There is a whole school of Canadian academics, media personalities, and politicians whose definition of a Canadian is a North American who fears or dislikes the United States.

Where you find all the worries about immigration, I think the way to handle that is to listen to the person that's got concerns, and then try to move that in a positive direction, as opposed to decrying it and saying, 'Don't even raise that, you can't raise that.'

Nothing disturbs me more than superficiality and mere sloganizing on matters of public policy, and the suspicion that what the speaker is saying represents the full extent of his knowledge on the subject.

There are hundreds of Canadian communities that have given more thought to hiring their rink manager than they have to electing their member of Parliament.

I think on all the debate on immigration, and all of that, the class of person that should be given the benefit of the doubt is the genuine refugee that is just in real desperate strait. Some of them are in the United States illegally because of [human] trafficking. They were caught up in trafficking, and you can argue to what extent it's their fault, to what extent they didn't know what they were getting into.

New Canada must be workable without Quebec, but it must be open and attractive enough to include a New Quebec.

There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems – including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity – than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents.