I think we have done one good thing. I was very pleased with the government's budget with regard to critical minerals. As the situation develops, and as I believe that Russia will move more into alliance with China, it will be challenging for us to engage in secondary sanctions against China if China does with Russia what it's been doing with North Korea: facilitating the breaking of the sanctions that we are imposing on Russia to try to induce Russia to come into compliance with the norms of the international, rules-based order. It will be harder.
If the world is going to split into two camps of the autocracies and the countries that Russia and China are able to bring into alliance in various ways.... China has quite a successful ability to rally support in the UN from nations that have received benefits under their belt and road infrastructure program. If we're going to be in that kind of situation, it's important that we ensure our supply chains as a matter of national security, so that we cannot be subject to coercion by countries that will say, “We will give you the element that you need, but if you're not nice to us in complying with our political agenda in your country, we'll cut you off.” We saw that with the Chinese sanctions against canola seeds and meat at the time of the fiasco with Meng Wanzhou and the completely unjustified and brutal incarceration of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
We have to look at the situation seriously. We have to look at the CSIS assessments, which are critical for you to understand what Canada has to do. It's not going to be without cost. There's no point in our pretending that this is not happening, because it is, and we have to make the hard choices necessary to protect our nation and the other nations of our like-minded allies as a consequence.