I'm totally in favour of meeting our Paris commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But I don't think we should do that by making ourselves uncompetitive.

There are people who just haven't done as well in a globalized economy.

It will not be good enough simply to depend on one or two markets, we will need to embrace innovation, decide what we do well, and target those sectors in which, with investment and planning, we could make the whole world our client for keeps.

We need to give the private sector many more powerful incentives to do research and development, to bring ideas and new discoveries to market in Canada, and commercialize them here, and stay here through successive stages of growth. But they can only do it with better government policies that give them more powerful incentive.

The plant goes down. The industry is weaker. The price of the commodity has lagged. Any of those things can push people into unemployment or lower income categories, and that hurts.

Absence of failure does not constitute success.

The reality of Canadian history is that we've been willing to do the important things the world demanded of us: fighting in World War II, in Korea, in the Balkans, where we were involved in offensive military operations, and in Afghanistan, where we have made disproportionate contributions.