SpankyMcFarland

People who voted for him because of inflation weren’t paying attention to global trends after Covid. He promised to bring prices down, not just reduce inflation, once he got into office but that hasn’t happened. Anyway, everybody knew what he was from the first time - entirely concerned about himself and determined to destroy the guardrails all his predecessors respected. That certainly has happened.

So Trump is going to save Europe by attacking its countries or abandoning them to Putin? Very Vietnam. The Soviets did the fighting in Europe in WWII. America was only slightly involved in that and belatedly too. By rights there should be ten movies about Kursk, Stalingrad and Berlin for every one about Normandy etc.

We have a huge vulnerability to US spying through their tech firms. They can shut our economy down at any time too. It’s high time we were honest about that. We’d be far better off with European and Canadian companies than American or Chinese ones, not an option right now but something every prudent country that values independence and the rule of law should be moving towards. We can’t trust them. That much has been made abundantly clear.

I realize there are arguments on both sides and that China is a unique problem for the world with its trillion dollar plus trade surplus but I feel we should not exclude one of the tech leaders in EV, if not the leader already. Trade should continue as far as possible,

Does it matter? Isn’t the new leader cruisin’ for a bruisin’ anyway? I still think of Dumont as a fresh face but that was many, many years ago when I was following a campaign as I drove across the country. Hasn’t he ruled himself out of this one already? My only issue is the hydro deal with NL and keeping the PQ out. Doomed quests, I fear. If we have referendums in Quebec and Alberta that grotesque excuse for a human being south of the border will interfere in both.

A lot of people here need to see America as it is now under the current wretched leader and his ilk - in relative decline and no longer as close a friend as it was to us. Also we are not Americans despite our proximity. Some of you will deny those facts till your last breath but you won’t change them.

Do you intend to protect our car industry completely and indefinitely from Chinese competition? That rather Marxist proposal doesn’t sound like a good deal for consumers. I know China’s industrial policies are a problem but shutting their product out completely doesn’t sound prudent. We need to compete with them in EV technology. It is coming to the world whether we want to deny that fact or not. Let’s not be Luddites here.

Please try and understand basic differences among people who disagree with you. We are not all the same. I don’t ‘praise’ the totalitarian nightmare that is China but I do refuse to ignore the unprecedented challenge that the West faces.

While Xi’s engineers road-test the future, Trump continues to turn the clock back by focusing on oil, tariffs, real estate, very exclusive clubs and keeping the Epstein files under wraps.

Is it possible that Erdoğan and Aliyev could support Azeri separatism and ultimately union with Azerbaijan?

Monopolistic behaviour is not confined to Canada. Look at the way Facebook and Google are allowed by heavily lobbied US politicians to buy up potential competition. The only country that has resisted this trend is China, hardly a model of open markets itself.

Discussing who pays what for defence is fine but should be entirely separate from the sovereignty of Greenland issue raised by Trump. There’s an assumption at the heart of NATO and the West that nations have the right to determine their own government. This isn’t the Warsaw Pact. What’s deeply disturbing about Trump is that he seems to get on better with Xi and Putin than he does with democratically elected leaders in Europe. Differences over immigration, taxation and how much each country should pay for its defence loom larger in his mind than the fact that the countries of the West share hard-won, basic assumptions on personal freedom and national self-determination. Frankly, it’s hard to tell which team he is on at this stage.

In many countries large cities are very expensive to buy in now. Nobody is born with a right to afford property there. The pioneers who built this country didn’t imagine they’d all end up in such places.

Not originally, as an immigrant. I started with a visa. I don’t blame governments or other people for my problems. If the Tories get in, fine, I’ll carry on and do just as well.

Any country that shares a language with a much larger one right beside it faces the same concerns about foreign influence as we do. Go to Ireland or Pakistan and you’ll hear similar conversations. In addition, social media poses multiple novel threats to our privacy, local news media, childhood development and social cohesion that we are just beginning to understand. We are still in the Marlboro Man stage on this industry and its dangers. On agriculture, the reality is very different from what some Americans allege. In 2024, Canada was the second-highest importer of U.S. dairy products, buying about $1.14 billion US, and was the top market for eggs and related products. The total agricultural exports to Canada amounted to about $28.2 billion US in 2023! Does that sound like we are shutting the US out? In addition, America still turns a blind eye to the thousands of illegal workers in its dairy and agricultural industries and then indignantly insists we must import even more of these illegally produced items. Let’s reform sensibly. For example, I have no need of Canadian content or local oligopolies when it comes to the companies providing cellphone and Internet services. By comparison with Europe, our cellphones contracts still cost too much here IMO.

I do believe myself. Russia is losing in Ukraine at this stage. Any use of nuclear weapons would be a massive gamble and an admission that they have lost the conventional war.

Sorry, I’m not Iranian, nor am I particularly familiar with Iran. I’m just a random Internet monkey. I have watched the Kurds in multiple countries, eg, Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, fight for more autonomy. If Iran was plunged into chaos, why wouldn’t the Kurds, for example, fight to create an independent Kurdistan where they would be safer and would have their own country?

Anything written in China or with Chinese data is suspect.

Do you live near Toronto yourself? Do you own a house there? As a radical leftist Marxist I made a great living in this country working in remote locations and doing jobs Canadians were simply not prepared to do.

Which one of us wants to get rid of Canada?

Like the US, China has become a problem that no one country can solve. Here’s a claim I would be sceptical of: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-never-deliberately-pursued-trade-surplus-vice-premier-says-2026-01-20/ At the current rate of trade surplus expansion, China is going to run out of globe soon. Its leaders seem obsessed with production for its own sake in every sector.

It’s very difficult to assess exactly what China is doing in health care.

If you don’t like being Canadian there is a simpler solution.

Genuine question: do you want MAID to be reformed or abolished?

Steal till you draw your last breath.