I am Groot

Canada's population is bigger than 21 US states combined. Its physica/geographic size is bigger than all US states combined. The idea it would be one state is ludicrous. Which will be heavily offset by increased automation and AI. We don't produce much. That's why we have free trade agreements. We have high energy costs due to ridiculous climate policies, low productivity due to ridiculous immigration policies, and ridiculous amounts of regulatory proliferation.

Which cost us the election. We need those three-way races. Unfortunately, given the people vying for the leadership, things aren't likely to improve much. They still seem to be obsessed with identity politics and are doubling down on it.

Many countries in the developing world have improved. Africa, on the other hand, is still a basket case, arguably worse off than it was during colonial rule. Most ME and NA states are no better, with only the oil-rich Gulf countries making any real progress. Pakistan is a shithole, and Bangladesh is not much better. It was progressing, but has been overtaken by the Islamists.

As far as trade goes, yes. That's what we're trying to do. He's an old man and has three years left in power, maybe even one before he loses the Senate/House. That he's criticising him and going to China, together with his China-owned MPs. The only screening we do is to check their names against known terrorist watch lists. We also ask them to provide a police clearance report, but those are easily forged. We do nothing to find out what kind of people these are, whether they're full of hate for others here, whether they even plan to work as opposed to loafing on welfare. There are no responsibilities for Permanent Residents other than not being arrested for too severe a crime. There are no requirements to become a Canadian citizen other than being here for a few years (or pretending you are, since we don't keep track) and passing a 25-question true/false/multiple choice test, which you can even do online. Unlike others, we don't ever meet with them. We don't interview them to find out what sort of people they are before we accept them as permanent residents, and we don't interview them or try to find out if they've even made any effort to integrate before giving them citizenship. If they've spent three or four years here on welfare, that has no impact on whether we grant them citizenship or not. Did it? Do you know what that's based on? It's based on the assumption by Immigration Canada that every single person whose visa ran out left Canada. Again, we don't keep track, but it seems highly, highly unlikely. Australia just tightened up requirements for Indians to go there, even as students, because 77% of them don't leave after their visas are up. In addition, the cuts that have been made, from about 485k to 385k are on paper. When you add in the 155k that the Liberals intend to make permanent residents over the next three years (mostly foreign workers and students) and the 500k migrants presently in the refugee queue (87% acceptance rate) Canada will be granting well over 500k new permanent resident visas a year for the foreseeable future. And there is no plan whatsoever about what to do about all those foreign workers and students who are not going to leave. By the way, did you know there is a trick to staying legally? Even if your visa expires, you can apply for one in another category, and then you get 'implied permission' to stay while that is being processed, which could take some time. There is no limit to how many times you can do this and stay working at wherever you're working. Muslims in Western countries vote for leftist parties that push mass immigration, are willing to grant them special concessions, and are in favour of generous welfare and social welfare benefits. And, lately, who agree that they too hate Jews. It takes 3 years of being present here (out of 5) to qualify, but again, we don't keep track. The UK Labour Party (Fascists!) are raising that to ten years, as it seems integration is not going so quickly. Which is why the Ontario Progressive Party has ordered the OPP to and Crown prosecutors to go 'hands off' on Palestinian demonstrators. Doug Ford and his Progressive party are not in any way, shape or form conservative. And if you disagree, please illustrate with what their policies are that are conservative. By the way, the sex-ed thing? They actually made few real changes. That was just for public consumption. We can only hope. It was also Frum, btw, who said, in 2018 "If liberals say that only fascists will guard borders, the voters will hire fascists to do what liberals refuse to do." That is something playing out in Europe now.

Normal Canadians very sadly accept that MAID might sometimes be the only solution. Normal Canadians do not 'like' it, and normal Canadians certainly don't think that mostly healthy twenty-eight-year-olds with depression should be put to death. There are moderate positions that allow for abortion rights while still controlling abortion. You do know that every single country in Western Europe has laws governing the provision of abortion, right? That includes the most egalitarian ones like the Nordic countries. Open, avowed racist hiring and racist sentencing is not 'equality of opportunity', nor is that their goal. Equality of results is their goal. They dislike it a lot less than having to wait two or three years to see a specialist. Again, every country in Western Europe has private healthcare in addition to robust public healthcare programs. And virtually all of them work better than ours.

A government that was going to move faster than any government we'd ever seen before! Then he gets elected and sends the House on vacation for four months. What has he done so far for the economy? Not the end results, but done to allow for a significant improvement? Nothing, I can see. He's borrowing more money and spending more money. Is that what you mean? Maybe he'll do stuff someday, but no sign of more than talk just yet. He might even order some weapons for the military eventually, though it's become apparent industrial benefits are more important than the quality of the weapons or the timing on when they can be produced.

The Left in Canada has had a massive, sneering sense of disrespect for English Canada's culture for decades. This is partly because our culture is British, and in order to please Quebec and make them feel less alienated, the Liberals set about cutting away at all the cultural underpinnings of English Canada's historical and traditional Britishness. After decades of effort, they have largely succeeded, especially when combined with the importation of millions of people from other cultures, and the expressed determination not to offend them by imposing our culture on them. Anything that was seen by white liberals to be potentially offensive to either Francophones or newcomers was swept away or at least watered down, and anyone who objected was labelled a racist. Trudeau was just the ultimate expression of that largely white liberal sentiment, a man who'd never have succeeded if the ground hadn't been prepared for him by years and years of indoctrination and bullshit, much like Trump would never have gotten elected in the US if the ground hadn't been prepared for him by years of stupidity.

So what? Japan's population has been shrinking and they're still doing fine, at least compared to us. I'd also suggest that the decline in birth rates has been at least partially encouraged by the flood of newcomers and the rising costs and lower wages that has caused. We don't need workers to support the CPP. It's self-supporting. And our military used to be twice the size it is now when we had a population half the size it is now. No. We could just let our population decline for a while. That would mean much cheaper housing and higher wages. The idea of a 'state' the size of Canada is ludicrous. If Trump had been serious, as opposed to just taunting Trudeau, he'd have said ten states. And may I remind you that the US also has a below-replacement birth rate?

I think our achilles heel is our education systems. If the West fails it won't be because of a crazed Muslim with a sword and a torch it will be because of neomarxist professors at our universities. Though honestly, that can be attributed to bad government that took its eye off the ball and then just found it easier to go along to get along. There was too much downside in taking on universities and not enough upside for people whose entire existence runs in four-year election cycles.We let them become ideological social justice factories and did nothing about it. They indoctrinated year after year of young people with twisted ideas and slanted curriculum, and a mentality that says dialogue is old-school and white supremacist types. We let them gatekeep occupations like law, making sure the students who got in were those who thought like them, then further indoctrinated them. They turned the teaching colleges into social justice factories and churned out teachers determined to teach children to think like they did, sending their indoctrination and guiltmongering downrange to high schools and grade schools and did nothing. We let their zealots take over the regulatory bodies of everything from doctors and nurses to lawyers and accountants, and impose groupthink on all their members. So it was the universities who did it, but our governments that let them. And it was Abraham Lincoln who said that "The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next." The Left took that to heart. The Right still hasn't, or simply doesn't care.

It's worked for Europe and other countries. Hell, Qatar gave the orange man a used airplane and now he's their b1tch, promising to use US troops to defend them. Disagree. His words and actions show he still believes Canada has a level of independence it probably doesn't. What he actually said was that the Western Hemisphere is a unipolar American-led area. Trump has pretty much said as much through capturing Maduro and threatening everyone from Colombia and Mexico to Canada and Greenland with military force, not to mention using economic blackmail to get his way. Under that scenario, doing things like going to China to try and diversify our trade is likely to provoke Trump if it leads to anything substantial. I've said before that the reason Trump won't give him a deal is that it's not just about trade. They want an end to Chinese influence (which, btw, was one of the reasons they hit Maduro). And instead, Carney is doubling down on that. They want a crackdown on money laundering and organized crime (both of which thrive here), and Carney is refusing because doing anything about crime is not the Liberal way. They want an end to mass immigration of unscreened people, many of them Muslims, and again, Carney refuses because Muslims might hate Americans and be seen as a terrorist threat, but they vote Liberal, and that's all that matters to him. The guy you need to worry about is the Republican who succeeds Trump being of the same mindset but a lot smarter and more energetic. I don't see anything good coming out of China, and I don't see India being interested in helping us out until the Liberals reject Sikh separatism instead of cultivating it as a valuable voting bloc.

Canadians are, by and large, a very passive people. Yeah, they'd 'do something'. They'd write furious posts on social media. The lefties would demonstrate. And how many of THEM are foreigners who came here to make money, and have no particular affection for Canada? Many of them would be delighted to now be able to work anywhere in America. And of the rest, well, they've been raised to believe Canada is an illegitimate country on stolen land, a non-nation with no core identity that is genocidal and racist, that they must forever bow their heads in guilt and shame for being white and accept all the cultural beliefs and behaviours of newcomers while defending none of their own. They must always accept that in anything they apply for, they will be in the back of the line, as corporations and government, including colleges, give open and proud preference to immigrants over them. What exactly would they be fighting for again? Ever heard of Japan? Germany?

The shooting was stupid. The guy could have stepped a foot to the side a lot faster and easier. At the same time, the woman involved was a brainless twat.

Oh, FFS, stop thinking like a terrorist. You want to win against the US, you send some JTF2 guys down, break them into groups, hit Republican senators and congressmen who are in states with Democratic governors. Which means the Democrats appoint their replacements. For that matter, hit the prez and vp. Their security isn't set up to fight off special forces with anti-armor missiles and the like. Neither is the minimal security around cabinet ministers or the military chiefs. Aside from the politicians who started the war, you blow up bridges, power relay stations in the cities, power plants, oil pipeline pumping stations, water and sewer lines, train lines, port loading and fueling facilities. You can cause chaos with minimal or no civilian deaths easily enough.

I pay nearly that now, and still have to pay thousands extra for a private doctor and for occasional visits to specialists in the US or Quebec because I don't want to wait two years in Ontario. I also get crime-ridden streets which, btw, are riddled with potholes.

I am pasting this from X because I think it's an intelligently and thoughtfully written and clearly explained definition of our relationship with the US, and quite applicable to this discussion. James E. Thorne - Wellington-Altus Chief Market Strategist Mark Carney and most Canadians are behaving as if Canada is an independent pole in a multipolar order, when the world he actually inhabits is a hierarchy being brutally clarified by Washington. Trump’s revamped National Security Strategy and the “Trump Corollary” — asserted through the seizure of Nicolás Maduro and open threats toward Cuba and Colombia, make plain that the United States now treats the Western Hemisphere as an American security estate, not a debating society among equals. In that framework, Canada is not a co‑author of the rules. It is a dependency inside the U.S. sphere, structurally lashed to American markets, finance and supply chains. AND after decades without a serious sovereign industrial or energy strategy, Canada is at best a weak Middle Power, that has for decades squandered its competitive advantage through proformative politics and virtue signalling. In this era, the Western Hemisphere is now a “secure production platform” for American industry and technology, defined not by territorial control but by ownership, access, and compliance. The Trump doctrine logic is clear and blunt yet internally coherent: if the Western Hemisphere's natural resources and supply chains are secured, the economic and geopolitical dividends will follow. Carney’s answer to the Trump Doctrine, however, remains the same “City‑of‑London” orthodoxy that produced him: more proformative political grandstanding, more process, more declarations, more meetings, and more boondoggles. The Greenland consulate, rhetorical red lines over annexation, the flying around the world, and ritual protests against U.S. action in Venezuela all presume that we still live in the post-WWII rules-based order. We do not! Will live in the era of the Trump Doctrine, and no we can’t wait it out. And in this era, Greenland will not be allowed to be under the influence of Russia or China. Thucydides warned that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Carney’s tragedy is that he quotes the rules‑based order while presiding over a country whose economic structure is colonial and whose security ultimately depends on the very power he is theatrically chastising. Posturing without power is not prudence. It is provocation without a plan. And yes, it’s dangerous. The irony is that Carney understands all of this perfectly well, which only sharpens the question: what, exactly, is he doing by posturing as a rules‑based equal in a hierarchy where he knows Canada lacks the hard power to back his stance?

I was reading an article on Denmark the other day that pointed out it doesn't mess around with taxing just the rich. It taxes everyone. Even poor people pay income tax, and everyone pays the VAT of 25%. In Canada, almost half of Canadians pay no income tax. The number continually rises as grandstanding politicians make grandiose promises about tax-free payments to poor people and lowering their tax rate (as Carney recently did), leaving the cost of the state to be born by an increasingly smaller number of people. Our GST is a mere 5% and the state refunds it to poor people. This may perhaps go a long way to explaining why Denmark has almost no debt while Canada is staggering under a growing debt burden.

Quite aside from the damage and harm these defective people commit, we spend a fortune on repeatedly arresting and processing them through the system when it's clear there is no place for them in our society. The fact that most of them were born elsewhere just makes it that much more insane. Anyone who comes here from somewhere else who commits crimes should be deported. If they have gotten citizenship, it should be removed, and then they should be booted out. For those we can't get rid of, we should open some kind of prison farm in the middle of nowhere. They can do manual labour for the rest of their lives. Or maybe we can just ship them somewhere in the Middle East to be slaves or something.

No, they're racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and antisemitic. And so are the immigrants from these places.

Oh spare me your bitterness. You aren't interested in logical discussion, just regurgitating your hate online.

If he's saying they'll build a pipeline with no intention of building a pipeline that's the lie.

There is approximately ZERO evidence of that. They're coming here to make money and bringing that 'conservatism' with them.

Did anyone ask you to open your little bird beak to squeak your brainless sputum? Anyone doesn't accept that Carney lies is not interested in serious discussion. The man lied when he announced he was running for leader* and has been lying ever since. What? Me move Brookfield to the US? Nooooo. That was someone else. I wasn't even involved! I was... I was gone by then! Oh, well, yes, I did write that letter. I mean, sure, I was still CEO uhm, but anyway, let's move on.

Quite possible. But even if it's an unfulfilled promise, it's a brilliant political move. And you say he's not a politician? The opposition of the Left to pipelines benefits the US economy, US refineries, and by extension, Donald Trump. It benefits no one in Canada.

You're expressing admiration for Carney's ability to lie to people.

This topic makes me once again shake my head at the lack of mental health care and addiction rehab available in this country.