News / canada
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1 min read
A Referendum She Doesn't Want to Win
Read more . . . →Two weeks from now Alberta votes on whether to begin the legal process of leaving Canada. The latest polls have separation at 22%. Danielle Smith, the premier who called the referendum, publicly said that number is “still too high for my comfort.” She doesn’t want it to pass. Sixty percent of Albertans will vote no. Half the province says the question is confusing. And yet here we are, burning public money on a vote whose entire purpose is to let Smith tell the loudest 22% of her caucus she tried. This is what happens when a politician runs out of...
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1 min read
Four Days Until Your Whisky Disappears
Read more . . . →In four days, it becomes illegal to import Canadian whisky into the United States. Also banned: Canadian beer, wine, vodka, cider, motorcycles, and whey protein. Trump signed the executive orders as retaliation for Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, which were retaliation for his original tariffs, which were retaliation for Canada having the nerve to exist next door. The circle of punishment lands, as it always does, on the person holding the receipt. This is what a trade war looks like when one side runs out of ideas. You can’t negotiate your way to a win, so you take the other country’s beer...
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1 min read
Nobody Leaves the Table
Read more . . . →Donald Trump signed an order yesterday to strip all Canadian-origin goods from federal procurement, $280 billion in contracts, because Canada had the nerve to launch a Buy Canadian policy after he tariffed them. The same day, he told reporters that if the European Union goes ahead with its plan to make Canada an associate member, he’d consider it a “hostile act” and hit Europe with tariffs too. Read that again. He’s kicking Canada off his shelves and threatening to punish anyone who puts them on theirs. This is the trade-policy version of the guy who dumps you and then shows...
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1 min read
Wounded and Confused Is Not a Foreign Policy
Read more . . . →Pierre Poilievre went to New York last week to go on CNBC and tell Americans that Canadians feel “wounded” and “confused” by Trump’s tariffs. That’s the pitch. That’s the whole strategy from the man who wants to run the country. Fly to the city where the guy tariffing you keeps a gold tower, get on his favourite channel, and describe your entire population as hurt and bewildered. I’ve seen better negotiating posture from a kid who got his lunch money taken and went back to say “that really stung, man, could you maybe not?” Meanwhile Carney is in Strasbourg pitching...
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1 min read
Twenty-Five Years and a Beer Ban
Read more . . . →Twenty-five years ago today, US airspace shut down and 38 planes carrying 6,500 people dropped into Gander, Newfoundland, a town of about ten thousand that wasn’t expecting any of them. The people of Gander emptied their fridges, opened their churches, dragged cots into community halls, and took care of complete strangers for days. They didn’t negotiate terms. They didn’t send an invoice. They just did it, because that’s what you do when your neighbor’s house is on fire. Today, on the anniversary of that, the president of the United States is banning Canadian beer. Canadian rye whisky. Canadian motorcycles. Canadian...
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1 min read
Twelve and a Half Percent Is an Answer
Read more . . . →Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives held Chicoutimi-Le Fjord with 34.1% of the vote twelve months ago. On Monday the riding voted again. They got 12.5%. Third place. Behind the Bloc. That’s not a bad night at the polls. That’s the kind of number you see when a party stops existing in a region. Twenty-two points gone in a year, and the Conservative response is to demand Carney cancel a gas tax increase. All three byelections went Liberal with over 50% of the popular vote. Carney didn’t squeak these out. Nobody came remotely close. The Conservative share dropped in every single riding, including...
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1 min read
He Renamed the Water
Read more . . . →Donald Trump signed an executive order yesterday renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” The name Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io (“beautiful lake”) and it’s been on maps since before the Declaration of Independence existed. Four hundred years of Indigenous naming, erased because a man who can’t find most countries on a map decided a body of water shared with another country needed a more patriotic brand. The Interior Department has 30 days to update the federal database. Canada is not required to adopt the change. Canada will not. This is what happens when you run out of leverage....
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1 min read
The Deal Was Never a Deal
Read more . . . →Trump spent three days telling everyone he had a deal with Canada. Posted about it on Truth Social. Floated resurrecting a dead oil pipeline as a victory lap. Then late last night, the talks collapsed, and at midnight 50% tariffs landed on $20 billion in Canadian imports: lumber, electronics, clothing, furniture, dairy, booze. The USMCA, the trade agreement he personally signed in 2020, says none of this is supposed to happen. His trade rep blamed Canada for “walk backs.” Carney said the US changed terms at the last minute that were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of...
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1 min read
He Broke the Window and Sold You the Glass
Read more . . . →Trump set a deadline of August 19 — tomorrow — for 50% tariffs on Canadian dairy, alcohol, and autos. The “deal” he’s offering to make them go away: Canada drops its retaliatory tariffs, opens up dairy markets, kills provincial procurement rules, and accepts the American interpretation of trade quotas. In exchange, the US would reduce some of the tariffs it imposed on Canada in the first place. That’s not a negotiation. That’s a guy who breaks your window and then offers to sell you the glass. Carney keeps saying Canada won’t accept a bad deal, but the framework leaking out...
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Seventeen Said It Out Loud
Read more . . . →Seventeen Conservative MPs told CTV, off the record, that they don’t think Pierre Poilievre can beat Mark Carney. Not two backbenchers griping into a pint glass. Seventeen elected members of his own caucus, speaking to a camera crew, saying out loud what the polling has been screaming since spring: the man is underwater. His favourability sits at 34 percent. His unfavourability is 52. Carney leads him on every single policy question pollsters can think to ask — cost of living, housing, trade, health care — by gaps of nine to fourteen points. The Liberals are up 43 to 34 nationally....
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