The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Would You Trust The New US Team With Your Secrets?

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Some of the proposed appointments to the Trump cabinet have surprised, but none more so than his intelligence & security positions.

And hello there, Peter Vansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Would you trust the new U.S. security and intelligence team with your secrets? That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Vansbridge here. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to our regular Monday conversation with Janice Stein, the director of the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And listen, this is a serious subject. You've heard of the group, the Five Eyes, which Canada, the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, they're the five eyes.

They exchange top-level secrets that each has found through their different intelligence branches. And, you know, we tend to kind of downplay Canada's role in things like this, but Canada is regarded as one of the world's top leaders in intelligence gathering from signals. In other words, listening. Listening in on various frequencies and being able to capture the secrets of other nations. And the deal with Five Eyes is they exchange stuff. So the question becomes, after the recent list of appointments by, or I should, I've got to be careful the way I phrase this, the recent list of names that Donald Trump has said he is going to nominate in key positions,

like Director of National Intelligence, like the Cabinet Secretary for Defense, like the attorney general. These are all kind of key positions, especially when it gets around to major discussions about the world situation, conflict. So this is an important question about who do you trust with your secrets. And it must be one that different intelligence agencies, literally around the world, are going,

really, he's going to put that person in charge of what? We're going to have that discussion with Janice Stein in a few moments. And keep in mind, Janice is not only an expert on Middle East affairs, on conflict resolution. She is a player when it gets to discussions at the international level on all kinds of things, including this whole issue of security and intelligence.

So we'll get Janice's view on all this in a couple of moments. But first, as we always say on Mondays, little housekeeping. And that housekeeping includes what our plan is for this week's Thursday's Your Turn, where you get your opportunity to weigh in on events. Now, often I'll frame a particular question like we did last week, but this week it's going to be one of those open ones. Try to do this every second or third week, because I know there's a lot on your mind,

especially so right now, both domestically, it can be anything from, you know, the current state of the Trudeau government, or the Polyev opposition, or bike lanes. I get a lot of mail about bike lanes. So anyway, all this is up for discussion this week, because it is a what's on your mind week. So whatever is on your mind and you want to put it forward as a discussion point, then jot down your thoughts. Keep them, you know, as we say, keep them tight, keep them short. Paragraphs should do it.

What's on your mind, you write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Include your name and your location. And you've got to play hardball. Last week we had quite a few just forgot to put in their location. Now, some of you think, well, I've written before. You know where I'm from. Well, okay, that assumes we have a huge research facility here at the bridge.

We don't. You have me. That's it, right? So remember, just tell us where you're writing from. And others say, well, why do you care? Well, I care because it gives me a sense of the country when we go through these. And, you know, such and such is feeling such and such a way, and they live in such and such a place. So it's all good. Anyway, there you go.

It's a What's On Your Mind week for your turn. Catch your cards and letters in before 6 p.m. Wednesday. All right, let's get to a conversation for today. And I think it's a very important one. So let's get at it, right? Would help if I queued it up, which I have now done. So here we go. Here's my conversation for this week with Janice Stein. All right, Janice, I'll start with just two words. Tulsi Gabbard. What should I be thinking when I hear those two words?

Well, first of all, Peter, I'm struggling for words to capture my astonishment is the only thing I can say. I mean, I really can't find the right words. Tulsi Gabbard has a track record here, which would make any serious intelligence agent sit up. Let me just put it to you that way. And there's two things that really stand out for me in looking at a record.

The first is that she went to visit President Bashir al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War. And what's really interesting is not only that she went and denied that he ever used chemical weapons, and that, frankly, is just not in dispute by anybody. But she was escorted once she got into Syria by Syrian intelligence, by Syrian agents.

Now, how does that happen? I don't have a good answer for that, frankly. Well, you know, when you, you know, she has a, she's from Hawaii. She was representative there for about seven years in the US. She had a record in the US Army Reserve for, you know, 15, 16, 17 years. She was and still is ranked as a lieutenant colonel, I believe. Yeah. But she's also known, you know, as a Russian asset, as the way your critics describe her.

Not only a Syrian asset, but a Russian asset, a Russian puppet, a Russian stooge, you name it. She was a Democrat. She's now a Republican. And she's now the Director of National Intelligence. Now, if you haven't heard that title before, or if you're only slightly familiar with it, it is because, you know, it's taken on much more of a dominant role really in the years since 9-11. Right.

But it is a big deal. She's basically not in charge of, but oversees all the intelligence agencies in the United States. All 18. All 18 agencies. Right. She's got the big picture sitting on top of All 18. All 18 agencies. She's got the big picture sitting on top of it all. The big picture and she has access to every

secret they have. With no exception. And if anybody owns her, they have access to them as well. And I guess that's the fear. That's it in a nutshell. Right there. Let's add one more fact to the resume um because clearly something has changed with her in her later career because

there's a long career as you just said she's also appeared on rt now rt uh for any of our listeners who don't know, is frankly Russian television. It's a very select group of people, journalists, politicians who will appear on RT because the only way that's acceptable is if you fundamentally toe the Russian line. This is not an outlet that is interested in independent criticism. You put those two stories together, Peter, that she had protection from the time she went into Syria and that she's on RT. There is no intelligence agency in the Western world

that is not going to worry about her, frankly. I don't think, here's the strongest way I can make this claim. She would not pass a background check for the highest level of security clearance. She would not. So let's finish that thread of the story. What are the Trump people doing about that? They have taken away the job of doing background checks from the FBI,

and they are going to contract it out to a private agency. So this is going to have huge implications for what we call the Five Eyes. And the Five Eyes are the five nations of which canada is is one of u.s canada britain australia australia and new zealand new zealand yeah and they they exchange information all the time there is a really privileged network there. This is probably the world's closest, I would say, multilateral intelligence information network. You know, it shuts out, just think about this, shuts out the French, shuts out the Germans. It shuts out other NATO allies. This is the Anglosphere.

It comes out of the old Commonwealth, frankly. These are the tightest of tightest friendships and trusted relationships. And everybody contributes a little differently, but the United States is the big one. And we in Canada, frankly, get a lot more from the Five Eyes than we give to the Five Eyes. So there are some very specialized things that we provide. What do you do when you know that, as you just said, somebody who wouldn't get clearance because of their record is now going to sit on top of this structure.

And everything that is confidential and security related, she will have access to. So what do you do? I mean, you can't just sort of say, well, you know, we're not going to tell them. So there's two levels of this discussion. Frankly, there's the official level and there's the unofficial level. The official level would say it's illegal not to share what we know. This is a U.S. problem. And until we have definitive evidence, we're just going to continue to share and let the United States manage what is,

after all, an internal U.S. problem. That's the official line. The unofficial line, and it's clearly where the British are, is they will not. They will not tell. So, you know, there are different ways of rooting information under a system like this. Do you want it to get to the president without going through her? If it's really, really important and you're worried about the security,

well, the Brits might tell the Canadians and our Prime Minister would reach out directly to the president. Could work the other way around, too. If the issue is really important and there is really top secret information, they will go around. They will go around. Which is illegal, for the record.

It's illegal. You have to keep reminding yourself that the American public service procedure is different than the Canadian one. I mean, there's the political appointment at the top, which she is, but in the States, the political appointments continue heading downwards. That's right. Resistance and like what we'd call deputy ministers. Three levels down, Peter, right? They're political levels across.

So every time there's a change in administration, thousands and thousands of jobs change hands. So it's not like you can sort of, you know, discuss this at a level that isn't the top level. No. Because you're going to get to the top level anyway um yeah so i want to get to the question of why do you think trump has done this but i but before i get there uh it's not like a one-off when we see the appointments that are being made so far especially the appointments that have or could potentially have something to do with international relations

and major big decisions like the cabinet sitting in that room where they make the big decisions, the war decisions. When you see who's potentially sitting around the table, you have, well, you have Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, and I think most people have agreed that's okay. That is okay. That's okay. He's got the experience.

He's a bipartisan guy, at least he's shown that in the past. Yeah. But after that. And he's competent. And he's competent. He's competent. After that, it gets a little greasy. You've got Gabbard.

You've got Peter Hesketh, who's a Fox News weekend anchor, who's now going to be the defense secretary. Can you imagine that? Let's just stop over that one. Can you just imagine that, Peter? It's really stunning. This is a $3 billion a year agency with close to a million employees. And you take a weekend anchor. Wow.

I mean, no experience. And as you just said, it's the defense secretary. And under him will be an assistant deputy secretary. It will go three levels down. And in any decision, any decision about Ukraine, about the Middle East, about Taiwan, the Defense Secretary is the key person that sits in that principal's committee in the situation room and gives advice on whether it's feasible to do what the president asks. He doesn't know. Well, there are more seats in that room as well. And one of them would likely be the attorney general because things that have something to do

with war often you know you got to look to the attorney general to see what's legal and what isn't legal so you've got you've got your matt gates in that that's probably the most that's the one i think that's caused it's hard it's hard to decide which is the most bizarre now keeping in mind these are slotted for nomination they haven't happened right yeah um let's talk about that for one second they require senate confirmation right well they do and they don't they do and they don't that's right um so that's by the way and there's some very good people in the Senate. All right. Senator Tom Risch, a very serious guy, really serious guy. He comes to the Halifax Security Forum, which is annually held in Halifax. He'll be there next week.

Right. Is he going to confirm some of these people? Well, you know, there's an alternative, which the Trump, just like the alternate, you know, they're going to subcontract that background checks. They can do the Trump administration can do what's called a recess appointment, go around the Senate. And those appointments last 240 days. So they are not stymied if the, quote, a week in the Senate says no. And then when that 240 days goes up, they can do another one with a replacement.

And I remember him asking about this last time around, like Trump, because he figures if I want to do it, I should be able to do it, and nobody should get in the way of it. Yeah. Now, this is like, I think it's like the second article in the Constitution. I mean, it's not like some 365th thing that they thought oh it's right at the top that's called the advise and consent provision right and it's so fundamental to the u.s constitution so different from ours because they deliberately divide powers to provide

checks and balances because you know what the framers of the U.S. Constitution worried about most? An unchecked president. Well, I mean, you try to imagine this room, the situation room. They're sitting in. There's some huge consequential decision about to be made. It could be, you know, the use of nuclear weapons. It could be any number of things.

For sure. They always come in every administration. So Trump is sitting there with Gabbard, Gates, Rubio, Peskis, and who knows, maybe the health secretary, RFK Jr. And you're going, these are the people who are going to make this decision? Yeah. I mean, it's true. I have to say, it is terrifying. It is really terrifying because, as I just said,

there's no administration that doesn't face a crisis, right? You don't know when it's going to come in. And it's not necessarily that Trump starts it. It just comes at you. The world happens. Really interesting how fast these appointments were announced and in what areas they were announced. Right. And you were hinting at that earlier, Peter. They're in. They're really in three areas and the other areas where Trump had the most trouble last time when he was president.

And these departments are frankly on his list. So intelligence, you know, he bears tremendous grievance. Again, all set of agencies that he feels did not properly do its work on the Biden family in Ukraine and also investigated him for alleged Russian connections. Personal. It's personal. And he wants he wants every person involved in any of that out. And there's a lot of fear, by the way, inside these agencies that this will happen. Do you know, I happen to know some of those people because of their work on Ukraine,

and some of them signed a letter criticizing him. Their lawyers, they all have lawyers now, their lawyers have told them not to be in the country, to leave the United States on January the 20th because the president could sign executive orders right after the inauguration. And they could be charged and arrested. You're kidding. No.

No. And these lawyers are not, you know, they have a duty to protect their clients, but they're not paranoid. They've told them, being an intelligence agent, either in the field or an analyst, that's not exactly the safest. Those are, you know, especially the field operators, that's not a safe job. You don't sit on the sidelines. Some of these people signed that letter about violation of procedures. This is where they find themselves. Let me ask you, let me come at it a little

differently here um you mentioned it was a surprise how quickly these happened and it was it was literally within days if not hours days so which departments just to finish up peter before anything to do with national intelligence the the Justice Department, of course, of course, the Justice Department and you don't, Gates was called, well, I'm just going to go in there and chop heads. That's his qualification. I'm going to go in. And the president, by the way, has appointed his own personal lawyers to the number two and the number three spots. So this is a longstanding argument. Is the president the lawyers or are they the lawyers for the United States government on the Constitution?

Trump sees it black and white. They are my lawyers. They're going to do my work, my bidding. I keep waiting for Alina Haber. They are my lawyers. They're going to do my work, my bidding. I keep waiting for Lena Habert, who kind of booted one of his trials around. But she was great at the microphone. And she's great on Fox. And she's all over the place. I keep waiting to see what appointment she's going to get.

She will. And Steve Bannon. waiting to see what what appointment she's going to get she will and steve bannon you know like there was a rumor running around the end of last week that he was going to get he was going to be the new director of the fbi well that'd be well you know like people sort of started to laugh and then they went well you know maybe i shouldn't be laughing look at these other ones and if you look at these people by the way almost all of them have a connection to Steve Bannon, if you trace it back far. So this is, you know, in the biggest sense of it, Steve Bannon's network of people. And the one thing about Bannon that people tend to forget,

I mean, you can say that the ideas coming out of the Bannon head are bizarre and wild and disrespectful of the Constitution, et cetera, et cetera. But the one thing he's not is stupid. He's a smart guy. Very smart. He's very smart. And he both thinks in big ideological terms, and he's an operator.

He builds networks. He's got both. You know, he does both, which not everybody does. Now, he did that. He was up here in Canada. He did that debate. Was it with David? Yes.

At the Munk School, right? Yes. Yes. It wasn't at the Munk School. It was at Munk Debates in Roy Thompson Hall. Roy Thompson Hall, right. Yeah. It was a good debate.

But. You know, it was pretty good. Anyway, let me get back to this question. When you look at this lineup of people and how quickly he put them in, it's like he'd been thinking of this from before. This was already penciled in on doing this on day two and this on day three. It leaves you wondering whether, and some Republican senators have said this, well, these aren't really the serious

appointments you know yes they are no but they're suggesting this isn't going to fly this is here for a reason to make a statement early but it'll be toned down and fixed and the right people will be in place i don't agree. I couldn't disagree more. As I said, first of all, no accident that the departments that caused him the most personal trouble, that he feels went after him, the Department of Justice and the intelligence community, top of the list on these appointments. I think they're very serious.

I think he's determined. I think he knows some of them. The senators are going to give him difficulty with. He doesn't care. This is about going after what he calls the deep state. You know, it's an expression that I first heard in Egypt. And now we're talking about it in the United States. But he means those people deep within the government that pursue their own personal

agendas. He wants a purge. That's what he wants. And it's fundamental to him, Peter. And I think senators that you're hearing that from are senators who all along never took seriously enough. And they will make a huge mistake if they do not. If they ratify these appointments, I think that's the worst outcome. And some of them in the past have backed down.

If they don't ratify the appointments, he has a workaround. It's going to be a recess appointment. So I think everybody, everybody has to take this very seriously, including Canada and including our own intelligence community. It has implications for us. It definitely has implications. What I don't understand, short of withdrawing from the five eyes, what do you do about it?

Well, that's exactly. We would never withdraw from the five eyes. And for reasons that you know well, Peter, we do not have an intelligence agency that formally operates abroad and gather and does the work. We don't have agents abroad in the same way as the CIA does. CSIS does not have that authority. It stations officers abroad in our embassy, but that's usually for very specific missions related to the embassy. So we're wholly dependent on Britain and the United States for the foreign intelligence that

we get. And, you know, there's a long history in this country of people saying, you know, we are a fully independent country. It is time that we collected our own because it influences the way our foreign policy works. There's no Canadian perspective on these. We're relying so heavily on U.S. intelligence. But we're in no position to withdraw. I do think, and it'll be done in the most careful, subtle way. People won't talk about it, but I think they will find different routes. First of all, I really believe Britain and Canada

will share at the highest levels. And then there'll have to be a big decision. Do you take this to President Trump apart from some of these people? You know, you'll look at his national security advisor. There's no room for comfort here because he used to be able to find one or two people that you could take this to and they would go to the president. That's not what there's none. There's Marco Rubio. Yeah, he's got a lot of people lined up at his door.

If, just one last point on this before we take our break and move on. There actually will be other people in that room, that situation room, and they would include the heads of the various armed forces. Yes. You know, the generals, whomever they may be. He's a very competent guy right now as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a funny name, Charlie Brown, but that is his name, Charles Brown. He's an extremely competent,

very, very highly regarded Secretary of Defense can make that person's life very miserable if they want to. And I assume the President can too if he wants to replace him. Yes. And that will become a question whether Trump replaces the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know, the head of the army, the head of the Air Force, the head of the Marines, etc. Space Command, all of that. Yeah. And we didn't talk about one other thing here in this mix. Yeah. Which is Elon Musk. Yeah, that was going to be part two. Okay, sorry. So let me take the break and come back.

Okay. Because, I mean, the more I look at Elon Musk, it's like he's a second president, the way he's portraying himself and the way he's sort of like not leaving like he's he's there he's stuck to oh yeah in every way but let me uh let me take a break and we'll come right back and we'll talk about that right after this And welcome back. You're listening to the Monday episode of The Bridge. It is, of course, our conversation, our weekly conversation, with Janet Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto.

We talked a lot about the concerns around, you know, who will be advising the president at the most senior levels of the new American administration. But we left out, as Janice said, one name. And we've saved that for this part of the program. And that name, of course, is Elon Musk, who is, you know, among other things, the richest guy in the world. He has Tesla. He has Tesla. He has X.

Although he's kind of basically driven it into the ground. I spent the weekend trying to decide whether I'm going to get out of X and into blue sky. I haven't quite got there yet, but I'm looking. Anyway, and he has SpaceX, which has incredible influence, not just in the United States, but around the world. He's been a major supporter at times of Ukraine, in the Ukraine war, by supplying it with his satellite system.

But in the last two weeks since the election, it's hard to see Trump without seeing, you know, this little elf on his shoulder, not so little actually, in Elon Musk, who's there apparently in almost every room, on almost every phone call that he makes with world leaders, you name it, Musk is there. Now, is this because Trump wants him there or Trump hasn't come up with a way to tell him thank you very much for your help, which was considerable, it seems to be, in the election campaign, and it's time for you to move on,

or if he actually wants him there as almost a co-president? You know, what did Elon Musk do for Trump? Leave aside the $150 million, because that wouldn't be enough to buy this kind of influence, frankly. You know, people talked about the fact that Republicans had no ground game and the Democrats had such a good one. That's true. The Democrats had a knock-on- no ground game and the Democrats had such a good one. That's true. The Democrats had a knock-on-door ground game for a class of Republicans.

But what Elon Musk do? Use Twitter and organize the functional equivalent of a digital ground game and micro-target it as you can when you get this kind of data from your users. This is probably the future, Peter. Everybody's going to learn from that operation and campaigns. You don't have to knock on doors. You could do far better by micro-targeting like this digitally. And that's what Elon Musk did for him.

So I think he probably made more difference to the Trump election campaign than absolutely anybody else. Now, what's in this for Elon Musk? Well, he is the biggest beneficiary of contracts from the Defense Department, the State Department of any company, SpaceX. SpaceX controls what we call lower orbit space. It is populating lower orbit space. And why was Elon Musk, why was SpaceX so important to Ukraine? Because there's this little thing called Starlink. If you're Canadian and you leave Toronto and you go north, you put a little Starlink thing where there's no coverage

and all of a sudden your systems function. Well, in Ukraine, without Starlink, the Ukrainian army could not communicate across from commander to commander. He was absolutely critical to that system. So for Elon Musk, what does he want to do? He wants to change the regulatory environment. He wants to get rid of the regulations that get in the way of SpaceX, that get in the way of Tesla, environmental regulations and others.

And there's a third company called Neuralink, which implants chips, frankly, smart chips in the brain. Right now, it's focused on people who have had spinal cord injuries and other such diseases so that they can begin to communicate directly from their brain with this smart chip. But if you understand that we're in an age of AI, and what matters to him, so AI regulations and China, because Tesla manufactures in China.

So across all those baskets of issues, Elon Musk's companies can benefit enormously. So what does he want? Well, he's very happy to be, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, to be made co-chairs of what they call Department of Government Efficiency. Perfect. You know, terminate some of those regulators, pull the state way back, get the government out of my face. That absolutely serves his interests. So he's not, Elon Musk's not walking away because the financial advantage for him is frankly incalculable. The different question is how long two men with beach-sized egos can survive in the same room.

Right? Everybody's egos can survive in the same room, right? Trump doesn't want anybody sort of as part of the picture in the sense of where the focus is on. He just wants one person in that picture, and that's him. But, I mean, for Musk and for Ramaswamy, I guess, too, it's the best of both worlds. They get to keep their private sector business. Yeah. They get a huge influence on government, and there's no accountability. That's right. It's perfect, right?

There's no appointment, so you don't have to. You know all the things you have to do when you take a government position in Canada, in the United States. You have to resign, you have to disclose, you have to put your shares in a blind trust, all those sorts of things. None of that applies to them,

but they get to shape the structure of government and the regulations that are going to affect him. You know, let me give you one concrete example. Elon Musk, a deep critic of open AI. He was an early investor. Left has formed his own AI company. I can assure you that if he's still there in six months, and I'm betting probably not, I think it's the ego issue that's going to explode between these two. Both of them are, it's inconceivable to me. But if he is there, we'll be able to trace the line directly in the content of regulations that comes out. He could be more important than any one of these appointments, frankly. He's on the phone with Zelensky. When Zelensky called, he passed the phone to Elon Musk. He was sitting right next to Donald Trump.

Allegedly, and, you know, allegedly had a meeting, a secret meeting with the Iranian ambassador that was in a state house outside of Washington this week in which Elon Musk started to talk to him about how they could each de-escalate, untrained, unauthorized. And by the way, just for the record here, illegal, illegal under what's called the Logan Law, the incoming, the president-elect is supposed to have no contacts of this sort other than congratulatory calls because you're only supposed to have one

president. Well, you see what's happening within a week. And you don't want to scratch too deep on, on the historical records on that either. No, no, no, you don't. You've got the John Kerry, Ronald Reagan. Everybody. You've got examples. So, you know, I'm sure Ramaswamy still has dreams

about being president one day. Do you think Musk, is that in the, does he care about that? You know, it's a really interesting question because he was not born in the United States. Oh, right. He's not eligible. What do rules mean anymore? Yeah.

They would have to change that rule in order for him to be eligible. But, you know, I would think this is the best of all worlds. He's got it right now. He's got it. It doesn't get any better than this. I think he probably knows it's not going to last for long. So it's like that. And I think, Peter, if I had to say one thing,

it's that's what to me characterized all these appointments and this next 18 months. They know this is not going to last for long. In the midterms, the odds are overwhelming, especially given how controversial all this is. They will lose control of either the House or the Senate. They have an 18-month agenda. And that's why they're organized.

It's not Trump who's organized. It's people like Stephen Miller and others around him. They have those lists ready to roll. They have a list of judges. It goes down two or three levels. This is an attack on the way the U.S. government is structured and run, and they have 18 months to get it done. They are very focused, very determined.

It's a revolutionary moment in the history of the United States. That's how I think about it. Last question. It was two weeks now since the election, an election where you predicted Trump would win, and I know that. That's what you said to me, and I didn't believe you, but nevertheless, you were right, as you so often are. But in those two weeks, knowing that it was going to end up the way

you thought it was going to end up, in those two weeks, what has surprised you most about what's happened? I am shocked, frankly, by the nature of these appointments. I mean, these are really serious appointments. And yes, we can argue about competence. But the vast majority of these people have no experience whatsoever

in national security or in the Department of Justice. Nothing, Peter. Look, in his first term, he looked for experienced people, and they blocked every single time he wanted to do something, and they were able to work around him. I think I did not expect that he would appoint people who have absolutely no competence and bring fundamentally just an ideological agenda to their jobs, which is what most of these people are. And the recipe, you know, here we've got all the ingredients for some terrible misjudgment at a moment of crisis. Okay.

We're going to leave it at that for this week. We'll get back on track with Ukraine and the Middle East next week, I'm sure, although these stories drop day after day in Washington. Who knows, right? Thanks, Janice. We'll talk to you in seven days. Have a good week, Peter. Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto.

So how secure do you feel after listening to that? Well, we'll probably have a good idea next weekend because as Janice says, she'll be out in Halifax this weekend at the annual security conference that's well attended from, you know, big names from around the world. So we'll get her glimpse into what she's hearing in the corridors of the Halifax security conference. And we'll get all that next week when Janice returns next Monday.

That kind of wraps it up for today. A quick reminder, it is a What's On Your Mind week for your turn. So get your cards and letters in. They gave you all the rules at the beginning and top of the program today, so you can go back to that to check it out. Tomorrow, one of my favorite guests, Catherine Hayhoe. I want to talk to her about where we are in the fight against climate change as a result of what's happened, not only in the last couple of weeks in the U.S. election, but what's been happening in different governments around the world, including ours, in the fight against climate change? Catherine, as you may well remember, is an atmospheric scientist from Canada, but she

teaches at Texas Tech in the U.S. right now. She has a huge following, not only in north america but you know around the world um she has a newsletter she has regular broadcast she does ted talks does a variety of things but she's um she's been on the bridge before very popular and she uh she likes talking with us and we have her for the full show tomorrow um And I think you'll like listening to Catherine Hale because one of the things I most admire about her is that she's an eternal optimist, right? She believes in good, and she believes that people are good

and people care and people will do something and people can have um can have a real impact on this story as individuals so we'll talk to her as to where she sees things right now on the climate change story uh that's coming up tomorrow on the bridge. Wednesday is Encore Edition. Thursday is Your Turn. Friday is, of course, Good Talk with Chantel and Bruce. So that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. It's been great talking with you, as always. And we'll see you again in almost 24 hours.