Zeitgeist

Read The Book of Negroes. Your remarks are so demeaning. Canada has a proud and interesting black history.

Canada has a proud anti-slavery history. Look up the Underground Railroad. We also have a very long established black community in Nova Scotia. Let’s not be self-righteous about this. Slavery was legal in the British Empire until 1832.

Ha ha, you really don’t know how political events have unfolded in Quebec since the last referendum. Quebec is a nation within Canada. It has special privileges over other provinces that it would be a huge stretch for Americans to accept. Quebec often receives transfer payments from other provinces yet is also the highest tax jurisdiction in North America and Quebec makes a lot of revenue from Hydro Quebec. Quebec is left of any other province in Canada except perhaps BC. Heard of 5 or 7 dollar a day subsidized daycare? That’s s Quebec thing. Canada maintains fully bilingual government services. Many provinces offer French immersion programs. Smaller French communities outside Quebec are strengthened by the relationship with Quebec. Relationships between the provinces are strong. Quebecers are thriving, maintaining their identity. Separatism is way down and fading with the older generation. There’s so much to say about how Canada supports Quebec and the French language, including Radio Canada. Do you think the US would provide half of that? Dream on. You don’t understand Quebec or Canada.

The costs of immigration are hard to calculate because many new immigrants are adding to the tax base, essentially expanding the economy, growing the pie so to speak. Yes city shelters are full and the refugee programs are costly in the first year. We need to see data on where these refugees end up after one year, two years, and so forth. I think it was noble to take in Syrian refugees, but we need to address challenges at home, like having a sustainable plan for remote indigenous communities where people are living in third world conditions in terms of housing, and where it’s not viable to build schools and hospitals because the communities are so small and there’s no real tax base. Kids often have to leave there families to attend far away high schools. We’re seeing depression, suicides, substance related deaths, racism among the non indigenous community. There needs to be hard conversations for a sustainable plan, because support is competing with the other interests of taxpayers. Recent immigrants feel little responsibility towards these groups. Those are real problems. The larger economy is still booming, but the US is in an unprecedented situation of economic growth coupled with rising debt due to the massive public spending on tax cuts. Rising debt and rising interest rates are a major concern. We also worry going forward about plant closures, labour strife, property values...But we always worry about such eventualities which aren’t easy to predict.

I don’t disagree with much of what you are saying here. Trudeau isn’t as strong as his dad, who was better able to capitalize on such tensions for political gain. However, there would be far fewer Canada-US tensions with a different president in office. We’ve had good relations before between conservative presidents and liberal PM’s or vice versa. I understand what Trump is trying to do standing up for American interests, but his damage to foreign relations is really a bridge too far. Not even the US can go it alone. I get the whole tradition of isolationism, but the US will have to manage a rising China, an expansive Russia, continued challenges with supporting a restless demographic that may not have decent jobs due to automation and offshoring, climate/political mass migrations, etc. Coordinated approaches with other countries can only help.

I like what everyone has said on this. Reassuring actually.

Well, unemployment is at historic lows. Our debt levels are reasonable relative to other G7 countries. Legitimate immigration is going fine. The border crossings were troublesome and we need to wind down refugee programs because we have to address third world conditions on some of the reserves. That’s a big undertaking that requires courageous conversation. Our headwinds are getting oil to markets and negotiating the surreal vagaries in the US. The situation with China could go either way, but we’re caught in the middle of Trump’s trade wars.

I’ve had misgivings about both parties in the past, but neither party can stray too far from the centre without upsetting the public. I was worried about Harper, but he ended up governing from the middle and was taken more seriously than Trudeau on the whole. Trudeau is youthful and I think quite sincere, but he’s a bit naive. His biggest problem is being PM with Trump as president. Trump seems to have a barely disguised loathing of Trudeau. My issue with Trudeau is that he gets very activist about the wrong causes, like not letting party members vote with their conscience on matters like abortion. He’s a bit too radical about some of the wrong things. Fine if you want to be pro choice, but don’t turn it into a dubious moral crusade. He has been mistreated by Trump, who seems quite amoral and has been belligerent to allies. I think both leaders need to go, but it was much better for Trudeau when Obama was president. The US was better under Obama.

More sky is falling paranoia. Canada is thriving. Appreciate and protect it, Liberal or Conservative.

Absolute bullshit. More right wing paranoid drivel. I’m waiting to hear from you about the Globalist Conspiracy and Soros. Shouldn’t you already be in a FEMA camp?

Yes our military is interoperable with other NATO forces, but to my knowledge we don’t have any nuclear warheads on Canadian soil. That’s Trudeau Sr.’s doing. It sounded very peace, love and Hare Krishna, but really, we’re part of NATO which includes nuclear force. Why pretend otherwise?

You really don’t know much about what goes on in Canadian schools, which are full of Smarboarts, Chromebook carts, IPads, Dells, Makerspaces, Dot and Dash robots, coding clubs, 21st century flexible learning spaces, and so much more. Many schools are going paperless and there’s a big environmental stewardship component. These kids talk circles around adults when it comes to media and IT.

My point is that Trudeau denuclearized the Canadian military. We knew the Americans were patrolling the Arctic with nuclear submarines. That’s the deal with NATO. In a roundabout way Canada is still a nuclear power. I don’t have a problem with that and would like to go further strictly as a deterrent.

Teaching is treated as a profession in Canada. Hard to get into teaching programs. We have the best public education system in the English speaking world. I’m not boasting. International test scores prove it. See the last PISA test results.

That’s right. Trudeau Sr. turned them down, which I disagree with, but he was a pacifist. Canada has all the tech anyway going back to our CANDU reactors. Don’t forget our important supply of uranium. Canada often achieves a high level of tech in key industries. Again though, as with the Avro Arrow, we can’t go into full production of everything until we have a bigger population, which is coming whether we like it or not. 35000 asylum seekers crossed the border into Canada last year. That’s completely separate from the 20000 refugees and hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Can Congress also pay for our border wall?

Uh, no way. You dismantle your military. It’s got quite a history of its own, including the use of nuclear weapons on civilians.

On what basis? Ridiculous.

You clearly don’t understand Canada. You’re just another American who thinks we’re just copies of Americans. American culture is just one influence in our multicultural society, albeit a significant one. That’s mostly because I live in Southern Ontario. The influence of US culture is high here.

What an exaggerated paranoid perspective. Canada is working on building good relationships with people, Indigenous and foreign, not destroying them. One minute you suggest we scale down or eliminate our military; the next you say might is right. Which is it? Canada tries to take its commitments seriously, in all areas, not just militarily. We proportionately took far more refugees in than the US. That’s a contribution to peace because we helped resettle displaced people from a war ravaged country. Canada is managing well in a volatile world. I still think the best approach for Canada when it comes to world affairs in general is to seek alliances with countries that have similar goals. It’s the multilateral approach. We hope we can rely on our traditional allies to work together on common goals. We are adding allies and we must also know that we may not be able to count on all of our allies.

Canadian parliamentary democracy is alive and well and not veering into fascism. Worry more about what’s happening in the US where the tension is palpable, and hope you get more responsible leadership that doesn’t blow everything up, good or bad, just because it came from the other side. I want to see decency return to American leadership, but I’m not counting on it.

You would have us just run roughshod over the Mohawks. No thanks.

Your claims are exaggerated. I’d like to see see comparisons of the impacts of the major fighting forces in their respective parts of Afghanistan. Therein lies the truth. We can blow shit up too, but it’s not just about that. We already all know Canada can’t go it alone against a superpower. Why would we attempt that? We have important alliances and NATO, including France and the UK (not just the US). If our biggest ally and trading partner ever turned on us, despite family members on each side of the border, you’re damn right we’d look to China. Maybe that’s why Trudeau is keeping it cool with China. He’s not stupid. That’s last resort stuff and not the preferred option. I think Canada must be wary of all superpowers and scale up its military to make strong contributions to NATO and protect its values, but we’re a peaceful country. We’re not war mongers. That’s also why we’re more left leaning.

Yes if we’re lining up with bayonets. War is becoming more of a remote automated affair. There are countries with large armies that don’t stand a chance against small high tech forces. It’s not just a numbers game. And what about after the invasion/occupation? You have to win hearts and minds. Belligerence instills hate.

Not true at all. The Canadian military as it stands is a skeleton force, maintained so that if need be it can be scaled up. We just haven’t had the need in recent years to scale it up. I would say though that your words just make America sound like a belligerent power and affirm the negative criticisms of the Peoples Republic. Don’t play into their hands.

And yet 40,000 Canadians fought with the US under NATO article 5 after the US was attacked. See, statements like the one you just made instill distrust. Either you step in to defend your NATO ally against the source of the attack or you’re no NATO ally. Don’t you see the People’s Republic trying to woo Canada against “40 phoney wars of American aggression”. This is real and I think the idea has Canadians wondering how to proceed given the disappointments of 2018 Canada-US relations. How Americans treat Canada is more important than you know, because it signifies how the US treats a close harmless ally. If there’s a bigger plan to take over Canada, the US would have to illustrate an overall net benefit to the country. It might have to involve the UK. It would have to support Quebec’s accommodations and the nuanced accommodations for the north and indigenous. How would they pull it off? If it ever became undemocratic subjugation, good luck with that. It has to be a worked out deal that the majority of the country buys into. No easy task. Canadians would have to be better off for it, but Canadians are relatively happy. I sometimes think under certain conditions it could work, but the US has a public safety problem related to violence. Is it worth the trade off? I’m not sure Canadians would want that. I’m also not sure Americans would want that. It’s a big project. Would America adjust at all for Canada? I wish US society was more like Canadian society, because then we could enjoy those warm beaches in winter with more safety and security.