When political and business leaders tell the public - any public - 'We don't trust you to make the right decision' - they prejudice that electorate against the very proposals they want it to accept and undermine public confidence in themselves.

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.

Negative is always more newsworthy than positive.

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.

In many respects, my best friends were dogs.

In Canada, what I find what people are afraid of or worried about is politicians who denigrate the importance of the resource sectors, which are the basis of our trading capacity.

Populism is about is alienation in large numbers of people, but aggravated and provoked by a deteriorating economic conditions.