The Paikin Podcast - Why the Future of Global Democracy May Hinge on Taiwan

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

George Takach, author of Inspired by Taiwan: Why Supporting Taiwan Matters for Global Democracy, joins Steve to discuss his book, the possibility of China invading Taiwan, why the West must make sure China doesn’t “take a run” at Taiwan, how we are all dependent on Taiwan through its semiconductors, and if President Trump would protect Taiwan if China invaded. They also discuss whether Canada should recognize Taiwan as an independent country, the political price Canada pays with China every time a delegate visits the island, and how seriously we should take China’s military maneuvers, including when they move warships through the Taiwan Strait. Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcast Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznCIUEA11lZGcNIM4h?si=b5d73bc7c3a041b7X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social Email us at: [e-mail] 

With so much of the world's attention focused on the war in the Middle East, it's understandable to forget that a lot of international observers think, in the long run, the more dangerous geopolitical hotspot is in the Far East. China and America have become increasingly bellicose about Taiwan. Could that be the next frontier of the world's tensions? That's next on the Paken podcast. Delighted who introduced George Takash, long-time lawyer, Osgood Hall Law School professor, and the author most recently of,

Inspired by Taiwan, why supporting Taiwan matters for global democracy. George says the future of global democracy may hinge on that small island of 23 million people. And George, it's good to see you again. How you doing today? I'm great. How are you, Steve?

Excellent. All the better for speaking to you. And I want to start there with that very provocative statement that we just quoted you as having said off the top. Why do you think the future of democracy worldwide depends on Taiwan. Because two things. One, Taiwan, and I go into this at some length of the book, as you can imagine, is a model

democracy. It's not just any old democracy. It's actually ranking in the top 15 in the world pursuant to the economist rankings. And that democracy, by the way, has given rise to a fantastic civil society. There's religious freedom. there's human rights, there's rule of law. So it's a really stunning example of how an autocracy, because it was an autocracy for 100 years,

how that can develop into a democracy. And the current real threatening autocracy, communist China, is threatening to snuff out Taiwan. And so the upshot of the book is that all the other democracies, including Canada, have to do their bit to make sure that China never takes a run at Taiwan. It is amazing that Taiwan has been able to maintain a relatively strong independence in the face of more than a billion people and an authoritarian government not far off at shores.

If I asked you, what's the special sauce of their being able to do that? What would you say? Well, the way they won their democracy. So for 50 years, 1895 to 1945, Taiwan was actually a Japanese colony. And then after the Second World War, it became an autocracy under Chiang Kai Sheck, a name that may well resonate with a lot of your listeners. And it was the longest period of martial law in history that Chiang Kai Shek imposed on Taiwan. So after 100 years of not being a democracy, when they were,

won their democracy in early 2000, they have cherished it ever since. And they've built, as I said a minute ago, all these other institutions around it. And they've withstood a barrage of disinformation, cyber attacks from China and gray zone attacks. And so they've become, frankly, stronger the more China has pressured them. Are they not the same people as mainland Chinese? They are a Han majority ethnic Chinese society, but they have diverged from the mainland. And frankly, this is one of the reasons why China is so keen to snuff them out as a democracy, because as you say, on their doorstep, the Taiwan Strait is only 160 kilometers across.

So on their doorstep, China has this very high performance, high functioning democracy. And the Chinese Communist Party, since 1949, has made the case to its own people, oh, you know, Chinese people, they're not really suited for democracy. That is not true. And it's very similar, Steve. I don't know how closely you're following the war in Ukraine. but it's very similar to the narrative that Putin uses. Oh, Slav people, you know, we don't really like democracy.

Well, Ukraine certainly does, and other Slav people certainly do. So holding the line, just as Ukraine is a front line in Europe, you know, Taiwan is an absolute front line to China's, frankly, fraudulent narrative about, well, you're not really entitled to democracy. They certainly are entitled to their democracy. Let me continue that analogy with you as it relates to Russia because there's obviously one significant difference, which is there's not too much sucking up that goes on

by other countries to do business in Russia because it is such a, well, let's be careful here about how I put this. It's such a corrupt state, and it is a diminishing country, and it's trying so hard to maintain some semblage of what it used to be. China is not that at all. China is so obviously hyperpower in the world. Everybody wants to do business there, all of which raises the question about just how committed much of the world is

to this special democracy in Taiwan, because, after all, everybody wants to curry favor with the mainland, not so much with the Taiwanese. What do you think? Well, first of all, let me correct a couple of, a very common misperception. If you have a cell phone, which I'm sure you do, and if you have a computer, which I know you do,

and if you have a car, and if you have so many other modern devices, you are as dependent on Taiwan as the next person with all those modern devices. So Taiwan makes 92% of the leading semiconductor chips in the world, including all the semiconductor chips, chips that drive the AI revolution. So the importance of Taiwan really, you know, can't be overstated. Bloomberg estimates that if the supply chain of semiconductor chips out of Taiwan is interrupted,

the world will suffer a 10% loss of GDP. That is depression level talk. And the U.S. 7%. So there is a criticality to Taiwan that, as I say, I cannot overstate. But my book, the first six chapters aren't about semiconductor chips. Again, I go back to the democracy that they've built, the civil society that they enjoy. And my argument would be that there's room for, for instance, Canada, and Carney and Edan, our foreign minister, they're now. navigating this path very carefully, we can certainly, to use your phrase, beat a door to China to do business, but we have to keep in mind always that we have to be very careful with China, whereas with Taiwan, when we do business with them, we're talking

essentially to kindred folk. So we can do both. And there's actually a recent example of that where just last week, the foreign minister from China, Wang Yi, was in Ottawa. And again, kudos to Anita Anan. She said, look, we want to reset our commercial relationship with China. We want to do business with you more and more because of the problems we're having with West. But we're not going to jettison our relationship with Taiwan. You can do both. let me follow up on that because presumably every time we meet with the Chinese, they remind us that,

number one, they are the real China, and number two, they want us not to have a deeper relationship with Taiwan, but less of a relationship with Taiwan. Can we really be a better customer and provider of goods and services to China if we still want to maintain that relationship with Taiwan that we've had? Well, this is the challenge that faces us, and we're going to see how that meeting last week plays out over the coming weeks and months. I wasn't in the room, and I've not been briefed on what went on in that room. But I would imagine you're right that the Chinese foreign minister said, look, don't appreciate your cozying up with Taiwan. And by the way, it's not a recent cozying up. There's a Canadian missionary, George Leslie McKay,

and it really is McKay, from Oxford County, Ontario, born in the little town of Embro, and he goes to northern Taiwan. He builds the first school for girls. He builds the first medical center. Today in Taiwan, you go around the country, because I went to Taiwan to do research for the book, and there are medical centers peppered all over Taiwan with his name on it.

He also built, you'll like this one, Steve. he built a college called Oxford College. And when we were there, my wife, Barb, was with me. We see all these foreign tourists going, oh, Oxford College. So Oxford, UK has a branch in Taiwan. And I'm smiling because it's not Oxford, Oxford, UK. It's Oxford County, Ontario. That's hilarious.

I didn't tell them. But the point is from that point, Canada has built a very interesting relationship For instance, the biggest offshore wind farm in Taiwan is owned and operated and was been built by a Canadian company, Northland Power, because those semiconductor chip factories, they use a lot of power, and it's good Canadian-made know-how that's driving a lot of that economy. So we can be very brab-da. And last one, here's one you probably will not have heard. You know the roots franchise in Canada and how it stands for Canadian values and style and so on. There are more roots outlets in Taiwan than there are in Canada.

Okay, that does surprise me, but well done. Go figure. How much does China attempt to interfere with the daily activities of Taiwan? So the book walks you through first just the... geography, and then the democracy, the civil society, the health care system. Another fun fact, in 1995, when Taiwan is becoming a democracy and they're looking around the world for a health care model, they choose Canada's. And they have 99.9% health care coverage courtesy of our model.

So I walk through all that stuff about Taiwan that will make you inspired, but then there's an entire chapter on what I call China's incessant pressure on Taiwan. Because to your question, for instance, in the cryptology world, but also just in the cyber attack world, China launches. about 2.6 million cyber attacks against Taiwan each day, each day. Then there is the economic coercion. But this is funny. And again, this will resonate for Canadians. There's actually a whole angle to this Taiwan book, now that we in Canada are under pressure from Trump,

there's a lot to learn here from the Taiwanese. So a number of years ago, to exert some pressure on Taiwan, China says at the last minute, oh, we're not going to buy any more of your pineapple. And pineapples, you know, they go bad very quickly once they're picked. So Taiwan says, oh, my God, you know, what are we going to do with our annual pineapple crop? Well, they reach out to Japan, and in a nice gesture, Japan takes the pineapples. Well, they fall in love with these pineapples.

And now Japan is the biggest market for Taiwanese pineapples. And this is what we have to do now to diversify away from Trump. So as I say, there's a lot that Canadians can learn from the book and from Taiwan. I do want to circle back to that issue of semiconductors because it's remarkable that they control, or I guess are responsible for more than 90% of the world's semiconductor manufacturing. How did that happen? One man in particular, Morris Chang, who is a semiconductor engineer working in California, and the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Development calls him up and says, how would you like to come to Taiwan?

We're starting a science park, and we'll write you a blank check. You can do whatever you want here. and he had already been thinking that in the semiconductor manufacturing space, there might be a model where a company builds semiconductors but doesn't design them. In other words, it takes other companies designed, but then builds them in a way that's never been done before. And this is the story of what becomes TSM, the leading manufacturer in the world and in Taiwan. So to be clear, all those invidia chips, for instance, that are blowing away the market on artificial intelligence.

They're designed in California, but they're made in Taiwan. And just to call out to our Dutch friends, TSM uses a machine in its factories in Taiwan to actually make the chips. And that machine is made in Holland. The country that gave us, you know, Gouda cheese, tulips, and wooden clogs makes the most important machine in the world today. But what TSM's done, to your question, is it has learned how to use that machine

in a way that nobody else has figured out. So it gets yields of 90, 95% off of a single silicon wafer, whereas everybody else, Intel, Samsung, the other makers, they're lucky if they get 40, 45%. So this is the genius of TSMC, and then strength begets strength, and they now have such a footprint in Taiwan. I was driving around the island, as I said earlier with my wife, and I'm just drooling at all these name companies.

And it's funny, they're building capacity in Arizona, in Japan, in Germany, but rest assured, the critical mass, the center of gravity for semiconductor chip manufacturing remains Taiwan, and will for the foreseeable future. And we'll be back right after this. Let me ask what I guess is the key question that the Taiwanese people probably asked themselves every day, which is, for multiple decades, successive American presidents have made the commitment that if China becomes too aggressive with Taiwan, militarily speaking, The United States will be there as a reliable ally to intercede on Taiwan's behalf.

Do you believe in an era of Donald Trump that that commitment is still worth something? So you just asked the $100 million question, or as President Trump would say, the hugest question, Steve. I think he'd say the hugest, you just. But anyway. But to your point. While there's been a policy in Washington that they don't say expressly, will we defend Taiwan, but they don't say expressly that we won't. And that ambiguity, in effect, works to keep China from attacking Taiwan,

but it also works to keep Taiwan from declaring full legal independence. So it's this funny middle ground that Taiwan occupies today. with Trump, particularly after the recent summit, you know, less than two weeks ago between him and Xi Jinping up China, he's on that flight, Air Force One, coming back to the U.S., because he's actually doing a pretty good job at the summit itself. He listens to Xi Jinping, who's very agitated about Taiwan, but Trump just listens from what we can tell from the readouts.

But then on the plane, he says, well, you know, the next big arms purchase that Taiwan wants to make from the Americans, I don't know yet whether I'll approve that. And here's the thing. The U.S. has a statute, the Taiwan Relations Act, that requires the president to sell arms to Taiwan. And that was part of the tradeoff in the late 70s. when the U.S. flipped its recognition to mainland China, Congress said, well, okay, but you at least have to give, you know, sell arms to Taiwan so they can defend themselves. And that's been, you know, the golden rule ever since. And now Trump is putting that at risk. So we're hoping it's just, you know, more Trump bravado and there's not a lot of substance to it. But you're absolutely, you're absolutely, right. The big question mark seems to be Trump. Though credit where credits do, Hegseth has said the right stuff. And I don't say that lightly about Hegseth. I think he's done so many things that I don't agree with. But on Taiwan, he's actually said the right things. And Rubio is known to be a big supporter of Taiwan. So with any luck, those two gentlemen will keep Trump on the

straight and narrow. I'm just wondering how far you think the commitment to Taiwan should extend. And by that I mean this. The Canadian Prime Minister visited China about six months ago. Donald Trump visited mainland China once in his first term. And as you pointed out, he has now been there again during his second term. Neither of those leaders has ever been to Taiwan itself. Should they go in your judgment? No. No. There's, as part of this very unusual, status quo, there is an understanding that the U.S. President, the U.S. Vice President, even senior members of the Cabinet, like you'll never see Pete Hegseth or

Marco Rubio actually go to Taiwan. And that's fine. And you may recall in August of 2022, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi went to Taipei, that produced a real response by China. So I'm willing to meet China halfway. I'm willing to say, look, let's just work on the status quo. So I wouldn't expect to see Mark Carney or Rita Anan go to Taipei. What I would expect to continue to see is members of parliament in Ottawa go to Taiwan. And I'll be very critical of Mark Carney on this point. When he went to China six months ago, there just happened to be a delegation of four or five Canadian MPs in Taiwan, two of them were liberals, and he recalled them to Ottawa. And he said, look, I'm going to be in Beijing. We don't want, quote, confusion. And when I heard that,

I said, oh, my goodness, this isn't auguring well. On the other hand, one week before the Chinese foreign minister was in Ottawa last week, the week before the Canadian nation's, vessel, the Charlottetown, did a transit through the Taiwan Strait alone. It usually requires a Canadian ship to go with an American or an Australian. We did it alone. And I have to assume that that was sent to send a message because the Chinese don't like it. They really don't like it when Canada sends a vessel through. You may recall the Chinese ambassador to Canada two weeks before the transit said, hey, if you want to do more business with us, you have to stop these transits through the Taiwan Strait. And to his credit, Carney and Anita Anand said, you know,

we're going to do our own foreign policy. Thank you very much. And a ship did go through. Now, the foreign minister, in addition to meeting with Anand, later had a short meeting with Carney. Now, what did he say to him about those, that last transit? I don't know. I wasn't in the room. But this is the sort of thing we're going to have to keep an eye on because it is a tightrope, but it's one that I think Carney is absolutely qualified to walk. I do want to follow up on some of the things you just raised, namely this. There is a fairly decent checklist of Canadian politicians who have visited Taiwan. And I'm thinking right now about the leader of the opposition in the Senate, Leah Husakos, who led a delegation to Taiwan in April. He said,

at the time, I'm proud to say that I was in Taiwan, meeting with their lawmakers, my second visit in recent years, and I will go again. So said the conservative senator. The former leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Aaron O'Toole, was there in March. Conservative members of Parliament, Melissa Lansman, Adam Chambers, and Shelby Cramp Newman were all there in January of this year. Now, you're quite accurate to point out that the two liberal MPs who previously went were recalled by the Prime Minister, lest there be any confusion about who spoke for Canada on that trip. But what do you think about the advisability of all these conservative politicians going? Well, actually, I'll add Michael Chong to that list, who went most recently.

Foreign Affairs Critic, yes. And spoke very eloquently and very forcefully and met with the president quite expressly. And I'll also add Judy Scrow, who's kind of the liberal party's chief liaison with Taiwan and John McKay, he's not in the house anymore. But for years, John would go and other liberals would go. So I think in this strange but workable status quo, I think we have now a customer. where government leaders, government ministers do not go, but members of parliament can go because their focus primarily is on building people-to-people exchanges. And from their level down, you get scientists, I mean, you get all sorts of people, the city

of Nanaimo. I'm speaking out in Nanaimo in a month on the book, and that city on Vancouver Island is twinned with a city in Taiwan. So those sorts of relationships, I think we want to continue, just as I have no problem twinning cities in Canada with cities from, you know, the PRC. Let's promote people-to-people ties. Everyone. That's only a good thing. So I have no issue with conservative members, liberal members, but they're not cabinet ministers. PRC, just for the younger members who are watching us, People's Republic of China. That's an older term that folks of our generation would use.

I wonder though, George, whether or how much of a price do we pay as Canada every time a Canadian politician visits Taiwan? How much of a price do we pay with the People's Republic? Yeah, and particularly it may be a cumulative factor, right? So maybe one doesn't serve as the straw on the camel's back that breaks it, but maybe after a year or two, particularly from this point where they've told us very clearly they don't want to see it, they might ratchet up. And again, what you and I won't see is that there might be some opportunity for more commercial exchange with China, and then they deny that to us.

or they can cut off certain tourist volumes coming to Canada and so forth. But, you know, at the end of the day, and this is why the book is so important and frankly why I wrote it, because we need a foreign policy in this country that totally understands raw national interest and power and economic power. but if the foreign policy doesn't include value, then what's the point of all that other power-based foreign policy? So there'll be limits, presumably, to the point of your question. There'll be points at which we'll say, look, we can't go any further, and then China will have to decide, you know, are they going to punish us for that or not? Which is why I'm hoping that we don't put too many technological eggs in the China basket. So selling them canola, you know,

buying certain lower tech items from them, not a problem. EVs from China, which Carney agreed to, even though it's only 49,000, I'd be very nervous about that because that EV, each car, has a data stream back to China. And I'd be worried that at some point the Chinese are going leverage that against us. And so I'd be very, very careful with certain types of commerce. So Ontario Premier Doug Ford was not completely wrong when he called them spy cars? Well, the language is perhaps a little more colorful than I would have chosen. To be perfectly frank, if the Tesla comes from the U.S., increasingly I have the same concern. This is why I think you're going to see us buying military aircraft from Sweden, why we're going to be buying

submarines from either Germany or South Korea. Like, we've got to get used to this new world where Canada, as a large middle power, no longer does a lot of strategic business with the three big hegemons of the world, Russia, China, and lo and behold, who'd have thought it, but now the U.S. So we all have to think a little more carefully about some of our high-tech purchases. George, I want to ask you about saber rattling. And to that end, how seriously you think we should take, for example, China's military maneuvers, such as when they move warships through the Taiwan Straits? I think it's very serious. The one that really caught my eye last year, Steve, you probably saw it as well, when China sent two warships down to Australia. And they circumnavigated

the entire Australian continent and just happened to do live fire exercises off the coast where Sydney airport resides. And some of the planes had to, you know, maneuver around the exercises, so on. This is clearly China flexing its muscle and making it very clear. and they've been doing this in the South China Sea, where they build military bases on little islands that under international law belong to the Philippines. So China is clearly sending the message to the democracies that this is now our neighborhood.

And Canadians, Americans, Europeans, you know, this is their Monroe Doctrine. This is the Shiro Doctrine here. I just made that up. But they're telling us, you know, be very very, very careful when you come around our neighborhood because we're the new guy in town. And what's fascinating about the South China Sea, so 40 years ago, they signed off on that. They were cool with international law deciding, you know, where you draw maritime boundaries.

Now they're claiming literally 90% of the South China Sea. It's an outrageous claim, but nobody was pushing back. Obama asked them politely, look, stop building. these islands and they did for three months and they went back. They have seven of them now, seven. Yeah, I was just going to say the West has not taken any particularly aggressive response to any of those things. So do we assume, do we infer from that, that all of these kinds of measures that the Chinese have taken so far don't cross whatever the line is and wherever it is. They haven't crossed the line yet. Is that fair to infer? For too long, starting

in the late 2000s and into the 2010s, we just stood around and we watched this, particularly in the South China Sea. That's changed somewhat. The Philippines are now pushing back, and you always have to remember, the Philippines has a mutual defense treaty with the Americans. So if there's a real kinetic conflict, like bullets and bombs start flying in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines, you know, the U.S. is implicated. It's like a NATO-type Article 5 Treaty. But let me tell you, also in April, so just a couple of months ago, there's a large exercise, a military exercise in the northern island of Lausanne in the Philippines, and the U.S. was there in a big way, Philippines, a bunch of other countries, and Canada sent the storied

Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, a whole battalion. And we were right there, you know, participating in the exercises, and that's where that ship, the Charlottetown, was also involved. So the West, if I could call it that, or the democracies, we're starting to kind of wake up, say, look, there are limits to what even an autocracy should be able to get away with. Now, Trump's not helping. Maybe this was your next question when he does what he did in Venezuela. the pressure he puts on Greenland, the pressure he obviously puts on Iran, the seemingly throwing Ukraine under the bus, the Chinese response is fascinating to all of those which saying, oh, the U.S. is not following international law. So it's almost like we're down some Alice in Wonderland poll where the biggest democracy has gone lukewarm. And so that doesn't help either.

So the rest of the democracies have to pick up the slack. Well, we do know that so far because nobody has responded particularly forcefully to any of the things the Chinese have done, whether it send their warships through the Straits of Taiwan, whether it's circumnavigate Australia. We haven't done anything yet. We have responded on the Taiwan Strait. When Canada sends a naval vessel through, the Australians have sent naval vessels through, the Americans regularly send naval vessels through. and each time we get a nasty note, you know, from the Chinese and the Americans do and the Australians do. That's very clear. So, you know, we've drawn that line in the sand, so that's good. Okay. But short of, you know, obviously if China were to open fire on Taiwan or, you know, aim bombs at Taiwan, that would clearly be crossing the line.

But short of that, what's sort of the next ratcheting up that if we're watching this to see whether or not things are getting dicey, what's the next ratcheting up, China? it could do, which in your view would cross a line, but still be short of all at war. In all likelihood, if China's looking to do the takeover incrementally, and by the way, keep an eye on the election in Taiwan in January of 2028, that's the next four-year election cycle. They have term limits, very, very democratic. If the current government continues in power, and a so-called DPP party government continues, Xi Jinping will be very upset. If the KMT opposition party comes into power,

he'll think, oh, maybe this is a government in Taipei I can deal with. So keep an eye. So we should at least talk. I mean, hopefully we'll talk sooner. We should at least talk in February of 2028. But so let's say it's a DPP, government reelected. I think the next step will be a very concerted economic coercion campaign because there's still a lot of business done between Taiwan and China. And that's where,

again, the democracies will have to pick up slack and sort of like that Japanese example with the pineapples. You know, we'll have to give special consideration to Taiwan to make sure that people can keep working there and so forth. Like, we have to close the wagons or circle the wagons and bring them even closer to the democracy. Okay, we've got a few minutes left here, and I want to hit you with a few more questions before we're done. You are going to finish this interview with me and then apparently go give a speech to officials at the Department of Defense for Canada. And I'm curious as to the sort of number one message you intend to impart to them. What's it going on this subject?

What's it going to be? Canada, for the most part, is still overly a Europe-focused country, I would say. If you look, for instance, when Carney became prime minister, he immediately went to London and Paris, and I get it, the two founding sources of Canada and so forth in terms of the white connection. But then he went to Europe again and again and again. And he only got to Asia as part of sort of an APEC meeting. You know, there was another reason to go. And I think that's a mistake.

I think in 2026, Canada has to absolutely regard the world for us as being Europe, absolutely. But Asia, meaning South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, as a very important part. So I'm going to talk to senior officers. One of my messages is we have to recalibrate our telescope, and we have to look to Asia as much as we look to Europe, particularly as we diversify away from the U.S. Well, I think this follow-up actually makes a lot of sense, because if I'm not mistaken, your background is Hungarian. Is that right? My parents were born, raised, and so on in Hungary. I was started there, but I was born in Toronto.

Okay, but having said that, you're telling us basically that even though, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of our orientation in this country is Western or Eastern Europe, and yet you're telling us to focus much more on Asia. How did that happen for you? Why did you become so interested in this part of the world? So I'm a big, big fan of democracy. My first book, Cold War 2.0, was all about how the world was splitting into the autocratic camp, you know, team autocracy and then team democracy. And we all know about the old democracies, the European ones. And they're great. Like, don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm forgetting about them. It's just that Canadians, for the most part, know very little about the Asian democracies, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, obviously, but even the Philippines. And we know Australia and New Zealand, but our economic future, as well as our, think about it in terms of political future, really requires us to have as many bonds and connections. You know, you think of all the trips that middle-class Canadians make to Europe and so and so forth. And for every 10 of those, there's maybe one to Asia.

Leaving aside Asian Canadians, but the non-Asian Canadians, we've got to get closer to the Asian democracies. They're great people, they're great countries, and we have to get closer to them. Okay, my last question here is about you in as much as, I think it was 11 years ago that you kind of dipped your toe into running in Canadian politics. You sought a liberal nomination in the south end of Atobico in the 2015 campaign. Not successful, but good for you for standing for office.

Have you ever been tempted to try again? I'm having way too much fun, writing books, thinking big thoughts, and then bringing those themes to Canadians, Americans, Europeans, and Europeans. And I also do a lot of other fun stuff. Now that I'm off Bay Street, I spent 35 years on Bay Street in the salt mine. With that behind me, I deserve a little bit of skiing time and so forth. So, no, I'm actually living the dream. So thanks for asking, Steve. Very kind of you.

But I moved to a different place. I'm not soliciting on behalf of any party. I just know that people who different. their toe in once, often want to do it again because it can be a, well, first of all, it's a great way to contribute to your country. And second of all, a lot of people say even when they lose, it's a hell of a lot of fun and it's quite a chaotic adventure that they quite enjoyed. And from what I saw on your Facebook page, I think you enjoyed it too. Oh, look, and what you left out, just to be clear for a moment, I actually ran for liberal leadership. And because it was an open

convention and you didn't have to be a member of the Liberal Party to vote. And so I reached out to computer gamers, and we signed up a bunch, but not enough. And it turns out, well, I did the Carney thing, but it helps to be the bank of governor of the Canadian bank and then the British Bank and to be from Goldman Sachs and so on. So I was just a little bit ahead of my time. But no, and yeah, don't get me wrong. I think politics is an absolutely noble profession. I would encourage people, you know, from all walks of life. I even wrote a check in the last federal campaign, an old high school buddy of mine was running for the NDP. I'd never written a check for the NDP, and I wrote the maximum number. So, you know, encouraging good people.

But you know, there is a history of former thoughtful television hosts running in politics. I'm not aware of any of it. No, sorry. If you're inclined that way, I've got a check coming to you tomorrow morning in the mail. Yeah. Thanks, George, but save your money. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Just before I thank you, let's do a little housekeeping here and say we encourage everybody to check out this website, patreon.com, forward slash the Paken podcast. You'll find web exclusive video there and an opportunity to shell out a few bucks a month. If you're like George and you want to write some checks, we're happy to take them to help keep this program on the air. All of our shows are archived at stevepacin.com.

And I do want to thank my guest, George to Cash, the longtime lawyer. He was at McCarthy's, McCarthy Tetro, I guess. on Bay Street for many, many years, then also taught law at Osgood Hall. He's the author of Inspired by Taiwan, why supporting Taiwan matters for global democracy. George, thanks so much for coming onto the Paken podcast. Peace and love to you and yours, and we'll see everybody next time.