Zeitgeist

Carney would be turned into mince meat by Trump. Carney speaks the word salad language that carries no meaning whatsoever. Can you tell me a single one of his policy plans? No, because there is no policy plan. He was advising the Liberals but supposedly has a different approach than 6 weeks ago. Gimme a break. Poilievre is a well-articulated, authentic challenge to Trump and an antidote to the Trudeau Liberals. Both electable parties are anti-51st state, but I actually want to hear more about what that would look like. Would the benefits of being paid in US dollars, living and working anywhere in the US, and having all of the access of other US citizens to the entire continent north of Mexico, not to mention lower taxes, outweigh the loss of this increasingly ineffective federal government in Ottawa? Canada’s federal government has put itself on the hook for endless payouts to Indigenous, endless barriers to development on huge swaths of the country where we’ve committed to endlessly consult with the elders. We can’t afford our current social safety net. We can’t defend our country against foreign attacks unless the Yanks do it for us. We don’t even have a merit-based hiring system because our institutions are so knee deep in gender-confused equity ideology. At this point the country needs a major realignment, whether that’s pursuing the costly nationalist policy of becoming more independent from the US, which Poilievre champions or becoming more integrated into the US. The current situation is unsustainable and under attack by the new president. Canadians cannot pretend that we can defer doing anything. If we do nothing, economic reality will reduce our options. If there’s a middle ground between 51st state and greater independence, it will look different from what we have now. Canadians should be looking at all possible options and weighing the benefits. I would rather live in the 51st state under Trump than under the Canada-hating Liberals who have significantly increased the size of our government and debt, have destabilized our culture and raised the cost of living, especially housing, through mass immigration, over-regulation, and taxation, and made us captive to Indigenous activists and woke-green radicals. Climate change? You’ll be lucky if you can keep your job in this economy.

Well Trump is probably realizing that the Conservatives are going to expand export markets and boost domestic refining capacity. He may be thinking that the Liberals are a weaker defence of Canadian independence. What do the Post National Liberals care about Canada? On the other hand this may be a rare switch where the Liberals take pages out of the Conservative playbook and try to out-conservative the Conservatives. No thanks, I’ll stick with Coke Classic and vote Conservative.

Carbon Tax Carney? He’s the ultimate elitist. Fully credentialed Goldman Sachs and WEF globalist stakeholder capitalist.

It comes down to how much independence from the US means to Canadians. What if it turns out that our own Canadian bureaucracy is holding us back? There’s a dream of Canadian independence and strength with healthy alliances. I think the closest we came to it in my lifetime was under Harper. If we could have something like that again, that would be enough for most Canadians, and it doesn’t require compromising our sovereignty or irresponsible spending. It’s far from perfect but it would be a good start.

Yup. Kinew is a likeable guy, but his pitch is a continuation of the jellyfish victim narrative. It’s weak. The NDP are all about expanding the welfare state and cannibalising the strong and successful. It’s a compelling story in certain contexts, but we need rallying cries to hard work and self-reliance.

Any Liberal leader is dead in the water come election day. People yearn for the days of Canada under Stephen Harper, when our dept was low, our dollar and national pride strong, and our international image was respected. Really if we could restore those conditions we would be in a good place. The Liberals wrecked that.

I agree. Unfortunately it’s often wars and economic hardship that remind people how hard life can get and what matters most. They realize that not everything is up for negotiation. I don’t want to see tough times ahead, but their possibility is hopefully a wake-up call. Covid ironically removed the masks hiding the self-interest and controlling nature of the elites. At least that was definitely the case in Canada. Government is disconnected from its people and the the everyday hardships of workers. I believe that’s why we see the rise of populism and rejection of status quo politicians.

I’ve arrived at the conclusion that we’ve lost the values and beliefs that brought us the constitutions that are the bedrock of our civilization. When I heard Whoopi Goldberg say that the 10 Commandments shouldn’t be allowed to be promoted in schools because, “What about the Muslims?”, I realized how stupid we’ve become. She didn’t even know that Muslims recognize the foundational books of the Old Testament. People don’t even understand that there are origins for the values underlying most of our laws. I say most because in recent decades we started forgetting those foundational principles and began allowing and even promoting behaviour that is the recipe for civilizational collapse, particularly around the family, fertility, gender roles, sexually, treatment of our food and bodies through the use of chemicals and technology, and so on. We have reaped the results of modern life: women who are expected to do everything men do and to be completely independent from men (against traditional and Biblical roles), men who act like women, people who are pleasure seekers (backed by the state with free birth control, drugs, and unlimited abortion access), a collapse in fertility countered by mass immigration (often from cultures that have different values, sometimes destructive ones), lost generations of people without purpose choosing to do themselves in through state-provided suicide or free hard drugs, dependence on the state, a refusal to take personal responsibility, and a working around key constitutional rights like free speech and self-determination on the excuse of national security or safety. The West is in free fall because it forgot and began devaluing our foundational principles. There were reasons for the elevation of some cultural values,, but now when people try to invoke those beliefs publicly, they are deemed racist or bigoted or backward. Wokism is built on a culture of overspending and excess, where people have forgotten what it takes to raise a family, budget, and build something worthwhile and lasting without the air of desperation around being able to afford a home or eat healthy food. We are told in Canada now that the state knows what we deserve and how we should live, and that the answer to our problems is a subsistence government program. We’ve stifled productivity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and the ability to take advantage of our country’s resources. In fact we’re told they don’t belong to us, that developing them is destroying the planet, and that we should hand it all over to designated victim groups that the state has decided are better people worthy of endless money for nothing handouts, groups whose ancestors had much harsher lifestyles than the ones our civilization provided. You’re right that some basic tolerance is imported in most cases, but not all beliefs and choices are of equal value, nor are all political and ideological standpoints. We’re learning that now the hard way. We’ve forgotten how much hard work it took to build and defend Canada. The WW2 generation are basically gone. The boomers brought us free love and some dubious expansions of our ideas about women, marriage, family and social organization. We’re having to do major cleanup. The generations after the boomers haven’t been any better generally.

It’s been fun watching the phoneys get a good drubbing. No doubt. Moreover, the woke tentacles are deeply embedded in Canada’s institutions, governments, businesses, unions, universities, schools, etc. It could take several years to remove them. In fact, I’m not convinced it will happen.

Yeah that’s about it. I just don’t want to see everyday working people suffer because of this silliness. Trudeau’s been publicly kicked to the curb with some sand kicked in his face for good measure. Fair enough, but now people have to act like adults and strike sensible policies or the likes of Trump and even Poilievre could be construed as mere protest votes for people who only know how to blow things up rather than be productive forces for positive change. Time will tell…

Well no one wants to be forced against their will to do anything. A cornerstone of liberal democracy is self-determination. Misunderstanding that is the flaw of overbearing governments that coerce their citizens. It’s in fact exactly what the Freedom Convoy was opposing. If the US is to win over Canadians, it can only be because the American way is the better way, freer and more prosperous. If America is perceived as coercive, even if only economically, Canadians won’t go for it, nor should they. I wouldn’t. It would mean moving towards greater self-sufficiency in all areas, including militarily, and boosting other trade relationships, e.g. Britain, Europe, Mexico, South America, Asia, etc Canadians can see for themselves how this has happened at different times in our history. The Wuwei affair was an example. America has gotten itself into trouble in the Middle East, Vietnam, etc. it has come through the other side, however. Canada has faced its own problems, like separatism and the early 90’s debt crisis. We too have come through the other side. The World Wars are examples of the power of Canadian mobilization. So, whatever your or anyone’s particular political leanings are, short of undemocratic invasion of Canada by a foreign power, Canadians are going to decide what they want to do. Trump’s power isn’t unlimited. I don’t think he wants to lose the ideological culture war to the left, which will happen if he isn’t seen as a force for good by foreign powers. Right now I think he’s better than the Democrat alternative, but people switch affiliations to serve their interests. My bet is that Trump tries this tariff move as a way of winning trade concessions and a tighter border. Canadians will make their best estimate of how to respond. The results may actually make Canada more independent, especially if we finally refine our own oil and diversify our trade away from America, build up our military to reduce reliance on the US, etc. That makes our bargaining position much stronger. Americans will pay a price for these tariffs too, remember, especially on the energy front. Danielle Smith will be forced to fall in line with any Canadian plan to restrict exports and tariff imports because international oil trade falls under federal jurisdiction, unless of course Alberta separates, which has other steep costs to consider. The Conservatives would be leading this movement to strengthen Canada. Americans could still offer the alternative of statehood, but if it’s perceived as the result of coercion, economically or otherwise, Canadians won’t like the American way. They’ll unify against it and find sympathetic international allies. We still have important connections to Britain and Europe. Markets in Asia and Africa and South America are growing. This isn’t the same Western dominated world of 50 years ago. Canada would find its place in that new reality. That’s why I keep coming back to economic union, because it offers both countries the most access to resources and markets. The Americans don’t have to go for it and either do Canadians, but it’s an underestimation of Canadians to assume that they’ll accept what America has to offer if Canadians feel that their hands are forced. Everyone knows that the trade deficit numbers Trump is saying are exaggerated. Everyone knows that we provide discounted oil to Americans and buy too many of our resources back in the form of finished manufactured products. Everyone knows that Canada doesn’t have an over the top military primarily because we don’t have as many enemies as the US. We haven’t played the imperial expansionist game that the Americans have, though we have let our military get too weak and made ourselves more vulnerable to foreign powers. That’s not to say that there isn’t a strong case for statehood or economic union, but those are the cases that must be made, the options on the table, if Canada doesn’t take the path of greater independence from the US.

I’m good with either an economic union with the US, or diversifying trade away from US and supplying our domestic market with our own refined oil, high value manufactured products, and generally becoming more independent militarily, or, last option, becoming the 51st state with American citizenship. Any of those options can be a huge win for Canadians and Canadian culture, wealth, freedom and opportunity. They aren’t the same things though. There are compromises for each path. We should really think about this honestly. Economic union seems like the best overall course, because it allows us to retain the policies that matter most and retain sovereign control of our country. Being able to live and work anywhere in North America and to have complete free trade seems to provide the most prosperity, opportunity, and freedom for citizens without getting into the muddy waters of either country having to absorb and be altered by the other country politically. The diversification away from US trade dependence option sounds great but will be costly. We may not have a choice if the tariffs remain in place, but clearly the economic union is the better option. Could Canada weather the storm? Sure. Canada has mobilized successfully in its history, but it would cause a pain that Canadians would never forget. The world would take note of the blatant might is right 19th century aggression, but life would continue. The third option, statehood, is cheaper for sure in the long run and it comes with greater opportunity and lower taxes, but loss of sovereignty. Canadians won’t go for it unless we get to a place of desperation, but you don’t want it to get to that point. Statehood puts us on level footing in terms of rights and opportunity as all other Americans, but it means that Canadian identity must assert itself culturally without the current cultural protectionism. Canada becomes a kind of Texas North, which isn’t bad at all. Texas has a smaller population than Canada but a larger economy. There could be state cultural protections and of course state laws and regulations for matters of state jurisdiction. Good and bad? Better overall than status quo? I think it could be. How much is Canadian sovereignty worth? Is it worth more than being American citizens with all the attendant freedoms and opportunities? I think sovereignty is worth a lot to Canadians at present. Economic union is the answer if it’s something both countries will support, because it ends the tariffs and gives the citizens of both countries more options. If Trump facilitates that he becomes a hero in both countries. If he just causes hardship through tariffs with a population that doesn’t want statehood and gets no third option pleasing to both countries, Trump becomes hated like never before in Canada and strong alliances fail apart. For what? If he wants to lure Canadians with statehood, make a persuasive case for it and consider other options like economic union.

You don’t know what the value of Canada is. You think it’s communism, as all of your posts about getting free stuff from the government paid for by working people illustrate. The question that should be asked is, What agreements and forms of governance best serve the interests of Canadians? If you believe in massive government that overspends on excessive and ineffective programs, over-regulates business and speech, and refuses to properly defend the country, while denigrating the country and its history and pitting groups against each other, then the NDP-Liberal-UN Post-National State is for you. If you believe in free speech, entrepreneurial opportunity, minimal government interference, and maximal wealth generation, while celebrating the culture and history of Canada, then you want significant change. I hope the Conservatives can do it, but if they can’t get the country out from underneath China, woke-green lunatics, and the anti-Canadian Post-National State, 51st state starts to look very appealing. In order to have a country you have to believe in its values and that it’s worth defending. If you support democracy, you have to support freedom of speech and economic opportunity. If you support capitalism, you can’t make it hard for the country to develop its resources and for people to grow businesses. There has to be a vision worth following. I’ll take the American Dream over the Post-National surveillance state. The Conservatives are at least standing by a compelling vision of Canada.

Let me see, CNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, CBC, and CTV on the left. FOX on the right. The right has such an advantage…

Yes, or at least economic union with freedom of movement, residency, and employment. If the worst option is statehood, it means greater prosperity, opportunity, and freedom than we currently have.

What it illustrates is the foolishness and dishonesty of the leaders who tried to beat everyone with the woke-green progressive stick, telling them they’re too bigoted, too sexist, too capitalist, too colonial, too patriarchal, too wasteful, too wealthy, too free, too rude… Our own government recklessly devalued its people, people who know in the deepest ways what’s really important in life: an honest day’s work, opportunity, the ability to think and speak one’s thoughts freely, the ability to raise a family according to time-tested values… Our government has divided people against each other by designating some groups as noble and worthy and others as the opposite, and the groups that they designated as bad are the ones whose ancestors are most associated with building the country, including most of what Canadians actually like about Canada. It leads Canadians to draw one of two conclusions: Ether the current government doesn’t mean what it says and actually likes Canada, which means they are liars trying to score points with radical internationalists, Marxists, and other activists, or they actually believe that the Canada of freedom and opportunity, based on Western values and traditions, must be torn down and handed over to the radicals and favoured designated victim identity groups. Either way, these people should not be in charge I would rather see America run the show if the current leadership types in Canada can’t be removed, because they aren’t Canadian. I’m not sure yet that Canadians will remove them though, because our population has been brainwashed to believe the anti-Canada rhetoric. It didn’t take long. 10 years.

So O’Leary is a traitor for wanting to see Canadians have more opportunity, freedom, and prosperity? I didn’t know poverty and stupidity were Canadian values.

The Donald and most Americans don’t care much about any of that unfortunately. He’s fixated on the expense of Canadian nationhood as it relates to US interests, because we’ve made ourselves so dependent on our US exports that essentially we count on US policies over which we currently have no control as citizens of a foreign country outside the US. Other than a few social programs that the majority of Canadians would want to keep, most Canadians would like a lower cost of living, lower taxes, greater clout internationally, the ability to live and work anywhere in North America, less regulation and red tape, and probably even the US dollar, which is what 51st state gives us. Of course Canadians want to have the discretion to opt out of some US policies. They want to maintain their expensive Scottish parliament to keep a sovereignty which defines itself primarily as not American. I think the answer is economic union for complete free trade, freedom of movement, and reduction and/or virtual elimination of some of our government departments. Basically cut the size of the federal government in half, reduce its responsibilities, and consolidate most departments into committees that harmonize and approve or disapprove application of US standards and policies to Canada, subject to parliamentary approval. Keep a basic border as a security checkpoint to ensure that bad actors and illegal firearms don’t enter each other’s territories, and add the ability to attain an AmCan card allowing free movement, residency and employability in either country. The adoption of the US dollar and eliminating the Bank of Canada might be a sticking point. so that option could be set aside and left for consideration after the aforementioned elements of economic union are settled and tried. I’d love to see the CRTC disappear and a ton of new competition and players enter our markets. Much of what we do to maintain separate Canadian versions of everything is costly duplication. We can’t even defend this sovereignty because we stripped our military to a minimum. Energy and resources are our greatest natural strength, but our own government gets in the way of developing them. It’s not worth propping up such a bloated government and bureaucracy. The price of having a separate array of Canadian governments and regulations is less prosperity, less freedom, and less opportunity. Why, so our “federal Canadian government” can tell us how lousy Canada is and why Canadians should endlessly hand over hard-earned earnings to designated victim groups and pay for the costly pet projects of woke-green activists?

The economic and other stats are accurate. Prove otherwise. The left has reinstated racism through DEI hiring and admissions, still blossoming in Canada as our Supreme Court is stupid compared to America’s I like the pro life ads. It’s about time. ——- Poilievre is as good as it gets to reverse Canada’s radical left downfall. However, he has a steep hill to climb. I think ushering in 51st state is the better long term strategy. We pay a lot to have all the duplication of standards and institutions just so we can distinguish ourselves from the Yanks. It’s not worth it. If 51st state isn’t popular in Canada, we should at least seek an economic union with right to live and work in each other’s countries. Ax the tax and other Poilievre ideas are good but may not be enough to reverse our fortunes in a lasting way.

As has been stated multiple times by different posters, the centre in Canada has been hijacked by the left. Canada is seen internationally, and particularly by US Republicans and centrists from both US parties, as an experimental leftist regime that pushes dubious projects like MAID for the mentally ill, unlimited abortion up to the expected date of birth, free and legal hard drugs, “safe” injection sites where opioids have become the number one cause of death for people under 30, promotion of alternative sexual orientations and non-biological gender in schools and all government institutions, unaffordable and ineffectual social programs, silencing of speech that questions government in a country where mainstream media is government-funded and heavily regulated, frozen bank accounts of government protesters, crippling of our resource sector through regulation, gutting of the middle class through irresponsible mass immigration, over-regulation, carbon taxes, etc. It will take at least a decade to restore sanity, liberal democracy, and opportunity in a country where all parties and institutions are ideologically captured by radical woke “feminist”, socialist, climate activist imbeciles.

A Commonwealth free trade agreement is problematic because of low cost jurisdictions like India and parts of Africa. Britain, Canada, and Australia could hammer something out, perhaps with some more developed countries.

I disagree. The US is the only major economy holding up living standards and freedom. Without that bulwark, much of the West would see a collapse in living standards in the name of UN resolutions to “save the planet.” A Chinese totalitarian surveillance state would quickly fill the void left by US hegemony. You want to be part of the US club, not outside it. Not even Britain can withstand international pressures these days. Having said that, Canada should absolutely diversify trade away from the US and remind Trump that any additional trade barriers to the US for Canada (tariffs) are a violation of USMCA and can result in limited access to our oil and resources, including tariff countermeasures. Canada absolutely should expand trade to other markets. Trudeau foolishly shut down the idea of exporting LNG to Europe. That needs to be reversed.

The irony of this radical left takeover of Canada’s government and institutions is that Canada did not allow slavery or have bounty hunting of Indigenous or massacres of any groups. The US did (Price per head, Wounded Knee, etc). In fact it was progressive Canada that set up free public education and accommodation for Indigenous children and there isn’t a single piece of evidence for the intentional killing of an Indigenous person. Nevertheless, the Canadian government says that Canada committed cultural genocide and Canada appears on the world stage as a colonial genocidal state. Why is that? It has everything to do with a government and institutions dominated by people who don’t know what real hardship and loss of freedom means. They think that looking at someone the wrong way or saying something mildly offensive is triggering and an act of violence. they don’t understand the value of free speech. These people complete with each other before media to prove how woke and progressive they are. Everyone knows it’s fake and most people don’t even agree with the sanctimonious platitudes. The bottom line is that Canada, its culture, and its citizens have been thrown under the bus to score political points with the UN and other unaccountable bodies. That’s one of the reasons Trump has had such appeal south of the border. He doesn’t kowtow to foreign entities or pretend to be something he isn’t for the cameras. I’d rather have a real person as a leader who says what he really thinks than a big phoney.

MAGA? You have no solutions. You just justify and defend inadequacy and accuse critical thinkers of being MAGA or alt right or something. This illustrates the mindlessness that got us here.

I should’ve qualified that I was looking at Peel Region demographics. Rural Canada is changing at a slower pace but also being vastly overshadowed by urban Canada. You, like Hardner take the What me worry? approach. That’s how we got here.