The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Trump's warning to European countries, and what Canada should learn from their mistakes

Episode Date: September 26, 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 with Trump's address at the UN General Assembly this week where he warned European countries that they are "going to hell" due to mass migration. While citizens rightfully expect their governments to protect their borders, we can't ignore the fact that we in the West need immigrants for economic growth and low skilled labour that is not being filled by native populations. The test for any government is how they manage immigration to benefit their societies instead of destabilizing them. Is Canada better at integrating newcomers than European countries? Rudyard and Janice agree that if we aren't careful about the pace of change in society and manage our ability to welcome large numbers of newcomers we could end up with a hard right populist movement, the kind we are seeing sweep through Europe and parts of the U.S. A sense of shared history, tradition, culture, and community is required to keep people grounded and populist politics at bay. 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.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 26th of September 2025. I'm Roger Griffiths, Chair of the Monk Debates, joined in studio by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Happy Friday, Janice. Same to you, Rogers. Beautiful fall weather.

Finally, after a deluge here in Toronto, where we're recording from it, I felt like I was Noah needing to build my arc. But we're out into the sunshine today. I wish I could say the same thing for our topic list. We had hoped maybe that the pace of events was slowing down last week, but this week things have ramped up. And let's start where we've seen some of that ramping occur, which is the United Nations, Unga, the UN General Assembly underway in New York.

And let's start first with Trump's, I don't know what you'd call it. It's not a speech, a harangue, a diatribe. Does this matter, though, Janice? Is it just Trump the television personality up on a big stage acting out? or are there implications for this? Are there actual messages in some of the really stark, maybe that's the most charitable way I can put it, statements and claims that he made in his Unga address?

Well, first of all, I'm going to throw the ball back to you for a minute, Rudyard, because you know far more about media than I do. And I have to say, you know, the annual show in New York, the United Nations General Assembly. It's a performance. I've never seen one quite like the one Donald Trump put on. I was racking my brains. When did I last see a major speech? And interspersed in that speech were things that you and I probably, and I shouldn't speak for you, might say privately, but out they came, the United Nations spends a lot of time writing letters

and then nothing happens. Well, I thought, you know, that one's not divorced from reality, but then it got ugly. You, European democracies, you're going to hell. There's a really strong message in that one that is probably worth unpacking. There is a civilizational,

message at the back of what Donald Trump says, that the Christian West is under assault everybody. I thought that language you're going to hell. That wasn't wholly accidental. It probably reflects a great deal of what Donald Trump really thinks. And wow, was that offensive? And then a big focus on, you know, migration as the primary cause or reason for why, Europe is going to hell. So we often talk about how all, in a sense, foreign affairs by presidents or prime ministers is really a domestic political conversation. Do you think that was the case of Trump's remarks? Do you think in a sense he's he's talking back not to Junga and the delegates in that room, he's talking back to American voters. His cohort, the MAGA crowd, probably likes to see the

president whacking away at the UN, which many of them would associate with some globalist cabal that, you know, is seeking to implant chips in their right frontal lobe. They could well do that. Was he talking to American voters, of course, but he was talking to more than American voters? immigration is a dog whistle, frankly, when you join it up with you European democracies, you're going to hell. It's you European democracies, let's be blunt here for a moment, Roger, that are admitting non-white, non-Christian immigrants to your countries. That's why you're going to hell.

And I think that's, frankly, a core message of the magazine. movement, you see it in the United States the way ICE is operating. That was no accident, that comment. Europe, though, does face integration problems. They have, primarily through the Syrian Civil War, accepted, in that case, well north of a million undocumented migrants who entered the country, again, in desperate humanitarian need, and to the credit maybe of Germany and others, those migrants were welcome, but they have created deep divisions in European society, and we're seeing the consequences of that. We're seeing Tommy Robinson in the United Kingdom, a kind of right-wing populist leader organized well over 100, 150,000 people for a big march in London just a couple

weeks ago. We're seeing... That was astonishing, actually. The ADF in Germany just have another set of employees. important victories at the state level of elections in the Rhineland, which is the kind of one of the biggest and most populous and industrialized portions of Germany. And then, you know, across the northern European countries, far right parties are continuing to make gains. So again, is the president simply saying the quiet part out loud that Europe is now courting real political instability as a result of a policy and an attitude towards migration where elites were deeply out of sync with popular opinion and what a lot of their voting electorate actually wanted.

Yeah, that is a huge issue in Europe, and it's a huge issue in the United States, too. It's an issue in Canada, more so than it was a few years ago, but nothing like what it is in Europe and the United States. And there's two threads that we can pull right here. One is the Europeans are not very good welcoming people, refugees from different cultures. In Sweden, right? You know, the virtuous Nordics have had a huge problem welcoming Muslim immigrants. They simply don't have the experience that we have in Canada.

Someone also say that some of those immigrants, not all of them, aren't particularly choosing to integrate into Swedish and other society, that they are like many types of immigrants in many countries throughout history are, you know, settling and living with people who are of the same ethnicity and religion are embracing religious schools and, you know, their own religious faith group over integration. But that's a generational thing. We've had that experience in Canada over and over. Groups come with different cultures, different religions, the first generation clusters together in a neighborhood.

Toronto is often described as a city of neighborhoods. Their kids go to school, and that's when they begin to branch out and begin to... Do you think that's a hard and fast law over time and generation? Some people would say that societies have a natural absorb of capacity, and that in certain circumstances where you do have massive influxes of migration, often in the context of civil wars or, you know, state collapse or economic, uh, economic hardship that, that propels these migrants in the case of Europe, on their feet, to walk into Europe or in the case of Canada, the large scale migration that we saw after COVID to solve so-called labor shortages that, you know, each society has an ability to, to

assimilate and inculcate and foster a common culture and that when you have these sudden sharp spikes in migration surely janis it's not a universal it's not a constant we can't always expect the sunny uplands of of migration to to reveal themselves and in the context of what we're seeing in the 21st century which is probably migration is one of the single biggest factors or story that is affecting every single vertical of our society, from politics to economics, to public services, to people's attitudes about civil society and democracy. So I think there's, again, there's a second message

because there's no question that immigration is one of the hot-bushan issues that the right, the extreme right, in Europe and in the United States, have been able to weaponize, Roger. So why is that the case? because underneath there is a very something that's very important to citizens control of your borders. And that, by the way, is not a right issue. That is a left issue. That is a center issue.

That's an everyone issue. Citizens expect governments to control their borders. So walking across borders, we've had that in Canada where people come across the border, come north across the border and claim asylum. And we're going through a period like that right now. And Canadians don't like it. So I think that's a big piece. That is a no-go for any government.

You have to show your citizens. You control your borders. The other side of this picture is every one of these countries that you've talked about, and I'd add Canada, desperately needs immigration because we're getting old. And we have jobs in our society that either Canadians won't do. or they're not, they don't have the right education to do. And our growth, our economic growth in the future, is dependent on immigration.

So it's about the government. It's about how government manages immigration and make sure that there isn't a burst of this stuff that appears to their citizens as if they've lost control of the process. Yeah, I mean, I would just have a gentle pushback to that to say that in Europe, maybe a bit different thing, Canada that if you're French or Dutch or others, you might feel that your nation is also a civilization, that you have history stretching back for centuries, that you have institutions

and traditions and culture that you think are worth preserving and that previous generations have, in many cases, fought wars or been invaded or have struggled to realize that culture. And therefore, the culture has a value to you, which is great. greater than simply its parts, that there is a summation of what it means to be French or Italian or Dutch or German. So I think there's, I think that's part of what's driving. It doesn't, it doesn't excuse the xenophobia or the racism, but Europe maybe unlike Canada is, is civilizational, that it has deep roots, deep antecedents in a, in a Western Christian tradition, which has been unfavorable to various groups over time, whether that be Jews or Muslims or

other Christian sex and minorities. But nonetheless, it is a Western Christian culture that is seeking to perpetuate and preserve what it is. It doesn't want to become something else through mass migration that leads to people who come maybe often from non-democratic societies or failed states and maybe don't share a Western Christian outlook or view. I'm not saying one is right or one is wrong. I'm just simply stating the facts that Europe is not some post-national, um, uh, culturelessness, uh, society that, that simply is fine with being whatever it becomes. Yeah. Look, I'm glad you brought France up.

France has the most stagnant economy in Europe. It is trapped. It is 30. of the years of downward spiral in the French economy. But is that solved through mass migration or is that solved through economic and other reforms? You need people. They need younger people. They are an aging society and they've been getting old since the war. But here's the other comment.

But just on that point, because there's one other brushback. I think it's an important thing to note that in the case of Canada, the average age of all people moving into Canada from outside Canada is very close to the existing age. age distribution of our population. So there's a bit of a myth here that immigration is essential, or migration in the case of Europe, because a lot of it is illegal, is essential to, you know, rejuvenating Western society and making it younger because we have to pay for all the boomers who are exiting the workforce, and therefore we don't have their taxation, but they're going to have huge health care costs.

That's not necessarily solved one through one through immigration, or in fact, migration because age distributions are, you know, a lot of old people come with a lot of young people. And that's, that's one of the wonderful things about, especially immigration in Canada, is that we don't have a, quote, guest worker program. We believe in family unification. I think that's an important kind of humanitarian principle. But, you know, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't believe in family unification and bringing parents and grandparents over to reunite with the principal applicant who has come to Canada. And then, you know, say, well, immigration is going to solve for our age distribution problem because the boomers

are getting older. But nevertheless, if you focus on young people that have years, right? And there are migration programs where you can admit people to the country. We did it in Canada, right, when we focused on particular skills that we needed, you know, the much hated temporary foreign workers program, which you come to this country. But then you stay if you're providing really critical skills. Sure, there are parents and grandparents out there. But there is a young person who is going to be productive in this economy and do things that

Canadians won't do. Let me come back to your culture argument. Won't do because maybe they can't either get a summer job to start their way on the path towards employment or they won't do because the employer is using the tied foreign worker program to offer lower wages. less favorable working conditions, a whole series of outcomes that understandably displace workers who are in Canada, whether they're citizens or not, because, again, Tim Hortons has decided we'd much rather pay people less and have more control over them because their immigration status isn't tied to us as the employers, the amount of, again, stick that that employer has. It's complicated.

It's complicated, but there also, as we're seeing in Canada as in Europe, there are becoming hotter button political issues because there are slowing economy. We have large rates of youth unemployment. There's all kinds of anecdotal evidence that this summer was awful for young people. So why are we bringing in tens of thousands of foreign workers when we are having problems finding jobs for Canadians, especially for young Canadians? You know, we could go, let me just say what the United States just did with H-1B visas, right? 100,000. Who is going to benefit? from that, all the big tech companies, they can pay that fee. And if there aren't enough people of the skills that they need, and these are a very specialized

skill, they shrug their shoulders and pay for the H-1B visa, whereas mid-sized enterprises can't do it. So we can unpack this. Let me come back to the cultural issue, because you did make it, I think it's a really important argument. It's not only economic, it's cultural. And the two strands are coming together and the right. So let's talk about the Jewish community.

100, you know, the big Jewish immigration to North America. There have been waves. Really came after World War I. The first generation lived in communities, very tightly knit communities, and all these civilizational tropes won't integrate. Go to different, they don't go to church. They speak this language that we can't understand. And then you went right down and you had a charitable description, clubby and welcoming.

Well, by the time their kids went to public schools, that began to change. And it wasn't that the- It was a century ago. I mean, it was a very different society. That was a majoritarian society. It was not a post-national state like Canada. It was not a country that- But it was a Christian society.

But it wasn't a country like Canada that's, you know, denigrated its history. torn down its national statues, had a previous prime minister again who openly espoused the idea that Canada's great attribute, our greatest strength, was the fact that we had no identity. So you can't say to me that the pathways to integration, the ability of a society to create integration as a social good and an outcome is the same as it is now in 2025 as it was in 1925. And not that in 1925, there weren't a lot of bad things, a lot of discrimination, a lot of groups who were unduly and unlawfully, especially the Jewish community in a variety of ways, subjugated and suppressed.

But again, you just can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't say, well, we're going to have wonderful levels of integration and all we need to do is wait one generation when the society is so different. I don't think history repeats itself. I think we have to be a little clear-eyed about the fact that we are. trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. And either the gum chewing or the, you know, the walking and the putting one foot in front of the other isn't always maybe as precise and as predictable as we would like. Yeah, but, you know, to go back to the argument for just a minute,

and the book, None is Too Many, described Canada long before we went through the period that you're describing. And it was all those same kinds of arguments that they don't integrate. That led civil servants to refuse to admit any more Jews, and that's where that famous expression, none of many, it came from. So this is not a new problem, this problem, of cultural integration. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program, simply go to our website, triple-w-the-munkdebates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site. Make a donation as little as $25 a year of 50 cents an episode and we'll send you not only the full-length editions of each and

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