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.

We can't afford to waste people. We can't afford to have people think the game is over before it's begun. We've got to be saying to the Canadian people: you can't tax cut your way to a productive 21st-century economy. You can talk that talk, but it's not going to give you a productive 21st-century economy, because it will scythe apart the public goods that make prosperity possible. That's what we've got to say, and so we shall.

The politics of personal destruction, the politics of division, the politics of fear, it's all there. It helps you to define the politics of moderation - the politics of democratic respect, the politics of hope - more clearly.

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.

How do you keep war accountable to the American people when war becomes invisible and virtual?

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.

You're never really out of politics.