What do you think Canada could take from that example?

Well, I wrote about this in a couple of opinion pieces over the last couple of years, mainly in response to the burgeoning consensus in Canada that we have to protect the auto sector, we have to push back against the American tariffs.

And my point is more, well, Here's an interesting example, a similar country.

They actually have higher GDP per capita than we do.

And they used to have a very highly protected domestic auto sector, not dissimilar to Canada in the sense of mainly American models being made in Australia.

But starting in the 1980s, under the Bob Hawke government, they started phasing out support.

And there's a big restructuring.

What do you think happens if we lose a manufacturing base as primal as the auto industry?

The idea that mass immigration was a problem in Canada was an idea relegated to the political fringes.

The Environics Group has been looking at how Canadians, uh, feel about the immigration system, about how immigration is affecting their society, for almost 50 years now, since the late 1970s.

Throughout these years, throughout the 2015 federal election, the Syrian refugee crisis, throughout Donald Trump's first term, and the Brexit campaign, and the 2019 federal election, with the new People's Party and its calls to end mass immigration.

These were all times where, where we would ask these questions and think, "Wow, I wonder if any of this is really kind of pushing attitudes back, uh, in Canada." Um, and the answer was always no.

So, uh, all of that period was in this, this, this period where we start to talk about, you know, a, a, a consensus in Canada aro- i- you know, in favor of a, a fairly welcoming immigration system.

[gentle music]