Interview: Green Party Co-Leader Jonathan Pedneault Has A Plan to Protect Canadian Sovereignty

And that plan is pretty damned interesting. It's definitely worth a look. So, let's have a look.

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Now, on to business…

Pedneault takes questions in Ottawa. Source: Green Party of Canada.

In 2022, Jonathan Pedneault became co-leader of the Green Party of Canada alongside Elizabeth May. In July of last year, he stepped away from that role after receiving “life-altering” health news. He announced a return to the job in January, and this month his party announced that Pedneault would be their spokesperson for the Leaders’ debates in the upcoming federal election. He will also seek a parliamentary seat in Montreal’s Outremont riding.

With threats of tariffs, annexation, and god knows what else coming from US president Donald Trump, I spoke with Pedneault about the Green Party’s plan to protect Canadian sovereignty, and to prepare the country for a changing world in which economic, political, and defense relationships that have held for decades are being upended in real time.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

David Moscrop

Let's start with the Green Party plan to create, as your party puts it, a “global economic bloc with the EU, UK, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and other democracies.” It's an extraordinarily ambitious plan. When you talk about an economic bloc, are you talking about a free trade zone? Free movement? The right to work? What setup do you envision?

Jonathan Pedneault

I think the first and probably the lowest hanging fruit is to commonly agree to red lines with respect to our relationship with the United States. What we're seeing right now is a state that is actively using its economic might to threaten or undermine sovereign rights and challenge the post-Second World War order, and that cannot go unanswered. So, from my perspective, the most immediate and potentially quickest measure to achieve is not free trade or free movement of people, but to agree on a set of red lines when it comes to US behavior that would automatically create or kickstart retaliatory measures by this bloc.

It would be essential to have joint measures, joint retaliatory measures. If we could coordinate such a response with Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Mexico, and other democracies, I think that would make us stronger and it would make the pain much greater for US economic interests, which, as I think we now know, are the only ones who seem to have some sort of leverage on President Trump.

Moscrop

What about the idea of a long-term, European Union-style relationship between Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand? This idea has been floated. Some people like it. Could you envision that as part of Canada's trade and economic diversification?

Pedneault

Absolutely. I think we will need, as democracies, and I would add the EU to this, to look at ways of strengthening our respective markets, facilitating more freedom of movement for our citizens, and building stronger cultural, economic, and political links. But one of the things we saw with the Canada-Mexico-USA free trade agreement, which has been immensely beneficial to the Canadian economy for decades, was that we became more dependent and reliant on the American economic superpower. We also undermined labor, intellectual property, and environmental protections in the course of engaging in such trade agreements. That would be something that we would need to closely consider.

Also, I think one of the great challenges of the EU is that despite this economic bloc and this free trade space they've created, there's no fiscal mechanism to make up for the strong differences in size and productivity between the various economies within the EU. Of course, Canada has an entirely different economy output and specialization than, say, the UK would have; the UK also has a much larger population. So, I'll just say I’m very open to it. I think this is certainly something that we need to explore, but this is a discussion that needs to take place with Canadians and it's one that would take most likely several years to achieve. I don't see this as something that could be put forth or become a reality quickly enough to really help us in this current situation with the US.

Moscrop

The broader theme here seems to be that we simply cannot trust the United States anymore. Canada can’t and the world can’t. And so we very quickly come to think about military arrangements. You would suspend Canada’s F-35 fighter jet deal with US company Lockheed Martin and you’d buy jets, ships, and submarines either domestically or from European Union states.

With the F-35s, we're close to the first shipment, let's say a year or so out. We need to retire our CF-18s. Could we replace those jets fast enough if we ditch the F-35 contract? And where would we get them? Are you looking at France or at the Saabs out of Sweden?

Pedneault

I would say there are other options to the F-35s. The Saabs or the French Rafales. Saab promised Canada that they would build their planes in Canada. And despite this, our government decided to instead throw $80 billion of our public money into Lockheed Martin and lock ourselves up in this contract with the Americans, which was not only a strategic mistake – now that we see the situation that we're in – but also a betrayal of Canadian interests and Canadian workers, especially in the plane construction industry here, largely here around Montreal.

Also, I've worked in Norway for several years, but most recently I was working with an organization that deals in informal diplomacy and has fairly close links with their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, people who deal with the security establishments in Denmark and other places. And there was a security forum in Oslo in January and the Danes were openly wondering whether they would be able to use their own F-35s to defend Greenland if it came under attack from the United States. And they don't know. They don't know. It's highly likely that there's a kill switch in those extremely expensive, high technology planes. If it fell into enemy hands, you would want to be able to disable it remotely. And it's not clear that whoever buys those planes has full control over that ability to deactivate them remotely.

We’re not quite yet at the point where the US is a military threat, but that is certainly something that I think any sane mind in Canada is now forced to contemplate. It begs the question as to whether it is worth it for us to continue to invest tens of billions of dollars into a product that will benefit US workers and US manufacturers — into a product that we already knew was not efficient enough. For instance, for us to patrol the high North, the range of the F-35 is questionable. Yet we still went along with this plan in order to, one could say, appease the Americans and show them that we were the steadfast allies that they deserve. And now they're stabbing us in the back. So, I think it's high time that we get out of this contract, that we cut our losses there and we buy planes that will actually be built in Canada.

Moscrop

You're talking about suspending the Safe Third Country agreement with the United States. You also want to build infrastructure to process new migrant arrivals. We expect, with Trump, more migration here across the US border, regular and irregular. How do we manage ending that agreement, building infrastructure for newcomers, and keeping public opinion onside so as not to generate a backlash?

Pedneault

There's no easy way to say it, but Canada's been in an extraordinarily privileged state for decades. We have been able to choose who we welcome, unlike Europeans, and unlike the Americans. There's no easy way to come to Canada. One thing that is clear is that right now the situation south of the border will undoubtedly create new influxes of migrants and refugees towards Canada. We saw that between 2016 and 2020. So we can decide to close our eyes and sort of think magically that this is not going to happen, but we will end up with large numbers of people in several locations throughout the country who will be claiming asylum here.

That will provide us with two options. One of them is to send them back to the US, a place that is becoming increasingly fascist and a country that has a president that has pledged to deport 20 million people, that is actively sending police throughout the country to take families apart and put them on planes and send them to Guantanamo Bay or potentially to Honduras under horrendous conditions. The other option is we can decide to, right now, work with the provinces to ensure that we grow our capacity to welcome those who will undoubtedly come one way or another.

Moscrop

One of my favourite Green Party policies is to end what you call “US-dictated intellectual property laws and allow the freedom to jailbreak, repair and modify US-manufactured products here at home.” I think that's a winner. I'm curious, though, what you think about the idea of going farther and refusing to enforce or respect US copyright or patent claims?

Pedneault

I personally love that idea. But I think Canada needs to look at how that would expose Canadian patents to the risk of other states doing the same to us. If there is a way for us to do that while we are able to protect Canadian patents, then that's something that I think would be very interesting to look at. But that's one place where I don't have the answer, so I'd love to get back to you on it.

Generally speaking, though, I fully support the thinking behind it. When it comes to pharmaceutical products, for example, that's one area where we've been pushing for reform for many, many years now. We want to have pharmacare and we've had pharmacare in our platform for decades. But, of course, one of the things that makes it extremely expensive right now is that so many of those drugs are under patents. And we know that these drugs could be manufactured at a much lower price. And these pharmaceuticals, whether Canadian or American, benefit from so much public money for research and development that it is completely unconscionable that they should be allowed to charge so much for lifesaving products.

Moscrop

Does your plan to protect Canada recognize and imply that we've entered a long-term, new normal in which the United States is no longer a trustworthy ally and trading partner? Are we looking at this as the new baseline, or do we revise things if Democrats win a few years from now?

Pedneault

I think that the US is heading in a very dangerous direction. I would not bet on there being midterm elections to begin with. This is a scenario I've seen in so many different countries where authoritarianism manages to find ways to destroy and undermine democracy. I mean, we may see fake elections or whatever, but I think the US is going to face some extremely dark times in the coming four years, in the coming decades. And we have to remember, of course, that Trump is only the symptom of something much deeper. US democracy was severely undermined for decades by money and gerrymandering. And while I do think that a good number of Americans are decent, democratic, freedom loving people, I think that there's an underbelly there that has taken up a lot of space, that has been enabled and allowed to bully others, that has grown in strength, and that also possesses weapons.

We cannot forget that there are 400 million weapons in private hands and circulation in the US, which is completely insane when you think of it. So, whatever happens in the US, I think it's likely to be pretty unstable or undemocratic in the coming years. In that respect, I think Canada would do extremely well or much better to prepare itself for such a scenario, not to mention the fact that it will always be better for us, especially in this world, especially when we take into account climate change, to have a stronger, more self-reliant economy and more friends than less.

And that’s one place where I'm very critical of prime minister Trudeau and Canadian foreign policy for the past 30 to 40 years. We've abandoned the rest of the world. We've not invested nearly enough in maintaining good relationships with allies or with countries with which we have severe disagreements, but which are nonetheless becoming extremely important actors right now. And those are relationships that we, for better or worse, will need to try and repair or at least manage in a way that hopefully provides us with a bit of protection from these big new geopolitical tendencies that we're observing.

Moscrop

You're thinking of China and India, for instance?

Pedneault

I think China is definitely acting like a revisionist power right now, the same way that Russia is and the US is. India assassinated a Canadian citizen on Canadian land. But yes, I do think in general we need to be more pragmatic. We need to also look at other states that have significant weight in international affairs. Brazil is one. South Africa, Nigeria, and Turkey are others. These are states with which we occasionally have disagreements, but which are growing significant influence in world affairs.

Having spent a significant amount of time in Norway and working with a small organization linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I know the Norwegian foreign policy is in many ways one that has managed to establish Norway as the necessary and respected actor with respect to everybody, despite being a strong NATO ally. They also, of course, share a border with Russia, but were still able to have discussions with the Kremlin until many, many months into the war in Ukraine. Norway has strong relationships with China and India and the US and various other countries, and those countries see Norway as a go-between that has the credibility of engaging in discussions and acting as a middleman.

I think Canada used to have that reputation. It doesn't have it any more. For many years our foreign policy has been so closely aligned to that of the United States that I think that for many European, African, and South American countries, they probably would have to ask themselves what difference would it make to them if Canada became the 51st state? And the answer is probably not that much; and we have to change the narrative, but that's on us to do.