The Death of Canada

 

"I am Canadian, and freedom is my nationality." -- Laurier

The current Sean Feucht controversy—an American pastor-performer being harassed and prevented from performing in Canada, even in a church—underlines the sad reality that Canada is not longer a free country. Canadians demonstrably do not any longer have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, equal treatment before the law, property rights, freedom of conscience, the right to have a nation, or even right to life. 

To be fair, neither any longer do Britain or France.

I have lived in Saudi Arabia. The atmosphere of oppression, of having to mind what you say, of government intrusion into your life, is stronger now in Canada than in Saudi Arabia even at the height of its autocracy. 

It is shocking how casually Canadians, and Britons, and the French, have accepted this, even voted for it, even demanded it. I grew up imagining everyone believed in human rights.  And France and Britain were among the cradles of liberty. Hyde Park Corner, the Oxford Union, Magna Carta, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and all that. It is more than sobering to see how gauze-thin the commitment ever was.'

At least, pushing back against errant government, earning eternal honour, we do still have the United States. This is a recent phenomenon even there; under Biden, the US was going the same way as Canada and Europe, even in some ways leading the charge.

This gives hope that a similar turn may come in Canada. But time is running out. Canada just voted in a Liberal government once again, probably for four years. Britain is in a similar situation, and France has banned the leader of their opposition from running.

I have felt since 2022 that the brutal suppression of the Freedom Convoy, which is ongoing with the prosecution of Tamara Lich and Chris Barbour, made Western separation, or at least Alberta separation, inevitable.

The federal government cannot or will not make a new trade deal with the US. They are insisting on preserving supply management, and this is something the US, reasonably enough, will not accept. It has also been torpedoing trade deals with the UK, perhaps others. The feds dare not negotiate this away, because the system is too popular in Quebec.

So everyone else is making deals with the US to get lower tariffs, and Canada can’t make a deal. Alberta energy is the one bargaining chip Canada might have had, and it is gone. 

Canada may not last another four years. Not to mention the effects of mass immigration, which look about to erase Britain and France too.

That being so, and liberty and human rights being vastly more important than any petty tribal loyalties, the most I can say is that I would not oppose an American invasion. At worst, there is little left to lose.

So Long, Canada

 

My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?

I am not over the trauma of the Canadian election. The result was, on its face, the worst possible. Four more years of the Liberals with their growing totalitarianism, growing censorship, growing immigration, deliberate hobbling of the economy, growing taxes and deficits, supply management and trade war.

Worse, with a minority. This means they do not have a mandate to negotiate with Trump. There is no unified front. Sooner than expected, but just as I expected, Alberta is talking of secession.

Has God abandoned Canada?

He might have reason to love America more. America has after all been at the forefront of advancing human rights and human liberty. And it has assumed the task of defending it. What, by contrast, does Canada’s existence do for the world, for mankind, for human progress, by existing apart?

America is also at the forefront of reverence for God, of religious faith. Granted that there is much religious fervour in poorer nations, America stands without parallel as a rich and successful nation that nevertheless has preserved its faith. It shows the path forward, then. Within the Catholic Church, America is now seen as the home of the resistance to modernism. And reports are growing of a general revival, a new Great Awakening.

At the same time, Canada has been blindly arrogant. On the one hand, we have looked down on Americans, imagined we are superior. We have not been grateful for their decency and generosity as a neighbour. Instead, we show contempt. “We burned down your White House.” Which, of course, we did not. “We won the War of 1812.” Which we did not. We object to their new tariffs, and ignore our tariffs on US products, as though America owes us something.

On the other hand, we in Eastern Canada, the bulk of the population, have arrogantly ignored the concerns of Alberta and the West. We have looked down on them. We have expected them to send us regular tribute, and expressed no gratitude for it. We have treated them like a colony.

We have deserved some chastisement.

But have we been so awful that we deserve to be destroyed? Surely we have still been on the whole a moral people, better than most.

Yet God perhaps knows best. Carney promises the destruction of Canada. Poilievre promised a chance to hold the enterprise together.

Maybe it is best for all if Canada dies fast so that the suffering is not drawn out. The great apocalypse everyone fears is simply Canada being assimilated into the United States—a fate that most people in the world would consider the best thing that could happen to them.

Canadians can then expect greater wealth, lower taxes, more career opportunities, stronger guarantees for our freedoms, more security, more life choices. 

Will we feel nostalgia for the old Canada? There is no real reason to, as we can and no doubt will preserve our traditions. Just as Texas remains distinct within the US, or Louisiana, or New England.

So Long, Canada. We Hardly Knew You

 

Big Pink

The world is mad. It has always been mad, but something snapped around 2020.

Canadians are in terminal Trump Derangement. They are prepared to burn down the country out of spite.

Trump and the USA of course have every sovereign right to impose tariffs at their border. This is not a hostile act. 

Trump is not threatening to annex Canada. That is paranoid fantasy.

It is insane for Canada to impose retaliatory tariffs. We cannot win a trade war with the USA. The sane course is to negotiate 100% free trade instead. But no Canadian politician dares say this. Instead, we will just stand there and pour gasoline all over ourselves, then light a match.

Unless things change dramatically in three weeks, Canada is about to re-elect the Liberals under Carney; with a majority government. 

Right-wing commentators are as delusional as everyone else, insisting that the polls must be wrong.

With the Liberals’ environmentalist agenda blocking the development and transport of Alberta’s energy resources, Alberta is then planning to hold a referendum on secession. 

It is likely to pass, with the Liberals in power. But Easterners all still insist on voting Liberal.

If Alberta separates, Saskatchewan is likely to follow. BC will probably need to go too.

If this happens, Eastern Canada will be left an impoverished rump. 

Trump gets his best case scenario: he can admit the resource-rich West to statehood, and get full access to their resources. He need not let in all those left-leaning voters in the East.

Congratulations, Canada. Darwin would be proud.

Happy Valentine's Day from Canada

 

Mark Carney

The mood everywhere on the left seems to verge on hysteria. Or perhaps this is “narcissistic rage.”

People are claiming that Trump’s tariffs and proposed unification are “an existential threat to Canada.” Those who welcome annexation are supposedly against Canada. Some point out that these are often the same people who supported the Freedom convoy, and claimed to be defending Candain culture against mass immigration. But they were traitors all along!

If the proposal to unite with the US is an existential threat to Canada, New Brunswick must have ceased to exist in 1867; British Columbia died in 1871. And all those blackguards we call Fathers of Confederation were traitors.

To the contrary: unification when possible with a larger body is the essence of Canada, beginning with union with the now dissolved British Empire. It is why Canada has always been a joiner when it comes to international bodies of all kinds.

And next to that, according to Laurier, the essence of Canada is freedom: “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.” If, therefore, Canadians preserve freedom in union with neighbours—or even increase their freedom—this is the perfect expression of the Canadian identity.

If one’s “Canadianness” consists only in not being American, this is not a nationality. It is merely a prejudice. In all the normal senses of the word, Canadian culture is American culture. Same language, same religion, same ethnicity, same political ideology, same history. If you reject American culture, you are rejecting Canadian culture. You are the one who is unpatriotic.

If Trump is an existential threat to Canada, moreover, then a man is an existential threat to a woman if he asks her to marry him. Were we not hysterical, we would at least be gracious, and appreciate the offer.

Instead, our embarrassing leadership, including Mark Carney, respond with threats and insults. These seem calculated to harm, first and foremost, Canada. They cannot seriously harm Trump or the US. At best, they are hysteria. At worst, they are treason.

The Liberal Resurrection

 

Mark Carney

I fear Trump has put a stick in the spokes of the Poilievre bandwagon. Bad news for Canada. 

Six months ago, I thought the future looked sunnier for Canada than for the US. We had a strong opposition leader in Poilievre, and our system looked capable of managing the impending populist revolution in an orderly fashion. Things looked darker in the US, with lawfare, riots, and assassination attempts. It seemed that civil war or revolution in the streets might break out.

Now the situation seems reversed. Trump is upstaging Poilievre. The radicalism of his program makes Poilievre look less exciting by comparison, and more like controlled opposition. Enthusiasm flags.

Without a truly radical option to vote for, the choice between Poilievre and (presumably) Carney now devolves to who looks more competent to manage. And Carney’s resume beats Poilievre, whose expertise and experience is limited to parliament and politics.

Poilievre has always been good at sticking to one message, as one should on rhetorical principles. “Axe the tax.” His calculation was that the Liberals could not abandon this central plank of their platform. But his attack has been so successful that they, Carney and Freeland and Dhalla, actually have. And now the carbon tax looks incidental in comparison to the threat of tariffs and annexation.

And the Liberals can now run against a foreign adversary instead of Poilievre, and benefit from a “rally round the flag” effect. If he says anything against the current government, or dissents in any way from their proposed program, Poilievre can be accused of disloyalty in the face of the enemy. Is he on Trump’s side? But if he agrees with everything they are doing, and Carney has a reputation for competence, why switch leaders?

The best hope now is that Carney will stumble or blunder in such a way as to look incompetent. Not impossible; but also not to be expected.

If Carney does manage to pull things out for the Liberals, I think this will hasten the dissolution of Canada. Trump will have won. Alberta will opt for independence and join the Union, in frustration. Others will follow. Poilievre is Canada’s only chance of staying united and independent.

The Annexation Tango

 

I am now seeing a growing chorus of Canadians on X pointing out the advantages of annexation to the States. 

Really. It only took a few days for Trump to create a groundswell of support for the idea. He has an uncanny knack for “reading the room”; in this case without even being in the room. What this really is, I think, is the essential talent of prophecy. As Blake said, the prophet does not really predict the future, but sees the present more clearly than others. Trump is uncommonly unburdened by the delusions that blind most of us.

The best argument to my mind is the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. It is not enough to get rid of Trudeau. Trudeau has demonstrated that the protections supposedly written into our Canadian Constitution are not worth the sheepskin they are printed on.

It’s all about what deal could be negotiated. Kevin O’Leary is proposing a union like the EU, with a shared currency and shared passport. Trump has suggested Canada come in as one state.

My problem with O’Leary’s suggestion is that, for such a union to be palatable to the much larger US, it would really mean the US made the rules, and Canadians would have no vote, so long as we stayed independent.

My problem with Trump’s suggestion is that it would offer no venue for Quebec to preserve its linguistic and cultural distinctiveness. And Canada would be underrepresented in Congress in relation to its population, with only two senators.

Ten new states, each of the provinces joining as states, would cause the least disruption and be easiest constitutionally. However, this would give Canada more representation than its current population would warrant; the US might well object. A compromise: five new states, and three new territories: British Columbia, Canada West (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba), Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador). This would give Canada Senate representation matching its population, recognize regional differences, and preserve the name “Canada” in at least two new states. 

The main objection, Stateside, will no doubt be that Canadian voters tilt left, so they will skew American politics. But perhaps not; having experienced a hard left government in Trudeau, Canadians may be reliably right wing from now on. Just as Cuban refugees or Vietnamese are in the States, or the Poles and Hungarians are in the EU.

Without Firing a Shot

 

Back at the close of the 19th century, Wilfred Laurier said “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.”

It follows that, if Canada loses its freedom, there is no more reason for Canada. 

This is perhaps the most compelling argument for Canada to join the US. It is clear that the Canadian Constitution has not protected our freedoms. Justin Trudeau’s government has been able to trample them, and nothing seemed to be there to stop him. It is exceptionally difficult to legally amend the Canadian Constitution; we are stuck with it. The simplest thing, then, might be to join the USA. Many Canadians now crave the protections the US Constitution seems able to protect.

Here is a simple non-violent way for Trump to annex Canada: offer any native-born Canadian citizens automatic citizenship on moving to the States, on the revocation of their Canadian citizenship. Many would take him up on the offer; especially the youngest, most ambitious, and most qualified. Canada would be left impoverished, and the US enriched. More so if he also applied the threatened 25% tariffs. The remnants would probably soon enough beg to be admitted.

Unburdened by What Has Been?

 

Discussion of the US annexing Canada is spreading, in the media and on X. 

I watch carefully the Canadian responses. What arguments does anyone have? Why is Canada independent?

The one argument I see is “we have universal health care.”

Not a good argument. In theory, if it so chose, Canada could still offer and provide universal health care for its residents as a US State.

Most often, no argument is given. Just an expletive, usually one beginning with F and ending with off.

This proves those who react this way have no argument.

As a businessman and entrepreneur, Trump has the skill of seeing a business opportunity. He sees when money has been left on the table. 

Canada was left on the table by the Statute of Westminster, and then progressively by the dropping of preferential tariffs when the UK entered the EU, the patriation of the Canadian constitution, and the influx of new immigrants. Its reason to exist was its British ties. They are gone. Britain walked away.

I think Canadians have felt this in their hearts for some time. Hence the frequent lament about an absence of Canadian identity. Justin Trudeau himself has said Canada has no identity, no reason to exist, no "mainstream." Hence the Canadian desire to join any international association going. Hence it's idolization of anything coming from abroad, its "multiculturalism."

Perhaps it would be a mercy.

I Think He's Serious

 

Someone leaked Trump's comment at his recent meeting with Trudeau, suggesting Canada become the 51st state. 

Why was this in particular leaked, and nothing else from the meeting?

Actually looks like a trial balloon.

Trump has since posted this on X:

Yeah, could be a troll. 

Bet it isn't. He's certainly forced the idea into the public discourse. Trump knows how to move the Overton window. Remember when building a border wall was a crazy idea?