The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Trump's plan to weaken Canada so he can annex it

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. Rudyard and Janice start today's show discussing a New York Times article which details a phone conversation between Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump, during which it is seriously suggested by the Americans that the two countries revise the boundary that separates them. Trump wants access to our resources, including water and critical minerals. Let's call this what it is: an old fashioned imperialist attempt by a superior power to exploit and extract resources from a weaker country. Coupled with the constant threat of tariffs, Trump's long term plan is to weaken us and then annex us. Janice and Rudyard agree: we are at economic war and this is a defining moment for our country. It's time to reorganize, embrace our national pride, and not let this crisis go to waste. To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You don't help the poor by making everybody poorer. The media has a frame, and the frame is Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the oppressed. I shouldn't be forced to acknowledge my privilege unless I desire for that to be part of my interaction with somebody else. What I know to be true and what all of my fellow Gen Z know to be true is that this is the most talented generation yet. With respect to every indicia of disadvantage, there is still a racial hierarch. And though I am, of course, an Anglo. I'm certainly not a fucking Saxon. Rudyard Griffiths here, the chair of the monk debates.

Welcome to this, our regular Friday focus podcast in video and audio for you today. I'm joined, of course, by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. She comes to us behind enemy lines deep in the heart of the crumbling empire that is America in Washington, D.C., Janice, you are a brave woman. You know, Richard, maybe I can make a personal remark to get us going. Even I have a chip on my shoulder. And if anyone dares to make a joke to me about what is going on, I find my eyes are flashing and there is an edge to my voice as I try to educate my fellow Americans, why none of this is funny. None of this is funny.

Let's start, though, on the show on a positive note, a whole bunch of new supporters coming on to make a charitable donation to Friday Focus and the Monk Debates. This makes our work possible, trying to create an island, a zone of sanity where we can have hopefully thoughtful and meaningful conversations about the big issues

and ideas shaping our world. So thank you to Cheryl S.J.W. Jonathan K. Doris F. Gullia S. Hunter S. Tilly S. and Mary Jane H. Greatly appreciate your support. Janice, I want to begin our show today by reading a quote to you from what I can only characterize as a kind of bombshell story in the New York Times today that has, again, those deep-throated sources that, reveal the content of Trudeau's conversations with Trump in early February and then subsequent follow-on conversations between Dominic LeBlanc and senior Trump cabinet ministers.

The quote that really jumped out at me, though, was the following. This is from early February. Trump telling Trudeau, quote, that he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between Canada and the United States was valid. And he, Trump, wanted to revise the boundary. He offered no further explanation. What can we think about this, Janice? It is a shocking revelation, if true, and if indeed an accurate description of that early February

conversation between Prime Minister Trudeau and President Trump. I read that article early early this morning on the web record, and it is shocking, right? And let me make two comments to get us going this morning. First, thank goodness for good journalism, because I think it's really important. And good investigative reporting that are trusted and we're able to share this information with the Canadian public. So we understand what's at stake here. Because no responsible official is going to say this. in public. So we need folks

like you read your time who creates spaces where we really get a much better understanding what this stakes are. So that statement about borders and it was about borders and it was about the Great Lakes as well

confirms what some of us have suspected since this, really this onslaught began at Mara Lago. He's serious about

annexing parts of Canada or failing to do that, he wants access to our resources. This is nothing to do with fentanyl. Nothing. He wants access to our water. Why else talk about the Great Lakes? He wants

access to our critical minerals. We saw what he is doing with Vladimir Zelensky. This is an old fashioned imperialist. That is the only word for this. Imperialist attempt to exploit superior power to extract resources from a weaker country. That's the only way to understand it. Yeah. And look, again, in this story, you get a sense that this is not just simply a one-off

in early February. There are reports that Mr. Lutnik, his crypto-bro treasury secretary, Secretary called Dominic LeBlanc and indicated that Trump, according to Lutnik, had realized that the relationship between Canada, the United States, here I quote, was governed by a slew of arrangements and treaties that were easy to abandon. Mr. Trump was interested in doing just that, said Mr. Lutnik. He wanted to eject Canada out of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing that includes Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. In subsequent communications, again, this is the New York Times reporting, Canadian officials and between Canadian officials and Trump advisors, this list of topics, water, the border, continental defense, NORAD, I assume, and Five Eyes came up again and again,

making it, quote, hard for Canadian government officials to dismiss them. Yeah. So again, let's treat our leaders and officials with respect here. They call this. They're saying this is economic warfare. Let's look at the four items. Yes, he can walk away from any boundary treaty, but what's the next step after that? He's not going to use the U.S. military, Roger, he's just not, right? The Great Lakes Treaty, which is really important. It's important for conservation of the Great Lakes, for cleaning up the Great Lakes. You know, we had, just think back to the acid rain days. When pollution was, in fact, destroying the Great Lakes, he can walk away from that, but it can't, you know, and they could drain the water out of the American side, and that would be a huge problem for us. The Five Eyes, here's the irony, let's just be blunt here. the four eyes are walking away from them.

They are putting restrictions or talking about putting restrictions on sharing intelligence with the U.S. An ally like Israel is putting constraints on sharing intelligence with the U.S. because they're worried that Trump is going to blow sources, reveal sources, because he's so undisciplined. So if you actually take apart this agenda, there are real risks here, but it's a lot of, important for Canadians to understand. We also have stuff that they want. What worked, right? One, the threat of withholding as an American to scratch yesterday, Poltash, right? Well, all the fertilizer for the American farming community comes from us. That's not trivial. And if Trump buckled under the pressure of three U.S. carmakers, by the way.

Wasn't what we did. It wasn't the negotiations we had in Washington this week. Three U.S. carmakers gone on the phone, said, you're going to wreck this business. His answer back, but move your plants to the United States, that's where the real story is here. This is designed to put a chill on any investment coming into Canada in the future. These carmakers can't move their plants by April 1st, Roger. But there's a forward-leaning message here. And that's the real problem we face, more than anything else. I agree with that, Janice.

And I think, you know, because rational people will try to react to irrational things. But I guess what unsettled me about this New York Times story was that it suggests that the president has, I wouldn't even call them a theory of the case, a series of impulses towards Canada. that are genuinely hostile and that are not simply adversarial, they are in the best traditions of strongman politics like we see out of Moscow from Vladimir Putin and that we may see from Xi in Beijing with regards to Taiwan. In other words, Janice, yes, we can understand that there were. will be repercussions from his terrorists, from these kind of statements getting out into the public,

and people will react to those. But what I want to react to on the behalf of our audience this morning is a darker scenario and possibly a darker reality, Janice. And no, it's not military invasion. I agree with you. That is that's not in the cards here. But what is in the cards here is not simply a collapse in a challenge. trade relationship, our most important bilateral trade relationship, it is an increasing awareness, a dawning on Canada that we are beside and attached at the hip to a president that is behaving

in the very best, read very worst, traditions of a 19th century strong man. And if you look at the cost that we could pay as a result of not simply a collapse in a trade relationship, but a reality that we now live beside a thug. I don't know, Janice, that's a bigger national challenge for us. It is a, it's a more consequential thing than just the future of auto manufacturing or softwood lumber or energy exports. It is a shock straight to the heart of our national security. You know, I completely agree with you. We are in violent agreement, as they say, we have the same diagnosis here. This is an imperialist, a 19th century imperial president who has turned his eyes on us. And that is shocking to the core, frankly, to Canadians.

And that's the right frame. And I think the Prime Minister got a right this week. You know, maybe it's his last week as Prime Minister before the transition starts. And he said this is economic warfare. He is trying to weaken us so it becomes easier to put us apart on annex us. He went further. He said he's trying to weaken us to annex us. Yes.

Okay, so again, that is, you can't just let that slide by and say, oh, well, you know, the Trump tariffs came off. We've another 30 day of reprieve. No. I put together our prime minister's comments earlier in the week and now this New York Times story landing on Friday. And I say to myself, this is now a genuinely serious issue of a. of national security and national sovereignty that trumps, no pun intended, an economic analysis and simply an economic response. I agree.

I mean, and I think that is exactly the right focus. And you and I could spin stories. And it's probably not the wisest thing to do on how intense economic pressure could weaken us and could create splits in this kind of. country that would make it possible to annex us. But I think the real challenge is how do we mobilize our resources so there was an upper limit to the damage that Trump can do? That's really the challenge for the next government, whether it's liberal or it's conservative. And you said this

is a national security challenge. You're right. What else was in that New York Times article? Norat, North American defense. Here's the brute fact. If you're an American president, you cannot defend this continent unless we collaborate with you. Anything that's going to come out of the United States from Russia, from China, is going to come over the top toward the United States. You remember that balloon controversy? There was a reason that balloon that was floating over Canada before it made its way to the United States was a serious issue despite all the humor. They need us for defense, regardless of what we spend.

And I think those are the kinds of things we now have to start talking about in really vigorous ways. So they understand there was no path to security for continental United States without a North American perspective that includes Canada. That is a brute fact that we have not talked about and we have to start doing so very loud. Thank you so much for your generous donations to the monk debates. Each and every contribution helps us stage fantastic debates like the one you're listening to right now. Please consider becoming a monk supporter. As a monk supporter, you get all kinds of additional perks and benefits, advance ticketing privileges to our main stage debates,

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Now back to our program. I just don't know how a strongman, though, reacts to that type of conversation because, again, that presupposes some degree of, you know, rationality. Rationality, multilateralism, a sense that we're stronger together as opposed to a part. I could see a strong man reacting and saying,

well, you know, we're going to, we're going to station American troops in your far north. We're going to fly our subs and Navy and icebreakers through your waters. You know, your sovereignty means nothing to us because we're, you know, we have, you know, this God-appointed, anointed mandate to defend the homeland, as they like to talk about. The strongman response is not to say, oh, well, yes, Canadians are part of NORAD and, you know, we have to get along to go along in order to keep NORAD. existence. It's quite possible that

a true strong man says, no, we'll just do it ourselves. We'll violate your sovereignty. We will do what we want to do. That's the whole point of being a strong man. I guess that just goes to my fundamental feeling as I end this week, Janice. It's that

we have to really get serious now as a country. We have to understand a bit like the Europeans, I think, began to understand this week, that we are on our own in a way that we have never been before. And that penny dropped, I think, in Europe. And it's dropped to the extent that they are now rushing to really think through how to secure themselves, what they're going to do from a hard power military perspective to defend

themselves against the threat of Russia in the absence of a reliable American partner. Here in Canada, I don't think we've grown up quite yet. We're still in a little bit of a hazy daydream here where we think this is a bunch of economic negotiations over future tariffs on this sector, on that product. And we're talking all of our candidates, Mark Carney or Pierre Pollyov, we're talking about a record middle class, you know, tax cut, NATO spending at, at 2% of GDP. We're going to build infrastructure across the country.

Like, come on, give me a break here. This is fantasy land that our politicians are spinning for us. There are real sacrifices ahead if we want to secure ourselves and secure our sovereignty. And that doesn't include large tax cuts, massive infrastructure spending, and just miraculously meeting our NATO spending. requirement, you know, in the tens of billions of dollars. The world just doesn't work that way. I'm sorry. Yeah, well, it doesn't, Roger.

And let's talk about what an agenda that would get you believing more serious would actually look like. If you believe the prime minister that the United States declared economic war on us, and I do. That is the frame that I now have. So I was shocked as I was, I was a surprise, as we say, when I read this thing earlier this morning. Well, what does that mean? We are war economically. We, and it's bigger, as you said. Well, Winston Churchill in 1940 didn't talk about tucks cuts.

It's such a good point. You know, that's famous speech of him. you know, to the beaches, to the, you know, to the air with a tax cut, a middle-class tax cut. Right. So, and you look, it's, it is really rough for this country that we're going into a federal election now. You and I, as long-time political watchers, we'll just admit this. This is not the time. Silly season.

Yeah. And where political leaders have to compete for votes and make promises. So I discount some of that. But you know what is missing, Roger? There's no call for sacrifice. Here, here, yeah. There's no call for sacrifice. And I will say in a briefing I did this week for some of our colleagues in Ottawa,

I said, where is the call for sacrifice? If we are taking this seriously, we are the smaller one. We will never be able to outmustle the United States. We just can't. Well, you know, it's a nine-to-one ratio, frankly. So we're going to have to be very strategic, very focused in what we define as core interests, but then there has to be a willingness to sacrifice in order to build the muscle to protect those core interests. I detect at least a willingness in the Canadian public.

They understand something. They're nervous. People are worried. But if we don't have the leadership that calls for success. sacrifices because that's what a country does when it's fundamental security, both economic and national, is at risk. People make sacrifices if they care about their country. Yeah. I agree, Janice, but I think the political leaders are also reflecting big cross sections in the public. It's Friday. I drove to the office. The streets are virtually empty here in Toronto. People don't

even work five days a week anymore. Every single section of our economy, there's hands. handouts, there's subsidies, everybody's, you know, asking for a check from government. Doug Ford's sending $200 checks to people debt financed during an election campaign. In many ways, Janice, we are an unsurious country. We are a country that enjoys our privileges and, you know, isn't really that interested in sacrifices. We rather like consumption. Look at our real estate market.

We're obsessed with consumption. We are not a country that in any way in decades has had to think about a national interest, a national purpose, and what might be required of us individually to further that collective product. So I worry, Janice, that the muscle memory, the tissues of being and belonging in this country have been whittled down, have been emaciated over the last number of decades. And this is a tough message for people to hear because we have no pain tolerance. We, you know, COVID proved that.

We, you know, and again, it was serious. It was a pandemic. Government had to respond. But then that response went well beyond Janice. We all understand what was needed. Those checks kept coming because we rather like the idea that, you know, there's always a handout. out. There's always a bailout. There is never a cost that we have to bear individually and

collectively for this project called Canada. And I, you know, this is going to be a real test. This is going to be a real test as to whether we have the intestinal fortitude, the sense of shared purpose. And I'll say, this is my final part of this, this mini rant here. If they come for our water, that is where, you know, I really start to. to say, like, mount up and ride to the sound of the guns. Because that is our identity. That is how we built this country. It is our great patrimony.

It is the thing that makes us unique geographically around the world. And so there are some things like that. I hope, Janice, that will ignite that sense of, of national purpose and pride and a willingness to make maybe real economic sacrifices to ensure that this country remains what it is for future generations. Like it is that essential, the conversation that we're having right now. It really is, Roger. And by the way, we're going to be put to the test.

I think we're not going to be put to the test until after this federal election is over because elections have dynamics of their own. And I can't fall political leaders who are trying to win an election, frankly. So I'm going to have a huge discount on what the leaders of the two big political parties say until that federal election is over, but the morning after. Okay. And inside the senior bureaucracy right now, there is and has to be huge effort at gaming out, every one of the possibilities you just described, including the possibility. that they're going to come after our water. And the question in each of those cases,

what do we do in response? How do we pay for what we need to do in response? How much are our Canadians willing to sacrifice in order to protect our water? We're very concrete. These are not theoretical questions. These are very concrete scenario planning exercises that have to go on right now

at the most senior levels of our bureaucracy. And I think to some degree, are. Oh, good. I mean, that's encouraging, but it's all going to reside on the rest of us, Canadian citizens, to say, you know what, maybe, I don't know, that vacation to Cancun is just not going to happen. You know, that late-modeled German sedan that I really wanted to buy, maybe it's not going to happen. You know, you know, that investor property that I wanted to flip my condo might not happen. And guess what? Maybe this time I shouldn't be bailed. though. Maybe the government shouldn't send me another check in the mail. Maybe it's time that our

resource is what we have because the country enters this crisis in a weakened state, a weakened state economically with a more abundant economy and dismal productivity growth and a weak state is turned as our identity. We spent the last decade tearing down our history, tearing down our national symbols, literally toppling our statues. And now, wow, that stuff kind of matters. national pride, national belonging, national symbols, all that kind of matters again. So I want to end on an optimistic note, Janice, and you and I were exchanging some emails before, and I said slightly ingest, but only slightly ingest, that, you know, Finland is a pretty well-run country. It's an intense place. I've had friends who've gone there, and the Finns know what the heck they're

doing, militarily, economically, culturally. And there's a reason why, because there's this giant Russian bear that's been sharpening its teeth for the last 80 years beside them. And they've created an instrumental strategic culture to live beside that threat. So if I come away with anything from this, it's the possibility. And it's only a possibility because it depends on all of us being willing to give things up for the country and for national pride and national purpose. There could be the potential that Canada becomes a Finland, that we understand that there's a a big eagle sitting there south of the border with sharp talons ready to rip into our underbelly. And we've got to get serious about national security, national symbols and identity,

and our economy to stave off this threat over the long term, just like the Finns have done for over 80 years. I agree with you, Roger. You know, we can't let a good crisis go to waste here. This is a defining moment for this country. we are going to have to decide how much we care about this country and then we need to look at the small countries that live next to the big powerful bears just over the border and understand how they managed to survive and what their strategies are yeah that's for sure well we did not take a break

today jess because i thought this episode was too important to uh stick behind the uh the wall of our membership, but we appreciate our donors allowing us to share the entire Friday Focus episode with all of our Monk debate community. Over 100,000 of you who subscribe weekly by email. So this program gets out wide and far thanks to the support of our Monk donors. So if you are a free member and you've enjoyed the back half of the show for as little as $25 a year, 50 cents a week, come on, it's the best steel in town. You too can get all the future episodes at full length of Friday focus. So shameless plug there just as we wrap up the show. But Janice, be well, be safe. Carry on the good fight there in Washington. Don't let those yanks, you know, bully you or, you know, profane,

profess, sorry, ignorance about what they're doing. The extent to which their government is eviscerating this incredible relationship with Canada that our two countries have enjoyed for decades, and they're doing it without much thought, with very little care, and with an arrogance that is just deeply unbecoming of their once great republic. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Have a good week. Thank you for listening to this edition of the Friday Focus podcast. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, the chair of the Monk Debates. I was joined on this program, as I am each week by

Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice and I would love your reactions to what you heard on the program today. Also, your suggestions and ideas about future topics that we should cover on Friday Focus. Please send us your suggestions now to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK Debateswithan S.com. This podcast is produced by Aidan Moscovic and generously underwritten by the Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundation.

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