The Paul Wells Show - Biden's Man In Ottawa

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

"Until I came here, I'm not sure I understood the depth of the problem," says David L. Cohen, the new U.S. ambassador to Canada. Cohen is talking about the "breach of trust" between Canada and the United States in recent years, a mutual suspicion that skyrocketed during the Donald Trump presidency and hasn't recovered. Paul Wells talks to Cohen about restoring trust, working together on energy and climate, and how Cohen became the second-base coach for his son's T-ball league.  The Paul Wells Show is produced by ANTICA, in partnership with the National Arts Centre and the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. It is published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Our founding sponsor is TELUS and the title sponsor is Compass Rose.

It's a big world out there, and sometimes it seems like it's breaking. I'm talking to the people who are trying to fix it. This week, the guy Joe Biden sent to Ottawa to clean up Donald Trump's mess. There had been a breach of trust. There had been issues that came up out of a sense of a lack of respect. U.S. Ambassador David L. Cohen. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. There's actually a book about how David Cohen learned to do politics, and it's a good one. In 1992, a big guy named Ed Rendell, fraternity pledge,

football fan, managed to get himself elected mayor of Philadelphia after losing a couple times. To say the least, Ed Rendell needed a detail man on his team. He found David Cohen, fresh out of law school, a compulsive reader with an awesome memory. Philadelphia was a mess, and the story of how this unlikely odd couple turned it around is the fantastic book, A Prayer for the City, written by Buzz Bissinger, who also wrote Friday Night Lights. I guess Cohen learned to like sidekick roles with clout because after he left City Hall, he became the number two guy at Comcast, making deals and resolving crises for the world's second largest communications company. And all along, he made money for

Democrats who wanted to be president. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden. When they went to David and Rhonda Cohen's house for dinner, they left with a lot of campaign money. So it's not a huge surprise that Biden gave Cohen the embassy job in Ottawa. It's always been a reward for bundlers, the people who put together big money donations for candidates. But what everybody in Ottawa is starting to understand is that David Cohen isn't just a money guy taking a victory lap. For 30 years, he's been who you send if you want to fix a big problem. And Canada's relationship with its most important neighbour has become a big problem. Last week, I spoke with David Cohen at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Here's that talk.

Last week, I spoke with David Cohen at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Here's that talk. It takes a lot of people to make a show like this, and I am so grateful to all of our partners for helping us do it. The University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, the National Arts Centre, our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose, and our publishing partners, the Toronto Star and iPolitics. David Cohen, come on up. Sometime in 2021, the President of the United States called you and asked you if you wanted to be the Ambassador to Canada. Tell me how that conversation went.

So it's actually a great story. Well, thank God. There's a funny side to it, too, and I've forgotten all the names so i won't embarrass anyone but i'm i'm working it's the middle of the pandemic i'm working at home i'm actually in the middle of a team's call i don't remember who else was on the call but i look at my i'm getting a call on my cell phone and it has a 302 number, which, as you know, is Delaware. This was early in February. So even though the president had been inaugurated, was working in the White House, a lot of his staff still had Delaware cell phones. So here it is. I see this Delaware number. I excuse myself on the team's call. I say, excuse me, I need to grab this call. So I answer the phone, and a young

woman's voice answers, and you say, well, why are you saying young woman? Are you being judgmental or chauvinistic? Trust me, this was a young woman. She almost sounded like she wasn't in high school yet. And so she said, Mr. Cohen, and I said, yes. She says, this is Betty. I'll change her name to protect the innocent. This is Betty. Would you be willing to take a call from President Biden? That was her question. So I couldn't, I mean, I'm not an irreverent person, usually.

But I couldn't, I mean, I'm not an irreverent person, usually, but I couldn't control myself. I said, I have to ask you, how long have you worked for the president? She said, this is my first week. I said, well, has anyone ever answered no to that question? And she started laughing and said, oh my, I'm so embarrassed. Maybe I should say the president would like to speak with you I said I would love to speak with the president so it's like the usual 15 20 second pause and the president gets on the phone he's laughing he said what did you do to Betty and I'm sitting here saying what do you mean I said she came into the office and she couldn't stop laughing. And she said, Mr. Cohen, he's a very entertaining guy.

So I tell him the story and he starts laughing. So anyway, I said, you know, how's everything? It was the first time I had talked to him after the inauguration. I said, how's everything going? The obligatory conversation. And then he got to the money part of the conversation, which was, David, I'm finally getting to the point where I need to start paying attention to ambassadorial appointments. I have one simple question for you today, which is, is Canada still your first choice? And I said, it is. And he said, well, that's where I'm going

to send you. And he said, but you're not allowed to tell anyone because I'm not making it public yet. It's going to take a while. So my nomination didn't actually get announced until I think late June, even though that call was in early February. So that's how I heard. That's a cute story, isn't it?

It's a fantastic story. No, I like that. Send our regards to Betty. Right, yeah. You've been here long enough to know that we're a terribly self-deprecating gang. Why on earth was Canada your first choice? I won't bore you with my entire thought process about what I wanted to do, but after excluding some other options, actually some friends of mine who were close with the president really encouraged me to focus on being an ambassador somewhere. year old boy, I said, gee, what I really want to be is an ambassador. I don't even think I knew what it was two years ago, let alone when I knew what it was when I was six years old. And I probably had a little bit of an unfair expectation about the ceremonial aspects of being an ambassador, which is, I mean, I'm okay with entertaining. I don't mind doing that. But it's not really where I think my highest and best use is.

But the president sent me, president as before he was president, before he was even president-elect, said you should talk to a few people and gave me some names and sort of talk through things I could do and might enjoy doing. And I really got persuaded that ambassador would be the right position. And then I had to refine, okay, where do you want to be an ambassador? And I sort of got to Canada in a series of questions, which is, number one, I was interested in a big country with big issues and big problems and complicated problems. I was interested in a country, though, that maybe it was big, but it wasn't so big that where the leader of the country wanted something,

he or she would call the president directly, that there'd be a role for the ambassador. So like UK, when the prime minister of the UK wants something, he rarely calls the US ambassador, he goes directly to the president. So I wanted a country where the ambassador wants something, he rarely calls the US ambassador. He goes directly to the president. So I wanted a country where the ambassador was relevant in that conversation. And last, I wanted a country that was important to the president, that the president cared about, and that he would want somebody who he could trust and who had a relationship in that role. And once you did that, there were very few countries that met that standard and Canada was legitimately at the top of the list. I suspect there have been times in Canada's history where sending an ambassador to Ottawa

would essentially constitute a nice victory lap after an excellent career. But I don't think this is that moment. And I actually don't think you're that guy. I think you're the guy they send to work on fixer uppers. What were the elements of the challenge in this assignment? So I don't think I ever looked at Canada as a fixer-upper. I really don't. The way I looked at Canada was that it was our country's most important ally, our most important friend, but it was a relationship that had been injured, that had been bruised, that was in need of restoration, of not to be fixed up because there was a long 50, 70 decades long relationship between the two countries. But there had been a breach of trust. There had been issues that came

up out of a sense of a lack of respect, maybe from a Canadian perspective of the United States, a sense the United States was just taking Canada for granted. And I look at Canada, and I honestly believe that Joe Biden looked at Canada the same way. This is our most important friend. This is our most important ally from a trade perspective, from a defense perspective, from a world leadership perspective, from a values perspective. We need to fix this relationship up. We, in that sense, it may be a fixer-upper, but we need to restore the trust that existed between

these countries. We need to make sure that Canada understands the high esteem and the high value that the United States places on this relationship. And from the minute I came here, that was a principal goal of mine. I must say, until I came here, I am not sure I understood the depth of the problem, how serious the breach of trust had been. That's the challenge of Canada. The challenge of Canada is not to deal with a country that seeks to compete against the United States with unfair trade or labor practices. The complexity of dealing with Canada is not to manage a country that has access to nuclear technology and can't be trusted to use nuclear technology in a responsible way. The challenge with Canada was,

how do you take this longstanding friend, this longstanding ally that justifiably feels like they've been taken for granted and not respected and rebuild the trust to recreate this incredible relationship where when the United States and Canada work together, as President Biden said, when the United States and Canada work together, we get results. We change the world. And how do you get us back to the situation where we're inseparable allies who are working together on all the things that are important, not only in our relationship, but in the preservation of democracy in the world. You said that when you took the gig, you weren't sure you realized how deep the betrayal of trust was. When did you begin to realize that? Almost immediately. I am a people person. Maybe more in my experience

in government and politics than my experience in law and business. But I like talking to people. I like, and I like listening. And so when, you know, when I was at Comcast, NBC Universal, I was the senior executive who had the program of traveling the country and had a little bit of a formula. I'd meet with local elected officials, state elected officials, federal officials. I'd meet with the press. I'd meet with business leaders. I'd meet with nonprofit community groups. And I'd meet with what I used to say, and I would still say, real people.

My favorite thing to do is always to jump in a taxi cab and say to the taxi cab, well, what do you think about your mayor? What do you think about the president? How's your business? Is it better now or worse now? What's wrong with it? What do you think's happening right? Because out of the mouths of real people come the ultimate wisdom of what's really going on in a city or in a state or in a country. So almost immediately in appearing here, when I began, I mean, started with elected officials and ministers, you hear, they don't necessarily use the words, but you hear a real betrayal of trust, less confidence in the nature of the relationship. And it didn't take long because I met with a lot of people. I meet with business leaders and I hear the same

thing from Canadian business leaders. I meet with non-profit leaders and civic leaders in cities and the provinces. By the way, I hear the same thing from premiers and from members of premier cabinets as I do from ministers in the federal government, non-profit leaders, and again, talking to real people. So I would go, I'm not really allowed to take taxi cabs anymore. I could find an Uber driver, but I'm not really allowed to go in Ubers either. And talking to my security detail about this doesn't get me very far. But what I would do is I would like go to a hotel lobby. And because I was in the pandemic phase, I travel a little bit. I'm in a hotel lobby. Not a lot of people there, but there's some hotel staff. And I have these conversations with waiters in

hotels, with concierges. And I think what was amazing to me, not that I heard this sort of, you know, what was the United States doing with this or with that from a minister, sort of expect that, but just from somebody who is a hotel concierge. And I would ask, I said, what do you think about the relationship with the United States? He goes, it used to be so much stronger after that guy. I'm not sure you guys like us anymore. And let me tell you, when you hear that from people who are not trained politicians, people who are not members of the media, not people who are living this, but just people who are living their lives, well, then that is what drove home to me that we had a serious issue. It's not easy to

address that. You can't, you know, you can't convene a meeting of 20 million Canadians and explain this is what we're doing, but it's a little bit of progress by increment that if I've sort of said to myself, if I can talk to enough people, if I can deliver the message that we really care about Canada, we really care about our friendship, we really care about our allyship. If I can quote the president enough saying that Canada is our most important friend and ally, you begin to turn this around. And I can't tell you how many times after speaking engagements, after I've been on TV, and now after I'm on this podcast, people will come up to me and say, we heard you on the Paul Wells Show, and thanks for saying all those things you said about Canada.

We really do feel the same way. It is nice to hear from the United States perspective the respect that you have for Canada and how important the Canada relationship is to the President and to the United States? So the problem may be even deeper still. It's not only that Canadians aren't sure that the United States likes Canada. Canadians are less and less sure that they like the United States. I grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, on the border with Port Huron, Michigan. I used to borrow my dad's car, drive across the border onto the Michigan side because the record stores were better in Port Huron. When there were record stores. Exactly, yeah. Now I just stream everything. You just dated yourself. Oh man, I'm getting old. I used to go down to Detroit to see concerts

every once in a while to see a ball game. And when I catch myself talking like that, like Canada-U.S. guy on television, there's a lot of chatter on social media to the effect that this guy, Wells, is a sellout to Washington. And we need to be careful because we don't want to get too much of that American stuff on us. A lot of Canadians have televisions. And they saw your president in your hometown of Philadelphia on September 1st saying that equality and democracy are under assault in the United States. And that elements in the opposition party represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. And a lot of Canadians look at the truckers convoy that set up shop here in Ottawa in February, and they wonder whether that's spreading. That's a hell of a problem. And I've said for the first time in history, in American polling, the number one issue of concern among Americans are threats to democracy.

It's never been the case before. It's always been crime or taxes or jobs. Those have always been, for 75 years of polling, those are always the top issues. What I find ironic is that in the polling Canada two weeks ago, number one issue in Canada, threats to democracy. It is my view, you talk about trucker convoy, you can talk about January similar demonstrations in London, in Berlin, in Brazil. The issue of threats to democracy is a global issue. It's not a United States issue. It didn't start in the United States. have this strain of conservative right-wing populism that is infecting a lot of our society and of our governments in the world's democracies. I think that's what the president's

speech was all about. And I, look, I'm a friend of Joe Biden's. I am an unadulterated fan of Joe Biden's. But I believe that speech will go down in history as being the speech that shined us, that bravely shined a spotlight on what is and should be the existential issue for the world's democracies. And unless you shine a spotlight on it, you can't even begin to confront it and to deal with it. I'm such a passionate believer in democracy and in free speech. And it's not always a popular thing for me to say, but it is my view that the way you combat these extremist movements, these anti-democratic movements, these threats to democratic values that the president talked about, the way you confront them is not to prohibit them from speaking. That's not democratic. That's not consistent with our free speech values. The way you confront them is to shine a

spotlight on them and to combat them with alternative pro-democracy speech. And I'm always a glass half full kind of guy, although my soda is getting near the half empty stage. And I believe that will ultimately be the way in which democracy prevails over autocracy as a result of more free speech by more people saying we're not going to submit to the negative extremist populist views of some right-wing voices that exist not only in the United States, not only in Canada, but in all of the world's democracies. the United States, not only in Canada, but in all of the world's democracies. Welcome back to my conversation with David Cohen after these messages.

Not quite from the sublime to the ridiculous, but from principles to files. You're fresh from a visit to Quebec. And most people, when they go to Quebec, they go to Joe Beef for dinner. But you went to James Bay. Tell us about that. James Bay does not have a great place to eat dinner. And I will assure you. I went up to James Bay yesterday. It really was an extraordinary trip.

went up to James Bay yesterday. Really was an extraordinary trip. You can learn a lot about something like hydropower by reading, by briefing papers, but actually seeing what's going on in James Bay really leads to a completely different level of understanding. I really analogize my visit there to the construction project that led to the dam and to the generators. It's like a mini Panama Canal. I mean, it is an amazing engineering accomplishment. It really drove home the importance of hydropower as we talk now about energy transition, energy security, the way in which we're going to create multiple sources of energy to help diminish our reliance on fossil fuels, be able to address climate change. And I honestly don't think that people in Washington or elsewhere appreciate what's going on with Hydro-Quebec and what's going on elsewhere in Canada, in Manitoba, in British Columbia, in the Columbia River Basin. So just

to give you the headline statistic for me, one of the power lines coming out of the Hydro-Quebec facility in James Bay runs 1,500 kilometers from James Bay to a little suburb outside of Boston. That power line provides 16% of the electrical power in New England. So it was an extraordinary visit, and it sort of gives you hope for the balance that can be created in the energy economy. I got myself in a little bit of trouble early on when I truthfully described the realities of the United States' appetite and interest in more fossil fuels from Alberta. The United States and Canada have the largest energy trading relationship in the world. We get 62% of our oil from Canada, and 98% of that is from Alberta. But that is not a long-term steady state with the challenges of climate change. The long-term steady state is going to be a more balanced energy economy, and hydropower is going to be

a very significant element of that. So just like my visit to the oil sands was eye-opening, my visit to James Bay was eye-opening as well, and it really gives me great confidence in the ongoing resilience and reliability of the huge energy trading relationship between Canada and the United States. So maybe a preview of coming attractions, that visit to James Bay. Because judging from the history of the Keystone XL pipeline, the United States is no more sure it wants to take our oil than we are that we want to export it. Yeah, so I want to be careful with that. I think we absolutely are interested in buying Canada's oil. I really do. With everything that we're doing in the energy transition and energy security, even with climate change as the existential issue of

our day, we're going to be using oil for a long time. And if you're looking at reliable trading partners, Canada's at the top of the list for who we would like to buy oil from. The problem is Canada's made commitments to get to net zero emissions by 2050. The United States has made commitments to get to net zero emissions by 2050. And we can't keep consuming fossil fuels at the level that we're consuming fossil fuels, increasing as energy demands increase and hit net zero emissions by 2050. And so the future is absolutely a future of more balanced energy sources than just fossil fuels. And by the way, using technology to take the carbon out of fossil fuel emissions, which is something that's happening in Alberta to a very large extent, but diversifying our reliance on energy sources beyond just fossil fuels. When I look at the options, when I look

at the energy market, Canada and the United States are just perfect partners, reliable partners for a balanced energy future with diversified energy sources. When I was in Alberta, I tried to make the case. I'm not one of these people who changes my story depending on where I am. And I tried to make the case that just because the United States, quote unquote, was not interested in vastly more oil imports from Alberta did not mean that we did not appreciate, did not respect, and did not treasure the energy trading relationship between Alberta and the United States. I said, but it should be a wake-up call for Alberta to support and nurture its energy technology sector and the alternative forms of energy that are being worked on in Alberta, whether it be hydrogen or the technologies that are being worked on in Alberta to help take the carbon out of fossil fuels. Because in doing that, when we look forward, I don't know, five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, it is a fully reasonable expectation that Canada and the United States will continue to have this very significant, very robust, very large energy trading relationship.

It's just that it's going to be more diversified, and there's going to be a technology side to that relationship as well. And Alberta is sitting in the catbird seat in terms of the work that's being done in Alberta around technology, just like Quebec is sitting in the catbird seat in terms of the clean energy that comes from hydropower and some of the technology, new technology that is associated with hydropower and non-fossil fuel sources of energy? I want to talk about Buy American. Last time you and I spoke in the spring, there was a lot of nervousness because the president had just delivered a State of the Union address in which he spoke about Buy American as a principle of his economic policy. And we're not American, and we need to sell stuff.

And you said, and I quote, everyone needs to chill. $700 billion economic package, a single bill comes forward, passed by both houses, which contains the magic phrase, buy North American. Did that just happen because we needed to chill in the spring, or did some people do some work to make that happen? So it's all of the above. I mean, my advice, which I gave to you publicly, but which I also gave within the Canadian government, was accurate. A lot of the negative reaction, you've referred to the President's State of the Union, but the negative reaction really started around the electric vehicle tax credit issue, which I tried to tell people was not even a presidential proposal. It was proposed legislation without language.

And my own instinct, although I didn't know it, was that the bill was never passing. But my advice at the time was that Canada should engage in the responsible advocacy that it had started, which is what Canada did. It was excellent principled advocacy, the kind of advocacy you would engage in with a friend. And that is what Canada did, and the advocacy was excellent. But in the end, the real success here was that there, and I hear, you know, buy America, buy American protectionism. Joe Biden is not a protectionist vis-a-vis Canada. He just isn't. There was always going to be room to make sure that Canada had the ability to participate in the U.S.-Canadian supply chain. And I pointed out to

people, I mean, the last infrastructure bill passed under President Obama had the same Buy American language that was in the Infrastructure Act that was passed, the exact same language. And Canada advocated, lobbied, and there were a whole series of waivers and exceptions negotiated in that essentially created a buy North American construct for trade under that act. And I also point out, and this is the risk, and this is part of the case that I made, this is the risk of focusing on disagreements and losing a little bit of the big picture. That even with buy American, buy American provisions, which remember, only apply to federal procurement, have nothing to do, Buy America, Buy American,

have nothing to do with private sector trade. It's all federal procurement. But even with Buy America, Buy American, there is $2.6 billion Canadian of trade that crosses our borders each and every day. And on top of that, in more than 30 states, Canada is their largest export trading partner. And I used to, when I gave those two statistics, I said, does that sound like protectionism to you? I mean, the fact of the matter is that Canada and the U.S. have one of the largest trading relationships in the world. It is the opposite of protectionism. And culturally, that really is where the United States is. And I didn't know what the solution was going to be, but I was honestly never that worried about electric vehicle tax credits. I always thought there was going to be, it's another part of my glass half full. I didn't know how we were going to get there, but I never thought that the world, the Canada-US world was

going to be blown up over electric vehicle tax credits, and it hasn't been. Enough about files. We've got several minutes left i did a lot of research because david cohen does his research and i i wanted to be a little bit like you and there's one story i just want to hope that you would share with people could you tell us all how you came to be the second base coach in the in the t-ball division of the philadelphia taney league in the in the 90s so it is one of my favorite stories, but it starts from the context that although I've had a reasonably successful professional career, I'm very proud of what I've accomplished. When I get asked the obligatory question of,

you know, what would you tell your 20 or 30 year old self? What would you do differently than what you did? I have a really easy answer, which is I would figure out work-life balance better than I figured that. I mean, I am fortunate that I have an extraordinary wife, professionally accomplished, but when you look at the ledger, she has played by far the disproportionate burden in raising our two boys and in the family side of this. But the one thing I did, and I learned this from Ed Rendell, because as a district attorney, a mayor, and a governor, demands on his time were extraordinary. But the one thing he told his scheduling people is, I do not want to miss any of Jesse, which is his son's basketball games, baseball games, or football games. And I decided if the mayor or the governor can do this, then I can do it.

And so I'm going to go to all of my kids' baseball and basketball games. Neither of them played football. So I started this. They were both playing t-ball. And it's a little horrifying, but true, that I'm standing in silence watching my kids play t-ball, and somebody tapped me on the shoulder and say, you know, Mr. Cohen or Chief, Chief of Staff,

you know, can we talk to you? And I'm sort of like, I'm trying to watch my kid play t-ball. And then people would come and they'd have resumes. They want to talk about getting a job. They'd bring an address. They say, we have a tree fell in our backyard. Can you help get it removed? And I would literally look up during the course of a t-ball game and there'd be seven, eight, 10 people standing in line to talk to me. So it drove me crazy. So I, you know, even not as chief of staff, we were playing, it's a local T-ball league. I know the coaches, I know the commissioner of the league. He's a neighbor and a friend. So I go up to him and I said, so I have an idea, which you think is going to be crazy. This is t-ball.

It's not that competitive. I said, you're going to think this is crazy, but I'll explain it. I would like to offer to coach second base for every t-ball game in which my boys play. And he looked at me, he says, I saw that line of people. I know exactly why you're asking. Done. that line of people, I know exactly why you're asking, done. And so I would coach second base, not only for my kids' team, but for the opposing team. And I would sit there, and by the way, in T-ball, it is not a bad idea to have a second base coach, because you sit there, and the kids

are on first base, they have no idea where they're going, the ball gets hit, they run to the pitcher mound, they run back to home plate. So I'd be on second base, my kid's team or the other team, and I'd stand in front of the base and I'd point, here, here, run here, and then stand here or keep going, run there. So having somebody in the middle of the field to help the kids run the bases actually made sense in T-ball. And I will tell you that in doing that that not a single person ever walked on the field to ask me a question or hand me a letter a successful strategy are there ever days here in Ottawa when you think this town could use a second base coach? It's a different sport, but I will say this, and I'm not saying this to suck up to all the people who I've met.

And by the way, I include journalists in this. Sometimes you look at your hometown and you never give it enough credit. You get the worst break from your hometown press, from your hometown political opponents. You're always treated the most harshly in that. There's a famous Philadelphia story. Philadelphia sports fans are notoriously difficult. Mike Schmidt, who is maybe the best third baseman in the history of baseball, was mercilessly booed repeatedly as a young baseball player.

And Mike Schmidt, in describing his relationship with the press and the press to the Philadelphia Phillies, famously said there are sort of two chapters in every Philadelphia life when you're playing. One is the joy of the game, and the second is the agony of reading about it the next day. And he was probably right. But by the way, when he went on the road, he was universally praised. So what I have found in Canada is extraordinary high quality of commitment and service of elected officials, an extraordinary high quality press corps, an extraordinarily committed business community, a fantastic array of nonprofit organizations that none of them get the credit that they deserve for the good that they're doing. that none of them get the credit that they deserve for the good that they're doing. It doesn't mean that I agree with them on everything. It doesn't mean that everyone agrees with them on everything that is going on. But when you just take a step back and look at the caring and at the direction of what they are attempting to achieve,

I think it's less of a need of a second base coach and maybe more of a need of a little bit more of a cheerleading squad to provide praise for the good work that's being done and encouragement, and make sure you don't chase good people out of their professions, out of their jobs, and that there is an acknowledgement of the many, many, many great things that are happening in Canada as a result of leadership, government, civic, nonprofit, media, et cetera. Sounds like a good note to go out on. Enjoy the rest of your night. We'll continue this conversation on many future occasions, I'm sure. Paul, thank you very much. It's an honor to be here for your inaugural show, and you're a little bit of a proof point that you can't keep a great journalist down. So this is... Thanks very much.

Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Haley Choi. And our executive producer is Stuart Cox. Music by Kevin Bright. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Anika Productions in partnership with the National Arts Centre and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where I'm the inaugural journalist fellow in residence. The show is published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. I am so grateful to TELUS for being a founding partner for the Paul Wells Show and to my friends at Compass Rose, our title sponsor. And Betty, if you're out there, I'll take a call from President Biden anytime. If you haven't subscribed already, please do.

We'll have another episode next Wednesday. See you then. Thank you.