Quotulatiousness

March 13, 2025

“Canadian liberalism has been regime ideology since at least Lester B. Pearson in 1963”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Fortissax on “Leaflibs & Puckstick Patriots”:

The past week has been very special because something happened in Canada. This something is not anything I could have anticipated, but I find myself not particularly surprised. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau propped up the husk of Jeff Douglas like an old Fisher King from some retelling of Arthurian legend. Jeff Douglas is famous for his appearance in the Molson Canadian beer commercial, released in the year 2000. This commercial was possibly the hardest-hitting, if not among the top hardest-hitting, propaganda pieces ever produced in service of regime ideology. That regime ideology is Canadian liberalism — a form of left-liberalism that emerged out of the Second World War, in direct contradiction to American right-liberalism.

Many American correspondents have asked me to explain why it seems like liberals are patriotic in Canada, while conservatives are not. The answer is simple: Canadian liberalism has been regime ideology since at least Lester B. Pearson in 1963, Pierre Trudeau’s predecessor, who laid the groundwork for a sinister, transformative cultural revolution — the likes of which I can only compare to the USSR or Communist China.

What occurred in this era was a complete and total restructuring of society — an absolutely Orwellian mind-wipe of Canadian identity, a retconning of Canadian history, culminating in the explicit purpose of erasing the historic Canadian nation. So successful was this cultural revolution that, for my entire 30 years of life, the narrative has been that Canada is an illegitimate, post-national state on stolen land. Paradoxically, the people are viciously patriotic toward the hollow state, whose newfound identity obsesses over its own dissolution, its symbols and icons mostly channeled into corporate brands and products, like Canadian Tire, fast food chains like Tim Hortons, and the timeless bread and circuses of hockey.

Canada was transformed into an international economic zone of individuals with relatively maximal allotments for personal fulfilment — including the most licentious, disgusting, and degenerate, as long as it remains acceptable within the Overton window of the time.

A cornerstone of this identity is precisely outdoing the U.S. in how liberal it can be — true to the end goal of transnational liberals like Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man. In this 63-year era, there are two archetypes of the average man or woman. These archetypes manifest as more moderate, more common versions of the populist American wannabe or the neurotic DEI cultist I discussed in my other article. These are what I’ve coined “leaflibs” and “puckstick patriots”. They represent the centre-left liberal and centre-right liberal majority of Canada.

There is often overlap between the two, but what they have in common is an extreme ignorance of Canadian and world history and national identity. Both regularly partake in the communion of the left-liberal civic religion but do so in different ways. They are also united in that the vast majority of information they obtain about local, regional, and national politics comes from legacy media outlets like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (state-owned, publicly funded broadcaster), CTV, and Global News — old-school news outlets whose private owners and shareholders differ little in belief.

What the Canadian ruling classes have in common is that they are extremely insular and scarcely interact with the public. In many ways, Canada resembles European countries. Canadians were, for a long time, educated along stratified British class lines, and everyone knew their place. Canada’s national value is Order, not Liberty, and traditionally, society functioned as a collective, organic whole in a proper communitarian model, where the social expectation of the enlightened and powerful elites was to tend to their responsibilities of responsible government.

Let’s discuss these two “normie” archetypes. International readers, especially Americans, may notice parallels with their own mainstream liberal and conservative, yet otherwise ill-informed, media-consuming relations.

March 11, 2025

“In many ways, Carney is the technocrat’s technocrat. A bona fide citizen of nowhere”

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In spiked, Fraser Myers expresses incredulity that Canadians have “chosen” yet another technocratic globalist as our next Prime Minister to succeed Justin Trudeau:

Then-Governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
WEF photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Canadians have a new prime minister. After a leadership election in the ruling Liberal Party, it’s out with the woke globalist, Justin Trudeau, and in with the woke globalist, Mark Carney.

Extraordinarily, in an age where justified populist rage against an out-of-touch establishment is spreading across the globe, Canadians have ended up with a leader who embodies that very establishment. In many ways, Carney is the technocrat’s technocrat. A bona fide citizen of nowhere.

The new Canadian PM’s CV reads like a parody of an archetypal Davos man. He has been governor of the Bank of Canada, governor of the Bank of England and a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance. Before he entered the public eye, he worked for Goldman Sachs – in London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto. He has degrees from Harvard and Oxford. Yet he has never once held any form of elected political office. He does not even currently hold a seat in Canada’s House of Commons.

Carney is living, breathing proof that expert credentials are no substitute for sound judgement or political acumen. He has embraced just about every naff and dangerous political trend of our times, never deviating from the Davos script.

Most notoriously, as governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, Carney became the high priest of Project Fear ahead of the 2016 Brexit vote. He warned before the referendum that a Leave vote would spark an instant recession. It didn’t. He claimed Brexit would make investment in British assets so risky that it could ‘test the kindness of strangers’ should the UK take the leap. Needless to say, this was politically motivated hysteria, not a sober assessment of Britain’s economic prospects outside the EU.

More recently, his endorsement of Labour’s Rachel Reeves as chancellor ahead of the UK General Election also smacked of both dubious judgement and needless political interference. Carney said in autumn 2023 that it was ‘beyond time’ her plans were put into action. Yet since Reeves’s plans were actually put into action, in her first budget in October last year, the UK economy has teetered on the brink of recession, unemployment has risen and government borrowing costs have shot up. Call it the Carney kiss of death.

March 10, 2025

“I, for one, welcome our new unelected globalist technocratic overlord”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

With a resounding 99% 85.9% of the voters whose votes were allowed, Maximum Leader Mark Carney has finally been elected to a position for the first time in his adult life:

With the support of most of Justin Trudeau’s team, Carney has been ushered in to continue on with more of Trudeau’s signature economic policies, the ones Carney has been advising Trudeau on since 2020.

Yes, Carney said that he will scrap the capital gains tax changes that have hurt so many small business owners, but that had to go. He also promised to drop the consumer carbon tax but would also increase the industrial carbon tax, a move that will have the same impact on manufacturing industries like steel as Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Few Canadians will know about the discrepancy in Carney’s plan or any others because there has never been a leader in this country elected to such high office with so little vetting. Carney preferred speeches and rallies over news conferences and interviews with U.S. media outlets over Canadian ones because the interviewer would know little about Canadian politics.

When he wasn’t appearing on The Daily Show or the podcast of Trump’s short-lived spokesman Anthony Scaramucci, Carney preferred to speak to friendly liberal media outlets like CBC. While the media narrative is that Carney has reinvigorated the Liberal party and closed the polling gap with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, neither claim is demonstrably true.

While more than 400,000 people signed up as “registered Liberals” to vote in this nomination process, just over 151,000 actually took the time to vote. This is a chance to pick the next prime minister of our country at a time when we are facing a threat to our sovereignty and a threat to our economic future, yet our next PM was chosen by so few people.

By comparison, the last Conservative leadership race saw more than 400,000 people vote with 295,285 ballots cast for Poilievre alone. Sure, it might have been a longer timeline, but the stakes – becoming leader of the official Opposition with no election in sight – were much smaller.

In the National Post Chris Selley doesn’t seem to be a fan of the new unelected leader of the federal government (assuming that Justin Trudeau will actually step down, of course):

Every speaker of note [at the Liberal leadership hootnanny], from the four leadership candidates to outgoing leader Justin Trudeau to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, who held the room in the palm of his hand for what felt like a day and a half, mentioned the need for Canadians to stand together, united and altogether resolute against the threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

At the same time, of course, Liberals were insisting that the Conservatives — who have as much or more support nationwide, and until recently had a lot more — are bent on destroying all that’s good and holy about this country. That isn’t really a unifying message.

“Pierre Poilievre just doesn’t get it,” Carney averred in his victory speech. “He is the type of life-long politician … who worships at the altar of the free market without having made a payroll himself. And now … at a time of immense economic insecurity, he would undermine the Bank of Canada. Poilievre has called for the shutting down of CBC at a time when disinformation and foreign interference are on the march. He insults our mayors and ignores our First Nations.”

“A person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him,” Carney said of Poilievre, who has been raining invective on Trump just as fast as he can in recent days — and indeed someone whom Trump himself denigrated in recent days as “not a MAGA guy”.

Oh, and Carney said “Pierre Poilievre would let our planet burn” — on the same night he promised to axe the consumer carbon tax as a first order of business.

Other than all that, though, we’re in it together. Okey-dokey.

Dan Knight is even less impressed:

And here’s where it gets even better. The polling — oh, the polling. For months, the Liberals have been sinking. Before Trudeau resigned, they were floundering at 24% support. Then, magically, within days of picking a new leader, they skyrocket to 33%? A 9-point jump in the blink of an eye? Wow, what a coincidence! You mean to tell me that the same Canadians who couldn’t be bothered to sign up for a free membership, the same Canadians who have overwhelmingly turned against this party, suddenly decided they’re on board again — just because the party swapped one out-of-touch elitist for another?

No. That’s not how this works. That’s not how enthusiasm works.

This isn’t some grand Liberal resurgence. This is the Liberal-friendly media manufacturing a comeback narrative because their government subsidies depend on it. The same journalists who screamed for years about the Conservative “far-right” threat are now bending over backwards to convince you that Mark Carney is a fresh outside

And you know what? Maybe if they had actually let Ruby Dhalla into this race, they would’ve stood a chance. Seriously. I had to do a double-take when I looked at her policies — supporting small business, tough on crime, actual immigration regulation — I mean, that’s how you win the center. That’s how you stop a Conservative majority and turn it into a minority government. If they had let her run, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.

But what did the Liberals do? Oh, they disqualified her over — get this — campaign finance irregularities. But guess what? They kept the money. That’s right. The party flagged “violations”, kicked her out, and then conveniently pocketed the cash. If that’s not the most Liberal Party thing I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is.

Can you feel the Carneymentum? It’s supposed to sweep the land from sea to sea to sea … any minute now.

March 8, 2025

The Federal Court of Canada rules in favour of Trudeau’s authoritarian instincts and actions

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Apparently we’ve all been under a delusion that Parliament was the paramount elected body and therefore that the Prime Minister needed to operate within the rules of Parliament. The Federal Court saw it otherwise, as Dan Knight explains:

Arms of the Federal Court of Canada

If you’ve been following this case, you already know what’s at stake: whether Justin Trudeau — Canada’s most brazenly authoritarian Prime Minister in modern history — can shut down Parliament whenever he finds it politically inconvenient. Well, today, the Federal Court of Canada, in all its wisdom, just gave him the green light.

Chief Justice Paul S. Crampton released his decision, and while he acknowledged that the courts do have the power to review the Prime Minister’s use of prorogation, he ultimately ruled that Trudeau didn’t exceed his constitutional authority. That’s right — according to the Federal Court, it’s perfectly fine for a sitting Prime Minister to shut down Canada’s elected legislature while his party scrambles to pick a new leader. It’s fine to suspend oversight at a time when Canada is facing real, tangible threats, including Trump’s tariff war. It’s fine to use a legal loophole to avoid answering for one of the biggest financial scandals in Canadian history — the SDTC affair, which saw millions of taxpayer dollars funneled into thin air.

Let’s be very clear about what happened here. On January 6, 2025, Justin Trudeau stood at a podium and declared that Parliament — Canada’s most important democratic institution — was “paralyzed”. He said it was no longer working, that it needed a reset, and that in the meantime, he was resigning. Oh, and conveniently, during that time, the Liberal Party would be selecting a new leader.

Pause for a second and consider that. He wasn’t just shutting down debate on a single issue. He wasn’t suspending a single bill. He was shutting down Parliament entirely — the very institution meant to hold his government accountable.

Now, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) immediately called this out for what it was — an unlawful, undemocratic, and unconstitutional seizure of power. They filed a legal challenge, and in that case, they pointed out some pretty basic, irrefutable facts:

First, Parliament was not paralyzed. In the weeks leading up to prorogation, four separate bills had been passed. Does that sound like a government that isn’t functioning? Or does it sound like a Prime Minister who was simply looking for an excuse to silence his critics?

Second, and more importantly, Trudeau wasn’t shutting down Parliament to “reset” anything — he was doing it to save his own party. His government was crumbling. His ministers were resigning. His own caucus was at war with itself. And just as an election loomed over his head, he pulled the plug on Parliament, giving his party a clean slate while robbing opposition parties of their ability to challenge him.

And here’s the part the mainstream media will never report — this move wasn’t just about Trudeau’s political survival. It was also a blatant attempt to escape scrutiny over his government’s refusal to release documents related to the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) scandal. If you don’t know what that is, it’s simple: Parliament ordered the Trudeau government to hand over records about how millions of taxpayer dollars mysteriously disappeared into politically connected environmental companies. The Trudeau government refused, defied Parliament, and then shut Parliament down before anyone could hold them accountable.

February 28, 2025

Trump’s done something most of us thought impossible – giving the Canadian Liberals hope for re-election

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Canadians were sick to the teeth with Liberal PM Justin Trudeau and itching to throw him out of office … until newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump tossed Trudeau a lifeline:

The BOM and the Little Potato on his way to another Taylor Swift concert.

For President Trump, making America great again in his second term includes tariff threats against Canada, along with talk of turning America’s northern neighbor into the 51st state. What that’s mainly achieved so far is to make Canada woke again.

Prior to January 20, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre had been cruising in the polls, and with elections coming this year in Canada, North America seemed headed for a right-leaning political bromance between a President Trump in Washington and a Trump-lite Prime Minister Poilievre in Ottawa.

That was before Trump got elected and began talking about 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods (10 percent for energy), which would likely wreck Canada’s economy.

One poll showed that four in ten Canadians see Poilievre and Trump as alike and that is hurting him as “Canadians increasingly associate Poilievre to Trump’s negative rhetoric aimed at Canada,” said Mark Marissen, a Liberal party strategist.

For the first time since 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party is ahead of the Conservatives in the polls. If an election were held tomorrow, 38 percent of decided voters would choose the Liberals, while 36 percent would back the Conservatives. This is a massive shift — just six weeks ago, the Conservatives were leading by 26 points.

[…]

“Poilievre’s rhetoric is nothing like Trump’s. He only takes conservative positions when he’s pushed in that direction,” says Nichols. “A Poilievre government is going to be exhausting. He seems behind the curve on a lot of social issues, such as DEI and gender ideology.”

The reality is that the Canadian right generally doesn’t resemble the unruly U.S. version. This, in turn, reflects a more moderate political culture whose roots go back to Canada’s early years as a refuge for loyalists to the British crown fleeing the American revolution.

Eric Kaufman, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, argues that Poilievre’s reluctance to mimic Trump reflects the fact that Canadian conservatism has always been “very wet”, with Conservative politicians reluctant to challenge the progressive consensus on culture and identity.

“Poilievre only takes a stand on social issues like DEI and immigration when there’s already overwhelming momentum in the press. He still plays within the safe sandbox of talking about economic issues which is permitted for Conservative politicians in Canada,” says Kaufman.

February 17, 2025

The growing problem of “America’s hat”

Filed under: Cancon, China, Government, History, India, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

John Carter’s latest post is excellent — but that’s his usual standard — but it’s of particular interest to inhabitants of what used to be the proud Dominion but who now live in a “post-national state” with “no core identity” as our outgoing prime minister so helpfully explained it:

Canada and the US have been frenemies for most of the last two hundred years. With the exception of some spats in the 19th century, they’ve fought on the same side in all major wars, and haven’t taken up arms against one another. At the same time, Canada has from the very beginning fiercely guarded its independence. Through the 1950s, this came from Canada’s self-conception as an outpost of sober, orderly British traditionalism, in stark contrast to the chaotic liberal revolutionaries across the border. Following the Liberal Party’s cultural revolution in the 1960s, Canada increasingly came to see itself as different from the US primarily in that it was more liberal, in the modern sense, than it’s Bible-thumping, gun-toting redneck cousins – which is to say more socialist, leftist, multicultural, gay-friendly, internationalist, feminist, and so forth. In fairness to Canada, the British government, having long-since fallen under the sway of the Labour party, had followed the same ideological trajectory, so Canada was really just taking its cue from Mother England as it always had. In further fairness to Canada, all of this has been aggressively pushed by Blue America, which has been running American culture (and therefore everyone else’s) until about five minutes ago.

Despite these differences, the US could always rely on Canada being a stable, competently run, prosperous, and happy neighbour – perhaps a bit on the prickly side, given the inferiority complex, but much less of a headache than the entropic narcostate to the south that keeps sending its masses of illiterate campesinos flooding over the banks of the Rio Grande. Canada might be annoying sometimes, but it didn’t cause problems. To the contrary, Canada and the US have maintained one the world’s most productive trading relationships for years: America gets Canadian oil, minerals, lumber, and Canada gets US dollars, technology, and culture.

Now, however, Canada has become a problem for America. Not yet, perhaps, the biggest problem – America has a very large number of extremely pressing problems – but a significant one nonetheless, with the potential to become quite acute in the near future.

The problem is that Canada has become a security threat.

[…]

The next security problem is the border, an issue which Trump has repeatedly stressed as a justification for tariffs. The 49th Parallel is famously the longest undefended border on the planet. It is much longer than the Southern border; there are no barbed wire border fences; most of the terrain is easily traversed – forest, lake, or prairie – in contrast to the punishing desert running across the US-Mexico border. Militarizing the US-Mexico border is already a huge, costly undertaking. Doing the same on the Canadian border would be vastly more challenging.

Canada’s extraordinarily lax immigration policy has, in recent years, led to a much higher encounter rate at border crossings with suspects on the terrorism watch list. These people come into Canada legally, part of the millions of immigrants Ottawa has been importing, every year, for the last few years. When you’re bringing in over one percent of your country’s population every single year, it is simply not possible to properly vet them, and it seems that Ottawa barely even bothers to try. Given that not every such person of interest will get stopped at the border, and that not every terrorist is on a watch list, one wonders how many enemies have already slipped across into the US by way of Canadian airports.

RCMP officers with their haul from a fentanyl superlab. Only one person was arrested.

The second border problem is fentanyl. Like the US, Canada has a raging opiod epidemic. We’ve got tent cities, zombies in the streets, needles in the parks, and this is not limited to the big cities – it spills out into the small towns, as well. Like Mexico, Canada has fentanyl laboratories. Precursor chemicals are imported from China by triads, turned into chemical weapons in Canadian labs, and then distributed within Canadian and American markets by predominantly Indian truckers. The occasional busts have turned up vast quantities of the stuff, but have resulted in very few arrests. The proceeds are then laundered through casinos or fake colleges, with the laundered cash then parked in Canadian real estate. There are estimates that the volume of fentanyl money flowing through Canada’s housing markets is significant enough to be a major factor (immigration is certainly the main factor) distorting real estate prices – keeping the housing bubble inflated, propping up Canada’s sagging economy, and pricing young Canadians out of any hope of owning a home or, for that matter, even renting an apartment without a roommate or three.

It’s generally understood, though essentially never acknowledged at official levels, that poisoning North America with opiods is deliberate Chinese policy, both as revenge for the Opium Wars of the 19th century, and as one element in their strategy of unrestricted warfare i.e. the covert but systematic weaponization of every point of contact – economic, industrial, cultural, etc. – between Chinese and Western societies. By allowing the fentanyl trade to continue, the Canadian government is complicit in an act of covert war being waged by a foreign power, one whose casualties include the Canadian government’s own population.

February 16, 2025

Canada – parliamentary democracy or elected dictatorship?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

During the entire dramatic confrontation with Donald Trump, Canada’s parliament has been prorogued … effectively meaning that the opposition can’t hold the government to task for how it is handling Trump’s aggression. In any other western country, parliament would have been in session all the way through this, but because Justin Trudeau was aware that his government might be defeated in the house, he chose to ask the Governor General to prorogue until late March.

Not everyone has been meekly accepting Trudeau’s position, and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is challenging the prorogation in Federal Court. Dan Knight updates us on the progress of the hearing:

Arms of the Federal Court of Canada

We are now in Day 2 of the Federal Court hearing, where Justin Trudeau’s government is trying to convince a judge that shutting down Parliament to avoid Well, folks, here we are. Day two of the Federal Court showdown, where the Trudeau government is desperately trying to convince Canadians that shutting down Parliament to protect their own hide was a completely reasonable thing to do. They want you to believe that this is all perfectly normal, that it’s routine, that it’s just a quirk of the system. Nothing to see here, folks!

But the problem with lying is that eventually, you get caught. And on Day 2 of this hearing, Justin Trudeau’s legal team got caught. Over and over again.

If you watched what unfolded in court, you saw the Trudeau government’s lawyers flailing like fish on dry land, fumbling through weak excuses as Chief Justice Paul S. Crampton shredded their arguments one by one. At one point, they actually misrepresented a legal precedent in court, only for the Chief Justice to read the case aloud and reveal that it actually contradicted their argument. Humiliating.

And that was just the start.

This case isn’t just about whether Trudeau technically had the ability to prorogue Parliament. It’s about why he did it — and more importantly, whether Canada is now a country where the Prime Minister can shut down democracy whenever it gets inconvenient for him. Because if the courts let this stand, what’s stopping the next Prime Minister from proroguing indefinitely? What’s stopping the government from suspending Parliament every time there’s a corruption scandal, every time they fear a non-confidence vote, every time they need to cover up a mess of their own making?

And that’s exactly what Trudeau did. His government was facing multiple crises all at once — a massive financial scandal, a looming non-confidence vote, and an economic firestorm caused by Trump’s tariff threats. So rather than actually dealing with it, he shut Parliament down. The question is: Did he have the right to do that?

[…]

The Chief Justice has promised to issue a ruling before Parliament resumes on March 24. That means this case will be decided before Trudeau can walk away and pretend none of this ever happened.

If the court rules against the government, it will mean that future Prime Ministers cannot abuse prorogation to avoid scrutiny. It will send a clear message that shutting down Parliament to protect yourself is unconstitutional and illegal.

But if the government wins, it will mean that the Prime Minister can shut down democracy anytime he wants. It will mean that Canada is no longer a functioning parliamentary system but a country where the executive can do whatever it pleases.

And if that happens, ask yourself this: What’s stopping the next Prime Minister from just shutting down Parliament indefinitely?

Trudeau might be stepping down soon, but his legacy of corruption, incompetence, and political cowardice will haunt this country for years. The question now is whether the courts will allow him to rewrite the rules of democracy on his way out the door.

We’ll find out soon.

Update: Fixed broken link.

February 6, 2025

Trump tariff diary, day 5

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The attention shifted away from the BOM kicking the Little Potato around as BOM floated the idea of annexing the Gaza Strip (as Eastern New Jersey?) on social media. There goes at least 24 hours of media hysteria …

Justin Trudeau’s vision of Canada

As I’ve pointed out a few times, the situation didn’t blow up out of nowhere (we’re back to the Trump tariffs, not the Gaza Strip), as Trump had given ample warning that this was an important issue for him. However, as Roxanne Halverson points out, Trudeau’s government paid it not the slightest bit of attention until Trump forced them:

This means Ontario Premier Doug Ford who threatened to cancel a $100 million dollar Starlink contract with Elon Musk to provide high-speed internet to northern and rural Ontario communities because of Musk’s strong ties to Trump. And perhaps BC Premier David Eby shouldn’t have threatened to take alcohol products from “red states” in the US off the shelves of BC liquor stores. And perhaps Team Trudeau shouldn’t been trying to play the mouse that roared by threatening to slap retaliatory tariffs on American products coming into Canada, given that it means Canadians will pay more for products like fruits and vegetables that we simply can’t get here in the winter. And that goes for all the provincial premiers, with the exception of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

And for all Canadians — particularly those who voted for Trudeau — who are so angry at Trump that they are blowing up the internet with memes, threatening never to vacation in the States, and booing the singing of the American anthem at hockey games — grow up and smarten up and rethink who your anger should be directed at.

Everyone needs to recognize the fact that Trump made it pretty clear about the tariffs when he was campaigning for the US presidency, after he won the presidency — but had yet been officially sworn in — and as soon as he entered the Oval Office. And yet everyone seemed so shocked when he did it — including Prime Minister Trudeau.

Trump also made it pretty clear what he was after — fix Canada’s porous border and fix the drug trafficking problem — and the fentanyl problem in particular. And thanks to the dithering of the Trudeau government — vacillating between “negotiating and diplomacy” and talking “tough”, as well as using the issue as a campaign tool, this is what it came to. Because, it would seem, Trump didn’t think his request was being taken seriously so he made it serious. One thing Trump recognizes is weakness, and it is something he is willing to take advantage of it. And in Canada he saw weakness — weak leadership and an weak economy. Another thing Trump is very good at, and that is rattling people and he did that in spades on Saturday — and by Sunday he got results.

For all the Canadians who are mad at Trump for starting these tariff wars, particularly those who voted for Trudeau. Remember this … if Canada had a strong economy that hadn’t been driven into the ground by ten years of Liberal economic, monetary, social engineering and “green” policies we wouldn’t be so vulnerable to Trump’s tariffs.

Trump didn’t halt the building of pipelines that could have taken our oil products to both eastern and western coasts to be shipped to markets overseas. This would have expanded markets for Canadian oil, meaning we wouldn’t be selling sell the bulk of it to the Americans at bargain prices. It wasn’t Trump who drove billions, if not trillions of dollars in investments out of the country by overtaxing businesses with ever increasing carbon taxes and various other in sundry operating costs, or stifling business growth with endless crippling green energy policies and regulations, or extinguishing any chance of expanding our natural gas production to sell to overseas markets by claiming “no business case” for it.

The business investment picture in Canada shows a clear decline dating almost exactly to the start of Trudeau’s time in office:

The Canadian government’s (and several provincial governments’) hostility to economic development and infrastructure expansion is clearly illustrated, I think.

February 5, 2025

Trump tariff diary, day 4

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Big Orange Meanie and the Little Potato had a phone call, after which the BOM announced a 30-day delay to the imposition of tariffs. In Canada, all of “peoplekind” were relieved to hear that they won’t have to give up their American-made binkies quite yet. Some appropriate snark from The Free Press:

It was actually a phone call between the BOM and the Little Potato, but we can imagine this is what it would have looked like in person.

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum Speedy Gonzales’d her way to a deal with Trump yesterday, promising to deploy 10,000 Mexican troops to the border to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs. In return, Trump agreed to pause his 25 percent tariff on goods coming from south of the border. Soon after, he struck a seemingly identical deal with Justin Trudeau, who said he’d appoint a “fentanyl czar” and promised to send 10,000 Canadian troops to the northern border. Who knew they even had that many?! Tariffs will still be levied against Chinese goods starting today, but Trump says he plans to talk with President Xi Jinping as soon as this week.

The FP isn’t wrong … the Canadian Army doesn’t have 10,000 spare troops just hanging around their barracks who could be sent to the border, so it’s much more likely to be a combination of Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) agents, RCMP officers, provincial police (if the respective provinces are willing), and whatever the army can spare. (Trudeau refers only to “nearly 10,000 frontline personnel”, not “troops” as a lot of US reports state … that seems a lot more achievable.)

You may be wondering how the US President has such disruptive and antagonistic tools at his disposal. It’s yet another hangover from the Carter years, as Congress delegated these powers to the president in 1977:

Donald Trump as Napoleon the 47th.
Image generated by Grok.

The emerging on-off-on-off trade war between Canada and the United States has everyone asking “How should we fight?” — understandably enough — but we should not move too quickly beyond the question “How is this literal nonsense at all possible?” How did the U.S. Congress’s clearly specified constitutional power to regulate the country’s commerce with foreign nations fall into naked and unapologetic decrepitude? Why is every new American president now a Napoleon, and why isn’t this at all a political issue in the U.S.?

The American Constitution, it seems, has no political party apart from a handful of cranky, tireless libertarians like Gene Healy, Clyde W. Crews or Ilya Somin, who has a new article spitballing possible litigation approaches for Americans who lie in the path of the tariffs now being wishcasted into existence by Napoleon the 47th. Somin explains that President Donald Trump is using an openly contrived “national emergency” to invoke powers delegated to the White House by Congress in 1977, powers that are to be invoked only in the face of “unusual and extraordinary threats” to the Republic.

Since the president apparently has plenary power to define an emergency, and to do so without offering anything resembling a rational explanation, this act of Congress now appears to be less of a delegation and more of a surrender — a total abandonment of constitutional principle and the classical separation of powers. I pause to observe that the cheeks every Canadian should redden with slight shame at the spectacle of frivolous recourse to the law of emergencies causing obvious and sickening injury to the rule of law in the U.S. (Oh, no, that could never happen here!)

February 4, 2025

Trump tariff diary, days 2 and 3

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Posted to social media yesterday:

To celebrate Groundhog Day, Governor Trudeau wore commemorative Groundhog-themed socks. Governor Trudeau’s announced counter-tariffs seem to have made no difference to the Big Orange Meany, so the Great State of Canada proceeds with plans to annex Guam and American Samoa. China has indicated interest in purchasing Vancouver Island or leasing the naval base in Esquimault. The National Post‘s Tristin Hopper suggested “Spend 10 years relentlessly kneecapping the Canadian economy for no reason to show Trump we’re not scared of him”, but we’ve already done that.

Today’s tariff diary entry was going to be:

Reports indicate that the Mexican government is folding to Trumpian pressure. Governor Trudeau insists he won’t budge, regardless of the economic damage to Canadian consumers … what a hero! A few of us may lose our jobs, our businesses, and our economic futures, but he’s willing to take that risk. Update: Trudeau folded like the cheap suit he so resembles. Tariff war on hold for 30 days as Trudeau looks for a way to sign the terms of surrender without any blame attaching to him or his party … he’ll probably blame the provincial governments and the federal NDP (who’ll still support him in Parliament, regardless).

… But the “pause” in tariff enforcement may be enough to let Trudeau and the Liberals — with the active connivance of the bought-and-paid-for Canadian legacy media propagandists — portray this as a great national victory and attempt to turn it into votes for Liberal candidates in the next federal election. I’d love to be proven too cynical here, but the Liberal track record isn’t good.

February 3, 2025

Rational response to Trumpish provocations? Don’t be silly, we must run in circles with our hair on fire!

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

My first entry in the “Trump tariff diary” on social media perhaps takes the situation too flippantly:

President Trump trolled Justin Trudeau about Canada becoming the 51st state.

Trump tariff diary, day 1: Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada struck back at the Big Orange Meany by wearing particularly fashionable socks to his press conference. Ontario will remove all bottles of Jack Daniels from the government liquor monopoly distribution system. The American national anthem will be formally booed at all NHL games played in Canada from now on.

At the National Post, Tristin Hopper offers much more substantive and serious suggestions:

Order Ryan Reynolds to defame American directors until free trade is restored.

Spend 10 years relentlessly kneecapping the Canadian economy for no reason to show Trump we’re not scared of him.

Politely suggest that the U.S. may have confused us with China. Say that although both countries start with the letter C, China is the one seeking to destroy American hegemony via economic means, and we’re just an obsequious neighbour who sells them raw materials.

As a gesture of fealty to American continental supremacy, immediately adopt the U.S. Constitution as Canadian law. Uphold it about as loosely as our existing constitution so there’s no material change.

Volunteer an honour guard of Mounties to serve alongside the Secret Service. Force them to wear red serge if Trump asks.

Offer to pillory a Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago if the tariff threats stop, but don’t specify which one.

Put sugar in the crude oil so all the U.S. refineries seize up.

Instead of shutting off Canadian electricity exports, export too much electricity so that their toast burns and the coffee is too hot.

Send Trump a bentwood box filled with smoked salmon as a gesture of goodwill. When he opens it, it’s just filled with bees.

On a rather more serious note, PPC leader Maxime Bernier posted this on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter:

It’s important to understand that the 25% tariffs announced by President Trump today are NOT imposed on Canada — they will be paid by American consumers and businesses who buy goods imported from Canada. Tariffs are a tax, and Americans who will have to pay more or go without our products will be the first to suffer.

Of course, Canadian exporters of these goods will as a consequence lose clients, contracts and sales, and will be forced to cut down on production and lay off workers. Or they will lower their prices to keep market shares and will see their profits diminish.

Because 75% of our exports go south of the border, our economy will for sure be very negatively impacted by this.

The stupidest thing our government can do however to deal with this crisis is to impose the same kind of tariffs “dollar for dollar” against US imports.

The US economy is ten times bigger than ours, much less reliant on trade than ours, and much less dependent on our market than we are on theirs.

Not only would retaliatory tariffs have much less impact on American exporters, they would immediately impoverish Canadian consumers forced to pay more for imported goods, as well as destabilize Canadian businesses that need inputs from the US in their production processes. It would more than double the harm of the US tariffs to our economy.

Trade wars are bad for everyone, but they are much worse for a small country with fewer options. We simply cannot win a trade war with the US. It’s very unlikely that Trump will back down. All we will do is provoke a massive economic crisis in Canada, until we are forced to capitulate.

Another self-destructive thing to do would be to set up giant “pandemic-level” bailout plans to support everyone affected by this trade war. This will simply bankrupt our governments even more than they already are and make us even weaker.

So what should we do?

1. Double down on efforts to control our border, crack down on fentanyl dealers, deport all illegals, and impose a complete moratorium on immigration, to answer Trump’s immediate concerns about Canada.

2. Tell the US administration that we are ready to renegotiate North American free trade and put dairy supply management and other contentious issues on the table.

3. Wait and see to what extent Trump is willing to keep tariffs in place despite the harm it does to the US economy. Despite his pretenses that Americans don’t need our stuff, the reality is that on the contrary they have few other options for crucial resources like oil, lumber, uranium and other minerals, etc. He will stop acting like a bully when he sees that he can get more results by sitting down and negotiating.

3. To reduce our dependence on the US market, immediately implement an ambitious plan to tear down interprovincial trade barriers and help our impacted exporting industries find alternative markets in other countries.

4. Immediately implement a series of bold reforms to make our economy more productive, including: reduce corporate and personal taxes, abolish the capital gains tax, abolish all corporate subsidies, get rid of excessive regulation, remove impediments to the exploitation and export of natural resources, drastically cut government spending, mandate the Bank of Canada to stop printing money and start accumulating a gold reserve to prepare for the global monetary reset (which is likely part of Trump’s plan).

In short, instead of adopting a suicidal strategy to confront Trump, we must do what we should have done a long time ago to strengthen our economy and our bargaining position. The transition will be rough, but not as much as complete bankruptcy and disintegration.

My strong suspicion is that Trump’s extended tantrum directed at Canada is actually a way to provide pressure against other future tantrum targets … “if he’d do that to friendly neighbour Canada, what won’t he do to us?” An updated version of Voltaire’s quip that Britain needed to shoot an admiral every now and again pour encourager les autres.

Coyote Blog facepalms over Trump’s self-sabotage of the US economy:

Trump’s first few weeks have been a mix of good and bad for this libertarian, all against a backdrop of horror at how Imperial the presidency has become. […] Because we are all tired of those fentanyl-toting Canadians crossing the border illegally. I mean, we all saw the Proposal and know how all those Canadians are trying to cheat US immigration law.

Seriously, this is beyond awful — and not just because of the threat of retaliation, though that is real. Even if all the affected countries roll over and accept these modified tariffs without response, this is still a terrible step for the US. No matter how Trump and his very very small group of protectionist economist friends sell this, this is a tax on 300 million US consumers to benefit a small group of producers. I don’t have time right now to give an updated lesson on free trade — that will have to wait for when I am not on vacation. But I will offer a few ironies:

  • After campaigning hard on inflation, Trump is slapping a 10-25% consumption tax on foreign goods. That is a straight up consumer price increase for a variety of key products including much of the lumber we use to build homes, a lot of our oil and gas, a lot of our grain and beef, and many of our cars and appliances.
  • Much of this inflation is going to disproportionately hurt Trump’s base. No one is going to care much if a Hollywood actor has the fair trade coffee they buy at Whole Foods go up in price, but Trump voters are going to see a direct effect of this on prices at Wal-Mart.
  • Republicans have spent 4 years (rightly) condemning Federal and State governments for the economic disruptions of COVID lockdowns and restrictions. While some of the inflation of the last 4 years was due to ridiculously high government deficits, another major cause was the COVID supply chain disruptions. And now Trump is voluntarily recreating them.

The only small hope I have is that Trump is steeped from his business career in a certain style of brinksmanship bargaining that consists of taking an entirely destructive and irrational position in hopes that they folks on the other side of the table will back down and give him more than he should. My son won poker tournaments like this because he would do so much crazy stuff that no one at the table wanted to challenge him. I have always said that I don’t think Trump is a particularly good business person — he has run business after business that has failed. But he is a good negotiator, and has exited numerous bankruptcies with his creditors giving him far more than one would think was necessary.

February 2, 2025

Captain Trumpmerica versus the Post-national Maple Protectionists

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Donald Trump has made picking fights with the corrupt oligarchs of Mexico and Canada a key part of his appeal to American voters. Canada used to be a proud nation, but after years of deliberate mismanagement and stubborn opposition to innovation and growth, we’ve become — as Justin Trudeau so smugly put it — the first “post-national state” that has “no core identity [and] no mainstream”, because we’re a plaything for the WEF and other transnational organizations. Elizabeth Nickson calls us a “failed state” and that swapping in globalist WEF’er Mark Carney for globalist WEF’er Justin Trudeau will make no positive difference:

25% tariffs will ruin us. The tariffs mean one million small businesses — all which sell to the U.S. — will contract and many will close their doors. And then Trump, as he promised the unions, will pull “our” auto industry. Then we’re done.

Who is to blame for this?

The following is going to be crude because Canada is so boring (that’s deliberate) that no one cares. There are a thousand ultra-complex rationales on why Canada is failing and all they do is obfuscate. I’m not pulling punches, softening rhetoric — it is bad. It is urgent. This is the death of something that 75 years ago was shining, sunlit, exciting. That country? That country was killed by the Laurentian elite, weak, cosplaying Marxism to stay in power, themselves outwitted by investment bankers who plan to steal everything not nailed down. In so doing new elements were forcibly injected into the population: envy, resentment of the successful, sloth, the refusal to grow up, be strong and independent. We effectively sit on top of the U.S., seething with envy, in wet diapers.

We are a broken country. Everyone who understands the world knows this. The only people who don’t are deluded Canadian socialists, which is to say our entire elite and all our “knowledge class”. Dissent is ignored. Or jailed.

Central banker Mark Carney, WEFer paramount, is being parachuted into the Liberal party in order to sell us off to the investment banks who will harvest us for our resources. Our people? Future serfs in Special Enterprise Zones. We already have the regulation in place. No taxes, no worker rights, no enviro controls, no self-determination, no agency, no freedom. Time frame? Ten years, twenty at the outside. The inevitable end of hard-core socialism.

That is what Carney did to Canada in the ‘08 crisis, a crisis entirely created by larcenous government and investment bankers: he loaded us up with so much debt that the moment the economy turned, the working class — and Canada is now 75% working class — paid for it through interest rates so high they crippled and broke every middle class family with a mortgage. Then, he moved to England and did it to the English. His name there? Mark Carnage. During the ’08 crisis, he in Canada and the UK and Obama in the US transferred trillions in public wealth to the investment banks to keep them going after the worst crisis since ’29. A crisis they caused. That was the people’s money, not theirs.

However, as Peter Menzies points out, our Laurentian Elite are still 100% protecting us from the baleful influence of American culture … well, the commercial bits anyway:

Next Sunday, the federal agency responsible for the flourishing of national culture and identity will be swamped with complaints. The grumbling will emanate from Canadians enraged they can’t get more American culture. Yes, America may be in the process of humiliating Canada as its lamest of lame duck leaders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, waddles into the sunset. And, for sure, most of us are mortified that U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen to make an example of us as he launches his mission to bring the globe to heel and Make America Great Again.

But the bitching directed in the days to come at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications (CRTC) headquarters in Gatineau will originate from Canadians angry they can’t watch American Super Bowl TV ads along with the game. A perennial contender to be the most watched TV event in Canada, the Super Bowl also has traditionally been the most controversial event on the CRTC’s calendar.

The USA can slap us silly with tariffs. It can send hundreds of thousands of us into unemployment and despair. It can mock our disinterest in maintaining the essentials of nationhood and drive us into unsustainable debt. Trump can brutalize our national esteem and taunt us for our cavalier attitudes towards the defence of our sovereignty. And he can lick his big beautiful lips while pondering our potential as the 51st state.

But what will really light us up Feb. 9 will be being unable to watch Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reinvent their famous restaurant scene from When Harry Met Sally or Michelob Ultra’s production starring Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara as a couple of pickleball hustlers. Or Matthew McConaughey channeling legendary Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka for Uber Eats. And the Clydesdales. Everyone loves those Budweiser Clydesdales, particularly the cute little foal making a debut.

It doesn’t matter that the ads cost $7 million U.S. (which will convert into heaven only knows how many bazillion loonies in the months ahead) for a 30-second spot. Or that for more than a decade many of the commercials have been available on YouTube. Canadians don’t want to watch a Super Bowl adorned with Government of Ontario and Maple Leaf Foods ads. They want to watch the game like real Americans and relish the full, unfettered American experience.

At the National Post, a sad recounting of just how badly we’ve been let down by our politicians — and not just recently … this is a decades-long list of conscious self-harm for short-term domestic political advantage:

Bold counter-attacks against the U.S. can’t work, because all the ideas Canada could have put into action to make such a response viable are collecting dust on the cellar shelf. Drop interprovincial trade barriers that amount to a $200-billion penalty on the national economy every year? That only became a serious conversation in the last month. It should have been a serious conversation 10 years ago, if not more.

End supply management? Out of the question — think of the Quebec votes such a move would cost. The Big Milk lobby is a strong one.

How about resource development? Because Canada is ultimately a resource-exporting economy? No; we’ve been cancelling energy projects at the slightest objection and building more legislation to stand in their way. Industries like mining and fishing, already mired in growth-choking regulations, are increasingly refashioned by governments into welfare and “reconciliation” initiatives, repelling private investment that would have brought prosperity to the country as a whole.

Diversify away from the Americans? We’ve only done the opposite: since 2017, Canadian trade has become more focused on the U.S.

Canada should be a prosperous, growth-oriented economy, but instead, its government — and the people who continuously vote for economy-stagnating policy — settle for subsistence and redistribution of a shrinking pie of wealth. Their choices for the past decade have left us without enough fat to get through a cold trade winter.

Prompt retaliatory counter-tariffs are hence unwise. Such a move would put Canadians in the path of two separate blows, one from the front, the other from the back. And while immediate counter-tariffs could affect Americans whose support the president depends on — as was the case in the 1930s, when Canadian counter-tariffs prolonged the American Great Depression (while inflicting domestic pain) — those Americans have much bigger economic fat stores. In a trade war of attrition, expect Canada to lose.

That leaves us, unfortunately, with the less-glamourous immediate option: play this by the book. The United States-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement, which will be violated by any across-the-board tariff Trump applies, needs to be challenged with the mechanisms agreed upon by party states. During the process, Canada must remind Trump that it’s just following the agreement that he made.

January 22, 2025

“If this country MAIDs itself in the next 18 months, we at The Line know what slogan belongs on Canada’s epitaph”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Line‘s editors gathered up the first day’s worth of Donald Trump II – The Trumpening and sifted out the bits particularly relevant to the dysfunctional Dominion to the north:

Donald Trump successfully trolled Canada’s hypersensitive political class about Canada becoming the 51st state of the union. The anguished butthurt still pains them.

What is happening right now was absolutely foreseeable. No one can claim with a straight face that U.S. tariffs could not have been foreseen on January 21, 2025, a full eight years to the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated for the first time. It’s not 2016, anymore. Nobody was blindsided.

Your Line editors wrote plenty of columns over the past decade noting that even if Donald Trump the man were not re-elected, the protectionist and reactionary currents that pushed him to power were still ascendant in America. The Biden admin was a reprieve, an opportunity for Canada to make necessary internal changes to withstand those currents.

And what did this country do with that time?

Jack all.

We at The Line have been scratching our noggins trying to think of single meaningful Canadian reform or improvement to come out of Trump 1. We did nothing to strengthen ourselves internally by an iota. Not a single lesson was learned.

It’s entirely possible that we were inevitably going to be dinged by some U.S. administration and, perhaps, this was not avoidable. No one can fully mitigate all risks. Granted.

But we can certainly do literally anything to address risks that are highly probable. Instead, we have absolutely degraded both our moral and financial capacity to be resilient in the face of economic threats; and that degradation is the direct result of almost ten years of Liberal party priorities, inactions, or choices ranging on files from crime, to market diversification, to being truly useful to our international allies, to failures on interprovincial trade.

This wasn’t unforeseen. We were willfully blind. That’s different.

We ignored the looming threat in part because our government was distracted by COVID. But also also because Canada’s political culture is too immature to make hard decisions, or to have real debates about trade offs or priorities.

Justin Trudeau is the kind of prime minister who would rather run the kind of country that lets him spout off on Jake Tapper about compassion and $10-day-day daycare and dental programs than NATO spending.

What about the scads of taxpayer cash we’ve squandered on things like “superclusters”? What if we had prioritized strategically crucial projects like Northern Gateway or Energy East, instead of letting them die under the mantra of: “no business case”.

Remember when Germany and Japan came asking after our natural gas supplies in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? What if we had spent oh, say, $13 billion, on fast tracking some kind of natural gas facility to supply our international allies because doing so served a strategic national interest rather than a pure economic one.

We didn’t pull that number from the air, by the way: that’s what Canada subsequently committed to subsidies for EV plants in southern Ontario — something for which there was a scant “business case” before, and virtually none now that Trump has decided to scrap EV subsidies. It’s looking not-great, Bob. Not great at all.

See, that’s the problem with running a low-productivity, highly centralized griftocracy that is more invested in expanding entitlements, symbolic action and emotional gratification than actually doing anything. We are now severely limited in our capacity to respond in the face of serious economic threats. We can talk a good game. We can bluster. We can invest in more symbolic retaliatory action; but we have utterly squandered the internal resilience required to mount a real fight in even a trade war, much less a kinetic one.

And we at The Line can’t help but note the deafening silence from our international allies as well. They think we’ve got it coming, too. Perhaps there’s “no business case” for sticking their necks out on our behalf.

The first time a big new battery plant was subsidized, I thought it was a bad idea. Then it happened again and again. This is exactly why you don’t want your government at any level “picking winners”! Ross McKitrick had a series of tweets discussing this and other noteworthy executive orders issued (thread on Threadreader, but that may not be available for long):

(more…)

January 13, 2025

Muttering something about “manifest destiny” while glancing north

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Line‘s weekly dispatch is, as usual, mostly behind the paywall but the portion visible to cheapskates contains much of interest:

Manifest Destiny, 2025? Big Serge’s updated map for the old US War Plan Red for a military invasion of Canada.

It’s no coincidence that as Canada’s leadership devolved into its own navel, the very-soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump escalated his provocations. This week, Trump threatened to use “economic force” to push Canada to bend the knee. Meanwhile, we cannot help but notice that the idea of a Canadian state is starting to gain significant traction in even moderate and mainstream American conservative circles. Meanwhile, we’ve got Alberta Premier Danielle Smith supping with Kevin O’Leary and Jordan Peterson down in Mar-a-Lago.

Tap tap. May we suggest that you peruse the safety cards tucked into the back of your seat, buckle up, and take note of your nearest emergency exits?

Whether we are talking about some kind of economic union, or a full-blown annexation, the fact that at least some in America are reviving the term “Manifest Destiny” is a possibility that we can no longer afford to dismiss as mere trolling. While we hope that the Trump administration is going to be so bogged down with other policy priorities that “Canada 51” is soon overshadowed, your Line editors have been game theorying out a host of possible scenarios and … none of them look great. If Trump et al get serious about this idea — and, again, we have no way to know if they will get serious about this idea — then we at The Line fear that Canada is in for some serious turmoil in the coming few months.

As I said in an email to Severian the other week, “… Canada will have very little ability to react to whatever Hitler, er, I mean “Trump” will do as soon as he’s inaugurated. It was clear before this that Trudeau cared very little about ordinary Canadians’ lives, but this really is dereliction of duty on a cosmic scale. If Trump does follow through with that huge tariff, the Canadian economy is likely to collapse, as we’re so deeply intertwined with the US on so many levels. Sadly, this might make it even more attractive to Trump, as it would absolutely encourager les autres on a global scale. If the BOM is willing to destroy the economy of his closest trading partner, what might he do to France? Or Germany? Or South Korea?” Back to the dispatch:

To explain our alarm, let’s first look at another news item to cross the desk. This week, Justin Trudeau travelled south to attend the funeral of Jimmy Carter, and stopped at the CNN studios for a quick interview with Jake Tapper on the way through.

On the whole, we think his interview was fine. Look, Trudeau’s been through a lot in the last few days, and considering the circumstances, it’s not reasonable to expect a breakthrough performance. So we’re being a bit unkind to nitpick, but something he said during that interview deserves scrutiny.

Justin Trudeau got far too comfortable with being treated as a progressive superstar, not only among the sycophants with CBC nametags but even on the international stage … perhaps especially on the international stage. Trudeau was always inclined to the performative in everything he did, and he might well only feel fully alive when cameras are rolling. The evidence certainly seems to point in that direction.

The “most prolific Canadian actor” meme was mildly amusing during Trudeau’s first term in office, as he went out of his way to put on elaborate costumes and to perform for the audience. This sort of thing was understandable if not particularly welcome to those who wanted Canada to be taken seriously by our allies and trading partners. It was clichéd to joke about what novelty socks Trudeau was wearing at any given international event … because it was his trademark. As was the clearly diminished respect he got as his time in office went on.

When asked about Trump’s provocations, Trudeau affirmed Canadians’ pride in their own sovereignty by noting — half jokingly, we presume — that we fundamentally define ourselves as “not American”.

Firstly, this is not a particularly diplomatic jibe to be launched at actual ordinary Americans; it made us wince to consider how it must have landed to CNN’s ordinary watching audience.

Secondly, if the only way in which Canadians can define themselves nowadays is “not-American”, Jeez, that’s an extraordinarily thin peg upon which to hang a hat.

This stuff matters.

It is to wince. However, even that pathetic response was better than launching into yet another diatribe about Trudeau’s firm conviction that Canadians are all genocidal white supremacist morons, I guess.

The ability of a population to withstand neighbourly aggression — “economic force”, if you will — depends on two things. The first is internal social cohesion and identity. The second is what the aggressor is willing to do or offer in order to secure capitulation.

In this case, the second part of that equation is outside our control. So we look to the first: does Canada have a strong sense of self right now? Do its leaders command the moral authority necessary to create the social cohesion required to withstand a period of sustained material sacrifice?

If we are “not Americans”, it rather asks the question why aren’t we Americans? And, more crucially, what are we actually willing to give up in order to preserve that independence?

A people can be rallied to make extraordinary sacrifices for a greater ideal, including the ideal of independent nationhood. Look at the sacrifices of blood and treasure made every day in Ukraine, for example.

If necessary, Canadians can band together and survive on lentils and supply managed dairy and eggs for many months or years. We can pull together through a period of inconceivable material hardship — but only if we’re doing it for something. Canadians, as per usual, can talk a big game, but how many of us are willing to suffer a real collapse of our quality of life to preserve a quasi-ironic, tautological, or negative self-identity?

Before Trudeau’s time in office, I wouldn’t have thought to question Canadians’ pride in their country and willingness to defend it. Nearly ten years later, Trudeau and his minions have done a fantastic job of undermining any kind of patriotic enthusiasms in our “post-national state”, haven’t they?

We at The Line don’t believe there is even a vanishingly small chance of the Americans using martial force to secure Canada — and if they choose to amass a brigade at the border on Monday morning, we’re all taking the Pledge of Allegiance by noon, so let’s not grace this fantasy with a lot of real consideration.

I’d love to refute that, but it’s probably true, at least in the more densely populated areas of southern Canada … the US could send a brigade north to Vancouver, another to Calgary, another to Winnipeg, and one to Montreal. Thanks to the lower lakes, it’d take a bit more to secure Toronto and Ottawa but not a lot more. We literally couldn’t stop them, both because our very limited troops are not positioned to stop an invasion from the south and because they’re not even close to being in a ready-to-move condition. Even our local reserves would have to be notified, travel to their local armouries, be issued weapons and the very limited amount of ammunition kept in local storage and by the time they were ready, there’s a foreign flag waving over Queen’s Park and Parliament hill.

Big Serge’s map at the top of this post vastly overstates the number of US troops necessary to secure the major population areas.

However, it is worthwhile to imagine it as a pure thought experiment: what would you really be willing to give up in order to continue to be “not-American”.

Your investment savings? Your property? Your house? Would you sacrifice the life of your child, or your grandchild, to preserve the legal independence of Canada?

We ask this question not because we think it’s going to come to that, but rather because these questions test the integrity of our national concept. They allow us to examine our resilience, and our willingness to withstand an assault of an economic or moral nature. And, folks, we’re just not convinced that our national resilience is very high at the moment.

Well, I’m sure a lot of new Canadians would want the rest of us to defend the place while they take advantage of all the government and corporate positions that need to be “diversified” … surely us evil white supremacists are willing to lay it all on the line for a more diverse society, right?

It was interesting to us to note, this week, that the most powerful moral appeal for the concept of nationhood was proposed in a Globe and Mail oped by Jean Chrétien. While we salute the old patriot, we can’t help but point out that he’s, well, very old — 91, to be precise.

We at The Line have a sneaking suspicion that Canadian patriotism and, more importantly, a willingness to make serious sacrifices to preserve that patriotism, is going to decline precipitously by age cohort in any well-constructed survey of the topic.

Would the young fight to preserve Canada against the Russians or the Chinese? Yes, we think our fellow Canadians could absolutely be called upon to make serious sacrifices to circumvent the rule of autocrats and dictators. But to prevent being subsumed by the — checks notes — wealthiest and most powerful democratic nation on earth (presuming America stays that way)? A nation that shares almost all of our essential values; one that looks and sounds just like us, and would probably provide a better set of opportunities to our kids? The place an increasing number of us are going to do start business and receive timely medical care?

Why?

Why would we do that? Can someone — anyone — please articulate a vision, here? Is anyone in our leadership class even trying?

It’s been noted many times that people are willing to charge even bare-handed into machine guns and cannons for things like “Liberté, égalité, fraternité“, but nobody is going to man the ramparts for “peace and good government”.

We put a lot of the blame for this on Justin Trudeau, and on the identitarian politics that consciously sought to undermine national legitimacy in the pursuit of progressive ends. But, if we’re being honest, we think this complacency of identity predates these social movements by many decades.

The Liberal Party as an institution owns a lot of it for the ways in which the “Natural Governing Party” has tied national identity to its preferred partisan policy options, at the direct expense of more transcendental and bi-partisan national self concepts. The Liberals have usurped “Canada” into a party brand

The national flag is effectively the Liberal Party flag … thanks Mr. Pearson!

and marshalled the very concept of “patriotism” to build consensus for picayune material entitlements. Trudeau couldn’t even help but do this in his CNN interview with Jake Tapper this week: “We delivered $10-a-day childcare. We’re delivering a dental care program that provides free dental care for people who don’t have coverage. We’re moving forward on a price on pollution that puts more money in the pockets of eight out 10 Canadians.”

We suppose Trudeau found that argument very compelling argument to Americans marvelling at Canada’s inability to meet its basic NATO commitments.

The weird thing is that Trudeau could have deflected a lot of these criticisms by our NATO allies almost painlessly without spending any more money directly on the Canadian Armed Forces — “It’s well known that Justin Trudeau has no time for military issues, but it’s surprising that he hasn’t done a few things that wouldn’t increase the actual spending on the CAF, but would be “bookkeeping” changes that would shift some existing government spending into the military category, like militarizing the Canadian Coast Guard. (That is, moving the CCG from the Fisheries and Oceans portfolio into the National Defence portfolio, not actually putting armaments on CCG vessels. Something similar could be done with the RCMP, switching it from Public Safety to National Defence with no other funding or operational changes.) That Trudeau hasn’t chosen to make even these symbolic changes shows that he actively opposes fulfilling the commitment his government has made twice in the last ten years for reasons of his own.”

This tactic has been very electorally effective for the Liberals, no doubt, but it’s also reduced the idea of “Canada” to a smug transactional exchange. “Canada” as nothing more than what provinces and citizens can wheedle out of the commonweal in transfer payments, equalization cheques, and grandiose but poorly executed national program spending. At least we’re better than America, though, right? We’re “not American!” — we’re so much more thoughtful and compassionate, as evidenced by the entitlements we’ve voted for ourselves, secure in the knowledge that the troglodytes to the south will spend and bleed and die for our coddled asses if Russia lobs a missile from the North.

Canada has become a question of what we, citizens, are able to get, rather than one of what we’re willing to give. And we’re smarmy, preachy assholes about it, to boot. (There’s a very famous political quote we could drop in here about what citizens can do for their countries and vice versa, but you’ll know why we aren’t, if you can guess the quote! It would be a little on the nose.)

A nation that is unwilling to make serious sacrifices of blood and treasure to protect its own sovereignty is a nation that is going to cease to be a nation sooner or later — and if we judge Canada by its commitment to its military, ours is a nation that has regarded itself as a quasi-ironic post-modern punchline for many generations now.

January 12, 2025

Big Serge updates War Plan Red for a 2025 invasion of Justin Trudeau’s “post-national” “genocide” state

Filed under: Cancon, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

After the farcical attempt by outgoing PM Justin Trudeau to pretend that he somehow has changed his mind and now likes and wants to defend the country he’s described variously as a “post-national state” with no core beliefs, steeped in white supremacy and misogyny, and still engaged in “genocide”, Big Serge suggests the US invasion plan should change like this:

When Trump invades Canada, the key will be rapid advances in the opening 48 hours to take advantage of Canada’s odd force disposition.

The country’s political and economic center of gravity is the urban corridor from Toronto to Montreal, but a significant share of the Canadian Army is dispersed, with large garrisons in Quebec, Halifax, and the western provinces. Only handful of brigades are garrisoned in the critical theater.

The war will be won quickly and decisively, without massive destruction of Canadian cities, if American forces can establish blocking positions to isolate the urban corridor from peripheral Canadian garrisons. In this maneuver scheme, we utilize highly mobile elements including 1st Cavalry Division and airborne forces to block the highways into Toronto, while an eastern screening group isolates the urban centers from reinforcements scrambling in from Quebec.

We envision inserting HIMARS at operational depths via Chinook slings, saturating Canadian road traffic with rocketry. A mobile firebase (“Firebase Maple”) will be established north of Toronto near Lake Simcoe that will have a dominant position over the city’s northern approach.

With reinforcements unable to scramble into the critical theater and Toronto severed from the cities in the eastern corridor, the Canadian 31st and 32nd Brigade Groups will be isolated and destroyed. Unconditional surrender is anticipated within 14 days.

If there is a Canadian insurgency, we’re calling it the Maplejideen.

As an addendum, artillery airlifted onto Isle Royale in Lake Superior will support an advance out of Minnesota towards Thunder Bay, which will add an additional level of interdiction on Canadian reinforcements moving eastward by rail.

People are so mad about this!

And after much kerfuffle among the easily trolled, he suggests:

There’s no community note on this post which means it has been fact checked as true by real patriots.

As to why Trump would want to invade a frozen failed state on the brink of bankruptcy, even Big Serge doesn’t have an answer.

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