I was going to write the same thing, but the thing that people haven’t caught on to is that the group that is going to be disappointed are the Boomers and leftist voters.
As the economist Rogoff pointed out, austerity is the word the left uses to pretend that debt has no cost. Unfortunately, it does and there is a price to pay for the past 10 years.
There is no way to square this circle without severely curtailing OAS. At the provincial level, it is going to be user fees for health care. There is no way to find money for defense and infrastructure otherwise. 100 billion plus deficits will drive interest rates up, increases debt servicing by the government, meaning more austerity.
With regards to international relations, Carney is doing well but he is going to have to deliver. He is being given the benefit of the doubt by NATO. No delivery, and he will treated with the same derision as Trudeau.
Significantly lowering the thresholds at which OAS and the Child Tax Benefit are clawed back would yield huge savings. Pushing OAS eligibility to 67 or 68 would also be of huge benefit, but more difficult to implement as a future government could easily change the phase in period. Perhaps the most regressive Trudeau policy was reversing the phase in of OAS being pushed to 67. Maybe the eligibility could be changed instantaneously and those with say less than 5 years to 65 could be compensated through one time RRSP top ups.
Government could also change the pension eligibility of its employees so that they would need to work 4 or 5 more years to qualify. Of course, the best approach would be to whack 100K from federal headcount
The child tax credit already gets fully clawed back at 90k of FAMILY income. OAS still only clawed fully back at over 300k combined income. For every dollar for child benefit, 10 is given for OAS. It’s not comparable.
(EDIT: I mistakenly claimed in an earlier version of the post that "Nate Esrkine-Smith did not vote specifically against Bill C-5." This has been corrected by others, although I still maintain that Nate's opening position was unassailable common sense that there should be no rush to pass the Bill through closure when MPs could simply work longer in parliament over the summer.)
With respect to the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and British governments actually miscommunicated the threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the time of the invasion there was widespread global skepticism against U.S. intelligence claims, claims that were proven to be false. *But* the Iraq WMD threat was never entirely or even primarily contingent upon the intelligence claims.
After the Gulf War and in 2002, the UN had specifically demanded that Hussein's Iraq *declare its entire pre-1992 WMD development history*. Iraq never did that and was repeatedly caught hiding information and details about the historical program from the inspectors: https://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/Chronology/chronologyframe.htm To this day, no one alive knows how many thousands of litres of anthrax Iraq had produced prior to 1992. That Iraq still had WMD in 2003 was a *logical deduction* from known facts that was obscured by the controversial intelligence that was mistakenly emphasized. Ironically, post-invasion interviews with Iraqi officials suggested that Hussein *wanted Iran to believe* that the dictator still possessed WMD.
The U.S. President and British Prime Minister never accused Iraq of being involved in 9/11. But just as the October 7th attacks ostensibly justified a paradigm shift that led to Israel's attacks on Iran, so too were the 9/11 attacks cited as justification to change the paradigm in favour of attacking Iraq. That aside, it is a verifiable fact that the man who founded al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004 was already present in Baghdad as of 2002.
Jean Chretien's stance on the Iraq war was hardly principled whatever one thinks of the war, as he kept out Canadian troops from formal involvement but consciously increased the presence of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan to free up more American troops in Iraq. Speaking of Afghanistan, the primary purpose of that war was to eliminate the Taliban government over its sheltering of al-Qaeda - improving life for Afghan women and bringing democracy were always secondary objectives, not retrospective justifications. The U.S. had demanded that such sheltering be ended even before the 9/11 attacks. As for now, the Taliban repression has come back, but the al-Qaeda training camps might not be coming back to that country.
One last comment: Iran observers seem to be consistent that one of the highest priorities of the Iranian regime is the survival of its regime and the regime officials therein. If Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon, there is actually a decent likelihood that Iran would not try to use the weapon to initiate an attack on Israel, given the certainty of Iran's subsequent demise. However, Iran would certainly use the deterrent of a nuclear weapon to get more aggressive with its proxies than it has been able to, given that the presence of an actual nuclear weapon would have plausibly stopped the country from suffering the kinds of humiliations that it is actually undergoing now.
My mistake Matt, as I said to Richard elsewhere on the thread I assumed that the final vote on Bill C-5 had not yet occurred. Even with the closure I had naively expected that just a little more debate time was still left...
Spot on in all respects, indeed thank you for the review of Chrétien versus Iraq — having written on the subject in depth, while listening I was assembling many of the same points as you have put here (better synthesized, again thanks). Chrétien sat out Iraq because he was living in the Liberal hive of our tradition as “peacekeepers” and he didn’t like GWB’s neocons. Where he got *lucky* was the neocons blew their very successful shock-and-awe invasion by failing to plan a postwar structure (they didn’t have to occupy for long, but they should have left the structures for a democratic Iraqi society to endure, through de-Baathification). A fruitful “what if” argument can be made that if more allies like Canada had set aside their moral preening and got involved in that society-building effort, the world now would be in a much better place.
And Nate E-S ended up voting against the final bill.
Thanks for the correction to my correction! I had assumed that the final Bill had not been voted on quite yet, but even with time allocation invoked I would have presumed that there was still some time left for debate...
I may be wrong but I believe when the Iraq War started Saddam Hussein himself thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He had been lied to by top officials.
I am open to correction on this but I appreciate your rebutting to Jen's history lesson.
Why didn't Israel for straight after Iran after Oct 7 you ask? Because it was a completely different scenario. Hezbollah was still fully armed and functional; Hamas was still a functional threat until Israel launched the invasion of Gaza; Houthis from Yemen were still aggressively active; Syria was still a functioning threat under Assad; and, late 2024 Israeli strikes exposed Iranian weakness. So Iran and its Axis of Resistance were significantly weakened from where they were in October 7th.
Waiting patiently for Carney to reveal his true colours besides after 10 years of the “leadership” provided by a narcissistic juvenile delinquent anyone would look good.
C-5 isn't conservative policy; it is full on Soviet-era communism. There is no democratic avenue for building a major project. A cabinet member must be on board to override existing laws and approve a project. Favoured projects like Ring of Fire will be fast-tracked despite abysmal economics, while hated projects like pipelines may once again be subjected to endless Ministerial scrutiny before being denied.
I am not privy to any inside info on this - I have just been following it because of its popularity.
The Eagle's Nest Ni-Cu-Pd-Pt resource is rich but small. The deposit is a vertical 200 m wide ribbon requiring a lot of underground excavation. Additionally, due to the muskeg, Wyloo has decided to permanently store acid-generating rock and tailings in underground chambers.
The chromite seems doomed by being too low grade to support all the transportation: 600 km by road to Nikina, 750 km by rail to Capreol for smelting, then shipping again to steel mills.
There is a reason why Wyloo isn't doing this on their own. I wonder if they will even go ahead without further subsidies once the road is built.
There is far more undeveloped Ni-Cu-Pd-Pt in Sudbury that could be make economic with far less subsidization.
Thank you for this informed reply. I have heard for many years now about how vast the mineral wealth in the Ring of Fire is, we just need a road to get there.
I continue to lobby for a No Acronym Zone. I see even Matt was confused by Jen's use of "GCC." Is that much harder to say "Gulf States"?
The Gulf Cooperation Council has been around since 1981 and I have been around much longer but I would not have been able to tell you what GCC stood for.
I believe you were absolutely correct with your analysis of the Iran situation and the reason that many MAGA supporters in the US do not support US action in Iran – The War Machine.
This is one of the three main reasons that Joe Lindsley repeatedly argues as to why many MAGA and MAGA adjacent US citizens do not support Ukraine. That is, they were burned by The War Machine on Afghanistan and Iraq and so, even though Ukraine is actually the real deal, they believe it is just another project of the War Machine. I am sure it is similar for any US involvement in Iran. Not that I fully agree with them, as I certainly do not with respect to Ukraine, I believe that is a real thing for quite a number of Americans on the right and left.
Oh and a bit off topic for anyone interested, the two other reasons Joe Lindsley gives for the lack of MAGA support for Ukraine are: 1) that they do not realize that Bursima was a Russian controlled company (i.e. it was Russian money, not Ukrainian money, paying off Hunter Biden) and 2) the Obama government, far from having the CIA foment the Revolution of Dignity, was quite willing to sell Ukraine out for “stability”.
Canadians voted 3x for Trudeau. He is a result of the lack of seriousness in Canadians, he didn't come from thin air. He was the result of a people who wanted to be taken care of like children by the state, and the rest of the world noticed.
Canada underachieves because Canadians underachieve. This is all on us, no one else.
Not really, he got minorities 2nd and 3rd time. Most Canadians are not weaklings wanting to be curled up in a ball taking government IV drips. Thats online stuff which is 50 percent or more in bot accounts. What the real problem was is the Conservatives couldn't/wouldn't put out a platform that appealed to enough people and generally waited until they thought they could win because JT was so hated.
I'm just looking at the results of the last 10 years as they are, not as we wish they were. The fact is that Canadians in our system chose left of centre parties. Most Canadians voted Liberal or even more left to the NDP (or Bloc and Greens).
The majority of Canadians the last 4 elections have voted explicitly for a more interventionist central government. They voted for more cradle to grave paternalistic programs and a more interventionist government economically.
That the Conservatives "didn't put out a platform appealing enough" just says that they didn't pursue a paternalistic and interventionist enough platform.
OMG you two and especially Matt....re: your favourable comments about Carney and what a wonderful centrist aka conservative he is....PLEASE read his book...either a cogent "political" essayed book about his life and what he stands for is a lie...or the person that is being packaged for us by state funded media is a lie....the two images cannot exist together...and with regard to defence and other initiatives...what has he DONE? All we have to go on are announcements .....announcements that are different than the previous regime and sound like they will fix their mistakes..... but that they are meant to diffuse and buy time till he can detente a crisis and then implement his "values". Don't ever forget,,,the Liberals are masters the message. EG...he says temporary immigration will be held to 5%...do the math....that is 2MM people! We peaked at 1.8MM!!!! He is prepared to allow more.
People who know better are already forgetting that Carney and the Liberal establishment essentially stole an election through massive manipulation of incumbent levers of power and by lying to the elderly and the easily scared about how Donald Trump is going to invade us / destroy us and how Conservatives will somehow collaborate with him to allow this.
Meanwhile Carney literally collaborated with Trump to get explicit permission to "run against him" with no hard feelings, and immediately after the election all the existential threats magically vaporized.
All aided by a mainstream media drenched in conflict of interest with the very notion of any non-Liberal government ever existing.
Carney's whole government is tainted top to bottom by this wretched parody of an election.
I think he will be around for a while. He has moved so close to the center and even a little to the right, that the Conservatives will not have a playbook other than to head further to the right and say the things that the Peoples Party does and go on ad naseum that Canada is broken. Online Convervative comments flood threads and have little fuel other than name calling like Carnage, still going on about THE TRUCKERS, or going on about body language and lip movements and screaming WEF over and over. PPs problem is he is still acting like he is fighting the inept and empty Justin Trudeau, and he isn't. Carney may have the same party name behind him, but he clearly is not running the joint like Trudeau did. THe podcast brought up a great example of committee meetings. Taking ammendments from all members like a business meeting would; Trudeau was very much against that kind of thing. The CPC is in for a LONG ride out of power if they keep playing to that trash talk while the other guy is quiet and boring and professional. They cant sell themselves as the party to fix canadas problems right now, all they can do is sell their leader will be BETTER as a leader,, and PP does not look like that . I voted Conservative by the way , but I can see things for what they are.
Carney is going to have to make some decisions that is going to royally piss off the Left. You will see the same type of comments after the fact. Both sides have a lot of nutters.
It's easy to read too much into the appearance that European leaders respect Carney.
Mark Carney talks like a Very Serious European, because he believes all the things Very Serious Europeans believe. Is it any surprise that when he does this, European leaders think he's terrific, making excellent points, and a man to be reckoned with? It is as yet untested whether Carney will prove to have actual influence, when and if he says something with which Europeans do not already agree.
That's still a contrast with Trudeau, who behaved more like a North American student union activist than a Very Serious European. From the socks, to the language policing, to droning on about gender, Trudeau sounded nothing like the Euro establishment. Europeans probably rolled their eyes when Trudeau did a victory lap for getting the Trans Pacific Partnership renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership.
I dislike many aspects of Carney's Euro sensibilities. I think his views are too European on industrial policy, Israel, privacy and free expression, among other issues. I think he has European-style overconfidence in the wisdom and competence of government. But there were no obvious issues on which he needed to be at odds with Europe at this particular G7. He said what they liked to hear, and he was mostly right to do so. We just have no idea yet what will happen if he ever doesn't.
I’m surprised you both have misread the UK with respect to their special relationship with the USA. It is, and always has been based on intelligence and military, sharing and support. Furthermore it has been on display (in the Middle East) now for months. Where the UK and the EU have failed is realizing that Trump does not share well. No he does not share. He is a user.
I agree Starmer should have known better and let Donald get flustered over paper that may well have been blank. As for running to the EU, I’m not yet convinced, if for no other reason that independence will allow them far greater freedom of action in a post Trump floundering world. Britain still has a far greater international reputation than any other European state.
A few things. You called 1. Carney a head of state? Tsk tsk.
2. The WWII Barnes Wallis Earthquake Bomb would do the trick on that Iranian underground nuclear facility.
3. Canada could really be a player by building 4 to 6 more Protecteur Class Supply Ships. The pacific navies are screaming for more of those types of ships.
Jen's analysis re Iraq may be half right, but the other half is that many people (see opini9n writers for the Globe and Mail for example) are comparing Iran to Iraq to discredit Israel's war against Iran and to discredit the US getting involved. They're not stupid enough to believe the situation is in any way similar, they're just prejudiced. They'd like Israel gone.
I'm not surprised that a change in prime minister can lead to a rapid change in how a government functions: the prime minister and PMO have accrued a tremendous amount of power in our system. They've been increasingly tempted to use that power and control to micromanage. That was tolerable when a workaholic policy wonk like Harper was doing it; it was disastrous with an incompetent narcissist like Justin Trudeau. Decisions weren't made, advice wasn't heeded, and a lot of talent was wasted or pushed out the door because of the insecurity of the guy at the top.
What has been pleasantly surprising is how Mark Carney seems to be bringing a mature and experienced approach to the PMO. It seems like he's delegating; the Liberal caucus (so far) seems to be stepping up rather than staying mired in Trudeau-era passivity. An important testing point will be how Carney deals with an incompetent minister or a troublemaker in cabinet. That's often a temptation to slide into micromanagement via the PMO, especially if an insecure leader feels like they risk a political rebellion in their caucus by demoting or firing somebody. It's only a matter of time before a Melanie Jolie makes a hash of a portfolio, or a Steven Guilbeault shoots off his mouth and creates problems by challenging the establish policy. Hopefully Carney is capable of some old-style Chretien ruthlessness.
Carney's true test will be the budget. Canada is headed towards a fiscal crisis and Carney will need to choose between austerity and austerity.
I was going to write the same thing, but the thing that people haven’t caught on to is that the group that is going to be disappointed are the Boomers and leftist voters.
As the economist Rogoff pointed out, austerity is the word the left uses to pretend that debt has no cost. Unfortunately, it does and there is a price to pay for the past 10 years.
There is no way to square this circle without severely curtailing OAS. At the provincial level, it is going to be user fees for health care. There is no way to find money for defense and infrastructure otherwise. 100 billion plus deficits will drive interest rates up, increases debt servicing by the government, meaning more austerity.
With regards to international relations, Carney is doing well but he is going to have to deliver. He is being given the benefit of the doubt by NATO. No delivery, and he will treated with the same derision as Trudeau.
Significantly lowering the thresholds at which OAS and the Child Tax Benefit are clawed back would yield huge savings. Pushing OAS eligibility to 67 or 68 would also be of huge benefit, but more difficult to implement as a future government could easily change the phase in period. Perhaps the most regressive Trudeau policy was reversing the phase in of OAS being pushed to 67. Maybe the eligibility could be changed instantaneously and those with say less than 5 years to 65 could be compensated through one time RRSP top ups.
Government could also change the pension eligibility of its employees so that they would need to work 4 or 5 more years to qualify. Of course, the best approach would be to whack 100K from federal headcount
The child tax credit already gets fully clawed back at 90k of FAMILY income. OAS still only clawed fully back at over 300k combined income. For every dollar for child benefit, 10 is given for OAS. It’s not comparable.
Both should start to be clawed back at around the 50th percentile income and completely clawed back by 75th percentike.
I need to correct some claims on a few subjects.
(EDIT: I mistakenly claimed in an earlier version of the post that "Nate Esrkine-Smith did not vote specifically against Bill C-5." This has been corrected by others, although I still maintain that Nate's opening position was unassailable common sense that there should be no rush to pass the Bill through closure when MPs could simply work longer in parliament over the summer.)
With respect to the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and British governments actually miscommunicated the threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. At the time of the invasion there was widespread global skepticism against U.S. intelligence claims, claims that were proven to be false. *But* the Iraq WMD threat was never entirely or even primarily contingent upon the intelligence claims.
After the Gulf War and in 2002, the UN had specifically demanded that Hussein's Iraq *declare its entire pre-1992 WMD development history*. Iraq never did that and was repeatedly caught hiding information and details about the historical program from the inspectors: https://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/Chronology/chronologyframe.htm To this day, no one alive knows how many thousands of litres of anthrax Iraq had produced prior to 1992. That Iraq still had WMD in 2003 was a *logical deduction* from known facts that was obscured by the controversial intelligence that was mistakenly emphasized. Ironically, post-invasion interviews with Iraqi officials suggested that Hussein *wanted Iran to believe* that the dictator still possessed WMD.
The U.S. President and British Prime Minister never accused Iraq of being involved in 9/11. But just as the October 7th attacks ostensibly justified a paradigm shift that led to Israel's attacks on Iran, so too were the 9/11 attacks cited as justification to change the paradigm in favour of attacking Iraq. That aside, it is a verifiable fact that the man who founded al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004 was already present in Baghdad as of 2002.
Jean Chretien's stance on the Iraq war was hardly principled whatever one thinks of the war, as he kept out Canadian troops from formal involvement but consciously increased the presence of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan to free up more American troops in Iraq. Speaking of Afghanistan, the primary purpose of that war was to eliminate the Taliban government over its sheltering of al-Qaeda - improving life for Afghan women and bringing democracy were always secondary objectives, not retrospective justifications. The U.S. had demanded that such sheltering be ended even before the 9/11 attacks. As for now, the Taliban repression has come back, but the al-Qaeda training camps might not be coming back to that country.
One last comment: Iran observers seem to be consistent that one of the highest priorities of the Iranian regime is the survival of its regime and the regime officials therein. If Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon, there is actually a decent likelihood that Iran would not try to use the weapon to initiate an attack on Israel, given the certainty of Iran's subsequent demise. However, Iran would certainly use the deterrent of a nuclear weapon to get more aggressive with its proxies than it has been able to, given that the presence of an actual nuclear weapon would have plausibly stopped the country from suffering the kinds of humiliations that it is actually undergoing now.
NES voted against the bill, man.
My mistake Matt, as I said to Richard elsewhere on the thread I assumed that the final vote on Bill C-5 had not yet occurred. Even with the closure I had naively expected that just a little more debate time was still left...
Spot on in all respects, indeed thank you for the review of Chrétien versus Iraq — having written on the subject in depth, while listening I was assembling many of the same points as you have put here (better synthesized, again thanks). Chrétien sat out Iraq because he was living in the Liberal hive of our tradition as “peacekeepers” and he didn’t like GWB’s neocons. Where he got *lucky* was the neocons blew their very successful shock-and-awe invasion by failing to plan a postwar structure (they didn’t have to occupy for long, but they should have left the structures for a democratic Iraqi society to endure, through de-Baathification). A fruitful “what if” argument can be made that if more allies like Canada had set aside their moral preening and got involved in that society-building effort, the world now would be in a much better place.
And Nate E-S ended up voting against the final bill.
Thanks for the correction to my correction! I had assumed that the final Bill had not been voted on quite yet, but even with time allocation invoked I would have presumed that there was still some time left for debate...
I may be wrong but I believe when the Iraq War started Saddam Hussein himself thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He had been lied to by top officials.
I am open to correction on this but I appreciate your rebutting to Jen's history lesson.
I do not think so, here are some quotes from the 2006 Iraqi Perspectives Project:
"Saddam walked a tight rope with WMD because as he often
reminded his close advisors, they lived in a very dangerous global neighbor-
hood where even the perception of weakness drew wolves. For him, there were
real dividends to be gained by letting his enemies believe he possessed WMD,
whether it was true or not. On the other hand, it was critical to his survival
and his plans to end sanctions that the West, particularly the United States, be
convinced that Iraq no longer possessed such weapons. He had placed himself
into a diplomatic and propaganda Catch-22.
"Chemical Ali,” who received his sobriquet for using chemical weapons on
Kurdish civilians in 1987, was convinced Iraq no longer possessed WMD, but
claims many within the ruling circle always believed they did. Even at the high-
est echelons of the regime, when it came to WMD there was always some element
of doubt about the truth. According to Chemical Ali, Saddam was asked about
having WMD during a meeting with members of the Revolutionary Command
Council. He replied that Iraq did not have WMD, but flatly rejected a suggestion
that the regime remove all doubts to the contrary. Saddam went on to explain
that if Iraq made such a declaration, it would not only show Israel that Iraq did
not have WMD but might actually encourage the Israelis to attack.16"
"Even when viewed through the post-war lens, documentary
evidence of messages are consistent with the Iraqi Survey Group’s conclusion
that Saddam was at least keeping a WMD program primed for a quick re-start
the moment the UN Security Council lifted sanctions."
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA446305.pdf
Thank you.
Why didn't Israel for straight after Iran after Oct 7 you ask? Because it was a completely different scenario. Hezbollah was still fully armed and functional; Hamas was still a functional threat until Israel launched the invasion of Gaza; Houthis from Yemen were still aggressively active; Syria was still a functioning threat under Assad; and, late 2024 Israeli strikes exposed Iranian weakness. So Iran and its Axis of Resistance were significantly weakened from where they were in October 7th.
Waiting patiently for Carney to reveal his true colours besides after 10 years of the “leadership” provided by a narcissistic juvenile delinquent anyone would look good.
C-5 isn't conservative policy; it is full on Soviet-era communism. There is no democratic avenue for building a major project. A cabinet member must be on board to override existing laws and approve a project. Favoured projects like Ring of Fire will be fast-tracked despite abysmal economics, while hated projects like pipelines may once again be subjected to endless Ministerial scrutiny before being denied.
There is also an opportunity for corruption.
What are the "abysmal economics" of the Ring of Fire? I thought there was a fortune of minerals in the ground there.
I am not privy to any inside info on this - I have just been following it because of its popularity.
The Eagle's Nest Ni-Cu-Pd-Pt resource is rich but small. The deposit is a vertical 200 m wide ribbon requiring a lot of underground excavation. Additionally, due to the muskeg, Wyloo has decided to permanently store acid-generating rock and tailings in underground chambers.
The chromite seems doomed by being too low grade to support all the transportation: 600 km by road to Nikina, 750 km by rail to Capreol for smelting, then shipping again to steel mills.
There is a reason why Wyloo isn't doing this on their own. I wonder if they will even go ahead without further subsidies once the road is built.
There is far more undeveloped Ni-Cu-Pd-Pt in Sudbury that could be make economic with far less subsidization.
Thank you for this informed reply. I have heard for many years now about how vast the mineral wealth in the Ring of Fire is, we just need a road to get there.
I do know that road will never be built.
I continue to lobby for a No Acronym Zone. I see even Matt was confused by Jen's use of "GCC." Is that much harder to say "Gulf States"?
The Gulf Cooperation Council has been around since 1981 and I have been around much longer but I would not have been able to tell you what GCC stood for.
I believe you were absolutely correct with your analysis of the Iran situation and the reason that many MAGA supporters in the US do not support US action in Iran – The War Machine.
This is one of the three main reasons that Joe Lindsley repeatedly argues as to why many MAGA and MAGA adjacent US citizens do not support Ukraine. That is, they were burned by The War Machine on Afghanistan and Iraq and so, even though Ukraine is actually the real deal, they believe it is just another project of the War Machine. I am sure it is similar for any US involvement in Iran. Not that I fully agree with them, as I certainly do not with respect to Ukraine, I believe that is a real thing for quite a number of Americans on the right and left.
Oh and a bit off topic for anyone interested, the two other reasons Joe Lindsley gives for the lack of MAGA support for Ukraine are: 1) that they do not realize that Bursima was a Russian controlled company (i.e. it was Russian money, not Ukrainian money, paying off Hunter Biden) and 2) the Obama government, far from having the CIA foment the Revolution of Dignity, was quite willing to sell Ukraine out for “stability”.
Canadians voted 3x for Trudeau. He is a result of the lack of seriousness in Canadians, he didn't come from thin air. He was the result of a people who wanted to be taken care of like children by the state, and the rest of the world noticed.
Canada underachieves because Canadians underachieve. This is all on us, no one else.
Not really, he got minorities 2nd and 3rd time. Most Canadians are not weaklings wanting to be curled up in a ball taking government IV drips. Thats online stuff which is 50 percent or more in bot accounts. What the real problem was is the Conservatives couldn't/wouldn't put out a platform that appealed to enough people and generally waited until they thought they could win because JT was so hated.
I'm just looking at the results of the last 10 years as they are, not as we wish they were. The fact is that Canadians in our system chose left of centre parties. Most Canadians voted Liberal or even more left to the NDP (or Bloc and Greens).
The majority of Canadians the last 4 elections have voted explicitly for a more interventionist central government. They voted for more cradle to grave paternalistic programs and a more interventionist government economically.
That the Conservatives "didn't put out a platform appealing enough" just says that they didn't pursue a paternalistic and interventionist enough platform.
OMG you two and especially Matt....re: your favourable comments about Carney and what a wonderful centrist aka conservative he is....PLEASE read his book...either a cogent "political" essayed book about his life and what he stands for is a lie...or the person that is being packaged for us by state funded media is a lie....the two images cannot exist together...and with regard to defence and other initiatives...what has he DONE? All we have to go on are announcements .....announcements that are different than the previous regime and sound like they will fix their mistakes..... but that they are meant to diffuse and buy time till he can detente a crisis and then implement his "values". Don't ever forget,,,the Liberals are masters the message. EG...he says temporary immigration will be held to 5%...do the math....that is 2MM people! We peaked at 1.8MM!!!! He is prepared to allow more.
People who know better are already forgetting that Carney and the Liberal establishment essentially stole an election through massive manipulation of incumbent levers of power and by lying to the elderly and the easily scared about how Donald Trump is going to invade us / destroy us and how Conservatives will somehow collaborate with him to allow this.
Meanwhile Carney literally collaborated with Trump to get explicit permission to "run against him" with no hard feelings, and immediately after the election all the existential threats magically vaporized.
All aided by a mainstream media drenched in conflict of interest with the very notion of any non-Liberal government ever existing.
Carney's whole government is tainted top to bottom by this wretched parody of an election.
I think the American military exercise comparison is Libya. Ruin the state from the air and then ignore the mess that is there after.
The analysis I have seen makes sense for Israel going to Iran now is that they have successfully destroyed Hezbollah and Hamas.
Well, Carney has yet to prove himself, but what he has demonstrated so far is considerable savoir faire.
That skill has the potential to carry him a long way.
I think he will be around for a while. He has moved so close to the center and even a little to the right, that the Conservatives will not have a playbook other than to head further to the right and say the things that the Peoples Party does and go on ad naseum that Canada is broken. Online Convervative comments flood threads and have little fuel other than name calling like Carnage, still going on about THE TRUCKERS, or going on about body language and lip movements and screaming WEF over and over. PPs problem is he is still acting like he is fighting the inept and empty Justin Trudeau, and he isn't. Carney may have the same party name behind him, but he clearly is not running the joint like Trudeau did. THe podcast brought up a great example of committee meetings. Taking ammendments from all members like a business meeting would; Trudeau was very much against that kind of thing. The CPC is in for a LONG ride out of power if they keep playing to that trash talk while the other guy is quiet and boring and professional. They cant sell themselves as the party to fix canadas problems right now, all they can do is sell their leader will be BETTER as a leader,, and PP does not look like that . I voted Conservative by the way , but I can see things for what they are.
Carney is going to have to make some decisions that is going to royally piss off the Left. You will see the same type of comments after the fact. Both sides have a lot of nutters.
It's easy to read too much into the appearance that European leaders respect Carney.
Mark Carney talks like a Very Serious European, because he believes all the things Very Serious Europeans believe. Is it any surprise that when he does this, European leaders think he's terrific, making excellent points, and a man to be reckoned with? It is as yet untested whether Carney will prove to have actual influence, when and if he says something with which Europeans do not already agree.
That's still a contrast with Trudeau, who behaved more like a North American student union activist than a Very Serious European. From the socks, to the language policing, to droning on about gender, Trudeau sounded nothing like the Euro establishment. Europeans probably rolled their eyes when Trudeau did a victory lap for getting the Trans Pacific Partnership renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership.
I dislike many aspects of Carney's Euro sensibilities. I think his views are too European on industrial policy, Israel, privacy and free expression, among other issues. I think he has European-style overconfidence in the wisdom and competence of government. But there were no obvious issues on which he needed to be at odds with Europe at this particular G7. He said what they liked to hear, and he was mostly right to do so. We just have no idea yet what will happen if he ever doesn't.
I’m surprised you both have misread the UK with respect to their special relationship with the USA. It is, and always has been based on intelligence and military, sharing and support. Furthermore it has been on display (in the Middle East) now for months. Where the UK and the EU have failed is realizing that Trump does not share well. No he does not share. He is a user.
I agree Starmer should have known better and let Donald get flustered over paper that may well have been blank. As for running to the EU, I’m not yet convinced, if for no other reason that independence will allow them far greater freedom of action in a post Trump floundering world. Britain still has a far greater international reputation than any other European state.
A few things. You called 1. Carney a head of state? Tsk tsk.
2. The WWII Barnes Wallis Earthquake Bomb would do the trick on that Iranian underground nuclear facility.
3. Canada could really be a player by building 4 to 6 more Protecteur Class Supply Ships. The pacific navies are screaming for more of those types of ships.
Jen's analysis re Iraq may be half right, but the other half is that many people (see opini9n writers for the Globe and Mail for example) are comparing Iran to Iraq to discredit Israel's war against Iran and to discredit the US getting involved. They're not stupid enough to believe the situation is in any way similar, they're just prejudiced. They'd like Israel gone.
I'm not surprised that a change in prime minister can lead to a rapid change in how a government functions: the prime minister and PMO have accrued a tremendous amount of power in our system. They've been increasingly tempted to use that power and control to micromanage. That was tolerable when a workaholic policy wonk like Harper was doing it; it was disastrous with an incompetent narcissist like Justin Trudeau. Decisions weren't made, advice wasn't heeded, and a lot of talent was wasted or pushed out the door because of the insecurity of the guy at the top.
What has been pleasantly surprising is how Mark Carney seems to be bringing a mature and experienced approach to the PMO. It seems like he's delegating; the Liberal caucus (so far) seems to be stepping up rather than staying mired in Trudeau-era passivity. An important testing point will be how Carney deals with an incompetent minister or a troublemaker in cabinet. That's often a temptation to slide into micromanagement via the PMO, especially if an insecure leader feels like they risk a political rebellion in their caucus by demoting or firing somebody. It's only a matter of time before a Melanie Jolie makes a hash of a portfolio, or a Steven Guilbeault shoots off his mouth and creates problems by challenging the establish policy. Hopefully Carney is capable of some old-style Chretien ruthlessness.