Really, guys? Ten to fifteen minutes on the SOTU address? Orange Man bad ain't exactly breaking news. And there is no shortage of Canadian stories I would love to have heard you address. Any or all of these four, for example:
Despite sitting on huge reserves itself, Canada just imported a massive amount of LNG all the way from Australia. A better example of this country's gob-smacking incompetence would be hard to find.
Canada's GDP per capita has fallen below that of Alabama. (This was unfortunate phrasing as it opened the door for the usual suspects to flaunt their undeserved smug superiority and mock Alabama - a place I have been to a few times, as recently as October and is very pleasant.) Now, one can make too much of this specific statistic but it drives home the undeniable point that we are in an awful economic malaise in this country.
The BC Human Rights commissars just fined somebody $750,000.00 for saying nasty things about gender ideology. Nothing more need be said about this self-evident abomination other than it has caught the eyes and scorn of people around the world including John Cleese.
Although not nearly a majority (at least I think/hope not), there has been no shortage of loud, sniveling losers upset with both Brady Tkachuk and Auston Matthews (the latter should be stripped of his captaincy??!!) for having visited Orange Man, who just happens to be the President of their country, a country that just experienced its most electrifying sporting win on the international stage since 1980. Indeed there are enough of these losers to have drawn the attention of onlookers in the USA leaving them with the understandable impression that we are a bunch of sore losers up here.
Any one of these stories in isolation ought to be an embarrassment for the country. That all four have made news within the past two weeks is staggering and paints a picture of a country that is weak, incompetent, authoritarian and full of whiners. Meanwhile, our Prime Minister is touring the world making speeches pretending as if Canada in its current state can somehow be a leader in some new world order??!! Bloody hell, get your own house in order before trying to lead the neighbours to who knows exactly where.
So yes, PP's speech may have had some delusions (while also making many good points) but Carney's delusions regarding our rightful place on the international stage at this time are even more deluded. Hell his delusions are crazier than me thinking I could run the 100 meter dash in 8 seconds. And I will always be more concerned about the PM's delusions than the Opposition Leader's delusions.
I think someone was going for the Rosemary Barton Award for Bad-faith Anti-Conservative Rant.
Let's compare with my recollection of prior statements and let's see if Poilievre is being held to an impossible and self-contradicting standard.
"Say more about Trump" / "No not those words!"
"Talk about international issues" / "Pft, you can't do anything internationally you're the opposition"
"Be more serious" / "Look how pathetic he is when he tries to be serious"
"Try to work better with others" / "You will never get the government to work with you"
"Say things that appeal to a mass audience" / "Everyone has already figured all of that out!" (Also: no, they really really haven't)
"Have novel ideas" / "Those ideas will never work, unlike the equally far fetched ideas of the sitting government"
Edit: there are some reasonable criticisms mixed in there. The Jivani thing was mishandled start to finish amateur hour style. Poilievre should have been going out of the country and making connections with other governments (including and perhaps especially the Trump administration) starting as soon as he won leadership, instead of... never until sort of now. It's reasonable to argue over whether all this is too late. But there's reasonable and there's... whatever this was.
I’m of the increasing mind that Gerson has become the journalistic equivalent of a conspiratorial, cynical, angry wine mom and that Gurney is the emasculated husband who agrees to go along to get along.
Let me be clear: this is not a personal attack, but a mere illustration of what I think they’ve become.
Maybe they’re just burning out, which wouldn’t be surprising given Gurney personal issues.
I hope they can return to form, but I’m not hanging my hat on it.
Poilievre’s speech about Trump wasn’t too late because it did not make the slightest bit of difference when it was. He’s now on the record having given a speech about how terrible Trump is. He and his people can say he gave it. Liberals and their allies will say he didn’t, or not enough, or he didn’t actually believe it, or whatever.
Now he should talk about it as little as possible. Which doesn’t mean never! Every minute Poilievre spends talking about Trump is a minute he’s spent losing, a minute spent on a ballot question no opposition party can possibly win, and the CPC even less than the ON Liberals or the NDP. Like every minute Paul Martin spent saying he was mad as hell about adscam, or every minute a conservative premier spends talking about not privatizing healthcare. They do need objection handling. They need to say something. But these are losing issues.
Sometimes a party is in a tough strategic situation, but trying to fight on the other guy’s ballot q is a dumb (though often tempting) response. A Trump ballot question is the most natural one in a hypothetical snap election, and fairly easy for Libs to cement. But Conservatives cannot possibly win on that question and shouldn’t try (though yes, yes, they need a thing to say). In part because NOBODY has a superior answer. Carney’s elbow nonsense in the last election was also completely false. He didn’t actually do the maximalist Doug Ford style tantrum many people thought he said he would (to his credit), and what he’s done hasn’t produced anything. But for whatever brand and demeanor-based reason, Carney accomplishing absolutely nothing puts him in a dominant position vs. anyone else who would equally produce nothing, because nobody can talk or elbow or bully Trump into free trade.
So the best move for the Conservatives is to put their effort into changing the ballot q, even though they would probably fail, and more likely than not they will lose, at least under current conditions. Maybe they’ll succeed, even though it’s hard. Maybe conditions will change, and the ground will shift to affordability before an election, so they’ll be glad they laid the groundwork.
And not only does it not matter WHEN he made the "Trump speech" it also doesn't matter what he SAID in the speech. The focus on how the Conservatives allegedly need/needed to pivot to "deal with Trump" is and always was weak sauce. That's because in this context, "dealing with Trump" essentially means hurling BS elbows-up type language at Trump. The Conservatives would be bringing a knife to a gun fight no matter what they said or when they said it if they were to battle the Liberals on those grounds. I also find it curious that there are supposedly some magic words that PP should be mouthing to win on these grounds and yet I have never heard anyone suggest to us what these magic words are - which you'd think would be readily forthcoming from every conceivable direction if the "pivoting" to be done was so obvious.
Again, the only REAL way to "deal with Trump" in any sort of meaningful way is to fix the country - PP and Jen's father are correct. And for reasons set out above, that is where the Conservatives have to try and fight the battle. And yeah, maybe they can't win on those grounds either! There are reasons to doubt PP's ability in that forum and his personality is off-putting to some who might otherwise consider voting Conservative which also doesn't help. But they sure as hell have no chance to win by trying to paint themselves as being as anti-American/Trump as the Liberals.
It reminds me of the 2021 Covid election where Trudeau took increasingly unhinged positions against anyone skeptical of vaccines and lockdowns and the media kept moving the goalposts trying to force the Conservatives to continually follow him there. It was a no-win situation and a losing issue altogether for O'Toole.
(Of course it was all bullshit and none of the proposed measures e.g. harsher vaccine mandates ended up doing anything positive. Also we got the Freedom Convoy as a direct result of this irresponsible demonization of up to 1/7th of the entire country. But that's another incredibly depressing story.)
On the Trump tariffs, Carney's efforts to diversify our way out of the problem are doomed to failure. We are talking about replacing 70%- 80% of trade with the US to sources, only reachable by ship, through ports which are already at capacity. By the time we do major projects to increase the capacity of ports, Trump will be in the rearview mirror.
Diversification does not happen on short time frames. It requires sustained efforts over multiple administrations.
So why is Carney winning with "elbows up"? Because the press does not want Canada to make a deal with Trump regardless of how many Canadians are thrown under the bus. The popular press claims you can't make a deal but somehow Mexico has.
If the Liberal trade mission accomplishes nothing and the limited trade advantage Canada has evaporates with the expiry of CUSMA, we may be going from the frying pan into the fire.
In this context, Poilievre's strategy to keep quiet is a winner as he can customize his message according to the outcome. The other outcome is that the Republicans lose the house and senate this year and Trump is impeached with the old order of tariffs being established. It still leaves pandemonium for almost another year.
For this reason, the Conservatives should plan for an election in another 3-4 years.
"Trump has been pretty clear what he wants from us." Yes. Take action against our fentanyl industry and go back to doing background checks on immigrants. We haven't tried that.
Wondering if increased support for the Liberals in parts of the west has any connection with increasing levels of eastern Canadians migrating to the west?
I tend to agree but my feeling is that easterners who moved in the past were motivated workers looking to pursue their dreams and and fitted in. The later arrivals especially from abroad seem to include way more entitlement hounds who tend to politically try to recreate the environment they were fleeing from. Since the days of Trudeau the greater and followed up by his successor with the same last name the Liberal strategy IMO has been to dilute Canada’s free enterprise culture with the State dominated humming collective approach of French Quebec.
I mean, Mark Carney is basically a Progressive Conservative Prime Minister. He’s far more right wing in every way than any Liberal since Chrétien. Not surprising that he’s peeling off Red Tory / PC voter types.
He’ll lose the Social Justice Left but they’re shrinking in numbers anyway as the world reasserts itself as a dangerous place requiring hard tradeoffs of leaders.
A lot of nonsense flows from treating politics as one dimensional along a left right axis. But if one accepts for the sake of argument that frame, how can anyone possibly say Carney is far more right wing than other Libs this century “in every way”?
Carney recognized an imaginary Palestinian state.
He is running a record deficit (apart from COVID) on the back of record spending.
Maybe if you add everything up someone might say he is more “right wing” overall than Martin or Ignatieff. But not in every single way, surely.
Remember, he was coronated by the press. As Matt said once, the liberals will do anything or say anything to stay in power - something along those lines.
He runs record deficits, rags the puck with regard to infrastructure, parades around the world "Just like Justin" getting MOU's on trade deals that are essentially the same as trade deals we already have, "reduces" immigration to levels that would still be record breaking if not for the 2021-2024 spike, talks about but does not implement any criminal law reform, and is still willing to turn ordinary citizens into criminals because they legally purchased guns that six women in Montreal think are scary.
I detect even more outright bullshit from Mark Carney than I did from Justin Trudeau. At least Trudeau was honest about some of his agenda. Carney is pissing on you and calling it rain, but also regulatory re-defining the piss content of what can technically be defined as rain and having the G&M call you a liar for complaining about the yellow liquid running down your face.
I find it interesting that, as of the time I posted this, the number of comments exceeds the number of likes. Sure, it's just a statistic and this like all comments is just an opinion, but JG and MG might want to reconsider their focus on topics which of late has been rather monochromatic and the dialogue reminiscent of tired children in a supermarket. As some of the other commenters have noted in this and other on the line comments sections, there are many engaging topics to choose from. MG's interview with the head of the RCN was pretty good. (Where are you planning to move if you are so disillusioned with Alberta, JG?)
Well like a lot here I agree there was quite a bit of news that you didnt touch on. Trump and Alberta are getting quite a bit of air time. Its disappointing Jen you find Pierres speech a dude, most people didnt. And yes he had to state everything thats broken in Canada as the elbows up crowd still don't see it. Every day I read how they are twisting facts, "GDP isn't real" ,"we didnt shrink this quarter here are the real numbers", "our economy is all Trumps fault''. So yes it was welcomed to hear him state all that so clearly. I agree with everything Matt said.
A good place for Poilievre to have started would be pointing out to Canadians after last year's election that half of cabinet are the same bunch who gave us ten years of performance art disguised as government. Remember, we're supposed to be genocidal and all other bad things combined. Remember how they divided Canadians and then had an election in the middle of a pandemic. Stuff like that.
Jen wants the truth, as they say “you can’t handle the truth”. Or more accurately the Elbows up crowd can’t handle the truth. The rupture is coming. We are not prepared. Our expectations are the problem. lol
True, his abysmal personality masks his good intentions for Americans.
Getting us to reduce the flow of fentanyl and criminal migrants across the border would have been good for Americans and Canadians. It wasn't a big ask, but we were intransigent. We are being punished.
Mexico is doing those two things and will get a favourable "USM" deal. Canada may not be able to beg their way in this time.
I don't detect any good intentions coming from Donald Trump toward anyone other than himself personally on a moment-to-moment basis. You have to make 4-dimensional logical leaps and attribute a totally unearned level of genius to him to make anything he does make even the slightest bit of sense, and even then it usually doesn't pan out.
And I was fully ready to give him a second chance. I was hoping that he would enforce the southern border and then spend four years golfing, which would have made him way more popular than he is now.
It probably is but his point about Canada not doing what it needs to do domestically is 100% true. Right now, though, no one is listening. He might have to get a lot harder before people do.
Stopped listening to this after Jen (prompted by Matt) suggested that the Cons should just embrace their true position, which apparently is subservience to Trump! Also, what Jen thinks is now conventional wisdom (we are sclerotic, over regulated, etc.) wasn’t until PP made it central to the case against Trudeau. Carney then ripped off the Cons’ policies. I too wish PP was more emotively anti-Trump. And Jivani can go fly a kite with his hissy fit bs (w/PP criticized rightly). The Cons need to just wait until Carney inevitably fails. There’s no way that Trudeau’s cabinet and a loose coalition of progressives is going to build a pipeline or lots of houses or cut red tape.
I hope not. I use to really enjoy the reporting and opinion, even when I disagreed. But something has happened, maybe as a small publication not enough rough exposure to other ideas and perspectives?
I hope the best for it but I'm reading and listening less and less. It's becoming a much less distinct voice vs the dregs of mass media.
Yeah, they started going down too many Trump rabbit holes for my liking. Today's article by Matt was a much needed change. Too soon to tell if it's a pivot, but I certainly hope so.
I’m not sure the Americans and President Trump want Canadian subservience. IMO Wanting subservience is much more a Canadian leadership trait than an American one. Americans fought a bloody civil war 165 years ago and disabused themselves thoroughly of that notion. No American I know wants Canadians to say “massa” and tug their forelock when they face south.
IMO What President Trump wants to do is bring about a return to the day when tariffs and excise taxes were the only or primary source of government revenue. Shifting the balance between personal income and “consumption” taxes offers the benefit ithat it brings back employment to US shores so that more people will be able to buy stuff even after the cost goes up because of tariffs. This is huge with voters who saw their jobs disappear from corporate outsourcing production to third world countries. I see no such movement in Canada which already has much higher income taxes in addition to value added (HST) plus hidden taxes like the Industrial Carbon hidden tax which for instance impacts every single step of the food production process. It’s really a differing view between the two countries as to which economic segment of the population should absorb the burden of paying for public services.
Really, guys? Ten to fifteen minutes on the SOTU address? Orange Man bad ain't exactly breaking news. And there is no shortage of Canadian stories I would love to have heard you address. Any or all of these four, for example:
Despite sitting on huge reserves itself, Canada just imported a massive amount of LNG all the way from Australia. A better example of this country's gob-smacking incompetence would be hard to find.
Canada's GDP per capita has fallen below that of Alabama. (This was unfortunate phrasing as it opened the door for the usual suspects to flaunt their undeserved smug superiority and mock Alabama - a place I have been to a few times, as recently as October and is very pleasant.) Now, one can make too much of this specific statistic but it drives home the undeniable point that we are in an awful economic malaise in this country.
The BC Human Rights commissars just fined somebody $750,000.00 for saying nasty things about gender ideology. Nothing more need be said about this self-evident abomination other than it has caught the eyes and scorn of people around the world including John Cleese.
Although not nearly a majority (at least I think/hope not), there has been no shortage of loud, sniveling losers upset with both Brady Tkachuk and Auston Matthews (the latter should be stripped of his captaincy??!!) for having visited Orange Man, who just happens to be the President of their country, a country that just experienced its most electrifying sporting win on the international stage since 1980. Indeed there are enough of these losers to have drawn the attention of onlookers in the USA leaving them with the understandable impression that we are a bunch of sore losers up here.
Any one of these stories in isolation ought to be an embarrassment for the country. That all four have made news within the past two weeks is staggering and paints a picture of a country that is weak, incompetent, authoritarian and full of whiners. Meanwhile, our Prime Minister is touring the world making speeches pretending as if Canada in its current state can somehow be a leader in some new world order??!! Bloody hell, get your own house in order before trying to lead the neighbours to who knows exactly where.
So yes, PP's speech may have had some delusions (while also making many good points) but Carney's delusions regarding our rightful place on the international stage at this time are even more deluded. Hell his delusions are crazier than me thinking I could run the 100 meter dash in 8 seconds. And I will always be more concerned about the PM's delusions than the Opposition Leader's delusions.
I think someone was going for the Rosemary Barton Award for Bad-faith Anti-Conservative Rant.
Let's compare with my recollection of prior statements and let's see if Poilievre is being held to an impossible and self-contradicting standard.
"Say more about Trump" / "No not those words!"
"Talk about international issues" / "Pft, you can't do anything internationally you're the opposition"
"Be more serious" / "Look how pathetic he is when he tries to be serious"
"Try to work better with others" / "You will never get the government to work with you"
"Say things that appeal to a mass audience" / "Everyone has already figured all of that out!" (Also: no, they really really haven't)
"Have novel ideas" / "Those ideas will never work, unlike the equally far fetched ideas of the sitting government"
Edit: there are some reasonable criticisms mixed in there. The Jivani thing was mishandled start to finish amateur hour style. Poilievre should have been going out of the country and making connections with other governments (including and perhaps especially the Trump administration) starting as soon as he won leadership, instead of... never until sort of now. It's reasonable to argue over whether all this is too late. But there's reasonable and there's... whatever this was.
Thank you. I am basically just here for the comment section these days haha
They actually have TDS now. Way way way too much talk about Trump, and boring talk at that.
Oh they hate when we say that 🤣
Maybe they hate it because it rings true.
I’m of the increasing mind that Gerson has become the journalistic equivalent of a conspiratorial, cynical, angry wine mom and that Gurney is the emasculated husband who agrees to go along to get along.
Let me be clear: this is not a personal attack, but a mere illustration of what I think they’ve become.
Maybe they’re just burning out, which wouldn’t be surprising given Gurney personal issues.
I hope they can return to form, but I’m not hanging my hat on it.
Maybe I’ve just outgrown the line. Who knows?
Poilievre’s speech about Trump wasn’t too late because it did not make the slightest bit of difference when it was. He’s now on the record having given a speech about how terrible Trump is. He and his people can say he gave it. Liberals and their allies will say he didn’t, or not enough, or he didn’t actually believe it, or whatever.
Now he should talk about it as little as possible. Which doesn’t mean never! Every minute Poilievre spends talking about Trump is a minute he’s spent losing, a minute spent on a ballot question no opposition party can possibly win, and the CPC even less than the ON Liberals or the NDP. Like every minute Paul Martin spent saying he was mad as hell about adscam, or every minute a conservative premier spends talking about not privatizing healthcare. They do need objection handling. They need to say something. But these are losing issues.
Sometimes a party is in a tough strategic situation, but trying to fight on the other guy’s ballot q is a dumb (though often tempting) response. A Trump ballot question is the most natural one in a hypothetical snap election, and fairly easy for Libs to cement. But Conservatives cannot possibly win on that question and shouldn’t try (though yes, yes, they need a thing to say). In part because NOBODY has a superior answer. Carney’s elbow nonsense in the last election was also completely false. He didn’t actually do the maximalist Doug Ford style tantrum many people thought he said he would (to his credit), and what he’s done hasn’t produced anything. But for whatever brand and demeanor-based reason, Carney accomplishing absolutely nothing puts him in a dominant position vs. anyone else who would equally produce nothing, because nobody can talk or elbow or bully Trump into free trade.
So the best move for the Conservatives is to put their effort into changing the ballot q, even though they would probably fail, and more likely than not they will lose, at least under current conditions. Maybe they’ll succeed, even though it’s hard. Maybe conditions will change, and the ground will shift to affordability before an election, so they’ll be glad they laid the groundwork.
Totally agree with this.
And not only does it not matter WHEN he made the "Trump speech" it also doesn't matter what he SAID in the speech. The focus on how the Conservatives allegedly need/needed to pivot to "deal with Trump" is and always was weak sauce. That's because in this context, "dealing with Trump" essentially means hurling BS elbows-up type language at Trump. The Conservatives would be bringing a knife to a gun fight no matter what they said or when they said it if they were to battle the Liberals on those grounds. I also find it curious that there are supposedly some magic words that PP should be mouthing to win on these grounds and yet I have never heard anyone suggest to us what these magic words are - which you'd think would be readily forthcoming from every conceivable direction if the "pivoting" to be done was so obvious.
Again, the only REAL way to "deal with Trump" in any sort of meaningful way is to fix the country - PP and Jen's father are correct. And for reasons set out above, that is where the Conservatives have to try and fight the battle. And yeah, maybe they can't win on those grounds either! There are reasons to doubt PP's ability in that forum and his personality is off-putting to some who might otherwise consider voting Conservative which also doesn't help. But they sure as hell have no chance to win by trying to paint themselves as being as anti-American/Trump as the Liberals.
👏👏👏 🎯 🎯 🎯
It reminds me of the 2021 Covid election where Trudeau took increasingly unhinged positions against anyone skeptical of vaccines and lockdowns and the media kept moving the goalposts trying to force the Conservatives to continually follow him there. It was a no-win situation and a losing issue altogether for O'Toole.
(Of course it was all bullshit and none of the proposed measures e.g. harsher vaccine mandates ended up doing anything positive. Also we got the Freedom Convoy as a direct result of this irresponsible demonization of up to 1/7th of the entire country. But that's another incredibly depressing story.)
On the Trump tariffs, Carney's efforts to diversify our way out of the problem are doomed to failure. We are talking about replacing 70%- 80% of trade with the US to sources, only reachable by ship, through ports which are already at capacity. By the time we do major projects to increase the capacity of ports, Trump will be in the rearview mirror.
Diversification does not happen on short time frames. It requires sustained efforts over multiple administrations.
So why is Carney winning with "elbows up"? Because the press does not want Canada to make a deal with Trump regardless of how many Canadians are thrown under the bus. The popular press claims you can't make a deal but somehow Mexico has.
If the Liberal trade mission accomplishes nothing and the limited trade advantage Canada has evaporates with the expiry of CUSMA, we may be going from the frying pan into the fire.
In this context, Poilievre's strategy to keep quiet is a winner as he can customize his message according to the outcome. The other outcome is that the Republicans lose the house and senate this year and Trump is impeached with the old order of tariffs being established. It still leaves pandemonium for almost another year.
For this reason, the Conservatives should plan for an election in another 3-4 years.
"Trump has been pretty clear what he wants from us." Yes. Take action against our fentanyl industry and go back to doing background checks on immigrants. We haven't tried that.
Wondering if increased support for the Liberals in parts of the west has any connection with increasing levels of eastern Canadians migrating to the west?
Easterners have been moving there for decades without changing much politically there.
I tend to agree but my feeling is that easterners who moved in the past were motivated workers looking to pursue their dreams and and fitted in. The later arrivals especially from abroad seem to include way more entitlement hounds who tend to politically try to recreate the environment they were fleeing from. Since the days of Trudeau the greater and followed up by his successor with the same last name the Liberal strategy IMO has been to dilute Canada’s free enterprise culture with the State dominated humming collective approach of French Quebec.
I mean, Mark Carney is basically a Progressive Conservative Prime Minister. He’s far more right wing in every way than any Liberal since Chrétien. Not surprising that he’s peeling off Red Tory / PC voter types.
He’ll lose the Social Justice Left but they’re shrinking in numbers anyway as the world reasserts itself as a dangerous place requiring hard tradeoffs of leaders.
A lot of nonsense flows from treating politics as one dimensional along a left right axis. But if one accepts for the sake of argument that frame, how can anyone possibly say Carney is far more right wing than other Libs this century “in every way”?
Carney recognized an imaginary Palestinian state.
He is running a record deficit (apart from COVID) on the back of record spending.
Maybe if you add everything up someone might say he is more “right wing” overall than Martin or Ignatieff. But not in every single way, surely.
Ethically, he is still a Liberal.
Remember, he was coronated by the press. As Matt said once, the liberals will do anything or say anything to stay in power - something along those lines.
Carney has ethics? 🤣🤣🤣 I thought he was living anecdotal proof that Liberal ethics is a giant oxymoron.
That’s what I meant. Liberal ethics = no ethics 🤣
Yep I realized it as soon as I posted the joke🙄
The first paragraph is totally deluded.
How is he a progressive conservative?
The Globe and Mail tells people that he is.
He runs record deficits, rags the puck with regard to infrastructure, parades around the world "Just like Justin" getting MOU's on trade deals that are essentially the same as trade deals we already have, "reduces" immigration to levels that would still be record breaking if not for the 2021-2024 spike, talks about but does not implement any criminal law reform, and is still willing to turn ordinary citizens into criminals because they legally purchased guns that six women in Montreal think are scary.
I detect even more outright bullshit from Mark Carney than I did from Justin Trudeau. At least Trudeau was honest about some of his agenda. Carney is pissing on you and calling it rain, but also regulatory re-defining the piss content of what can technically be defined as rain and having the G&M call you a liar for complaining about the yellow liquid running down your face.
I find it interesting that, as of the time I posted this, the number of comments exceeds the number of likes. Sure, it's just a statistic and this like all comments is just an opinion, but JG and MG might want to reconsider their focus on topics which of late has been rather monochromatic and the dialogue reminiscent of tired children in a supermarket. As some of the other commenters have noted in this and other on the line comments sections, there are many engaging topics to choose from. MG's interview with the head of the RCN was pretty good. (Where are you planning to move if you are so disillusioned with Alberta, JG?)
Well like a lot here I agree there was quite a bit of news that you didnt touch on. Trump and Alberta are getting quite a bit of air time. Its disappointing Jen you find Pierres speech a dude, most people didnt. And yes he had to state everything thats broken in Canada as the elbows up crowd still don't see it. Every day I read how they are twisting facts, "GDP isn't real" ,"we didnt shrink this quarter here are the real numbers", "our economy is all Trumps fault''. So yes it was welcomed to hear him state all that so clearly. I agree with everything Matt said.
A good place for Poilievre to have started would be pointing out to Canadians after last year's election that half of cabinet are the same bunch who gave us ten years of performance art disguised as government. Remember, we're supposed to be genocidal and all other bad things combined. Remember how they divided Canadians and then had an election in the middle of a pandemic. Stuff like that.
People aren't quite ready to deal with reality, however.
Is it too late for Canada to survive ???
Yes.
Canada is now full of financial "Liberal" caused gangrene and zero and negative growth prospects; go ahead and amputate.
Jen wants the truth, as they say “you can’t handle the truth”. Or more accurately the Elbows up crowd can’t handle the truth. The rupture is coming. We are not prepared. Our expectations are the problem. lol
How do you know tariff-free auto isn't possible? We haven't tried to negotiate.
For me, negotiating is useless because Trump changes his mind regularly
Smith tightened the border and made the case for the mutual benefits of Alberta O&G. A year later, the tariffs are still 10%.
Nobody has bothered to do the same for Ontario auto. Instead, they use Trump for politics.
For me, he's a lunatic. Ontario produces cars. Alberta oil. Shame they can't work together.
True, his abysmal personality masks his good intentions for Americans.
Getting us to reduce the flow of fentanyl and criminal migrants across the border would have been good for Americans and Canadians. It wasn't a big ask, but we were intransigent. We are being punished.
Mexico is doing those two things and will get a favourable "USM" deal. Canada may not be able to beg their way in this time.
I don't detect any good intentions coming from Donald Trump toward anyone other than himself personally on a moment-to-moment basis. You have to make 4-dimensional logical leaps and attribute a totally unearned level of genius to him to make anything he does make even the slightest bit of sense, and even then it usually doesn't pan out.
And I was fully ready to give him a second chance. I was hoping that he would enforce the southern border and then spend four years golfing, which would have made him way more popular than he is now.
He's a senile lunatic. And he just finished year one.
Too late or not, Pierre has to pivot. Might as well get on with it because we saw the results of the last election so the campaign has to change.
It probably is but his point about Canada not doing what it needs to do domestically is 100% true. Right now, though, no one is listening. He might have to get a lot harder before people do.
Stopped listening to this after Jen (prompted by Matt) suggested that the Cons should just embrace their true position, which apparently is subservience to Trump! Also, what Jen thinks is now conventional wisdom (we are sclerotic, over regulated, etc.) wasn’t until PP made it central to the case against Trudeau. Carney then ripped off the Cons’ policies. I too wish PP was more emotively anti-Trump. And Jivani can go fly a kite with his hissy fit bs (w/PP criticized rightly). The Cons need to just wait until Carney inevitably fails. There’s no way that Trudeau’s cabinet and a loose coalition of progressives is going to build a pipeline or lots of houses or cut red tape.
Jen seriously needs a vacation - too many rants these days
Not to mention snark directed at commenters.
Oh look, more about Trump… I'm assuming a lot about Alberta here too?
*Skip*
Is it too late for the Line to pivot?
I hope not. I use to really enjoy the reporting and opinion, even when I disagreed. But something has happened, maybe as a small publication not enough rough exposure to other ideas and perspectives?
I hope the best for it but I'm reading and listening less and less. It's becoming a much less distinct voice vs the dregs of mass media.
Yeah, they started going down too many Trump rabbit holes for my liking. Today's article by Matt was a much needed change. Too soon to tell if it's a pivot, but I certainly hope so.
100% that Donald wants our subservience.
I’m not sure the Americans and President Trump want Canadian subservience. IMO Wanting subservience is much more a Canadian leadership trait than an American one. Americans fought a bloody civil war 165 years ago and disabused themselves thoroughly of that notion. No American I know wants Canadians to say “massa” and tug their forelock when they face south.
IMO What President Trump wants to do is bring about a return to the day when tariffs and excise taxes were the only or primary source of government revenue. Shifting the balance between personal income and “consumption” taxes offers the benefit ithat it brings back employment to US shores so that more people will be able to buy stuff even after the cost goes up because of tariffs. This is huge with voters who saw their jobs disappear from corporate outsourcing production to third world countries. I see no such movement in Canada which already has much higher income taxes in addition to value added (HST) plus hidden taxes like the Industrial Carbon hidden tax which for instance impacts every single step of the food production process. It’s really a differing view between the two countries as to which economic segment of the population should absorb the burden of paying for public services.