Thank you for the question.
Before February 24, many observers wondered whether Western countries, including Canada, were willing to go far enough to defend the values they hold. Many doubted it. President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping doubted it.
In my view, the situation in Ukraine shows that Western countries, Canada and other NATO members in particular, are able to be more cohesive in terms of their actions as well as their cooperation when danger is in the air, in a sense. That's important. This is a decisive moment because the message we're sending to countries like China, in relation to Taiwan, is that we're ready to do whatever it takes, that we are even ready to wage a proxy war to defend our allies, our democratic partners. The Canadian government's message is very clear. Canada's approach is quite dichotomous, if not Manichean, when it comes to good democracies versus autocracies, which are not good.
Canada has a very clear position on this situation. That's not always been the case. For a long time people wondered where Canada stood.