May 12, 2025 - Epoch Times
10:01
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| He knows Canada's vulnerability to the United States and he knows that for Canada there is no realistic alternative. | |
| And he's basically signaling to Canadians he knows this and he's going to have... | |
| High expectations of any negotiations that will take place between Canada and the United States over the nature of our trade and other relationships. | |
| Let me put it a different way. | |
| Canada has, I think it is fair to say, Been failing to keep up its end of the bargain with the United States. | |
| Its end of the bargain being, you know, we will be a reliable ally on defense. | |
| We have not been a reliable ally on defense. | |
| That we will be the country that will look after the Arctic flank of North America. | |
| We have not been looking after the Arctic flank of North America. | |
| That we will be, you know, enforcing the rule of law in Canada and ensuring that... | |
| Canada cannot be used as a launching pad for, you know, drug trade with the United States. | |
| I think he exaggerates to some extent the degree to which this happens, but there's no doubt that Canada is part of the international network that is flooding the United States with fentanyl. | |
| By the way, I think the biggest role that we play in that is that we have become a haven for money laundering for the people who are actually behind the drug trade, which is mostly China. | |
| And so those are just a few examples of ways in which I think America is entitled to say to Canada, you've not been holding up your end of the bargain. | |
| And that's one of the reasons why. | |
| I have been urging people on both sides of the border to think about what I call a grand bargain between Canada and the United States. | |
| Let's not get caught in the weeds on the trade relationship. | |
| That's very important. | |
| Let's make sure we get that right. | |
| But, you know, there's border management issues, there's defence issues, there's national security issues, you know, drug trade issues, organised crime issues, all of which. | |
| Touch on the Canada-US relationship. | |
| And we should sit down with Donald Trump. | |
| He's the great dealmaker. | |
| Say to him, Mr. Trump, we are prepared to negotiate across this whole range of issues and to help define a grand bargain that will... | |
| Be in Canada's interest. | |
| We're not here to sell out Canada's interest, but that you will be able to sell to Americans as a great deal that you have negotiated on their behalf and that is in their interests. | |
| And I think there's a lot of scope to do that. | |
| You know, I'm just thinking to myself this morning, Sam Cooper has an article talking about how The Canadian authorities are refusing or did at one point refuse to cooperate with the DEA around car fentanyl production. | |
| Cleo Pascal on this show some time ago, a fellow Canadian over at FDD, she's described Canada as a kind of a net security detractor for the United States at the moment, as you alluded to. | |
| And so Canada is essentially deeply reliant on the U.S. for its security. | |
| In my view, this is something that the current administration in the US wants to get in order for those relationships to make sense. | |
| I'm curious about your thoughts on this. | |
| Canada was a founding member of NATO, the North American Treaty Organization. | |
| The purpose of NATO was to Protect the liberal democracies from external threats in the post-war world where Germany and France were a smoking ruin. | |
| Britain had been destroyed by the war effort. | |
| America was rich and powerful. | |
| And was willing to put that wealth and power on the line to make sure that, you know, the liberal democracies, particularly in Europe, could not be bullied and taken over by particularly the Soviet Union. | |
| Now, that was a long time ago. | |
| NATO was founded. | |
| I think I'm right in saying in '49. | |
| And part of Donald Trump's whole approach to the rest of the world is to say, look, all of our so-called allies, and I'm using his language, have been free riding on America's defense effort. | |
| You know, 70 years after the founding of NATO, basically, they're still... | |
| Contributing only a fraction to their collective defense that America is contributing. | |
| And Canada, one of those founding members of NATO, is one of the worst laggards. | |
| You know, we sign up for a treaty that, in Article 5, commits all the members of the Alliance to the proposition that if a member of the Alliance is invaded by another country... | |
| It will be regarded as an attack on all of those countries, and everyone will come to the defense of the country so attacked. | |
| Article 5, by the way, has only been invoked once, and that was when America asked its allies to help them invade Afghanistan because they had been the launching pad for 9-11. | |
| Back to Canada. | |
| You know, NATO several years ago said, look, you know, America is correct that, you know, the other allies are, you know, not living up to their obligations and we need to fix this. | |
| And so NATO made a formal declaration that the target for all the NATO members in terms of defense spending. | |
| That all of them were expected to spend a minimum of 2% of their GDP. | |
| So 2% of their national wealth generated every year should be spent on defense. | |
| Canada is like down around 1.3, where we're one of the two or three worst performing members of the NATO alliance. | |
| And in private meetings, you know, our previous Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said explicitly, it's been reported in the media, said explicitly to his NATO partners, we're never going to reach 2%. | |
| Don't expect us to do this. | |
| You know, he paid lip service to it in public, but he made it very clear that Canada had other things to do with its money. | |
| Well, George W. Bush... | |
| And Barack Obama, and Trump won, and Joe Biden, all of them, Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter, they all said to the NATO alliance, "You guys have got to do a better job on defense spending." Almost everybody else in the alliance has made some progress. | |
| Some countries have done really way more than was asked for, and they're mostly countries close to Russia because they're frightened to death of Russia, Poland and the Baltic Republics and so on. | |
| And Canada has just stood back and said, sorry, we have other things we want to do with that money. | |
| So they wanted all the benefits of... | |
| The US needs to protect Canada, from my viewpoint, even if there was no NATO. | |
| Well, this is a fair point. | |
| America would never allow another country to invade Canada because next stop would be America, wouldn't it? | |
| So can I just build on that just for a sec? | |
| So to me, this extensive, deep infiltration of Canada by the Chinese Communist Party, I think, is part of this discussion that the U.S. is trying to—this negotiation, right? | |
| It's not just about tariffs, I guess that's what I'm saying. | |
| I completely agree. | |
| And while I personally am skeptical that the current government of Canada will take a hard line on China, I am very hopeful that America should, I think, quite properly say, and by the way, you cannot be a backdoor of access for the Chinese to America. | |
| It's a perfectly legitimate thing for America to ask for. | |
| That will be a tough pill for the Liberal Party of Canada to swallow because they have You know, to a considerable extent, hitched their wagon to China as a rising power. | |
| But I really think, for all the reasons that we've talked about, Canada's profound vulnerability to hostility from America, China's complete inability to step in and be, for us, what America is, in terms of A trade partner, a security partner, a defense partner. | |
| And also, I might add, being a totalitarian state that is actively eradicating entire groups of its own people. |
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