I'm 29 minutes in and I am laughing my fucking ass off. Your hitting the problems and "drama" in the right places. Pointing out how stupid our protective confederation is, is absolutely hilarious. Canada is a joke and we had better start acting like a country and treating it's citizen's properly or fuck it. Quebec wants it's own constitution and Alberta could turn into a state. All good from a oilfield Albertan. Better than being treated like a second class citizen from this Ottawa corrupt bubble.
Time to dismantle Ottawa and return major powers and funds to the provinces? Feels like that's the way to deal instead of fixing Ottawa. It's unfixable.
Quote ".....a bit of bad news: Mélanie Joly, our top diplomat, became talk-of-the-event for a bad reason after being gutted like a fish on stage by a man who ... wanted a specific answer to a specific question."
That is actually very good news, 'cuz she deserves to be gutted, as well as Troodas the unprime subminiser and the rest of this atrociously substandard government.
Jen's comment about Trump's election being a response to a spiritual malaise. The particular malaise is the perceived decline of America, the loss of jobs, the loss of respect and, particularly, self-respect. Strangely enough, it seems to me that that sense of malaise also exists in Russia, to an even greater extent than in the US.
In any event, Trump's election reflects a lot of support of so many people who feel disrespected and they believe that Trump will allow them to regain self-respect.
As Jen also said, Canadian politicians do not understand this issue in the US.
I think the sense of malaise exists in Canadians. The loss of respect for our country written bold by our increasingly irresponsible and largely irrelevant federal MPs.
Trudeau’s call for team Canada immediately diminished by Guilbeault striking out against Alberta would have made me laugh except it was only comic in that he was so out of touch with the new reality of Trump being once again the president of the US.
Carole, I agree that the malaise exists in Canada. I can speak to it personally as I simply have no interest in being a Canadian after the last nine years of trash. As a result, I self-identify [new phrases courtesy of the Face Painter and his ilk] as an Albertan and a Canadian only by accident of birth.
I am the same. Albertan first. I honestly don't think that the Federation of Canada will survive. What the Trudeau years have taught us is that Alberta will never know when another Trudeau(esc) person will once again take over Ottawa and Alberta becomes the wedge issue again.
Yes, we only have 4 million people, but we have people who believe the 'strong and free' line.
Nailed it. The old order have no clue what the average people are saying or doing. Trump is the vessel of change that everyday citizens that are dealing with the daily problems that the elite have caused. Funny thing, it's happening everywhere
The sad thing is, he may represent that, but he may do it in a crazy enough way that the Americans get another four years of extreme leftism after Trump before someone with real change and real ideas that aren’t just as destructive as they are fresh comes on the scene. (Trump gets some things right, but not everything. And tariffs will likely anger a good portion of his base when they experience higher prices at the stores they frequent)
If only the folks we elected cared as much about Canada as you two do, or at the very least they put good governance ahead of ideologies that are not relevant to every day life for everyday people.
Yup. The biggest problem with Trudeau is that he doesn't actually like Canada, apart from what it can do for him and his friends. He can't be gone soon enough, in my opinion.
I agree. It's definitely a predicament. All I know is that we can't continue on the same path forward. The Neo'cons have disrupted peace, power, social order all based on power struggles. The citizen's have to take the power away from the
Now, having said that, any vessel (whether nautical or more prosaic) can be damaged or entirely sound but a vessel used in it's designed way will do so good/damages - take your pick!
The press loved to call Trump a Russian agent, but if you consider actions, it is far more likely that Trudeau and his feckless cabinet ministers are the true Manchurian candidates.
A real bad actor would pick a capable Manchurian candidate, not the clownshow that inhabits the Liberal Caucus. In this case, hostile foreign governments need only rely on incompetence in Canada's Federal Government, with no need for direct influence.
Also on the "optimism" front, is it just me or has Poilievre been acting as more of a leader and less of a troll lately? Obviously there's still some trolling, especially in parliament, but various speeches and social media posts have come across as a lot more prime-ministerial.
I believe that the support the conservatives are getting from the citizen's has emboldened Pierre to speak truth. He is transitioning from old politics to new politics. I believe that once he has the win the citizen's will give him the courage to speak freely
Well ..... I say ..... Justin Trudeau and Lieberals, Jagmeet Singh and NDP do deserve merciless trolling every minute. They worked very hard to earn it.
Trump is going to “ murder” the Canadian economy! We’ve been living through a time when Trudeau has already burned the economic house down. Seems like the carbon tax which certain people like is already a self imposed tariff. Own goal
Yup. We can't blame Trump for our demise. We brought this upon ourselves by voting in idiots. Also, we need to talk more about Singh's role in all of this. Trudeau would be gone by now if Singh had any respect for voters and any political sense beyond "The NDP is too poor to head into another election, and anyway, we'd like to qualify for pensions without having to be reelected."
I think it's important to define ahead of time what we think success for the PM and Canada looks like. Then we can have a look at the result and judge.
Re: “the rules-based international order rests on American gunboats”
I am sorry to say that rules and laws are written on water unless they are accompanied by the willingness, and the means, to enforce them.
And that is true both domestically and internationally.
Because the reality is that “the law” is always (ultimately) based upon force and compulsion; and without that prospect, it is just virtue signaling.
And (I am sorry to say) that is something that we have come to expect, in too many settings, in Canada, where every grievance group can interfere with the property and civil rights of ordinary citizens, who have come to expect that the police will turn a blind eye.
Accordingly, without the US navy or similar projection of power, commerce through the Red Sea can be interrupted by pirates or by Houthis. Just like aboriginals seem to have a free hand to interfere with major rail lines in Ontario. For weeks. With impunity.
And public parks, and parts of cities, can become inaccessible to the public.
Because the sad fact is that, if you want order, then you have to provide both penalties, and remedies to prevent and discourage disorder.
It would be great if he's just playing games and posturing. On the other hand, instead of winging it, Project 2025 lays out a pretty clear plan to "overhaul" the US internally; so there's no reason to think he wouldn't "settle scores" outside the US. We are puppets on his string.
"Get smart fast".....That in itself is a very steep hill to climb, and we're not dealing with a rational president.
Outside of ignorance, misinformation, and cult stupidity, I'm not likely to understand how they elected him and threw away 248 years of history.
I think the reality is the US is going to tell us what we're going to do, and we're going to go "mutter, mutter, mutter" and cave. We are economically annexed; Austria in 1938. We're all Von Trapp's with no mountain pass to climb over to freedom. Having no leaders at any level with the capacity to deal with this won't make things better. We're facing a national emergency because of a megalomaniac. There is no plan, because; like COVID, it's a moving target based on Trump's emotional state day to day. But we know he hates Trudeau. That's enough reason to have an election.
Canada does not have a functioning military. Period. It hasn't been a priority for decades. We're a punchline. The government doesn't appear to have a plan to change anything.
Yes, pull off the bloody bandaid and have an election. Trudeau is "lame-duck" on steroids.
Coming to terms with our new reality isn't going to be fun. We've fallen down a well of our own digging. We have no say on whether we get out.
Ironically this was the less depressing of my two "Friday afternoon center-right Canadian political podcasts". The Hub's theory is that the purpose of the tariffs is to generate revenue without directly raising taxes. And if the tariffs are the end goal, there's likely nothing we can offer to get them removed. I'm not sure why Trump would feel the need to mention border issues as a fake pretext, but the fact the Chinese number was only 10% rather than the unrealistic 60% makes me worried they could be on to something. I hope not.
Granted we can't know Trump's end goal is (and I agree it may shift by the day), but I do think Smith and Ford have had somewhat better responses than the federal government. The Liberals falling back to their typical "free trade helps everyone", "look at the inputs" and "what about Mexico" are absolutely the wrong arguments to be making. At least Smith and Ford seem to be acknowledging Trump's listed concerns and are trying to provide some solutions (although Ford's advertising campaign is a waste of money).
For Western Canada, the US is more important than Ottawa economically and perhaps even culturally. Trump and his people know that. They could pick off pieces of this country one by one at will.
The psychological concept of 'Vladimir's Choice' comes to mind when thinking about Trump's tariffs. It purports that we little lizard-brain humans (and/or shit-throwing monkeys, as Jen says) sometimes favor resource allocation to the in-group *relative* to the outgroup, rather than in absolute terms. In other words, given the choice between taking 10 dollars and having someone in the 'out-group' get 9, OR getting 9 dollars and having the out-grouper get 7, we tend towards the latter, since there's more relative advantage for us. If standard of living drops by 20% in the US as a result of tariffs, but by 40% in Canada, that's 'Making America Greater' by comparison, even if it's objectively damaging. I don't think the decisions made by the swarm of angry bees in Trump's head can be boiled down to any one simple rationale, but if that *does* have something to do with it, then claiming that the tariffs will be damaging to the US as well as Canada is not going to help, unless we can demonstrate that the tariffs will be MORE damaging to the US than they will be to us.
I'm 29 minutes in and I am laughing my fucking ass off. Your hitting the problems and "drama" in the right places. Pointing out how stupid our protective confederation is, is absolutely hilarious. Canada is a joke and we had better start acting like a country and treating it's citizen's properly or fuck it. Quebec wants it's own constitution and Alberta could turn into a state. All good from a oilfield Albertan. Better than being treated like a second class citizen from this Ottawa corrupt bubble.
Reluctantly I came to the same conclusion re. Canada. Starting to listen now.
Time to dismantle Ottawa and return major powers and funds to the provinces? Feels like that's the way to deal instead of fixing Ottawa. It's unfixable.
I'm really starting to think the same way
Might as well just break up and have a dozen countries if we are going that route.
Just like Europe, Asia and Africa?
Quote ".....a bit of bad news: Mélanie Joly, our top diplomat, became talk-of-the-event for a bad reason after being gutted like a fish on stage by a man who ... wanted a specific answer to a specific question."
That is actually very good news, 'cuz she deserves to be gutted, as well as Troodas the unprime subminiser and the rest of this atrociously substandard government.
They are such a embarrassment.
Jen's comment about Trump's election being a response to a spiritual malaise. The particular malaise is the perceived decline of America, the loss of jobs, the loss of respect and, particularly, self-respect. Strangely enough, it seems to me that that sense of malaise also exists in Russia, to an even greater extent than in the US.
In any event, Trump's election reflects a lot of support of so many people who feel disrespected and they believe that Trump will allow them to regain self-respect.
As Jen also said, Canadian politicians do not understand this issue in the US.
I think the sense of malaise exists in Canadians. The loss of respect for our country written bold by our increasingly irresponsible and largely irrelevant federal MPs.
Trudeau’s call for team Canada immediately diminished by Guilbeault striking out against Alberta would have made me laugh except it was only comic in that he was so out of touch with the new reality of Trump being once again the president of the US.
Carole, I agree that the malaise exists in Canada. I can speak to it personally as I simply have no interest in being a Canadian after the last nine years of trash. As a result, I self-identify [new phrases courtesy of the Face Painter and his ilk] as an Albertan and a Canadian only by accident of birth.
I am the same. Albertan first. I honestly don't think that the Federation of Canada will survive. What the Trudeau years have taught us is that Alberta will never know when another Trudeau(esc) person will once again take over Ottawa and Alberta becomes the wedge issue again.
Yes, we only have 4 million people, but we have people who believe the 'strong and free' line.
5 million now. Half a million have moved to Alberta in just the last 3 years alone.
I do think that the federation will survive, but out of inertia and habitual risk and confrontation aversion more than anything.
Separatism is almost always led from the top and our elites are 2nd rate featherbedding clowns at best
Nailed it. The old order have no clue what the average people are saying or doing. Trump is the vessel of change that everyday citizens that are dealing with the daily problems that the elite have caused. Funny thing, it's happening everywhere
The sad thing is, he may represent that, but he may do it in a crazy enough way that the Americans get another four years of extreme leftism after Trump before someone with real change and real ideas that aren’t just as destructive as they are fresh comes on the scene. (Trump gets some things right, but not everything. And tariffs will likely anger a good portion of his base when they experience higher prices at the stores they frequent)
Great podcast.
If only the folks we elected cared as much about Canada as you two do, or at the very least they put good governance ahead of ideologies that are not relevant to every day life for everyday people.
Yup. The biggest problem with Trudeau is that he doesn't actually like Canada, apart from what it can do for him and his friends. He can't be gone soon enough, in my opinion.
I'm calling it now. Trudeau will be living in NYC within a couple of years.
I've always thought he'd moved to LA and get bit parts in the movie industry.
I agree. It's definitely a predicament. All I know is that we can't continue on the same path forward. The Neo'cons have disrupted peace, power, social order all based on power struggles. The citizen's have to take the power away from the
Yes, he is the "vessel" of the change.
Now, having said that, any vessel (whether nautical or more prosaic) can be damaged or entirely sound but a vessel used in it's designed way will do so good/damages - take your pick!
The press loved to call Trump a Russian agent, but if you consider actions, it is far more likely that Trudeau and his feckless cabinet ministers are the true Manchurian candidates.
Manchurian candidates for whom?
China?
My real point is that this government continually is acting like the world hasn’t changed and is putting Canada in the position of harm.
A real bad actor would pick a capable Manchurian candidate, not the clownshow that inhabits the Liberal Caucus. In this case, hostile foreign governments need only rely on incompetence in Canada's Federal Government, with no need for direct influence.
I think you're wrong here. A feckless incompetent that's surprisingly good at being re-elected is an excellent Manchurian candidate.
Also on the "optimism" front, is it just me or has Poilievre been acting as more of a leader and less of a troll lately? Obviously there's still some trolling, especially in parliament, but various speeches and social media posts have come across as a lot more prime-ministerial.
I believe that the support the conservatives are getting from the citizen's has emboldened Pierre to speak truth. He is transitioning from old politics to new politics. I believe that once he has the win the citizen's will give him the courage to speak freely
Well ..... I say ..... Justin Trudeau and Lieberals, Jagmeet Singh and NDP do deserve merciless trolling every minute. They worked very hard to earn it.
They may. The people who have to listen and watch it do not.
Let's hope he can make the pivot to governing and their team can hit the ground running. There's a lot to do.
Trump is going to “ murder” the Canadian economy! We’ve been living through a time when Trudeau has already burned the economic house down. Seems like the carbon tax which certain people like is already a self imposed tariff. Own goal
Yup. We can't blame Trump for our demise. We brought this upon ourselves by voting in idiots. Also, we need to talk more about Singh's role in all of this. Trudeau would be gone by now if Singh had any respect for voters and any political sense beyond "The NDP is too poor to head into another election, and anyway, we'd like to qualify for pensions without having to be reelected."
The personification of the Laurentian Elites just scurried off to Mara Lago to ‘kiss the ring’.
Is that the Team Canada strategy? Looks more like panic.
Metaphoric masterpiece lol.
I honestly hope certain people mentioned actually watch this. Matt, the reference to Back to the Future was gold lol.
I also agree with Jen’s comments regarding the CBC. Great Podcast guys.
I think it's important to define ahead of time what we think success for the PM and Canada looks like. Then we can have a look at the result and judge.
Re: “the rules-based international order rests on American gunboats”
I am sorry to say that rules and laws are written on water unless they are accompanied by the willingness, and the means, to enforce them.
And that is true both domestically and internationally.
Because the reality is that “the law” is always (ultimately) based upon force and compulsion; and without that prospect, it is just virtue signaling.
And (I am sorry to say) that is something that we have come to expect, in too many settings, in Canada, where every grievance group can interfere with the property and civil rights of ordinary citizens, who have come to expect that the police will turn a blind eye.
Accordingly, without the US navy or similar projection of power, commerce through the Red Sea can be interrupted by pirates or by Houthis. Just like aboriginals seem to have a free hand to interfere with major rail lines in Ontario. For weeks. With impunity.
And public parks, and parts of cities, can become inaccessible to the public.
Because the sad fact is that, if you want order, then you have to provide both penalties, and remedies to prevent and discourage disorder.
It would be great if he's just playing games and posturing. On the other hand, instead of winging it, Project 2025 lays out a pretty clear plan to "overhaul" the US internally; so there's no reason to think he wouldn't "settle scores" outside the US. We are puppets on his string.
"Get smart fast".....That in itself is a very steep hill to climb, and we're not dealing with a rational president.
Outside of ignorance, misinformation, and cult stupidity, I'm not likely to understand how they elected him and threw away 248 years of history.
I think the reality is the US is going to tell us what we're going to do, and we're going to go "mutter, mutter, mutter" and cave. We are economically annexed; Austria in 1938. We're all Von Trapp's with no mountain pass to climb over to freedom. Having no leaders at any level with the capacity to deal with this won't make things better. We're facing a national emergency because of a megalomaniac. There is no plan, because; like COVID, it's a moving target based on Trump's emotional state day to day. But we know he hates Trudeau. That's enough reason to have an election.
Canada does not have a functioning military. Period. It hasn't been a priority for decades. We're a punchline. The government doesn't appear to have a plan to change anything.
Yes, pull off the bloody bandaid and have an election. Trudeau is "lame-duck" on steroids.
Coming to terms with our new reality isn't going to be fun. We've fallen down a well of our own digging. We have no say on whether we get out.
Omg so many laugh out loud moments in the first half - enjoying it immensely.
Ironically this was the less depressing of my two "Friday afternoon center-right Canadian political podcasts". The Hub's theory is that the purpose of the tariffs is to generate revenue without directly raising taxes. And if the tariffs are the end goal, there's likely nothing we can offer to get them removed. I'm not sure why Trump would feel the need to mention border issues as a fake pretext, but the fact the Chinese number was only 10% rather than the unrealistic 60% makes me worried they could be on to something. I hope not.
Granted we can't know Trump's end goal is (and I agree it may shift by the day), but I do think Smith and Ford have had somewhat better responses than the federal government. The Liberals falling back to their typical "free trade helps everyone", "look at the inputs" and "what about Mexico" are absolutely the wrong arguments to be making. At least Smith and Ford seem to be acknowledging Trump's listed concerns and are trying to provide some solutions (although Ford's advertising campaign is a waste of money).
For Western Canada, the US is more important than Ottawa economically and perhaps even culturally. Trump and his people know that. They could pick off pieces of this country one by one at will.
Reading between the lines, you're calling for an Election. Now!
The psychological concept of 'Vladimir's Choice' comes to mind when thinking about Trump's tariffs. It purports that we little lizard-brain humans (and/or shit-throwing monkeys, as Jen says) sometimes favor resource allocation to the in-group *relative* to the outgroup, rather than in absolute terms. In other words, given the choice between taking 10 dollars and having someone in the 'out-group' get 9, OR getting 9 dollars and having the out-grouper get 7, we tend towards the latter, since there's more relative advantage for us. If standard of living drops by 20% in the US as a result of tariffs, but by 40% in Canada, that's 'Making America Greater' by comparison, even if it's objectively damaging. I don't think the decisions made by the swarm of angry bees in Trump's head can be boiled down to any one simple rationale, but if that *does* have something to do with it, then claiming that the tariffs will be damaging to the US as well as Canada is not going to help, unless we can demonstrate that the tariffs will be MORE damaging to the US than they will be to us.