This article made my day. So happy to read that Canada is moving forward so quickly and using our industry and people to follow through on improving our self reliance and natural resources, to provide cleaner emissions while providing good paying jobs for many and freedom for the like minded countries from purchasing raw materials from China. I’m also extremely pleased to read that our spontaneous boycott of not buying American food products and not crossing the border for vacations or day trips has been so successful. I am not sure if Canadians who owned real estate in the US and who have chosen to sell their real estate to back their patriotism have been included in any statistics. It’s just Canadians deciding to leave the US and spend that money elsewhere in the world. We personally sold our condo in Washington State which we had purchased to use regularly for outdoor mountain activities ie skiing, hiking, mountain biking. Our patriotism to Canada was stronger than staying. We haven’t been to the US for well over a year and never plan to go back.
Thank you for such an uplifting and informative article.
Proving once again that 'pundits' and 'opposition politicians' are endless sources of hot air with little or no substance. Can we hook up a heat exchanger to get some benefit from that? The phrase that keeps running through my head is "past performance is no guarantee of future profits". It applies in both directions of the binary. They need to stop living in the past, albeit for almost 50 years, and look at what's happening on the ground right now. The sense of urgency has finally kicked our federal government into gear, and I lived to see it! I will thank Mark Carney for this renewed sense of purpose and hope for the rest of my life. And to those who yap like spoiled children about 'why isn't it done yet', it's time for them to stop cosplaying as TikTok influencers and do a real job so they can learn what it takes to put this kind of infrastructure into place. TIME is the real constraint - can we get it done in time?
There are legitimate criticisms of the Carney government. But that paragraph throws federal responsibilities, provincial incompetence, global inflation, and longstanding structural problems into one blender.
Let’s look at housing. Yes, Ottawa influences housing through immigration levels, financing tools, infrastructure money, and incentives. But zoning, permitting, development approvals, NIMBYism, density restrictions, and endless municipal processes? That’s provincial and municipal. Saying the PM decides whether Calgary, Vancouver, or Toronto approve a housing project is false.
Food inflation is the same. Canada didn’t create global inflation. Energy prices, supply chains, transportation costs, commodity volatility, and international instability hit every economy. Could affordability measures be better? Sure. But the GST/HST relief increases and one-time June payments are at least an acknowledgement that people are getting squeezed. Which is more than some governments manage while giving lectures about “resilience.”
As for Indigenous reconciliation, yes, the failures are real and longstanding. They’re also older than most people currently yelling about them online. This is not a problem created by one party. It’s layered across federal, provincial, legal, institutional, and historical failures going back generations. Acting like there’s a policy that fixes it by next Tuesday is a joke.
Canada’s actual problem right now isn’t just affordability. It’s whether the country can execute large-scale policy and infrastructure without collapsing into ten provinces, forty committees, twelve consultants, and a three-year environmental impact study to buy a stapler.
We are now living in a changed world that requires us to reexamine old assumptions that are now melting into air.
The post-WWII framework is dead. The current period is akin to the preparatory run ups to WWI and WWII.
All the major imperialist powers are rapidly preparing for coming world wars to redivide the world into turfs. The main axis is the coming U.S. war against rival China, but there will be many indirect and proxy conflicts and wars as the lesser powers decide which major power to back, and try to grab theirs.
The feigned niceties of yesterday are rapidly being discarded. Yet some are still unable to recognize what is happening, hanging on to quaint ideas of imperialist decorum, and ‘cherished allies.’
Now might be a good moment to remember how the U.S. rulers really viewed the UK and Canada as they headed to WWII.
From the 1920s through the mid-1930s, Canada was considered a catspaw for the primary enemy: the UK.
The UK was viewed as the most likely military foe of the U.S. rulers. Wall Street and Washington aimed to strip their British rival of its main colonial possessions around the world, in particular in Asia to gain access to markets and establish client regimes.
Anti-British opinions were predominant in the U.S. during this period. There were debates about annexing Canada and Greenland to the U.S.
Among U.S. assumptions were that the UK would attack and invade the U.S. from Canada. Therefore the US Department of War began planning a preemptive spoiling attack on Canada.
In preparation for war against the UK, the U.S. military drew up the secret "War Plan Red" in the 1920s and updated it in the 1930s.
The U.S. had large-scale plans to invade from Boston to capture the vital port city of Halifax (including possible poison gas), from Detroit and Albany to seize Toronto and Montreal, from Bellingham to capture Vancouver, and and to seize Niagara Falls, disabling the Canadian power grid. Bombing targets included: Halifax naval facilities, rail hubs, industrial centers, and communications infrastructure.
The U.S. military first strike preparations began accommodating roads and airfields on the border with Canada for the invasion. In 1935 the U.S. held the largest peacetime war games in its history, involving 36,000 U.S. soldiers at Fort Drum, only 30 miles from the Canadian border. An unambiguous threat.
And Canada had its own plan, “Defence Scheme No. 1,” which envisioned preemptive Canadian raids on the U.S.
It was only with the rise of Japan and its 1937 invasion of China, which U.S. imperialism coveted above all as the last great uncolonized territory, that the U.S. shifted its attention and all its fury to that new foe.
Anti-Japanese propaganda was furiously churned out in the U.S. media and by politicians. How dare they take what's ours! And FDR began squeezing Japan with threats and sanctions to finally force it to attack first, as he couldn't overcome widespread public opposition to war.
The U.S. was ambivalent towards the Nazis as they didn't see them as rivals initially, and were intrigued by the idea of the Nazis destroying the UK, France and the USSR, and then leaving an opportunity for the U.S., and FDR was an admirer of Mussolini.
FDR let the Germans give rival UK a good thrashing from 1939 through 1941, making a tidy profit off of selling “aid,” while demanding concessions from the British.
But then FDR saw a war against Germany as an opportunity to assert U.S. hegemony towards Europe and most importantly towards oil in the Middle East. And Hitler gave him the gift he desired by declaring war after Pearl Harbor.
The 1941 Atlantic Charter was publicly framed as anti-imperial, but the U.S. interpreted “self-determination” selectively to weaken European colonial competitors while expanding American influence.
Then FDR cold-bloodedly began stripping the UK of its power and colonial possessions (in particular snatching Saudi Arabia from the UK in 1945, culminating in 1947 with the loss of India).
So much for the blather about peace, shared values, eternal allies and principles…
My congratulations are qualified. I see many of the tactics that led to the abomination in the White House, being used by the radical right in Canada. The same divisive tactics I’ve observed developing for over 30 years in the US.
I hope you are more successful in shutting them down than we were.
This time, fascism has progressed even further than it did in the 1930s, when the only thing that shut down Father Coughlin, the Silver Shirts, and America First—German Nazi-sponsored violent movements.
I love the sentiment. I would prefer to know the apples to apples on the graphite mine. Discovery to production doesn't seem directly comparable to application to approval. But it's good to see tangible results starting to flow.
Fantastic news, particularly about the parallel processing of permits, and indigenous engagements that allowed the mine to move forward so quickly. A taste of things to come 🤞
What do you mean the boycott is working. “Working” to me means that there is some measurable effect on the ways the USA is dealing politically and economically with Canada. If you have evidence of that, please produce it. The big impact in places Canadians visit, mostly as Snowbirds, I believe is only significant in those areas. I observe Canadians to still be going great guns buying stuff on Amazon. To me that is more support for the US regime than the loss of income to American individuals who are faced with difficulties because Canadians aren’t coming anymore and who, themselves, may not be supporters of the current regime. It is wonderful, though, if Canadians are spending more money in Canada (let’s see stats on that), but I read about other places in the world to which Canadians are travelling more frequently instead of the USA. The effects of “I’m never going there again” are way more complicated than that simple statement.
I guess you can’t read or chose not to given your comment. The story does indeed pinpoint how much the travel industry in the U.S. is hurting severely by Canadians not going to the U.S.
No. Just... No. You're better than this, Mr Froelich. Ms Lovejoy makes valid, supportable, points. Please. Read again what she wrote. Leave your emotions and your need to dominate behind, sir.
Hi David. She raises a lot of points which tell me she has not read the article which of course she has a right not. But that does not give her the right to make points which are clearly covered in the article and that I won’t stand for. And people like that I call out. I have been a journalist for more than 40 years and I have no problem in people calling me out but it better be based on facts or challenging my perspective and give specific facts and facts for doing so. No problem at all , in fact I encourage it and when it happens I acknowledge it. And I can assure I have no need to dominate, do I become emotional about it, yes, but I believe that people who make similar statements need to be called out.
I can’t help but think about the separatist movement in Alberta (Stay Free Alberta) that says it is culturally more attuned to MAGA America than it is to Canada.
Get free of the oil industry, or you may be surprised how quickly your way of life can blow away in the wind.
This article made my day. So happy to read that Canada is moving forward so quickly and using our industry and people to follow through on improving our self reliance and natural resources, to provide cleaner emissions while providing good paying jobs for many and freedom for the like minded countries from purchasing raw materials from China. I’m also extremely pleased to read that our spontaneous boycott of not buying American food products and not crossing the border for vacations or day trips has been so successful. I am not sure if Canadians who owned real estate in the US and who have chosen to sell their real estate to back their patriotism have been included in any statistics. It’s just Canadians deciding to leave the US and spend that money elsewhere in the world. We personally sold our condo in Washington State which we had purchased to use regularly for outdoor mountain activities ie skiing, hiking, mountain biking. Our patriotism to Canada was stronger than staying. We haven’t been to the US for well over a year and never plan to go back.
Thank you for such an uplifting and informative article.
I am so glad I can read true news stories. Thank you.
Proving once again that 'pundits' and 'opposition politicians' are endless sources of hot air with little or no substance. Can we hook up a heat exchanger to get some benefit from that? The phrase that keeps running through my head is "past performance is no guarantee of future profits". It applies in both directions of the binary. They need to stop living in the past, albeit for almost 50 years, and look at what's happening on the ground right now. The sense of urgency has finally kicked our federal government into gear, and I lived to see it! I will thank Mark Carney for this renewed sense of purpose and hope for the rest of my life. And to those who yap like spoiled children about 'why isn't it done yet', it's time for them to stop cosplaying as TikTok influencers and do a real job so they can learn what it takes to put this kind of infrastructure into place. TIME is the real constraint - can we get it done in time?
There are legitimate criticisms of the Carney government. But that paragraph throws federal responsibilities, provincial incompetence, global inflation, and longstanding structural problems into one blender.
Let’s look at housing. Yes, Ottawa influences housing through immigration levels, financing tools, infrastructure money, and incentives. But zoning, permitting, development approvals, NIMBYism, density restrictions, and endless municipal processes? That’s provincial and municipal. Saying the PM decides whether Calgary, Vancouver, or Toronto approve a housing project is false.
Food inflation is the same. Canada didn’t create global inflation. Energy prices, supply chains, transportation costs, commodity volatility, and international instability hit every economy. Could affordability measures be better? Sure. But the GST/HST relief increases and one-time June payments are at least an acknowledgement that people are getting squeezed. Which is more than some governments manage while giving lectures about “resilience.”
As for Indigenous reconciliation, yes, the failures are real and longstanding. They’re also older than most people currently yelling about them online. This is not a problem created by one party. It’s layered across federal, provincial, legal, institutional, and historical failures going back generations. Acting like there’s a policy that fixes it by next Tuesday is a joke.
Canada’s actual problem right now isn’t just affordability. It’s whether the country can execute large-scale policy and infrastructure without collapsing into ten provinces, forty committees, twelve consultants, and a three-year environmental impact study to buy a stapler.
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗛 𝗧𝗢 𝗪𝗔𝗥, 𝗔𝗚𝗔𝗜𝗡
We are now living in a changed world that requires us to reexamine old assumptions that are now melting into air.
The post-WWII framework is dead. The current period is akin to the preparatory run ups to WWI and WWII.
All the major imperialist powers are rapidly preparing for coming world wars to redivide the world into turfs. The main axis is the coming U.S. war against rival China, but there will be many indirect and proxy conflicts and wars as the lesser powers decide which major power to back, and try to grab theirs.
The feigned niceties of yesterday are rapidly being discarded. Yet some are still unable to recognize what is happening, hanging on to quaint ideas of imperialist decorum, and ‘cherished allies.’
Now might be a good moment to remember how the U.S. rulers really viewed the UK and Canada as they headed to WWII.
From the 1920s through the mid-1930s, Canada was considered a catspaw for the primary enemy: the UK.
The UK was viewed as the most likely military foe of the U.S. rulers. Wall Street and Washington aimed to strip their British rival of its main colonial possessions around the world, in particular in Asia to gain access to markets and establish client regimes.
Anti-British opinions were predominant in the U.S. during this period. There were debates about annexing Canada and Greenland to the U.S.
Among U.S. assumptions were that the UK would attack and invade the U.S. from Canada. Therefore the US Department of War began planning a preemptive spoiling attack on Canada.
In preparation for war against the UK, the U.S. military drew up the secret "War Plan Red" in the 1920s and updated it in the 1930s.
The U.S. had large-scale plans to invade from Boston to capture the vital port city of Halifax (including possible poison gas), from Detroit and Albany to seize Toronto and Montreal, from Bellingham to capture Vancouver, and and to seize Niagara Falls, disabling the Canadian power grid. Bombing targets included: Halifax naval facilities, rail hubs, industrial centers, and communications infrastructure.
The U.S. military first strike preparations began accommodating roads and airfields on the border with Canada for the invasion. In 1935 the U.S. held the largest peacetime war games in its history, involving 36,000 U.S. soldiers at Fort Drum, only 30 miles from the Canadian border. An unambiguous threat.
And Canada had its own plan, “Defence Scheme No. 1,” which envisioned preemptive Canadian raids on the U.S.
It was only with the rise of Japan and its 1937 invasion of China, which U.S. imperialism coveted above all as the last great uncolonized territory, that the U.S. shifted its attention and all its fury to that new foe.
Anti-Japanese propaganda was furiously churned out in the U.S. media and by politicians. How dare they take what's ours! And FDR began squeezing Japan with threats and sanctions to finally force it to attack first, as he couldn't overcome widespread public opposition to war.
The U.S. was ambivalent towards the Nazis as they didn't see them as rivals initially, and were intrigued by the idea of the Nazis destroying the UK, France and the USSR, and then leaving an opportunity for the U.S., and FDR was an admirer of Mussolini.
FDR let the Germans give rival UK a good thrashing from 1939 through 1941, making a tidy profit off of selling “aid,” while demanding concessions from the British.
But then FDR saw a war against Germany as an opportunity to assert U.S. hegemony towards Europe and most importantly towards oil in the Middle East. And Hitler gave him the gift he desired by declaring war after Pearl Harbor.
The 1941 Atlantic Charter was publicly framed as anti-imperial, but the U.S. interpreted “self-determination” selectively to weaken European colonial competitors while expanding American influence.
Then FDR cold-bloodedly began stripping the UK of its power and colonial possessions (in particular snatching Saudi Arabia from the UK in 1945, culminating in 1947 with the loss of India).
So much for the blather about peace, shared values, eternal allies and principles…
https://aaronruby.substack.com/p/war-is-coming?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=7jhui4
My congratulations are qualified. I see many of the tactics that led to the abomination in the White House, being used by the radical right in Canada. The same divisive tactics I’ve observed developing for over 30 years in the US.
I hope you are more successful in shutting them down than we were.
This time, fascism has progressed even further than it did in the 1930s, when the only thing that shut down Father Coughlin, the Silver Shirts, and America First—German Nazi-sponsored violent movements.
I love the sentiment. I would prefer to know the apples to apples on the graphite mine. Discovery to production doesn't seem directly comparable to application to approval. But it's good to see tangible results starting to flow.
Fantastic news, particularly about the parallel processing of permits, and indigenous engagements that allowed the mine to move forward so quickly. A taste of things to come 🤞
What do you mean the boycott is working. “Working” to me means that there is some measurable effect on the ways the USA is dealing politically and economically with Canada. If you have evidence of that, please produce it. The big impact in places Canadians visit, mostly as Snowbirds, I believe is only significant in those areas. I observe Canadians to still be going great guns buying stuff on Amazon. To me that is more support for the US regime than the loss of income to American individuals who are faced with difficulties because Canadians aren’t coming anymore and who, themselves, may not be supporters of the current regime. It is wonderful, though, if Canadians are spending more money in Canada (let’s see stats on that), but I read about other places in the world to which Canadians are travelling more frequently instead of the USA. The effects of “I’m never going there again” are way more complicated than that simple statement.
I guess you can’t read or chose not to given your comment. The story does indeed pinpoint how much the travel industry in the U.S. is hurting severely by Canadians not going to the U.S.
No. Just... No. You're better than this, Mr Froelich. Ms Lovejoy makes valid, supportable, points. Please. Read again what she wrote. Leave your emotions and your need to dominate behind, sir.
Hi David. She raises a lot of points which tell me she has not read the article which of course she has a right not. But that does not give her the right to make points which are clearly covered in the article and that I won’t stand for. And people like that I call out. I have been a journalist for more than 40 years and I have no problem in people calling me out but it better be based on facts or challenging my perspective and give specific facts and facts for doing so. No problem at all , in fact I encourage it and when it happens I acknowledge it. And I can assure I have no need to dominate, do I become emotional about it, yes, but I believe that people who make similar statements need to be called out.
I can’t help but think about the separatist movement in Alberta (Stay Free Alberta) that says it is culturally more attuned to MAGA America than it is to Canada.
Get free of the oil industry, or you may be surprised how quickly your way of life can blow away in the wind.