If you get the access to see history happen, do you understand the history when it does happen? And the answer to that question is no, you dont.

One of the biggest divides in Canada - I said it in 2006, and I said it right through my political career - is urban-rural. Lots of parts of this country feel entirely left behind. And they're mobilized by, you know, the gun control issue.

Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish.

I'm very struck by what you can do in a classroom. I've got 200 students. You don't do partisan politics in a classroom, that's not appropriate. But you want to give them a strong sense that these are the issues that matter.

There are a lot of young Canadians who want to be politically active at their college or their university who can't go to the party convention, who can't take part in politics, because they're holding down a job to pay their tuition. These are kids who want to do public service, who want to get involved politically, but their financial situation is precarious.

The reason that the Croats want a state of their own is that they fear being cut into little pieces by the Serbs.

Well, I'm an absolute fan of lacy lingerie. I want to make that perfectly clear.