Well, and it's also effectively, I mean, it's a high-stakes poker game I guess, but made him kind of the leader of the unaligned with America world, which is pretty much everybody.

I q- I have a lot of questions about why on that fateful Friday night in August he walked away, and I think it was 'cause I write about it a lot in the book about culture and the importance of the, being able to do what exactly you and I are doing here right now, talking to each other, uh, talking to the country, uh, reaching across to, through our newspapers, our magazines, our radio stations, which we're losing every day, right? And our publishing industry is 95% owned by foreigners.

And so our ability to talk to each other and tell stories is diminishing.

Has been for decades.

And there's something about the things he was saying wh- uh, when he walked away that indicated that he was most concerned about culture.

Yes, oil.

Yes, steel.

And again, I'm hoping you can talk more about that.

So make that distinction for us.

All the bad things that have happened in modern history, uh, wars and conflict and, and massive deaths, have really come from the idea of nationalism, of ethnic nationalism, of believing that, of trying to build a state upon a shared heritage, an ethnic identity.

And it is, uh, such a destructive force, and what we're seeing now in the United States, which is I think why we have this opportunity to see who we are because we know what we're not in a very large way.

Is the United States is e- evolving into this Christian nationalism, and Chri- Christian white nationalism too, and we're seeing that all over Europe.

And the idea ...

What nationalism does is that it says the state should build its apparatus upon our shared heritage, and it's about an identity.

Whereas Canada, this wonderful project, is about an idea, an idea that we, we don't have that.

What have those struggles, as you were writing this and, and these, these struggles and these issues are sort of coming to the fore, w- what did that teach you about the moment, again, that we are in here in Canada, and how we got to this moment? I mean, it, it is hard to imagine that simultaneously we have a sovereigntist or separatist government in one province, and across the country we have a, a burgeoning, uh, movement of, you know, maybe as much as 25% of people of a province who say, "Yeah, I w- I want to separate."

So do you think that that word patriotism is sort of the solution or part of the problem?

I had a really hard time with that, and I had to come to terms with that, right? And I write in the book that this, which you'll learn as you read this, is how I came to truly patriotically love this country.

And then I had someone say, oh, that makes me so uncomfortable.

I said, well, because as an American, we think of patriotism as something American, like chest thumping, we're the best.

But this patriotism that I've arrived at is a sense of civic pride, just being proud to be in this country, knowing that it has flaws, that it's not, this is a great country, but it's a flawed country.

And we need to work on those things.

And so the patriotism I write about is a love of a country because it's diverse, because it cares for its people, because it's democratic, it's open, and it's kind.

What's the distinction?

Do you feel the way many feel that, you know, Donald Trump sort of looks as, at Canada the same way Vladimir Putin looks at Ukraine?

You know, I, I would, w- wouldn't have thought so, but I think that the people who are closest to what's going on are starting to see that possibility.

And I thought that, you know, I thought that Mark Carney would walk, would accept a deal with, with, uh, with Trump and, uh, you know, this past summer and, uh, because you just thought it was, the, the stakes were just too high.

And he walked away because he saw something that was going on.

And then he also made comments recently about how, yes, we have to prepare for the possibility that we will have a military issue with the United States.

I mean, we have to be prepared to defend ourselves against the US.

I mean, he, he thought deeply before he made these remarks.

So just wondering what, what people say to you if you, in that sort of line of conversation.

Is what you're seeing now fundamentally different from the free trade wars in the 1980s?

not perhaps completely fundamentally, but very much different.

And I don't really think that at the time when I was covering the free trade agreements in the 1980s, that there was a strong love of country at that time.

I think there was a feeling, well, we might have cheaper vegetables in the condo in Florida, and maybe we can give up.

i've never even seen the canadian movies where do i care that all the movies are american where do i care that my job is with a branch plant of the united states or that i don't have control over our province doesn't have control over its resources they're owned by other nations or i we don't have Our policies are being determined elsewhere.

It doesn't really matter.

We're doing OK.

Just a general comment on the role that you see the CBC playing and whether or not you think that it accurately and fairly represents what you could describe as Canadian values coast to coast.

Hmm.

I didn't know what mattered.

I didn't...

I came home from all my travels.

I covered wars, I covered genocides, ethnic cleansing, things blowing up all over the place, uh, and I would come home and I'd be so grateful to be home.

But I, I didn't know what I had.

I didn't know why it mattered.

Um, you know, you, you raise this in the book and to the extent that you feel comfortable, uh, amplifying on it here, uh, can you tell us more about all of that?