Iran war: Carney opens door to committing Canadian forces

0:00Boots on the ground, that's right there's some musings now from Prime Minister Mark Carney that it's not being ruled out Canadian troops might could in certain circumstances be called into duty, into action to participate in the United States and Israel's war on a rant. To break down this big development, I'm joined by Sean Spear, Mike Co-Founder and editor at large. Wow, Sean, I think these comments of the Prime Minister overnight have set off a bit of a debate, haven't they? Indeed, the Prime Minister is messaging on the ongoing conflict is moving almost as fast as the conflict itself. In all seriousness, this represents, I think, one of the few missteps for Prime Minister Carney since he crossed the threshold from public servant into politics and it's one that

1:00is causing him, I think, increasing headaches both within his own caucus and increasingly with the media who are traveling with him on this international trip. Well, let's play the clip right now because in all these things it's important to listen to the language and hear exactly what the Prime Minister said. So let's roll the clip from Australia. You've said the Canada will not participate in U.S. military action in Iran. So can you definitively say that's going to remain the case, even if hostilities broaden escalate or are prolonged? The – you've asked a fundamental hypothetical in a conflict that can spread very broadly at today's events, or recent events, point to that. So one can never categorically rule out participation. We will stand by our allies. So stand by our allies, not categorically rule out participation. Sean, you've served in a Prime Minister's office.

2:02Try to translate for that for us. What does that mean when the head of government says, well, not rule out participation, support our allies? That sounds to me like moving the goalposts closer to not further away from some kind of active rule for the Canadian military in this conflict. Yeah, I think that's probably right, Roger. Keep in mind, of course, that there is a lot of integration between the Canadian armed forces and the United States to say nothing of NATO more broadly. There is obviously conversations happening through these different military channels. And you get the sense that the Prime Minister is – as a matter of military strategy is resisting, closing the door to Canada's participation. And then, more generally, as a political matter, he – I think is struggling to find the

3:03right positioning on the broader conflict and how him and his government are thinking about it. And that is, as I say, kind of dogging him on what was supposed to be a really positive trip for him and his message around building new relationships and economic opportunities in the Pacific Rim. It's almost as if, Roger, this war and its implications for the government's messaging have arrived at precisely the wrong time for the Prime Minister, where he's on the road and Canadian and importantly, international media aren't afraid to press him on it. Yeah, so we've gone from the weekend, a declaration of support from the Prime Minister for the war that walked back by two senior cabinet ministers, Anita Annand, McGinty, the Defense Minister, the Prime Minister, then qualifying his support on the weekend, saying that it was done so with regret and kind of falling back on some of the more traditional language

4:05about de-escalation, negotiated settlement, not being able to say that the war is legal inferring that there could be an element of illegality to the war. And then another seeming like 180 last night with this comment, well, we regret our support. We're not sure the war is legal, we're pointing out that it doesn't have UN support and sanctioned vis-à-vis the Security Council. And yet here we are, Sean, saying there might in a set of circumstances that could evolve be a scenario where Canadian troops will be sent in harm's way to support our allies. Where are we at here? I mean, I'm getting whiplash trying to follow that little bouncing ball over the Prime Minister's remarks as they come out from press conference to press conference to press conference. Indeed, and I hope my children don't hear the message that they've done something but

5:06with regret. I think that'll be a line that many of us will be using with our spouses and our employers and others. But as they say, in all seriousness, this is a Prime Minister who has, I think, surprised a lot of people at his kind of death touch when it comes to politics. His learning curve was steep and he summited the peak of Canadian politics rather quickly. And so this is a bit of a surprise. You go back to that statement over the weekend. There was not a lot of expectation that he would go as far as he did, reflecting unqualified, unequivocal support for the military strikes in Iran. That strikes me in hindsight is a bit of an own goal, Roger, and since then, you get the sense that he has been struggling to kind of find his feet underneath him being pulled in different directions, including by all accounts from some members of the liberal caucus.

6:07And we end the week, I think, as big of a lack of clarity on how the Prime Minister and the government are thinking about these issues as we started. And I'll pause here in a minute, but we'll have an episode of how politics coming out with David Coletta shortly where he sets out some polling and it doesn't look good. Canadians are overwhelmingly opposed to the mission. And so I don't think the Prime Minister can allow this idea that we're contemplating troops to languish in the media and the minds of the Canadian public for very long. Again, there's all kinds of reasons why you may be happy that Kampanyi, the Supreme Leader of Iran, is no longer with us, that this regime is under attack and under threat, but it's very hard, Sean, as the Prime Minister has intimated to make a case that this war

7:08was legal, that it was either based on the formulas, which, again, aren't perfect at the United Nations or just broader international law, that there was an urgent and existential threat that Iran posed towards Israel and the United States. Iran has been close to and nuclear weapon for years now. Iran has unfortunately been killing its citizens for years now. Iran has been fueling terrorism and its proxy groups throughout the region for years. This is a war of choice. There is no doubt about it. And you can embrace that as President Donald Trump, as Benjamin Netanyahu, and I think we need to hear from our Prime Minister. I think we need to clear this up. If we are actually contemplating the possibility, even the possibility of sending Canadian troops, then we need an argument from our Prime Minister as the head of government to explain why we would even consider that possibility.

8:09And on the other side, we seem to be conceding that this isn't a legal war, a war of choice, and a war, and this is a bit more subjective of my part, a war that's being carried out by a U.S. President and an administration who, I think, is fair to say, are fast and loose with the facts and have a pretty troubling track record when it comes to following through on policy and on these types of big geopolitical moves. This is a president who flip-flops, it's a president who wakes up one morning and thinks one thing and wakes up one morning and says something else. So to put all of our eggs in this particular basket, in this particular administration, to join a war with the United States when it is being led by its commander-in-chief, Donald J. Trump, to me, is a very high bar for us to justify, and I want to hear it justified. If we are now saying that Canadian troops conceivably could be pushed into harm's way, give

9:10us the case, give us the argument, or clarify this, and once and for all, say that we're not participating in this war, we are withholding judgment, we are reserving ourselves to see how this conflict plays out. I'm just, I'm a little tired, Sean, you can hear the frustration of my voice that we've reached the end of the week, and we still seem to be having our cake and eating it too. We seem still to be wanting to, I don't know, please the president, appease the Americans by saying certain things, but then saying other things, I guess, because domestically they're more convenient, or in fact they are more aligned with international law, and the reality of what this war is, a war of choice, and a war that has the slimmest, slimmest underpinnings of legality to what's happened over the last 100 hours. Yeah, I think that's all right, Roger, to say nothing of the fact that if you project forward what's to come in Iran, and what it means for the region, and for the world,

10:13I think there's reason to be doubtful that the net result of all of this will be more peace and security. I think one could make a plausible argument for precisely the opposite outcome, that whatever one thinks of the Iranian regime, and as you say, we are hardly inclined towards it. It doesn't change the fact that regime change is hard and complicated as we learned the difficult way over the past 20 years or so, and that is with an administration that is sophisticated at stake, craft, and all the rest, attributes that one wouldn't attribute to the Trump administration. For all of those reasons, I come back to a point I made earlier. You get the sense the Prime Minister was out over the skis with his unequivocal endorsement of the military action over the weekend. Him and his government seem to be trying to get it back to a more measured and restrained place, and yet, just as it was doing that, the Prime Minister bizarrely opened the door

11:15to Canadians' direct military participation. The net result is it is confusing for global audiences, it's confusing for Canadian audiences, and as we've talked about this week, it strikes at the heart, it seems to me, of Mark Karnie's entire political persona, which is that he's a serious person for a serious moment, and yet, when faced with a serious moment, arguably one of the most serious moments we've had in a long time with respect to defense and foreign policy, the message out of the Prime Minister's office is anything but serious. My final comment on this is, you just have to hope that there's something else going on here that we're not aware of, because I just call it what it is. I think it's insane to consider committing Canadian troops to this war, again, a war of choice that has no legal underpinnings vis-à-vis international law, or the processes and procedures of the United Nations, again, all of which are imperfect. What you wonder, Sean, is this pre-staging, an attempt to kind of pre-stage public opinion

12:21in the country, because our Prime Minister has received a call from Donald Trump. His government is under pressure from the U.S. administration to join this war. We have frigates, particularly we have some naval capacity that could be useful, let's say in the Straits of Hermos and trying to keep oils open and flowing in the global economy, doing something else other than falling back into an inflationary surge. I wonder, Sean, again, I'm trying to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt here. Is there something going on behind the scenes here where we're under a lot of pressure to join this? And the Trump administration is making calls, it's trying to call in chips, and that may be the case. And if it is, I would just say level with the Canadian public. Let's have this debate, let's have this conversation. Some people may think it's worth joining this war because we'll be paid with dividends

13:21on the trade file and the renegotiation of Kuzma. My own personal opinion is this president forgets tomorrow what you did in terms of a favor for him today. And again, I just think after Afghanistan, we need a damn high bar in this country before we send more of our sons and daughters to die in foreign wars. So this is serious. The Prime Minister has put this on the table. We have to understand the motivation. Maybe the Trump administration is behind it, but right now all of this is opaque, Sean. We have no idea other than the Prime Minister's, again, somewhat fuzzy musings in Canterbury. Yeah, well said, Roger. I'm glad you put it out there. There's no doubt that there are things happening behind the scenes that we're not privy to. But as you say, at some point, the Prime Minister has to level with the Canadian public.

14:25We know that our relations with the Trump administration at times is going to come with excruciating trade-offs, but I'd say there's something fundamentally different about compromising on our subsidies and protections for dairy than there is involving ourselves in a war without a clear set of objectives where the outcome is anything but self-evident and where you say we could be putting people in a position to make the ultimate sacrifice I think Canadians would distinguish between the two and the Prime Minister sooner rather than later, I think, owes the public a clear understanding of what precisely is going on. Yeah, and I'll just say to remind people that this president, a matter of a few weeks ago, was denigrating Canadian and allied sacrifices in the war in Afghanistan, claiming that we were fighting from behind, not at the front lines. All that to the couple hundred Canadians who gave their lives in that war.

15:28I don't know. I'm just tired of this. I'm tired of letting this president get passes on this. I'm tired of even contemplating that we are going to replay the Afghanistan, Iraq, horror film again with an even more irresponsible administration, as you say, with completely opaque war goals and objectives and an administration who has triggered a war on the flimsiest of legal and other bases. And now we're amusing about the possibility of hypothetical circumstances of committing Canadian troops. Sorry. I say in this debate, it's an emphatic NO, as I like to say to my kids, spell it out, NO, we are not going along with this war, but again, we don't know, because the Prime Minister is not leveling with us. Thanks, Sean.

16:29I'm a bit riled up today. I appreciate you being the sober voice of reason and improvedy on this podcast as usual. Great to connect, Roger. Bye-bye.