Last week Jordan Peterson conducted the above interview What Pierre Poilievre Thinks About Donald Trump. Poilievre is the Conservative leader expected to form the next federal government in Canada.  My lightly edited transcript is below in italics with my bolds and added images. JP refers to Peterson and PP to Poilievre.

JP: Trump famously met with Trudeau and seemed to troll him quite hard. First thing, I don’t know to what degree the Canadian press picked up on this, but Trudeau wasn’t invited to stay at Mar-a-Lago and there’s 126 rooms there. So when Trump invites someone he also invites them to stay there. So you know that was a message, and then he trolled him hard. He called him the governor of America’s 51st State and let it be known that he had very little respect for him. And then he announced a 25% tariff on Canadian goods.

So I had two reactions to that. You know, because I’m no fan of Trudeau, one was amused pleasure at Trump’s vicious humor let’s say. And the other one, you know he is the leader of our primary ally and a G7 nation, and so maybe that verged on contempt. I’m not exactly sure what to make of that and I’m curious about your response, and also how you feel about negotiating a new relationship with the Americans and with the Trump Administration in particular.

PP: Well I won’t spend a lot of time on how I feel about it other than to say Trudeau is a weak leader who leads a weakened economy with a weakened dollar and a weakened border. And president Trump has a strong mandate and he he spent his life as a highly successful businessman in the most cutthroat economic environment in the world, New York City. So in construction yeah and in Chicago. This is a former businessman who can spot weakness a mile away and act on it. So it’s just humiliating for all Canadians to witness something like that, because this is our country.

But what am I going to do about it? Look, first and foremost we need to show up with strength. We have an American president who has always put America First, he’s very blunt about it. I’ll put Canada First. The good news is that there’s immense overlap in the two countries respective interests and values. We’re both liberal democracies, we both value Freedom, we both share a geography. We have our enemies and our risks and our threats are the same, so there’s no reason why we can’t both win. If you look at the history of President Trump, he negotiates very aggressively and he likes to win, but in the end he doesn’t appear to have a problem if his counterparty also wins. So I think that we can get a great deal that will make both countries safer, richer and stronger. That’s the goal that I’ll be coming with into these negotiations.

JP: Okay, so what would a great deal look like as far as you’re concerned with the Americans on the energy side. One of the things that Trump pointed to was Canada’s Trade Surplus with the US at 1 billion was his estimate.

PP: It depends how you measure it, other estimates have it at around 40 billion, but he’s right, there is a Canadian Trade Surplus with the states. And from a mercantilist point of view you can say that America has been ripped off by China and Mexico. You can see examples of a factory closing in Ohio or Pennsylvania to open in Mexico or in China. But that’s not the nature of the Canadian Trade Surplus. It’s not a matter of the Canadian economy taking American jobs, far from it.

The nature of our Trade Surplus with America is that while it is a ripoff,
it’s Canada ripping itself off and let me explain.

Our entire Trade Surplus and more is due to oil and gas because we export about $120 billion of oil and gas to the United States at enormous discounts to market price because we have been so stupid and our bureaucrats have been so obstructive and woke activists have been so fanatical that we have not been able to develop the infrastructure to refine and transport our own energy to World Markets. So we are stuck with the US; depending on the time we sell a barrel oil to the Americans for 10% up to 30 or 40% cheaper than the world price. There’s a price called western Canada select and it’s significantly lower than WTI.

Until recently at least 99% of our oil exports to America where they then get to upgrade it and resell it at enormous profits with their welders, pipe fitters and engineers making the six figure salaries that go along with that. We give all of our natural gas exports to the United States because we don’t have an an operating liquefaction terminal to send it away ourselves so they get our natural gas at massive discounts. And then they can decide if they want to liquefy and ship it off to world markets at literally five times higher.

So that is that is the trade surplus he’s talking about. Now if he were to stop that today it would mean that American workers at refineries and in other value added places would lose their jobs and Americans would pay higher energy prices. So that would not be good for America in the long run.

Being very blunt, I intend to approve refineries and LNG plants and
hopefully pipelines so that I could bring that production
back to Canada and make us more energy independent.

But in the short run if president Trump wants to make America richer the last thing he should want to do is block the underpriced Canadian energy from going into his Marketplace. In fact I would encourage him to approve the Keystone Pipeline so that we can create jobs for American workers who will build and install it, but also create much more wealth for Alberta and Saskatchewan and have their product reach tide water in the US Gulf Coast and get World prices.

So that’s an economic win. Also it’s not just oil and gas though. We have in Canada the Strategic minerals that are necessary for Warfare and for the modern digital economy that we could be exporting to the United States breaking both of our dependencies on China. We have the energy, a major Surplus of electricity, a surplus that we could even grow further that could be used for data centers that America cannot build fast enough.

So there’s enormous opportunities for both of us to get vastly richer if
we actually deepen our trade relationship rather than blocking it.

JP: Right, well it seems highly probable to me that that would be the direction that the Trump Administration would turn in if they were negotiating with people who were playing a straight game and were actually aiming for something like economic Prosperity instead of whatever the hell it is that Trudeau’s aiming for. Now you made brief reference to something quite shocking in its full import which didn’t really strike me until your comments. For example, Trudeau turned away the chancellor of Germany and the leader of Japan when they came cap in hand to Canada asking for increased Natural Gas exports over the long run. Given that we refused them, we ended up maintaining our low cost contracts with the United States and selling them all our resources at a discount.

PP: Yes, it’s enormously stupid. That’s the business case Trudeau couldn’t make. And I hate to say this, but because we have blocked LG plants and pipelines and other energy infrastructure, and because we’re giving therefore our gas to America at like a 70 or 80% discount to European and Asian prices and our oil at a discount of 20 or 30%, we’re effectively throwing money out a window. What do you do when someone throws money out a window? Stand next to the window yeah right.

So that is the true story, the pathetic story of our Trade Surplus is
that we’re actually handing over our resources stupidly.

It’s not The Americans’ fault, it’s our fault. We’re stupid and we’re going to stop being stupid when I’m prime minister. We’re going to build this infrastructure ourselves but in the meantime it would be it would be bad for American workers and consumers for the president to tariff our oil and gas.

And look, we have an integrated economy; I think an automobile crosses the Border something like eight or nine times between Ontario and the manufacturing states of the US before it becomes a finished product. Why interrupt those Supply chains? Also why not allow Americans just to have access to buying our minerals? Or better yet why don’t we process improve them here in Canada before we sell them to the United States to break dependence on hostile foreign powers?

By the way I would say to president Trump that the gains that Canada gets from increased access to the United States, I would spend largely on our Continental defense, on a more powerful Canadian military that truly secures the Arctic that protects us against terrorists and against intercontinental ballistic missiles, against threats, God forbid, from other parts of the world. We could have a bigger and more powerful military with a bigger and more powerful economy and so our interests overlap overwhelmingly.

That’s the case I would make to the incoming president
who has proven that he likes to make deals and is good at it.