I just spent six months in Brussels and had considerable opportunity to exchange with some of the key leadership including on the commission in the European Parliament. If you go around European capitals, what is the challenge? Energy prices being two to four times as high...are not just undermining Europe's competitiveness, they are fundamentally undermining European democratic institutions, because just like in Canada, but only to a much higher degree, people are frustrated with the prices they are paying. We are not just supporting our European allies in their efforts to keep their economies competitive; we are also protecting their democratic integrity. By being idiosyncratic about our hydrocarbons and our critical minerals, we are undermining our own geostrategic interests, because we are not delivering for this key to European allies. Of course, for decades we have used European allies to counteract the vagaries of U.S. unilateralism. The silence by European partners has been stunning when our sovereignty, political and economic, has been threatened by a U.S. administration. That is because we have not delivered.
I think we can strike a bargain that delivers for us and for our European allies and preserves what has made us safe, prosperous and democratic for the last 75 years.