wampus

Musks Tesla stock holdings make it so that even if he were kicked out as CEO, the company would continue to be viewed as his personal piggy bank, and likely continue to face backlash for the stuff Musk is doing. Him liquidating his stock position would crater the stock price. It's pretty well cooked.

And yet the CBC is explicitly reporting on Smith as threatening a National Unity crisis.

Look, it took a while for people to wake up to the fact that Donald Trump "meant it" when he said crap, because what he was saying sounded so far out there. There's no reason to think differently of any politician, if they're saying really dangerous shit. A national unity crisis is basically saying she wants out of Canada if her demands aren't met And she has the support of 'most' Albertans, apparently, cause they voted her in, and her party still supports her and her actions. Like even if there's no 'recall' option for her as an MLA, if her party didn't want to follow the crap she's saying they could all just stop voting for her crap. Albertans aren't openly calling for her to get dethroned / booted. To think that they would not, potentially, vote to leave -- and/or not stoop to the level of dirty tricks like what we see in the states (Elon's reportedly paying people again in some election to skew the vote, and gettin away with it) -- is naive in my view.

If someone had said 10 years ago that the USA would be talking about annexing Canada, we would have called that a fantasy / no way it'd ever happen. But here we are.

I disagree with this sentiment, to some extent.

For industries and areas considered critical to national security / functions, they ought to extend and enforce a Canadian content like requirement for the sector ownership structure. That is to say, you'd define news sources / papers as an area of national interest, and require that at least 51% (or some other percent) of that industry's stakeholders are Canadian citizens / organizations.

Blocking all foreign ownership of media is not the direction I would want to go, though I would like it to be transparent about its ownership structure, so that readers can make an informed decision about potential ownership biases in the content they read.

I also wouldn't be opposed to the Government keeping track of a formal list of licensed News Agencies / Papers, with their ownership structures and official sites. Not only would that make different smaller/local papers easier to find / add to feeds, but it would help in weeding out the "fake" (ie made by unknown/questionable sources) sites. Businesses have to get licenses to operate anyway, so I don't imagine this would be something too difficult to sort out for the Govt IT folks. Any information they'd require to make it work could be added to the licensing process pretty easily I imagine, and they could theoretically provide options for businesses to update their information in the event of things like site/domain name changes etc (if they expand it beyond just news agencies). They could even tie this in to the ACSS system, or Interac E-Transfers, to flag vendors that have Canadian hosted online payments available, for people wanting to avoid US card networks like Mastercard/Visa. As many business licenses are handled at a municipal level, you'd have in person verification options for all of these items, which could help cut down on potential fraud and abuse. Main hurdle would likely be sorting out how to have the information presented to end users, but if it used a federated approach with clusters for each municipality, province, nation-wide, and international, allowing users to opt in to whichever lists they wanted to reference/search for products, I imagine that sort of an approach could work... ? And honestly, might even give better results for marketing/connecting businesses and customers than something like Google or the existing search engines.

I admit I haven't really dug into what's online related to business licences etc as part of this, though I'm fairly sure we don't have something like that. If it exists I'd welcome some insight.

Frankly, I can't take anything the conservatives say seriously given their close alignment with Trump-style conservatism. They use practically the same campaign slogans, court the same style of extremist bullshit, and PP even wore Trumps orange bronzer for a bit lately.

Trump's overtly lying about things like trade deficits, cartels controlling Canada, fentanyl flowing over the northern border, and he overtly mislead people in the USA in regards to things like project 2025. they made it clear that they'd do/say anything they wanted to get elected, and then they enacted policies that they'd previously claimed they weren't aware of. I don't see why I would believe a single thing that comes out of the Trump-style conservative party that exists today.

Carney and his policies are honestly a lot more in line with 'traditional' conservative principles, along the same line as the Reform party under Manning, and the Cons under Harper. One reason he's got potential to win a big majority, is that he can bring in many of the voters who normally go conservative, who are pissed off at PP's bullshit machine and divisive rhetoric.

Quebec already set a precedent that Provinces can theoretically vote to separate. The Bloc Quebecois in the 90s held votes, and the claim then was that a simple 51% majority on the referendum would've triggered Quebec into declaring independence from Canada. The blocs remained a staple in Canadian politics ever since, historically promoting "Quebec First" and separatist values the whole time, with tons of support from people in Quebec -- one of the big surprises with the US rhetoric, is that Quebec is suddenly seeming more 'pro Canada', even while still electing a party who's roots are separatist. Canada's a federation of provinces, so it's theoretically possible for provinces to leave.

If Quebec can do that, there's no reason to think that other provinces can't do the same. And if Alberta were to hold such a referendum, and the vote showed 51% in favour of 'leaving' -- be it through semantic shenanigans on the phrasing of the question, or overt election manipulation aided by people like Musk -- it's unclear how the rest of Canada would react. Even more, if they did that, and Canada didn't let them "leave", the US could take that as a justification to help "free" the people and oil of Alberta.

Individual towns and regions might try to separate -- in the Quebec referendum, there'd been talks of the northern parts of QB wanting to stay in Canada. Practically though I don't imagine that'd happen. The division of powers between provinces and federal governments, and the authorities given them, are fairly clear cut. Towns and regions sorta just pop up at resource hubs within the province, and aren't as clearly demarked in terms of self governance / "the big" items for a nation. Again, we're a federation of provinces, but provinces aren't a 'federation' of cities.

"This one thing won't be a magic bullet that saves the environment, so we shouldn't do it!" .... huh?

They're less damaging overall, and more sustainable.

If/when Alberta and Sask vote to defect, that's not an invasion. After losing them, and east/west trade is disrupted, forcing BC to also defect, it's not an invasion. If the US takes greenland, effectively fully encircling Canada and blocking most trade, causing the rest to 'vote' to defect, it's not an invasion.

It's crappy, and antagonistic/aggressive -- but if they don't move military troops in, and if the "choice" to defect is "voted for" by Canadians who are sick of being embargo'd and isolated etc, then... idk. I think "invasion" isn't right, and annexation seems more accurate.

Western Canadian here (BC) -- I agree with Moe on this one.

Tariffs on them imply they're still generally safe to use / drive -- it's not a 'ban' after all, for being unfit for the road or a security risk. Tariffs make sense to some degree if/when there's a local industry you're protecting, especially if/when the good is a luxury.

In the case of EVs though, getting off of gas is a priority in terms of reducing emissions / combating climate change -- it's not so much a luxury even, given how many of our cities are designed for car-oriented travel. I'd rather we had $20k EV options from BYD, rather than we continued to push gas cars and/or EVs that are in the $40-50k from US manufacturers, as it'd mean faster adoption of EVs and faster exit from gas cars. We have literally had multiple cities burn to the ground due to climate change lately. You'd think we'd be above political nonsense on this subject.

So you're in a demographic that gets 'uplifted'/'praised' at the Canada Together event -- explains why you view it differently.

One of the most common graffiti tags around Vancouver is FN tagging things about giving land back, or wanting colonials out. The MMIWG report recommendations largely orient around FN-exclusive services and privileges. The criminal system literally has to have a race-based reviews as part of judgment, which is an attempt to justify the law punishing people differently based on racist segregation, giving specific benefits (in the form of reduced sentences/bail conditions) to criminals of FN descent, and giving harsher punishment for crimes committed against people of FN descent -- JWR, our first FN AG, literally campaigned for and implemented this race-based privilege, her policies being a big reason we had the huge uptick in repeat violent offenders being released onto the streets around the time COVID started (it became much more noticeable after the lock downs). Housing is built explicitly for FN. The Hereditary chief system, and band management in general, is not inclusive, not overly accountable, nor something other races can "immigrate" to -- a black guy can't show up and become a FN, the system is racist by definition. Non-FN that do things like create art/images that resemble FN things, get sued / torn down / shamed -- hell, my Mom once brought some home-made Dreamcatchers to a craft sale in the 90s, and was verbally assaulted by a FN vendor (whose dreamcatchers weren't selling, as they were lower quality) until she had to leave.

I'm not allowed to ask questions about the residential school system, or question the narrative around it being a genocide, as questioning it is on schedule to be claimed a hate crime. So you win that one by authoritarian decree, I have to accept whatever you say about it. Because the system doesn't treat people equally. Very Canadian -- so you're right, we do have very authoritarian tendencies, even in recent history.

I'm from Vancouver, and currently live here. Vancouver does "Canada together" (not Canada Day celebration -- because it's triggering to some minority groups to Celebrate a nation that they view as a colonial genocidal occupier). No fireworks. And as you say, lots of recognition of past injustices. Most of the events are FN oriented, basket weaving, music, etc. There're food trucks, which aren't bad. It's not so much a celebration of Canada, but a celebration of FN culture, and an assertion that FN culture is key to Canada. FN culture is often xenophobic, undemocratic, and unaccepting of 'colonials' (for good reason in some cases) -- these aren't, historically, Canadian values. It's not so much "Let's show off how great Canada is", as it is "look back at all the bad stuff we did, and celebrate the victims with a hope for reconciliation". So in that sense, yes, we do still "celebrate" on Canada day, but it's not so much a celebration of Canada. The change over to this format happened around the same time as Trudeau's "Postnational" comments, declaring us a people without a singular connecting culture.

Alberta is likely the reason the Americans are confident they can 'take Canada by economic force'. Smith's overtures are basically moving towards Alberta leaving Canada / joining the USA. Once that happens, east/west trade basically gets cut -- BC is left isolated and unable to feed its population without trade crossing the USA. This, coupled with the dissolution of the Columbia River Treaty, wherein we get a cut of the power produced by US hydro plants downstream of the river (so BC isn't energy independent by any stretch, contrary to what some politicians have implied over the years), allows the USA to annex BC. Most of the prairies would follow Alberta, from the sound of things when push comes to shove (the Sask premier has made similar "you can't restrict our trade south, we don't care about the federation!" comments from what I recall, we just don't hear it as much in the media), and areas of the northern territories would be increasingly pressured after BC+Alberta fall, especially on the western side. The USA wouldn't have to move any troops to accomplish this, they just need a compliant Alberta, which they seem to have.

Taking Greenland would allow them to isolate the eastern parts of Canada by restricting ocean trade routes and limiting access to European markets -- they won't need to "take" take Greenland, but just setup a few occupied military bases similar to what they have in Guantanamo in Cuba (Cuba doesn't want them there, but there they are!). And without BC / access to the West Coast and/or the Panama canal, moving goods from China becomes difficult/impossible for Eastern Canada. Without the prairies and lacking non-US controlled trade routes, food sustainability becomes an issue for Central Canada, making it an easy target. The maritimes fall, practically as an afterthought.

With the "fentanyl is a WMD" rhetoric, they may even try to expedite that by sending troops in to our ports -- and honestly, when you hear how the longshoremen in BC operate, the states may have actual justification to do so: their 'attack' would have a grain of truth, given the seedy crap that goes on at the ports. And despite the bravado from some of our politicians, they would likely still capitulate on a ton of things to try and appease the Americans. PP would do it with a smile, Carney will do it slightly grudgingly but in the same "rationale" as what we saw down south with the Senate Democrats betraying the progressives on the budget vote -- so, for example, the Americans are on about "banking", specifically wanting access to retail banking while ignoring Canadian regulations. Carney likely won't hesitate to throw Canada's retail banking ecosystem under the bus. Carney and Carolyn Rogers are the folks who were responsible for smashing the hell out of the small credit unions in Canada already -- Carolyn practically killed Central1, the primary trade association for the Credit Union system (though it takes a long time to bleed out) -- they'll happily sell out what's left, and any modicum of privacy people have on their payments, to the USA if they think it'll buy them a few more years of "near status quo". Even if doing so will make it easier for the USA to target "bad thinkers" by reviewing where you spend money - similar to what Doge and the social media inspections are doing currently. The CBC will spin the story into a positive, just like how they spun Freelands negative results on the USMCA into a positive after that deal was signed. The CBC reporting there, while it was being negotiated, listed various things we were seeking that'd be 'measures' of how we did -- we failed on most of em, yet they still ran pieces as though Freeland did a great job, with photos of her collapsed on a couch 'exhausted' from negotiating so hard or whatever. That sort of shenanigans from the CBC, is one reason the "right wing" calls to defund the CBC convince so many people; and instead of addressing the issue, the Left is now simply blasting out that we need to protect the CBC because of American influence in other media channels. You either support all Left wing positions without question/thought, or else you're labelled a bootlicking fascist. We don't really have a non-authoritarian option.

Another area they're likely to capitulate on, are things like Immigration and "bad state" students -- like the Bill the US is currently pushing to ban students from China from accessing higher education. Realistically, do you think they'll be all "Yeah, no worries, we'll keep sharing tech/education stuff with Canada, even though they don't do the same racist shit"? Nah, they'll require Canada to put restrictions / limits / block the same sorts of people. With Trumps approach, he may just go with a blanket "No more CPUs for Canada, unless they agree to our terms" -- try finding any kind of computer that isn't tied to the USA supply chains, its nearly impossible. And we'll likely end up doing it, because our politicians will reason out that the "best option" is to go along with it, and hope the USA 'gets better'.

Places like Europe are aggressively trying to build up sustainable military manufacturing. They're pushing to excise American tech companies - advancing things like Linux-centric Operating systems for use by businesses/government agencies. Building up nuclear capacity. Our politicians are big on talking, but very short on actual action. They put the entire government into Microsoft, AWS, Google, Meta etc. Our health records are in the US cloud. Our financial regulators are in the US cloud. Most of our government agencies are in the US cloud. Even if "data is stored in Canada", access and use of that data is controlled by USA companies, that are beholden to the Orange mans whims -- no, that's not quite right: USA tech companies that are not only beholden to his whims, but are egging him on to do more. The govt sold out so much of our supply chain to other countries, that it's nearly impossible to get anything that's "Canadian made", beyond the odd grocery or clothing item here and there. And while claiming that they view this as an existential threat, their actual response has been very muted when it comes to supporting Canadian industries / businesses. And none of the parties, from what I can see, will realistically change that trend -- it's mostly just whether you want PP gleefully destroying stuff with a "DOGE-NORTH" hat, or if you want a sullen Carney doing it. Best hope is that the states descends into a civil war, and we manage to last long enough to see it -- but its increasingly unlikely, as American "resistance" sorts are weak willed, and generally "online activists, offline enablers".

Like, it wasn't too long ago that Trudeau was busy blasting out, and celebrating, that Canada was ‘the first postnational state’, adding that there was ‘no core identity, no mainstream in Canada’. Places like Vancouver don't even bother with celebrating "Canada" on Canada day, instead putting on basket weaving "Canada is a genocidal shame fest" events, and making asking question about that narrative a criminal hate crime. Even if the Liberals are the most "likely" to provide some sort of resistance at this point, they celebrated the country being dismantled, segregated and separated. And they celebrate tools like censorship -- many of the tools the right-wing extremists are using, were made/blessed by left-wing "progressives". They're all marching to the beat of the same authoritarian, tech oligarch drum.

Sorry, I'll stop ranting.

And yet Albertans will almost definitely support PP, even as he campaigns using Trumps slogans, wearing Trumps bronzer, and promising the same DOGE-like crap that's going on down south. They'll also likely re-elect Smith when the time comes.

I hope I'm proven wrong, but I'm not optimistic.