The Paikin Podcast - World on Edge: Sweden’s GlobalEye, Trump Blowback, and Canada’s Defence Future

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

We got some more evidence this past week that our relationship with the United States is not business as usual. Canada is going to purchase a whack of surveillance jets, and we are not buying them from the US.  Sweden got the contract and the Americans are ticked. Did the federal government make the right choice here? And will we have to pay a political price for angering our neighbors? Stephen Saideman joins Janice Stein on World on Edge. 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] 

We got some more evidence this past week that our relationship with the United States is no longer business as usual. Canada is going to purchase some surveillance jets and we are not buying them from the U.S. Sweden got the contract and the Americans are ticked. Did the federal government make the right choice here and will we have to pay a political price for angering our neighbors? All that and more coming up on World On Edge on the Paken podcast. Delighted to welcome back to our program, Janice Stein. The founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs in Public Policy and our special guest this week, Stephen Saitaman, Professor at Carlton University's Norman Patterson School of International Affairs.

He's also the director of the Canadian Defense and Security Network. And Stephen, it's good to have you on our program this week. Janice, welcome back. You two know each other pretty well. Is that fair to say? We do. You guys hang out. You hang out and you talk shop.

Well, we're going to do that again today. Stephen, I'm going to put you to work right away. Did the Canadian government in your judgment make the right decision here? Given that the Canadian defense investment strategy, defense and investment strategy is focused on jobs at home. And that's what this will produce more of since it involves Barbardier. I guess it's the right choice given all the costs and benefits of the various dynamics involved. Janice, what do you say? So Stephen is right to say this is in the we.

Steve, so I'm going to get in the weeds for one minute. Are you going to bear with me? There's two criteria here. Does it give the Canadian forces, the capabilities they need? And where the rubber hits the road here is in the north, right? Because this is an early warning aircraft. That's what it does. And you've got to be able to sweep and provide early warning. And where Canada's most valuable is when we do it in the north. There are some, issues here with connecting it to the radar systems that the United States uses to provide an integrated defense. So people who are concerned about have grounds to be concerned. However, here's the other side of the argument. This plane that the Canadians are buying, they are not the

only members of NATO to do so. There are two other, three other NATO countries that are doing so probably for reasons that are similar to ours. So we are not, you know, alone in doing us. And if this is an insult to the United States, maybe they should look at the way they've been treating some of their allies to understand why you might get a decision like this. Okay. Hold off on that on the relationship with the U.S. angle

because I still want to focus a little bit more on this plane. It's called the golden eye, apparently, of this plane. and and Steve, what, you know, what is the job of this plane in as much as what are they looking for up north? Well, the whole idea of these kinds of planes is to understand the airspace. And actually, this does also can scan the ground of that sea. So it gives us more knowledge of what is in the space that it's flying. And given that it's very hard to put lots of space stations, lots of stations on the ground in the far north. That's very expensive.

this is a way to get an understanding of the situation wherever the plane is sent. And this could also be sent abroad if we wanted to participate in any kind of expedition operations. But this is aimed at the north. And so what are we trying to find? Ships, planes that are balloons that are near our north and to give us better situational awareness

and that feeds into the American defense system as well because they need to know it's coming in their direction. and one thing we have to be humble about is anything that's flying over or near our north is really not aimed at us. It's aimed at the Americans. And so this is part of NORAD, our promise to modernize

the northern warning systems that feed into American air defense but also feeds into our own air defense. Janice, maybe a silly question here, but do we need these planes? Yeah, no, we, this is, let's not confuse this

with fighter aircraft. Steve, we really need these planes because for Canada, what really matters is that we have what Stephen was just talking about, which is situational awareness. We have to know what's happening, right? You can't be a sovereign country, frankly, if you don't know what's happening, you know, under your water, on your water, in the air, on the ground, then in space. And these are early warning aircraft. They provide, you know, when something comes, over the north at us. Let's assume hypothetically that something were to come over the north, the polar north at us. It would come to us first. We provide the critical advance warning under

those circumstances. So we absolutely need to increase what we call our domain awareness. But it's also true that we, the value of value here is that we can integrate and communicate that information to the United States in real time as soon as we become aware. And that's where some of the criticism comes here. Well, let me pick up on that because, Stephen, there were two American products, actually, that were under consideration by our government apparently, Boeing's Wedgetail E7A and the L3 Harris-Eris X platform. And presumably our ability to communicate with and integrate with the United States military would have been enhanced had we chosen one of those two planes. We didn't. So is that to say we're going to have a more difficult time integrating our

communications and attempts and efforts with the Americans because we've chosen a foreign buyer? That's a good question. I don't again know the specific details. I would say one of the challenges facing Canada over the next 10, 20 years for all of this equipment buying is going to be a tradeoff between what is best for Canadian military and what is best for Canadian military and what is best for Canada. That is, this, this equipment may not be the very, very bestest, bestest thing. And the Canadian military always wants the very bestest, bestest thing because they are worried about confronting some peer competitor that has, I mean, it's very, very good. And so he always want to have the very bestest thing. But those bestest things are always super expensive and scarce. And so sometimes

quantity versus quality is a real important issue. And for instance, you can have one really terrific artillery piece, but that's just one, as opposed to having a bunch of ones that are very good. So this purchase has lots of tradeoffs involved. I believe the Lockheed one is right now imaginary rather than real. The E7 is a real plane. And so the real decision is between the E7 and the Canadian and the consortium plane between the Swedes and Bombardier. But it's also about other interests calculating into the question of, not only can we communicate with the Americans,

but what happens to the Americans stop supporting their technology. Right now, we live in fear of Donald Trump's unreliability. And so we can get the bestest, best as plane, but if it can't communicate with the Americans because Americans are no longer talking to us, what's the point?

Whereas if we get the plane that it might be pretty close, but not exactly have the same requirements or same capabilities, but we can get and it employs thousands of Canadians, it gets a supply chain, it gets us a little bit less dependent on the Americans, to be fair, this plane too has American parts into it because all advanced technological systems have a mixture of countries involved. But it reduces our dependence

of the Americans by a little bit and meets Carney's promise of reducing our buy of defense equipment that is ordinarily 70% American, something less than that. That's a competing interest. And this is a way to juggle those competing interests. Janice, can I get you on that, whether we'll have more difficulty integrating with the American military because we've gone for a European model here? Well, again, we're not the only ones, Steve. You know, if we were the only

off-sider here, then it's a real problem. But in fact, the last three purchases by NATO allies have not been the Boeing plane. And so that tells you that the concern that Steve just articulated, you know, people talk about a kill switch.

There's no kill switch. What there are, are software updates. It's as simple as a... Sorry, just tell us what that means when you say there's no kill switch. So a lot when you read about, you know, in some of the more popular treatments, they say, well, the Americans flip a kill switch and stop sending us what we need. They can shut off the systems for us. And then all this expensive equipment, U.S. equipment becomes valueless.

That's not the right analogy. If you think about that little phone that you've got on your desk. are in your pocket. You probably get an update every now and then. And if you couldn't get those updates, your phone would quickly become useless. So all these things are just very expensive software wrapped in steel dresses, as I like to say. And it's the updates to the software that really matters. And the United States has the capacity. In theory, a president could order any manufacturer not to send software updates where it perceived the national security emergency. That would have been unthinkable before this president, but this president has no trouble

declaring national security emergencies because he's done it again and again for trade purposes, right? So that's why this is much more complicated than it looks. The biggest threat to integration would be were the president ever to declare a national security emergency and ask Boeing not to send security updates. Now, they will tell you that that could never happen. But that's not the right question. The right question is, what would happen if the United States, if the president did so, they would have to comply by U.S. law.

They have no choice. And we'll be back right after this. All right, let's, I want to circle back to. the point Janice was trying to make off the top, which is to say there's sort of two parts to this decision. Number one, on the merits of the planes themselves, and number two, on the political consequences of our having not chosen the American offering, but rather gone with the European one. Stephen, take us forward. Do you think there will be political consequences to Canada for opting for the European option? I think this is all prelude to the big F3D5 Grip and decision.

I think the Trump administration is very thin skin and so they always want to get exactly everything they want but that's not the way alliance politics works that's not the way the world works and if they overreact and try to punish us on this it's just going to drive us into choosing the Gippin for the fighter aircraft so that's not clear the Americans will react very strongly of this

also Donald Trump has lots of other things on his plate so it's not clear that this has really resonated a lot Oh, he's got to build an arch. He's got to put his face on the $250 bill. He's got to take his name off the Kennedy Center. He's got a lot of important issues that he's dealing with right now. And he's still fighting. He's still got to figure out what to do with this war that he started that's causing oil prices.

Oh, yeah. There's got too. Right. So he's got a lot of things going on. So I don't think we're going to get a lot of attention. Canada tends to think that we're the forefront of everybody's minds all the time. But we're usually not, if not an afterthought, at least not at the front of it. So I think there might be some tension a little.

bit, but I don't think there's going to be that much. But again, this is, there's a larger couple issues in front of us. One is the F-35, which we've put on pause, not actually the purchasing, that's been going forward, but on this review that's supposed to have taken place. And so that's been ongoing. And we've been lots of stuff that leaked out about possibly stopping the purchase at 30 or 32, and then buying a lot of Swedish planes, the Gripen plane. So that is in the air. other thing that's in the air is of course is the renegotiation of the trade agreement that was NAFTA that became Kuzma or NAFTA 2.0 and that's a real issue and that's the central issue between the United States and Canada and that's been the major vector of American coercion

towards us and so they may try to make a harder bargain with us because we bought a plane that's not built in the United States but we can talk about how as a sizable American components to it that we have to worry about our own jobs and that Sweden is a partner of NATO and that this is a NATO capability. So there might be miffed, but the other thing I'll have to say is

we can't condition all of our decisions to whether it's going to upset the Americans because Donald Trump is going to be upset no matter what. And so he's going to punch us in the face if we do what he wants and he's going to punch us in the face if we don't do what he wants. So we might as well just do what's best for our country

even if we're getting slapped around a little bit because we're going to get slapped around a bit anyway. Janice, political consequences as you see them. Let me just disagree with Stephen on one minor item here, all right, which is when you said, Stephen, that this is about jobs. I see, I know that is used a lot, that language in Ottawa, but I don't think it is about jobs. And I think it's a really important distinction as we move forward.

The defense industrial strategy, which you talked about earlier on is not a job creation strategy. It is about investing in the industrial capacity in this country to do two things. One, to preserve an advanced manufacturing sector in this country, which really matters over time. And our car industry is under serious threat. And the second thing is about growing Canadian companies so that we have. have a reasonably viable defense industrial sector in this country when this process is over.

Now, out of both of those will come jobs, but it's not a job strategy. A job strategy we've done in this country for years, we bring foreign companies in here, they create a brand plan, they promise 7,000 jobs, they create 500, they leave, and they don't leave any intellectual property behind. That's what we've done in the past. This is deliberately, breaking from that. Now, I don't blame people for being confused because even some of the ministers talk about this as a job strategy, but it's not that. It's really not that. So let's come back to this deal for a minute. Why is this deal? There's a part of this deal that we haven't really talked about. So Saab is going to partner with Boeing. That's tick the box number one. You've partnered

with a Canadian company and it becomes investment in growing. a Canadian company. The IP intellectual property, really wonky thing. But that is, in fact, the wealth generator in today's digital economy. All the IP that's going to be created in this partnership is going to stay in Canada. Okay, change number two from some of the things we've done in the past, where a company comes in, invest, takes the IP home when it leaves. let's remember Stalantis, okay?

That's the story. We get left with nothing. That is very different in this deal. And then the third thing is, there is an agreement to sell these aircraft into global markets, you know, Saab and Boeing, marketing the products jointly together. All of these are three big gains for the Canadian industrial sector in this country. which is a dual-use sector if it unfolds this way.

So when Steven says we have to do what's right for our country, that's the prism that we have to think about these deals. Is it investment in this country that grows Canadian, big companies like Boeing primes or smaller ones, some of the smaller businesses that are now actively making dual-use technology, advanced technology, which flies along with these primes, as we say. That's a critical lens for all of this. Stephen,

does you want to go back at Janice on the jobs angle? I think it's both things, but I think we can't ignore the jobs thing. The Bombardier is a Quebec company, which means that it's jobs and folks in Quebec, and we can't ignore the political dynamics of this, that when we talk about building up all this industry, it's about jobs.

That if you read the documents, they're constantly talking about jobs, more they are talking about military capability. And this is where there is room for some friction between the military and and other folks making these decisions because the military is always going with, again, the very best things. And they tend to associate the American technology with the very best things. And so instance, for our shipbuilding program, our shipbuilding program is not producing the best ships or the or the ships getting to us the fastest. They're getting us the ships eventually that have produced jobs and votes in Halifax and Vancouver. And someday we'll see those ships.

I'm referring to what are called the river class destroyers, the replacements of the 15 frigates that are now aging out. So the jobs are really important. The investment, the technology, the IP is very important. And that is as much of a priority as military capability. And so we're constantly going to be facing tradeoffs about getting things quickly, getting things cheaply, getting things without waste, getting things that are produced in Canada versus elsewhere.

Janice mentioned the defensive investment strategy. The phrase of it was, build, partner, buy, right? So build is try to build it in Canada. If you can't build it in Canada, co-build it with a partner, which is what this really is,

or buy it if we don't have it. Now, the one thing that we haven't talked about yet is Canada, if we want to grow our defense sector, that inevitably leads to a very troublesome question, which is we cannot buy all the things ourselves that we make in order for the, if we want the industry to be

at all efficient and can be sustainable. We need to be able to sell this stuff abroad. This plane is better than most in that that is that we will be able to sell it mostly to our allies and the deal has something like lots of planes involved that we're going to be building not only for ourselves but for a lot of partners in NATO. The problem when this is translated to other sectors

is that we're building things that are really good at killing and people and repressing people. Remember the labs built in Canada, sold to Saudi Arabia. That's a dual use. We do not like the second use of, right? So on this situation, with this plane, this policy makes a lot of sense without having the moral and tragic implications that other systems will have. But we have to keep in our heads that not everything is the same and that other systems that will make can be used by regimes against their people. and usually the most of the folks buying our stuff are the unsavory regimes.

Now, one of the things that Carney stated at Davos and Sist then is that we're going to have to moderate our principles and just do what's right. And that might mean being a little more casual about selling, you know, for the tools of repression to repressive governments because that allows us to have a more independent defense sector. But that is the tradeoff that we're facing and we're making a choice in particular direction. We have to be aware of that tradeoff as we face it. Janice, he did say that at the Davos speech, right?

We've got to take the world as we see it, not as we wish it were. Actually, he says something a little more complicated. He said, and I really, it depends, you know, I can make this mean different things, depending on how I feel when I got up in the morning. He said, I'm going to be a principled pragmatist. Pragmatist, right. Yeah, principal pragmatist, yeah. So I don't know.

in Stephen's example here, you know, are we going to be pragmatic and sell what we make with and usually with a partner too, which is going to make it easier a little bit. And that's why this particular deal, I think, is such a good one for all the reasons Stephen mentioned. But, you know, are we going to be pragmatic or are we going to be principled and say to our partner that is co-invested with us and where the IP is here? No, no, no, we can't sell that product into global marketplace because it violates our principles. None of that's really worked out yet in that doubt will speech, frankly.

Janice, let me get you to follow up on this. Do you think there's any doubt in your mind that had the Canadian military had the final decision on this, we would have gone with the American model? Zero doubt. The captain, the commander of our Air Force is she is outspoken. And this is, in a sense, as Stephen rightly just said, this is the forerunners to the big decision, which is we'll really roiled the waters here, Stephen. There's no question about it, which is the F-35 versus the Grip and fighter. And she has outspoken that she wants the F-35, she wants a wholly interoperable plane with the rest of NATO.

And then in that case, there are not other NATO partners who have yet bought the Griffin Fighter. But she is absolutely clear her highest priority is to have interoperable aircraft. She doesn't all want the Air Force running two different kinds of planes and all the maintenance requirements and the training requirements. There's a lot of costs. And we're not a big Air Force and we're not a big country. and when you ask in Air Force to train and maintain two different fleets of aircraft, it really gets complicated. So she would not.

She's probably, I don't know, she hasn't said anything. And so I don't know, but I would be very surprised if she's happy with this decision. No, and that is perfectly consistent with the conversation I had many months ago with Rick Hillier, the former chief of defense staff from, I don't know, 20 years ago or so. And he said, we should not be influenced by our political irritation with Donald Trump right now, which is, in his view, a temporary thing. And we should be continuing the interoperability and, you know, commingling, if you like, with our military and the American military. But that is clearly not a decision that our decision makers, our political decision makers have come to. So, Stephen, my question is we seem to have irritated the Americans with our purchase of these surveillance planes.

Do you think our political leadership has also irritated or even estranged themselves somewhat from the Canadian military decision makers? Because we've gone with a model here that they clearly didn't want either. I'm a scholar of civil-military relations. And so when it comes to a civ-milit-f where the civilians want one thing, the military wants the other, the civilians win. it's simply that that's the case and the job of the military is to fight with equipment they're given and in the past we've gotten in some controversies

where they've maybe tried to design request for systems that would lead to an inevitable outcome we need to buy what the civilians think is best the military wants what it has the best military attributes but they often forget that war is politics by other means that means that everything has politics baked into it there's all kinds of things going on that they are not,

they're going to care most about which plane flies the fastest, the highest, can carry the best weapon set, can be, have the most intelligence assets to it. Now those are great military things. That's not the only thing involved with this. And it has larger political implications,

not just whether the Americans will support that technology. Now, once they sell it, if we get into a bigger TIF with the Trump administration or successor, but also which allies are, to work with, whether, what kind of signals we're going to send.

This is all bundled in again with the larger trade deal. I'm saying all this. I still think that we ought to buy that 35 because it would be incredibly expensive to have two planes. It would be handicapping the Canadian Air Force because some pilots would be trained on one and some would be trained to the other. You'd have to have duplication all over the place. So I think there's a clear decision we made, but having said that all along the way,

the military is just going to have to suck it up and take what they get. Right now, they're facing a bonanza, a bonanza they haven't seen in years, right? One of the things that people didn't notice in Carney's speech at the Kansack event last week when he announced the global eye thing was 4%, not 3.5%, not 2%, 4%, which is he promised that we will get to 4% of spending of our GDP, the equivalent of our GDP, on defense by 2030, which is far ahead of,

which is very fast, way ahead of NATO's expectations for the Allies, and it's beyond the 3.5% standard. So the military is getting a lot, a lot, a lot of what they want very, very quickly after a long period of being very frustrated. So they're going to have to take some losses along the way

because they're not going to get everything they want, but if you take a look also what's being purchased, you take a look at the Canadian Defense Agency's website. The Air Force is a big winner all this. They've got lots of weapon systems listed. The Army is kind of like, well, we're doing what we came for the Army. And the Navy, it just says subs. Literally, if you go to the website, that's all it pretty much says.

And so the Air Force is winning in a variety of ways, and they're going to have to lose on some things. And that's just the way of politics. And again, defense procurement is absolutely politics. So they're going to have to just accept that they're going to get some of what they want. They're not going to get everything of what they want. Okay, Stephen, I take your point. But, Janice, I do wonder whether or not this decision, which clearly goes against the advice that was offered by the military to the prime minister, does this decision come with consequences in as much as it, well, I'll ask you the question directly.

Do you think it could lead to increasing estrangement between the chief of defense staff and her prime minister? No, for a whole variety of reasons and practical reasons, right? This is a small deal compared to the big fighter aircraft that's coming. So any, you know, are the commander of the Air Force, even if she is irritated, is going to keep her eye on the bigger debate. secondly the you know the CDS understand her job is political as Stephen just said she's got to get along

with the prime minister and the minister of defense so she will express her views but that's it she's not going to nobody is going to campaign openly against this prime minister I can tell you that there's not a single military leader that is going to campaign openly there are private ways of expressing

views that get leaked. But there's not an equal balance of power here given the picture that Stephen has painted between the political level and the senior military. They are not going to take this Prime Minister on.

This is the best chance they've got to get what they've wanted forever. This window is not going to stay open for a long time. A lot of things could close it. And these are sophisticated players. They're not going to do that. The bigger problem is the consequences in Washington, frankly, right now because the timing is such

that this is an announcement pre-customer review, as you know, and we are in a very difficult situation right now with the president and the trade representatives making no bones about it that they prefer to talk to the Mexicans and they are talking to the Mexicans and they're not talking to us. So that's the relevant political setting here. Gotcha. I want to put something, oh, sorry, go ahead, Stephen. Just one thing. When we cite a retired military officer, which is Rick Hillier is, we need to take seriously that they do not speak for the military. Now, some people think they speak for the military and some have spoken for the military. But there's a whole range of retired military officers. They range from

very, very cranky to very satisfied to some who are far right. uh, wing, uh, activists. So we need to take much caution in that. And so let's not say that Rick earlier said something when he was CDS, you know, back in the 2000s and say that that is actually valid today. Um, no, no, what he told me. I mean, he told me this. Uh, how long ago we did, do, did we shoot the interview? I mean, it was a matter of months ago. It was a matter of months ago that he said we, we, we absolutely have to go for the F-35 and we cannot allow temporary. irritation with Donald Trump to affect a decision that will have consequences decades. And that's where I agree with the whole thing of that.

That 35 is a 40-year decision. It's not a three-year decision. The problem, though, is that Donald Trump is not a man unto himself, right? Now, some of the stuff that is Donald Trump is unique to him, probably the obsession with the 51st state stuff is his thing. But the Europeans, when they look at Donald Trump, they don't see Donald Trump as being a off. They see it as the fourth American election

in 25 years that has produced a politician who's hostile to international cooperation. George Bush in 2000, George Bush in 2004, Donald Trump in 2016, Donald Trump in 2024, and a very narrow election, you know,

not that long ago in between. And so they see that the Americans are divided on whether they're committed to Europe and they're committed to multilateralism. and so that so we can wish away trumpism and there's no guarantee that trump's going to go away in three years either uh but the the united states as a reliable partner every regardless of whether democrats or republicans the bipartisan bipartisan consensus on NATO and on cooperating with allies is dead is absolutely dead uh and so we when we make the f-35

decision, we have to bake in, yes, it's about Trump, but it's not just about Trump because, yes, the Democrats may eventually get back to power, but then they'll eventually be replaced by Republicans. And those Republicans will probably be somewhere in between George Bush and Donald Trump on cooperating with allies. And that means that they're going to be very difficult to cooperate with. Right. Let me put a new issue on the table here that I'd like to get both of you to react to. And that is we are spending, and there's a great deal of focus nowadays, on surveillance planes, on fighter jets, on ships, on submarines. And I think one of the things that we are learning, particularly from the war right now,

between Russia and Ukraine, is that these cheap little things called drones can be absolutely impactful as it relates to modern warfare. And I just wonder if I can get, go ahead, Janice, you weigh in first on this. I haven't heard Canada talk much about whether we ought to be going hog into drones, given the impact that they've had overseas. What do you think? Yeah, look, I've said this openly. I think that we have to be very, very careful not to buy legacy technology.

And I think that some of the things that we are proposing to buy border on legacy technology, and if I think that about it today, five years from now, we could have very expensive equipment that can't do its job because it's overmatched by the next generation, the next generation, because the pace of innovation is so fast because it is being led by armies that are actually fighting on the battlefield, and that's the Ukrainians, and the Russians too, for that matter, as well as what happened in the Middle East in the last three months. that we

and that's why co-investing with Canadian companies that are making smart technology is so critically important to us it's less true

on this plane because we need we will always need a very sophisticated surveillance aircraft to provide domain awareness but you know I think I worry about

our submarine purchase for instance which is diesel. It is non-nuclear. And already in the water, now as we speak about it, are small, autonomous,

unmened minisups, but large numbers of them at a fraction of the price. So I think we could make a really big mistake here. And I understand the momentum because when

And when the spending finally opens up after years, you go to what you've wanted for years. And you say, I want this. It's my only chance. I'm never going to get it again. I'm going to push it through this window. But this is a moment where war fighting is literally changing at a faster pace than it has for 20 years. And I think there's a real risk. We have to be very, very careful that we divide the spending between state of the art

or almost state of the art. It doesn't have to be the best, but it has to be good and it's heavy and it's expensive. But leave a big chunk of this budget for a small, smart, autonomous, evolving, you know, weapon systems, frankly. And you do both? Can you do it?

Sure you can. Well, for 74% we certainly can do both. I mean, that's... Sure you can. Part of the impetus for the submarines was actually so we could actually get to the various spending metrics because submarines are very expensive. But it's also a reality that our submarine program is aging out. That if we don't replace the four that we got, then we won't have submariners to be qualified if we want to have submarines again. So part of it is of sustaining that capability.

We need to buy some submarines. Then if you buy four like we had last time, that means you only really have one, maybe two that can be deployed in one point time, which means we got three oceans. Do you have enough subs? So you need to have either eight or 12 to be able to field at least two or three with some great certainty at any moment in time. On the drones, we are buying drones. We are developing drones. If you went to Kansak and walked around like I did a couple years ago, there's all kinds of folks who are producing drones or all kinds of folks who are producing counter drone technology.

Those things don't, because of their nature, don't lead to media discussions about $75 billion purchases. It's not that they're cheap. think they can be pretty expensive, but this is where you're buying a bunch of them from a different bunch of producers. So it's just not getting the same kind of play. We are in the drone business. We have Canadian firms that have been buying, building drones. We've had Canadian firms have been building components for the drones of the Ukrainians have been building and using quite effectively. So we're in the drone business and we're in the counter drone business, which is almost as important or maybe even more important. Yeah. So that's going on. It's just not making news.

right let me just come back to the diesel submarines for one minute and I've had this we can argue about diesel submarines but we're not buying nuclear submarines so there's that's the alternative if you want to spend a lot of money then we can buy nuclear submarines but then we wouldn't have anything else including money for drones well diesel summary the whole point of a submarine is you can for us in Canada unlike other countries is our submarines need to be able to stay under the ice right we're a cold country and they're going to work up north. These new submarines can only stay under the ice two and a half weeks before they have to surface.

That is not a small problem, frankly, and that's what I say we have. Look, let me just take it away from the submarines because this is a bigger issue, although that's the easiest way to make this argument. Countries, when countries, the few countries that leapfrog over current technology and make a bet on the next generation of technology, either win big or lose. I think this is a moment for this country to take more risk and to invest more in future technology than in current technology.

The other side of this is one reason why to buy diesel subs and particularly the ones that are being built by either the Germans and the Norwegians or on the other side of the South Greens is they're in production, which means, yes, they're current technology, but they're real. And that means that we can get them sooner rather than later. We can't afford to wait until 2040 or 2050 to get the submarines. We need to have them in the 2030s. And so that's that's also risk and that's also tradeoff.

And while we're developing the subs, we are also developing underwater drones as well as above air drones and on the ground zones. So the things are going on at the same time. So there is a tradeoff to me. but I think we're actually working on both sides of it on this specific thing. Is it ridiculous of me to point out that the diesel submarines would be a lot more polluting than the nuclear submarines and does that matter? Or is that just a charming notion nowadays? Yes, they're more polluting but not that much more so.

I mean, with the diesel engine, the reality is that 12 submarines are not going to add that much pollution to the universe compared to everything else that we're doing. if you want it to worry about pollution, start going to the data center near you and look at what it's producing in terms of heat and how much electricity it's spending. I mean, the biggest tragedy of our time has been we spent

the past 34 years trying to figure out how to conserve electricity. And the first thing we do is we invent fake money that's really good for laundering money. But it's you, crypto, by what does it do? You have to burn computers all the time.

That was the one thing that was burning a lot of electricity and sending us back on energy conservation. And now AI, which whose advantages are widely exaggerated is now causing data centers to pop up all over around the world, putting out a lot more heat. And so I would guess that the one mass of data center is going to produce far more problems for the climate

than 12 diesel submarines. And on that, Steve, we're only going to have three submarines in the water at any point. So I shouldn't pick on the diesel subs. No, no. We talk and we use diesel as a dirty word, but it's a very advanced technology. really do is they power and provide energy for batteries. So that way the reality is that a diesel

sub operating on its electrical power on its batteries is quieter than a nuclear submarine. And submarine warfare is all about being quieter. Yeah. They're stealthier. Yeah. Let me ask each of you one last question, which is to say this is a, you know, you two have been watching this sector for a very long time. And yet right now, it's really in its ascension. I mean, we have a prime minister right now and we have a time in our history where this is really front and center in a way that it hasn't been over the last. You might even say 50 or 60 years, or maybe even since the end of World War II. I want to know what's the big issue that you two are both watching in terms of defense procurement, in terms of strategy, in terms of approach.

in terms of priorities, you know, as we come towards the end of the 2020s in this decade. Janice, go ahead. Yeah, you know, I think looking back, Steve, we're going to say Donald Trump was the best gift that ever happened to this country. And Stephen is shaking his head. Doesn't feel that way right now, but I hear you. And why is that? Because if we do this right, we should come out of this spend, right?

And we've had periods of big spend. on other things. But we should come out of this bent with a resilient economy that has the capacity for advanced manufacturing, which we have not really had we not put together the resilience with the advanced manufacturing. It's a game changer for this country and its future. And that to me is the critical criteria for weather

we make good use of this money or bad use of it. Do we grow an ecosystem of Canadian companies, and I mean Canadian owned in Canadian domicile, and the measure of that is just the IP stay in the country and does it allow us the capacity to partner with others and to sell into global markets so that the Canadian economy grows in productive ways for Canadians. If we get that done with this program, it will be a huge success.

Stephen. I wonder how sustainable this is. I think that's really going to be the question because the conservative government, when it comes in, when it eventually will come in, will care more about deficits than it will care about defense. That's been its pattern. Depends on the world, Stephen. No, it depends on the ideology of the conservative party. And so I think that when that happens, then there will be some pushback. And I also think that one of the problems that Carney will eventually face when his popularity fades a little bit from this moment is he's cutting a lot, a lot, a lot of things that Canadians benefit from domestically.

And so the trade-off right now is we think that guns is more important than butter. But at some point, folks are going to be really hungry for their butter and they will want more domestic stuff. So there's going to be countervailing pressure. So the question is, how long can we sustain this? And of the stuff we buy, how much of that will impose? huge costs to upkeep and maintain so that way we'll face questions of which systems can we maintain for 40 years, which kind of systems do we buy for 10 and then figure out something to do with. I mean, I really hope that we have the stain power, but Democratic politics

suggests otherwise that people are not going to see the benefits to themselves. We're living in a moment of Canadian nationalism. And when Donald Trump is replaced by a Democrat, that nationalism will fade a little bit. And if he's replaced by a Republican, who might be hostile or national cooperation, but not hostile to Canada, then again, the nationalism will not be quite as strong. And so people will not be quite as willing to sacrifice on all these other interests for a defense sector. Okay. Stand by you two. We're going to do a little housekeeping before we sign off. And that is to say, there are costs associated with putting this podcast on. And we want it to be free. It will be free for everyone who wants to watch it on YouTube or

listen to it on Spotify or Apple, but there are costs associated with it. And to that end, we have a Patreon page where we invite people to go. Check out what offerings we have there. We do have some web-exclusive video, including a new thing that I want to bring your attention to, namely an interview I did just this past weekend. Actually, the tables were turned. I've interviewed thousands of politicians over the years. This was a time when a politician interviewed me. He's a guy named Jonathan Scott who, how do I say this? He's the same age as one of my kids. This is how young he is.

And Jonathan actually has known my oldest son, Zachary for a very long time. And he's a town counselor in the town of Bradford finishing out this term. And before he left office, he wanted me to come up to the Bradford Public Library and do a one-on-one with me, which we did this past weekend. We talked about journalism. We talked about state of politics in Canada today. We talked about my so-called career. Anyway, that's up at patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast, but only to those who shell out a few bucks to keep us on the air here.

So check that out if you would. There are a few people, Shelley Lewis, I'm talking about you, Mari Issa Gay, I'm talking about you, Ralph Lean, I'm talking about you, who have been extraordinarily generous with us and have given at the highest levels. Even if you can't or don't want to do that, there are much smaller levels at which you can help us out. and we are grateful for everybody, including a guy named Greg Clark,

who's in Toronto, who has his own substack called Searching for the Truth in the Messy Middle. As that indicates, he's a guy who sort of prizes moderation in politics as opposed to the extremes, which seem to have taken over so much of politics over the last many years. Anyway, Greg, we thank you very much for contributing to us on the Patreon page. Once again, patreon.com forward slash the Paken podcast. All of our episodes are archived at state. Steve Paken.com. Janice Stein from the Monk School, Steve Sathamon, Carlton University.

Any last words from either of you, or are we good to go? I think we're good to go. And just great to be with the two Steve's, one Stephen and one Steve. Steve squared. There we go. Great to have both of you on the Paken podcast today and to everybody. Peace and love. See you next time.