Zeitgeist

Buddy, get off the welfare and pot and come back to us when you’re sober and 10 years older.

Canadians need to understand that country will only survive and thrive by winning the ideological war against people with views like Herbie’s. His ilk are destroying the country.

I think this is the problem for Canada: We are essentially a boutique country where our taxpayers and productivity take a hit for being a kind of welfare state for preferred identity groups. Quebec will shoot itself in the foot economically to maintain its fascist language laws and treating the rest of Canada like a foreign country. The Indigenous leaders will maintain their culture of dependence to benefit themselves at the expense of the economic and mental wellbeing of their populations. Canada will be held back economically to satisfy these identity lobbies. Canada is a socialist cultural protectorate where some groups are propped up at everyone else’s expense. I guess Canadians will decide whether this is worth maintaining. It’s annoying.

I generally agree and I think that anyone who knows the facts would also agree. The question is how to turn this segment of society from a burden into an asset, not just for Canada but for themselves. No doubt there are successful Indigenous and successful bands, but not enough. This is very much a Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand problem. The Americans simply decided a long time ago that this is what we’re willing to accept and if you don’t like it, too bad, assimilate like everyone else. It’s actually a selling feature for Canada joining the U.S.. I don’t think the Americans understand how much of a hassle and expense the Indigenous file is in Canada. Quebec is also a strain. Nevertheless, Canadians so far are up for managing it. I don’t think the Yanks would be nearly as sympathetic.

I think it’s a creative solution that certainly moves the needle closer to autonomy. I still think that the government needs to get out of the business of having an Indigenous Affairs Department and budget, whatever that is now. A kind of final settlement needs to happen. No one is going to take away the reserves and reservations. Probably the status cards will have to be maintained only to determine who gets to stay on the reserve so to speak, but the tax exemption should actually be a tax swap, meaning that if you don’t pay the feds, you must pay the rez. Gradually, but ideally quickly, that health and education expense should shift to the reserve and paid through local tax collection. This effectively turns reserves into their own provinces, except that locals won’t have to pay federal taxes if they pay the rez. Yes some will leave the rez permanently and live and pay taxes to the Feds and provinces like the rest of us, but there’s always the option for holders of status to move back. If you think that all status holders should receive an annual amount of money like an annuity, in addition to what I’ve said, I think that’s going to maintain the dependency, because presumably someone can live in free housing on the reserve, collect the annuity, and never have to earn an income. I think that’s an unhealthy moral hazard that leads to intergenerational welfare recipients living in publicly funded housing. It will always be a sad kind of subsistence. Indigenous do need to be able to benefit from the resources under their dedicated lands, but they also shouldn’t be able unilaterally shut down interprovincial projects. If there must be a permanent annual annuity, it should be taxed by the Rez/feds to pay for local health and education, so that it’s clear to everyone that this money is coming from Canadian taxpayers. We may be stuck with the annuity, but it shouldn’t be big enough to allow someone to be a total loafer. The Indigenous population is actually a growing population and the expenses to taxpayers are growing, especially as the settler colonial narrative of victimhood is retold, often involving unverifiable events and people who aren’t alive today. That financial burden is paid by people who had nothing to do with those events. There’s another big piece to this puzzle that impacts all Canadians, which is that we may all have to end up on an annual annuity or Universal Basic Income as automation and A.I. makes jobs redundant, so maybe the reform of Indigenous Affairs can coincide with the implementation of UBI, such that everyone gets enough free money to subsist and can supplement the amount with income from employment. Beyond a certain income level it starts to get clawed back. That might effectively end the two tier citizenship of the Indian Act without taking away the reserves or status. However, the moral hazard of becoming a loafer will remain. Perhaps every society faces this hazard. Some work hard and are motivated to be productive. Others do little with what’s handed to them, and in fairness, some are handed more than others. There’s probably no avoiding this stratification, though some funding formulas probably do instil more drive and motivation than others. Tough but important questions…

Until Indigenous pay taxes like everyone else or collect their own taxes to pay for their own health and education, they will remain a kept people. That’s just the way it goes. Either demonstrate true self-sustainability or pay the cost of your upkeep by paying into the system. Everyone with a brain sees the two-tier citizenship and the dependency the Indian Act and reserve system creates, yet it’s the Indigenous who want to keep it. Stoke the past injustice narratives, demand more money. Keep needling Canada, but the price of this game is never breaking the cycle of dependence.

Yup, and most native settlements were temporary. Native bands invaded each other’s settlement areas and “stole” them. The Northwest Coast Indigenous who did have permanent settlements were the biggest slave owners in Canadian history. Of course you’ll never hear about that or the fact that free public education for Indigenous was a progressive cause in its day supported by the majority of Indigenous. Why? Because today’s public education systems are run by woke activists who want you to believe that Residential Schools were a system that people like them would never have supported, when in fact they would’ve been its biggest cheerleaders. These are the folks now imposing race-based education, racist hiring practices, and gender ideology in schools.

If Canada comes apart and some or all of it gets absorbed into the U.S., it will be because of this. If we can’t get “national projects of significance” done that will make us wealthy and strong, we shouldn’t be a country. Let the provinces do their own thing or let Washington ignore the sucks in B.C. and Quebec, because let’s face it, it’s the leftist self-proclaimed victims among the natives and in Quebec and B.C. holding Canada back economically. I’m sure the U.S. doesn’t want to deal with their nonsense either. Washington should support Canada’s sovereignty just to save money on clean-up and management. Interestingly, Alberta can’t be as independent as Ontario, B.C. or Quebec because they don’t have seacoast. They need interprovincial/interstate infrastructure. Even Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces have that important trade advantage.

It’s highly arguable though that the U.S. is in the death throes of a major realignment away from Pax Americana, and I don’t think this is a good thing. Until recently the US was the lifeboat of the West for security, democracy, and economic power. It’s struggling to maintain that for its own citizens, so it’s trying to shake down the rest of the world using the excuse that they have been too generous in the past. Yet America was just the fresh new empire that emerged out of the British Empire, which itself was the leading alternative power after the Holy Roman Empire which grew out of the Macedonian Empire which came out of the Greek city states, etc. in many ways Canada is the fresh new growth out of a fading empire, but we’re in transition, growing our country. Trump doesn’t have us under heel in the most important ways. We can still produce and sell to ourselves and other countries. The U.S. exports represent about 22% of our economy, significant but not insurmountable. Also many American states benefit greatly from trade with Canada and Canadian tourism and patronage. Trump is on a short leash that will choke him out of political relevance in 20 months if he hasn’t improved the US economy. Doge didn’t accomplish much and now Musk has abandoned ship. Trump is calling Xi. Major corporations are hugely upset by the tariff uncertainty and so are markets. Carney just has to keep the focus on modernizing the Canadian economy and brokering the best deals. Either Canada comes through the other side united or it succumbs to total American takeover. I don’t think that becoming part of the US is necessarily bad or the worst of possible outcomes. What matters is whether Canadians are making the most of what they have in the area we call Canada.

Alberta’s interests would be overwhelmed by the interests of a U.S. federal government and other states if it joined the U.S. That’s the problem in general for any part of Canada joining the U.S. it’s not an equal partnership. The biggest losses would be cultural, but Canada has to get real about prosperity fast or cultural considerations will be the least of our worries.

And then the prosperous provinces will either follow suit or be independent jurisdictions surrounded by a self-interested U.S. The U.S. shouldn’t think this is in their interests to make or let Canada unravel, because managing these economic and cultural regions and groups is very hard and expensive. It’s not worth it. Let Ottawa run it, but if Ottawa fails to keep this country strong and united…

Without Alberta, Quebec culture will no longer be propped up in North America, because the transfer payments to Quebec from oil and gas sales will evaporate. BC will simply become a de facto retirement province of China, with most of the province off limits to non-Indigenous.

The only good thing to come out of the Trump taunts on our sovereignty and the surge in Canadian pride is that we may finally get real across the country about what we need to do to make this land and its citizens thrive: eliminating interprovincial trade barriers, expanding trade beyond the U.S., increasing our domestic market for Canadian-made goods, investing heavily in long overdue infrastructure projects like high speed rail, pipelines, ports, deregulation of barriers to business, and domestic military and commercial production of our own vehicles, ships, etc. If our federal and provincial governments finally have the strength and courage to override the ridiculous radical special interests holding us back, then we can call this period the proving ground for the Canadian people and the Canadian nation state. These are the only options for Canada now. Everything else is fluff and pandering to victimhood. Basically the federal government needs to set up an encampment at Stelco and the other major smelters and steelworks and build, build, build. Don’t put workers on welfare. Give them real work of national significance. These policies and projects should’ve been implemented decades ago. As for Carney’s attempt to strike a new “economic and security partnership.” It better not be a capitulation to one-sided tariffs against Canada. It should be an economic union that expands economic and mobility opportunities for Canadians and Americans in equal measure. Live and work anywhere in North America with minimum residency length requirements to draw government benefits. That’s the opportunity. The Trump 51st state rhetoric and surge in Canadian pride over its incumbent flabby economy/Liberal government are side shows that distract and threaten to derail this opportunity for both countries.

To be honest there were so many lawsuits, many of which were thrown out, that I stopped paying attention. He had to pay out big money for disparaging that E Carrol woman. She made a killing out of it. The biggest victim in all of these cases was the justice system.

Rapist in a he said she said trial with no witnesses and an all Democrat New York jury? She made tens of millions of that dubious case. Unfortunately the courts were highly politicized against Trump and most Americans understood that in the election. That isn’t to say that. Trump has a highly moral character or that he hasn’t crossed the line legally in situations. I can’t say. The Stormy Daniel’s cases were also ridiculous. You’ve been watching too much CNN.