back of our minds obviously on on that story But so is this whole issue of defense spending and that's what we're gonna get at with Janice Stein in just a few minutes time Before we get there our regular Monday Discussion of what the question of the week will be for your turn on Thursday. And you have your opportunity to answer that question. There are certain conditions on how you do that, but let me get you the question first of all, so you can be thinking of it. And this one does, I think this one will take

some thinking on all our parts, because it's a big question. It this one does, I think this one will take some thinking on all our parts. Because it's a big question. It's one of the questions in front of, well, in front of the First Ministers as they have their conference in Saskatoon today. It's taking place as our podcast is on the air. Here's the question. What is your nation-building project? The Prime Minister has asked the Premier to give him ideas on nation-building projects and you've heard some of them tossed around already. But what's yours? When you think of that phrase, a nation-building project, what is it? What would it be?

What is your idea of what that is? So think about it. I mean, there are some ideas floating around already, and there are some easy ones to kind of grab at. But let's be imaginative here. Prime Minister and the other first ministers say they want nation-building projects that will create jobs in the immediate term, but also build the country in the long term. So what's your idea for a nation-building project?

Here are the conditions. 75 words or less to describe your nation building project. Include your name and the location you're writing from. Don't forget that, please. It's very important. The deadline for this is noon Eastern time on Wednesday. Now a number of you always write in, you know, some of you write in late and you say, oh, come on, I'm only an hour or two late.

We have to place a time. There are things we have to do. There's a certain vetting process that we'd go through. We want to make sure the facts that are stated in the letters are correct or close to correct, and we kind of add facts to help bolster the letter. So, noon Eastern time Wednesday is the deadline for getting your letter in with your write to? Well, you write to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Look forward to receiving your letters.

This is for Thursday's Your Turn. In by Wednesday, noon Eastern time is the cutoff name and location really important don't forget it okay let's let's get on with today's program and of course that means our conversation with Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School of the University of Toronto so let's get that going right now. Okay Janice a number of things to talk about this week. And I want to start with this issue of defense spending. This has been an issue that's been kicking around for a number of years about more defense spending needed to be done by certain countries in the NATO alliance. Well, this has taken on a whole new light, or at least it seems that way to me. You've got Germany, the UK, and Canada,

to name three countries, who are saying yes on more increased defense spending, and yes, they're gonna do it domestically by increasing defense production domestically, which in Canada's case for certain is a knock at the US, because we were, what the figure I read was 75% of our defense production had been coming out of the US.

Well, that's not gonna be the case anymore. So talk to me about what's going on here. What's happening? Well, Russia is the big story here. It's Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If you'd asked a European leader in 2020, are we gonna have a land war in Europe? They might have asked, what were you smoking? Which is inconceivable. The Germans in

particular were so shocked. There was a social democratic chancellor in Germany, Olaf Scholz, who said there's going to be a Seidn-Venda, which means a change. We're going to veer in another direction. Look at the numbers, Peter. It actually didn't happen in Germany until we got Friedrich Meierz, who's a Christian Democrat, more conservative, who also in a sense turned his back on what's 40 years of what the Germans call auspolitik, looking to the east, bring the Russia, you know, have relationships with Russia, don't exclude them, that will make them an adversary. That's gone in Europe and particularly in Germany where under Angela Merkel, she deepened the relationship and made Germany wholly dependent virtually on Russian energy to run that industrial machine in Germany. So the war's been a strategic disaster for Germany. It's been an economic

disaster. They're paying world energy prices now. And Germany's probably the economy that's struggling most. We don't often think about it that way. Italy is booming, how does that turn the world on its head? Italy is booming and Germany has to remake its industrial strategy. So he did something which made everybody's jaw drop, including mine. He got a two-thirds majority in the parliament that just ended. And that was for a reason. A two thirds majority to exempt defense spending from the debt ceiling.

Because nobody is more cautious than the Germans. The Germans remember the inflation after World War I, wrecked their economy and wrecked the middle class. And they have had a balanced budget or close to it for longer than anybody else, fought the rest of Europe every time they wanted to deficit spend for good reasons, Germans would have none of it.

Well, here we are. spend for good reasons, Germans would have none of it. Well, here we are. More than half a trillion dollars is going to be spent on defense. Now, what's in there, Peter? Because we're going to ask that same question again over and over. What's in that big envelope? Well, it includes roads and bridges because you can't drive a modern tank over these roads or over these bridges. The bridges simply won't take it. Roads and bridges and some climate spending. So it's a big envelope right now. I think there's a lot in it that we traditionally wouldn't count as defense, but I suspect we're

going to do the same thing in Canada. Well, you know, we'll get to Canada because I think it's a really fascinating way that the Carney government seems to be going about this. But first of all, let's stop in the UK. We've done Germany. I understand the geopolitical bit, but the way they are trying to turn this into a big economic benefit as well is really

interesting. You're watching the UK over the weekend, Stammer and his defense minister announcing their plans, which are massive as well in terms of new spending, mostly domestic, building big new factories, industry base for defense production, especially our shells, artillery that is needed. Many countries, including Canada, are basically running out of bullets and artillery shells. But they're selling this not just on defense, they're selling it on the economy. What it'll do for new jobs, a new industry in their country. So it's kind of a double-headed thing here, which is going to push their numbers. You know, we're talking about 2% defense spending for NATO. This is, we're talking three and a half to five percent here. That's right. And you know, that's an important number to keep in mind, three and a half. And

just by comparison, the Baltics spend five, Lithuania. Look closer you are to the front line, the Poles are over three. So we are rushing to get to two, Peter. As soon as we get there, it's not going to be enough. We're still going to be a laggard in NATO, just for everybody to understand. It was really interesting. Starmor's approach is very interesting. He's the Labour Prime Minister. And said explicitly,

we are going to use the defence spending to improve the lives of the working class. Use those words at the conference I was at in London just a few weeks ago. So, so clear that defense spending, it's true for the German government too, they have to restart their economy, they have to reinvest in more advanced manufacturing that can survive with expensive energy until they can make the long switch to renewals. So for them, it's an economic strategy. For the UK, it's a clear economic strategy. And you know, Britain, Peter, it's not London that matters here. It's that old blue wall labor belt that the

Tories broke through on under Boris Johnson because they were in decline that part of the country economically. That's the fallow field that for us is plowing right now. And that's if you have to understand defense strategy as an economic strategy all through the developed world. That's why they'll have legs. Well, that's what brings us to Canada because before we get into the nitty gritty of what's happening right now, one of the first things Carney did after he became prime minister, this is like

before the election, was he came to England and he met with Stammer, he talked with Mertz. So the three of them, he talked to a lot of other countries as well, he didn't talk to Macron, but there seems to be something that was cooked up between those three at least on some of this stuff, because it is all packaged to how do you counter Trump and terrorists?

Was there something going on there between the three of them? Yeah, look, there's more to this story than Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, right? But just the geopolitics of that. We could explain about the geopolitics. But look what Germany, the UK, and we in Canada have in common.

All three economies are struggling. We have to do something. I don't use the word productivity because it so much depends on how you measure it. That's a whole wonky subject aside, but just to make clear to our listeners while I say that, as soon as that pipeline comes online to British Columbia, and we can export LNG to HL,

our productivity rate is gonna climb. Because we made the investment upfront, it depressed the productivity rate, and then when you finally get the product out of that pipeline, we're going to look great or better than we've looked. But the issue really is we're not growing and we're not investing in next generation sectors. That is true for Germany and they haven't. The last time they had a recession like this was in the 1990s.

And Britain's been struggling, as you well know, for years to repassion its economy. So in Canada, we use the same language. We are going to rebuild the defense industrial base. That's how. And I think that's shared language between all three prime ministers here. And it does mean buying less US equipment. Let's understand. So we're not going to buy the best and the most efficient at the lowest price in integrated

markets, which is what we allegedly did. Now we're going to make stuff at home, even if it costs more, because we have to grow our economy. And it'll create jobs and all that. Yes, it will. You know, if it works. And we're talking, we're not talking a drop in the bucket here. No.

We're talking tens of billions of dollars here. That's right. And if you look at this across NATO, Peter, right? It's massive spend. And let's talk for just one minute about the F-35. The F-35, you know, the costs escalate every time you turn around. The last time I left it was close to a hundred million dollars a plane. plane. Well, we have contracted to buy 88. We bought everybody in NATO using the same plane. That should be a good start, or virtually everybody, but not the French. But everybody in NATO has bought in, so we get all these benefits. The systems talk to each other easily. They're interoperable. If you're a pilot

in one NATO country you can fly anybody else's plane. It's an integrated system. Well the first thing Carney did was say we're gonna we pay for 16 we're going to stop. We're gonna see. We're gonna do a review. Well we decide all the challenges. That's a message, right? We don't have to buy all the 88, maybe 25 or enough, we can argue. And then we take the rest of that money and it gets spent in Canada to make everything from artillery shells, which nobody has,

you're quite right. And we can make them as well as anybody else. But we're really, really good at space, really good at space in this country. We do some of the best stuff in satellite-to-satellite communication. Maybe we spend more on space and less on air.

That kind of decision is gonna to be made in London. It's going to be made in Berlin and it's going to be made in Iowa. Is this, um, is this building in your home country? Is that part of, to try to generate the economy that helped can help pay for the stuff or is it a shot at the U S that help can help pay for the stuff or is it a shot at the U S? You know, it's a little too easy to say it's a shot at the U S, but it is a shot at the U S. It's not only though, that's the point. So in the German case, it's actually a shot at everything that Angela Merkel did and the grim realization ever since

Willy Brant, the charismatic mayor of West Berlin, turned and said, we need to turn, we need an Eastern politics, we need to engage Russia. That's a long time ago. That's 40 years of the Germans believing that a world with Russia was possible and make it by Russian energy and thrive and they did. The Germans were gonna face this irrespective of who was the United States, the press and the United States for the United, the president of the United States, for the United Kingdom. This is in part one of the consequences of Brexit.

We're out of that integrated market. We need to create jobs at home or they will have a government that looks a lot like what the United States has right now. The populist surge is very real and it's longstanding. It doesn't go away. So the only answer to that is economic investment and job creation.

Well, what's the easiest place to do that? It's defense because it's a double win. You meet your obligations in NATO, which is very important to the United Kingdom. But you generate manufacturing jobs which still pay good salaries, which still have good benefits, unlike the next AI revolution, which is probably going to erase most of those jobs. I think that's the biggest shoot Carney's risk. We're going to have a fierce fighting encounter here. Right. About where that money should go. I just a heads up. I mean, this is going to be the fight for the next 18 months. Do you put in a next generation technologies and leapfrog ahead?

months, do you put in a next generation technologies and leapfrog ahead? The kind of… There's a strong argument to do it, but it won't create jobs of the order of magnitude. The kind of money we're talking about spending on the defense front plus then on the energy front plus on the nation building projects. Like it is astronomical and trying to figure out where this is all coming from. He was the governor of the Bank of England and the governor of the Bank of Canada and the Deputy Minister of Finance. His brain thinks of differently than ours, but I mean, I'm telling you, when you just look at, start adding all the stuff up, and we're already have a huge debt, national debt,

and a significantly large national deficit. Wow, I mean, I'm like a mind boggler. You know, wow, it's right, the big, beautiful bill. Big, beautiful, that just passed. The United States is, why did the bond markets do what they did? Because they looked at exactly what you're talking about. Where is all this, where's the fiscal room for tax cuts?

The United States is running the largest fiscal debt it ever has in its history. Just think about this, Peter, the interest on the debt in the United States, more than on defense spending, more than what they spend on defense. That's how large the debt is. We are at the fiscal ceiling in this country. How did the Germans make it happen? They did the unimaginable thing. They removed the debt ceiling from anything you label defense, anything. And the UK, this is a tough goal for Stormer against that.

Something is going to give here the comforting thing for all of us, for the Canadians, the Germans, the Brits, the United States worse than we are. So it is, you know, so if you and the Chinese are heavily indebted to, by the way. So if you're an investor and you're looking around and you want a rule of law country, you're going to trade off in your mind, what's more important to me, rule of law or that these people have borrowed, you know, not only from our grandchildren's generation, but way, way, way on into the future because that's what we've done. You saw what Jamie Dimon said over the last couple of days.

Yeah, and he's important. He's really important. And you know, a year ago, it's kind of sounded, he was sounding like he was kind of on Trump's side, but it didn't turn out that way. And it certainly isn't now because he's basically saying this, the, this is one of the top bankers in the United States. Well, the, the, the biggest bank, the biggest banker, an old friend and a times adversary of Mark Carney's. Right. They both worked at Goldman Sachs. Anyway, he's basically saying we're on the verge of going poof because of Trump and everything he's doing on the economy.

So, and he talks about debt and deficit, right? Yeah, they're very important. Well, you know, we took them down the road every year. We kept it down the road, but the Trump numbers are so astonishing. There's no way, in fact, in that bill, there's not even a serious cost thing about how you're gonna pay for this.

So, you know, the Brits, the Canadians, the Germans, we look pretty good in comparison to what's going on in Washington. And let's just be blunt here. This is, this is, this is defense dressed up, but it's economic strategy. You build, you know, bridges and roads. Okay. And Mark Redder, the new Secretary General of NATO, who was a really sober-minded Dutchman, gave a speech and I thought, okay, here's where the wind is blowing. And he talked about the bridges and roads in Europe and said, well, we can't drive tanks

over them in the event of an attack. We can't get our heavy equipment there. So there you go, massive infrastructure spending now okayed. So there you go, massive infrastructure spending now okayed. Okay. We've got three more things to talk about in this program today, so I got to get to them. One is to go back to Germany for a moment and forget about the spending there. Just look at what they're talking about now. They're talking about, they call them long range missiles for some reason in the stories, but they're talking about now. They're talking about, they call them long range missiles, for some reason in the stories, but they're not really, they're kind of medium range, right? 300 miles. But nevertheless, this is a direct threat to Russia. And the Germans are focused on this is going to happen. We're

doing this. And this has a lot of… I mean, the history of Germany, Russia in the last century is a brutal one that's involved millions of deaths as a result of the second world war. And the fear, I mean, there's an understanding for Merkel and really brand to why they took that approach. I mean, they're trying to find a way that that could never happen again. This suddenly sounds like it could happen again. You know, and I think what's happening, we talked about what Germany's doing as a valid, you know, as a valuable allied country. But he spent a little time in Europe, right under the surface, there's a lot of nervousness about a rearmed Germany. There's a lot of nervousness, you know, the memories of World War II in Europe are different than they are here in Canada and the United States.

So the Poles who are most alarmed right now about Russia, along with Lithuania, Latvia, they're the most alarmed because they have terrible memories. But who were they partitioned by? By the Russians and the Germans. It could be in 1939 when the war started. So yes, they're terribly worried about Russia, but they turn around and they see Germany rearming with missiles and tanks and there is already that frissom of anxiety. What will a military, you know, a military powerful Germany look like? We haven't seen that in how many years now? 55, doing math, I had 80 years, right?

And the Germans and everybody after World War II took peace seriously. They wanted to wipe out their own capacity ever to attack anybody. They had no army to speak of. You know, it was a big deal when they participated in their first peacekeeping mission. Think where we are today, Peter, after such a short time that we're going to see a massive investment in rearming Germany. You know the famous joke about NATO after the war? It was to keep the Russians, the Germans down and the Americans in. That's And that's why the Alliance was created. Well. That's why we, you know, we're a bit player in some of this, but we, we had two major bases there, an army base in war Germany, and we had an air force base in Bodden and we were major players during that period of the cold war.

Yeah. And then everybody started to exit out. Yeah. And we were major players during that period of the Cold War. Yeah. And then everybody started to exit out, which left the Germans to deal with the German situation and with Russia, supposedly after the collapse of communism, supposedly not an issue anymore, but we've all learned from that. That was a huge miscalculation, Peter, the huge mistake that liberals made, frankly,

because it was a liberal vision that it would always be rules-based. And then as Russia went through this transformation, yes, it might be different, but it would follow the most important basic rules. That is not who Vladimir Putin is. And you can understand why the Poles get nervous, because you know, people tend to forget or not even realize that the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Russia and Germany were allies. And they...

And divided Poland. Carved up Poland. Yeah. Until 1941 when Hitler made perhaps his biggest blunder of the war when he decided, I'm going to invade Russia. You know, Peter, if you go to Poland now, and they put the Poles, by the way, are having a historic election for right now as well for president, in which they're dealing with the same populist impulses

that we're seeing all through the Democratic growth. There's no Polish kid, a 15, who will not tell you that the Germans and the Russians carved up Poland and that they were the victim. First, they were the victim in World War II. It's a lot for them. Golden Dome. I don't wanna spend a long time on this because I've seen this movie before in different

versions. But you know, if we're going to get into this thing with Trump and start talking, this is going to cost money. Let me just say it was a rookie mistake by the prime minister. You get asked to join that kind of thing. You say, oh, thank you very, very much for thinking of us, we're gonna go home and set up a task force and it's going to meet with your task force. So, but you know, this was so where this is the child of Star

Wars and the Reagan and anti defense, and that was a vicious fight in Canada, right, to pull us in and Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, both, as much as they disliked each other, they agreed on this. We weren't going to do it. And really great science fiction about this stuff that you want. In fact, we're not much farther down the road on this, but what's changed in a way, first of all, in the Middle East, we've seen these missile bombs,

and we've seen these interceptors, and Israel developed the Iron Dome and the Arrow system. So let's just talk about what that system quickly does as opposed to what Donald Trump is talking about. Those are short range missiles that are being exchanged. And for sure you do that, but you're not in, you're not, you're at the very most, you're even below orbit space,

low orbit space most of the time. And that's what works. And what the Israelis have done is layer their system. So you get close to the ground above and you were able to do this. What Donald Trump has talked about is something entirely different. Let's say what it is openly,

it's gonna militarize space. That's what we have to do for what he called the Gold Dome. And boy, Canada said repeatedly, and there are treaties that we are not gonna do that. So we would have to walk away from a long set of commitments. Secondly, there's no proof yet that it works.

And why is that? Because what we saw in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine, by the way, we did not see, we saw single missiles flying that were launched and you could get at those missiles right after launch or on the way down. What the Golden Dome would have to do is cope with MRF. That's not somebody's first name.

It's multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles. One missile that goes up into space, bursts into five and can send multiple targets, multiple missiles. That is a wholly different challenge. I think the Golden Dome still remains an unproven concept. The technology is going to get better and better. It's going to be AI driven, but it's unproven and a whopping price tag. $61 billion dollars. I don't know, on top of everything else, we're gonna do with no Canadian industrial benefit yet. That we do see.

Well, that's what all those task forces will determine. Yeah, so we will create employment in this country. Peter was one of a lot of task forces. Yeah, exactly. Gonna keep a lot of task forces. Yeah, exactly. Gonna keep a lot of people busy over the next two or three years. But I think, you know, for me, the key takeaway, and that's why Paul Martin said no in the 90s,

is this is a space-based system. That he's talking about now that he called the Golden Dome. What could be more? Yeah. Well, if you look at the way, I can't remember, somebody counted the glitter in the Oval Office, so no surprise, this is called the Golden Dome. Well, I thought he would call it the Trump Dome

because he called everything else the Trump, whatever. But anyway, okay. We'll see whether we ever come back to discussions on the golden dome. Yeah. But that gives us at least a starter, a brief sense of what it's all about. And we have one more subject and we'll get to it. But we need to take our break. So we'll get to it right after this.

And welcome back. Welcome to your Monday with Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School, the University of Toronto. You're listening on Series XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. We're glad to have you with us. Okay. A couple of weeks ago, you mentioned in our kind of mini version of what are we missing? Some of the talk in Mexico, there was floating around leading up to what would be the election of judges in that country.

Now, as it turns out, that happened on Sunday, happened yesterday. Without running through the whole list of who got elected, we're talking about thousands here. What- 2,700 of them, Peter. What's the importance of that? Because I recognize that that has been a hot topic and not necessarily

unifying one in Mexico, but it was driven by the previous administration, encouraged and taken to fruition by the current administration. What is the… Tell us why this is an important story. You know, I'm absolutely fascinated by it Peter, because it goes in the envelope of what we have come to call sadly judicial reform. There's a playbook where you get authoritarian leaders who face the courts.

This is what's happening in the United States right now and make the argument, and this is the argument in Mexico, to judges do not legislate. Now, Donald Trump is taking it further. Courts have no right to constrain the policies of freely elected leaders. Now that argument is probably the most fundamental because it says the rule of law is not the rule of law.

Elected leaders are above the law. That's really where that argument takes us. That's why it's so worrying when it comes from Donald Trump and it comes from Bibi Netanyahu and reporting in Poland. And now in a sense, this is being played out in Mexico. And that's how it developed in Mexico. It was when AMLO, the former president of Mexico, when some of the things he was doing were ruled unconstitutional by judges in Mexico, and that's what pushed him to do this.

Now, the Mexican story is a particularly interesting one because high level of corruption even among the judges. So I think if you were to ask anybody, does the Mexican judicial system need reform? Yes, absolutely it does and far more corrupt than anything we would ever see in the United States or Canada frankly. But this is not reform. This is electing people. And can you imagine the ballot? It's self constituencies. The average voter will have no idea who these people are. And in fact, there are chichis floating around that are put up by the party, Morena, the

president's party, to tell people who to pick on the list. Some of them apparently have been lawyers for the cartels that are now running. Now, can you just imagine if the drug cartels in Mexico, which are an enormous security problem and a security problem for Canada and the United States, if those people are elected as judges? So what this system does, and thirdly, you have to have a degree and seven years of practice, that's all. So that's not that hard to get. So there's no expertise. They did

not have the chance really, to validate these people. How are they going to do it? There's an election commission after the election that took place yesterday. They're going to disqualify anybody who is a cartel lawyer or had a criminal conviction themselves. But these judges are now, it's very difficult to understand, why are there any different from any member of a political

party they're running for reelection. And they're going to make decisions based on calculations of what's going to get them reelected. In many ways, this has to be a huge concern for Canada and the United States. We have an integrated market in cars, for example, and auto parts with Mexico. If there's a trade dispute, how much confidence would we have

that we could get that trade dispute litigated fairly in this kind of judicial system? This is the end road of judicial reform. That's why the story so interesting because it's not only about Mexico, who is a fellow member of COSMA, but it's about all the authoritarian leaders who understand, oh boy, these courts,

they are the last line of resistance to us. The media we dealt with, the universities we're dealt with. So who's left standing the court? And if that doesn't sound like Donald Trump's America, I don't know what to say. Well, we're gonna have to watch this, see how this plays out. Because it's, as you say, I mean, listen, the old system had its issues for

sure. Absolutely. This one could have, you know, I mean, look, let's hope it works out, but the way you're painting it, it sounds like it could be worse than what they've got already. Anyway, as I said, we will watch that and everything else we've talked about today. But we're going to have to close it out there. It's been another fabulous conversation. Thanks so much Janice and we'll talk to you again in a week. Have a good week. Dr. Janice Stein, Munk School, University of Toronto. And yes, another great conversation, informative, interesting, makes us think as she does every week.

A quick reminder about the rest of the week tomorrow. Well, actually tomorrow we're still juggling around. People's different schedules are conflicting this week, so I'm not sure what exactly we'll end up with tomorrow, but you can rest on this. We'll be there and there'll be something very interesting to talk about. Wednesday it's our Encore edition and I haven't decided which one that will be this week. Thursday it's your turn and you heard the question of the week, what is your and you heard the question of the week, what is your national building project, nation building project? What is it? What would you suggest to that first minister's conference that's going on? This is where you should concentrate. This is where you should focus as this,

as a nation building project. So think of that one and draw it down in an email to me at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. 75 words or less and we're firm on that. Include your name and the location you're writing from. All right? All those things are important and the deadline time is 12 noon Eastern time on Wednesday. Okay, and in Friday, of course, it's also on Thursdays, the random ranter can't forget him. Friday is good talk with Rob Russo and Sean Tellebeer. Today is good talk with Rob Russo and Chantelle Bear. So lots coming up as we drift into another week here on the bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you again in less than 24 hours. Thank you.