What's Next for U.S.-Canada Relations? Ben Shapiro & Premier Danielle Smith Discuss | PragerU

Well, it's a pleasure to be here with all of you and with the premier and I have to say it's rare that I go to one of these dinners and leave poorer than when I started. But that's actually a thing that happened tonight which is how much I care about PragerU and why I'm so grateful to all of you for being here and supporting PragerU which is an incredible organization. So we'll get to the terraflora in a little bit and I know that the premier has taken some flack in her hometown and in all the hometown papers for even being on the stage with such as me because I made the unfortunate the unfortunate error of making a joke about our soon-to-be 51st state and this apparently did not go over amazingly well in Canada and I just want to assure the premier just from the get-go I am NOT interested in Dudley Do-Right. I have no I feel no necessity to actually seize the great land of Canada and take it for the United States. Frankly there are too many Canadians in it and Canada is in fact an excellent ally to the United States. We'll get into that in a little while. I want to start and if I may I mean I come in peace I am here to make peace with your people and I have when any when anyone asked me the question about the 51st state I and this room will appreciate that you know that Canada tends to be a little bit more progressive that would be like adding another California to your electoral system and you would never have a Republican president in the White House again so I would just caution you that it's probably best for us to just stay friends and friends should never move in together but we can still be very very good friends. Absolutely Greenland is still on the table yes on Greenland maybe Cuba right but yeah I don't I don't think we need I don't think we need Canada they can't even spell color anyway so let's talk about the situation in Canada politically so obviously when we in the United States look up to our northern neighbors America's hat when when we look up to our northern neighbors one of the things that we see is an enormous amount of radical leftism but we are seeing in recent years a backlash to that maybe want to talk about particularly on the social side what kind of radicalism you're seeing from the Trudeau now the Carney government and and how exactly Canadians are responding to that. Yeah I can tell you part of the reason we no longer have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is is because he went too far on on so many issues he did yeah we're glad that he's gone too but one of the things that he went so far on was not realizing that punitive carbon taxes were going to create a major inflation crisis a major affordability crisis which caused interest rates to go up which caused young families not to be able to buy a house and as a result that started seeing you could almost see it that as people had their mortgages renewed then and faced those higher mortgage payments the liberal level of support kept going down I actually have there's a young economist who actually tracked that but they were so bent on going in that ideological direction by putting in the things that I mentioned in that video they have if you can believe it I mean they've proposed an emissions cap on oil and gas which would cause us it acts like a production cap it would mean we'd have to shut in production they wanted us to achieve a net zero power grid by 2030 less five years from now and in my province not 90% of our power comes from natural gas in I mean since auto tariffs are very much in the news there's a policy that we have to start buying 20% of our vehicles as net zero vehicles by January 1st of 2026 these are the kind of policies that are completely unachievable people realized it and they ended up giving Justin Trudeau the boost now we're in the middle of an election but that wasn't the only one my province is as you may know it is does not believe in safe supply of drugs we don't think there's such a thing as safe supply of fentanyl and crystal meth and heroin so we've seen this all down the west coast not just British Columbia but all the way through down to California just the absolute devastation that has been wrought by policies like that so we've taken a bit of a different turn public safety is really important yes and and the public is turned in in that direction as well and we're the only province that has come through with with policies to protect kids from making choices about their gender before they're old enough to understand the consequences of it you've probably yeah so we we wanted to make sure that teachers couldn't get in the way of kids and their parents parents have to be informed about what's going on with their kids if they want to change their pronouns we won't allow for kids for young people to get hormone blockers or surgeries when they're minors and we're going to allow for for women and girls to participate in biological female only sports as well so those are some of the things that we've done thank you and I think those are the same policies that you've seen and the same issues that you've seen cause just severely normal people to say enough is enough that's that's been happening in Canada as well most mostly in Alberta but it has been spreading elsewhere so are you seeing the trend of conservatism in upswing in in Canada overall I mean I first met Jordan Peterson who now works with us at Daily Wire among other places Peterson Academy is also a great organization and enjoy I first met Jordan actually up in Canada an event in Canada when he was protesting Ontario's bill c-16 which which was of course a measure that was essentially designed to make it illegal to speak out against many of the things that you're talking about and it's been a long time in the wilderness for conservatives in Canada do you feel that the things are beginning to change at a serious level there well I certainly felt that way about four months ago because really when I was when I was down before we were talking about the potential for a total white boat of the Liberal Party that's how unpopular they had become that's why they booted their leader out and needed to choose a new one kind of like what you saw with the Democrats as well they knew that Biden no possible way that he was going to be able to beat your president and when you do a quick switcheroo on a brand new face sometimes it gives you a little bit of a surge that's the point that we're in in Canada right now is that they did a switcheroo on the leader he is getting a bit of a surge and our election is going to be April the 28th but that's the the question is there going to be enough time for some of those conservative ideas and some of that some of that to to to come back that that's what we're watching over this the course of the next month or so what it feels like from the outside to get to the sort of the elephant in the room which is of course the tariff war is that the conservatives were absolutely set to dominate in this election Pierre Poliav was was set to win almost an outright majority I believe in in the Canadian Parliament and just blow out the Liberal Party and then President Trump decided that he wanted to put tariffs on Canada and this has led to you know a massive upsurge in support for the Liberals who are portraying Pierre Poliav who's the leader of the Conservative Party as an ally of those tariffs even though he is actually an opponent of those tariffs that analysis correct? I think that and thank you because although everybody wanted me to cancel my event with you this evening in my hometown you have been one of the consistent voices saying why Canada why are we having a tariff war with Canada I think you can understand why you might have some frustration with China maybe some frustration with Venezuela I think you can get that but Canada we kind of look at ourselves as your best friend and and neighbor and I think what you're seeing is some hurt feelings I think we don't understand why it is that this relationship is having the tension that it is right now so I what I would hope and this is why I like to come to the US is to say that I know that there I was talking to some of my table mates about the the level of tariffs that we charge on some of our commodities like dairy and eggs and chicken I think it gives the impression that we have these massive amounts of tariffs on all American goods and we simply don't we've got one of the largest terror free relationships in the entire world we have about a trillion dollars worth of products that go across borders and the only reason why we have a trade deficit at all is because you buy so much oil and gas from our country and so if we could get I think that understanding I feel like the Americans have a lot bigger fish to fry I think it would be much better for us to go back to the same kind of relationship that we had before whether it's on oil and gas whether it's on food that goes cross-border whether it's on our auto parts which is such a great integrated industry those are the things that we're trying to resolve right now and I'm really hopeful we can have a breakthrough because I I think that we would be so much stronger in supporting each other on the Americans aspiration of energy dominance on making sure that it's kind of a North American stronghold that we can support each other on international security I would really hope that if we can get to that faster than I think it might end up stabilizing a relationship I mean just on a factual level the overall tariff rate that Canada charges on American goods is well below 2% and that was under a deal that was actually negotiated by President Trump the USMCA which was a change to NAFTA I've said before with regard to tariffs that there are excellent reasons to put tariffs tariffs can be used for a couple of reasons that can be good one is for national security purposes you've seen President Trump do this with regard to very important products ranging from medical appliances to military hardware and an attempt to protect industries that are vital to that that's a good reason for tariffs you have to protect certain industries there another good reason for tariffs would be to presumably get other people to ratchet down their tariffs so President Trump were to deliver a sort of deal to Canada saying bring down your tariffs on lumber bring down your tariffs on eggs bring down those tariffs and then we will lower our tariffs as well I think that would be justifiable as well because the end goal obviously is to get to a lower tariff rate that allows for more trade cheaper products for the American people and also a bigger export market for America because obviously Canada has retaliated against the United States by raising its own tariffs and I think one of the side effects here that that needs to be noted is that if the United States Canada trade relationship were to go sideways it's very likely and Mark Carney is actively attempting to do this that that Canada would really exacerbate its own trade relationship with China so China would really start to make inroads in Canada as opposed to the United States I'm very hopeful that President Trump knows all of that and that this is again a sort of Trumpian gambit we've seen him do this a few times in which he lays out a sort of very harsh regime of tariffs with a specific goal in mind once that goal is reached he then removes the tariffs because he's actually achieved the goal he saw this most recently when he did this with the the country of Colombia not the University which he's also sanctioning but but the the country of Colombia where he threatened massive tariffs unless they were to actually accept illegal immigrants who we were deporting from the United States I'm very hopeful that that is the thing that President Trump is seeking is is an actual answer that will allow both countries to go back to status quo ante but better well and I hope so and I what we have found has been successful is that when when people like you and other influencers who have the ear of the of the president are able to make those exact arguments because one thing that I'm struck by is when I was when I was down here doing some lobbying a few months ago to try to avoid tariffs I saw a page from The Economist from from recently they sometimes do these graphics that show you what did the world look like in 2001 and what does the world look like today and back in 2001 they did this world graphic where all the countries were in blue that had their dominant trade relationship with the United States and all the countries were in red that had their dominant trade relationship with time China and in 2001 the map was almost all blue by 2021 it was almost all red with the exception of Canada and Mexico and so Canada and Mexico have remained steadfast and strong as friends and allies of the United States but you're very right what what has happened and I'll give maybe just a little bit of history because I know that the president likes President McKinley and when you go back and look what McKinley did on tariffs back in the 1890s he was he was worried about defending the tin plate industry I guess at the time but even back then I think he knew that you shouldn't tax raw materials and intermediate goods because raw materials and intermediate goods go into making finished products you get the value added and all the jobs and the value that go along with that but but what occurred is that the reaction in Canada to the tariff war was to say fine we're gonna change our trade relationship with Britain and sure enough the amount of trade that we ended up doing with Britain ended up skyrocketing and I believe that the the Republicans lost the subsequent midterms after that had occurred because of the backlash that happened in the American economy at the time on the businesses and on the consumers who were impacted by those so I would just put that out as a caution I mean we've already seen it that when you see this kind of tariff war take place when we put tariffs on your goods it hurts our people when the when your president puts tariffs on you it hurts your businesses and your consumers and you see the impact on the stock market you see the impact on businesses changing their investment decisions you see the impact on consumers and it's just unnecessary it just be much better if we could figure out what are the limited issues that are causing irritants but and then recognize that we just do so much better as as as two separate nations having a strong trade relationship. One of those issues that the president has cited in in doing the tariffs has been the lax border security at the northern border and and the reality is that Canada's immigration regime under Justin Trudeau has been quite terrible it really has and I wanted to ask you about that you know what what is Canada's viewpoint with regard to immigration because this is a massive issue for the entire West it was ignored by I would say much of what people would would correctly term the globalist elite and I think that term is very often misused but when it comes to the idea that there ought to be no borders and that everyone has a right to be in the West that is a perfectly well used term there is an elite that basically says there should be no borders people should be allowed to cross whatever borders they wish and simply and simply live there that's been taken up it was taken up by the Biden administration it was taken up by Trudeau what do you make of that and what's the current status in Canada well I can tell you it's there's always a difference of scale I mean what you're dealing with on your southern border is as I understood it up to 3,000 people per day coming across at some points is significantly more is up to 10,000 people sometimes so so you're talking about a problem in the millions so I can tell you what happened in the last couple of years is that Canada made the decision to end the visa requirement that we had from Mexican arrivals in Canada and so what would happen and you've seen it as well is it's not just farm workers who are coming up wanting to work the fields right it's everybody has realized that with the human smugglers that they can just get to Mexico and either be smuggled across the southern border or hop in a plane and then come to Canada and then get smuggled across the northern border that's the danger that you're facing and so what we saw is that we went from having about 4,000 people declaring amnesty when they arrived at our airports mostly Toronto Montreal because that's where our direct flights were from and it went up to as high as 40,000 last year so that that's I can see why that's a concern that's like a tenfold increase but most of those folks are still staying in Canada there was a difference of folks coming across the border of about 2,000 when the president was in his first term it went up to 20,000 this time so yes you're seeing the trend going in the wrong direction but it's also an easy problem to fix because it's very difficult to get to Canada you can't very easily get into a boat and come on to our shore you can't very easily if you're crossing you're already crossing from America because you're in the way the only other way is to get in by flight and so we solved that problem we put the requirement back on for a visa and we also made sure that people who were coming had a return flight and the number of people coming in through our ports has gone down dramatically what I have seen is that what because Alberta it's also pretty hard to get from Alberta to a major population center because you have to travel vast vast miles to get to a population center and so we don't have many people coming across the border from Alberta into the United States some of the problems may be in in Quebec and Ontario but I would say that we took the problem seriously in Alberta we hired a specialized teams of sheriffs with sniffer dogs commercial vehicle inspection dogs all-weather drones you need those in in Canada to have all-weather drones and also Blackhawk helicopters and we made sure that we had that presence at the border and so the provinces have done our part to take that seriously we also want to solve that problem we also want to solve the problem of drug trafficking and it goes both ways I mean yes there's an issue of fentanyl we're all facing that problem but we also have crystal meth and cocaine that are coming up from the United States as well so it's far better for us to realize this is a joint problem that we have of cartels operating all across North America share our intelligence share our resources and then let's be able to stamp it out we we don't want to say we want to have zero fentanyl also we don't want a single other person dying of a fentanyl overdose in our country or in yours again I think that the one of the important points here is that if you rewind the tape just a few months there was a massive conservative movement that was happening in Canada and it can be again and I think the obstacles to that need to be removed because it'd be better for the United States to have actual solid allies running Canada than to have some of the schmucks who've been running Canada over the past few years that's true in Canada it's true in Europe it's true in a wide variety of places so let's work together to get those obstacles out of the way so we can get to a better governed Canada that actually acts as a more solid American ally I think that the the president recognizes especially the importance of oil and gas because we've already seen a couple of things that when the initial 25% tariffs were to come in he made an adjustment for energy resources and that if you look at the energy emergency declaration executive order that he signed that isn't just oil and gas it's also electricity as well as critical minerals and and so I can tell you the the Canadian story on that it is we my province as I mentioned we're just above Montana for those of you from who don't know the geography of Alberta of Canada as well but our province we own the resources I know it's a little bit different in the US in the US your Bureau of Land Management owns most of the land in Canada's the reverse is the subnational government that owns most of the land and resources and so we've got 1.8 trillion barrels of oil of which 165 billion are recoverable we've got 1.36 quadrillion cubic feet of gas of which 146 trillion are recoverable at today's technology we already ship about 4.3 million barrels a day of oil to the United States most of it coming from my my province yeah we're very good we'd love to double it we'd love to sell you twice as much but your refineries are tools specifically to receive our brand of heavy oil and if you don't get it number one some of the refineries rely a hundred percent on that oil if you don't get it from us it means that they could be shut down if you want to replace it there aren't very many good replacements you've got Venezuela as an option and you ran as an option for that heavy oil we think that we're going to be a better partner for you than either of those two countries but it's a similar story on anything else that you that you want to name we have in Canada all of the critical minerals that are needed my neighboring province of Saskatchewan they supply 20% of the world's supply of uranium your other options to get uranium are from Russia or Kazakhstan the Chinese said that there are three different types of critical minerals they no longer want to sell to America germanium you can get that in British Columbia antimony you can get that in Ontario and there's a there's another product gallium that you can get from from Quebec your your aluminum I know that the president wants to start an aluminum industry but you don't have one right now you get 60% of your aluminum from from Quebec and so the worry that I have is that I know the American aspiration is to make sure that China does not win this war on critical minerals on on AI but you need a partner to be able to help provide all of those critical minerals and we're right here and we want to do business and we would like to trade and it would be far better for us to move to that point of how can we work together to achieve that end as opposed to watching for months maybe years as a tariff war continues on and and that's what I worry about is that there's a perfect opportunity right now for Canada and the US to work together on energy dominance on national security on winning the AI data war on crowding out China crowding out around crowding out Russia and and being able to work together on that but if it does get delayed you know how terms go they can they can switch really quickly at midterms they can be over very quickly we might lose the window to be able to do all of that and I think that would be a real shame if that happened yeah I think that along some of those lines one of the things that you were mentioning to me before when we were discussing offline was was about the current Prime Minister Mark Carney and and the idea there is that he actually is a particularly bad negotiating partner because he actually is incentivized for this to continue he actually would like to see it continue because number one it's giving him political ballast or at least the political win in his sales and two he is perfectly fine with doing deals with places like China and so even if you are interested in getting a better deal out of Canada what you want is a better partner in Canada to make those deals with yeah it's true I mean there there is an ideology as you know of those who believe that we have to get to net zero as quickly as possible the Mark Carney has been behind the net zero banking move so he has been going around signing up banks to defund any fossil fuel intensive industry and so that you can imagine my province which is very energy intensive and and what that would mean for us if if that if that same ideology was applied because it's what we've had to experience for the last ten years so when you look at where the world is going now I think most of the world now understands the absolute danger that happens if you do not have reliable and affordable energy I think that is finally what we've all realized with the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the turmoil in the Middle East with the acceleration of energy prices with the instability of power grids we all now realize that you can't run the world on solar and wind and batteries and so now is the time really for us to see a switch I think America has been the first to make that switch everybody else is coming on a little bit more slowly but if you want human flourishment if you want to be able to do well for your people you have to have affordable reliable energy and when you look at the the global scene you've got five billion people on the planet who want to have the same quality of life as we do and so we have to solve the issue of energy poverty if we're also going to solve the issue of global poverty so the world is dividing into two camps I think on that and I would rather be on the side of human flourishment I'd rather be on the side of helping to support that kind of aspiration I'd like to be on the side of that of that sort of growth but I don't think America could do it alone I think that America needs to have strategic partners and valued partners and I think I think Canada and Mexico together can be valued partners for America in being able to achieve those those broader aspirations well premier I'm very glad that you made the trek down from the frozen north into a significantly better country and well again I will admit that that you know our aspirations to engulf your country and reverse the results of the Battle of Montreal may go by the way side I think that you know a solid alliance between the United States and better partners in Canada is something that we can all look forward to really appreciate your time lately and we promise not to burn down your White House ever again