 back to Think Tech, I'm J. Feidele. This is a view from the north with Dr. Ken Rogers joining us from Kelowna, British Columbia. We're going to talk about how would Canada be affected by a U.S. dictatorship, which is what Trump is threatening. So I guess the question is, is there a level of urgency among the people that you talk with in Canada about what is going on as we approach the November 2024 election? Well, as a generalization, most of the Canadian public's pretty apathetic. They don't follow too much what's going on. As a generalization, most Canadians don't believe that Americans would be done enough to vote Trump back in. It's true, you know, I mean, I talk to people all day and they say I can't believe the country would be done enough to vote for Trump. And yet the polls are good. His base is strong and he himself is, he's undaunted. He's undaunted by, you know, whatever problems he has in court, which are many and whatever problems he has in, you know, in governing, which are many. So here we are with the logical possibility that he could very well win. So for this discussion, I guess first I'd like to ask it, you know, you're in British Columbia, Western Canada, do people favor Trump over Biden? Is there is, is there a, you know, any kind of, you know, there's strong feeling favoring Biden. Canadians think that, you know, the U.S. economy is performing fantastically well. And normally, you know, the economics affect how everybody votes. You know, the U.S. is the only major country who's not suffering, you know, let's call it a recession or near there too. You know, certainly Canada isn't doing as well as the U.S. So we, you know, when I look at the polls and chat with a few people that are quite knowledgeable, they say, well, other than his age, what does anybody have as a problem with Biden? I mean, when he's before the mic, he sounds as lucid as ever. You know, I know lots of people his age and older that have no great problems mentally, you know, they may limp along, but, you know, with some physical ailment, but generally, you know, their mind is still pretty crisp. How about his rhetoric? You know, there are people who say we want him to speak up. We wanted to respond to Trump's crazy statements and Republican crazy statements. We want to be stronger in terms of his public appearances. Did they talk about that? No, there's a there are a fair number of Canadians who are, you know, far to the right, similar to Trump's base and who believe, you know, some of the BS on all of the news media that gets or let's call it not news, the fake news that they seem to watch or listen to, you know, so that, you know, it's not like, you know, there's even in Canada, there's even people that, you know, are climate change deniers. So when you listen to Trump say, you know, drill, drill, drill or whatever his new punchline is, aside from he'll be a dictator, for sure, you know, starting on day one, they didn't, didn't say ending. But you know, the, the generalization is that, you know, Trump would be a catastrophe for Canada. I mean, the Canada, the border from Maine to Washington state is about 4000 miles long. And in addition to that, there's another 1500 miles of border between Alaska and Canada. You know, so it's 5500 miles. So, so whatever happens in the United States affects Canada dramatically. Yeah, it's the same language of the media crosses the border. People cross the border trade crosses the border. And the culture is not that different. On the other hand, you know, our, what do you want to call it, political bubble, our congressional headache is really limited to a national scope mostly. And I wonder, I mean, we were talking a minute ago about Western Canada, how they feel, how people that you talk to feel, what about Eastern Canada? Is it the same or different there? How do they feel about Trump and Republicans? I think they're pretty consistent all the way across Canada. You know, I know Eastern Canada, you've got to remember there's province of Quebec, which is quite different from anything else in North America. You know, the majority of Quebecers speak French. Virtually all Quebecers can speak both like French and English, but you know, they have a lot of different rules and attitudes. The politics different, you know, would they be more likely to support Trump than the others? No, probably less. Okay. So, you know, I want to focus, if you will, on his comment that he would be a dictator on day one. And of course, it's a wordplay, is what it is. My guess is what he really means is that on day one, he will change everything. He has a little list right out of the Mikado. He has a little list, and he has a playbook, which he is working on now, which he has revealed in part, which he will implement on that very day. All together now, everything that he wants to do as president, he will do that day, including wreck the government. So, I wonder if people in Canada, some people in the U.S. understand this, recognize it as, you know, as a horrible result. Other people don't. They seem to think that it'll be okay that he's not going to be any worse than he was in the first term, but I think it's clear that he will be, and that he'll populate the government, you know, with his accessories, you know, in every corner of the government, and they will be completely loyal to him, much more so than before. He will not tolerate any disloyalty the next time around. So, you know, it does lead to dictatorship, and he as much as said so, he wants to throw out the Constitution, the rule of law, the notion of democracy, all that. As I wonder, you know, and there are some people in this country, including President Company, you know, who feel this is really a tremendous threat to the United States, but are there people in Canada who feel, A, that it's a threat to the United States, and B, that it's somehow a threat to Canada? Well, intelligent people I talk to think that, you know, if Trump wins the democracy as it's now known in the United States will end, you know, and pretty quickly, your comment about reducing some of the government departments to just mere skeletons of what they are now, and that the heads of all of those reduced departments would be, you know, Trump loyalists, you know, who salute whatever he salutes and says, yes, sir, whenever he gives an order or a suggestion, I think it'll take a little while for him to implement his revenge strategy, but it would be fairly quick to to take over the Justice Department, the FBI and the Tax Department, and then those three could certainly implement pretty quickly a lot of the revenge that he would like to have, you know, but when you take the Justice Department in particular, then you eliminate the rule of law. So it's like, you know, what happened in Navalny in Russia, you know, he just disappeared, you know, well, you know, just because somebody says, well, I'll get my day in court, well, you may not, you know, in a dictatorship, you don't get that sort of thing, you know, and I don't very few people in Canada have come to serious thinking about what would the effect on Canada be if Trump did win. And he did implement some of these things, well, when you got, you know, the first thing is, you know, what happens at the border, you know, right now there's an awful lot of traffic going both ways across the border, you know, that whether you, you know, if you're taking a winter vacation from somewhere in Canada that is cold, like Edmonton, Alberta, and you want to go to Mexico, you know, you got to fly over the United States, does that even permit it? You know, and in a lot of ways, you know, comparing the US and Canada is a little bit like I was thinking of the dispute between Venezuela and Guyana, you know, where Guyana is the little guy, you know, and its military right might compare to Venezuela is deadly squat, you know, and if Venezuela says, well, we just want to take two thirds of your territory. And thank you. You know, well, there was actually a few, you know, joke videos that somebody made up on AI showing, you know, Trump speaking about, you know, well, what would he like to do for Canada? Well, first thing you do, take Alberta and then Saskatchewan. Well, that, you know, that's a very interesting point, because say first thing, but the first thing would be little things, right? Little incursions on Canada. Well, actually, the first thing would be the wall to finish the wall. The wall in Mexico. Yeah, in Mexico. I don't think anybody be dumb enough to try to build one five, five and a half thousand miles, especially between parts of Alaska and in those parts of Canada. Like anybody who's taken a cruise along the British Columbia coast up to Alaska would recognize that there's a mountain range really close to the coast that has some huge glaciers on it. You know, where are you going to build a wall? The glacier glacier straddles the Canada US border in that place and for a lot of Alaska. But, you know, you're going to have a major mess. You got major rivers that run, you know, back and forth. For example, you know, the most important river on the west side of the US is the Columbia. Well, most of that water arises in western Canada. You know, but when you take what are the items where Trump was a problem in the past, which may be his first picks this time, he certainly didn't like NAFTA or the US, Canada, Mexico trade agreement. He, you know, it seemed to be he reluctantly accepted what was done. Well, if he's back in office, that would be back on the plate. Well, he may just start with saying we're just not going to respect the agreement as is. There's not much Mexico and Canada can do about it. That's the kind of thing. I mean, so he's not going to take British Columbia, not right away, but he will, you know, nibble. Well, that's the only way you could connect to, that's the only way you could connect to Alaska. Yes. You see, if you want to, if you want to get to Washington State, the Idaho and Montana so that they can connect directly to Alaska, you need to, you need to take most of Western Canada, you know, British Columbia, Alberta, and the Yukon, the Yukon territories north of British Columbia, most Americans would know where it is. You know, don't you think that the Canadian American border would change legally? Absolutely. Tell me how you think it might change? Well, one of the first things would probably be a lot more Americans wanting to just move to Canada and in a hurry. You know, I don't know if people who, you know, would be on Trump's threat, you know, revenge list, you know, but they may prefer to go to Europe to feel safer just because Canada's too close, maybe. But the border now has an awful lot of day traffic. Like people, for example, in Detroit, a very large portion of the hospitals in Detroit are manned by medical people that live right across the river in Canada. You know, I don't know why it just seems to be such a huge percentage of medical staff. Well, what happens, you know, like you just have an unknown factor, but you also have thousands of Canadians go across the border to the US and a lot of these border towns depend on their purchasing power. You know, for example, immediately between Seattle and Vancouver, you know, there's an awful lot of traffic where the Vancouver end or just north of the border, Canadians drive across to the nearest sizeable town, which is called Bellingham in that case. And they do certain kinds of shopping where there are items, selected items that are cheaper in the US than they are in Canada. And then, you know, they're back. Well, those small cities all across the US-Canadian border all depend on that business. It's pretty huge. Now, Canada, like the US international trade, everybody thinks is pretty large, but as a percentage of the US economy, it's just about the smallest in the world. You know, where Canada is just about the opposite. You know, we have just a huge percentage of our gross national product is exports or imports. Well, that actually suggests two things. It suggests that Canada is, I guess we knew this, dependent in many ways on the US in terms of trade and transfer of resources. But on the other hand, it also suggests that if Trump wanted to take advantage of Canada, if he wanted to demand concessions, if he wanted to force Canada to do this or that on some kind of trade or geopolitical basis, he would have huge leverage against Canada and Trudeau and the parliament and all that simply because of Canada's dependence. And it's not below him to do that. Do you agree? Yes, but there's already examples of that in terms of most trade or other relations between the United States and either Mexico or Canada. The US has always been a bully. The US never does play really, really fair. And a wonderful example would be the softwood lumber under NAFTA and the US, whatever they call the agreement now. There's been several times that that dispute has been gone to the tribunal and they've always done it in Canada's favor. And then the US just says, so what? We're going to impose great big tariffs on softwood lumber coming from Canada. Anyhow. No, you can take. Sure, tariffs are a way to impose your will on your neighbor, your trading buck. Yeah, but you have the biggest dollar item aside from automobiles, parts and stuff going back and forth, mainly between Southern Ontario and the US, is energy. Well, the energy is certainly a favorite to area for Trump. And, you know, the essence of energy, Canada exports an awful lot of natural gas to the US that you use. But also, now that you have LNG being shipped around the world, you know, one of the big changes in relation between Canada and the US on trade has been that Canada is sending natural gas to the US, which is shipping it to the ports, converting it to LNG and shipping it out. Now, that's a very large plum. You know, those natural gas conversion plants that convert the gas into LNG and ship it, you know, they're mega billion dollar projects. You know, one of the keys as to why the US economy is doing so much better than than everybody else in the world right now. You know, all the infrastructure bill and, you know, the LNG played such a dominant role in creating jobs and, you know, increasing productivity. Well, that actually raises an interesting question. Some say that, you know, Biden, well, I mean, including you and me, say that Biden done a good job with the economy. He may not get credit for it. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't seek all that much credit for it. But credit where credit is due, he's done a good job with the economy, jobs and infrastructure and the like. But let's suppose for a minute that Trump becomes a president and he acts like a dictator and he does everything on his own without good advice and the economy of the United States falters, which I think is a real possibility, given our isolationist direction these days. So, query, you know, what does a falter in the American economy mean to Canada? Will Canada follow a rack and pinion on a decline in the US economy? Well, if the US gets a sniffle, Canada gets a cold. If the US gets a cold, Canada gets pneumonia. You know, it's really, you know, we probably have, I don't know what percentage of the trade that Canada has is with the US, but it's probably over half. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is the culture wars issues that Trump will undoubtedly endorse. And ultimately, we have to talk today about, you know, his threat on the press and the lawyers and the politicians who criticize him. That's another issue. But it seems to me that, you know, we have racism in this country. We have this crazy thing about abortion. We have this crazy thing about guns and so forth and schools and, you know, not letting kids read books and gee, as I could go on. And I don't know the level to which the dark side of those issues has permeated the Canadian, you know, country and culture. But I wonder if things get worse here with issues like that, do you think that they would have an effect on the issues like that in Canada? Well, certainly, if you take abortion, which I think is one of the key reasons why most Canadians think Trump will lose is, you know, there's no question that nobody would even bring up the idea of abortion ban anywhere in Canada. Most of the things that I think would happen were where the social problems in the US will arise like the abortion question, are we then going to get a whole bunch of Americans coming to Canada to get abortion? Or are they just going to... You may very well. I think that's going to happen now. Yes. But if you think of, well, because Canada is closer, but maybe their US healthcare won't pay and there's still lots of really good US states where they can go to and get good healthcare. But your social things, you got the attack on women's rights, the attack on the LGBTQ community where, you know, Canada's more liberal than the US on that issue as well. You know, Trump last time tried to put in a Muslim ban. I would assume that would be fairly high on his list. I mean, we have, you know, areas in Canada, for example, one of the large boroughs of Vancouver or let's call it sub-communities called Surrey. Well, nearly 50% of that municipal part of Vancouver is Muslim. You know, we got another one called Richmond. It's Chinese. But, you know, Vancouver's a pretty cosmopolitan place. However, that would attract a lot of Americans. You know, if they see the Trump actions as dangerous as I think they would be, you know, Canada might be a pretty good choice for an awful lot of people. You think that his policies and these cultural wars that we have in this country would creep over the border and somehow infect Canadian government, Canadian institutions? In other words, would we have Islamophobia in Canada to kind of copycat what we have here? Would we have an increase in anti-Semitism in Canada like we have here and like I think will happen under him? This is sort of thing of concern. Well, I hadn't thought about it because it normally would not be at all a concern in Canada. I think the, you know, anti-Muslim or Islamophobia has always existed to some degree in Canada and remains in existence. You know, I picked major districts where there's a big mixture of recently arrived Muslims, as opposed to, you know, long-term Canadians that have lived in the neighborhood. You know, you get some tension between them. The other factors though, I think Canada on the LGBTQ thing is that it is going to change. I don't see if America becomes far more anti-Jewish, which would really surprise me, you know, because, you know, having lived in New York, I find that hard to believe, you know, that I think the Jewish population is just such a strong major contributing part of the U.S. economy. And I don't think Trump has any anti-Jewish inclinations, even though a lot of his followers might. But, you know, the elimination of major parts of the U.S. government, you know, would be, you know, the item that would cause the most disruption. Now, you know, I don't see him not doing a bunch of government spending, you know, but if you don't have the staff to do it, if you're going to eliminate the FBI, what's going to happen to your, you know, drug problems and, you know, in other criminal matters, the, you know, you just have a big mess. I mean, I, it's really hard to comprehend what the consequences of Trump being in and converting the U.S. into a, you know, a target or a dictatorship would, what it would be like, especially with a dictator that's, that's half insane in the first place. Well, you know, query, we have Justin Trudeau right now. I wouldn't put him in those categories. However, you like or don't like his policies. But maybe it's the next, you know, prime minister. And maybe the next generation of leaders around the provinces, maybe they will move to the right. Maybe they will see what Trump is doing to minimize government or destroy government institutions, destroy democracy, destroy the rule of law. And they will say, gee, I can make myself more powerful if I follow his lead. And maybe there will be some traction in Canada. That's the way there has been traction in the U.S. You think this is possible or likely? Very possible, because in fact, you know, Trudeau has become very unpopular in Canada, you know, and not unreasonably in my mind, you know, I'm a little biased, but you know, it's really that he's done nothing. And they spent a lot of money, but to really accomplish nothing with it and has a bunch of policies that most Canadians do not like are gross domestic or GDP per capita has been going down for three or four years where the U.S. has gone up, you know, especially in the last year or two with the Biden's infrastructure bill, etc. However, the main opposition party in Canada is a conservative party, you know, they have been in power over the years, but not for the last eight years or ten years. But they are more popular right now. And part of it is they spit out a few of these Trump-type policies. They're certainly more right-wing than their predecessors in that party. But they're really not much right of the U.S. Democrats. That is, they're not very right-wing, they just have a few of these scary policies, but they certainly wouldn't even dream of having an abortion ban. You know, Canada does not have a big evangelical base. You know, like one of the quandaries to anybody here is how could evangelicals support Trump? It just seems contradictory. Well, he breaks every religious rule in the book. But, you know, I wanted to ask you about isolationism, because what we have is this populist isolationism under Trump, and even without Trump, that seems to be the U.S. is moving in that direction. But I always felt that Canada, as a former member of the Commonwealth and all that, Canada, that has its legal roots, its societal roots, if you will, not only in the U.K., but lots of immigrants to Canada from lots of places. It's a very diverse, global society, and especially from Eastern Europe, which is under such threat these days, like Ukraine, for example. And I wonder if the notion of isolationism would be popular, would catch on from what Trump is doing, will do, to the civil society of Canada. Well, it first has to get, the isolationist trend has been, you know, sort of North America not just U.S. only, like the U.S. has really pushed it for the simplifying supply lines, bring supply lines closer to home, because it was supply disruptions that really, you know, caused the mess, you know, following COVID and created the inflation that, you know, caused the economic problems that we're still unraveling. But the, you know, real isolationism isn't going to happen in Canada by itself. You know, it's really, if the U.S. wants to be only the U.S. isolation and stop the trade from Canada, it's going to hurt on both sides of the border. But proportionally, it's going to be suicidal for Canada. I mean, you know, if you just stopped all U.S., all Canadian goods going into the U.S. bank, you know, you'd have just a total mess. You know, for example, a whole bunch of U.S. homes would freeze in the, in the dark. I guess it wouldn't be, you know, which would therefore the next move would be to, you know, Trump to invade and take Alberta. But, you know, you'd have the automobile industry, you know, you've got a huge portion of the parts move back and forth between the Canadian border, you know, and the auto production would break down. I mean, you can't stop it all instantly. But the problem with Trump is I don't think he would think it's true. And so if you slam some door, you just create a catastrophe economically on both sides of the border. Well, you mentioned earlier, and it's something I did say I wanted to follow up on. And that is that he would, he would change law enforcement and the media in this country. And certainly I think he would cut the Department of Justice in favor of his own appointees, loyalists, the same thing with the, you know, FBI and, and the tax office IRS. He'd make them all his weapons, his instruments in order to bring pressure against those who would oppose him. But, you know, it strikes me that one of his targets, and he's made it clear that it is a target, is the media. And, you know, he's attacked the New York Times on a regular basis and the Washington Post. And those are the two largest, you know, primary news sources in the country, print press. And he's attacked, you know, the cable news networks like MSNBC and CNN, for that matter, the BBC as reporting against him. Okay. So let's assume he will do that. He will do that. And that's probably one of his day one things through the, you know, the Federal Communications Commission and change it around so that they stop these, these news organs. But it strikes me, Ken, that he would want the same thing to happen in Canada. In other words, if a given news media organization in Canada attacked Trump, and it might, because it might not agree with him. And there is First Amendment, there is freedom of speech and freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Canada. As far as I know, Trump may want to reach out and try to undermine those organizations, because they are broadcasting into the United States. What are your thoughts? Well, I don't think he had reached out. I think he had just swing, bring out the sledgehammer and, you know, but the Canadian press certainly is fairly anti-Trump as is. Yeah, but would you want to stop them? Wouldn't he want to have an effect on them? Would, for example, if he could stop them broadcasting their opinions into the United States, wouldn't he do that? Probably, but, you know, an awful lot of Canadians watch, just watch U.S. news, like, you know, MSNBC broadcasts in Canada, you know? So, that's where I learn lots of my stuff, you know? But, you know, you really have, you know, with computers or with, you know, the internet, people can get news from anywhere in the world. You know, I mean, if you just list what news channels can you get, you know, for example, you know, you can get Al Jazeera, you know? So, if you want to get a heavily biased opinion favoring the Palestinians, that's a good one to listen to. You know, they were pretty, you know, pro-Ukraine, but, you know, they just stopped doing any news about Ukraine the minute, you know, Israel invaded Palestine. Well, I have no idea how, you know, Trump would react, you know, I think in the short run, he'd be, you know, too busy enjoying taking his revenge on people, whether it's Jack Smith or, you know, Tanya Chutkin or, you know, Fannie Willis or, you know, whatever, you know, or a whole bunch of, you know, the past and current senators that are, you know, on the, you know, or congressmen like Adam Schiff, you know, so that he could have his hands full for a while, you know, but I think that the disruption to the economy will get his attention fairly quickly and so that, you know, and to, you can keep the economy rolling better by being friendlier with Canada and Mexico. You know, I tend to believe the, you know, his isolationism would probably, you know, go from, you know, between Russia and Central America. That's his market. You know, a lot of Russian media in Lithuania, they had to leave Russia when they published something called Medusa and something called the B, that's B-E-E-T. And they published their opinions about what Putin is doing around the world and he hates that because they're attacking him, but he can't do much about it because they're in Lithuania. If he could, he would. And so I'm thinking that, A, as you said before, there'll be Americans who will be, you know, concerned about him going after them with the Revenge Initiative, including media, and they would go to Canada, which is the most appealing place really. It's not just because you're there, by the way. It is a very, I've always spelled it Canada, the wonderful country. And so they may go there. They may go there and they may do what Medusa and the B are doing out of Lithuania. They may, you know, be broadcasting their criticism of Trump and he will hate that. And I just wonder whether Canada would be willing to accept Americans and American media and, you know, give them the necessary visas to come, because, you know, we can't swamp you. We can't, you know, send millions of people across the border. It's not going to work. But there will be those people who will be influential, who would like to come across the border. And I wonder your thoughts about what public opinion, where public opinion would go if when Trump becomes a dictator and does, you know, try to do his vengeance program, how Canada will react to that? Well, I would think Canada would would stand on its head to encourage any American that was on Trump's revenge list, you know, or just felt it was a problem to come, please come to Canada. You know, like, he would not have on his hit list, you know, people that are poor and unemployed. You know, you know, he may have them round them up and put them in camps, you know, but that which seems to be one of his more disastrous sounding policies of take all the, you know, undocumented aliens or whatever they're called, the undocumented citizens. But, you know, we actually have probably more people in Canada that were born in the United States than we have people born in any other country. You know, like we now have a ton of Americans, I can remember growing up in Alberta when they discovered oil and that the city of Calgary and the city of Edmonton had a majority of Canadians one day and the next day there was, you know, probably 50% Americans. Certainly, certainly the high school that I went to had, you know, the sons and daughters of Americans who moved to Canada because the oil industry was so spectacular and, you know, Americans have no trouble fitting in in Canada. The ones that seem to come to Canada are not like the criticisms people make of American tourists, like an awful lot of American tourists when they're traveling to some countries, say they're Canadian, you know, just because, you know, so many American tourists act so boorishly, so entitled, so pushy, you know, that they're not just nice people at all. Well, that would be the concern. That would be the concern on behalf of the Canadian government to open the door completely and have, you know, Americans come in wholesale because of Trump, because of his policies, because of his autocracies. And I wonder whether there would be a limit or whether people would welcome them and disregard the fact that some of them are in fact ugly Americans. I think you're going to experience that. Can I really think that's going to happen? Well, you're going to have isolated groups like you may have LGBTQ. You know, well, if you took, remember the population in the United States is about 10 times that of Canada. Well, if you took every LGBTQ person in the United States suddenly panicked and wanted to get out of the US and they had to pick somewhere, well, you know, you'd just be really overloading Canada with a isolated group or a group that can be segregated against so easily, you know, and that might push problem that isn't here in the first place, you know, might create a problem for the existing community. You know, similarly, the Muslim thing, you know, if, you know, if Muslims have a problem in the US, you know, are we going to have, you know, who's going to say they don't want to have Kamala Harris move to Canada? You know, one thing is clear from this discussion and that is that the border will change if Trump, you know, becomes president again. The relationship in terms of trade and culture between the two countries will change. It's hard to predict exactly how, but I feel that from this discussion there will be changes. And I also feel that, you know, even if he is elected, hopefully, there'll be a better president after him, hopefully, at some point in time, and things will return to a more normal state of relationship between the US and Canada. Those changes are likely to continue whatever they are. So we are, you know, on the precipice if he wins of a new relationship, it may be very nuanced, but it will be new. Don't you agree? I do. I think overwhelmingly, Canada, you know, believes that Americans are not going to be dumb enough to vote him in. You said that before. You know, it just, it just is astonishing how, you know, Americans are well educated population. You know, how could they be so stupid or not realize the consequence? And, and, you know, because of that, Canadians kind of brush off, but what will the consequences be? Oh, my God, we'll have to watch this very carefully because it is entirely possible. From this point of view, we'll have to follow it as we go closer to election day. Thank you very much, Ken. Back to Ken Rogers, Hugh from the North, broadcasting from Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Thank you so much. You're welcome.