Canada 2015-25 and Beyond: New Hope or Phantom Menace?

[Rumpy]

Well, maybe Canada and its politicians are reacting the way they have because it's not something the Country has had to face in some time, ie we're not used to all this attention. Words may be words, but they do have an impact, especially when someone is spouting so much misinformation about them.

[GreenGoo]

I guess my question to you is what do you think is being accomplished by treating the threat as legitimate?

You are mistaking my outrage as being about the real impact of his words. It's not. It's about the constant "unprecedented" articles and chin wagging about how a president elect could say such a thing. Americans have seen their norms and standards obliterated by drumpf and the GOP. The time to be shocked by anything he says is long past. Like a decade ago.

Dealing with the fallout of his stupid mouth? Sure. That's real and needs to be addressed. But article after article of hand wringing or tough talking is just noise that has no productive result, except to keep people hand wringing or tough talking, and clicks. So many clicks. The president elect is literally click bait incarnate. Just his existence. Why are we falling for it? Why are we freakin' clicking so, so many times? Isn't once or twice enough?

[Rumpy]

I don't so much see it as treating it as legitimate; I see it as considering the options or alternatives. And I think that any viable politicians have to do this in order to anticipate what he does next, say in relation to the tariffs. Sort of a what-if scenario. But in the back of their minds, they all know it can't happen, and are possibly laughing at him.

But to the video, it was tongue-in-cheek rather than super-serious.

As for why we're falling for him, eh, we're human.

[GreenGoo]

First, I'm not addressing you specifically in my original rant, nor the video. I'm mostly fed up with the entire circus.

Second, what options or alternatives do you see, regarding Canada joining the US? What complex issues are involved here that require a well thought out *public* response from Canadian politicians and our geopolitics?

As for why we're falling for him, eh, we're human.

We should all strive to do better than be lead around by the nose by an idiotic charlatan, even if he managed to dupe the American people. Twice. As Canadians we have no excuse because we have literally watched him in action for years. He treats his fellow citizens like rubes. We can not voluntarily join the rube army by playing his game. Especially since none of this is a surprise and we witnessed his nonsense repeatedly for years from a great vantage point. Why aren't we learning our lesson?? It's like people in Canada are hearing his nonsense for the first time and are flummoxed.

[Rumpy]

Trust me, I'm tired of it too, and we're only just beginning. I don't even watch much news on TV for that reason. For me anyhow, and perhaps others, it's a way of releasing stress, and maybe this is also why politicians are doing these videos.

Second, what options or alternatives do you see, regarding Canada joining the US? What complex issues are involved here that require a well thought out *public* response from Canadian politicians and our geopolitics?

Nothing specific, no. But it is something I do find interesting, particularly because of the sudden interest in our Country.

We should all strive to do better than be lead around by the nose by an idiotic charlatan, even if he managed to dupe the American people. Twice.

You know what, you're absolutely right. We should strive to do better. And I apologize if what I posted triggered you. I just thought it was worth sharing particularly because of the eloquence.

[GreenGoo]

My rant is not about you specifically. You just happened to be here when I went off.

Oh, and I think it's important to remember that drumpf says his crazy shit because of insane personal slights that he imagines (or real ones. Those I like ).

He's the most fragile man I have ever seen. He makes Kim Jong Un look like a confident, benevolent leader. And fragile men are super duper dangerous. That's why, in the past, we didn't elect them to positions of power.

But fuck it (this is directed at the entire world, not you Rumpy), let's give him the launch codes and then remind him that Scotland wouldn't let him build his golf course and made fun of his wind turbine nonsense. Should be good for a few clicks. Maybe we can derive a week's worth of revenue out of it.

[Rumpy]

No worries, and I know the feeling. We all have those days which just suck and hearing more stuff like just adds to the noise. It's essentially verbal diarrhea, especially given what he's said in the last few days which has sounded like he was having a seizure or stroke. It's hard to take anything he says seriously, but at the same time, that's part of why it's so scary for him to be so fixated on us. Or why he'll be one of the most powerful people with access to military. It's like a dog spotting a squirrel. Squirell would be like: What? What Happened??

So, while he's currently fixated on us, my hope is that it fades away soon.

Trump spends most of his time at his golf course rather than the White House. It wouldn't surprise me if he said he wants to move the Capitol to Florida.

And btw, it's not that I think he ever would, it's the thought of someone in office like him and what he could possibly do with the power he has that makes me uneasy.

[Max Peck]

The good news is that Leon has been saying nice things about Poilievre, so maybe he'll tell Trump to knock it off once the Conservatives are back in power. It isn't like the NDP have a hope in hell of forming a government, and the Liberals are toast, so the Conservatives are the default governing party this time around, courtesy of first-past-the-post. I take a tiny amount of solace is knowing that Trudeau understands that he fucked up by not following through with voting reform.

Maybe we should have a discussion about the myriad ways that Poilievre, rather than Trump, will fuck up Canada.

[GreenGoo]

He's not even president yet and he WILL do heinous things that require serious people to come up with serious answers. We need to be ready and prepared for the real threats and conflicts. The media is wasting time on will he/won't he assimilate Canada and/or Greenland.

Unfortunately we're going to have our own populist running things up here. At the worst possible time. (edit: Wrote this before seeing Max's post. At least we're on the same page).

Bad, bad juju is coming our way.

I'm terrified of the future and I'm an old white male. I can blend in if necessary. I can't for the life of me imagine what it's like to be a target of this right wing movement.

[Rumpy]

Maybe we should have a discussion about the myriad ways that Poilievre, rather than Trump, will fuck up Canada.

Yeah, why do we need Trump to wreck us when we can do that just fine on our own...

[IceBear]

Yeah, not even a chance it'll be a minority government so he could be kept a little in check. He's going to have free reign to destroy everything

[Alefroth]

Yeah, not even a chance it'll be a minority government so he could be kept a little in check. He's going to have free reign to destroy everything

At least almost all of your provinces are blue (US).

[Holman]

I don't know if anyone's seen this, but this is a great speech by Elizabeth May, who for Americans who may not know, is the Leader of the Green Party.

May I assume that Canada's Green Party is independent and is its own thing?

I ask because (as you probably know), the USA's Green Party has been co-opted by Putin and runs Moscow-friendly candidates, including the stooge Jill Stein.

[naednek]

Do we need a Canadian subforum now?

[Rumpy]

I don't know if anyone's seen this, but this is a great speech by Elizabeth May, who for Americans who may not know, is the Leader of the Green Party.

May I assume that Canada's Green Party is independent and is its own thing?

I ask because (as you probably know), the USA's Green Party has been co-opted by Putin and runs Moscow-friendly candidates, including the stooge Jill Stein.

Well, the first thing to understand is that Canada has 3 main parties (Conservatives; blue, New Democratic Party;orange and Liberals; red), then you have others such as the Green Party, a legitimate party in its own right, and then the Bloc Quebecois, which is unique in that it only ever serves the Province of Quebec. So yes, I would absolutely say it's its own thing, but it's also not independent. But their main focus is of that of an environmentally conscientious party.

[IceBear]

I thought this was a good video on Trump's US subsidies Canada rhetoric

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6610259

[Sudy]

...the USA's Green Party has been co-opted by Putin and runs Moscow-friendly candidates, including the stooge Jill Stein.

I would be as wary of faux-left propaganda as alt-right.

[Rumpy]

Speaking of the Goverment, I really have no idea who a good replacement for PM would be. It's certainly not Polievre. But at the same time, I don't know enough about the current MPs. I hear Freelandt has been canvassing for support, but may be too closely aligned to Trudeau, and Singh well, the NDP might not become the leading party anytime soon. I feel like we're in a tough pickle at the moment as there's no real standout.

[The Meal]

Best chance for northern folk to live in a Stanley Cup winning country.

[Max Peck]

Mark Carney willl be throwing his hat in the ring.

Mark Carney expected to launch Liberal leadership bid next week, backed by 30 MPs: source

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney is expected to formally announce his bid to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau late next week, a source close to his campaign told CBC News.

The source, who spoke on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Carney has more than 30 MPs backing him. The source suggested he picked up support after Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc closed the door on leadership earlier this week.

Carney, who more recently was the Bank of England governor, has long been touted as a potential leadership candidate and would be considered one of the front-runners in the race as it launches into high gear.

The 59-year-old had been tapped as a special adviser for the beleaguered party, with the official title of "chair of a leader's task force on economic growth." He attended the party's caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., in September.

The article includes of laundry list of other potential candidates. Carney and Freeland are probably the most prominent names on the list.

[Sudy]

I can't imagine any serious contender wants anything to do with Liberal leadership until after the party's inevitable obliteration in the upcoming election. As each legitimate contender announces their non-interest I chuckle to myself with non-surprise as their politcese-laden excuse belies the reality that they'll be gunning for leadership once the shine is off Pollieve's disastrous ascension and Trudeau's stink has begun to dissipate. If only real change were possible.

[Kraken]

Well, it is the new reality that we're living in. And it does affect us one way or another. And I rather hear a competent politician than an incompetent one any day.

It's not a reality. It's a contrived controversy.

It's just dick-swinging entertainment for the MAGAts. Trump has a great instinct for that.

Massachusetts would fit well with Canada, but I don't think we'd vote in favor because of our pride of place in the American Revolution. The Braintree Instructions arguably started it rolling.

[Sudy]

You stand up to bully's talking about banging your mom by laughing at them, not by seriously considering the ramifications of what would happen if he actually banged your mom, and repeating that he said it 400 times a day, then asking scholars whether it's possible for the bully to actually have sex with your mom, then publish their article about mom banging.

I don't think it's so black and white. The real concern may not be that the bully will fuck your mom. It's that the bully's going to try to steal your pudding each day at lunch regardless of how you react, and the school administration doesn't give two shits.

And let's be honest, the bully would totally fuck your mom if he thought he could get away with it, so while it's likely a waste of effort to strap on your goalie mask and gardening pads and sit outside your mom's door with a baseball bat at the ready each night, it's probably good if someone's paying heed to what that fuckhead could accomplish if he ever ran off his leash.

[Max Peck]

The Liberals could be crushed in the next election. Why would anyone want to lead them?

Back in 2012, when Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced he would resign, Kathleen Wynne says many people were asking the same questions: Who would run for leadership of the provincial Liberal party and — more importantly, given its grim prospects at the time — why would anyone want to?

"I made a decision to run for the leadership in that context, fully expecting that I wouldn't win, but also that we were on a path to lose [the next election]," Wynne — who succeeded McGuinty as both leader and premier — told CBC News.

So she has a little insight into why anyone would want to lead the federal Liberals following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's resignation, even though polls suggest the party could suffer a massive defeat in the next election.

(Although Wynne was elected in 2014, she also knows what it's like to be politically decimated, having been crushed in the 2018 vote, and being left as one of only seven Liberals elected to the legislature.)

"If you expect to lose, then you are prepared to rebuild. You're prepared to ferret out what's wrong and try to try to solve those problems because you believe in the project that you believe in the people," Wynne said.

"There has to be a fire in your belly to take that on."

That fire, in the case of the next Liberal leader, may need to last for a long time — and in the political wilderness. CBC's Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives would secure a landslide majority government if an election were held today, with the Liberals in danger of falling into third, behind the Bloc Québécois, or perhaps even fourth, behind the NDP in the seat count.

[Rumpy]

Mark Carney willl be throwing his hat in the ring.

Interesting. I hadn't even considered him. So, I guess it will be up to Freelandt and Carney for the Liberal Leadership role.

[Rumpy]

I don't think it's so black and white. The real concern may not be that the bully will fuck your mom. It's that the bully's going to try to steal your pudding each day at lunch regardless of how you react, and the school administration doesn't give two shits.

Yep, my thinking was that, yeah sure, what he says now in regards to Canada might be silly, but if he's doing that now, there's the lingering thought of what he could possibly do while in office, and it's that thought that scares me, and he's just getting started. The guy has runaway thoughts. And it's not a bad idea in general to keep an eye on him. And if anything, with the MPs engaging now, it's showing that that we're coming together as a Country. That's what I find inspiring in these videos.

[Max Peck]

To be clear, so far as I know Trump hasn't threatened to use the US military to invade Canada (although IIRC he has said that isn't off the table for Panama and maybe Greenland?), just that he'll use "economic force" to bring us into the American Empire. Whether that means anything beyond ramping up tariffs, I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure that the big, beautiful tariffs will happen to some degree because that seems to be the only magic trick he has up his sleeve. There are things, such as forging alternative economic relations to improve non-American international trade and lowering interprovincial trade barriers to shore up the domestic economy, that can be done to mitigate that damage. We'll just have to see how it plays out.

My big question is whether PM-in-waiting Poilievre stays the course in resisting whatever the USA throws at us over the next few years, or if he does a heel-turn and makes concessions in order to court favor from the billionaire oligarchy backing Trump. He seems happy to cultivate a relationship with Leon, for example.

[GreenGoo]

I don't think it's so black and white. The real concern may not be that the bully will fuck your mom. It's that the bully's going to try to steal your pudding each day at lunch regardless of how you react, and the school administration doesn't give two shits.

And let's be honest, the bully would totally fuck your mom if he thought he could get away with it, so while it's likely a waste of effort to strap on your goalie mask and gardening pads and sit outside your mom's door with a baseball bat at the ready each night, it's probably good if someone's paying heed to what that fuckhead could accomplish if he ever ran off his leash.

I think I've been pretty clear. Let's talk about the actual, possible consequences of a drumpf administration, not repeat ad nauseam his insane public nonsense like it needs to be dealt with or agonized over and fretted about.

"paying attention to what that fuckhead could accomplish if he ever ran off his leash" is exactly what I'm petitioning for, rather than address the outlandish assertions designed to garner support from his insane posse and distract the rest of us until all our time and energy are wasted on worrying about the fact that he said it.

Drumpf says insane thing about Canada. Canadians and media spend weeks repeating and being shocked by this insane thing. Next week he's going to say a new insane thing.

He's literally been doing this to Americans for 12 years. Over and over. We've learned absolutely nothing in that time. Let's just stop the pattern, ok? That's it.

edit: Planning for a drumpf administration? Good. Vocalizing his nonsense repeatedly while angry? Bad. They are not the same thing. One is proactive, the other is reactive.

[GreenGoo]

To be clear, so far as I know Trump hasn't threatened to use the US military to invade Canada (although IIRC he has said that isn't off the table for Panama and maybe Greenland?), just that he'll use "economic force" to bring us into the American Empire. Whether that means anything beyond ramping up tariffs, I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure that the big, beautiful tariffs will happen to some degree because that seems to be the only magic trick he has up his sleeve. There are things, such as forging alternative economic relations to improve non-American international trade and lowering interprovincial trade barriers to shore up the domestic economy, that can be done to mitigate that damage. We'll just have to see how it plays out.

My big question is whether PM-in-waiting Poilievre stays the course in resisting whatever the USA throws at us over the next few years, or if he does a heel-turn and makes concessions in order to court favor from the billionaire oligarchy backing Trump. He seems happy to cultivate a relationship with Leon, for example.

All real, danerous and serious concerns that need to be considered. And yes, Poilievre is the absolute worst option to have as PM during this time. At least the truck protestors will be happy? I guess?

[Rumpy]

To be clear, so far as I know Trump hasn't threatened to use the US military to invade Canada (although IIRC he has said that isn't off the table for Panama and maybe Greenland?), just that he'll use "economic force" to bring us into the American Empire.

It's rethoric, but it's also damaging rhetoric that I fear may damage relations between both Countries and any other Countries like Greenland. I feel that the politicians that are reacting now will set a precedent for how to handle him in the next 4 years. We've essentially sat up and become alert. I think it's a good thing that they're getting their practice.

And somehow, I don't think Polievre will have the Country's best intentions in mind.

[Rumpy]

So, this isn't really political, but I thought this was a great interview with our former PM Jean Chretien, who at 91 is sharing some life lessons. Great perspective and humility. The interviewer also does a really great job fielding questions. And I love the comment about the shoes!

[IceBear]

So Alberta's premiere who met with Trump on Saturday and said it was a friendly and constructive meeting has said she saw nothing to dissuade her from believing the 25% tariffs are coming next Monday. Going to suck.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.7429546

[IceBear]

Fucking Smith. Watch Trump exclude Alberta in his tariffs to reward her and drive the wedge between Alberta and the rest of Canada even more

[waitingtoconnect]

It’s wrong what she is doing. It’s easy to try and split away Canadian provinces though from a maga point of view. Polling is showing that’s not the case.

Economically every Canadian province trades more with the United States than it does with Canada. This is particularly the case with the prairie provinces like Alberta. Further Quebec and Ontario are in demographic crisis so as a collective the prairie states are going to be portrayed very heavily paying for the retirements of people in those provinces.

So we are going to see a lot of “economic coercion” to try and break unity.

[IceBear]

I also found it...interesting?...that she was meeting with Trump on the weekend and was in Panama yesterday rather than Ottawa. She off to Greenland next?

[Rumpy]

Yeah, there is something to the trade between Provincial borders. I think we could do much better in that respect.

One thing I've never been able to fully understand is why the price of fuel is so high at the pumps for us when the source is right within our own country. Shouldn't it be much lower to us? I live in an area where the price at the pump is always consistently high. It only lowers when out of the city and you start to see the native gas stations.

[IceBear]

I agree, we need better in country trade.

I grew up in Newfoundland before the cod fishery was closed and we'd catch the fish, ship it to the US and then buy the processed fish back at the grocery store (well, no real newfie would buy store fish ) but that just shows where we need to improve - do the processing of our raw materials here and then trade amongst ourselves.

Just saw that their Treasury cabinet pick disagrees that tariffs will increase the prices there. Guess the tariffs are coming and the layoffs and ruined economy will follow (up here...will work out down there I'm sure)

[hepcat]

Jesus, I know Jesse Watters is an "entertainer" not a journalist, but this interview with Doug Ford in which he basically says Canada is being hostile by not wanting to be absorbed by the United States makes me wonder why his own mother didn't just strangle him at birth. Talk about a trash human.

[IceBear]

Yup, that just enraged me. Especially the next day where he basically said "I hope we annex Canada, just because they don't want it". Talk about rape culture.

[Rumpy]

Well, it is Fox News... and like I've always said, the MAGA crowd are the ones that will believe everything coming out of his mouth and take it as gospel. That's the scary part in all this, because the MAGA crowd are more or less an extension of him. But interesting how we're supposedly the hostile ones in just wanting to be left alone.