Zeitgeist

People forget that the auto industry grew up on both sides of the border simultaneously. It was always both Canadian and American. Oshawa’s McLaughlin, the maker of autos by the same name became incorporated into GM as Buick. He became a VP of GM. Rubber for tires came out of Bowmanville. Cutting Canada out of auto manufacturing is like cutting one of your children out of your will. It’s unfair and causes resentment.

The Canadian auto market represents a significant amount of sales for these companies. Caving into Trump and throwing Canadian workers under the bus is totally unacceptable and must be countered by harsh public boycotts. Honda, you are being watched by Canadians.

Honda has announced that it’s buckling under pressure from Trump and moving production of its SUVs from Canada to the U.S. We must remember the companies that do this and stop buying their products.

I think we’ve had enough elites running governments in the West. Carney and Trump don’t understand the plight of working people. Poilievre’s platform is solid and builds on Canada’s strengths, namely energy and resources. He’ll build the infrastructure needed for Canada to become less dependent on U.S. trade and more energy independent. He’ll put pressure on municipalities and provinces to release land for housing and reduce regulations. Those are the main issues for Canada: cost of living and economic vitality/growth. I think Canada can overcome the US trade nonsense largely by diverting auto, steel and aluminum production damaged by Trump tariffs to domestic infrastructure projects that will open up new markets for Canadian energy and make the country more productive long term. Poilievre seems much more likely to do this than Carney because he will scrap the stupid regulations on pipelines and resource development that Carney still supports.

SCTV and Kids in the Hall were some of my favourite shows.

Ontario has a far more diverse economy than Alberta or BC. Even Quebec still has a more diverse economy than Alberta’s. Alberta happens to have a lot of oil that requires a lot of energy to extract. It’s a resource rich province, but it’s also colder than Ontario, BC, and Nova Scotia. It’s got tremendous natural beauty like BC, Newfoundland, Quebec, and Northern Ontario. It’s very much RCMP National Railroad country. Alberta’s economy is growing but it’s very cyclical and tied to the price of oil. Regarding our high immigration, that’s entirely the result of our low 1.3 percent birth rate. If Canada wants to fix that and maintain its culture, it will need to lower the cost of housing significantly, incentivize having kids through tax breaks, stop providing free birth control, stop having unlimited abortion rights that allow abortion up to the day of birth, and stop painting rainbows everywhere and pushing woke ideology, especially around gender and the encouragement of diverse sexual “lived experiences.” Basically Canada has to become a lot more conservative.

Canada is partly here because of Quebec. I’m not sure one can exist without the other. Sure Alberta kicks in more than it takes out. So does Ontario. Either Alberta has Canada’s back or it doesn’t. Ontario does. Canada’s challenge has always been regionalism and national unity. Yet somehow there’s enough holding us together through our shared history and traditions to be of value to the vast majority of Canadians.

Canada is the test of whether such forces can be balanced. This is the place of order and responsible government - whether you like it or not! It’s stable if nothing else. It’s China style totalitarian capitalism light. The only thing keeping it in check is evangelical Republicans.

Yeah but I think it’s worth maintaining a presence in these sectors, not at all costs, but I like the idea that if need be we can manufacture anything in a pinch. Our auto sector can produce any kind of vehicle. We let our aerospace capacity lapse somewhat. We stopped making appliances. Yes we produce top tier engineers and coders, but we tend not to cash in on intellectual property or keep our best companies from being acquired by larger fish. We have to capture more of the design royalties in a world where increasingly factories are just giant pre-programmed automated 3-d printers that can be plunked anywhere. Increasingly AI is doing the programming. How do we employ people and extract tax revenue from such schemes? The brightest programmers will always do well. Governments and pension funds will have to be shareholders essentially redistributing the profits from these enterprises. Citizens will have to derive benefits. Right now only a segment of the population are shareholders in this fourth Industrial Revolution. Countries are now just geographical zones where such business takes place and the population sets spending priorities based on its cultural and economic interests. If a guy can design a cheap rocket over the weekend using design software, everything becomes a matter of availability of raw materials, energy, and access to machinery/robotics, which can be bought if you have energy and/or resources. Canada may have more per capita energy and resources than any country. We also have the designers and programmers.

I’m excited to see resource development in the Ring of Fire. Ontario has so much going for it.

True, you really have to get southwest of London, north of Barrie, or east of Oshawa to find affordable housing. Hamilton is the exception, but pick your area wisely.

I’d like to see Ontario seed infrastructure in massive new planned communities in places like St.Thomas and Chatham in southwestern Ontario, cheap land that becomes economically viable when connected by high speed rail and decent amenities. Toronto is Manhattan North. It’s not affordable for young families. We should also be seeding cities farther north. This strip of development along Lake Ontario is a traffic nightmare. It’s going to keep growing and the subway and highway construction are going to have to be continuous. For me the most desirable places in Ontario are cities like Guelph, K-W and London. Oakville, Burlington, Kleinburg and Markham are beautiful but too expensive for most people starting out. Toronto is great for the rich.

In urban high immigration Canada I agree, except in Quebec, the Maritimes, Newfoundland and the far north where it’s not as easy to forget where you are. The fact that these new influences are so overwhelming should be reason to reflect on our reliance on immigration for our persistence and the fact that life in Canada is becoming unaffordable for families. It also should make Canadians question whether further Americanization is desirable. Again, I think we can have these different influences and maximize opportunities if people are feeling confident about the future. It really starts with the basics: Can I have a good job and afford a home? Is my community a good place to live and work? Can I expand from here?

But without culture we’re just worker bee consumers. I’m fascinated by cultural anthropology, history, architecture, and all things cultural. That’s the one big card Quebec has in North America. It’s just interesting and fun to explore regions with their own traditions, food, and dialects. Of course putting food on the table trumps other considerations, but a strong country can have both.

Yeah it’s really a continent of regions: Main, New Hampshire, and the Maritimes down to Boston, MA. Boston is as much the Nova Scotia team as the Leafs. Ontario, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and you could almost add Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin by association. BC to Northen California is one unit politically and culturally in many ways. The prairies, North Dakota, Montana, etc. The states and provinces in these regions are more similar to each other culturally and economically than these provinces are to the territories or Quebec. However, these provinces share borders with the territories and have a relationship with them too. Ontario and the Maritimes have their own deep relationships with Quebec that are more integrated than say, Vermont or New York are with Quebec. There are some cool cultural and national features that Ontario has connecting us with Quebec in places like Ottawa with the Rideau. There are French speaking towns running through northern Ontario to Manitoba that can be traced back to the original settlement patterns of Canada. I don’t have to tell you that there are French towns throughout the Maritimes and running as far west as Alberta. There are also around 200 Indigenous groups throughout Canada. These can’t ever be downplayed in cultural significance, whether or not our main government eventually shifts to Washington.

True, but the rhetoric out of Ottawa, our media, and even international media, including half the U.S. media is that Canada is the cooler cat in this match. Carney spoke with authority and garnered attention. Of course we know the deadbeat military status of Canada and the airhead radical progressivism of the last 10 years under Trudeau, but right now the Canadian government sounds pretty adroit and of the common people. Most Canadians are on board.

But that may still be a worse option overall for Canadians than simply being in an economic union of two countries with the U.S. that has free movement of people and goods. I’m not sure. I think it would depend on how much bureaucracy and duplication we could remove over time, and how aligned we become policy-wise. It’s one of those questions that is unanswerable right now but will become clearer over time. The biggest obstacle is vested interests. How do you eliminate those layers of bureaucracy? The people have to see the value and choose it. The big incentive is lower taxes and greater opportunity. People can get stuck on ideas too. Culture is an important consideration. Self-determination too obviously.

The problem is that Ontario runs Canada. How would we ditch that responsibility? lol

Canada got lazy and precious and elected Trudeau.

I’m not the one to be sold on erasing the border. I’m sick of the duplication and paperwork hassle of dealing with two different standards and requirements. I’m tired of sending so much tax money to a federal government that can’t get the basics right like passports and defence and wants to tell us how to think and violate provincial jurisdiction with a program for everything. I also don’t think, however, that the importance of the provinces can be ignored. They really are like states. Maybe you could group the Maritimes together with Newfoundland as one state. Maybe Alberta and Saskatchewan could be one state. Maybe Manitoba could be in with Ontario. Quebec would stand alone. B.C. would make a strange bedfellow of Alberta and might have to go it alone. The Republicans would need a couple of conservative states. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario are the only prospects, but Ontario is also progressive and Saskatchewan is small. The East might occasionally go conservative. Quebec and BC are full of radical left lunatics. Maybe if BC was anchored to Alberta it would be conservative overall. If Saskatchewan was anchored to Manitoba it would be conservative at least half the time. Ontario would be conservative at least half the time. Quebec would be crazy 100% of the time. The eastern provinces would be conservative a third of the time. That might work politically for the U.S., but I don’t see the Canadian provinces accepting compromising their current provincial jurisdictions. The territories would continue as-is, I think. Yeah too messy to re-jig on that scale.

Don’t forget that much of that wealth difference is in exchange rates. Under Harper Canadians briefly became wealthier than Americans. Now that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be very concerned about our dollar’s value.

Good ol’ Upper Canada. Brock would be proud.

Yes it’s very much about intellectual property. The Greater Toronto-Greater Golden Horseshoe running from Bowmanville to Niagara and north to Barrie and northwest to Waterloo is a series economic region that can do it all, from growing peaches to producing steel and cars and smartphones. Connect that with high speed rail to Montreal and its AI centres and cultural assets and the sky is the limit, but you’re right, with or without Quebec, Ontario is impressive. I forget about Ottawa, which is also an Ontario tech and cultural centre. It’s also on that corridor. But it can only work through gradualism and enticement. An economic union facilitates that without stoking fears of takeover. Annexation threats and economic pressure backfires on Americans.

Canadians aren’t giving up their sovereignty. Travel from Canada to the U.S. is down 70% since the 51st state talk and the country is in rapid realignment mode away from US dependence. Canada won’t be Puerto Rico. Canada has the 10th most powerful economy in the world, a proud history of military, technological, and industrial achievements. Canada has created one of the most harmonious and peaceful countries on Earth. Canadians want to chart their own course and have the strength to do so. A good article by Jim Stanford today said that in fact only 20% of the economy is export dependent, as 80% of what we produce is for Canadians. We can well afford the removal of internal barriers and a retooling of our economy away from US dependence. I agree we needed our asses kicked on defence, but the trade imbalance with the U.S. is BS as they get our energy at a discount. Canada needs to enhance the Canadian military and build the infrastructure and policy framework for a more productive economy. We should be prepared for the unreliability of the U.S., so any trade deal with the U.S. has to have assurances in it with penalties upon violation. The “national security” excuse can’t be abused to break trade agreements without clear justification. Canada is better off becoming less integrated with an unreliable partner.

It’s not just transfer payments. Its labels on products in Canada, its official language status and use of French in Parliament. It’s the numerous French language education programs and international Francophone ties. Pitting the regions of Canada against each other just creates more barriers to be removed later on, and look at what American threats are doing to those barriers. The country is unifying and harmonizing at lightening speed. It’s not in the U.S. interest to weaken the biggest market for its exports or to alienate its biggest foreign tourist nation. The best long term gain is a strong union of two strong countries that function economically and in many other ways like one giant country. Forced annexation is far too damaging and costly to manage. I can see a common market reducing as much duplication as possible over time. Ottawa may slip somewhat into irrelevance, but probably not completely, which is fine. The provinces won’t want to give up their legislatures, which as you said are strong in Canada.