I was a just thinking about this yesterday how we haven’t heard a word from the King or from the UK.
As for being part of the EU. Hell no. What a horrible horrible idea. Worse than joining the US. We have enough problems with excess migrants without suddenly finding ourselves with the migrant problem most countries in the EU are facing. Not to mention our completely different culture and different continent. People sure do love to come up with ridiculous ideas rather than doing the work to fix what is actually wrong with the governance and institutions in the country. (News flash: joining the EU wouldn’t fix that either.)
With that said, I think best comparison to the current situation is actually Plaza Accords. Japan went thru similar threats to their Sovereignty. It would be wise to get someone who knows that Era really well to provide us with fresh perspectives.
Maybe, just maybe, British elites are only now beginning to grasp what many working class Canadians are only now realizing: perhaps Trump is not the problem. Perhaps Trump's policies are not the problem: they just reveal it. Maybe, just maybe, the coddled chattering classes are beginning to grasp that shooting the messenger as a national policy (think rape gangs for Britain or Trudeau as a way of life) doesn't address the problem of either country becoming a failed state.
Maybe us lower class plebes have started to get through to our 'elected and non-elected self appointed or coronated betters' that handing immigration over to immigrants carries with it dramatic negative national consequences... not just for those who don't earn enough to have any shot at achieving through hard work and savings our national dreams for a higher quality of life once obtainable for previous generations but... for any reasonable hope for responsible national governance. I don't see any representatives for that dying hope other than Trump. And doesn't that say something!
Blaming Trump for our spectacular national failures while producing irresponsible governance for decades does nothing to correct direction other than put off meaningful and positive change. Again. More and more people are seeing this circling the drain fact on the ground and in the streets and I think it scares the living shit out of politicians who have nothing but 'communication skills' (aka passing the buck with nice sounding words) to offer. When offering such platitudes and blaming everyone else doesn't work to alter reality, shutting one's mouth is the last best hope.
Also speaking as a lower class plebe, I do honest to God think that many if not most of our class are just not willing to both put in the hard work, and have the discipline to have a upwardly mobile life.
There is a habit of looking for a leader, a saviour, a daddy figure who will take care of us. That leads to folks like Trump.
Yes, that’s what we have, vacuous ‘comms pros’ - in abundance. Wasn’t only a few weeks ago, that the media, en masse, kept saying that Trudeau is such a great campaigner? SOMEHOW overlooking nearly a decade of scandal & complete mismanagement.
Trudeau was just the latest. In Canada, over 30 years of identity politics and policies leading to the teaching of generations that the country is illegitimate, a genocidal, colonizing, racist nation in need of people who do not share the inherited fundamental western values that once formed the backbone of a unified people tolerant of ethnic differences. Now lets all go and declare our patriotism for an unserious morally bankrupt and unrecognizable broken country. What's the problem?
The US wants to be an island. Let them. Yes, Canada is way behind on this, but maybe waking to the idea that we need to change some things to find common ground with other nations....we certainly can't trust the US going forward, and that won't change after 4 years. Their issues are far larger. We need to pivot like we never have before at a pace unseen since the CPR was built. Do we have leaders capable of that?
David, I agree with the scope of your timeline--looking back to the building of the CPR. We need epic-scale pivoting, not just a rehash of dusty plans that never were acted upon.
I haven’t seen much pivoting to date. Lots of talk about eliminating interprovincial trade barriers but just talk up to this point. I’m not sure we do have the leaders that we need at this moment.
No, we don’t. It’s a generational chasm from what we had - bold, opinionated, out-spoken MPs LEADING DECISIONS, to a House filled to the rafters with today’s beaten zombies fearfully toeing the party line. There isn’t an original thinker that would cause me to pause & think, hey, that one looks promising. Only sycophants hoping for a cabinet seat … and, of course, a pension.
Anyone who says we have the same parliamentary system that we had is patently clueless. As for the patronage Senate, a complete & utter waste of tax payers dollars.
That's been my take for a few years. We need the PMO to stop running the country. Power cannot be centralised in one unelected office. The PM is the spokesperson for his Ministers that actually make decisions and speak without notes the PMO provides.
I have noticed the silence from London, and it will not be forgotten. Maybe what the Brits have forgotten is that while Churchill spoke of defending their island alone, Canada was right there beside them.
Perhaps, having sent a gaggle of Labour activists over to the US to ‘help’ the Harris campaign ( in what is known as ‘election interference’ when Russia or China does it), Starmer and his gang of incompetents is finally showing a bit of intelligence by shutting up and keeping its head down for a change, as they know they have pissed off the Tweeter-in-Chief and there will be retribution for it. The UK is finished. Starmer is presiding over the sun setting on what’s left of the Empire, and what a ruin he’s making of your country.
Ps- take Carney back, and we’ll give you two first round draft choices and a player to be named later.
I don’t wish to be unkind, and I do appreciate the support from someone from the UK however having followed UK politics from before Brexit to today, I have to say that needing the
UK as a friend is not a healthy place to be. Again, hate to be this blunt, being a Canadian is too ingrained and niceness comes naturally and bluntness not so much, but the UK is a basket case. Obviously we could say the same about Canada, and should, but we are not even in the same league (except of course being advised by carney, we have that in common). So let me be blunt to avoid any confusion whatsoever. The US has the right to impose whatever tarifs it wants to its imports. In what way do we need support from any other country to take our side? That is saying that Canada has no right to impose our own tariffs? And some other country needs support if we impose trade tariffs on their goods? I personally would impose 100% tariff in the clothing from China just to pay for the landfill space we need to dispose of their garbage. I am sorry but this overly emotional, hysterical posturing must stop. No country is obliged to import goods tariff free.
As to 51st state talk, considering we do not have soldiers massing on our borders, we don’t need UK or anyone else’s support.
I know that there are Canadians who currently need hand holding but I am so personally over this, sick of the hand ringing, the pearl clutching and the rest. I am perfectly fine supporting my fellow Canadians if they are having problems dealing with the tarifs, we lived through the mess Covid was, we can handle this, but the hysteria must end.
I am not a lawyer, but I feel that signing a trade agreement obligates you to follow that agreement until it concludes. Especially as it was the same president who signed it.
The problem with this argument is that there is no international authority that can force a country to abide by a trade agreement when its leaders no longer want to, especially a country as powerful as the USA. One can appeal to "international law" as much as one wants, but since there is no single global authority to enforce it (thank God!), appeals to it are meaningless.
The United States has been guaranteeing the world order where your comment makes sense from a geopolitical perspective. The US is no longer guaranteeing this. For some strange reason, Canada forgot this. So did the UK. Strange but true.
Bang on. The UK is a walking embodiment of an effing nightmare. And yeah, enough of hand wringing, for sure. Either we can get our sh*t together, or we can’t. And I’m reading this on Feb23 - can anyone tell me what Ottawa has come up with in the last 2 weeks? Even a basic strategy, besides - we’re going to fight, fight, fight? Middle school rhetoric.
It would seem that the only thing that can slow the Trump launched wrecking ball is Americans themselves (in red states where the message may actually matter to him) loudly rising up as their cost of living increases while quality of living plummets. Maybe. As for the blue states the Democrats paved the way for a Trump with their overindulgences and listening to no one outside of their own echo chamber. Reagan and Clinton (the first) would look pretty appealing to both voting blocks now. The centre is dead.
I hope monarchists and Super Canucks who support the monarchy remember this moment well. In our time of need our King bailed on us.
At this point, the only reason to have a royal Head of State is so that the executive isn't permanently held by Ontario and more likely Quebec. That would of course break up the country. Imagine executive orders and veto power from a Head of State chosen by Central Canada?!?
Anyone who expected the UK to act otherwise has a fundamental misapprehension of how the UK has *always* treated Canada with respect to the United States. Britain has a 242-year history of trading away Canadian interests for often ephemeral concessions from the United States, or nothing at all. From giving away the Ohio Country in the Treaty of Paris despite the wishes of the Americans' French ally that Britain not do this, to giving away the upper Red River Valley in 1818 in exchange for nothing at all other than a straight line, to giving away the north shore of the Columbia in 1846, to giving in on the boundary of the Alaska Panhandle in exchange for concessions from Venezuela in Guyana, the UK has always had a consistent pattern. Silence is the *best* we can hope for from London. Normally we're a bargaining chip.
I'm sure that the more historically-minded staffers at the Foreign Office only regret they're not in a position to trade away British Columbia in exchange for a delay on tariffs on British spirits or some other non-concession.
I say all this as someone of largely British ancestry who's a monarchist and proud of the British connection:. You sadly can't feel betrayed when the British government is merely taking their consistent approach to things.
One might hope that after standing to defend Great Britain in two world wars, at great loss of life, it might assist us in our need of meaningful support. Evidently memories are short. Canada will be left on its own to defend itself in whatever manner it can. And no other nation really cares.
Not even our Head of State (The King) would condemn Trumps annexation remarks. If we can ever build a movement to cede from the monarchy, this is the time.
President Trump is a classic and somewhat successful bully motivated primarily by strength. Nine years of governance by the Liberal Party of Canada has left Canada weak, economically, militarily and with a poor sense of national unity and purpose. Canada desperately needs to find the national character, courage and sense of national purpose that made this country the envy of the free world. Grow the economy and dump the woke nonsense that undermines national unity.
I was a just thinking about this yesterday how we haven’t heard a word from the King or from the UK.
As for being part of the EU. Hell no. What a horrible horrible idea. Worse than joining the US. We have enough problems with excess migrants without suddenly finding ourselves with the migrant problem most countries in the EU are facing. Not to mention our completely different culture and different continent. People sure do love to come up with ridiculous ideas rather than doing the work to fix what is actually wrong with the governance and institutions in the country. (News flash: joining the EU wouldn’t fix that either.)
Commentariat class has become too Eurocentric.
With that said, I think best comparison to the current situation is actually Plaza Accords. Japan went thru similar threats to their Sovereignty. It would be wise to get someone who knows that Era really well to provide us with fresh perspectives.
Maybe, just maybe, British elites are only now beginning to grasp what many working class Canadians are only now realizing: perhaps Trump is not the problem. Perhaps Trump's policies are not the problem: they just reveal it. Maybe, just maybe, the coddled chattering classes are beginning to grasp that shooting the messenger as a national policy (think rape gangs for Britain or Trudeau as a way of life) doesn't address the problem of either country becoming a failed state.
Maybe us lower class plebes have started to get through to our 'elected and non-elected self appointed or coronated betters' that handing immigration over to immigrants carries with it dramatic negative national consequences... not just for those who don't earn enough to have any shot at achieving through hard work and savings our national dreams for a higher quality of life once obtainable for previous generations but... for any reasonable hope for responsible national governance. I don't see any representatives for that dying hope other than Trump. And doesn't that say something!
Blaming Trump for our spectacular national failures while producing irresponsible governance for decades does nothing to correct direction other than put off meaningful and positive change. Again. More and more people are seeing this circling the drain fact on the ground and in the streets and I think it scares the living shit out of politicians who have nothing but 'communication skills' (aka passing the buck with nice sounding words) to offer. When offering such platitudes and blaming everyone else doesn't work to alter reality, shutting one's mouth is the last best hope.
Also speaking as a lower class plebe, I do honest to God think that many if not most of our class are just not willing to both put in the hard work, and have the discipline to have a upwardly mobile life.
There is a habit of looking for a leader, a saviour, a daddy figure who will take care of us. That leads to folks like Trump.
Yes, that’s what we have, vacuous ‘comms pros’ - in abundance. Wasn’t only a few weeks ago, that the media, en masse, kept saying that Trudeau is such a great campaigner? SOMEHOW overlooking nearly a decade of scandal & complete mismanagement.
Trudeau was just the latest. In Canada, over 30 years of identity politics and policies leading to the teaching of generations that the country is illegitimate, a genocidal, colonizing, racist nation in need of people who do not share the inherited fundamental western values that once formed the backbone of a unified people tolerant of ethnic differences. Now lets all go and declare our patriotism for an unserious morally bankrupt and unrecognizable broken country. What's the problem?
The US wants to be an island. Let them. Yes, Canada is way behind on this, but maybe waking to the idea that we need to change some things to find common ground with other nations....we certainly can't trust the US going forward, and that won't change after 4 years. Their issues are far larger. We need to pivot like we never have before at a pace unseen since the CPR was built. Do we have leaders capable of that?
David, I agree with the scope of your timeline--looking back to the building of the CPR. We need epic-scale pivoting, not just a rehash of dusty plans that never were acted upon.
I haven’t seen much pivoting to date. Lots of talk about eliminating interprovincial trade barriers but just talk up to this point. I’m not sure we do have the leaders that we need at this moment.
Talk and study.....Canada's failures defined
We need to change virtually everything and grow up.
No, we don’t. It’s a generational chasm from what we had - bold, opinionated, out-spoken MPs LEADING DECISIONS, to a House filled to the rafters with today’s beaten zombies fearfully toeing the party line. There isn’t an original thinker that would cause me to pause & think, hey, that one looks promising. Only sycophants hoping for a cabinet seat … and, of course, a pension.
Anyone who says we have the same parliamentary system that we had is patently clueless. As for the patronage Senate, a complete & utter waste of tax payers dollars.
That's been my take for a few years. We need the PMO to stop running the country. Power cannot be centralised in one unelected office. The PM is the spokesperson for his Ministers that actually make decisions and speak without notes the PMO provides.
On the plus side, the wrecking of our economy will bring us closer to spending the 2% of our plummeting GDP on defense.
That was my thought. Sadly.
Maybe it’s a simple as the acknowledging that the current government and leadership of the UK is pathetic?
I have noticed the silence from London, and it will not be forgotten. Maybe what the Brits have forgotten is that while Churchill spoke of defending their island alone, Canada was right there beside them.
In your well-written op-ed, you referred to cowardice as the likely cause of UK silence (relative to others that have spoken out against Trump).
I think this is plausible, though I would add that the default position of most modern technocratic leaders is to crouch (keep one’s head down).
This has certainly been true until recently of Canada’s rather mediocre lot of federal and provincial politicians (and senior bureaucrats).
Perhaps, having sent a gaggle of Labour activists over to the US to ‘help’ the Harris campaign ( in what is known as ‘election interference’ when Russia or China does it), Starmer and his gang of incompetents is finally showing a bit of intelligence by shutting up and keeping its head down for a change, as they know they have pissed off the Tweeter-in-Chief and there will be retribution for it. The UK is finished. Starmer is presiding over the sun setting on what’s left of the Empire, and what a ruin he’s making of your country.
Ps- take Carney back, and we’ll give you two first round draft choices and a player to be named later.
I don’t wish to be unkind, and I do appreciate the support from someone from the UK however having followed UK politics from before Brexit to today, I have to say that needing the
UK as a friend is not a healthy place to be. Again, hate to be this blunt, being a Canadian is too ingrained and niceness comes naturally and bluntness not so much, but the UK is a basket case. Obviously we could say the same about Canada, and should, but we are not even in the same league (except of course being advised by carney, we have that in common). So let me be blunt to avoid any confusion whatsoever. The US has the right to impose whatever tarifs it wants to its imports. In what way do we need support from any other country to take our side? That is saying that Canada has no right to impose our own tariffs? And some other country needs support if we impose trade tariffs on their goods? I personally would impose 100% tariff in the clothing from China just to pay for the landfill space we need to dispose of their garbage. I am sorry but this overly emotional, hysterical posturing must stop. No country is obliged to import goods tariff free.
As to 51st state talk, considering we do not have soldiers massing on our borders, we don’t need UK or anyone else’s support.
I know that there are Canadians who currently need hand holding but I am so personally over this, sick of the hand ringing, the pearl clutching and the rest. I am perfectly fine supporting my fellow Canadians if they are having problems dealing with the tarifs, we lived through the mess Covid was, we can handle this, but the hysteria must end.
I am not a lawyer, but I feel that signing a trade agreement obligates you to follow that agreement until it concludes. Especially as it was the same president who signed it.
The problem with this argument is that there is no international authority that can force a country to abide by a trade agreement when its leaders no longer want to, especially a country as powerful as the USA. One can appeal to "international law" as much as one wants, but since there is no single global authority to enforce it (thank God!), appeals to it are meaningless.
The United States has been guaranteeing the world order where your comment makes sense from a geopolitical perspective. The US is no longer guaranteeing this. For some strange reason, Canada forgot this. So did the UK. Strange but true.
Bang on. The UK is a walking embodiment of an effing nightmare. And yeah, enough of hand wringing, for sure. Either we can get our sh*t together, or we can’t. And I’m reading this on Feb23 - can anyone tell me what Ottawa has come up with in the last 2 weeks? Even a basic strategy, besides - we’re going to fight, fight, fight? Middle school rhetoric.
They do not know how to deal with it.
It would seem that the only thing that can slow the Trump launched wrecking ball is Americans themselves (in red states where the message may actually matter to him) loudly rising up as their cost of living increases while quality of living plummets. Maybe. As for the blue states the Democrats paved the way for a Trump with their overindulgences and listening to no one outside of their own echo chamber. Reagan and Clinton (the first) would look pretty appealing to both voting blocks now. The centre is dead.
I hope monarchists and Super Canucks who support the monarchy remember this moment well. In our time of need our King bailed on us.
At this point, the only reason to have a royal Head of State is so that the executive isn't permanently held by Ontario and more likely Quebec. That would of course break up the country. Imagine executive orders and veto power from a Head of State chosen by Central Canada?!?
Anyone who expected the UK to act otherwise has a fundamental misapprehension of how the UK has *always* treated Canada with respect to the United States. Britain has a 242-year history of trading away Canadian interests for often ephemeral concessions from the United States, or nothing at all. From giving away the Ohio Country in the Treaty of Paris despite the wishes of the Americans' French ally that Britain not do this, to giving away the upper Red River Valley in 1818 in exchange for nothing at all other than a straight line, to giving away the north shore of the Columbia in 1846, to giving in on the boundary of the Alaska Panhandle in exchange for concessions from Venezuela in Guyana, the UK has always had a consistent pattern. Silence is the *best* we can hope for from London. Normally we're a bargaining chip.
I'm sure that the more historically-minded staffers at the Foreign Office only regret they're not in a position to trade away British Columbia in exchange for a delay on tariffs on British spirits or some other non-concession.
I say all this as someone of largely British ancestry who's a monarchist and proud of the British connection:. You sadly can't feel betrayed when the British government is merely taking their consistent approach to things.
One might hope that after standing to defend Great Britain in two world wars, at great loss of life, it might assist us in our need of meaningful support. Evidently memories are short. Canada will be left on its own to defend itself in whatever manner it can. And no other nation really cares.
Not even our Head of State (The King) would condemn Trumps annexation remarks. If we can ever build a movement to cede from the monarchy, this is the time.
President Trump is a classic and somewhat successful bully motivated primarily by strength. Nine years of governance by the Liberal Party of Canada has left Canada weak, economically, militarily and with a poor sense of national unity and purpose. Canada desperately needs to find the national character, courage and sense of national purpose that made this country the envy of the free world. Grow the economy and dump the woke nonsense that undermines national unity.
To be blunt, I expect nothing from the UK. The King couldn’t be bothered to comment when asked. The UK can’t help Canada and they won’t.