Excluding citizens' voices from politics leads down a very bad path.

You cannot let yourself be defined by the hopes that you will fulfill the darkest wishes of your opponents.

Angela Merkel has been focused on the right things. She has focused on the interests of her citizens - and not just in a narrow, short-term way, but in a very thoughtful - Let's make the world a better place for future generations as well - kind of way. Whether it's about climate or migration, she's not afraid to look at the longer-term trendlines and say, OK, we need position ourselves here, even if it doesn't seem obvious - this is the direction we need to go in. People respect that in Merkel, that a politician has a vision for the long term.

Canada has some very, very dark histories, from internments to turning away the St. Louis and the Komagata Maru, but none is darker than our abject failure to respect rights, the spirit and intent of the original treaties with First Nations, Métis Nation, and Inuit peoples. We have to transform that relationship.

I don't read the newspapers, I don't watch the news. I figure, if something important happens, someone will tell me.

There will always be people who say, we should just tear things down, they simply don't work and we should just fold inward. The three of us - Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and I - are trying to show that we can work with existing systems and that we need to make sure that they work for all citizens and that they create the freedoms and the opportunities without having to be more fearful, which the right is always pushing, or angrier, which the left seems to push.

My idea of freedom is that we should protect the rights of people to believe what their conscience dictates, but fight equally hard to protect people from having the beliefs of others imposed upon them.