The Paikin Podcast - World on Edge: Can Middle Powers Fight Back?

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Christian Leuprecht joins Janice Stein to discuss Carney’s speech in Davos, how it was the “most consequential” international speech ever delivered by a Canadian prime minister, why we must move on from the rules-based international order, and why nostalgia is not a strategy. They also discuss middle power alliances, Canada’s foreign policy, “taking the world as it is,” and whether Canada can be both principled and pragmatic in its approach to the world.Support us: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcastFollow The Paikin Podcast: APPLE: https://apple.co/4m81G7KSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1OhwznC...X: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.socialEmail us at: [e-mail]

Hi, everybody. Steve Paken here. I'm not sure I can recall a speech by a Canadian Prime Minister that captured as much international attention as the one that Mark Carney gave last week in Davos, Switzerland. This week on World on Edge, we're going to dive into the new world order that Prime Minister Carney described, as well as his contention that the government, quote, takes the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Coming right up on the Paken podcast. As always, happy to welcome back here on the World On Edge segment, Janice Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and our special guest this week, Christian Leoprecht, professor at Queen's University and RMC out of Kingston.

And I guess we should add, is this true, a former student of Professor Steins as well? Indeed, my best, the best mentor you can hope for. How about that? Well, that's pretty cool. Christian, great to see you again. And we should say you're coming to us sort of from a little room in all. Ottawa, where you are about to testify before a parliamentary committee. So we'll make sure we don't go too long today so that you can do your responsibilities in a timely fashion. Janice, I'm putting you to work right away.

When was the last time any Canadian Prime Minister gave a speech this important on a world stage? I'm going to answer that question. One second, Steve. But how great is it? I have a return on investment like Christian. The best. It is just the best. So my answer is.

never. There has never been a prime minister of this country who has delivered a speech that captured this kind of attention at an international stage. Now, Louis Saint Laurent delivered a famous speech in 1946 called the Great Lecture, but that was a convocation hall in the University of Toronto, and he was at that time Secretary of State for External Affairs. a.k.a. a. Foreign Minister. But it outlined the fundamental principles of the new order at that time. So he doesn't count. Well, you might say Lester Pearson. That would be a good try, but Lester Pearson made very consequential speeches, one at the UN in which he outlined UNF, the United Nations Emergency Force, the first peacekeeping force, but so.

Sorry, he was Minister of State for External Affairs. So this is the most consequential speech ever delivered by Canadian Prime Minister in an international form. All right, let me get Christian on that. Christian, you haven't been around quite as long as Professor Stein or me, but that doesn't mean you don't know your history. So what say you on that? So I think it's interesting how this has garnered considerable international attention. So I read a number of European papers on a regular paper.

And I think it captured the imagination. I think it did so for two reasons. One is that I think it was a very articulate way of capturing the moment. And I think it spoke both to allies as well as to a domestic audience. And so that dual audience is actually, I think, quite difficult to capture in a single speech. But the other is, of course, that it anticipated what was coming from the Trump administration. various sort of facilities, the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. And so I think it might have not received the same reception if it wasn't as prescient

as it was in terms of reading the tea leaves and the cards and laying out that, you know, we're playing with a weak hand. We need to have a stronger hand. We need to get more cards into our hand. And we need to understand that we need to be real players at the table. rather than just watching the superpowers deal the cards amongst themselves. You know, Chris, and Steve, let me just add, well, I agree, but let me add one more reason earlier this morning. I was talking to someone who was at Davos in the room when both of those two speeches were given.

And the third reason, the prime minister said in public what everybody was saying in private. And that explains in part the ovation. He had the courage to do so. Janice, you said that you thought it was the most important speech any Canadian prime minister gave in an international setting. But you didn't say whether you thought it was a good speech and that you liked it. So let me follow up with that question. Well, let me just say off the top. I did like it.

I think Christian put his finger on it right there. There were multiple parts of the speech. some aimed at Canadians and some aimed at the international audience although the messages travel to both places here's the first part the liberal international order is dead don't mourn it

and nostalgia is not a strategy boy so critically important to say to the town of Ottawa where Christian is, this is an effort to get people to move on, to understand that we are living in different times, and to inject some urgency.

The prime minister feels the urgency, but as you go down low levels, you know, Christian just use a term, as we were getting ready for the show, cognitive dissonance. That urgency isn't reflected. Steve, in many cases, as you go down inside Ottawa, but it's absolutely critical if we're going to get anything done.

Let me get Christians take on the speech. Christians, did you like the speech? Yeah, so look, I mean, one of the things that currently laid out is that the superpowers will move unilaterally, and we can either get on board and have capabilities to assert our interests and the political will to assert our interests, and that requires to live in this ever more realist world, or we're likely going to get people have run roughshot over us. And, you know, I think, look, what we've seen happen even over the last week is that superpowers do, in part because they can do it. But I think what the Prime Minister laid out is also the

sense that we are not entirely, we have some capabilities and we have some instruments to assert ourselves. We don't need to be simply sitting on the sidelines and observing what's happening, but that it'll require significant also sacrifices to retake for us the initiative, and that we can only retake the initiative if we do this collectively. And if we also remind ourselves how we got to the moment where we are and what sort of world we actually collectively want to live in. And I think the key difference here is, yes, he captured the imagination, of Europeans and European leaders. But that's because they're already

where the prime minister and his speech were. Whereas in Canada, public opinion, and I think most of people, even in caucus and cabinet, are not where the prime minister is. And so this is very much about, I think, bring Canadians along in terms of the world that we live in. And I think he called out sort of some elephants in the room that are a bit like,

a holy grail in Canada. So essentially saying that the international rules-based order was always a bit of a mirage, that we pretended that there was one and sort of the rest of the world sort of pretended to go along with it. And saying that, you know, the only reason why there are rules is because ultimately either people believe and follow those rules, or we have the ability to actually somewhat assert and enforce those rules, that's a very new reality for Canadians that for years have been told by Canadian politicians that, you know, Canada projects values and, you know, the United States projects interests or whatever else. I think Canada has always been a closet via this country.

It's just that we've sold interests as values. And now we're in the world where the values and the interests don't align quite as nicely. And the prime minister is pointing out that ultimately we need to be clear about what our interests are and how we're going to assert them. Well, you can't give a speech like that, and Janice, I'll go to you on this one. You can't give a speech like that knowing that Donald Trump is going to be speaking the day after you speak. Without knowing as well that there's going to be a lot of brushback. And of course, Donald Trump did that. He called Carney Governor, which is what he used to call Justin Trudeau.

Yep. He said, Mark, you know, you ought to be more grateful and Canada can't live without the United States. You know, he really laid it on thick. So presumably the prime minister has made the political calculation, Janice, that he knows all that's coming, but he's going to give the speech anyway and to hell with it. Do you think that was the right political calculation to make?

Well, let's just listen to, let's go back a week, you know, and refract some of the comments were coming out of Washington anyway. We don't need anything Canada makes. We don't need those cars. We want all car making in North America to be in the United States.

I don't care if customers are renewed or not. We don't need it. It's not important to us. So it's not as if a strategy, which I think the Europeans have used to not only we, you know, some of the flattery that the Europeans have used on Donald Trump craven, cringe-worthy. Sycofancy. Yeah, we were in the middle of that. But keeping your head down and hoping the president won't notice.

you was not working very well for us. So the prime minister, of course, must have expected there was going to be bullback. You don't give a speech like this and not expect there's going to be blowback. The critical question becomes, what assets do we have? And this is exactly what Christian is talking about. What assets do we have? How do we mobilize those assets? And I think the important thing for Canadians to understand. There was a cost to making a speech like this. What is it? Well, there will be blowback from the United States. Cosmo was already, our trade agreement was already confronting a very difficult, prolonged path to renewal. It just became more prolonged and more difficult, frankly. And it's a pretty fundamental

agreement. 90% of what we send to the United States. And it's a, it's a very important. And it's, is covered by that agreement and the stuff that gets explored does not receive tariffs. That's pretty fundamental. That's what I wondered, Christian, was whether or not, you know, the prime minister, does he give a speech like this because he suspects, you know what, we're never going to get a deal on free trade with the United States? And therefore, there's no need for me to hold back anymore. I may as well say what I really feel.

Well, so I'd sort of characterize this always as Canada, we want. may not be conspicuous by our presence, but we will be conspicuous by our absence. Yes. And I think, you know, even some of the comments that the derogatory comments the president made with regards to, for instance, contributions to Afghanistan's and veterans and the people lost their lives, imagine if we had not been there, you can bet that President Trump would have leveraged that. And so I think this speech was about being conspicuous.

our presence. Now, the problem for your conspicuous in Washington by your presence, it's usually because you're a problem and you're attracting the attention of the administration and or of Congress. But Canada has been very good in the past of leveraging those short moments of attention spans in Washington when it does show up on the radar to negotiate deals that have actually then, in the long term, been quite good, I would say, in constructive for Canada and for Canada's relationship with the United States and with the world. So it is really about the prime minister, I think, wanting to make something and understand there's an opportunity to make something of this difficult moment. The question is, what are we going to make of it? And I think what we're

going to make of it is not exactly what most Canadians would like to make of it. And so the prime to understand, look, that the Americans are best friends, whether we like it or not. And so we're going to need to have to figure out how to live and work in a new world where our interests for a host of reasons will continue to diverge. But we still need to find ways to work together. But as the U.S. has made it clear, there will be fewer interests that align and that even where those interests align, allies should expect much less support and only the U.S. need the support they absolutely need to assert those common interests. So I think the promise is

really, Christian, let me put what you're saying in Bollanter terms, all right, because Chris was really polite right now. Most Canadians love that speech. First of all, it was a very eloquent speech. I think we all three would agree that. I was well written and, you know, the prime minister wrote it. And whenever you get a speech written by one person rather than by a committee, you just get a totally different speech. Sorry, can I jump in there? Do you know that for a fact that he wrote it as opposed to you do know that? Yes.

Okay. Because I always wondered who wrote that speech. He wrote it. He wrote it. Okay. And that's why it had the quality that it did. But secondly, why did Canadians love the speech beyond its quality? It, they felt that it sucked Donald Trump in the eye that he was standing up, right?

that's the issue that Christian is talking about. You may feel just great about that, but tomorrow we trade with the United States. We will never, we will never be able to replace all of our trade with the United States. Trading with the United States is permanently part of our future. So how do we think about this relationship now? How do we play by the rules that the United States is playing by? ultimately, where are our assets? To use Donald Trump's words, what cards do we hold?

And that's the conversation that the prime minister is saying, let's have that conversation. And we have cards. Well, let me put this to Christian. One of the bits of blowback that we have seen is that the Treasury Secretary in the United States is musing out loud about Alberta alone, never mind all of Canada, but Alberta joining the United States, given that they're potentially about to have a referendum on independence.

I mean, that is the kind of thing that no politician from a foreign country would ever weighed into in the past. But, Christian, I guess we're, yeah, we're in a new era now, I guess, hey, Christian? DeGold did it. Well, DeGle did it back in the 1960s. No one, no one's been stupid enough to do that for more than 50 years. Well, it's interesting in the country where we've spent so much time talking about foreign interference, but the greatest risk of foreign interference has been the same for,

250 years. It's the United States. And I think one of the between the lines message that you get from the prime minister's speech is that we've been complacent in this country. We've not played ahead in terms of what's coming. We've not postured ourselves for the way the world has been changing. We've been living in, as the prime minister said, a world the way we would like it to be. And the longer we do that, the delta between where the world is going and where we would like it to be will continue to grow. And so the fast. we can catch up. We will understand that, for instance, there are no doubt certain sympathizers in the Trump administration with Alberta's cause for strategic reasons. Because of course,

if Alberta were to leave the Federation, you can fold the country because, like it or not, Alberta effectively pays for much of the lifestyle and the prosperity that we ultimately enjoy in this country. And so, you know, and the Prime Minister find himself, I think, this is partially why this was also, a speech about national unity. And of course, the prime minister traveled right after to Quebec City to give sort of a quasi-national unity speech that didn't make sort of as much in terms of the headlines. But understanding we live in a difficult international moment and the corollaries, we live in a very challenging national moment.

And the greatest risk to the future of this country has always been internal disintegration. And so this is, I think, also what the prime minister is flagging. for us here that we all need to figure out how we're going to pull on the same side of the rope here. And let me just add, let me just add to this. You know, Scott Besson was saying, again, in public. He's the Treasury Secretary. Yeah, who made that comment.

He was saying in public what everybody had been saying in private. This is in Washington. They've been saying this. Look, if you think about this from a strategic U.S. perspective, look, look at the resources. that are concentrated in Alberta. You don't have to bother much with Venezuelan oil if you have Alberta's oil. And in fact, in Ottawa, why do you think the prime minister traveled to Edmonton and made the deal with the Alberta government that he did?

Because he's fully aware of this and so are many others. So I think it's really important to recognize that this speech made public. On both sides, both the speech and the reaction, what was talked about privately anyway, Steve. It's an interesting reminder of the U.S., there's this hypothesis that the U.S. is a picky empire, that when Trump talks about the 51st state, he's actually not talking about all of Canada. He's not interested in Quebec. He is disproportionately interested in certain other parts of Canada. And so what's our national unity strategy when we need to defend also?

I don't think we need to defend from a U.S. invasion. This is a complete distraction of what's actually the great threat to this country. The great threat is significant pressure that the U.S. president is going to exert as a result of the upcoming free trade negotiations and the threat of internal dissent within the country to the point of disintegration. And of course. I said one more, unless I had one more. And I know, Christian, I think you will agree with this, Christian. Alberta and the Arctic, right? And our Arctic, as you've heard me say many times,

it's virtually undefended, and it's just inconceivable to me that we would be there given what we saw in the month of January from the president. I did find it very interesting, the reaction to the Premier Alberta of Alberta, who of course has put in this new law providing for circumstances under which a referendum can take place, and many people have observed that the criteria for having a referendum on independence are far too easy

and get us a little too close to that option for those who want to keep Canada together. But I note that Danielle Smith came out and said, look, she believes in her guts that the majority of Albertans want to stay part of Canada. So she didn't indulge in that speculation that Scott Besson put forward, which I suspect those of us who want to keep the country together, appreciate it. Now, here's the next question I want to ask you, too. And that is, I want to know if it's actually possible to do what Mark Carney kind of presage during that speech, which is to say, okay, all you hyperpowers, you want to go over there and do all your thing. Then us medium-sized powers, we're all going to get together in some new kind of alliance.

So that, well, okay, that's what I inferred, Janice? No. That's what I inferred. Okay. So I think this is the biggest single misreading of the speech, okay? Thank you. All right. Let me take just a minute.

No, you're not alone. You're not alone. Most people hear it that way. It's not correct. He used a funny phrase, a wonky funny phrase called variable geometry. But what does that mean? On any particular issue, you join up with a few others to move that issue forward. So in the aftermath of that speech, there's been a lot of critical commentary.

Oh, there's so much. unity among middle powers, you can never build a coalition. And the Europeans can't even agree on the regulations for cheese. There's 27 of them in the European Union. They're never going to get together. They never have. That's not what he meant. Variable geometry is, if we have an issue in the Arctic, who are the one or two Arctic powers that we want to work with most closely, and I believe Norway should be one, that we want to work with most closely to move that addition forward. We don't need all the Arctic powers. We need the one or two that are really relevant to that. Oh, we have, we want to diversify our trade. What are the two or three in

Europe? We don't have to do a deal with the European Union. Who are the two or three in Europe that we want, that we think would be great export markets? So this is not about creating a new alliance of No, no. In fact, it's the obverse because the most effective international institutions today are not the all-clunky ones that require vetoes where nothing happens. They're the more nimble, flexible. You know, there's Oakhins, Tier 1 and Tier 2. We just signed an agreement with the most terrible name. I mean, I don't know what these folks were thinking. It's called ICE. But would you believe it? But it is the ice. What does it include? It includes Finland, Canada, and the United States.

And it's about sharing research to produce more advanced ice breakers. That's why they got that name. They need a new name. But it's three countries. So, in fact, that criticism misses the opportunity for nimbleness, for flexibility, and for standing up small coalitions, issue by issue. nothing's permanent. Okay, let me get Christian on this.

What did you infer when the prime minister talked about other friendships and alliances potentially? The importance of mini-lateralisms, and in particular mini-lateralism, outside of U.S. participation or perhaps U.S. participation, but not U.S. leadership. I mean, this is what we see with the security guarantees on Ukraine, for instance. A great example is, for instance, Canada signed a maritime security partnership. with Germany and Norway that Denmark has subsequently joined. You, for instance, just before Christmas, you saw an undersea defense pact signed between Norway and the United Kingdom. So getting together countries that have joint interests and joint issues at stake. And Janus pointed out the Arctic.

It was very interesting that, of course, during the Greenland, this cascading Greenland crisis, that went sort of from a geopolitical crisis to a diplomatic crisis to an economic crisis. to an economic crisis. I think this is partly what's implicit in this Prime Minister's speech, that it's not sort of one consistent crisis, is the problem of sort of cascading crises that are associated with these and our inability to contain these as the unfold. Who led that quick sort of mission to Green Man that really got Trump's backup? It was Germany, and they deployed 14 soldiers with a handful of other European countries

there. But it was the ability to show that. Yes, we have capabilities and we will assert those interests using the capabilities that we have. And so this is what I mean, you know, like you'll be conspicuous by your presence. And that's, I think, important in terms of these mini-lateralisms and that we are some of the wealthiest countries in the world. We have instruments of statecraft that might not be military, but we have in terms of our

economies, our trade, our cultures, some of our diplomatic sort of credibility and values, that there's a lot that we can leverage here together to assert ourselves. But I think this is a very different type of thinking. And to some extent, I would say it is actually a thinking that the Trump administration is encouraging. We don't, you know, the joke about NATO is, what does NATO stand for, right? Needs Americans to operate. The Trump administration is saying, like, look, we actually, you know, like, you

You need to actually grow up. I think the prime minister is in part reminding of us, as middle powers, we came out of World War II, especially Canada and Australia, effectively inventing that concept because we said we're not small powers, so we're not just going to be foreign policy clients of large powers. We do have some capabilities. We just need to be deliberate about what those interests are and how we marshal the relatively limited means. So the resources we have to those ends. And I think we haven't been, especially Canada, it's a little bit different in Europe because you have the European Union as sort of a bit

of a force multiplier to hurt the kittens. In Canada, we haven't been, I think, very deliberate about other than areas of trade, how we marshal those limited resources to assert our interests. And I think this is partially what the prime minister is looking for. You know, Christiana, let me give you a concrete example. It's very interesting because it's Germany, as you said with its 14 soldiers, so I guess we needed to send two. Okay. Move the agenda right to the, move the issue right to the top of the agenda. What broke the crisis and led to a resolution? Norway. Norway has pulled many U.S. treasuries and a very quiet signal. The Japanese bond market react first, and the Norwegians came in right

behind, started to sell treasuries. And that's why, after Trump's speech, within a few hours, the announcement of a deal coming out of a conversation with Mark Rana. So Norway used its capacity in a very specific area to cause a great deal of distress to this precedent. And he changed course. Can I, Steve, can just jump in there? Please. I think there's a lesson for us here in Canada. Why was a country of 5 million people able to do that?

Because they have one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world that they've deployed very strategically to assert their interests. We could have the same in this country if we could understand that building critical infrastructure in particular pipelines and mining critical minerals and we actually put that money in the bank rather than spending it, we could have the same firepower, financial, firepower that Norway has. And I think the prime minister is saying, we need to make some key strategic decisions about how we're going to leverage the incredible natural resource wealth this country has. Are we just going to squander it or are we going to use it strategically to assert our interests? And when a country such as Norway can move the dial in a way that Canada, an economy multiple

times the size, is not. we can see that I think we have some hard lessons to learn. But if we move quickly, we can change the direction that we're going in. We made that decision at the end of World War II, that this is not the world we wanted to live in, and that we were going to invest to shape the future. Here's an opportunity for us to learn from Norway about what are we as Canadians going to do to shape the future of this country and its role. I want to ask the two of you one more question about the speech,

and then we'll move on to something else. And in doing so, I didn't give you a heads up on this question ahead of time. So I'm going to give you an example from my life and then I want to hear from the two of you. I'm sure all of us got, you know, phone calls, emails, lots of reaction from friends and colleagues on the Carney speech over in Davos. And I think the most interesting one I got was from a professor that I know in California who actually taught at McGill for a little while. and when he taught it, McGill decided to take out Canadian citizenship, because as it turned out, he quite like Canada. So he's a joint American Canadian citizen. And he called me last week after the Carney speech.

And I could hear he was choking back tears. And he said, you know, I've never felt prouder of the half of me that's Canadian that I have this week watching the Prime Minister give that speech. And, you know, it was an emotional, very resonant moment. for him. And he shared that with me. I'd like to get feedback from the two of you on, you know, something similar. What reaction really stayed with you from a friend or a colleague about that speech? Janice. I got innumerable calls from people who, and they were all emotional. And I'm so proud of our prime minister. I'm so proud of our country. We stood up. We were the first to stand up and challenge. I think just have a very deep vein of anger toward Trump and resentment at the bullying that this country has experienced,

especially in Trump to for over a year now. And as our leaders tried to navigate this to see how much room they had, this came as a moment of huge emotional relief and emotional pride. there's a risk to that, Steve, because, as I said, we are going to have to be very focused on what our interests are and which of these interests we attach priorities to. And then we're going to have to go do the hard work of building those mini lateral alliances that Christian was talking about. There's going to be costs to this. There was no free lunch in this world. there was no free lunch with the United States, this United States anyway, but they're going to be

cause. So there is that moment of intense pride and euphoria. What might, let I say when I'm asked about it, you have to understand this government, this prime minister and this government is facing the biggest challenge this country has faced. Really, I think even World War I and World War II, although there were tremendous sacrifices that we made were not of this order of magnitude because the existence of the country was not at stake in the way that it is now. So we have to create more degrees of freedom for the government and it's not partisan. They have to move faster because the United States is moving fast. We have to go faster.

This government is going to make mistakes. If we're all over them for every single, mistake that they make for every process that they short circuit. That will be the biggest own goal, the biggest self-inflicted injury that we can inflict. Canadians have to understand this is not business as usual. And stay focused on what is core here. That doesn't mean we don't have partisan politics. Of course we do. But there has to be a recognition that no government in living memory of every single Canadian in this country has faced a challenge of this order of magnitude.

Understood. Christian. So two quick comments. One is there's a strategy through the speech. And I think what the speech did nicely. And when you talk about the emotional response, it did both the play-by-play and the color commentary. And I think the way you went over people is with the color commentary.

And the way those were woven together, I think, were very powerful in terms of as a rhetorical tool. The other is that, you know, I think we make a mistake when we, and I have a longstanding debate on this with a famous colleague here in town. But I actually think Trump is more of a symptom than of the cause of the friction and the disruption that we're experiencing. The voices in this debate goes back to the end of the quote. War about the United States needing to, going back to George Washington, no entanglements,

right? The United States getting itself into alliances. You know, I've called this multilateral unilateralism. The US has always been unilateral. It's just this multilateralism has served its interests. And, you know, already at the end of the Cold War, there were voices in Washington that said that this is not really serving our interest. That was disrupted first by Biden's unipolar moment, then by the global war on terror.

But you already got that in Trump won, this sort of decoupling. from allies and the US sort of more going it alone. People mistake that for isolationism. The US hasn't been isolationist since the late 19th century. The US has always been unilateralist. It just manifests sort of itself in different ways. And so we could have prepared ourselves for that. My colleague Kim Nossel wrote a well-known book about this, Canada alone.

And I think what you also get from county speech, we live in a very dangerous moment that if we don't get if we don't get with the playbook here, the risk is that Canada will find itself very isolated in the world. As Europe becomes more target, more independent, more autonomous in its decision-making, that we will be sort of relatively, become relatively less important to global decision-making. And so remembering that Canada uses the relationship with Europe to counterbalance the vagaries of US unilateralism.

All this is implicit in the speech. So this is not just about functional mini-lateralism. It is also about strategic mini-lateralism to offset the unilateralism that we see from the United States. And if we don't do this, we're going to become less important in the world. We're going to have to spend ever more on instruments of statecraft for an ever lower rate of return. And if you want to see what that looks like, look at the Indo-Pacific in our closest allies there,

and how much they are spending on their instruments of statecraft and their relative low rate of return that they ultimately get. And for all of Trump's menaces and threats and so forth, notwithstanding, I do think the Trump administration also understands that although it looks like U.S. unilateralism and it looks like bullying from the United States, there's also senses we live in a very dangerous world and the U.S. can't actually do it alone. It needs its allies, but it needs its allies to align much more quickly than allies have been able to pivot because we have these ponderous consensus-based decision-making processes

that are simply misaligned with the speed at which the world is changing. Okay, I want to do one more thing before I let you two go, because I know, Christian, you've got to get off to your parliamentary hearing. And that is this. In spite of the fact that this speech seems to have reverberated around much of the world and made Canadians feel the way they have felt over the past week, it wasn't the only thing of significance that Mark Carney has said over the past couple of weeks. And the other is what I want you to focus on now in our remaining moments here, which is to say after

this government of Canada signed the deal with China. And some reporter asked the prime minister, you know, is it a good idea to get in bed with an authoritarian country the way we are here? And the prime minister said, well, we take the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. And Janice, I wonder if you believe that represents, that statement represents a whole new approach to foreign policy and dealing with the world or our country now. You know, Steve, I'm going to say this. Canadians have for a long time taken the world as it is rather than the way we wished it would be with some exceptions. There are never some exceptions because we wouldn't be here as a country if we hadn't done that.

But we never talked about it that way. And that's what created this gap between what leaders said and what they did. And, you know, when I speak to Canadians, which I do very often, the two most favorite expressions you hear are, we are a nation of peacekeepers. No, we're not. We haven't been for 30 years. We haven't been for 30 years. Even when we were, we weren't all that important.

in the peacekeeping landscape very quickly, right? And the other is we project our values abroad. Well, you know, as I remember, it was Pierre Elliott Trudeau who went to China and opened the relationship with China. Before the Americans. Before the Americans did, and there were clearly not values that were aligned. It's a disservice to the Canadian. I think Prime Minister Carney did.

a huge service. That's why I think this speech was just as important domestically as it was internationally. It is not a service to the Canadian public to continue to perpetuate myths, which bear almost no relationship to the reality of what Canada actually does in the world. And this is the beginning. I think this speech is the beginning of a pivot, as Christian that it has to come in the Canadian public. So they ask themselves over and over, what can we do in the world? Which of our interests are served in the world? What do we need to do to protect ourselves in this world?

Those are not questions that the government has asked those questions, but those are not questions the Canadian public asks. Christian, your view on taking the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be? So look, we've been complacent in the sense that we live next door to the largest economy in the world. And so we've hitched our wagon to that economy. And that's great for our prosperity, for security, for social harmony. And then we double down on that with a free trade agreement that further deepened the integration

with that economy by design, not by consequence. Of course, many other allies in the world and partners are not in that favorable position. Think of South Korea, for instance. If you don't have natural resources and you're in a dangerous part of the world, you have to think in a much more diverse fashion. Look at what Australia did a decade ago. Australia signed a very deliberate strategic deal on liquid natural gas with China that Australia has leveraged very deliberately in terms of its relationship with China, which has also been

difficult. But I think there's opportunities here. Look, I mean, given the size that China is as an economy and its political importance, we're going to have to be pragmatic and work with China on some issues. I'm just surprised we're not being very strategic about that. If I would have been the Prime Minister, I would have tried to have a liquid natural gas deal with China in return for China,

getting the United Front Work Department to stand down on its operations here in Canada. So I think those are deals that we can strike, but we're also reminded of the fact when the Prime Minister says the international rules-based order is over, which of these orders is over. Because as John Ikenberry reminds us, there's three of those orders. There's an economic order.

There's a political order. And there's a sort of human rights order, normative sort of order. And the economic one, I think, to some extent, we see from the prime minister, that still seems to be working somewhat. The political one is more controversial, in part because, of course, China and now Russia would like to upend it. The human rights one has never had really buy-in. beyond sort of a few small countries.

And so we need to think about where are we going to put our priorities in terms of the world that we ultimately want to live in? And so if that international rules-based order is over, what we do see from the prime minister is that perhaps not all is lost. Janice, last word due on this. The prime minister has said, I want to take a principled yet pragmatic approach to dealing with the world. Those sound like contrary values.

Can you be both at the same time? There's freightoffs there, right? There's freightoffs. There's no question. And they're going to come fast and furiously. Because sometimes, quite frankly, pragmatism has to come at the expense of principles. You have to do what works in the world. That's the definition of pragmatism.

And sometimes they conflict with principles. And you might argue, look, We just did that with China. We were pragmatic. We started very small. We were pragmatic. We're doing it with India. The Indian government does not have a great record on human rights, as you know.

But we have a large, we have huge opportunities in India, a very large South Asian diaspora in this country and really significant opportunities. We as a small country cannot be at odds with the United States, China, Russia, and India because they are currently violating our values. We would be so isolated and we would be forfeiting economic opportunities for every single Canadian in this country. So you make compromises. The real issue, how much of one? How much of one do you give up in order to get something on the other side? And boy, Steve, you know as well as I.

That is the essence of politics. Well, I want to thank the two of you for this. I've got a couple of housekeeping matters to deal with before we say so long. Number one, it's important to us that we keep these discussions free of charge for those who want to watch them on YouTube or listen to them on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. So they will be. Having said that, for those who want to kind of support what we're doing here, we invite you to go to our Patreon page. That's patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast. There's lots of, I guess they call it web-exclusive videos there, other interviews that you won't see online, as well as some other goodies.

So please check out our Patreon page. And all these shows are archived at stevepaken.com. So we invite you to check that out whenever. Christian Loyprecht, Janice Stein, so good of you to join us on the Paken podcast this week. And until next time, peace and love, everybody.