Category: Canada Page 1 of 7

On February 18, 2025

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Most Americans don’t understand why Canadians are so angry about Trump’s actions, and his talks of annexation.

I think hockey illustrates it well. Back in 2014, the singer who sang the American anthem’s mic failed at a hockey game. Canadians finished the song:

Just recently, fans at a Montreal game booed the anthem.

Here’s the thing: Ordinary Canadians thought that America was Canada’s friend.They really believed this.

Thus, hearing Trump’s threats, and seeing how many Americans back them, and how Americans deride and insult Canada, they feel betrayed.

The opposition to joining the US is in super-majority territory: over 80 percent. Canadians like being Canadian and think our society and form of government is better than America’s. They know Americans think the opposite, but it never occurred to most of them that America would try and force Canada to give up its sovereignty, or economically attack Cnanda.

Of course this is foolishness. America has never had friends and never will. It’s an antagonistic nation of bullies, and they have a long record of invading and bullying other nations. But ordinary Canadians, like ordinary people everywhere, don’t really think such issues through. Americans are a lot like Canadians and Canadians consume a ton of American media and tended to identify with America.

Personally, I’ve always been worried that America would turn on Canada, and since the ’90s I’ve been pushing for Canadian policy to recognize that. So, if we can avoid an invasion, I’m somewhat pleased that Trump has torn off the mask and shown the barbarian beneath. Even if the political elite is still in denial, it pushes us towards understanding the world more realistically. There is only one country that can credibly threaten Canada, and it’s been that way for as long as Canada has existed. Hell, since before Canada was formed.

Oh, and Americans: America doesn’t protect us from anybody but America. For Canada, NATO is and always has been nothing but an American protection racket. A proper Canadian military wouldn’t be an expeditionary force designed to help American overseas wars; we would lend naval and air support, with a lot of icebreakers, and an army primarily trained for insurgency to defend the only country in the world which has ever been a threat to us.

But I agree. Canada should spend a lot more on its military. We just shouldn’t spend it on US tech, as Canadians have begun to recognize:

Defence experts warn that The United States controls many of the key systems onboard Canada’s new warships, allowing the Americans to hold this country hostage over future upgrades or even the provision of spare parts.Taxpayers are spending as much as $80 billion on a new fleet of Canadian Surface Combatants to be constructed at Irving Shipbuilding.

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The heart of each of the warships is the command management system, which controls weapons, radars and other intelligence-gathering equipment.

Originally that high-tech system was supposed to be Canadian-made and under the full control of the Canadian government.

But that was switched out for a made-in-the-U.S. technology called Aegis, allowing the Americans full control and oversight of the supply of parts, modifications or future upgrades, industry officials confirm.

“This is what happens when you exclude Canadian companies: You find yourself potentially being held hostage,” explained Alan Williams, the former procurement chief at the Department of National Defence. “We don’t control the (combat management) system; the Americans do. Who knows what they are going to demand from us?”

Other Canadian defence industry officials acknowledged the same concerns — they asked not to be named as they did not want to jeopardize ongoing contracts with the federal government.

You don’t make your military dependent on the good will of the country that is the primary threat,and you get what you pay for.

Doctorow Has the Best Idea for How Canada Should Retaliate to Trump’s Tariffs + Make It So Americans Can’t Drive

On January 16, 2025

Just break the IP laws and set up app stores with 5% feeds. Create jail break kits for John Deere tractors, and so on.

There’s no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors, and provide jailbreaking kits that allows device owners all around the world to install the Canadian app stores where software authors don’t get ripped off by American Big Tech companies.

Canadian companies like Honeybee already make “front-ends” for John Deere tractors – these are the components that turn a tractor into a plow, or a thresher, or another piece of heavy agricultural equipment. Honeybee struggles constantly to get its products to interface with Deere tractors, because Deere uses digital locks to block its products:

https://honeybee.ca/

Canada could produce jailbreaking kits for John Deere tractors, too – not just for Honeybee. Every ag-tech company in the world would benefit from commercially available, professionally supported John Deere jailbreaking kits. So would farmers, because these kits would restore farmers’ Right to Repair their own tractors:

This is the ultimate “break glass in case of fire” situation. US elites make a ton of their money from IP, and breaking it would hurt them extremely. It’s something I thought Russia could do in the face of American sanctions, but why not Canada? If the US won’t keep its deals with us, any deals we have with it are ours to break.

And Doctorow’s right that this is the perfect retaliation: any sort of exit-tariffs or retaliatory tariffs hurt Canada too. This just hurts the US, and hurts the decision makers, not ordinary people. Heck, many of them might benefit.

To make this really work, and make sure the population backs it, share half the profits with Canadians: just split them evenly.

If the US wants Canada to not be its good ally, then why not become a semi-neutral country? We can sell to the US and China and Europe, and become a data haven.

The other, less fun, but very devastating thing to do is to cut off raw crude. US refineries are reliant on Canadian crude oil, and by about a month after Canada doing so there would be absolute shortages of gasoline in half of America. Not “the price is high”, but “we don’t have it.” Canada can handle this for a few months. Just cover the company losses and insist they keep paying workers until we say otherwise.

Finally, and obviously, all countries being hit my Trump tariffs should get together, support each other and work to hurt the US and Trump as much as possible. Trump’s handed us allies, we should use them.

Canada 101 For Would Be American Annexers

On January 8, 2025

So, reading various Americans who think annexing Canada would be a good idea, it’s clear most of them know nothing about Canada. Let’s educate them. The basic principles here are “Canadians are not Americans and Canada is not just America with fewer people.”

Canada Has Universal Healthcare

If you’re American you don’t know what this really means. Let me start with myself: if I had been born in America, I’d be dead the past thirty-one years. I needed millions of dollars of healthcare in my 20s at a time when I would have had no insurance if American. Since then I’ve needed serious care twice, in both cases when I’d have no insurance as an American.

I am not alone. There are a lot of Canadians who know they’d be dead, or unable to get healthcare if they were American. So, irrespective of any resistance, American annexing Canada means a lot of people will die.

I imagine some of them will decide that if they’re going to die anyway, strapping on a vest and saying an explosive hello to unwelcome American guests would be a good way to go.

Income Numbers are Deceptive

If you’re American you probably make more money than the equivalent Canadian. Great. Now subtract all hospital and doctor costs from that. I’ve never seen a hospital bill. I walked out after 3 months and no one asked me for one red cent. Your drugs cost way more than ours do, so subtract half the cost of any drugs your taking from your income. Americans have to pay for a lot of things that people in other countries get from government or for lower cost because government allows less gouging.

Canada’s History Is Based On the Idea “We Don’t Want to Be American”

America had its revolution. The people who lost and were most bitter about it? They were called the “United Empire Loyalists” and they fled to what was then called “Upper Canada”. When our founding fathers drew up our constitution, they looked at the US Constitution and said “they made some big mistakes.” They created a very different constitution. As one example, though it’s almost never used, the Federal government has the ability to override ANY decision made by the States. (Our founders were around during your civil war. They took a lesson.)

We raced West so that America wouldn’t claim all of North America. We stretched as far as we could to establish our borders opposition to, and in a race with America.

Canada’s founding principle is “We Are Not Americans.”

Canadian Identity

Not American. That’s what we all agree on. Americans see Canadians as more polite and wimpier Americans, and think everyone wants to be American, because gosh, America is the best. Canada always compares itself to American and asks “are we doing better?” I think that’s often a bad thing, the American bar is on the ground, trying to be better than America is often choosing a very low standard. Still, that’s how it is.

Canadians don’t bluster, but we have more wilderness and rural area than America. Canadians have a lot of guns, and rural and wilderness Canadians are tough and used to roughing it. There are places in Canada where there’s no one, no one, around for fifty miles. You take care of your own problems, or you die. The idea that Canadians are wimps is based on America being a superpower and Canadians being polite. It has little basis in reality outside the major cities, and Canadians in cities aren’t any more effete than Americans in cities (and while fat, less fat than Americans.)

Canada is BIG

Canada has more land than any country but Russia. Most of that land is sparsely inhabited. But, and this is important, so pay attention at the back of the class, almost everything America would want from Canada is out in the boons: oil, minerals, timber, etc…

People say Afghanistan was made for guerilla warfare but those people never thought what it’d be like to fight an insurgency in Canada. Thousands and thousands of miles of roads, railways and pipelines. Widely spread mines and farms and oil wells. Absolutely impossible to defend against some guy with an IED.

Canadians Don’t Want to Be Americans

There won’t be a voluntary annexation. A poll found 82% of Canadians opposed to joining the US and 13% for. If there’s a violent one America will conquer the cities in a couple weeks, then spend thirty years fighting a guerilla war which makes Afghanistan look like the picnic it was because, again, it’s a big country, often very rough and everything worth having is out in the country.

Canadians often like Americans, but most of us don’t want to be Americans and those who do simply emigrate to the US. And, in truth, just as many Americans look down on Canadians, Canadians think Americans are barbarians. Understand that when Canadians were polled on who the greatest Canadian is, the number one choice was Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian Universal Healthcare.

We aren’t nearly as nice as we like to think we are, and we have plenty of flaws. But one thing the majority of us agree on, “Thank God We’re Not Americans.”

This is perfectly natural. For our entire history and even before Confederation the number one fact of Canadian political life has been the four hundred pound gorilla on the southern border. We’ve always been aware that many Americans wanted to take over Canada or take a big chunk of it. Fifty-four fourty was the slogan. The Canadian border is at the 49th parallel, but many Americans wanted it up at 54.4. Canada is the “not America” nation.

So, once again, for the slow folks:

Canada is not America. Canadians are not embarrassed Americans. Most Canadians don’t want to be Americans and like folks pretty much everywhere, figure that our country, whatever its flaws, is better than our neighbour’s country and that being us is better than being someone else.

Canadian PM Trudeau’s Resignation is Perfectly Normal

On January 6, 2025

He ruled for about the normal time for Canadian Prime Ministers. This, from Taibbi, is well-written nonsense:

Canadian Prime Minister and feminist heartthrob Justin Trudeau resigned this morning. His departure completes an unprecedented popularity cliff dive, dropping from 65% to an incredible 16% approval rating over the course of a nine-year reign that men will chuckle over, from now through the end of time. Centuries from now, fathers will sit sons on their knees and tell The Fall of Trudeau as a cautionary tale.

Trudeau had about nine years:

Harper had 9 years;
Martin had 3;
Chretien had 10;
Campbell had less than one, but was an unelected caretaker PM; and,
Mulroney had 9.

American red-pill nonsense is just that. Trudeau was was a gifted politician who was bad at policy. He resigned because his own caucus wanted him gone, as they think they’re more likely to keep their seats without him.

The Liberals won’t win the next election, the standard pattern in Canadian politics is for the Liberals and Conservatives to alternate. Barring some huge surprise, the Conservatives will rule next. But how much of a majority they have will depend a lot on who the next Liberal leader is.

This is a nothing-burger. Yes, Trudeau could have been a better Prime Minister. He mishandled Covid in the same way as almost every other western leader; let in way too many immigrants, and inflation, especially in rent and food hurt him just like it did every other neo-liberal government of the era.

I despise Trudeau. He’s an empty neoliberal suit coasting on being le dauphin. (Son of Pierre Trudeau, one of Canada’s greatest Prime Ministers.) But he was a gifted politician, and his fall is bog standard for Canadian post-war Prime Ministers. It is entirely normal and has nothing to do with red-pills, cucks, soy, pick-up artists, feminism or any other culture nonsense. All of that is just noise, he may have been attacked on the cultural politics of the day, but he lost because people became worse off under his rule and because his time was, essentially, up. Even a very good Prime Minister finds it hard to hold on for more than two terms in Canadian politics.

He’s not an extraordinary cautionary tale and no one except historians will remember him in fifty years, let alone centuries from now.

Batshit Delusional Canadian Conservatives

On December 19, 2024

I want to highlight some tweets, because they’re representational of a lot of what modern Canadian conservatives think:

Trump’s 51st state rhetoric regards Canada is serving a number of different functions, but beneath it all Trump understands the threat posed to the United States by the Laurentian Elite who run Canada, and their disgraced and soon to be replaced poster boy, Justin Trudeau.

Trump and his people are well aware of a number of growing threats to US interests happening with the neighbors. His talk of tariffs is merely a negotiating tool to force the Canadian government to start governing like adults.

An incredible amount of illegal migrants, terrorists, and highly dangerous drugs like Fentanyl are flowing into the US from the northern border, and Trudeau has done squat fuck all to stop it, and in many ways has encouraged it through his globalist immigration policies.

Canada is also moving into the Chinese sphere of influence and control. Let us not forget that CSIS confirmed ChiCom interference in Canadian politics back to Mulroney, and direct interference in the last two elections. Nothing has been done about that.

China is also buying land and resource access in Canada, which Trump, and every administration previous to his, rightly viewed as theirs, insofar as the historical precedent has been set by Canada and the US having an incredible trade relationship. Trump wants them out.

The discussion around tariffs was a component of the disagreements between Trudeau + Freeland last week which lead to her resignation as Deputy PM + Finance Minister. Trump is already orchestrating major Ws for Canada, and signaling to the government he means business…

…TL;dr – what Trump is doing is good for The United States and will ultimately be good for Canada. We will not become an official 51st state, but Canada will definitely improve if it heeds to Trump’s demands. The status quo is leading us to hell.

This is so insane it’s hard to even respond to, but let’s give it a shot.

Canada’s policy has been massively anti-Chinese all thru Trudeau’s reign. We have sanctions on China. We arrested a Huawei VP for the US, which previous government officials felt was insane. We are not friendly to China, and their influence ops are not particularly effective. Our intelligence services are working against Chinese influence but do nothing to stop American or Israeli influence.

America has 100X the influence that China has over Canada. Israel has a 100X the influence that China has over Canada. China is not even in the running.

Canada’s land and resources do not (or should not) belong to America. As Russia proved recently, if the resource is in your country, you can take it away any time you really want to. BA Canadian is saying that the US rightly owns our resources is beyond offensive.

There are only two countries in the world which are a threat to Canada: the US and Russia. Russia is a minor threat to some our northern island possessions, the US is an existential threat. There is only one country in the world which could invade and conquer Canada. We have one-tenth the population and an army which is a joke. We are no threat to the US at all, and if we moved to let Chinese military forces in (which we won’t) America would bomb or invade the hell out of us.

America, on the other hand, has a proven record of being run by deranged warmongers who will invade or otherwise destroy foreign countries. We are zero threat to the US, the US is a huge threat to us. It is a maxim of strategy that you plan based on other countries capabilities, not their intentions, because intentions can change.

No one who doesn’t want a nuclear deterrent is a Canadian patriot. It is the only way we can be safe from the implicit (or under Trump, nearly explicit) threat of American force.

It is true that the neoliberals who have run the country from Mulrooney on have been terrible for Canada. But they have been terrible exactly because they over-integrated us with America from the Free Trade and NAFTA deals on. The old Canadian economy, from about 1880 to 1990 or so was based on having a real manufacturing sector to balance the resource sector. When resource prices were high, we subsidized industry. When resource prices were low (and thus the dollar was low) our manufacturing became more competitive and we subsidized the resource industry and paid welfare to laid off resource workers. That mixed economy produced one of the best economies in the world for over a century.

But American style conservates in Canada seem to want to deepen our vassalage to America. Our interests are not the same as America’s in all cases and acting as if they are is delusional.

The last real Prime Minister of Canada was Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre. He was willing to tell the US to go to hell when necessary. During one trade dispute he actually closed the border to trade flow to the US.

No PM since then has been willing to give the middle finger to the US and they have made us weaker and more dependent on America. We used to not ship raw seafood or logs, for example—all primary processing was done in Canada.

Now, ever since the fall of Britain in WWII (they won the war and lost the peace) there’s no question we’ve been a vassal state, but there’s abject vassalge and there is dignified vassalage where you’re able to stand up for your own interests.

Too many American influenced Canadian conservatives have bought into ridiculous ideas. To think that Trump cares about the welfare of Canadians is so out to lunch that I can’t find words to describe it. It’s questionable if Trump cares about anything but Trump. He cares about America as an extension of himself. He sure as hell doesn’t care about any other country except perhaps Israel.

Trump wants things from Canada which he thinks will make America better off. That’s all. This isn’t a “tough love” situation where he’s trying to make us do the right thing because it’s good for us. It might work out that way in some parts, but it’s not his intention, it’s a result of him destroying the post-cold war international order which was terrible for Canada and Canadians and putting the boot to neoliberalism.

But Trump’s policies are intended to take industry away from America’s allies and bring them to the US, just as were Biden’s. He’s more brutal and honest about it, but Canada can’t afford to lose even more industry.

Get nukes, and run Canada for Canadians. Only a Canada with nukes can be a sovereign country, free from the implicit threat of invasion. Force the Americans to downsize their embassy and move it far from Parliament, and watch Americans like hawks so they don’t run a color revolution.

Both the neoliberals who run Canada now and the American-style conservatives who want to replace them are bad for Canada and any Candian who wants Trump to push Canada around is a traitor. Someone who wants to pucker up and kiss the boot that’s kicking him.

Canadian Finance Minister Freeland Resigns

On December 18, 2024

This isn’t about all the high minding crap she said (lost the confidence of the PM, etc…) it’s an attempt to pressure Trudeau to resign, so the Liberals don’t have him as an albatross hung around their neck during the next election. The Liberals will still lose, I’d think, but they won’t get slaughtered, or that’s their hope.

Freeland has terrible politics. She’s the worst sort of neoliberal. She’s been Trudeau’s strong right hand, and done most of his dirty work. Given this is the case, I don’t think she’ll make a good candidate if she’s the new Liberal leader.

Trudeau may want to hang on, knowing he’ll lose the next election, with an eye to running again after four years of Conservative rule. It’s what his father did, and he may wish to emulate Pierre.

Pollievre, the Conservative leader, will probably be the next Prime Minister. He’s right wing of the modern American variety. Nativist, nasty, and stupid. About the only good thing I can say about him is that he’ll fight if Trump goes ahead with tariffs.

Trump’s threatening everyone with tariffs. The Euros, Chinese, Mexico, Canada and so on. The smart response would be for all of these nations to coordinate their response, rather than each midget fighting on their own. More on that in a later post.

Continued Privatization

On May 28, 2024