There's a lot there. I'll try to pick up at least on some aspects. As much as everything we said about China at the beginning absolutely stands, when I think about the order of threats Canada faces, or potentially faces, number one is in some ways the United States. When I say “in some ways”, I mean by some scenarios, which are by no means guaranteed, where the situation degenerates in the U.S. That can pose a greater threat to Canada, because of our massive dependence on the U.S.
The civil war scenario, I think, is very unlikely, but scenarios of contested elections, of more unpredictability in their foreign policy, of more unilateralism, of retreat from NATO and other organizations, and of intelligence-sharing in the Five Eyes and so on are potentially very concerning.
The problem we face is that we have no other option. People have been saying for 50 years that we need a third way and that we need to diversify our trade and other relations. Because of geography, we'll never be able to fully do that.
If you bring in the China dimension, what that means for me is that Canada has to make significant efforts to diversify its relations, including with democracies in East Asia, South Korea, India and Japan. We saw a new intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan announced last week. That's great. That's what we need to do more of to link these two issues, but it's hard. It's not easy, because culturally we are so focused on the U.S.