Regarding Canada, President Trump has said two things during this election campaign.

First, Trump said he wants Canada to become the 51st state.  He’s not joking.  He’s said it repeatedly.

Second, President Trump said he prefers to negotiate with Carney. He’s never taken that back either.

These two statements are connected.  All Trump has to do is wait.  He’s older and fortunately for him, he won’t have to wait long.

A Carney government will continue to block oil and gas development.  When Carney speaks of national energy projects he’s referring to his renewable energy pipedream. Canadians will watch helplessly as the Carney government spends untold billions in a fruitless attempt to kill the oil and gas industries and force a net zero energy transition.

Even Russia and China in their wildest national adventures never tried to forcibly transition its entire energy system. It took the Soviet Union about 80 years to collapse as an economic structure. But the Soviets never attempted anything this ridiculous.

Somehow we’ve attempted to detach accessible and affordable energy from economic viability. If we think affordability is an issue now (and it is our top issue), just wait.  The election hasn’t even happened and jobs backed by billions of our tax dollars are already disappearing.

The US economy with it’s affordable energy will look like Shangri-La compared to Canada.  If you think this is hyperbolic please take a quick look at the Prime Ministers own Privy Council report which he has understandably neglected to speak about during the campaign. This is a report from the PM’s own planners which states “social stagnation and downward mobility are plausible elements of the future” and goes as far to suggest that desperate “people may start to hunt, fish and forage on public lands and waterways without reference to regulations.”

For those who believe Carney’s approach can be successful please note the collapse of GFANZ.  Carney was chairman of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.  Those who committed to GFANZ agreed to kill investment in non renewable energy, funding only renewable replacements. Members of GFANZ hoped to compress a transition that naturally takes somewhere between one hundred and one thousand years into a decade or two.

By declaring a National Energy Emergency on his first day in office, Trump killed GFANZ in the US. In short order major investment firms and all the major US banks left the alliance. While Carney and other pretenders try to keep the GFANZ dream alive, their economies will compete with China’s cheap labour and USA’s cheap and abundant energy. GFANZ will survive in the short term only by the sacrifice of the citizen taxpayers of participating nations.

The reality is a Carney victory only strengthens Trump’s position. Trump wants Canada’s resources and a Carney government sets the table for that to happen.  Not in a negotiation over trade disputes in the fall of 2025, but after Canada’s utter economic collapse a few years later.

There are people in Canada, definitely in Alberta who actually like the idea of becoming an American state.  One of them told me he will vote for  Carney to accelerate the conditions that make it more feasible.  The real irony is that the Elbows Up crowd are the most adamantly opposed to future US statehood. Ironic because they’re doing the work Trump wants them to by putting Carney in charge of our economy.  Canada seems poised to put the wrong general in charge at the most critical time.

This is not so much a battle against left and right, liberal and conservative as it is a last stand by the shrinking number of Canadians who still trust corporate media. While corporate media stir up the anti Trump narrative, Canadians who’ve moved on to the new independent medias concern themselves with other issues. One of these groups don’t answer polling questions.  Maybe it will turn out Poilievre’s rallies are the real measuring stick. If you love Canada you better hope so.

If there’s one thing we know about the unpredictable US President, it’s that he will predictably say whatever he wants to. Why has President Trump not said he’d prefer to work with another conservative?  Because he doesn’t care about his fellow conservative thinkers in Canada as much as he cares about a future North American-wide USA. Giving Trump a Carney victory?  God help Canada. We’re going to need it.

Some day in the near future those of us who fondly remember the Canada that stretched from sea to sea, will look back to see how the best country in the world (at least for a while) fell apart.  In the end our love for national sporting endeavors and our multicultural charm couldn’t hold us together anymore.  Sure we may not have been able to define what a Canadian was, but for the longest time at least we could all agree we weren’t American.

At some point the country of Canada simply couldn’t support a decent living for the average citizen anymore.  Fiscally, it became inevitable that Canada would splinter and fall apart as desperate citizens made desperate political moves to do what immigrants have always done, uproot their lives in search of safety and financial security.

A number of serious academics will point to the first NAFTA agreement as the starting point for all this turmoil.  They might indicate NAFTA was Canada’s first Great Mistake. Tough to avoid even in hindsight.  Free Trade Agreements swept the planet and it would have been expensive and maybe even impossible to avoid that route.  Problem is, we were a small country surrounded by oceans and the biggest market in the world.  At first it looked like we were in the most enviable position of any country. Eventually we came to depend entirely on Big Brother next door and we didn’t aggressively pursue development and trade relationships with other countries and regions with the gusto that we could have and surely would have with better hindsight / foresight / intelligence.

It only took a few decades for our country to become entirely dependent.  One day Canadians woke up and realized we completely relied upon not just the US market, but the good graces of successive US governments who were perfectly happy to throw us a bone periodically to ensure at least limited success… until they weren’t.

The day we woke up and realized the water was rising all around us was very early on in the Trump 47 Presidency.  That’s when US voters decided their economy was off the rails. Their tax burdens were unsustainable. They were buying manufactured goods, including necessities like food, energy, microchips, and medicines from everywhere except the US. They were supporting economies actively engaged in the military / financial destruction of the US.  They spent far too much on their military and their bureaucracy, and funding for necessities at home were at risk.  In the end their reasons weren’t as important as their actions.  Their actions compelled Canada to do something and quick.

We didn’t. Instead of fighting like mad to build pipelines and move energy, to swiftly develop minerals the world needed stat, to immediately erase interprovincial trade and employment barriers, Canada fought the US.  Too many politicians and too many voters reacted the way most people do when they’re punched.  They punched back without stopping to think.

In retrospect it would have been a great time for someone with a wider view, someone that could have seen the world in 20 or 30 years time. Instead our politicians were focused on the oncoming political campaign.  Just like we could have used someone with foresight when we entered into NAFTA, it would have been incredibly helpful for the sea to sea version of Canada if politicians would have been leaders instead of vote collectors.  They might say this was Canada’s second Great Mistake.  We entered into a fight against a much larger and more powerful opponent. It was a fight we had no chance in winning. But our leaders weren’t interested in “saving” Canada so much as in “fighting for” Canada.  Turned out there was a big difference between “saving” Canada and “fighting for” Canada.  Who knew?  Retrospect.

As a side note, there were a couple of political leaders pushing for the longer view. Alberta’s Danielle Smith had some momentum, at least at first, in taking the fork toward resource development and even dealing with interprovincial trade barriers.  Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe was on side, but they were drowned out by Team Canada and were unable to form the political coalitions they needed to sway the fighting camp into the saving camp.  Federally there was one leader who took this route as well.  Max Bernier made the right calls, but unfortunately for his People’s Party only a couple of voters picked up the phone when he called. He was more less completely ignored.  It’s his own fault.  He called for immigration limits about 10 years too early and he was written off as a racist lunatic.  Remember those days? That’s what we did to just about everyone who stuck their necks up.

The problem for the “saving” Canada crew was that the “fighting for” Canada crew had all the major national political parties, all the corporate media (remember them?) and almost all the academics (or at least the ones the corporate media talked to).  Team Canada was at war and they acted like it. Even Canada’s greatest sporting hero of all time, Wayne Gretzky, fell to their blades.  When The Great One was sentenced to a lifetime of golfing in sunny Arizona / California / Florida and banished from visiting his national non-profit head office in wintery Ontario, well that was Canada’s third Great Mistake.  Those who saw the influence of Team Canada knew if they can cancel The Great One, they won’t think twice about your silly arguments for saving their nation.

So, Canadians voted to fight The Donald.  Early losses suffered by Ontario’s newly elected (to fight the tariffs with greater tariffs) Premier Doug Ford were not analyzed the way an intelligent individual might who was looking toward the future. Not a surprise as this forward looking type could not be found since the dawn of that NAFTA Agreement.  Canadian voters voted to follow the politicians who hated The Donald as much as they did.  Ironic because a lot of those voters ended up trying to continue that fight by joining the Democrat party a couple of years later.

In the end it wasn’t the tariff war that sunk the sea to sea Canada.  Canadians eventually got around to lowering trade barriers and even signed some significant deals with other nations that hated The Donald as much as they did. In the end though, the nations we wanted to deal with the most had no interest in what Canada has most to offer.

Do I need to say it?  Oil and Gas?  Cheap, reliable energy. It still hurts to talk about it.  Sure the Canadians who held on to the name of that formerly great country held a big party when they decided they were the world’s first Net Zero Nation.  They used paper cups and paper straws and paper plates and wooden forks to eat their organic cake.  All the public news services covered it.  People in the US might have even noticed if the remaining Canadians hadn’t decided to hold their event on July 4 so they could go head to head with.. oh forget it.

No it wasn’t the tariffs in the end. The tariffs were one of the battles in the war. The war ended for all intents and purposes when the people running sea to see Canada decided to take their longer vision of the future and apply it to the entire earth instead of the country they loved.  After all there would be no Canada at all if the world was too hot for life to continue.  So they continued to use reams of the dwindling supply of taxpayer dollars to subsidize what they were sure would be a world wide move to renewable energy sources. Problem is, they’re still looking for affordable battery technology.  Some say the greedy Americans actually discovered the science behind it but the oil and gas people bought it and buried it.  They’re going to be sorry when their coastal properties sink some day soon.  Rich pricks.

At least the remaining Canadians can feel good about saving the planet.

PS. Of course most of this can be avoided.  Canadians can still decide they love their country even more than they hate The Donald.  We could still direct ALL of our efforts into becoming as economically viable as possible.  But that would mean ending years of climate change crisis planning.  It would mean cutting the size and the scope of our bureaucracy to counter the wild advantages investors and businesses are building in the US. It would mean we’d come to the understanding that Saving Canada and Fighting For Canada have become 2 separate ideas.  It would mean taking this blow from the US on the cheek and turning that cheek to accept more blows while we focus ALL our attention on building a stronger nation as quickly as possible.  Not bloody likely, eh?