Is Canada Sleepwalking Into China's Trap | Election Special Ep.7 - Power Struggle

Episode Transcript
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Terry Glavin (00:00):
Energy sovereignty , I think, is the conversation
that we really should have beenhaving through the election.
To some extent, I think we werehaving it, but the overemphasis
on pipelines, pipelines,pipelines for their own sake
misses the point that well, weactually have pipelines and the

(00:22):
pipeline.
What is it?
$34 billion, I think we shelledout.

Stewart Muir (00:26):
Trans Mountain.

To get the Trans Mountain pipeline built.
Where's that oil going?

California and China.

It's going to China in a very, very big way.

Welcome to Powers Trouble.
I'm your host, stuart Muir.
Today is Friday, april 25th,just three days before Canadians
head to the polls in perhapsthe most consequential election
we've experienced in generations.
By the time you listen to thisepisode, the results will have
been decided.
Canada will be starting a newpolitical chapter To reflect on

(01:06):
where we are and where we mightbe headed.
I'm joined today by renownedjournalist and author, terry
Glavin.
Terry's incisive commentary hasshaped Canadian political
discourse for decades.
Before diving into today'sissues, I've asked Terry to read
from his powerful 1990 book ADeath Feast in Dimla Hamid.

(01:28):
Terry, thanks for coming toPower Struggle.
Here's your book.
It's one of my favorite books.

Completely unexpected, and thank you very
much, Stuart.
We're geezers now.

Yes, officially.

And you wanted me to read, if I'm not mistaken,
right from the opening of thatchapter.
Chapter 4.
Okay.

Yes.

Here we go.
Nola was the last chief toleave Dimna, hamad.
The seasons had turned backupon themselves and the city's
final punishment began.
The arc of the sun ended itsnorthward migration and turned
back again to the south.
With each new morning the snowline crept further down the
mountain sides until the snowbegan to fall in the streets of

(02:10):
Dimnehamet.
The people of the great cityhad grown insolent and careless.
They failed to honor theremains of the first returning
salmon of spring.
First, garen mocked the skywith the first running salmon,
with the first salmon runningacross the salmon weirs, the
skies darkened and the snow fell.
And it kept falling until allthe great houses in Dimlechama

(02:33):
disappeared beneath it.
There was Fanny Morrison's stonefeast to be seen too.
It was a gathering to feast forthe raising of a headstone, a
modern equivalent of a poleraising feast.
Fanny had died twenty yearsearlier, but her son, willie,
was never quite settled abouthis responsibilities in
completing the cycle of fireweedfeasts for her, and it had been
bothering him all those years.

(02:54):
And there was the feast forLelt, the late Fred Johnson of
Gitwangach.
And there was another feast inKisbyox, the death feast for
Mabel White.
And there was much planning andarrangement to be done for the
feast of Wee Sake's grandmother,wygette Elsie Morrison.

So 37 years ago.

God, I was a child reporter for Vancouver Sun when
I wrote that yeah, andstrangely it has echoes even now
.
Some things don't seem tochange.

It's a timeless region and a consequential one,
and there's so many passageshere I would love to hear you
read that one to me speaks ofthe timelessness of the, the
people of that part of thenorthwest of british.
You know it.
What?
Where is it on a map forsomeone?

oh gosh well if Well.
I think most people are vaguelyfamiliar with Prince Rupert say
right Prince Rupert, yeah,almost Alaska.
Almost Alaska.
And if you head up the SkeenaRiver I'm going to say maybe 100
miles you get to the middle ofthe universe.
You get to Dimlehamet, thisancient city state that is said

(04:03):
to have existed at the universe.
You get to Dimlechamed, thisancient city-state that is said
to have existed at the time,roughly at the forks.
Well, where the Bulkeley comesin, the Bulkeley River comes
into the Skeena, very, veryinteresting part of the world.
It is the westernmost edge of,I guess, what is it?
St Paul's province, theCatholic universe of North

(04:26):
America, the old Catholicuniverse and, older still, the
western edge of the Athopascanlanguage families which stretch
all the way back as far asHudson's Bay.
Really, I mean, there's dozensand dozens of languages, but in
that linguist, a huge linguisticgroup and the coast culture
begins right and it becomesincreasingly curiously

(04:48):
Protestant for all kinds ofinteresting reasons.
And it is right.
There.
The greatest and most importantand most disturbing conflicts
or struggles in the land claimsdisputes in Canada.
That was the fulcrum, was rightthere and of course it ended up

(05:12):
producing the leading case onAboriginal title and rights in
Canada, which is Delgamuthversus the Queen.

A young reporter at the Vancouver Sun, this
Delgamuth case involving theGit-San and what's the claim
comes up and you say I want togo up and report this story in
the style of what we used tocall new journalism, like Harry
Southern or some of the othergreats.
I mean, this really is aclassic of a style of reporting,

(05:40):
not just, that's anotherconversation.
Right, thanks, but it was uh,momentous at the time.
But it's still with us now andit's still yeah, you know, this
show is power struggle.
It's about energy and how weget energy.
To me, the the passion I havefor this show comes from that,
because it's a human struggle,because you can't say economy

(06:01):
without having energy in that,yeah, humans can't persist
without energy, but it's astruggle to get it and the
struggle of this area persiststoday, it has been the front
lines of that epochal struggleover energy as well.
And it's a place in geopoliticalterms, which is a term
geopolitical that wasn't usedmuch for a long time until

(06:23):
Russia invaded Ukraine.
It wasn't used in Canada much.
You didn't hear it.

Well, there were nerds like us who would use it a
lot.

Occasionally, yes, but suddenly, I bet, when it
was talking about it, and if youlook at the geopolitics of
Canada and its future, it goesthrough the lands of the Gitxsan
and Wet'suwet'en people, and wesaw that in the headlines in
2020, when the whole country wasshut down because of rail
blockades.
I actually was, I think, theonly one who went out there to

(06:51):
document this.
We put a drone up, weinterviewed people at the tracks
.
There was actually someone whodecided they didn't like me
being there and chased me offthe site at Hazleton, which you
write about, and it was aflashpoint then, as it was years
ago.

Well, it was actually we Sakes at Gitwungach
who first stood on the tracks,the CN tracks.
By himself he stood there andstopped the train and I have to
confess I'm kind of personallyvested in this, in that, you
know, a lot of my buddies are inthe logging industry and the
fishing industry.
When I was growing up but WeeSakes, I loved him.

(07:32):
He ended up being my firstboy's godfather, which required
a little bit of backstairs workbecause he's actually, you know,
an Anglican and we're Catholics, and so you had to do a little
bit of work with the archdioceseto get that done.
But he was a great guy and agreat barrel of laughs and he

(07:53):
didn't have some kind of chip onhis shoulder.
He wanted to see a flourishingforest industry in his
traditional territories whiteguys and Indians, as we used to
call them and the great concernthen was the way the wealth was
being drained from the landscapeand it was being consolidated.
And we're shipping and we stillare shipping raw logs off to

(08:15):
Asia.
And in more recent years, thatvery same fulcrum, that exact
place, has been where you knowthe great struggles and the
arrests and the roadblocks thatsome of the Soudans have been
involved with against thenatural gas pipeline that's

(08:38):
going through there.
And I think what was differentthen was that the whole point of
the assertion of Aboriginaltitle among the people at the
vanguard of that struggle was sothat indigenous people would
have a stake, a vested stake, inthe development and the

(09:00):
management of natural resourcesof their traditional territories
, in cooperation with, incollaboration with Umshua white
people, their neighbors andquite often their relatives.
There are very few politicianswho understand that.
That's where it all came from.

(09:21):
It wasn't about stoppingdevelopment.
That was the last thing that itwas about.
As a matter of fact, theargument, the successful
argument in Aboriginal title lawwas that Indigenous people have
the right to.
Aboriginal title implies theright of Indigenous people to
exploit the natural resources oftheir traditional territories

(09:43):
in a contemporary manner and tobuild pipelines, to harvest
timber, to develop mines as anAboriginal right, as a right
deriving from an extinguishedAboriginal title.
And in recent years it's kindof been turned on its head and I
mean, I think, reasonably andfor understandable cases in some

(10:06):
instances.
But that's what it was allabout.
And, interestingly, the firstuse of the term reconciliation.
We hear it all.
We're all in favor ofreconciliation.
We're not quite sure whatthat's supposed to mean and as
far as I understand, as far as Iknow, the term reconciliation
in law was established inDelgamouk and the point of

(10:30):
reconciliation was it was toreconcile Aboriginal rights with
crown title, aboriginal titlewith crown sovereignty.
And it has become somethingelse and I think it's become
quite gnarly and debris-strewnand contested and not

(10:57):
particularly healthy.

It feels like one of those terms.
I've seen sustainability gothrough this and it's owned by
so-and-so and then so-and-sowants to get a hold of it and it
changes and at the end of theday it becomes kind of useless
and we need to think ofsomething else if we want to put
meaning into it.
Campaign looking back over sixweeks, which we're going to do

(11:18):
here, and maybe talk about thecampaign that wasn't.
I can't help but think I wasreading the Globe and Mail, I
think had an editorial.
They said look, this countryneeds energy.
We need energy security.
We need it to beenvironmentally acceptable to
the populace.
We need it to be available andaffordable.
It needs to drive theindustrial development and the
economy.
We definitely need it to beavailable and affordable.

(11:40):
It needs to drive theindustrial development and the
economy.
We definitely need that.
To have that, we can't just saywe need energy.
We have to admit we need thingslike pipelines and
infrastructure, Otherwise you'rejust mouthing meaningless
platitudes, Nonsense, yes.
And so they came down.
They said look, we don't thinkCarney's convincing in what he's
offering to get that.

(12:01):
But you know what, If you'reexpecting us to say we think
Polyev can do it, don't, becausewe don't think he's offered the
way to get there.
Neither one has offered, eventhough both acknowledge that we
yes, it's true, we do need tosolve this, we do need that
development.
Neither one has persuaded theanonymous, the collective voice
of the global, and mailed thatit's there.

(12:22):
So there are those for whomwhere we are today, wherever
that is, is unresolved.
So we have a job to do here,Terry.
Let's resolve it, let's explainit.

The contradictions that prevail globally now, I
think, were front and center tothe land struggles and the
resource development strugglesthat obtained when we were boy
reporters up there.
And I mean seriouscontradictions and they are

(12:55):
broadly geopolitical.
When you find yourself barelyable to make ends meet and you
live in Smithers and you go toCostco or Walmart and you buy
pink salmon that's packaged,that was actually fished out of
the river, that you can see fromthe parking lot and was sent to

(13:18):
China and was packaged thereand then comes all the way back
across the Pacific and you'rebuying it under plastic, I mean
this strikes me as an odd way torun an economy, a resource
economy, and I think we are.
Energy sovereignty, I think, isthe conversation that we really

(13:42):
should have been having throughthe election.
To some extent, I think we werehaving it, but the overemphasis
on pipelines, pipelines,pipelines for their own sake,
misses the point that well, weactually have pipelines and the
pipeline.
What is it?
$34 billion, I think we shelledout.

Trans Mountain.

To get the Trans Mountain pipeline built.
Where's that oil going?

California and China.

It's going to China in a very, very big way.
Our exports to China have beenincreasing through all of the
fighting about the two Michaelsand Chinese Beijing's influence
operations.
In Canada the trade deficit isstill outrageous, but exports
have been increasing, and it'smainly oil and coal.

(14:34):
And this is something that Ithink really complicates the
whole question about Canada'sobligations with respect to
climate change, which I'm all infavor of us meeting.
But you know imposing a carbontax, you know making some bloke
in Prince George pay more at thegas pump when, if you actually
look at the, I mean we don'tcall it global climate change

(14:57):
for nothing.
Don't call it global climatechange for nothing.
It's not like Canada's makingany great contribution to the
flooding of greenhouse gasesinto the upper stratosphere.
In the bigger scheme of things,and when you look at that bigger
scheme of things, there's achart you can find that's being
put together by the oil industryand by environmental
organizations.

(15:18):
It's one of the few confluencesof interest that you know
they're agreed on is thecontribution of greenhouse gases
, production of greenhouse gasessince 2000, the year 2000.
And in fact North America andEurope and Japan, it's basically
a flat line.
You know there have been allkinds of innovations that of

(15:41):
innovations the way wemanufacture cars, for one thing
that have allowed us tobasically more or less level off
our greenhouse gas emissions,whereas the Chinese contribution
is like that, the line is likethat, and you can't pretend that
that's not happening and youcan't expect ordinary working

(16:03):
people to bear this burden whenwe have senior politicians that
are flitting off to China andpatting the Chinese on the back
for building perhaps less coalmines this year than they did
last year and what have you andnot having the same commitments,
whether they're realistic ornot, to net zero as we do, this

(16:27):
is really quite huge.
This is a really huge issue andit's very difficult in Canada
to have an honest conversationabout it.

I'm struck by the success China has had in
becoming a manufacturer at amega scale of the components of
what some call energy transition, although that term I think
would be better replaced withwhat's actually happening energy
addition.
We're just adding more energy,but let's call it energy
transition equipment solarpanels and wind cells and

(17:00):
electrolyzers and the wholegamut.
China has become the dominantsupplier of all of that
equipment, and if you want tohave a green economy in the
definition of the renewableslobby, you are going to be
getting your equipment fromChina, where, incidentally, it's
made with coal-firedelectricity.

(17:22):
But let's set that aside.

And as often as not, the photovoltaic function
of it all is produced inXinjiang by Uyghur slaves.

Such as the rare earth, metals that need to be
supplied and all of these things.
It's riven with contradictionsof this kind, and yet there
seems to be the expectation thatthere's a moral issue here.
There's the right and wrong.
If you don't accept that wehave to buy these components
from China for the Western greentransition, then you must be a

(17:54):
climate denier is one of the isone of the statements you
sometimes hear.
Another is more the Trumpianside of.
We're going to punish China forcommitting the crime of selling
us the things that we've beendemanding China sell us for the
last 50 years, and they haveaccumulated the money we gave

(18:18):
them when they should have beenbuying the things we wanted to
sell them.
So now we've got this Trumpianthing.
You called the Trump incomingcabinet.
This is back in November,before it even came true.
You said the Trumpadministration would be a
cabinet of quote circus freaksand Bond villains, and you're
not wrong.
Turns out villains, and you'renot wrong.

(18:44):
So when you look at what Trumphas built and you look at his
relationship with China, is hedoing something different than
Canada is?
Well, clearly he is.
Is he doing something?
Maybe better?

Okay, that's a good question.
All right, Let me say I thinkTrump's tariffs on China doesn't
hurt my feelings.

It doesn't make me cry.

I just wish we had been doing this a quarter of a
century ago or more.
The problem is that he's makingwar on the rest of the world,
including the liberal democraticorder, while he's also
pretending to make war on China.
While he's also pretending tomake war on China and I say

(19:27):
pretending is that if youactually look at his polemics
and postures and standpoints andpolicies, Xi Jinping isn't
bothered by any of this.
He's described Xi Jinping ashis friend.

We like.

Xi Jinping His vision to the extent that there
is one there is to kind ofdivide up the planner between
China, Russia and Washington DC,and China basically owns Africa
now.
And what is it?
Five, seven of the 11 majorUnited Nations agencies are

(19:58):
directly or indirectlycontrolled by China now, and
that's largely because of theUN's retreat from the world
under the Obama administration,by the way, and the Biden
administration it wasn't allTrump but the Chinese are
looking at this now and saying,meh, 14% of their exports, 14.5%

(20:20):
of their exports goes to theUnited States Command and
control slave economy.
You don't think that those guyscan figure out what to do.
Of course they can figure itout.
They're going to be fine.
And I look back to the beginningof this century.
You know we all think ofSeptember 11th 2001,.
Right, I think it was kind oflike a blunt trauma wound to the

(20:42):
head.
Everybody was shaken by this,on the left and the right.
I will not disparage George WBush, as so many people will.
I think, if you can, you can'timagine what the world would
have been like if we allowedSaddam Hussein to stay in power.
I mean, give your head a shake.
Guy had to be gone and whichwas, by the way, the position of

(21:06):
the Democratic Party longbefore George Bush came along.
Ironically, one of the things weforget, but the bigger thing
that happened last year was inDecember, and it was when the
World Trade Organization waspermitted to admit China into
its ranks.
That was the moment that theWest put a knife to its own
throat and that has determinedlargely the course of history

(21:28):
ever since.
And it is why Russia has beenallowed to get away with the
genocidal invasion of Ukraine,and it is why our economy has
become weakened and why ourpolitics are enfeebled and why
Canada is at this juncture now,where we're being pulled between

(21:49):
the orbits of two very darkstars.
One is impermanent Trump isn'tgoing to be there forever.
One is impermanent Trump isn'tgoing to be there forever, but I
think inshallah, God willing wehave learned that we cannot be
as reliant as we have been ontrade with the United States.

(22:10):
Our economy should not be asreliant as it has become on
exports either.
And Beijing and that dark star,and those guys aren't going
away anytime soon.

So are we headed towards a stronger reliance on
China?

That's my worry.
That's my worry.
That's a far greater worry thatI have than this difficulty
that we're having with the Yanks.
We're always going to havedifficulties with the Yanks.
They're a bit mad and it'sreally quite tragic.
I remember saying to a lot ofmy erstwhile comrades on the
left 20 years ago, 25 years agoyou might whine about American

(22:52):
imperialism as much as you like,but you're going to miss the
old bitch when she's gone.
And that is what we're seeingnow is we're seeing the collapse
of the American, the finalcollapse of the American order.
It began under Obama in a very,very, very big way His
capitulations throughout theMiddle East and the retreat of

(23:12):
democracy around the world,where it's measured by Freedom
House and VDEM and any number ofinstitutions that track this
sort of thing VDEM and anynumber of institutions that
track this sort of thing.
I think we're in our 19th yearnow.
Depending on how you add it up,18 or 19 years of democracy
retreat throughout the world.

Terry, you've written that Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau was basicallyalready acting like a governor
when Trump started calling himGovernor.

Trudeau, that was a paradox.

Why did you think?

that Because all the evidence suggested that.
I mean he was indistinguishablefrom the.
You know, a governor of somesmall, irrelevant but seriously
woke democratic state.
You know you have a shooting, amass shooting in Uvalde, texas,
and the next thing, you know,he's having this big press
conference and announcing howhe's going to impose further

(23:59):
restrictions on firearms inCanada.
There's a leak out of the USSupreme Court about the pending
decision on abortion rights.
He has another big pressconference and makes commitments
to ensure that Canadians havefull access to abortions.
Access to abortions.

(24:26):
I don't think there was a singlefaddish imbecility to come out
of an American, an Ivy Leagueuniversities, social sciences
and humanities department, thatwasn't adopted by the Trudeau
government.
We became I mean Canada becamewas like some kind of social
justice Instagram account incharge of a G7 country.
I mean it really was comical.

(24:47):
And he, you know all of hisinfluences, almost all of his
influences were American Trump'spardon me, trudeau's.
And the other thing that I'vealways found fascinating about
that, I mean Trumpism isdefinitely a dear leader cult.
I mean, let's be honest aboutthis, for God's sake.
Well, so was Trudeauism, verymuch so.

(25:07):
They're both one percenters,everything.
If you could look at all of theI mean the most extreme and even
crazy things that people weresaying about Trump's liaisons
with Vladimir Putin's regime inRussia in Trump 1, and a lot of
it was crazy are things that canbe said accurately about Justin

(25:31):
Trudeau's relationship with XiJinping's regime in Beijing.
If you can imagine Trumpelevating the head of the
Russian American BusinessCouncil to the most senior
position in the Senateimmediately after getting
elected, that's what WhitneyTrudeau did.
He elevated the head of theChina-Canada Business Council to

(25:51):
the senior government post inthe Senate.
If you can imagine Trumpassembling all of the key

(26:14):
Republican donors in variouscash for access soirees across
the United States with Russianoligarchs States, that's exactly
what Trudeau did with respectto his hopes for a free trade
agreement in China.
We're China.

So yeah Well, can you imagine if Donald Trump did
a podcast that was in Canada?
Because I've noticed that,whether it's Trudeau or Carney
and Paul, it seems like the onlypodcasts they do are in the US.
And early in the campaign, Ithink someone from the Carney
camp I know someone from theCarney camp asked me hey, would

(26:51):
you be interested in having MarkCarney on the Power Struggle
podcast?
I said sure, absolutely I woulddo that.
I'd never heard anything.
But then you start showing upon the US podcasts.
I don't know what am I?

Well, he originally I mean he basically
announced his decision to runfor the leadership of the
Liberal Party on Jon Stewart'sshow in New York Right.
Similarly, I mean you knowTrudeau, you know he shows up.
The first major interview hedid was with the New York Times
when he was describing how he.

So we're already the 51st state Certainly acting
like it.

I mean, you know.
So I think there's a lot ofobservations about how the
fringes of the ConservativeParty and I will call them
fringes do very, very closelyresemble some of the Trumpist
hooliganism.
The Yahoos, that's true.
But let's be honest about this.

(27:47):
Shall we Is all I'm saying.

Well, let's get into this election campaign.
Did China manipulate thiscampaign?
Is there evidence?

Yeah, there's a lot of evidence for that.
It's just that the difficultyis in the language that we use.
Is it foreign interference?
If it's welcomed and invited?
If it's solicited, is thatinterference?
You need a flat tire, you'vegot a flat tire and somebody
comes by and fixes your flattire.

(28:17):
Is he interfering with your car?
It is welcomed and invited.
There are at least 15 ridings inCanada where it's practically
impossible to get elected dogcatcher without the approval of
the local proxies of the UnitedFront Work Department of the

(28:38):
Chinese Communist PartyPolitburo.
It is deeply vested in theleadership of the Liberal Party
in the greater Toronto areaparts of Metro Vancouver.
The Conservative Party is notimmune to this either.
They've been very active inmonkey-wrenching the
Conservative Party as well,nowhere near as successfully as

(29:02):
with the Liberal Party, because,of course, in the case of the
Liberal Party particularly theJustin Trudeau Liberals,
although Khrushchev Liberals aswell the Liberal Party
essentially became the politicalwing of the Canada-China
Business Council and in theperson of Pierre Trudeau you had
a person who objectively,whatever you might think of him,

(29:22):
like him or not could bedescribed as the most important
propaganda asset of the ChineseCommunist Party in North America
in the 1960s and 1970s.

It's bread in the bone with these guys is what I'm
saying Now, maybe just to bedevil's advocate for China.
Just a couple of things I wantto throw at you, terry.
Okay, look, the current primeminister as we sit here is
someone who was the governor ofthe Bank of England.
He is someone who stood up whenKeir Starmer was trying to lead

(29:58):
the Labour Party into power,and did so successfully.
He stood up, mark Carney did onvideo and endorsed Keir
Starmer's government, andpresumably there's some
friendship or alliance therethat persists.
We thought we stopped being acolony of the United Kingdom a

(30:20):
long, long time ago, but itseems like one might be able to
say well, there's a prettystrong alliance.
Is that command and control?
Is there something in that?
Surely a critic of your Chinaarguments might suggest that,
and I wonder what you have tosay about that.

Well, I mean personally.
It's difficult for me becauseI'm a Tague, I come from Fenian
stock, I'm Irish Catholic, butwe were also loyalists.
We're Darcy McGee Catholics,okay, and we have a very deep
commitment to a kind of ananti-fascist, anti-nazi
tradition on both sides of mymother's and father's sides.

(31:01):
I have no difficulty in sayingGod save the king.
I have no difficulty in sayingthat at all.
I think the Commonwealth was agood idea.
It didn't work out all thatwell.
A lot of people are reviving thenotion of a
Canada-Australia-NewZealand-United Kingdom kind of
alliance.
That's an interestingconversation to have.

(31:23):
It doesn't mean being subjectto some kind of imperial
overseer.
In fact, relations with theUnited States doesn't have to
mean that either.
But you'd have to kid yourselfvery, very, very long and hard
if you won't acknowledge thatthat's the kind of relationship
that we would enter into andhave entered into.

(31:46):
The deeper that we associatewith China, the closer that we
hitch our wagon to that team ofhorses, the more subservient we
will become, the more vulnerableand susceptible we will become
to the whims of the world's mostsuccessful and dynamic torture

(32:08):
state.
I mean, it is a matter ofvalues, ultimately.
I think and I make no apologiesfor adhering to the values of
my parents and grandparents andgreat-grandparents.
There's nothing wrong withshooting Nazis.

Well, king Charles is our king and we are a part
of the Commonwealth.
There's a lot of commonalitythere, but I am still curious.
I mean there will be, say,chinese Canadians who are
thinking well, I immigrated fromthis country, I would like to
use my cultural ties to China tobe successful in business and

(32:45):
in manufacturing, but now wehave these tough, these
divisions.

Yeah, that's my answer.
Maybe it's because I run with arough crowd, okay, maybe it's
the company I keep.
I've spent more time insynagogues than Catholic
churches over the last 15 years.
The people that I associatewith, I mean, I'm barred from
Russia.
I can no longer go anywherenear Russia.

(33:10):
I'm sanctioned by Russia notofficially sanctioned by China
yet but I know I'll never beable to return to China.
All of the people I know, theChinese that I know, the Hong
Kongers that I know don't havethe view that you just expressed
.
They want rid and shut of theinfluence of the Chinese

(33:31):
Communist Party in their livesand in their country.
And I think you really have tochoose sides.
Sometimes.
It does come down to that, andit's complicated because you
know we talk about the Chinesecommunity.
There's no such thing as theChinese community in Canada.
There used to be something thatyou could call the Chinese

(33:51):
community in Canada.
There were Cantonese-speakingpeople, taishan and Taishanese
people, most of them from thefive counties at the mouth of
the Pearl River Delta.
You know the Hongkars and so on, and about 10 years ago that
started to change radically.
I think Vancouver had about100,000 people, if you include

(34:12):
the family members as well andall the capital that they
brought to Greater Vancouver.
And you have significantcandidates in the Liberal Party
today who made enormous profitsduring that period, bringing
Chinese investors over andflying them around Metro
Vancouver in helicopters, andthe enormous investment in real

(34:37):
estate if you want to talk abouthouse prices, which I think we
should talk about and you haveMandarin is now the second
language of the people that wedescribe as Chinese in Canada.
It's not Cantonese anymore.
So you have this strangephenomenon of immense wealth,

(34:58):
immense wealth that has migratedto Canada and there's huge
investments in real estate andin these property bolt holes and
an influx of a population thatis extremely wealthy, mandarin

(35:18):
speaking, aligned with theChinese Communist Party and
embedded at every single levelof the liberal party in the GTA.
You've got Mary Ng, you've gotyou know the people who you know
Han Dong.
I mean that was just somecurious little hilarious side

(35:40):
angle, right?
I mean the story there that Ithink everybody misses, that
Justin Trudeau knew very wellthat Han Dong was mobbed up from
the very beginning.
He knew that that ridingelection was monkey wrenched and
rigged.
He was told that by CSIS in thedays before the election.

(36:04):
I know that they knew becausewhen Han Dong was running for
the leadership, was running forthe ticket in Don Valley North,
I told Gerald Butts personally,gerald and I used to be almost
kind of chummy they knew andthat's the thing that I think we
miss in this is that they knew,they know and they see nothing

(36:28):
wrong with it.
Okay, people have to get theirheads around it.
You know.
The overwhelming majority ofCanadians might recoil in
disgust and revulsion and think,oh my God, the Chinese are
interfering with our electionsand so on.
The people involved in thesewritings and the people involved
in the liberal establishmentsee nothing wrong with it.

(36:52):
And once you get that into yourhead, everything seems.
Everything starts to make sense.
And I mean so.
It's very subjective.
I see something wrong with it.

I make no, well, suppose that whoever the prime
minister was said, I'm going tocall that glavia and ask him to
stop just criticizing me andtell me what I should do about
it.
That's a tough one.
What are that call?
What are you going to say,terry, because you've been
banging on about this all thetime, here's your chance.

Well, I think, I mean, things have changed with
the whole American businessright, Trump has completely, you
know, detonated what we used tocall the liberal rules-based
international order, but I thinkthe emphasis has got to be on.
I mean, I am very, veryreluctant to propose policy

(37:40):
remedies or predict the future,but to the extent that I am
inclined to a certain direction,it would be energy sovereignty,
for sure, for sure,Interprovincial, a far greater
emphasis on interprovincialtrade, a far greater emphasis on
stability and security.
I mean, I'm not proposingconscription, but it sure would

(38:02):
be great if we had a massiveinvestment in the Canadian
reserves, which would address alot of youth unemployment, for
one thing, and it would mobilizepeople, particularly young
people, and this is the electioncampaign that we don't talk
about.
This is what happened.
The thing for me, if you cansort of separate it into a
domestic issue, which is reallyhard to do because all of these

(38:25):
things have internationalimplications is the bottom third
of the Canadian population,most of them are kids.
Bottom third of the Canadianpopulation, most of them are
kids, the people that we callthe lost generation.
What we've done to working classpeople, working class kids in
this country, that's a hill Iwould die on, and it is.

(38:46):
We pretend that we can buildour way out of it.
We can't build our way out ofit.
It's impossible and it won'thappen.
I mean, if you think thatbuilding is going to do anything
for house prices, then explainVancouver to me.
Since the 1970s they've tripledthe number of residential units
within the city limits of.
Vancouver.
Should be the cheapest city inNorth America.

(39:08):
It's the most expensive If youdon't factor in the speculative
value in land and if you don'tunderstand the dynamics of a
tulip bulb mania.
We have tens of thousands ofempty apartments and condos in
this country.
We've already got it All right.
It's not like we haven't beenbuilding but at the same time we

(39:33):
have outsourced our immigrationpolicy.
We've run immigration policy asa series of rackets by strip
mall colleges and by high-enduniversities and by immigration
consultants and by provincialgovernments.
You know there's a dizzyingarray of categories that we rely
on.
It's got to the point where theimmigration department, stats

(40:01):
and Statistics Canada thenumbers don't add up.
Nobody knows how many peoplelive in Canada.
I'll put it that way, it's theeasiest way to put it Nobody
knows.
Nobody knows how many temporarypermit holders live in this
country.
We know that at least a half amillion their permits have
expired and they're out theresomewhere.

(40:21):
And then there's another.
The official federal guess is50 to 500,000 Canadians who are
working or people who areworking illegally in Canada.
Meanwhile, we brought more thana million people into the
country every year for the lastthree and a half years.
We don't have enough houses togo around, we don't have enough

(40:41):
jobs to go around, and ifanybody thinks we can just add a
bunch of houses, it's just notgoing to happen.
Even if both the liberals andthe conservatives were magically
correct in their projections ofhow many houses they're capable
of building, if we're really,really lucky, after all that

(41:04):
construction, 10 years from nowwe would be in the same
situation we're in now and we'renot being honest about this.
We're not being honest about it.
We don't make anything.

We don't make the goods we consume.
We don't make babies.
We don't make the goods weconsume.
We don't make babies.
We have to import those too.
Yeah, One of the big lies Ourindustries.
We have to import that.
What do we make here?

Well, one of the big lies I think that's really
upsetting is well, of course,you know these kids these days.
They're just lazy and they justplay video games and they don't
want to have babies.
So of course we have to inviteall these hard workers to come
and do their jobs.
The cause and effect linesthere are completely wrong.
It's not like young peopledon't want to have families.
How do you raise a family in a700 square foot box on the

(41:47):
eighth floor in downtownVictoria, here or Toronto or
Vancouver?
How many kids are you going tobe able to fit into that and you
can't afford to buy it anyway?
Here or Toronto or Vancouver?
How many kids are you going tobe able to fit into that and you
can't afford to buy it anyway?
So I think a lot of this isabout culture.
The political economy andpolitics tends to be downstream
of culture, and I kind of likeit when Polyev talks about the

(42:10):
Department of Defense and hesays we need to build a warrior
culture.
Okay, let's do that right, but Ireally think that we need to be
honest about the dystopianculture that we have built for
millions and millions of youngCanadians.
This is unforgivable and we'reseeing a lot of the result of

(42:44):
that in the 50,000 fentanyldeaths and that's stuff that, to
be fair, the kind of radicalremedies that would be required
to actually deal with this stuff.
I don't think either of theliberals or the conservatives
are willing to say how bad it is.
You don't get elected to officeby saying, man, things are so
bad I haven't the faintest ideahow we could get out of them?

Well, one might say hey, boomers, you're going
to die anyways and you'll giveup your wealth.
When that happens, why don't wejust speed up the giving up the
wealth part of that andredistribute that?
Do you think that would be?
Well, there are ways to do it.

There are ways to do it Taxing the unearned
increment on property at pointof sale, property at point of
sale in order to, you know, atleast help suppress the
exponential growth in propertyvalues and also to fund a little
bit of housing.
I mean, I just get a kick outof it.

(43:46):
You read it every day, you know, oh, another isn't this?
Wonderful 700 unit housing hasbeen approved and it only took
18 months, instead of threeyears, to get all the approvals
done.
And and you know, uh, 60, 60,you know 60 of the units are
going to be affordable.
Excuse me, why are we buildinganything that isn't affordable?

(44:09):
And if we can't afford to buildaffordable housing, then we
have to have a conversationabout why we can't afford to
build affordable housing crowdwas the one that shows the gap
between the US and Canada in GDPterms over the last 10 years.

It's kind of chugging away like this and then
boom, it's just widened rightout.
And that is the original sin inthe view of those who believe
that if you can grow thedistribution of wealth through
growth of the GDP, through thegross domestic product, that's
how you have American stylelifestyles.
Because we don't have that.

(44:57):
You can buy a house in theStates, even in a lot of the
bigger cities, if you're not ahighway junior.

Yeah, Well, I mean , I think if you look at GDP per
capita, that's the thing.
I don't know if there wasanybody in the Liberal Party who
just said you know what, if wejust sort of opened the
floodgate and basically, youknow, invited people to come to
Canada by the hundreds ofthousands, millions, that that
would actually expand thenumbers on GDP and it didn't
make us look good, I don't know.

(45:26):
I don't know what they werethinking.
One of the enduring mysteriesof the Trudeau government, the
Trudeau era, past 10 years howmuch of this happened
deliberately and how much was itby mistake.
What?
do you think I don't know Halfthe time, I really don't know.
But one of the things that Ithink the most crippling blow

(45:48):
among many to Canada's culturalresilience was the lowering of
the flags on Parliament Hill, onall federal buildings across
the country, in that year-longnational psychotic episode
following the discovery of amass grave that was never
discovered.
That was animated largely bythe federal government and

(46:11):
indigenous people were kind ofencouraged to play along.
Didn't lead that, by the way,didn't lead that whole thing.
They were pushed into positionsof leadership and essentially,
you know whatever crazy thingsan indigenous person might have
said about mass graves.
Well, they watch the CBC likethe rest of us, don't they?

(46:31):
I think that was more damaging,I think, than anything else,
because we really did need tobelieve in ourselves in order to
Is that what fed the Canada isbroken belief, because I think
there is a strong belief for asound 70% of Canadians I think
it was 70% last year said yes,canada's broken.

(46:53):
So it's not just some snappyconservative slogan.
This is what Canadians actuallyhad come to believe.
And one of the interestingthings I think about the
election campaign is it occurredand it was weird how, how
Carney became kind of associatedwith elbows up and without you
know, defending Canadiansovereignty.
But there a real.

(47:15):
There was going to be abacklash.
It was going to there's allthis pent-up, suppressed
Canadian patriotism right thathad really been beaten out of us
for a decade by the Trudeaugovernment and there was bound
to be, there was bound to be asignificant backlash to that and

(47:38):
it happened.
I mean, you got to remember theliberals wanted Trudeau gone.
I mean he didn't have thesupport of his own caucus.
If you want to see the back ofthat guy as soon as and I think
you know Carney has really triedto, disingenuously or not,

(48:01):
deliberately and immediatelyattempted're the largest
European country outside ofEurope or whatever it was, and
it wasn't afraid to be seen inthe company of monarchists and
so on.
So it was going to happen.

(48:23):
I think it was going to happenanyway, no matter what Trump did
or said, no matter if KamalaHarris had won, we would still
be stuck with these deepeconomic dysfunctions in Canada,
and we would still have been ata point where Canadians were

(48:45):
beginning to say, well, wait aminute.
I'm actually not ashamed to bea Canadian.
So all of these strange thingscombined at once to produce the
election that we just had.

You've warned that the path ahead might be darker.
What did you mean by that?

Well, I've always been notoriously optimistic, and
one of the things that stillleaves me hope for optimism is
we don't have the faintest ideawhat's going to happen tomorrow.
You know, I mean, I was readingthis study the other day where
economists failed to predict 148of the last 152 recessions, I
think it was.
So you know, okay, economists,I love you guys, but give me a

(49:24):
break.
You know, you don't know what'sgoing to happen any more than I
do, and also, journalists areterrible soothsayers and fortune
tellers.
So I don't know what to say.
But one of the things that I dotake heart in is the fact that
nobody saw the Berlin Wallfalling.
You know, nobody saw thatcoming.
Cia did not see it coming.
This collapse of communismDidn't see it.
The Arab Spring nobody saw itcoming.

(49:47):
Nobody saw it coming.
And so the world can turn right.
No one knows the hour of thenight, no one knows the lash to
the back of the slave that willcause him to rise up against his
master.
So I live in hope, and I don'tknow that.

(50:08):
I don't mean to be dreary, butI do think that we are not fully
comprehending theprecariousness of our situation
as a free country.
We're not fully grappling withthe economic dislocation that so

(50:29):
many Canadians are facing, justliving paycheck to paycheck,
you know, barely being able tomake ends meet.
And indeed you know, havingbeen sort of lured into the idea
that you can invest in propertyrather than anything productive
, god forbid.
You know, just some buy someproperty and now you've got tens

(50:51):
of thousands of sort of mom andpop investors across the
country that are walking awayfrom their condo investments
because they'll never they'llnever get a return on it,
because people simply can'tafford to buy them and people
don't want to live in 700 squarefoot boxes on them.
You know, and the remedy thatthe both parties are proposing,
you know, to build a kind of alennon platz on top of all of

(51:13):
these cities in Canada.
I don't think people are goingto put up with it and I don't
think it's going to work eitherwhen Ottawa sends out the plans,
here you go.

you can build this in Edmonton or Toronto.

It's a very open and very real question, and a
frightening one is does thefuture belong to China?
I don't know the answer to thatquestion.

Well, it's tended in that direction and they're
willing it to be so through thethings they're doing.
They have power and money, andTrump is doing them a huge favor
by getting you off the playingfield in Africa and all over the
world.
So it seems like the nextcentury is going to be China's.

It's quite possible that the coming century
is China's century.
It's quite possible that thecoming century is China's
century.
It's quite possible.
But as I say, you never know.
Every once in a while there's awobble in China which is very
interesting.
I mean, you know the degree towhich they've invested in
surveillance and artificialintelligence to control the
population.
The Chinese are not doing aswell as you'd imagine right.

(52:14):
Control the population theChinese are not doing as well as
you'd imagine right.
And if you question anything,you know you'll be disappeared.
You could be the most senioreconomist with a you know a
think tank in Beijing that'sintimately connected with the
Politburo, the Chinese CommunistParty, and if you say the wrong
thing, that's the last anyonewill hear from you.

You could be a Politburo member and you can
take a vote on live television.

Yep, marshed out Yep, so I don't know.
And I think there's a certainkind of emancipation and being
able to say I don't know, Idon't know.
Nobody really does know.
So I think you need to just dothe right thing and we need to
take care of each other.
We need to build, build forourselves.
We need to be consuming our ownenergy first before we think

(53:06):
about exporting it.
We need to, I mean, if we'regoing to play a role, a useful
role, internationally on theenergy file, why in God's name
are we not supplying Europe withnatural gas?
What the hell is that about?
And I mean, I would say even, Imean I'm kind of a China hawk,
I confess.
Right, kind of sounds like itanyway, right, I don't have any

(53:28):
objection really to selling toomuch LNG to China.
If it can wean them off coaland oil, okay, that's a
transitional thing, whatever.
And maybe there aren't enoughbuyers in the Pacific for our
LNG.
I don't even know that.
I suspect there probably are.
But the very idea that we'veallowed Europe to sort of

(53:50):
languish and to be so reliant onthe Beijing satrapy there in
Moscow, it really is quiteastonishing that we haven't been
able to marshal the will andthe resources to say damn it,
we're going to supply Europewith LNG, we're going to be

(54:13):
their guys.

So, terry, there's a word I've been hearing for
the last six weeks a lot.
I don't even know what it meanswhen I hear it from different
people.
That word is diversification,and I mean in trade terms.
I mean because the US is notseemingly going to be a reliable
trading partner, at least forfour years.
We need to diversify, but somepeople take that to mean one
thing and others take it to meananother.

(54:35):
What do you think it means?

Well, what I would like it to mean is a trade
policy that affirms and restoresand rebuilds our relationships
with liberal democracies.
That's what I would hope itwould mean.
And it's odd, it's a very oddthing that for the last few

(55:00):
years, we've had, you know,Rosemary Ng or Mary Ng as our
international trade minister.
It's funny how that works.
Eh, I mean international trade.
Nobody talks about her Like itwas supposed to be her job.
And I, you know, I don't thinkthat there's anyone who would

(55:20):
deny the proposition that we aresimply too reliant on the
United States, we expect toomuch of them.
I don't.
I'm not particularly persuaded.
You know the security umbrellaargument and all that kind of
stuff, yeah, Okay, but that'sthe way the Americans wanted it.

Okay.

That was the role that the Europeans and Canadians
were expected to play in thepost.
You know, breton Accords andNATO arrangements were to buy
American weapons if we're goingto buy any weapons at all but
basically be the kind of ladies'auxiliary down at the Legion
Hall.
That was our role.

(56:00):
And then too many countriesbecame comfortable in that role
and then the Americans said,well, we don't want you to play
it anymore.
But the Americans were beingthe beneficiary of this, of
these arrangements.
Let's not kid ourselves, that'sthe way they wanted it.
And so how do you?

(56:21):
You know, what do you?
How do you go about?
You know, we used to.
Maybe we were talking aboutfriend shoring for a while,
remember that term was kind offancy.
I guess it was Janet Yellen whowas the Commerce Secretary, I
think.
And I guess it was Janet Yellenwho's the Commerce Secretary, I
think, and Christy Freeland,who I, by the way, have a lot of
regard for, christy Freeland,whatever her economic stuff.

Bring manufacturing from countries we
don't expect.

Yeah, she was good on Ukraine, she was good on
China, she was good on Venezuela.
I'm sorry, you know.
I mean she was about as good asit got, and she was very much a
proponent of this propositionthat we should be emphasizing
trade with fellow democraciesand giving fellow democracies a

(57:02):
leg up and allowing fellowdemocracies to do us a favor
from time to time.
I would hope that that is thekind of diversification in trade
that we pursue, Because if allwe're doing is, you know, the
whole Harold Ennis thesis aboutCanada is basically to do with
hewers of wood and drawers ofwater, Can we get out of that

(57:23):
now, please, Please, about time?
Yeah, I mean, you know, there'sall kinds of reasons to develop
our rare earth industries inCanada for our own purposes, not
just to sell them right.
Let's have an energy corridorin Canada, but let's emphasize
the corridor, a corridor that'sactually through Canada instead

(57:44):
of partly through the UnitedStates.
Let's get LNG to Europe.
And why don't we build stuff?
I mean, I'm not proposing somemassive, you know, five-year
plan, uh, you know kind ofWarsaw Pact building project,

(58:05):
but to the extent that we'rebuilding anything in this
country, let's build it forourselves, let's, and and I do
think that the the one, the onething that I think is something
you can take to the bank, theone thing that I think that, no
matter what happens next week ornext month or next year, we
need to be taking care of eachother.
We need to hunker down.

(58:26):
It's going to be weird.
It's going to be very strange.
We don't know where things aregoing with China.
It could implode.
Be very strange.
We don't know where things aregoing with China.
It could implode in a year.
We don't know where things aregoing with the United States.
If we think the DemocraticParty is our friend, okay If you
say so.

(58:49):
The war in Ukraine, what'shappening in Africa, the
genocide in Darfur, I meanwhat's happening in Sudan alone,
is just off the charts comparedto anything that we've seen in
recent years.
Here we need to take care ofeach other, we need to hunker
down and we need to be very,very clear about who our friends

(59:10):
are and who we can'tparticularly rely on.
And, um, we cannot be allthings to all people.
We have to build on what on ourstrengths, and our strengths do
lie in, uh, natural resources,not only um, but we need to
build stuff, feed, feedourselves quote even clothe

(59:31):
ourselves.
We have to start thinking aboutthat kind of thing feed
ourselves, even clothe ourselves.
We have to start thinking aboutthat kind of thing, Not being
so reliant on trade in the firstplace.

Well, terry Glavin , that's an almost superhuman
task.
Whoever is going to carry itforward needs to succeed for
Canada, so let's hope that yourthoughts have provided some
timely, salutary advice for that.
So thanks for joining me atPower Struggle today.

Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it.
I hope I would have made someuse of myself in some way, I
think you have.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Is Canada Sleepwalking Into China's Trap | Election Special Ep.7