Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Mark Carney Proclaims the End of American Hegemony w/ Stephen Maher | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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Mark Carney Proclaims the End of American Hegemony w/ Stephen Maher | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: The new world struggles to be born.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words from Gramsci, I welcome to the time of monsters podcast.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is sponsored by the Nation magazine.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm G.T.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: here right here for the Nation.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the time of monsters idea, seasonally gaining residents, not only among readers of the nation, but also apparently like people in very high places, like who were gathered at Davos, the sort of meeting place of the global elite.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of talk that sort of echoed Gramshee's statement.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people will think about the way in which the traditional world order is in fact dying and what it's three done about it.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And surprisingly, the speech that got the most attention was from Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, surprising on a number of fronts.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Canada is a kind of like middle power, you know, very wealthy and successful nation, but not necessarily one that is a leader in global affairs on all occasions.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And also, Carney himself, this former banker coming out of the corporate world, not a great public speaker, especially compared to his predecessor, Justin Trudeau,
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: who was fluent in English and French and a very charismatic personality.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think anyone has ever said about Mark Carney.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think Carney's words about he resonated far more than anything Justin Trudeau ever said because of the contents of what he said.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I also mentioned, since I said that Justin Trudeau is like a wonderful speaker in both English and French, I have to say Mark Carney's French, which he started off with in his speech,
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But having said all that, like you guys, the speech itself shows that maybe content matters more than presentation.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: To talk about this, I'm very happy to have on Steven Mar.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a Canadian journalist.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: As it happens, the author of a biography of Justin Trudeau called The Prince.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so someone who is in a position to, I think, really talk about the speech and where it's coming from, in terms of the liberal party of Canada.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Canadian society at large.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, first of all, thank you for being on the program.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you for having me.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an honor for me, dude.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so let's just explain to listeners that.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Both the situation, it's up, and like what Karni actually said, that I think got so much attention.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's interesting.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would point out that Mark Carney has often been at Davos, and he's often been a star there.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: When he was the Canadian Central Banker and then the UK Central Banker, I wrote a profile of him from a claims of National Canadian News Magazine recently and made myself watch a number of his Davos presentations over the years.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it struck me that although the subject is frankly boring to me, bank regulation,
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: he had them on the edges of their seats over the years in that room.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he's very comfortable there.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: He would have anticipated and planned this very carefully.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He arrived at a moment of great tension because the Europeans were having to face down, Trump
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: over Greenland and his speech, which I suspect will look less impressive in a way over time because the message is really sort of a regulatory message.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have to cooperate, middle powers have to work more closely together.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing really revolutionary about that.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a message that Canadian leaders have been delivering since the 1940s, the Middle Powers, typically like, but in the moment was so fraught, and he demonstrated courage by sort of speaking freely without naming Trump, but above Trump, but above the peril that the Americans have delivered to the world.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you showed backbone at a time when the Europeans in particular needed to
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I mean, there's perhaps two components of Carney speech.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: One is a sort of analysis of the situation, and the second is sort of prescriptions for solutions.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as you suggest, maybe the prescriptions are not so radical, but I think what people were struck by was the honesty of his diagnosis that he is actually saying something which is like everyone knows and everyone sees which is that the United States, which has created the world order,
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Global Hegemon and really created all these institutions, like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, NATO, NORAD, the US is like now in a moment of adopting a radically,
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: unilateralist, Western, hemisphere, dominance policy, the United States is like wrecking the very system that it's creating and that like obviously creates a lot of problems for the world of large, but specifically for American allies.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that, you know, like as you said, he did a name crump, but it's very clear to everyone who is referring to and particularly is clear to Trump.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: because Trump himself would later reference the speech showing great unhappiness.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that that is the significance of it.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: The honest acknowledgement by someone in a position of power about what everyone can see.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you agree like that's where these are power the speech came from?
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think so.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: more eloquently likely than you are I can now really describe the this sort of perils of facing the world the bargain no longer works he said let me be direct we're in the midst of a rupture not a transition great powers are using economic integration as weapons so he he didn't say anything that we didn't know but by kind of putting it all together in that place in that time he
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: to confront the situation.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the courage or the sort of, you know, can it is vulnerable, more vulnerable than any of the European countries?
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's up to Denmark, I suppose.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But to American pressure under tariffs, our economy is so integrated.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for him to say those things, demonstrated something important, I think.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely the case.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's sort of accentuate the courage.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it is necessary to realize that since Trump's reelection or the beginning of his second term, the standard European response has been sort of like try to comply with Trump or to, you know,
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: rhetorically not offend him and to try to meet whatever demands he can make that can be reasonably mad.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think what people with the Greenland situation where finding that was very alarming was that it seems like you could comply with him as much as you want and he still has like a demand.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is a crazy demand that really crosses a line, which is that like he was literally calling for Denmark to give up its territory until like a lot of women to be absorbed in the United States.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I mean, I think your contrast with the European leaders is striking because as you said, Canada is actually like more economically integrated and defend it on the United States and more geographically close and more actually like vulnerable.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: to American military attack than like any of the European countries.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even include Denmark.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, let's say Denmark loses Greenland.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Denmark is still a European country with an economy that is not so dependent on American trade as Canada is.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, the extreme vulnerability of Canada is very striking.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and we may come to regret.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Carni may come to regret his words.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now he obviously thinks he has cards.
• 7:48
  [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The U.S. MCA NAFTA 2 is coming up for renegotiation Trump has threatened to tear it up and that would do terrible damage to the U.S. economy, but it would destroy the Canadian economy.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that Carney though must be calculating that the business interests who seem to have forced Trump to back down.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over Greenland will also prevail in the in the NAFTA considerations.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So so you know, he's he's like a guy sitting at a poker table without great cards, but he's going to play them all the way is the way it looks to me.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I mean, this was where you had that, and this actually goes to the sort of middle power argument that Karni is making, which is on the one account of the bites of doesn't have great cards, but kind of does by no means alone.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we've actually the Greenland is a sort of second playing out of this scenario where Trump really crosses a line.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first was when he initially launched the sort of trade war with what would we call it inauguration day or something like this is a liberation day.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, which at that time he provoked some very radical characters going to implement and what happened was that there was on the one hand run on U.S. Treasury bonds which led to like, you know, the U.S. Treasury having to raise its rates, which is like a huge problem in terms of like how indebted the U. American governance and many of these treasuries are held.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: by Canada, European governments and European investors, and Chinese investors, and Japan.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that, in turn, led to a steep sort of stock market correction, and that led to Trump sort of scaling back his tariffor.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now the same scenario seems to have played out with Greensland, where Trump was really pushing towards a policy that would have absolutely torn apart.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: NATO, and we saw again, I kind of run on the treasury and a stock market correction.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like, as you mentioned, Mark Carney, a banker, you know, like someone very steeped in global economics, the background in Goldman Sachs, and as a hedge fund manager, like, is that like a large part of his consideration of, like, actually, even though Trump threatens his allies in the world, he, you know, the United States is also very vulnerable in half-fight can, like, actually
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: the sort of, you know, bond market vigilantees, the sort of, you know, the ultimate boss of the stock market.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's what's going on.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody would be better placed to lead an attack on the American stock market in a way than Mark Carney or no one would have the skills.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when I was working on a profile of him earlier this year, I talked to some people who've done business with him
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: quite a cold and calculating guy.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: His public image, he's mild and pleasant.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is not always mild and pleasant in the board room.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has a reputation as quite a hard man in a way.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, this is, we could maybe get to this later, but I have been a little bit of a carney skeptic just because I'm not quite sure that the skill set that
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: leader of a democratic country.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a kind of tendency towards being autocratic or, you know, while wanting to call the shots, this is absolutely someone who is hard and cold and calculating, but on the other hand, as I said, speaking as a current skeptic, I think I, in a lot of other people have also thought like,
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you normally wouldn't want someone like that as the leader, except that this is a time of emergency and then emergency maybe he is like, you know, the the man for the hour that you know someone with that sort of corporate background, that sort of background in international economics and backing in the stock market, who's also a cold and calculating might actually have, you know, sort of the McEvilian skill set that one needs at this moment.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I think.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had wondered if he would end up having a political career like Michael Ignatis who led the Liberal Party of Canada to their worst showing in a century or Michael Bloomberg, who might be a more appropriate
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: yeah uh reference very successful in business very intellectually sound sort of character but never able to connect with the electorate it was the peculiar circumstances of the rise of Trump the political paralysis of Justin Trudeau that sort of allowed currently to present himself as the savior of Canada and what's dropping about the devil speech is he's presenting himself as the savior of the world now and his sales pitch
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have to think that he's got a plan to follow up and say, well, now here are fellow middle powers.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what I was talking about.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's the new club that you're going to join, or, you know, I think there may be a sort of second chapter that we haven't seen yet.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's sort of like worth talking about in terms of what are actually the sort of policy prescriptions that come out of this recognition that the United States is no longer this sort of pillar of global stability that Canada has relied on since World War II.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now he has, he did mention in his speech,
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: at Davos, and then subsequently on Thursday, he gave a speech in Canada and Quebec, symbolically at a place called the Citadel, which was a fortress that was built to protect against an American invasion.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gave a speech where he also outlined, you know, where they sort of policy thinking.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So some of what is on offer is like trying to change the nature of the economy, getting rid of internal trade barriers at that was he toe did sort of tax cuts, but then also he has promised the sort of greater program of nation building.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: but also a sort of shift in trade strategy of building trade relations in both Asia and in Europe.
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, and specifically, he did actually prior to the meeting of Davos go to meet with the president of China and there was actually like a sort of significant agreement that was made to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like so for all of that he's outlining like are these policies that can kind of like meet the sort of crisis that he's describing both trying to have a greater internal integration of the Canadian economy and then building stronger trade relationships outside the US in Asia and presumably with Europe.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So far so good.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The internal trade barriers that have made some progress on that, it's very difficult because as with almost anything in Canadian public policy, you deal with this jurisdictional quagmire with the strong provinces, so I don't know whether he's going to be able to make progress on that.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't mention he has dramatically increased Canadian military spending.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: and goes against a very long tradition of Canada not spending money on its military trump has basically forced us to start to do so.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's no counter argument against the Canada now.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody can say, well one.
• 15:08
  [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we said for a long time and the Americans are next to our.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't need a military.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, so far, our economy is performing better than expected, given the new tariff barriers to the United States, and if anyone would know how to generate economic activity through new trade agreements, it should be that guy.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: right like who's better qualified than he is to do that so at the moment he's got runway in Canada Canadians think well we seem to have given the puck to our best player and that's basically all we can do is hope that that he makes it rain this this deal with China you mentioned the EVs the flip side of it is the Chinese agreed to reduce tariffs on pinola and lobster and so carnie's been out of the country
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: like a third more than his normal for a Canadian Prime Minister.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: These things will take time to bear fruit, but he seems to have the continued political backing of Canadians to do that.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, I know I mean, I think it's absolutely the case that a lot of these policies it's gonna take a long time.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like, you know, for like, you know, like many decades, it kind of has been very integrated to United States.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: All the more so in the sort of Europe, NAFTA, that Trump is sort of like undone or change.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's, it's, uh, and I think you're right to suggest that there's a lot of sort of like goodwill among Canadians.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: because this is seen as a sort of like a not a crisis that the government made itself, but it's an external crisis, and it is kind of creating a unity moment.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he has, I think, very intelligently trying to govern as not quite a centrist leader, but a national unity government.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to make certain concessions to different regions and different political interests, which is also, I think fits the sort of model of a leader in a moment of crisis.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to actually talk a little bit about that, though, why he's been given this sort of mandate.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, like, enjoying actually a lot of popular support, even for people who didn't necessarily vote for him.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is because of that moment of crisis and how anxious Canadians are about the sort of American threat.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is something, you know, most of the listeners of this podcast will be in the United States, and they might be like, puzzle to think,
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, like the Canadian seriously think that, you know, like Trump will like invade them people don't like Trump play like it seems like even a little bit more far fetched that even the sort of annexation of Greenland, but like can you like outline like what are the sources of this sort of Canadian anxiety and what is sort of scenarios whereby people think that the Canadian sovereignty could be undermined.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I'm not sure how far-fetched it is.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Trump is not speaking like a 20th century, like a late 20th century American president.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: He sounds like a 19th century American president, 20th century, McKinley or Teddy Roosevelt.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or Paul, like people who did actually, like, annexed territory.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, and, you know, the num schools who are seeking to curry favor with him are starting to say things.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, wow, we've got to show the Canadians the lesson or
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: We should conquer Greenland, we should do these things, we should expand the United States.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, if you have a sense of history that's longer than a couple decades, then you see that this is a traditional pattern with the United States.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there is a particular vulnerability in Alberta where they are organizing to hold a
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It makes me worry that there might be some sort of a dawn bass type scheme to say.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you see them, they're working on similar lines to the lines that Putin delivered about protecting people who are being oppressed in a breakaway area of Ukraine.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: The organizers
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: have been down in Washington, they say that at their last meeting it was held in a skiff, a secure top-secret facility, presumably a government of the United States facility, and that they're meeting with cabinet level people who have promised that they will help them to break up Canada.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think that it is the kind of thing we can just laugh
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: who's a former Royal Canadian mountain police intelligence officer who worked on the coups blockade and he's written about how he's gravely concerned and concerned that the Canadian security forces may be fearful and passive.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: because it sort of against the law to cooperate with a foreign government in this way.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think there is reason to be concerned.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am less concerned about American invasion than I was early on when Trump was threatening to make us the 51st state.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This stuff may seem laughable to Americans, but Americans are not the ones who saw
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I think that the Alberta separatist movement is there.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It does have American ties.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would also mention there's the earlier example of the sort of freedom convoy that happened under Justin Trudeau, which is very substantially funded by like American sources and which did have a kind of, well, it did actually like some of its advocates were advocating regime change.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, there's a kind of very disturbing and plausible scenario, and there are people who have held real positions of power and who do have the ear of Donald Trump.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm at Steebannon, his former advisor who's still like a very influential presence on the American right, and on his podcast has advocated this line.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting that whenever he talks about Canada, he's at Steebannon like likes to mention Ukraine, and he does it in the spirit of, well, Canada is vulnerable and we have to protect it.
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like Ukraine, but you know, like given the scenario that you have applied.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that that reference to Ukraine, you know, to my mind also carries within a threat.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, according to all polling, like Alberta separatism is not very popular, like, like, you know, like you could get, I've seen like, you know, maybe 20% if you're generous and sick, they pose a wrong, you get the 30% or whatever.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a majority position in Alberta, but the dumbass example, I think, that you pointed to,
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And actually, Trump's own history of challenging elections plays ways in which even strong electoral victory for Canadian Federation and for staying within Canada could still lead to a crisis, because they wouldn't think much to, you know, for people who supported where the separatists would say, like, you know, like, stop the steal.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a fake election.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we need the
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: the help of our American allies to come in here to check the the ballots.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is like, there's a, you know, like a very plausible scenario where this could play out in a way that really does disrupt Canadian sovereignty.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, that's what I'm worried about, and I found it bracing to talk to Lennox, who's actually worked on these issues as an intelligence officer, including during the convoy when there was an armed group that were eventually arrested and tried and found guilty at Coots near the border with the United States.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I went to Alberta during the last election and did some reporting, not far from there.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the features of the political geography of Alberta, there's a lot of people in that part of Alberta who's family roots are in the cowboy states.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you talk to them, you quickly realize that they've never really, their families have never really signed on to the sort of low-wrenching consensus about the nature of Canada.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: They find themselves nodding and agreeing into conservative American arguments, and they would frankly rather live in the United States, have that, they're part of the world, become part of the United States.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: there by no means the majority if you look at the history of Alberta a lot of the settlement was along a railway with people from Ontario and waves of immigrants from Europe and later from South Asia you know who basically signed on to median consensus but the specific nature you know where those people are is near the border
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they're not going to change their minds in the short term.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's striking that until now, this has never been a political movement in Alberta, unlike in Quebec.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also, we should probably note that although that the movement is not connected to the United States in any way,
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: the Quebec movement remains strong.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the sefches have been pulling ahead of all the other parties in the provincial landscape and they're promising to hold a referendum.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a reason to be nervous on a number of fronts.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I think that's right.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would draw a distinction, which I think you've hinted up, like, you know, between
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Quebec, Nationalism, which is like, you know, genuinely authentic nationalist movement, like with kind of like deep roots and doesn't necessarily need for intervention.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was a case that Charles the Gaul did praise it.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it was asked to leave the country, it was kind of resauded on Gratau, or for doing so.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's some distinctions we made between the Alberta situation, the Quebec situation.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think in Quebec as well, like my sense even though the sovereignty could win the provincial election, but as a kind of like alternative government, people are sick of the current government once they knew.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that like all the polling shows that like support for sovereignty is at a pretty much a low point right now in Quebec, right?
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like am I wrong about that?
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, the support, it's a curious sort of situation because the party Quebecwa is polling well and they are promising to have a referendum and most Quebecers don't want a referendum now.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was reporting in Quebec during the last federal election and a lot of lifelong sovereignists signed up to the Carnegie Project because as one party Quebecwa supported, Quebec can't be independent if Canada is not independent.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They can't separate from Canada if the whole shooting match is absorbed into the United States So now that is not what you think we're gonna put it.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know We have this one of the reasons why Carnie gave us speech and convexity today was to talk about this old
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: the long partnership between French Canada and English Canada that is based on a desire not to be governed by the Americans.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the whole point of the whole thing.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've struck these kind of very fraught and difficult arrangements because the alternative is the living under the stars and stripes, which is not what we want.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're right to point out like what the logic of it is.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like if Carnegie is worried about separatist movements within Canada, you know, giving the speech, a gave it at the story, the military battlefield, where the French and English forces fought and was later progress against the United States.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the whole thrust of the speech was to emphasize Quebec's role within confederation and the historical concord
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: our French and English people.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it seems like Carnegie is fighting.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you take the two speeches together, a two front war, one is an internal war within Canada to dampen down separatists' movements.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's doing that, obviously with this speech and come back.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would also suggest some of his policies in terms of fossil fuel of getting rid of the carbon tax, which is very popular in the Canadian West.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And kind of build a pipeline,
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are also gestures towards trying to defang any separatists sentiments that might be in Alberta.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the two front warriors, one in internal war, to build up national unity.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other is this more external thing to offer an alternative to Trump's American unilateralism.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: of trying to forge an alliance of bill powers that can work together to uphold the international order that the United States seems to be abandoning.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, it seems like a very coherent policy if we take the two things together, like everything that he's doing seems like very focused on the sort of crisis and looking at different fronts of battlefields.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Having said that would like, what do you think are kind of like weaknesses or areas where the sort of policies that is outlining might not be up for the task?
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I can't really quite a difficult country to govern, so that's the main vulnerability as always.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's because of social media, it doesn't seem to be getting easier, right?
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: get their messages using dark money as they did in Brexit to people inside Canada and I just recently looked again at a book called Mind F. Asterick C.K.
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: by Chris Wiley who worked with Ben and at Cambridge Analytica.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and you know it's kind of bracing to think about what they managed to achieve there.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's to me that the
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: the most worrisome sort of thing is the continued and it likely it's only going to become more intense, you know social media campaigns to undermine Canadian unity.
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: that's that's what seems to be and we don't see something like that in Quebec which is a homegrown kind of thing but you if you spend some time looking at what they're doing in Alberta somebody's obviously spending some money to communicate to organize and so that seems to be the the sort of weak spot right now
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I mean, in terms of that issue, like, I think both the clients and the Europeans have a very worried about this.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And well, once you see this, especially in some of the sort of European comments and policies trying to combat Elon Musk, you know, who has been very much part of this or Trump project of encouraging war-right, insurgent movements.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: in American allied countries.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like on a public policy level, like do you hear anything coming out of Ottawa that can try to like address this or grapple with this problem?
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not tracking that closely, but I would be surprised if they feel that they want to take on Elon Musk or the social media giants, you know, they had to back down off of introducing a digital services tax.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's the kind of thing that they're going to have to be very careful about.
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the what I find most striking elements of Trump's policy in, you know since his second election, is how quick he is to threaten countries that attempt to impose regular regulatory burdens on the
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know he's he's very politically integrated with that and also they kind of serve his political cause, you know, in a lot of ways.
• 31:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that I mean, that's a real search challenge, right?
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's how, how dare you not allow our Trojan horse into your city gates.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, yeah, and this is off the topic, but I don't know if you've noticed this a couple weeks ago, there was a story out of St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Caribbean islands.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have a local gun laws.
• 32:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of problems with gun violence throughout the Caribbean, and, and, and, and, and,
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's an American problem really because the guns come from the United States, which is unique in the world in not having gun control.
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But so I think Thomas for a likely sensible local reasons has, you know, island-based gun control.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trump, uh, the Trump government has threatened them, they didn't let say a lot, basically apply the second amendment in St. Thomas.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you see this sort of like, if you start looking at all these things together, it's like a demand that everyone be governed in a way that is acceptable to US business interests, whether it's gun manufacturers or social media giants, they're trying
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: health and safety laws.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you have this kind of, I don't know how to think of it, except it's sort of aggressive capitalism.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll accept the American system or you'll pay.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that is actually a very student observation.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think some of the sort of fossil fuel stuff as well, like in Venezuela, then even like the business deals that are coming out of the Middle East.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is a way of trying to make us are paying empire, and you know, like I mean, if I wanted to introduce a lot of skepticism, like to my mind,
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's the principles that Karni outlined.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We all sort of middle powers trying to step in and uphold the principles that the U.S. is not violating.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I told my mind, like, sort of like, make sense.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just wondering, since some of this predation is happening as you mentioned in, like, St. Thomas,
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think a large price of the world were happy to see Maduro go in Venezuela, but now the situation where like the Americans government is like working with Venezuela to run the oil companies and that the profits from that are like, you know, under the control of the Trump administration and apparently we banked
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: offshore.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe in the Middle East.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: What in Cherkarni's very of the middle powers?
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like how do you set up opposition to this?
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what it includes some way of stopping this sort of predation?
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like my question is like, how can this proposal grapple with the size of the
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: a good question and I'm not sure the current in a way is best position to lead that kind of thing.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean in a way is he's sort of the foremost regulator in the world, right?
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of these things, you know, when we look at Venezuela, I think most, I think polls well in Latin America.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Latin Americans are glad to see Maduro gone.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't poll well in Canada, right, because it's just associated with Trump.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was listening to Scott Galloway yesterday talking about American military interventions is being like bond films that start with tremendously diverting set pieces, but get bogged down and are lousy by the end, you know, what Trump did was extraordinary, but we're not at the end of the first act yet, right?
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I keep thinking the Jimmy Cliff tune, the harder they come, the harder they fall.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Americans are, you know,
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: they can do a surgical strike like that if they start putting boots on the ground any place that seems like it could end badly so you know are we are we at the beginning of a new era of American military supremacy it's we're just in the first part of the movie right?
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess my general question is, like, you know, like, to what degree can we return to a sort of like, you know, it's just a very rational law, where the principle of like, you know, you can't take over another country's oil revenue.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a positive, and I think I think we're far away from that.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, typically American military supremacy, I think it is notable in some ways one way to read what's happening now is a symptom of weakness rather than strength because the Trump is retreating from fighting with like major great power rivals like Russia and China and it's picking like yellow, that's sort of easy targets.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maduro was a very easy target because as you say,
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And his own country, you know, like I don't think it takes much for the United States to threaten Greenland.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, but I think it is, yeah, obviously we don't want a world where these are like a great power military threats of conquest become normative.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it remains an open question as to how to combat it.
• 37:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But,
• 37:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Certainly, I think Carnegie Desert is a lot of credit for actually addressing these issues head on.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, in a way that other Western leaders aren't able to do.
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you saw a Sentinel tool has a piece in the New York review of books today, talking about how, you know, this is sort of wonder attached normally to performance of empire.
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: new technology and new, you know, it sort of helps to all people, but he points out that this is an sort of oil era thing that Trump is doing in Venezuela.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, the Chinese are rapidly advancing in manufacturing and in low-carbon energy production.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know,
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: He does not seem to be equipping the United States for the economy of the future.
• 38:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did actually read that until I think because you had lived to it, so I thought, no, it is absolutely the case of the US is betting on oil and China's betting on new technologies in terms of solar and like I vehicles.
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we'll see which is the the greater bet, the better bet.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the challenge for countries like Canada, who's two major trading
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, the United States and China is the, you know, how to find the space for ourselves in this new world.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, but I don't know.
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I