Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Surrendering the field to the separatists, once again

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As the Alberta referendum is now in advanced voting, I am finding my patience being severely tested as the “Lead Not Leave” crowd continues to rely on the same lies and manufactured grievances that the separatists employ to try and insist that while their grievances are real (they’re not), there is a better solution than separation, such as a federal government that capitulates to their demands. But Justin Trudeau did not cause the oil price crash in 2014, Stephen Guilbeault wasn’t even elected until 2019 and wasn’t environment minister until 2021, none of them did anything to cause capital to flee the country (that was the oil price crash), and the oil companies themselves went along with the plans to reduce emissions, claiming they were committed to the goal (only to relevel that—surprise!—they were lying as soon as they had a federal government that was more willing to capitulate than hold them to their promises).

Honestly, fuck off with this revisionist history. Trudeau and Guilbeault didn't cause the world price of oil to crash in 2014. They did nothing to "shut in" Alberta's resources. Trudeau offered help to Alberta in 2015 when Harper didn't. www.readtheline.ca/p/jim-dinnin…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T02:44:22.717Z

The fact that the "remain" camp keeps telling everyone the lies about these fabricated grievances means that they are just accepting the separatists' arguments, and that just seems incredibly stupid because it's validating their false narratives. Can nobody have an honest conversation about 2014?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T02:44:22.718Z

I cannot stress enough that if you agree with the separatists’ lies, then you have already surrendered the field to them. You are saying that they’re right about the issues, but only wrong in the solutions, which is ridiculous. The “Lead Not Leave” crew also engages in the other false narratives about Albertans, that they are somehow unique examples of people who work harder and are more ingenious than the rest of the country, which isn’t true either. Alberta, when it was carved out of the Northwest Territories, happened to be rich in resources that the First Nations signed treaties to share. Albertans are not harder workers than anyone else. Their ability to extract resources was not thanks to something special about them—they got a shit tonne of federal dollars and special tax treatment.

Speaking as an Albertan, I cannot roll my eyes hard enough every time someone insists that Albertans are a separate people because of their "work ethic" and "entrepreneurial spirit," as though it was their hard work and ingenuity that put the oil in the ground in the first place.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T02:50:18.115Z

"Oh, but it was our ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that developed the oil sands!"No, it was a fuckload of money and tax breaks courtesy of Jean Chrétien, both when he was Pierre Trudeau's finance minister and later prime minister. Not that you'll ever hear an Albertan admit that fact.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T03:10:23.265Z

Their good fortune is virtue! Cree first identified the oil sands. Europeans needed a Treaty to exploit it. And now Alberta (a non party) want to end said treaty through individual votes-which contravenes international law, Canadian law Cree law (per Sylvestre). open.alberta.ca/dataset/d5a7…

— Orlagh O’Kelly (@orlaghokelly.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T03:57:27.341Z

Groups like “Lead not leave” and the federal Conservatives who claim to be fighting for the remain side in this referendum rely on these lies and falsehoods to make their point, which is just conceding that the separatists have a point. Until any of them can have anything approaching an honest conversation about what happened in 2014 (and 1981 for that matter), we’re just perpetuating this same cycle of manufactured grievance and this referendum will solve nothing.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-14T13:08:03.510Z

My Latest:

For National Magazine, I dig into the issue of “digital trade alignment” that the Americans were pursuing, and why that is a backdoor to attacking sovereignty.

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The lessons from Trump’s lies

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Circulating online over the weekend was a piece by Daniel Dale over on CNN about what it’s been like fact-checking Trump for ten years, and what this kind of industrial scale lying is doing to the landscape. He does correctly lay part of the blame on legacy media outlets who simply treat all of the lying as background noise, as they have few fact-checkers on staff, and they are overwhelmed by the volume of it. In this, Dale correctly surmises, the Steve Bannon tactic of “flooding the zone with shit” has proven affective, because there is so much that it goes unchallenged, so the lies fester, particularly among adherents who treat it like gospel. What he doesn’t do, however, is point out that the continued insistence by legacy media to both-sides everything led to this situation. Conservatives in the US and Canada have long-since figured out that they can lie with impunity because the most that will happen is that it will be both-sidesed, and thus not actually challenged.

In amidst these recollections, I wanted to note that this problem is not confined to the US, but it’s present here on a smaller scale, particularly with Pierre Poilievre and his constant stream of out-of-context, cherry-picked statistics, or his outright bald-faced assertions that are not only incorrect, but hysterical lies that virtual nobody (David Cochrane excepted) has any appetite to challenge. This is especially true for any economic data, which Poilievre spouts unchallenged even though it’s almost all wrong. But because it goes unchallenged, you have a lot of people who think that he knows what he’s talking about so they believe that he’s some kinds of economic genius. He’s not—he learned what he knows from crypto bros on YouTube, and if you actually have an inkling of what the actual data is, then you would see that he is hilariously wrong, but nobody will call him on it, least of all the government.

The other point that Dale made in his post was that the other side-effect of Trump’s constant lies is that because he “authentically speaks his mind” when he lies constantly, it has the effect of making him seem more “honest” than his opponents, which is utterly baffling, and yet populist and wannabe populist leaders, including Poilievre and his would-be challengers, have taken this lesson to heart. There are just so many compounding failures, and yet legacy media in this country refuses to learn any lessons, and most outlets have been even more timid when it comes to challenging any of this, and that’s a very worrying prospect.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-09-27T23:08:01.337Z

My Latest:

My (belated) weekend column points to areas of arrogant presumption on the government’s part with their latest omnibus legislation and why it may yet backfire.

New episodes released early for C$7+ subscribers. This week I look at the study that says that 20 percent of MPs' speeches were assisted with digital asbestos, and why we need a major change in Parliament now more than ever. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-09-27T22:34:15.933Z

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Choose your own associate membership adventure

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Yesterday in Strasbourg, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen gave her state of the union address to the European Parliament, and said that she wanted Canada to become the first “associate member” of the EU, which is not a Thing, and suddenly had a bunch of people’s backs up about it. Our new ambassador to the EU, Jonathan Wilkinson, poured a bunch of cold water on this suggestion, essentially saying that we need to define what this relationship is supposed to mean before we can actually assign any kind of label to it. Other European countries who are waiting for membership are also questioning what this means (including Ukraine), especially because there is a huge process around actual EU membership, and a lot of questions about what the obligations/benefits equation, and levels of integration, because there are already relationships that the EU has with other European countries that aren’t full membership. Carney’s speech will be today.

As Lauren notes, the CAP would be an eye-opener for Canadian ag. Add to that the Euro + the ECB stuff. And then there is the 'four freedoms'….hmmm.I'm not an EU expert, but I follow European politics enough to understand what *full* 'membership' means. Nein, danke. bsky.app/profile/ldob…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T15:17:45.192Z

Meanwhile, after Trump signed a memorandum to ban Canadian products from US federal procurement, he had a whole unhinged rant about how any “associate membership” deal with the EU would be considered a “hostile act” with new tariffs on Europe, in violation of the agreement he signed with them thirteen months ago—because he’s totally making the case that their attempted new trade deal wasn’t impacting on Canada’s sovereignty and would give Americans control over our other trading relationships. Then again, Trump also went on an absolutely incoherent rant about cutting off trade with countries and pocketing the “deficit” which makes no sense because that’s not what a trade deficit means, but his brain is rotted and he has no conception of any economic concepts, so it’s hopeless, but that doesn’t mean people won’t still try to implement these decisions in order to curry favour.

I fear that people might be getting sick of hearing my views on the world.So this time, an open thread for econ faculty to grade this submission on the meaning of a trade deficit.

— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T23:45:58.544Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-09-16T13:08:03.577Z

My Latest:

My column points to how Americans, and Democrats in particular, are trying to guilt-trip us into backing down on counter-tariffs than actually cleaning up their own mess.

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There’s no such thing as associate membership in the EU

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Because everything is stupid, over the weekend, an American newspaper made reference to prime minister Mark Carney working toward “associate membership” with the European Union, which to be clear, is not actually a Thing. It’s not a real title, and means nothing. That didn’t stop the Conservatives from rising up en masse to declare this to be the worst thing ever. Remember that this crew has more than a few people in their ranks who believed that Brexit was a good thing, and lent their support to the cause. And so, Pierre Poilievre decried that we weren’t going to be the 51st state, or the 28th state in the EU, and then decried the whole thing, and demanded Parliament be recalled (it’s back next week regardless), and that he doesn’t have a mandate for this, so he would need an election. Other members of the caucus chimed in with their own bugaboos around “mass migration” and so on, because of course they did. But remember that at no time did anyone say anything about actually joining the EU.

I’m just getting so tired of this desperate search for relevance in the current moment. We’re not going to be EU members. “Associate membership” is not the same thing, and it’s especially nowhere near forced annexation by the US. Grow the fuck up, guys. We need a competent opposition party.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-09-13T20:22:37.264Z

Carney and his office had to engage in damage control to insist that Canada is not seeking EU membership (which we can’t join anyway, because it’s quite explicit in their constitution that it’s not open if you’re not in Europe), but that he is merely seeking an “unique alliance,” to which the EU will be opening an “antenna office” in Ottawa to help with coordination. None of this is EU membership. But that didn’t stop the Conservatives from going absolutely haywire over it, because they can’t resist the siren song of American culture war bullshit, where the far-right derides “decadent” Europe and claim that it’s dying economically and socially, while they act as catspaws for the tech bros who resent that Europe is trying to regulate the internet and force them to be responsible, which they don’t want to be, and for which they’ve coopted the US government to protecting them. More than anything, this is just a sign of how desperate and grasping the Conservatives have become for relevance in the current moment. It was a pathetic display that just demonstrates how adrift they are as a party.

My Latest:

  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take has a concrete suggestion for what the new Digital Transformation Canada should be doing, and it’s not pushing more digital asbestos.
  • For National Magazine, I delve into Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision on sentencing delays and why they’re fundamentally different from pre-trial delays.
  • My weekend column calls out Evan Solomon for complicity in manufacturing consent for worse digital asbestos outcomes, including deaths, rather than regulating it.

New episodes released early for C$7+ subscribers. This week I talk about the Alberta referendum and why it won't solve the imaginary grievances Albertans have been told to believe in. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-09-14T02:20:29.215Z

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Ignore the toddler meltdown in the cereal aisle

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The Trump administration players continue to try and spin their own versions of how the talks collapsed, with Trump insisting that we’re “nasty” and the “worst” (because we won’t just submit), we also saw Howard Lutnick claim that Carney has manufactured all of this because of the Quebec election and the Alberta referendum, and that once those over, Canadian officials will come flooding back to Washington to resume talks. Sure, Jan. Meanwhile, Dominic LeBlanc has taken notes of their denials over certain files, and is taking those as assurances that the “trade irritants” they keep identifying won’t be brought up any longer and publicly saying so. Clever.

Lutnick accuses Mark Carney of "manufacturing" a controversy over trade so Alberta doesn't secede from Canada

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-08-27T18:18:00.166Z

Meanwhile, Trump’s continued tantrum saw him sign an executive order to demand that the US Department of Interior change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, which is going to be another loyalty test for MAGA adherents going forward. And of course, we had a bunch of Canadian media outlets falling all over themselves to try and get reactions to this (and a certain CBC guest host was extremely cringey about it), when we don’t need to respond to this. We can just ignore it, guys. Take Shannon Proudfoot’s advice here, and treat this like a toddler having a meltdown in the cereal aisle. He’s trying to get attention, and if you don’t give it to him, he’ll move on to something else, and you won’t have to make an ass of yourself trying to “get reactions” to this bit of nonsense. Nobody wins by taking this seriously, so just stop.

The last time the Americans tried to claim Lake Ontario in 1813, we intentionally lured them into Fort York and then blew up our entire gunpowder magazine to kill as many Americans as possible.A foundation part of Toronto history is "blowing our own fort to smithereens rather than being American"

— ℳatt (@matttomic.bsky.social) 2026-08-27T18:15:24.761Z

I mean this very, very seriously: It is absolutely an option for us to ignore his idiotic Lake America stunt. We can do that. We can just tune it out like you would block out a child howling at you in the cereal aisle, recognizing that to do anything else would be to give the whiner what they want.

— Shannon Proudfoot (@sproudfoot.bsky.social) 2026-08-27T17:54:13.273Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-08-27T19:08:03.250Z

My Latest:

  • My column takes note of where we’re at with the trade war, and the fact that Carney spent a year-and-a-half making concessions for a deal that was never real.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take points to the difficulties about sacrificing the Online News Act for a deal that didn’t come to pass, which would be a Pandora’s Box.

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A brief reprieve from threatened tariffs

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There has been a slight reprieve on the expected imposition of new tariffs, which Trump says has to do with the revival of Keystone XL (which isn’t actually called that anymore). I’m not sure that that accomplishes overall, because it will likely mostly just wind up being trans-shipment for export on the Gulf Coast, and I doubt we have production capacity to fill both that pipeline as well as a second west coast pipeline, and if that means this is an invitation to ramp up even more production in the oilsands, well, that’s yet another climate betrayal by Carney.

Trump says he's pausing the new Canada tariffs for three days because there's a tentative deal which may include reviving the Keystone XL pipeline

— Thomas Seal (@twseal.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T02:20:17.599Z

From PMO:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T03:14:59.266Z

Earlier in the day, the rumour being leaked was that the Americans were trying to put forward a deal on auto tariffs to lower them to 15 percent, but with a possible base level of 7.5 percent if the American content was increased. The problem, however, is that according to the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association’s Flavio Volpe, margins in auto assembly run around six percent, so they’d still be losing money, so it’s a non-starter. All of this to say that this is dragging out further, and I’m still not discounting yet more capitulation by Carney to get some kind of a “deal,” even though there is no actual deal to be had.

Proxy voting

Mike Moffatt published an op-ed in the Globe and Mail yesterday that expanded on his previous thoughts about proxy voting for parents with children, which is his way of getting around the notion that not giving everyone a vote undermines the one-person-one-vote ethos. I’m not a fan of this particular logic, and I think that his enthusiasm for how mothers would vote better in the interest of their children (as most mothers would be given the proxy vote using CCB rules in his vision) is wildly optimistic or utopian, I do worry that this would essentially be rewarding people with additional political power for having children, even for the sixteen or eighteen years that they have the proxy, which I find a bit distasteful.

More to the point, I worry about unintended consequences. Like how voting rates plummeted after we lowered the voting age to 18, and how people have been wringing their hands about it ever since. One of my particular concerns is that this becomes yet another de facto gerrymander to increase the weights of rural ridings over urban ones, as rural families tend to have more children than urban ones, and this just perpetuates the already egregious problem of rural ridings being artificially weighted heavier than urban ridings, which in turn favours conservative parties in those areas, and that is often a deliberate strategy (looking especially at you, Alberta). Maybe I’m just being cynical, but as much as I can respect Moffatt’s reasoning, I don’t think it survives the test of reality.

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Section 338 tariffs?

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With the World Cup out of the way, Trump decided it was time to beat up on Canada again, so he announced the intention to hit us with new 50 percent tariffs, and no, not because of the wildfire smoke crossing the border (which prime minister Mark Carney said he talked to Trump about at the World Cup final). No, these are under Section 338 in their trade law, which has to do with “discrimination.” Because retaliation for their illegal and unjustified tariffs apparently counts as “discrimination” in their eyes, and no, there won’t be any NAFTA exemptions under these tariffs, apparently.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mr4ivv6mlk2l

But they’re also weird. Some of them are calculated for symbolic effect (like hockey sticks, or Canadian wine), but some of them make no sense (Canadian tequila?). And maybe this is more “art for the deal” nonsense,

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3mr4hk7wqcs2w

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3mr4hk7wz422w

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3mr4hk7x23c2w

Raking the Forests

Some Canadians got in on the whole “Rake the Forests!” MAGA meme, and it’s very embarrassing. Others decided that after years of insisting that these fires were set by climate arsonists, that now wildfires are natural, so there’s no climate change involved. (Erm, guys…) I can’t even.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2078166450540519719

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2078912872625868932

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2079276027340362039

New right wing talking points dropped! The forest fires have nothing to do with climate change. Nothing to see here.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-18T19:42:56.807Z

My Latest:

My weekend column looks at how Carney capitulated to industry on the Pathways project, making it essentially costly and useless, likely in a bid to simply kill it.

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Roundup: A mere reminder to respect international law

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Well, that kind of felt like a close one, as Trump made genocidal threats against Iran, and then backed down at the very last minute for a two-week ceasefire (negotiated by Pakistan?!) that would seem to effectively hand over control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran’s control in exchange for extortion payments? Maybe? There are a lot of competing narratives, nut none of them are any good, and the most that Mark Carney could muster himself to do was to say that “all parties” must respect International Law. Well then.

Meanwhile, you had Americans on social media imploring the rest of the world to Do Something about Trump, when he’s their president and they have all of the tools to remove him at their disposal if they were to so choose, and they could have spent the day protesting in the streets nation-wide, and made it really uncomfortable for their government, but nope. It’s not even learned helplessness—it’s an absolute refusal to both understand their own civics, and take responsibility for their actions.

Trump expects the rest of the world to clean up his mess in Iran, while American voters expect the rest of the world to clean up the mess they made in electing Trump.Just perfect. Chef's kiss.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-07T16:03:58.527Z

Back home, Mark Carney says he’s looking at ways to “cushion the blow” of high gas prices as a result of this conflict, while he keeps having to answer questions about why gasoline prices are so high when we produce our own at home. He never seems to want to explain why we are bound to the world price (i.e. so that we can export into the global market), and also never gets around to saying that the last time the federal government proposed price controls on oil and gas, well, Alberta has an absolute meltdown that they still harbour zombie resentment toward today (even though they blamed the NEP for the collapse in prices when it was, in fact, a global oil price shock, but it was more convenient to blame Pierre Trudeau and it stuck).

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2041663111531528240

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2039193785742324033

In case you missed it:

  • For National Magazine, I delve into whether there is any basis for the Chief Justice to recuse himself if the Supreme Court hears the Emergencies Act appeal.
  • My weekend column looks at a recent push by some senators to start using the tools at their disposal to break up omnibus budget bills.
  • My column notes that Poilievre treats “cutting wasteful spending” as the very same kind of magical money tree that the NDP does when it comes to wealth taxes.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take finds it a problem that Poilievre is evaluating the effectiveness of his shadow cabinet based on their social media presence.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians attacked two busses in Dnipropetrovsk, killing eight people and injuring more than two dozen others. Ukraine has regained more territory along the frontlines in the east and southeast parts of the country. There is a looming shortage of the miniature jet engines that Ukraine’s deep-strike drones require.

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Roundup: Stopping because we asked nicely?

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Prime minister Mark Carney departs for India today on the first leg of his major trade trip, and as pretty much as he’s out the door, senior officials giving a background briefing to reporters says that they believe that India is no longer engaging in transnational repression, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the trip. That…defies credulity. And the logic of not going on the trip if they were engaged in the repression doesn’t hold given that Carney was just in China two weeks ago, and lo, they haven’t stopped their own efforts around interference or repression.

Foreign interference from India, including transnational repression, has been going on in Canada since the 1980s. It did not stop last week. You can agree that stabilization of relations is important with India is important, while not believing this BS. www.thestar.com/politics/fed…

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2026-02-25T23:42:11.723Z

“I really don’t think we’d be taking this trip if we thought these kinds of activities were continuing,” a senior government official said. lol ok so by that logic I guess that means China no longer interferes in our democracy either since the govt took a trip there

— Supriya Dwivedi (@supriya.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T00:35:08.800Z

We just had a whole-ass judicial inquiry that found that India was the number two country, following China, engaging in foreign interference and transnational repression in this country. It’s been happening since the 1980s, and we’re supposed to believe that they just folded up shop and went home because we asked nicely? Really? Just this week, more Sikh activists in Vancouver were warned by police that they and their families are being targeted. Are we supposed to believe that this is just a figment of their imaginations?

The worst part of this is that it’s just insulting to everyone’s intelligence. It’s transparently untrue, and it’s done to shut up the reporters who keep asking about the state of the relationship. There were so many better ways he could have answered this, including talking about how they have made progress with dialogue with Indian officials, or that they have police cooperation, or anything, but just saying “they stopped,” because apparently we asked nicely, is not going to cut it, and Carney is misjudging the public on this one yet again.

Ukraine Dispatch

There were overnight attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv. Ukraine’s defence minister says they plan to have 4000 kilometres of road protected by anti-drone netting by the end of the year. It is estimated that some 1700 Africans are fighting for Russia, mostly having been tricked into doing so.

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Roundup: His photo-ops were different, you see

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Jamil Jivani has returned from his trip to Washington, and before briefing Dominic LeBlanc or anyone from the government, he turned to the pages of the National Post to pen a self-congratulatory op-ed for the trip that nobody asked for, and that op-ed says pretty much nothing but a collection of platitudes about the GM plant in his riding, and looking for ways to continue the partnership with the US, as though the US isn’t the problem. It’s empty, and has apparently accomplished absolutely nothing

What is hilarious, however, are the fact that conservative posters over on social media have been taking his photos from his meetings with various players in Washington and declaring this to be “leadership,” as opposed to photos that say nothing other than he met with them. And yes, these are the very same voices who denounce the fact that prime minister Mark Carney has travelled across the globe several times over the past nine months and has met with all kinds of world leaders, because of course, that’s just a useless photo op (per Pierre Poilievre’s talking points in Question Period), but Jivani’s pointless photo ops? Totally different. Because of course.

Meanwhile, Kirsten Hillman can’t actually say if she thinks Trump wants to preserve the New NAFTA because his positions change from day to day, and there is no consistency from anyone around him, so that’s fun. Here is more about Hillman’s time in Washington as she wraps up her diplomatic career.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a massive drone attack on Odesa overnight, which followed a previous massive attack on energy facilities with over 400 drones and 40 missiles earlier in the weekend. The US says they want the war over by summer, but Russia can go home at any point, and these deadlines do nothing but encourage Russia.

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