The world definitely needs more democratically elected leaders that are willing to speak up on issues of human rights and global security issues. We need more. There are not that many voices.
I wouldn't speak specifically to Canada not sufficiently being a leader. I would say that we're not hearing that many leaders on the global stage that are actually advancing a human rights agenda and advancing an agenda on international humanitarian law. There aren't that many voices.
There's a distrust of multilateral systems. There's an increasing distrust in UN processes. We need more voices that are speaking out on these issues. There's a kind of vacuum of discourse on fundamental principles around gender equality, human rights and the rights of refugees. Not demonizing people who are on the run but actually speaking up in their defence is really critical.
There's definitely more room for Canada to be speaking up. It's a time when, if you look across the G7 and the G20, there aren't many leaders that are really speaking out in defence of the principles that I think most Canadians would really cling to and believe in. We see ourselves as a country that was built on various waves of migration and as a welcoming country. It's expressing that at a time when there's rising xenophobia, when there are these populist trends that are fuelling fear of the people who are going to be coming to our borders. That's very harmful.
Yes, there's room for Canada, certainly.