When is a concession or a capitulation, not a concession or a capitulation?
Everyone in the Country agrees Supply Management is bad for Canadians. There are better ways to assist farmers, if farmers indeed need assistance.
And, yet, we insist on maintaining this Soviet style anachronism in order to placate a tiny cadre of self-interested, rent seeking economic ne’er-do-wells, in spite of the fact it impairs our own best interests and agitated our largest customer.
If we were really ruthless, and really grown up, we would unconditionally and unceremoniously dismantle this beast of a policy and keep our Country moving forward economically and sanely.
At the very least we could point out to Trump that we might, just might consider talking about dairy when they stop subsidizing it to the tune of $15B.
U.S. dairy subsidies encompass the Dairy Margin Coverage program, federal price support purchases, and feed/crop assistance. These federal interventions cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually, encourage market overproduction, and shape international trade friction with neighboring countries.Key Federal Support ProgramsDairy Margin Coverage (DMC): A voluntary risk management program administered by the USDA that pays participating farmers when the difference between the all-milk price and average feed cost falls below a certain threshold.Price Support and Purchases: The government maintains indirect price floors by purchasing surplus dairy commodities (such as butter, cheese, and nonfat dry milk) from processors during market drops.Disaster and Feed Assistance: Ad-hoc relief packages and subsidized crop insurance for feed components (corn and soybeans) indirectly lower operational costs for dairy producers.Economic and Trade ImpactOverproduction: Critics argue that guaranteed safety nets incentivize farms to produce more milk than the free market demands, depressing baseline global prices.Trade Tensions: Subsidized U.S. volumes frequently trigger trade disputes, notably with Canada's supply-management system, which relies on strict import quotas and high tariffs to shield domestic producers from foreign price swings.
Because milk prices stabilized and feed costs fell compared to the historically severe market stress of 2023, direct safety-net outlays dropped significantly in 2024.1. Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC)Total Payout: $100.1 millionContext: This marked a steep 91.6% drop from the record-high $1.2 billion paid out to dairy farmers in 2023.How it Functioned: DMC acts as a subsidized risk-management insurance program. In early 2024, indemnity payments were triggered when income-over-feed margins fell to $8.48 per hundredweight (cwt), yielding roughly $761.56 per million pounds of enrolled milk for farms protected at the maximum $9.50 tier. For the rest of 2024, margins stayed healthy enough that few payouts were triggered.2. Organic Dairy Marketing Assistance Program (ODMAP)Total Payout: Over $31 millionHow it Functioned: Managed by the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), ODMAP 2024 provided unique, one-time financial cost-share assistance. It specifically helped certified organic dairy producers cover spikes in marketing and transportation costs.Indirect and Broader SupportBeyond these dairy-specific programs, U.S. dairy operations also benefited from generalized agricultural safety nets:Total Direct Farm Payments: Across all sectors, the U.S. government distributed $10.4 billion in direct agricultural subsidies in 2024.Indirect Subsidies: Dairy margins were heavily supported by heavily subsidized federal crop insurance for corn and soybeans, which artificially depressed feed expenditures—the primary cost of milk production.
And already the Premier of Quebec was chirping about it this morning at the Premiers' Conference in PEI!
"Ms. Fréchette added that she wants Quebec’s interests to be 'fully taken into account' during the negotiations, especially regarding supply management of the dairy industry and respect for the province’s unique culture."
So, here is my answer: Quebec can continue to respond performatively, and demand policies and programs that are at odds with Canada’s best interests.
The Prime Minister of Canada can respond by expending some political capital and standing his ground.
Without constitutional change, Canada as it exists is impotent and unproductive; the Prime Minister cannot simply be like Oprah and say repeatedly, “here is a car for you, and a car for you, and a car for you.”
The marginal benefit of continued appeasement is zero.
It's interesting that you chose to use the word "performatively" because ... in the back of my mind (for a while now) ... I've been thinking that there is probably a fair amount of THEATRE in all the public political support pronouncements from both the federal government and Quebec.
The Feds keep saying that it is an untouchable sacred cow ... an absolutely un-fucking-non-negotiable carved-in-stone fact of Canadian life even moving forward. So when we cave-in on it (as we should eventually and tearfully do), President Trump will be delighted and content for at least a few days ... during which he might pass.
Ottawa would sooner throw the auto industry AND the oil industry under the bus than shut down the dairy cartel like the taxi cartels were blown up when Uber came around.
Official Ottawa honest to God believes without dairy farmers on board there is no Canada. It's existential. What is the point of Quebec staying in Canada if there isn't a captive market to take advantage of?
Christine Frechette said today that supply management is non-negotiable. French Quebec media will not accept any concessions asked of dairy farmers. Carney will have to find a way to negotiate with the USA on this issue. He will lose popularity in Quebec. Many of the seats in the dairy farming areas are held by the CPC & Bloc Québécois.
My point with Ron, is that either Canada works in its current form, or it doesn’t.
We have choices we can make as a Country; we have choices we can face as separate countries. I would prefer we remain as a Country, but if we decide Canada just isn’t working, we can set out on our own, as well.
That reminded me that we the dairy cartel a billion dollars to make up for expanding imports from the US in CUSMA, and then gave the dairy industry the veto over those imports. Do we get our billion dollars back?
USTR Jamieson Greer said on CNBC yesterday that U.S. dairy producers cannot sell milk to retailers. They can only sell to Co OP's. Co-ops have no incentive to sell US milk in Canada, so it was useless to expand US market access.
The dairy cartel is very powerful in Quebec. Carney has the political capital to make concessions to the USA. I suspect he will wait till after the Quebec election.
Carney will also have to change the law they passed last year that bars any trade negotiations on dairy.
Will Canadians agree to a temporary surcharge on Canadian milk to compensate Canadian dairy producers if Carney grants more access to American dairy products?
Let it be wound down, pay the young farmers book value for the quota they were swindled into buying, and let Quebec politics digest it. If Quebec leaves because of milk alone, okay so be it.
Quebec or the federal government will probably have to grant increased access to the dairy market to satisfy the Americans. There will be compensation for farmers.
When Trump announced these latest tariffs I thought to myself: “They don’t want allies, nor friends nor good neighbours. They want vassals. I’m glad you used that term. That is not a word I thought we would use to describe diplomatic policy in the 21st century, but here we are. Trump wants vassals because it makes him feel powerful: vassals show up with tribute. Trump demands tribute; it is the price of entry. His administration is filled with people who are filled with adolescent views of what constitutes power and vassal states fit the bill.
"Middle powers" is the naïve label Carney and others have used to define what historians have termed vassal states. I've come to an admittedly simplistic and opinionated assessment arrived at through aggregating the opinions and analyses of Gerson/Gurney on general Canadian issues and other Substack writers with credibility in areas like Sino-Russian relationships, CCP economic and political long games in Canada and so on.
China and the US are staking their claims through economically and politically enforced alliances with vassal states. Canada and the EU are expected to fall in line with the USA as is every other country in the Americas. Vassal states like Iran and its religious counterparts and the Soviets are expected to fall in line with the CCP.
The individual vassal states are figuring out the best ways to control the ways and means by which citizens can express disagreement through defining misinformation and disinformation as crimes - see bill C22 that has taken its direction from similar legislation in the UK, Ireland and the EU. Prior to that climate change, DEI and covid were used as control levers to manage public sentiment. And others in the comments have mentioned the secret MOU's with the CCP's Ministry of Public Security and whatever the Qatari equivalent is. The US is by no means lily white when it comes to human abuses. However, and speaking only for myself, I'd rather deal with the neighbours next door rather than countries with a centuries long history of human rights abuses and no constitutional protection. Columns and comment sections... do you really think these views would be tolerated under a Canadian government strongly influenced by the CCP and its vassal states? That to me is the bigger issue here.
“I bet a prime minister that doesn’t have the balls to accept the consequences of keeping a bridge closed for a while is not generating the credibility required to re-order the Western alliance.”
There is no need to damage either bridge in Windsor. Just tear up a section of the road to and from the Ambassador bridge on the Canadian side. Declare it 'emergency infrastructure repair.' There is a nice new bridge not far away. Or the Blue Water bridge crossing if you don't mind the rerouting.
100%. As Trump gets pummelled in Iran, he's going to go out of his way to crush anything he sees as weak, to distract and rescue his manhood. And we're the easiest, most obvious, punching bag. But as we've seen repeatedly, Trump punches everyone in the face no matter what they do. Resisting, we can at least save our self-respect and help galvanize some opposition and started to happen after Davos. (The EU has just slapped Google with a one billion dollar fine. That's the spirit.)
You mean Mark Carney's Hail Mary "pull out all the stops to retain power at all costs" election campaign might have been full of shit? The 15 minute Davos Speech that gave him a 15-point polling lead might have just been hot air? The "just trust us after we wrecked the country for 10 years" Liberal government might not have any idea how to deal with a US administration that can't be dealt with? Call me completely shocked.
Next thing we will be figuring out that the mainstream media are deliberately running cover for those in power, or that tangible bribes changed hands to secure the Liberal majority.
It remains all about 'communicationing'. But on a larger stage, I guess... and doesn't that makes it so much better and earnest and patriotic?
I don't know about you, KRM, but I'm breathless at the speed and scope of all the building this gov't demonstrates. Just spitballin' here, but I suspect there might be a sleight misunderstanding - probably my own - that 'communicationing' and 'building' are not synonyms no matter how much virtue and hope and inspired explanatory bafflegab one inserts into these terms. I know that claim will come as surprising news to so many Liberal and optimistic patriots who can't wrap their heads around it but the reality of this fact has a way of inserting its unwanted nose into the multicultural collapsing tent called Canada. But with the right socks - umm... I mean business attire - the Prime Minister it seems is very confident that with even more Chinese approved 'communicationing' we will keep these folks in power into the foreseeable future... as long as hatred for the Americans stoked on the lie we are 'responding' to this recent bullying by US Administration (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)can be rinsed and repeatedly sold to a receptive audience and then used as the excuse for economically and socially dismantling a perfectly good country. The virtue, it overflows.
Oh yes, the world finally got to see the Liberal expertise at communications and talent at spinning rhetoric* and then are also getting to see the complete lack of substance and follow-through that customarily accompanies such rhetoric. It's like seeing 2015-2020 unfold all over again only at supersonic speed and now on the world stage!
But back home, we never learn our lesson. Every proclamation is still met with fanfare and hope, and taken Very Seriously Indeed.
(Speech totally definitely written by Mark all by himself, in one draft, on a napkin, at 3am, imagine how great it would have been if he had actually tried!)
Retain power at all costs election campaign? For me, a discarded water heater could have run for the CPC and the result would be the same; I'm certain of it. Again, that 25 point lead that just weirdly disappeared once the water heater realized it had blown it so it might as well double down.
Who cares about tens of billions a year in corruption and waste when you can worry about the opposition leader's "tone" and ability to "meet the moment".
But I'm not even talking about Poilievre, I'm saying the guy in charge is absolutely full of shit and that has been obvious from day one.
If it had been obvious from the start I think most Canadians would have been clued in by now. For me, you could run a water heater against the CPC right now and the Liberals would win.
The circumstances of the election - months-long prorogation and transparently cynical parachuting of a literal foreign resident as Prime Minister (!) - would have tipped some off that they were in for a snow-job.
But Canadians are dumb as bricks, easily manipulated, and everyone over 60 is getting pro-Liberal propaganda beamed directly into their brains though the legacy media they consume, and to which most have zero resistance.
Exactly — another thing we caved on. The tolls on the new bridge are going to match the old one now (it was going to undercut). Thus protecting most of the Maroun family’s monopoly rents.
Or wait about 6 weeks to Let traffic get accustomed to using new Bridge. Then shut out border crossings down on Canadian side of the Ambassador Bridge until we get a deal same as the deal on the new bridge.
Jen, all I can say is, for fuck’s sake, bang on. For years, Matt has hammered us about our inability to do big stuff and now you tell us we’re friendly cowards. Two prophets in a basket.
If you can't find an example of Canadians being ruthless that's less than 100 years old, then I'm not sure it's worth mentioning.
I get the anger in this piece, I feel it too, but I'm not sure there is much to be done. To borrow a more recent illustration– living beside America is like sleeping next to an elephant. You feel every groan and grunt. So, if the Americans really decide to crush us, they will. (elbows first, of course) The flags and signs are window dressing that makes Canadians feel better about their impending crushing. But what's the alternative? Freak out and panic? At this point Carney is the guide on a whitewater raft. The rest of us can choose whether we paddle or scream, but rest assured we are going down river.
If my info is correct most of the WWI heroism was from the newfies who were their own colony at the time. Certainly not from the French Quebeckers who were rioting against participation
The Newfies certainly did their bit in WWI: mauled badly enough at Gallipoli that they were pulled out and reformed, getting wiped out on the Somme, rebuilt and then getting sent to Flanders as a reward.
And the Canadians held up their end: Under Lord Byng and Sir Arthur Currie they developed the "Bite and Hold" tactic that ultimately defeated the Germans. After Vimy Ridge, the Canadian Corps became the most effective Allied shock troops available and they paid for that honour with heavy casualties.
I don't agree with the decision to capitulate on the bridge contract, but I can see there might be an economic rationale for it. What I find really objectionable is lying to the Canadian people about it. It's offensive and dumb since we were bound to find out the terms of the contract.
Anyone with a basic grasp of GAAP knows that debt servicing does NOT count as an "operating cost" - so Carney's detailed explanation on national TV was PURPOSEFULLY in direct opposition to what the actual deal actually says (unless you somehow believe Carney does not understand how accounting works....)
As per always, the Liberal strategy is to rely on the fact that the Canadian public is clueless as to how most of stuff actually works - so they try to tell the most soothing lies, and pin all the blame for bad outcomes on some external Boogeyman de jeur.
Trump has been a gift to them in this regard, as he puts out Boogeyman energy in much the same way Carney exudes Technocrat Daddy energy. It's a heady combination if one wishes to win a popularity contest, but it does not hep move us forward as a nation.
He didn't know what the deal was? For me, that is actually far worse than a lie because it speaks to his competence and judgement. Clearly both were questionable at best in this case.
I think most people can spot a lie, and that is the problem. Most people expect politicians to lie. It won't stick because of this. The bigger issue would be why did he lie and isn't a lie a verbal hedge a lie in sheep's clothing?
His new line of explanation (yesterday) is that he was inadvertently talking about the wrong deal.
He now wants us to believe that although he had answered the reporter's question with details from the agreement between Canada and Michigan (in which there had been NO sharing of the tolls until after Canada had paid down the debt) rather than answer the actual question, which was specifically about his deal with Trump.
He seems to truly believe Canadians are idiots who will swallow any lame excuse he offers - and I don't see a lot of reasons to disagree with him.
Thank you for calling this what it is: a lie. I see some news organizations are avoiding the use of the term, choosing instead to use synonyms for the word.
I think what bothers me most is that our capitulatory political class took the faint memory of the ruthless streak we still have, the glimpse we saw when all the 51st state talk kicked off, and not only wasted it, but trivialized it.
I think that instinct is real. I think a better leader could have used it to our advantage. Enough of us probably would've accepted at least some sacrifice, certainly more than Americans, if we'd been given a genuine promise that we were working toward a stronger, more independent Canada. Instead, all of that energy was redirected into the kind of symbolic nonsense you described.
I think it's because Carney sees this more as an opportunity for himself than an opportunity for the country. Another chance to enhance his reputation as a crisis manager, as 2008 and Brexit did before. And the people most comfortable with that approach are, like him, already established and already comfortable. They don't really want the world to change. They just want to preserve their place in it.
That's why so much effort has gone into fending off today's pressures instead of fundamentally changing anything. But I don't just want resilience. I want our "fuck you" energy directed toward independence. I want us to radically and aggressively embrace the fact that we're entering a new world and build a country that no longer needs this kind of dependence.
I just don't see people as invested in the old order as Carney and much of his voter base being either willing, or perhaps even able, to lead that transformation.
Jen, how much of this is driven by the business community? My experience (from conference panels, actions taken, etc.) is top business leaders are much more likely to think resistance is futile and Fortress North America is the GDP-maximizing path and we should not try to fight it.
Which, like, is probably true if you think of corporations and gdp as bloodless economic-value-maximizers?
Carney listens a LOT to big business. I think that’s where this is coming from. This isn’t defeatist Liberals, this is globalist business leaders saying borders don’t matter, and fighting back against America makes line go down, and we want line to go up.
Would the Conservatives be any different in defying the business community?
I think that's exactly right. We havr a business community that is risk averse, and clinging to the fantasy that politics doesn't matter and that a stabilizing deal is possible. JG
I would be curious to know how many of the largest Canadian employers, say 5,000+ employees in Canada, outside of government and banks, are actually “Canadian”? And Canadian banks are more global than Canadian.
Those employers: the auto giants, tech firms, financial service behemoths, and resources businesses think globally. Canadian politics don’t factor much into their business strategy. If US tariffs hit and STICK, a big if, they will relocate operations/production to their facilities somewhere else, often the States, to avoid the tariffs. Some already have announced this. That’s kind of the point of Trump’s tariffs. It’s shitty and I hate it, but it’s the current world we live in.
I might be wrong about who the largest private sector employers are. It’s possible most are proudly Canadian-led and Canadian-based, but the sense I had from decades at a big strategy consultant in New York is that isn’t the case.
Exactly!! (I am former MBB, so I saw the same things you did.)
As I said above in reply to Tildeb, there is a view that many have that economic prosperity is more important than Canadian sovereignty, and so we should solve for GDP growth *above* being an independent country that charts our own course independently of Trump’s America.
This is what I’m accusing (some) in the business world of doing, and saying that this is a bad thing to do. And that some business leaders are thus being, to some extent, fifth-columnists. Which isn’t uncommon — I wasn’t joking about Austrian business doing this in the 1930s. Germany was the much bigger market!
I care more about not being American more than I care about economic growth. Others (like our Alberta separatist crowd here who think Canada sucks and want to leave and join Trump’s America anyway) are free to disagree, but I am also free to say that people who think this are bad Canadians.
Being concerned about the bottom line over national sovereignty?
Business has been a fifth column at times in history, but not all the time, and usually not when it mattered.
Austrian business, from what I understand, was quite in favour of the Anschluss in the 1930s. Think of the access to that much larger same-language market!
You aren’t making logical sense. You can’t sacrifice Canadian sovereignty to have stronger business *in order to protect Canadian sovereignty*, because you’ve already sacrificed it.
The only way this makes sense is if economic prosperity is more important than Canadian sovereignty, and so you’re actually solving for GDP growth *above* being an independent country that charts our own course independently of Trump’s America.
This is what I’m accusing the business world of doing, and saying that this is a bad thing to do. And that some business leaders are being, to some extent, fifth-columnists. Which isn’t uncommon, I wasn’t joking about Austria in the 1930s.
I care more about not being American more than I care about economic growth. You are free to disagree, but I am also free to say that people who think this are bad Canadians.
I suspect the issue here is your understanding of 'sovereignty' as it relates to economics supporting political oversight (governance). My claim is that without a strong economic base upon which gov't can govern with financial resources to have effect, there is no means to govern other than through brutal totalitarianism. And we have lots of world history to know exactly how that system only impoverishes everyone. None of us live in a real world economic bubble 'independent' of international trade because the world's products depend on it! In the same way a single person living in the wilderness must do absolutely everything every day just to survive each one, a country that tries to do the same cannot help but be equally inefficient. Communities that allot expertise to 'take over' certain needs directly reduces these inefficiencies beyond simple survival. And we see such organized living provide the means to grow and prosper beyond simple survival. We also see how further the integration with other communities trading expertise and products results in a 'higher' standard of living for the average (a growing economic tide raises all boats, so to speak).
The same is true on an international scale.
With 3.6 billion dollars of trade daily between the US and Canada, it takes a special kind of framing 'sovereignty' to think this is a net cost to Canadian 'independence' rather than the heartbeat of fostering it. Replacing this volume of trade with the closest, richest, and most efficient economy in the name of promoting 'sovereignty' is a socialist pipe dream that must ignore both geography and real world market economics. This special trade relationship is WHY Canada once was one of the richest nations in the world with a golden future.
No longer.
We're so busy squandering this inheritance and intentionally stopping wealth creation in the name of all kinds of 'progressive' goals that we are dismantling rather than building our economy (which is why Alberta, a province very close to how this intentional interference affects wealth creation compared to other Provinces, has made separation a very real thing).
You obviously consider improving economic trade 'outside' of national political boundaries as a kind of sedition to your idea of what independence means. I suspect it is this concept you use to be the metric of how 'logical' the claim is that the strength of sovereignty very much depends on the strength of integrated international trade. Put another way, the kind of independence you think you want means a return to Depression era economic contraction and no means to reverse that trajectory in the name of 'patriotism'. No thanks.
Economic health for Canada in the real world is not a word game nor one subjected to a preferred socially accepted Just So narrative. It is serious business, pun intended. Being anti-American is not the same as being not-American (the founding principle for Canada), so I suggest crossing that line is what makes far too many Canadians oblivious to the economic self mutilation the country is currently calling 'patriotic'. The richer we are, the more independent we can be. We're collectively rewarding political and social policies that make us all poorer. This is why I say stupid is as stupid does. Supporting this popular trajectory with little understanding of why it matters I think is very stupid even if those committed to it like to think of themselves as 'good' Canadians.
When is a concession or a capitulation, not a concession or a capitulation?
Everyone in the Country agrees Supply Management is bad for Canadians. There are better ways to assist farmers, if farmers indeed need assistance.
And, yet, we insist on maintaining this Soviet style anachronism in order to placate a tiny cadre of self-interested, rent seeking economic ne’er-do-wells, in spite of the fact it impairs our own best interests and agitated our largest customer.
If we were really ruthless, and really grown up, we would unconditionally and unceremoniously dismantle this beast of a policy and keep our Country moving forward economically and sanely.
See my last column! JG
I try to read everything written by Jen Gerson that I can, so, perhaps, I may have missed one.
This essay is a manifesto, Jen. I have read it twice and I am going back for more.
Well done, friend.
At the very least we could point out to Trump that we might, just might consider talking about dairy when they stop subsidizing it to the tune of $15B.
That’s an interesting note Allen. Do you have a reference available to support the existence of that subsidy? I’m curious to learn more
U.S. dairy subsidies encompass the Dairy Margin Coverage program, federal price support purchases, and feed/crop assistance. These federal interventions cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually, encourage market overproduction, and shape international trade friction with neighboring countries.Key Federal Support ProgramsDairy Margin Coverage (DMC): A voluntary risk management program administered by the USDA that pays participating farmers when the difference between the all-milk price and average feed cost falls below a certain threshold.Price Support and Purchases: The government maintains indirect price floors by purchasing surplus dairy commodities (such as butter, cheese, and nonfat dry milk) from processors during market drops.Disaster and Feed Assistance: Ad-hoc relief packages and subsidized crop insurance for feed components (corn and soybeans) indirectly lower operational costs for dairy producers.Economic and Trade ImpactOverproduction: Critics argue that guaranteed safety nets incentivize farms to produce more milk than the free market demands, depressing baseline global prices.Trade Tensions: Subsidized U.S. volumes frequently trigger trade disputes, notably with Canada's supply-management system, which relies on strict import quotas and high tariffs to shield domestic producers from foreign price swings.
Because milk prices stabilized and feed costs fell compared to the historically severe market stress of 2023, direct safety-net outlays dropped significantly in 2024.1. Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC)Total Payout: $100.1 millionContext: This marked a steep 91.6% drop from the record-high $1.2 billion paid out to dairy farmers in 2023.How it Functioned: DMC acts as a subsidized risk-management insurance program. In early 2024, indemnity payments were triggered when income-over-feed margins fell to $8.48 per hundredweight (cwt), yielding roughly $761.56 per million pounds of enrolled milk for farms protected at the maximum $9.50 tier. For the rest of 2024, margins stayed healthy enough that few payouts were triggered.2. Organic Dairy Marketing Assistance Program (ODMAP)Total Payout: Over $31 millionHow it Functioned: Managed by the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), ODMAP 2024 provided unique, one-time financial cost-share assistance. It specifically helped certified organic dairy producers cover spikes in marketing and transportation costs.Indirect and Broader SupportBeyond these dairy-specific programs, U.S. dairy operations also benefited from generalized agricultural safety nets:Total Direct Farm Payments: Across all sectors, the U.S. government distributed $10.4 billion in direct agricultural subsidies in 2024.Indirect Subsidies: Dairy margins were heavily supported by heavily subsidized federal crop insurance for corn and soybeans, which artificially depressed feed expenditures—the primary cost of milk production.
I'd rather have subsidies than cartels. Cartels hit the poor the hardest. Subsidies hit taxpayers the hardest, who in Canada tend to be the wealthier.
And already the Premier of Quebec was chirping about it this morning at the Premiers' Conference in PEI!
"Ms. Fréchette added that she wants Quebec’s interests to be 'fully taken into account' during the negotiations, especially regarding supply management of the dairy industry and respect for the province’s unique culture."
Great point, Ron.
So, here is my answer: Quebec can continue to respond performatively, and demand policies and programs that are at odds with Canada’s best interests.
The Prime Minister of Canada can respond by expending some political capital and standing his ground.
Without constitutional change, Canada as it exists is impotent and unproductive; the Prime Minister cannot simply be like Oprah and say repeatedly, “here is a car for you, and a car for you, and a car for you.”
The marginal benefit of continued appeasement is zero.
It's interesting that you chose to use the word "performatively" because ... in the back of my mind (for a while now) ... I've been thinking that there is probably a fair amount of THEATRE in all the public political support pronouncements from both the federal government and Quebec.
The Feds keep saying that it is an untouchable sacred cow ... an absolutely un-fucking-non-negotiable carved-in-stone fact of Canadian life even moving forward. So when we cave-in on it (as we should eventually and tearfully do), President Trump will be delighted and content for at least a few days ... during which he might pass.
Here's a fun AI LLM exercise. Ask it how Canada would be faring economically in 2026 if Quebec left in 1995
Ottawa would sooner throw the auto industry AND the oil industry under the bus than shut down the dairy cartel like the taxi cartels were blown up when Uber came around.
Official Ottawa honest to God believes without dairy farmers on board there is no Canada. It's existential. What is the point of Quebec staying in Canada if there isn't a captive market to take advantage of?
Christine Frechette said today that supply management is non-negotiable. French Quebec media will not accept any concessions asked of dairy farmers. Carney will have to find a way to negotiate with the USA on this issue. He will lose popularity in Quebec. Many of the seats in the dairy farming areas are held by the CPC & Bloc Québécois.
I accept all of your facts, Demetre.
My point with Ron, is that either Canada works in its current form, or it doesn’t.
We have choices we can make as a Country; we have choices we can face as separate countries. I would prefer we remain as a Country, but if we decide Canada just isn’t working, we can set out on our own, as well.
"...concessions asked of dairy farmers."
That reminded me that we the dairy cartel a billion dollars to make up for expanding imports from the US in CUSMA, and then gave the dairy industry the veto over those imports. Do we get our billion dollars back?
USTR Jamieson Greer said on CNBC yesterday that U.S. dairy producers cannot sell milk to retailers. They can only sell to Co OP's. Co-ops have no incentive to sell US milk in Canada, so it was useless to expand US market access.
The dairy cartel is very powerful in Quebec. Carney has the political capital to make concessions to the USA. I suspect he will wait till after the Quebec election.
Carney will also have to change the law they passed last year that bars any trade negotiations on dairy.
We should only say ok to any of it if the US stops subsidizing their dairy which last year was $15 B
True, but how will Canada make a deal that satisfies Quebec & the USA?
Would Canadians agree to pay higher milk prices to subsidize existing dairy farmers to allow increased imports of U.S. dairy?
Will Canadians agree to a temporary surcharge on Canadian milk to compensate Canadian dairy producers if Carney grants more access to American dairy products?
So protection money?
Let it be wound down, pay the young farmers book value for the quota they were swindled into buying, and let Quebec politics digest it. If Quebec leaves because of milk alone, okay so be it.
Or what?
Quebec or the federal government will probably have to grant increased access to the dairy market to satisfy the Americans. There will be compensation for farmers.
But Quebec has already said not going to happen
They said the same thing in 2018.
And nothing will change
When Trump announced these latest tariffs I thought to myself: “They don’t want allies, nor friends nor good neighbours. They want vassals. I’m glad you used that term. That is not a word I thought we would use to describe diplomatic policy in the 21st century, but here we are. Trump wants vassals because it makes him feel powerful: vassals show up with tribute. Trump demands tribute; it is the price of entry. His administration is filled with people who are filled with adolescent views of what constitutes power and vassal states fit the bill.
We are signing economic and security deals with China and Qatar. How do you think they will treat us? Your grandkids will be slaves.
It’s hard to project power across an ocean
Military power, yes. But their interference operations are successful.
"Middle powers" is the naïve label Carney and others have used to define what historians have termed vassal states. I've come to an admittedly simplistic and opinionated assessment arrived at through aggregating the opinions and analyses of Gerson/Gurney on general Canadian issues and other Substack writers with credibility in areas like Sino-Russian relationships, CCP economic and political long games in Canada and so on.
China and the US are staking their claims through economically and politically enforced alliances with vassal states. Canada and the EU are expected to fall in line with the USA as is every other country in the Americas. Vassal states like Iran and its religious counterparts and the Soviets are expected to fall in line with the CCP.
The individual vassal states are figuring out the best ways to control the ways and means by which citizens can express disagreement through defining misinformation and disinformation as crimes - see bill C22 that has taken its direction from similar legislation in the UK, Ireland and the EU. Prior to that climate change, DEI and covid were used as control levers to manage public sentiment. And others in the comments have mentioned the secret MOU's with the CCP's Ministry of Public Security and whatever the Qatari equivalent is. The US is by no means lily white when it comes to human abuses. However, and speaking only for myself, I'd rather deal with the neighbours next door rather than countries with a centuries long history of human rights abuses and no constitutional protection. Columns and comment sections... do you really think these views would be tolerated under a Canadian government strongly influenced by the CCP and its vassal states? That to me is the bigger issue here.
“I bet a prime minister that doesn’t have the balls to accept the consequences of keeping a bridge closed for a while is not generating the credibility required to re-order the Western alliance.”
Simply brilliant.
There is no need to damage either bridge in Windsor. Just tear up a section of the road to and from the Ambassador bridge on the Canadian side. Declare it 'emergency infrastructure repair.' There is a nice new bridge not far away. Or the Blue Water bridge crossing if you don't mind the rerouting.
That would have required gorm.
100%. As Trump gets pummelled in Iran, he's going to go out of his way to crush anything he sees as weak, to distract and rescue his manhood. And we're the easiest, most obvious, punching bag. But as we've seen repeatedly, Trump punches everyone in the face no matter what they do. Resisting, we can at least save our self-respect and help galvanize some opposition and started to happen after Davos. (The EU has just slapped Google with a one billion dollar fine. That's the spirit.)
You mean Mark Carney's Hail Mary "pull out all the stops to retain power at all costs" election campaign might have been full of shit? The 15 minute Davos Speech that gave him a 15-point polling lead might have just been hot air? The "just trust us after we wrecked the country for 10 years" Liberal government might not have any idea how to deal with a US administration that can't be dealt with? Call me completely shocked.
Next thing we will be figuring out that the mainstream media are deliberately running cover for those in power, or that tangible bribes changed hands to secure the Liberal majority.
It remains all about 'communicationing'. But on a larger stage, I guess... and doesn't that makes it so much better and earnest and patriotic?
I don't know about you, KRM, but I'm breathless at the speed and scope of all the building this gov't demonstrates. Just spitballin' here, but I suspect there might be a sleight misunderstanding - probably my own - that 'communicationing' and 'building' are not synonyms no matter how much virtue and hope and inspired explanatory bafflegab one inserts into these terms. I know that claim will come as surprising news to so many Liberal and optimistic patriots who can't wrap their heads around it but the reality of this fact has a way of inserting its unwanted nose into the multicultural collapsing tent called Canada. But with the right socks - umm... I mean business attire - the Prime Minister it seems is very confident that with even more Chinese approved 'communicationing' we will keep these folks in power into the foreseeable future... as long as hatred for the Americans stoked on the lie we are 'responding' to this recent bullying by US Administration (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)can be rinsed and repeatedly sold to a receptive audience and then used as the excuse for economically and socially dismantling a perfectly good country. The virtue, it overflows.
Oh yes, the world finally got to see the Liberal expertise at communications and talent at spinning rhetoric* and then are also getting to see the complete lack of substance and follow-through that customarily accompanies such rhetoric. It's like seeing 2015-2020 unfold all over again only at supersonic speed and now on the world stage!
But back home, we never learn our lesson. Every proclamation is still met with fanfare and hope, and taken Very Seriously Indeed.
(Speech totally definitely written by Mark all by himself, in one draft, on a napkin, at 3am, imagine how great it would have been if he had actually tried!)
The ironic thing is that everything that Daniel Smith, Scott Moe, and Pierre Polievre have said about the issue has been corrected from the start.
What exactly has PP and Smith said that was correct from the start? Has Trump made special concessions to them?
Retain power at all costs election campaign? For me, a discarded water heater could have run for the CPC and the result would be the same; I'm certain of it. Again, that 25 point lead that just weirdly disappeared once the water heater realized it had blown it so it might as well double down.
Who cares about tens of billions a year in corruption and waste when you can worry about the opposition leader's "tone" and ability to "meet the moment".
But I'm not even talking about Poilievre, I'm saying the guy in charge is absolutely full of shit and that has been obvious from day one.
If it had been obvious from the start I think most Canadians would have been clued in by now. For me, you could run a water heater against the CPC right now and the Liberals would win.
The circumstances of the election - months-long prorogation and transparently cynical parachuting of a literal foreign resident as Prime Minister (!) - would have tipped some off that they were in for a snow-job.
But Canadians are dumb as bricks, easily manipulated, and everyone over 60 is getting pro-Liberal propaganda beamed directly into their brains though the legacy media they consume, and to which most have zero resistance.
Could be.
You know what the most ruthless action would be vis a vis the bridge? $0 tolls for 15 years.
Here’s half of nothing fuckers, oh and your corrupt partner with the other bridge? Enjoy not having anybody paying for it because of the free bridge.
Great idea - but we can't do that either because the agreement we signed doesn't allow us to.
Fuck the agreement. $1 CAD toll, these are the Loonie Years.
Exactly — another thing we caved on. The tolls on the new bridge are going to match the old one now (it was going to undercut). Thus protecting most of the Maroun family’s monopoly rents.
Soooo .... if DJT and the US can abrogate signed agreements whenever it suits them ........
We can get the people who did the phoenix payroll system to do the tolls?
And to design the program to send the US their share of proceeds.
Good one! Also,notice how no one is talking about the Epstein Files? Iran! Bridge! Tariffs! More money for Bombs! Tariffs!
Or wait about 6 weeks to Let traffic get accustomed to using new Bridge. Then shut out border crossings down on Canadian side of the Ambassador Bridge until we get a deal same as the deal on the new bridge.
this is genius!
That was savage. Well done Jen! I've been getting tired of the Carney fluffing on the podcast.
Jen, all I can say is, for fuck’s sake, bang on. For years, Matt has hammered us about our inability to do big stuff and now you tell us we’re friendly cowards. Two prophets in a basket.
"We used to be notoriously ruthless."
I bet this will be about WW1.
*clicks link* Yup, right on cue.
If you can't find an example of Canadians being ruthless that's less than 100 years old, then I'm not sure it's worth mentioning.
I get the anger in this piece, I feel it too, but I'm not sure there is much to be done. To borrow a more recent illustration– living beside America is like sleeping next to an elephant. You feel every groan and grunt. So, if the Americans really decide to crush us, they will. (elbows first, of course) The flags and signs are window dressing that makes Canadians feel better about their impending crushing. But what's the alternative? Freak out and panic? At this point Carney is the guide on a whitewater raft. The rest of us can choose whether we paddle or scream, but rest assured we are going down river.
If my info is correct most of the WWI heroism was from the newfies who were their own colony at the time. Certainly not from the French Quebeckers who were rioting against participation
The Newfies certainly did their bit in WWI: mauled badly enough at Gallipoli that they were pulled out and reformed, getting wiped out on the Somme, rebuilt and then getting sent to Flanders as a reward.
And the Canadians held up their end: Under Lord Byng and Sir Arthur Currie they developed the "Bite and Hold" tactic that ultimately defeated the Germans. After Vimy Ridge, the Canadian Corps became the most effective Allied shock troops available and they paid for that honour with heavy casualties.
Thank you I stand corrected!
Your info is not correct.
Read Tim Cook's two volumes on the First World War for more.
Thank you I will certainly do that!
That's OUR Jen!
Giving perfect voice to what so many of us are feeling ... ❤️🌹
I don't agree with the decision to capitulate on the bridge contract, but I can see there might be an economic rationale for it. What I find really objectionable is lying to the Canadian people about it. It's offensive and dumb since we were bound to find out the terms of the contract.
Yeah, slight correction for Jen.
The PM did NOT "appear to have lied".
He LIED.
He blatantly lied, and it was NOT accidental.
Anyone with a basic grasp of GAAP knows that debt servicing does NOT count as an "operating cost" - so Carney's detailed explanation on national TV was PURPOSEFULLY in direct opposition to what the actual deal actually says (unless you somehow believe Carney does not understand how accounting works....)
As per always, the Liberal strategy is to rely on the fact that the Canadian public is clueless as to how most of stuff actually works - so they try to tell the most soothing lies, and pin all the blame for bad outcomes on some external Boogeyman de jeur.
Trump has been a gift to them in this regard, as he puts out Boogeyman energy in much the same way Carney exudes Technocrat Daddy energy. It's a heady combination if one wishes to win a popularity contest, but it does not hep move us forward as a nation.
I dont know whether he lied, or if he simply didn't know what was in the deal. Hence the verbal hedge.
I get that you are more exposed than the rest of us. But he sounded like he knew what was in the deal.
Carney used the nebulous term "net revenue", which seems intended to mislead.
He didn't know what the deal was? For me, that is actually far worse than a lie because it speaks to his competence and judgement. Clearly both were questionable at best in this case.
I think most people can spot a lie, and that is the problem. Most people expect politicians to lie. It won't stick because of this. The bigger issue would be why did he lie and isn't a lie a verbal hedge a lie in sheep's clothing?
His new line of explanation (yesterday) is that he was inadvertently talking about the wrong deal.
He now wants us to believe that although he had answered the reporter's question with details from the agreement between Canada and Michigan (in which there had been NO sharing of the tolls until after Canada had paid down the debt) rather than answer the actual question, which was specifically about his deal with Trump.
He seems to truly believe Canadians are idiots who will swallow any lame excuse he offers - and I don't see a lot of reasons to disagree with him.
For me, the news should be going after him on why Canadians should believe him?
I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one.
You can pay the Danegeld but you won’t get rid of the Dane…
Thank you for calling this what it is: a lie. I see some news organizations are avoiding the use of the term, choosing instead to use synonyms for the word.
I think what bothers me most is that our capitulatory political class took the faint memory of the ruthless streak we still have, the glimpse we saw when all the 51st state talk kicked off, and not only wasted it, but trivialized it.
I think that instinct is real. I think a better leader could have used it to our advantage. Enough of us probably would've accepted at least some sacrifice, certainly more than Americans, if we'd been given a genuine promise that we were working toward a stronger, more independent Canada. Instead, all of that energy was redirected into the kind of symbolic nonsense you described.
I think it's because Carney sees this more as an opportunity for himself than an opportunity for the country. Another chance to enhance his reputation as a crisis manager, as 2008 and Brexit did before. And the people most comfortable with that approach are, like him, already established and already comfortable. They don't really want the world to change. They just want to preserve their place in it.
That's why so much effort has gone into fending off today's pressures instead of fundamentally changing anything. But I don't just want resilience. I want our "fuck you" energy directed toward independence. I want us to radically and aggressively embrace the fact that we're entering a new world and build a country that no longer needs this kind of dependence.
I just don't see people as invested in the old order as Carney and much of his voter base being either willing, or perhaps even able, to lead that transformation.
Very eloquent and reasonable. Thank you.
This thread is chock-full full of carefully-crafted insight ...
Jen, how much of this is driven by the business community? My experience (from conference panels, actions taken, etc.) is top business leaders are much more likely to think resistance is futile and Fortress North America is the GDP-maximizing path and we should not try to fight it.
Which, like, is probably true if you think of corporations and gdp as bloodless economic-value-maximizers?
Carney listens a LOT to big business. I think that’s where this is coming from. This isn’t defeatist Liberals, this is globalist business leaders saying borders don’t matter, and fighting back against America makes line go down, and we want line to go up.
Would the Conservatives be any different in defying the business community?
I think that's exactly right. We havr a business community that is risk averse, and clinging to the fantasy that politics doesn't matter and that a stabilizing deal is possible. JG
Geoff, you get it. You make a very good point.
I would be curious to know how many of the largest Canadian employers, say 5,000+ employees in Canada, outside of government and banks, are actually “Canadian”? And Canadian banks are more global than Canadian.
Those employers: the auto giants, tech firms, financial service behemoths, and resources businesses think globally. Canadian politics don’t factor much into their business strategy. If US tariffs hit and STICK, a big if, they will relocate operations/production to their facilities somewhere else, often the States, to avoid the tariffs. Some already have announced this. That’s kind of the point of Trump’s tariffs. It’s shitty and I hate it, but it’s the current world we live in.
I might be wrong about who the largest private sector employers are. It’s possible most are proudly Canadian-led and Canadian-based, but the sense I had from decades at a big strategy consultant in New York is that isn’t the case.
Exactly!! (I am former MBB, so I saw the same things you did.)
As I said above in reply to Tildeb, there is a view that many have that economic prosperity is more important than Canadian sovereignty, and so we should solve for GDP growth *above* being an independent country that charts our own course independently of Trump’s America.
This is what I’m accusing (some) in the business world of doing, and saying that this is a bad thing to do. And that some business leaders are thus being, to some extent, fifth-columnists. Which isn’t uncommon — I wasn’t joking about Austrian business doing this in the 1930s. Germany was the much bigger market!
I care more about not being American more than I care about economic growth. Others (like our Alberta separatist crowd here who think Canada sucks and want to leave and join Trump’s America anyway) are free to disagree, but I am also free to say that people who think this are bad Canadians.
Imagine, business is concerned about the bottom line. So retro. Truly, Public Enemy Number One.
Being concerned about the bottom line over national sovereignty?
Business has been a fifth column at times in history, but not all the time, and usually not when it mattered.
Austrian business, from what I understand, was quite in favour of the Anschluss in the 1930s. Think of the access to that much larger same-language market!
The health of the bottom line IS Canadian sovereignty. Without the former, ya ain't got the latter.
You aren’t making logical sense. You can’t sacrifice Canadian sovereignty to have stronger business *in order to protect Canadian sovereignty*, because you’ve already sacrificed it.
The only way this makes sense is if economic prosperity is more important than Canadian sovereignty, and so you’re actually solving for GDP growth *above* being an independent country that charts our own course independently of Trump’s America.
This is what I’m accusing the business world of doing, and saying that this is a bad thing to do. And that some business leaders are being, to some extent, fifth-columnists. Which isn’t uncommon, I wasn’t joking about Austria in the 1930s.
I care more about not being American more than I care about economic growth. You are free to disagree, but I am also free to say that people who think this are bad Canadians.
I suspect the issue here is your understanding of 'sovereignty' as it relates to economics supporting political oversight (governance). My claim is that without a strong economic base upon which gov't can govern with financial resources to have effect, there is no means to govern other than through brutal totalitarianism. And we have lots of world history to know exactly how that system only impoverishes everyone. None of us live in a real world economic bubble 'independent' of international trade because the world's products depend on it! In the same way a single person living in the wilderness must do absolutely everything every day just to survive each one, a country that tries to do the same cannot help but be equally inefficient. Communities that allot expertise to 'take over' certain needs directly reduces these inefficiencies beyond simple survival. And we see such organized living provide the means to grow and prosper beyond simple survival. We also see how further the integration with other communities trading expertise and products results in a 'higher' standard of living for the average (a growing economic tide raises all boats, so to speak).
The same is true on an international scale.
With 3.6 billion dollars of trade daily between the US and Canada, it takes a special kind of framing 'sovereignty' to think this is a net cost to Canadian 'independence' rather than the heartbeat of fostering it. Replacing this volume of trade with the closest, richest, and most efficient economy in the name of promoting 'sovereignty' is a socialist pipe dream that must ignore both geography and real world market economics. This special trade relationship is WHY Canada once was one of the richest nations in the world with a golden future.
No longer.
We're so busy squandering this inheritance and intentionally stopping wealth creation in the name of all kinds of 'progressive' goals that we are dismantling rather than building our economy (which is why Alberta, a province very close to how this intentional interference affects wealth creation compared to other Provinces, has made separation a very real thing).
You obviously consider improving economic trade 'outside' of national political boundaries as a kind of sedition to your idea of what independence means. I suspect it is this concept you use to be the metric of how 'logical' the claim is that the strength of sovereignty very much depends on the strength of integrated international trade. Put another way, the kind of independence you think you want means a return to Depression era economic contraction and no means to reverse that trajectory in the name of 'patriotism'. No thanks.
Economic health for Canada in the real world is not a word game nor one subjected to a preferred socially accepted Just So narrative. It is serious business, pun intended. Being anti-American is not the same as being not-American (the founding principle for Canada), so I suggest crossing that line is what makes far too many Canadians oblivious to the economic self mutilation the country is currently calling 'patriotic'. The richer we are, the more independent we can be. We're collectively rewarding political and social policies that make us all poorer. This is why I say stupid is as stupid does. Supporting this popular trajectory with little understanding of why it matters I think is very stupid even if those committed to it like to think of themselves as 'good' Canadians.